The Will, Bondage, and Freedom

In this post we will look at Luther's ideas concerning the will of man. Specifically, we will look at Luther's Bondage of the Will. I am not a Luther scholar, and I am not familiar with other writings of his where he touches on the subject of the will, thus I cannot necessarily claim this as a fair judgement of Luther's position, or, at least, his final position. Possibly someone out there with a little broader knowledge of Luther's understanding can give input. Likewise, this is "young Luther" who is prone to exaggeration, is far from systematic, and is often times found to be contradictory.

Like the work itself, I don't feel I have a coherent way of presenting Luther's arguments. What I am compelled to do is pick out certain aspects of his argument and analyze them from that perspective.

I. One thing that Luther draws on is the necessity of things happening the way that they do. I wrote in my previous post that I wouldn't touch on this subject. But, coming across Luther's condemnation of Erasmus on this subject: "But you are a very poor rhetorician and theologian if you venture to open your mouth and instruct us about 'free will' without any reference to these matters,"1 I decided I couldn't stand under the same judgement as Erasmus :) Luther writes: "God foreknows nothing contingently, but He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His own immutable, eternal and infallible will. This bombshell knocks 'free-will' flat, and utterly shatters it."2 A little later, Luther will write: "All we do, however it may appear to us to be done mutably and contingently, is in reality done necessarily and immutably in respect to God's will. For the will of God is effective and cannot be impeded, since power belongs to God's nature."3

This is Luther's first mistake. It is a mistake that does not take into account the distinction between God's permissive will and his directive will. God's directive will is that which he actively wills and personally brings to pass. His permissive will is that which he allows to come to pass. This is an essential distinction for any theodicy that desires to make clear that God is not the author of evil. We must therefore determine what exactly makes up what is ultimately necessary. For us to do this we must make a distinction between wills, that is, God's and all others. To determine why things happened the way that they did within a span of time, that is, in history, one has to look at the active subjects that are involved in that history. To do this you have to acknowledge the wills involved. In the case of our universe this is God's directive will and our wills. Therefore we can honestly say that we have a role in determining what is ultimately necessary.

For example: I decide to hit my sister. We would not say that this is part of God's directive will, that is, that God actively willed this and actively brought it to pass. Rather we would say that this is part of God's permissive will. That is, God's active will acquiesces to our will. And this is what God's permissive will is, it is, God's active will acquiescing to other wills. The accumulation of this is what determines what is ultimately necessary, and it all falls under the bounds of God's directive and permissive will.

Luther, on the other hand, sees the necessity of things coming about as part of God's active will ("the will of God is effective and cannot be impeded, since power belongs to God's nature") and thus sees this as an argument for why we do not have free wills. This is what we call theological determinism. Luther argues that our perception of our actions being mutable is just an accident of our consciousness. Luther writes: "It is a settled truth, then, even on the basis of your own testimony, that we do everything of necessity, and nothing by 'free-will.'"4

II. We should stop and define what an un-free will is, and in contrast, what a free will is. From my previous post: I Desire To Be an Orange..., we determined that the will is the ability to analyzes different options and to, of its own impetus, choose between them. We also determined that this does not mean that the will can choose anything, for example, I can not will myself into becoming an orange, because this is, technically speaking, not an option. A will that is un-free, therefore, is a will that is not capable of choosing, thus not being a will at all, or a will that is forced to choose what it does not will, or a will that is unable to choose that which it would if it was not being impeded from choosing, from something outside of it.

Luther, at least nominally (and ultimately in contradiction with the previous topic above), denies these positions. He writes:

"I said 'of necessity'; I did not say 'of compulsion'; I meant by a necessity, not of compulsion, but of what they call immutability. That is to say: a man without the Spirit of God does not do evil against his will, under pressure, as though he were taken by the scruff of the neck and dragged into it...but he does it spontaneously and voluntarily."5

Luther goes on to say: "This is what we mean by necessity of immutability: that the will cannot change itself, nor give itself another bent."6 It should be noted that when Luther says "immutable," that is, an inability to change, he is really talking of only one choice, that is, between good and evil; he is not talking about peanut butter and jelly and ham and mustard.

What Luther does not make clear, though, is that the will is never forced to do anything. It never is made to do something it does not want to do. The depravity of man before conversion is commensurate with the will that wills that depravity. Its inability to choose the good is reflective of its own depravity not an imposition on the will from anything external. There is nothing outside us, technically speaking, that keeps us from choosing the good. That does not mean the unconverted will can choose the good, any more than I can will myself into being an orange.

This therefore does not contradict our definition of what a free will is. The will is capable of choosing that which it is capable of choosing and is not forced to choose that which it does not desire to choose.

III. There are many statements of Luther that are either in conflict with this, or in conflict with what he said about compulsion (from outside), or both. Whether this is merely rhetoric, or oversight, or straight contradiction, is not for me to judge. We should, though, point some of these statements (few of many) out.

a) Luther speaks of the converted will that can choose the good: "Here, too, there is no freedom, no 'free-will', to turn elsewhere, or to desire anything else, as long as the Spirit and grace of God remain in a man."7 This needs to be clarified. If Luther means that, say, in heaven, man is not capable of choosing evil through imposition from outside, he is mistaken. If, rather, he means that the renewal of man is such that, in heaven, he would never choose the evil, he is correct.

b) Luther writes: "So man's will is like a beast standing between two riders. If God rides, it wills and goes where God wills...If Satan rides, it wills and goes where Satan wills. Nor may it choose to which rider it will run, or which it will seek; but the riders themselves fight to decide who shall have and hold it."8 This is crass dualism, and in complete opposition with what Luther writes, just one page previous, that the will is not forced through compulsion.

c)Likewise, Luther will write: "However, with regard to God, and in all that bears on salvation or damnation, he has no 'free-will', but is a captive, prisoner and bondslave, either to the will of God, or to the will of Satan."9

IV. In light of all the previous, we need to make clear what we mean by bondage and what we mean by freedom, that is, the will that is in bondage and the will that is freed (arbitrium liberatum - SD, Art. II, Par. 67).

The bondage is exactly what Paul talks about in Romans 6:20. This is not a bondage that is imposed on us, nor is it a bondage that we engage in against our will. It is, though, a bondage that we ourselves cannot get out of. It is a bondage that we can only be released from by the blood of Christ and the rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit. Our wills cannot accomplish this due to the fact that our entire corrupted natures are turned against God, and thus our will, as an accumulation of man (see: I Desire To Be an Orange...), can never turn towards God.

The arbitrium liberatum, freed will, that Solid Declaration, Article II, talks of is the freedom we receive from that same bondage previously mentioned (Rom. 6:20). This is accomplished through the rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit through Word and Sacrament. It frees us from the sin in which we were in bondage, renewing us in heart, soul, and mind, so that we can choose the good (we can now will to be an orange!) by the grace of God.

Neither of these states implies a lack of free will, properly speaking, rather they reflect either the depravity of our nature so that we cannot choose the good, or the renewal of that nature by the grace of God, by which we can.

----------------Footnotes--------------
1. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, trans. J. Packer and O. Johnston (London: James Clarke & Co., 1957), 79.
2. ibid., 80.

3. ibid.

4. ibid., 105.

5. ibid., 102.

6. ibid., 102-3.

7. ibid., 102.

8. ibid., 102-3.

9. ibid., 107.