SIMUL: The Journal of St. Paul Lutheran Seminary, Vol. 4, Issue 1 (Fall 2024)

SIMUL

Fall2024

Freedom of the Will vs. Bondage of the Will

TheJournalofSt.PaulLutheranSeminary

SIMUListhejournalofSt.Paul LutheranSeminary.

CoverArt:

“PortraitofDesideriusErasmusof Rotterdamwith RenaissancePilaster,”by HansHolbeinthe Younger(1523).

Disclaimer:

The viewsexpressedinthe articlesreflectthe author(s) opinionsand arenotnecessarilythe viewsofthe publisherand editor.SIMULcannotguaranteeand acceptsnoliabilityforany lossor damageofanykind causedby the errorsandfor theaccuracy ofclaims made by the authors.Allrightsreservedand nothingcan be partiallyor inwholebe reprintedor reproduced withoutwrittenconsentfrom the editor.

SIMUL

Volume 4, Issue 1, Fall 2024

Freedom of the Will vs. Bondage of the Will

EDITOR

Rev. Dr. DennisR. Di Mauro dennisdimauro@yahoo.com

ADMINSTRATOR

Rev. JonJensen jjensen@semlc.org

AdministrativeAddress: St. Paul LutheranSeminary P.O.Box251 Midland,GA 31820

ACADEMICDEAN

Rev. Julie Smith jjensen@semlc.org

Academics/StudentAffairsAddress: St. Paul LutheranSeminary P.O.Box112 Springfield,MN 56087

BOARDOFDIRECTORS

Chair:CharlesHunsaker

Rev. GregBrandvold

Rev. JonJensen

Rev. Dr. MarkMenacher

Rev. Michael Hanson

Rev. Julie Smith

Rev. Culynn Curtis

Rev. Dr. ErwinSpruth

Rev. Dr. JamesCavanah

Rev. Jeff Teeples

Rev. Judy Mattson

TEACHINGFACULTY

Rev. Dr. MarneyFritts

Rev. Dr.DennisDiMauro

Rev. Julie Smith

Rev. VirgilThompson

Rev. Dr. Keith Less

Rev. BradHales

Rev. Dr. ErwinSpruth

Rev. Steven King

Rev. Dr. OrreyMcFarland

Rev. HoracioCastillo(Intl)

Rev. AmandaOlsonde Castillo(Intl)

Rev. Dr. Roy HarrisvilleIII

Rev. Dr. HenryCorcoran

Rev. Dr. MarkMenacher

Rev. RandyFreund

TheBoundWillinTexas:AMinorityGuestata FriendlyLuncheonoftheFreeWillSociety

Rev.Paul Owens

Virgil

TheTheologyofPredestination/Electionandthe BoundWillIsforProclamation:Luther’sSweet SermonintheBondageoftheWill

Dr. Marney Fritts BookReview:

(Michael Massing) Rev.Dr. Dennis R. Di Mauro

EDITOR’S NOTE

Welcome to our thirteenth issue of SIMUL, the journal of St. Paul Lutheran Seminary. This edition goes to the heart of the matter by exploring whether human beings actually have free will.

In this volume, Roy Harrisville tells us what to do when those pesky door-to-door evangelists come calling. And Paul Owens explains what you should say when surrounded by a dozen free will preachers at the local pastors’ lunch.

Virgil Thompson takes another look at Gerhard Forde’s The Captivation of the Will to understand how freedom leads to bondage, but also (and paradoxically), how bondage leads to freedom.

This edition goes to the heart of the matter by exploring whether human beings actually have free will.

Marney Fritts provides a beautifully written and well-researched study on Luther’s Bondage of the Will.

I finish out this issue with a book review on Michael Massing’s 2019 tome Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther and the Fight for the Western Mind. Can the lives and experiences of these two great humanists shed light on their theologies about free will?

What’s Ahead?

Upcoming Issues

- Our Winter 2025 issue will discuss the seven

Lutheran confessional controversies of the late 16th century. They are the: Adiaphoristic, Majoristic, Antinomian, Osiandrian, Crypto-Calvinistic, Synergistic, and Flacian controversies. How did these debates influence the creation of the Formula of Concord (1580)? Do these disputes still exist in Lutheranism today?

SPLS now offers the Th.D. – We are excited to announce that St. Paul Lutheran Seminary is partnering with Kairos University in Sioux Falls, SD to establish an accredited Doctorate in Theology (Th.D.). The Th.D. is a research degree, preparing candidates for deep theological reflection, discussion, writing, leadership in the church and service towards the community. The goal of the program is to develop leaders in the Lutheran church who are qualified to teach in institutions across the globe, to engage in theological and biblical research to further the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to respond with faithfulness to any calling within the church. Those who are accepted into and complete the program will receive all instruction from SPLS professors and will receive an accredited (ATS) degree from Kairos University.

The general area of study of the Th.D. program is in systematic theology. Specializations offered within the degree include, but are not limited to: Reformation studies, evangelical homiletics, and law and gospel dialectics. The sub-disciplines within the areas of specialization are dependent upon the interest of the student provided they have a qualified and approved mentor. Other general areas of study, such as biblical studies, will be forthcoming. For the full description of the

program, go to https://semlc.org/academic-programs/ If you are interested in supporting our effort to produce faithful teachers of Christ’s church, contact Jon Jensen jjensen@semlc.org. All prospective student inquiries can be directed to Dr. Marney Fritts mfritts@semlc.org.

Giving - Please consider making a generous contribution to St. Paul Lutheran Seminary at: https://semlc.org/support-st-paul-lutheran-seminary/.

I hope you enjoy this issue of SIMUL! If you have any questions about the journal or about St. Paul Lutheran Seminary, please shoot me an email at dennisdimauro@yahoo.com

EITHER FREE WILL OR PREDESTINATION

Roy Harrisville III

The Visitors

They are polite and usually come in pairs. They want to talk about your eternal soul and which path you will choose to avoid damnation. They mean well, but they put the fear of God into people who have no theological background. Instead of hiding behind couches or angrily dismissing them with a slam of the door, invite them in. Offer them coffee or tea and ask them if they created themselves. If they believe in “free will,” they must believe in auto-generation, for only then would they be perfectly free from the devil or God’s influence.1 That’s what free will means, in the end. It means that I must have created myself without the aid of the Creator. It’s the only way I can be truly free from God’s or anyone else’s influence. They will respond that God gave them free will, that God granted them the freedom to choose. Then ask them where it says that in scripture. They will probably refer to Joshua 24:15: “…choose this day whom you will serve…” And you are off to

the debate over free will and predestination.

Compulsion

The debate over free will and has raged incessantly for millennia. Most Lutherans don’t know anything about it because pastors are too shy to address it or because they don’t understand it themselves. I have frequently heard the language of “invitation” in Lutheran churches lately. To invite means to allow the invited freedom to choose. The pastor will tell people that Jesus invites them to the kingdom, or some such phrase. Perhaps the pastor is thinking of that parable in Luke’s Gospel in which the master invites people to his feast.2 But it’s a parable, not a whole theology of invitation. More importantly, all the guests who were “invited” turned him down! It was then the master told his servants to “compel” people to come to his feast. Compulsion is hardly invitation. Instead of the language of invitation we find that God calls people into the kingdom.3 A calling is an imperative, a command, not an invitation. Such observations are important if one is to present the gospel in its full light. With that in mind, it only takes some close exegesis to notice that in Joshua 24 the choice Joshua gave his people was not between false idols and the true God, but between two sets of false idols!4 Paying attention to the words and the context does make a difference.

Joshua

Bondage of the Will

Paying attention to the language of scripture is what Martin Luther did in his famous book: On the Bondage of the Will (1525). Luther wrote his book in response to Erasmus of Rotterdam’s diatribe: Discussion, or Collation, concerning Free Will (1524). “The Bondage of the Will is the greatest piece of theological writing that ever came from Luther’s pen,” according to Packer and Johnston.5 Whether that is true or not, it is true that this work is at the center of the Reformation and supplies the engine for the theologies of justification, sanctification, faith, and salvation, etc. If one wishes to find the core of Luther’s theology one need only read the Large Catechism, and The Bondage of the Will. To read that second book with humility and honesty will mean the demise of one’s trust in autonomy – the confidence in the self. For it is the self and it’s will that fight against the will of God. It can be quite upsetting at first to encounter this kind of theology. That is why I have always joked that one should read it in broad daylight with a friend.

American Autonomy

That is because it goes against every common theological instinct (especially in America). Free Will is a doctrine that is universal in the human family. Most people simply assume it. Many Christians do so because they do not want God to be the author of sin and suffering. Free will supplies a neat excuse for letting God off that hook. If people have free will, then God is

not responsible for their sinning. I imagine that people want to believe in a God who is all sweetness and light. But it’s hard to get comfortable with such a powerful and awesome God who has sovereignty over all creation, including us. However, a God who allows his creatures perfect sovereignty over their own lives seems like a good and gracious deity. Besides, free will just makes sense in everyday life, why not in theology?

The Hidden God

Everyday life is comprehensible to the average human being, but God is not. We may have “free will” when it comes to reasonable things that our minds can understand, but God is inscrutable.6 Erasmus was concerned that God never be the cause of death. Luther countered that God hides himself. While God is known through his Word and the preaching of it, that Word does not reveal all there is to know about God. Scripture tells us what we need to know things concerning this life, but has not exhausted the depths of the Lord. The will of God is disclosed in part – the will that chooses our life, our good, and our salvation. But there is more to God. “Who has known the mind of the Lord?”7

God has an inscrutable will that is beyond the understanding of mortals. We can know about that God, but we cannot understand that God. That is why we live by faith and not sight.8 Faith in God is not knowledge about God. Faith

Erasmus

requires mystery beyond sight and knowledge. The hidden God is also the reason why Christianity cannot be boiled down to some simple romantic doctrine of love. Sappy sentimentalism ala Hollywood will not do for the Lord of the Universe. God’s hiddenness requires our reverence and awe. We must allow mystery in our faith.9

Not a Deistic God

Yet, the teaching about predestination, though it certainly touches upon the teaching of the hidden God, is actually built upon the teaching of grace. In numerous places in scripture, for instance, the doctrine of election is plain. It is there in the creation, the call of Abraham, the Exodus, the call of the disciples in the New Testament, the crucifixion and resurrection, and Romans chapter nine. Each time the context is one of grace, in which God chooses to do something wonderful. Both testaments witness to God’s election of Israel.10 This theme of gracious choosing cannot be expunged from scripture in favor of free will. Jesus chose his disciples; they did not choose him.11 That was actually quite unusual since most teachers at that time would hang out their shingle and see who came calling. Jesus was not willing to wait for someone to notice him. God is not willing to wait for people to choose him. God is not like a coach who sends in plays and strategies to the players on the field, all the while being relegated to the sidelines. It is his creation, his world, and he will enter it where and when and how he wills. To do anything less would be to become a clockmaker god who makes the

clock, winds it up, and leaves it in its own care.

God cares too much for his creation to stand idly by and let it sink not oblivion by the light of its own mortal sense and reason. The expected Messiah unexpectedly did not raise an army and conquer the world, as many had hoped. Instead, he came and placed himself under the cruelty and arrogance of his own creatures, to the reasonable astonishment of them all. No one asked him to do that. He elected his own demise as a gracious act of redemption that would shatter all preconceptions, reasonable and otherwise. Gardeners do not simply plant seeds and walk away. Why should God?

Determinism

Another misconception has to do with the idea of determinism. Determinism, as I understand it, is the determination of every breath and step we take by some outside force. That is not what is meant by predestination. Predestination has to do with the ultimate destination of each person, not with the paths they take on the way. As mentioned above, Luther well understood that people were certainly capable of making their own choices in this life as far as their reason can take them. But in the things beyond reason, such as the Almighty Lord God, they are not free to choose.

“So we learn from Ecclesiasticus that man falls under two Luther well understood that people were certainly capable of making their own choices in this life as far as their reason can take them. But in the things beyond reason, such as the Almighty Lord God, they are not free to choose.

kingdoms. In the one, he is led by his own will and counsel not by any precepts and commandments of God; that is, in the realm of things below him…In the other kingdom, however, man is not left in the hand of his own counsel, but is directed and led by the will and counsel of God.”12

Thus, the idea of determinism is eliminated in Luther’s theology and replaced by things “below” (where we can choose), and things “above” (where God alone chooses).

No doubt the two visitors will counter all this with the accusation that if there is no free will when it comes to choosing God, then how can our faith be genuine, authentic, real? Are we robots who have no will of their own? What about all those people who don’t believe? Why doesn’t God elect everybody?

The Issue of Faith

The issue of faith then becomes the focus of the debate. But here again, the two visitors need to read scripture closely to find out that it is precisely because of God’s grace and election that faith is a gift, not a choice. According to Romans 4:3-5, the great exemplar of faith, Abraham, did not believe by his own efforts. John’s Gospel states that faith is “… not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man…”13 “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.”14 Nowhere in all of scripture is faith in God described as a matter of one’s own mortal will. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit.15 Such faith is real. It is genuine. Just as one’s

breath is an unchosen gift at birth and continues to be authentic through life, so too one’s gift of faith is quite real. Christmas gifts are real, even though they are often not what one wanted! Faith is very genuine even though it is a gift.

The charge of being robots carries no water either since it is not a question of determinism, but of one’s final destination. Yet, the final accusation, that God is unjust to choose some and not others, seems quite an effective retort. Yet, it too fails to achieve its goal.

Lutherans Are Not Calvinists

Lutherans are not Calvinists. Calvinists adhere to the idea that some are destined to heaven and others to hell.16 Though God may have elected to damn a few “vessels of wrath made for destruction,”17 Lutherans do not need to believe in a densely populated hell. Martin Luther never developed the same kind of double-predestination theology as Calvin did. Instead, one might call it “single” predestination in that Lutherans believe God graciously chooses his children who are destined to share eternity with Him, but as for the rest, though they may live under the threat of condemnation because of unbelief, one can never tell if in the end they might be gifted with faith. St. Paul needed to be ambushed by the risen Lord before he believed.18 So too, it is possible that those who are now living without faith in God may yet have a similar experience. The mechanism of predestination is probably the most

Calvin

neuralgic of issues. Many think that God chooses people in some long-forgotten age while twiddling his thumbs on the clouds. Indeed, ancient Jewish apocryphal books testified as much. But for the New Testament it is different. The word is the avenue by which people are given faith and therefore are chosen.19 The word is the avenue of election. When someone preaches, teaches, or talks about Jesus to another person and that person’s heart is warmed by what he or she hears, that is the very immediate and very personal moment of predestination. It happens when you are there, not when you are not.

Because it is through the word that election happens in a very personal way, it is also through the agency of other persons that faith is broadcast. Therefore, if one is concerned with all those people who do not believe, then one has the wonderful opportunity to proclaim the gospel to them. That brings us back full circle to the two visitors.

After hearing these arguments our visitors may ask, “Why doesn’t God choose everyone?” If he loves the world so much, wouldn’t that make sense? The question seems logical and a debate stopper. But again, the underlying assumption in that question is what dooms it. The assumption is that people are born basically good and should all be chosen. But Psalm 51:5 (“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity…), and many other such verses, declare otherwise. If people are born sinful then the real question is why God would save any of them. That God does so is evidence of His good and gracious will. It is not a matter of why God does not save everyone, but, rather, why God saves anybody!

The two visitors may stomp off without praying for you (as mine once did!). Yet, one can always hope that as they listened, they learned that God’s election does not come from a desire to seem like an ogre, but quite the opposite. God’s love is so overwhelming that He is unwilling to leave his creatures to their own devices but will choose to act in love and mystery to redeem a fallen world.

Conclusion

In the end, the teaching on free will and predestination in the Lutheran tradition provides the truest release from the self’s abiding concern for itself. The self will always want to have the assurance that it is secure from all harm and that its destiny is equally assured. If you don’t know where you are bound though, no path is right and anxiety builds. But if you believe that your end is secure and that no matter what path you take you will arrive at your proper destination, then you may be released from worrying about yourself everlastingly and take comfort in the assurance that even if you lose your way, get sidetracked, or even stalled, you’ll still end up in the right spot. If that is so, then self-denial is finally possible, from which comes a new life that is not curved in upon itself but rather points outward toward others. It is a life of gratitude for having been set free from worry and fear. It is not a perfect life, never that, but a genuine life focused on God and creation in which the greatest concern is with the other person and his or her welfare. Just as Christ

The self will always want to have the assurance that it is secure from all harm and that its destiny is equally assured.

never worried about himself but denied every selfish impulse, so too may the ones he redeemed live with love’s abandon for others. Think of how different our world would be if people actually believed that.

So, invite your visitors in. But before you do, read some Lutheran theology. Just remember to keep the lights on!

Roy A. Harrisville III, PhD, is a retired NALC/LCMC pastor who has taught New Testament at several institutions and has published three books. His most recent is The Faith of the New Testament: A Pauline Trajectory, Pickwick, 2023.

Endnotes:

1“If ‘free-will’ is ascribed to men, it is ascribed with no more propriety than divinity itself would be – and no blasphemy could exceed that!” J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, Martin Luther on The Bondage Of The Will: A New Translation of De Servo Arbitrio (1525): Martin Luther’s Reply to Erasmus of Rotterdam (Ada, Michigan: Revell, 1957), 105.

2Luke 14:15-24, The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2001). All subsequent citations in this article use the ESV version.

3In Mark 1:17-20 Jesus called his disciples, he did not ask them to RSVP.

4“…choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.” Joshua 24:15.

5Packer and Johnston, 40.

6“… man should realize that in regard to his money and possessions he has a right to use them, to do or to leave undone, according to his own ‘free-will’…However, with regard to God, and in all that bears on salvation or damnation, he has no ‘free-will’, but is captive, prisoner and bondslave, either to the will of God, or to the will of Satan.” Packer/Johnston, 107.

7Romans 11:34

8“If I could by any means understand how this same God, who makes such a show of wrath and unrighteousness, can yet be the merciful and just, there would be no need for the exercise of faith when these things are preached and published; just as, when God kills, faith in life is exercised in death.” Packer/Johnston, 101.

9“That there may be room for faith, therefore, all that is believed must be hidden.” Packer/Johnston, 101.

10Deuteronomy 7:6-8; Romans 11:28-29, etc.

11John 15:16.

12Packer/Johnston, 151.

13John 1:12-13.

14Romans 9:16.

15Luther attests to this conclusion when he writes in the Small Catechism, “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith…” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 355.

16"This they do ignorantly and childishly since there could be no election without its opposite reprobation ... whom God passes by the reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children." John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. by Henry Beveridge, Edinburgh, 1845, 3.23.1.

17Romans 9:22.

18Acts 9:1-9.

19“So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ,” Romans 10:17.

THE BOUND WILL IN TEXAS: A MINORITY GUEST AT A FRIENDLY LUNCHEON OF THE FREE WILL SOCIETY

Paul Owens

Not long ago at the gym, my friend Joel asked me a rare question. His dad was a Methodist pastor, and Joel now attends a local Baptist Church. Joel asked me - in a calm, matter-of-fact way - “so do you believe in free will?” I thanked him and congratulated him for getting to the heart of the matter. He had asked a question that most of my beloved neighbors lack the presence of mind to put directly into words. We all want desperately to claim some imagined power for our own will, but how often do we consciously pose the crux of our own desire to one another, let alone voice our prideful claim directly to the Lord in prayer? Luther commended his opponent Erasmus for also uniquely getting to the heart of the matter. “You and you alone have seen the hinge on which everything turns and have gone for the jugular.”1

The myth of human free will is practically in the drinking water in America, and even in the Church, so much so that you may be reading this right now and saying to yourself “why is he calling it a myth?” The jugular, as Luther and Erasmus both knew, is trust in God versus trust in man’s own abilities. My conviction is that the human will is bound to trust in itself, bound to do what it wants to do… enthralled with itself. Just give your will or mine half a second and you’ll see. Freedom only breaks in for us when our will gets crucified with Christ, that is, when you come to the end of yourself - which you and I both hate to do –and realize that your conscience is hobbled, bound to yourself… unrighteous… wrong… and that only Christ crucified gives himself as righteousness for the unrighteous, namely for you. Then and only then, we have all the free will we could ever want or need: our dear heavenly Father’s will for us, rather than our own. As Paul confesses, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).2

Then and only then, we have all the free will we could ever want or need: our dear heavenly Father’s will for us, rather than our own.

God bless my friend Joel for his amiable, calm manner when he went straight for the jugular at the gym that day. Too often the devil lures us in and convinces us that the debate around this question is about winning a theological argument. For Luther, and I hope for me and the people I serve, it’s about something much deeper and profoundly more helpful to sinners who struggle under the Accuser’s constant attack. It is

about rescue from that attack and from the blackhole of oneself. It’s about handing over life to those who otherwise have no life in them (John 6), about freeing a burdened, bound conscience from itself. Gerhard Forde has said as much in his slim-but-significant book, The Captivation of the Will. Forde writes that Luther’s response to Erasmus’ diatribe on free choice, De libero Arbitrio, "should not be seen primarily as a negative work or merely one more theological debate, but as a desperate call to get the gospel preached. It is intended to be a summons for us, not a dirge. A conversation to be entered full of humor and theological gusto.”3 Even Erasmus himself, a vehement opponent of Luther’s at times, lauded his consistent gospel-filled message. A few years after the exchange with Luther, Erasmus wrote “the theologians curse Luther, and in cursing him curse the truth delivered by Christ to the apostles… Luther’s books were burnt when they ought to have been read and studied by serious persons.”4

The Natural Will, Clint Eastwood, and the Holy Spirit

Oswald Beyer writes, “People by nature have their own natural idea of God, in which they flatten everything out to make it fit their concept of the One, the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.”5 This self-justifying thinking is the natural way of the human heart, and this “thinking and striving of the heart is radically evil” (Genesis 6.5; 8.21). My heart and yours has busy fingers that are always trying to make something of their own rather than live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And what the heart makes is counterfeit… good

looking, good sounding, sense-making idol after idol.

Before Satan enters to peddle the voice of your free choice as a counterfeit to the Lord’s free will and his voice (Genesis 3), men and women are content to "live by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Deut. 8.3, Psalm 40.3, Psalm 71.8, Psalm 89.1, Proverbs 13.3;18.7, Isaiah 53.7), etc. But then, as soon as Satan whispers into our ears, we begin to take our words over God's word and talk of our will emerges and our free choice is then asserted. “As Erasmus saw it, it is essential that man should have freedom of choice. Without it there would be no sense in meting out praise or blame, since there could be no possibility of man’s meriting either” (LW 33.9).

God’s will is justification by grace through faith; our will is selfjustification by choice. The human will is so fast bound to itself and its own words that it can do no other than to insist on an economy of deserving: “I must have the freedom to choose or refuse grace, otherwise how will the bad and the good each get what they deserve?” When the self seeks to justify itself in this way, bringing an imagined righteous choice of its own, a dose of reality from the famous theologian Clint Eastwood can be most helpful. In the 1992 film Unforgiven, his character Will Munny reminds us: “deserve has got nothing to do with it.”6

The notion of free will is a trick of Satan –perhaps his best – in order to deceive you and me into trusting ourselves and our own words. The popular, attractive, easy-to-swallow proposition that “my will is free” ultimately ends in burden, sin

Unforgiven

and death. Christ alone is freedom, forgiveness and life for you and for me. To pull the curtain back on this wizard’s deception, the law of God stops our mouths’ insistence on free choice and holds this will, which is enamored with itself, accountable to God. It isn’t just the addict’s will that is bound, but mine, too. Have just some fallen, or have all? Have I fallen just a little short of God’s standard and if I really mean it this time, can my will make up the difference… or does my will trip on itself all the way and need a rescue? (Romans 3.19-23). Christ sends his Holy Spirit to finally convict our will of its bondage to sin and unrighteousness (John 16.8-9).

“I Was Always Striving, Never Good Enough.”

I have a friend who was right at home in the free will society. She grew up in a church that Erasmus would like. Wellmeaning, caring people often urged her on asking, “Are you making good choices? Have you committed your life to Christ?”

But while it is most certainly true that there is no salvation for ungodly ones like us outside of Christ, telling someone “You must believe in Christ” only adds another big item to the will’s “to-do list,” and does not hand over to her any of Christ’s promises. So, my friend found herself constantly striving to obey, but never good enough.

Preaching the decision of your free will can result in a welldressed, popular, and successful collection of congregants in the pews, and perhaps a lucrative business model for the parish as well. But it also heaps untold burdens and accomplishments on an eager will that ultimately collapses under their weight.

Worse yet, it instills a legalism that turns pastors, elders and talkative lay people into the righteousness police. The log in one’s own eye comes to mind. Either way, the burdened conscience is ultimately turned back on itself to be its own rescuer.

Baptism: Who Is the Subject of the Verb?

In the congregational setting, the reality of the bound will and the rescue from bondage that Christ alone accomplishes, manifests itself in pastoral care, preaching and hearing, and the sacraments, particularly baptism. In the town where I serve, if I were to approach most conversations as a theological argument to be won, I’d have no friends and likely not much effectiveness in my witness. But if I acquiesce to the predominate drinking water of the will, I misrepresent scripture and would eventually have to answer to the Lord for it. Christians of the Lutheran confession bring a rare, radical gift to the lunch table. So, in our church, every beloved sinner who joins or considers joining our congregation participates in a simple word study of the verb baptize. We begin by diagraming a simple sentence, such as: “Tommy throws the football.” Even those who slept through grammar class can pick out verb, subject, and the direct object. Then we diagram every sentence in which the verb “baptize” occurs in the New Testament (Matt 3.11; Mark 1.8; Luke 3.16; John 1.26, 33; Acts 16.15,33;

So, in our church, every beloved sinner who joins or considers joining our congregation participates in a simple word study of the verb baptize.

Romans 6.3; Galatians 3.27). Pretty early in the exercise, participants realize for themselves that the Lord or the Lord’s agent (i.e., John the Baptist) is always the subject, the doer of the verb. This seems to be quite helpful in handing over to consciences God’s choice of them in their baptism.

Do We Believe This Ourselves?

When I left for college, my dear mother cautioned me: “Paul, you will pick up the habits of those around you… so remember who and whose you are.” We belong to God, we are not our own! And yet the myth of free will is so ubiquitous that it is hard to not pick up. Why, it’s un-American not to believe in the power of my free will to behave highly effectively and make good choices – never mind that the track record of our race tells a different story. The vast majority at the lunch table imbibe this trope automatically, indiscriminately… and the ready waiter that he is, Satan is always right there to fill our glasses again and again. The ice cubes jingle a deceptively delightful song as the Accuser grins and pours his potion into our glasses. Surrounded by so many friends at the table, it’s easy for each of us to acquiesce and go along with the popular, prevalent, unbiblical doctrine: the myth of my own free will. In all the communicating that is incumbent of our office as Jesus’ witnesses - conversations, emails, sermons, teaching, text messages, prayers - you and I are never more than a predicate or a pronoun away from picking up the human habit of endorsing a non-existent free will. Does Christ want us Lutherans to happily assert our distinctive accent into our conversations? An accent that is not ethnic but rather

evangelical the foreign message that God is the justifier rather than you or me? I believe so.

Sent to the Luncheon, You and I Are

To disciples who were imprisoned by their own self-justification, the crucified and risen Christ breaks in at just the right time so that he might be just and justify these unrighteous ones by giving them faith in Him rather than in their own wills. “Peace be with you,” he declares. “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20.21ff). He doesn’t encourage their free wills to behave better and choose Him, but instead he sends them to do the only thing that actually rescues a bound will from itself: retain and forgive sins. Jesus sends us to hand over Christ’s will in place of our own, to speak life and freedom where there would otherwise be only death and a will enthralled to itself. Rather than quietly going along with a free will, “are you making good decisions” culture, what happens when the law is allowed to do its holy work and expose the enormity of our sin? And then what would happen when that sin is finally forgiven on account of an even bigger Jesus?

Walking out of a public building awhile back, I came upon a young friend I had not seen in months. Peter played baseball in college and now works in the oil field and only comes home every so often. I smiled and called out his name, gave

Rather than quietly go along with a free will, “are you making good decisions” culture, what happens when the law is allowed to do its holy work and expose the enormity of our sin? And then what would happen when that sin is finally forgiven on account of an even bigger Jesus?

him a big hug, and asked a pretty regular question since I had not seen in him a few months: “How are you?” His tone and countenance fell as he confessed into my right ear, “Not good. My little brother left on deployment yesterday and I wasn’t there to say goodbye because I was hungover. I knew he was leaving, and I blew it.” We released our hug, and I looked Peter in the eye with a smile and said, “Yep, that’s bad. You know what Jesus says about that?”

“What does he say?” Peter asked.

“He says that’s a sin; and you’re right, you screwed up… And do you know what he says about this sin of yours?”

Peter beckoned and I responded: “He says you are forgiven. In Jesus’ name, I forgive this sin of yours Peter.”

This 27-year-old baseballer and roughneck wrapped his arms around me in the parking lot and bawled and smiled at the same time, saying, “thank you, thank you… that is exactly what I needed.”

Thanks be to God and Christ’s church that a call was laid upon me, a duty given me to hand over Christ alone to Peter as his righteousness. But what if, what if… I had instead proffered the typical response which would have turned Peter back on his own allegedly free will to behave better? Would I not have left my dear, desperate friend dead in his sin?

The interactions and conversations of daily life, as well as ministry, tend to go better when I remember that what’s at stake is freeing burden consciences rather than winning a theological argument/debate. My witness is more effective when I confess the bondage of my own will first. “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort…” The demons of prideful resistance are dialed down more effectively by humble

confession than by a polemic spirit.

But humble confession certainly does not mean timidity. Indeed, in our conversations we Christians make assertions. We are not just milquetoast dialoguers who endlessly prolong a safe, polite conversation. Without arrogance and with confidence in Christ alone, we confess the truth of scripture, not of the self nor its feelings and opinions. We adhere to, persevere in, and confess the truth of the human will’s captivation to sin and Christ alone as our righteousness. Christians acknowledge adiaphora when so and make assertions when it matters (Matthew 10.32-33; II Timothy 4.15; I Peter 3.15). Like Paul, we get poured out by the Holy Spirit as a fresh drink offering rather than another stale ladleful from the tainted well of the will’s free choice. “What a droll exhorter he would be, who himself neither firmly believed nor consistently asserted the thing he was exhorting about!”7

Perhaps most helpful is the realization that even in a raging, tottering culture, honest conversation full of humor and that theological gusto which Forde encourages tends to serve the gospel and burdened consciences better than polemics. Grumpy guests lose their place at the table. It’s the warm-hearted guests who have the “full conviction”8 that affords for a sense of humor, these are the ones who keep getting invited back into the conversation. These are also the ones who get crucified by the world for confessing Christ alone. As Jesus himself alerts us, “If

But humble confession certainly does not mean timidity. Indeed, in our conversations we Christians make assertions. We are not just milquetoast dialoguers who endlessly prolong a safe, polite conversation.

they do these things to me when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23.31).

In the locale where I serve, there are lots of people and lots of churches. My good friend at the Baptist megachurch is great about convening local pastors together for lunch every month and facilitating our praying together for the good of our community. It’s the best ministerial group I’ve ever been associated with. We all sit down for barbecue the second Tuesday of each month. I love the fellowship and continue to show up with a smile.

Showing up at the lunch table with a smile and waiting your turn, or being present in the hospital room, or at family dinner, or in the pulpit, and handing over a promise of forgiveness of sins, true life, and salvation from Christ crucified to those enthralled by their own free wills well that gives us and the other beggars around the table the only true freedom song. As witnesses to Christ, you and I get to show up at all kinds of “tables,” starting in our own homes and congregations. And we can do so smiling because we have a surprisingly unusual gift to hand over even as the water glasses are being refilled by that sneaky waiter.

Rev. Dr. Paul J. Owens is senior pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, New Braunfels, Texas.

Endnotes:

1Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, American Edition, 33 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1958), 294. The American Edition renders the last phrase as “aimed at the vital spot;” while “gone for the jugular” is Steven D. Paulson’s translation in his forward to Gerhard Forde’s The Captivation of the Will (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2005).

2The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2001). All subsequent citations in this article use the ESV version (unless otherwise noted).

3Forde, xvii.

4LW 33.13

5Oswald Bayer, Theology the Lutheran Way (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2017), 190.

6Clint Eastwood, director, Unforgiven (Warner Bros., 1992).

7see LW 3319-22. Christianity involves assertions; Christians are no Skeptics.

8plerophoria, as Paul and the writer to the Hebrews repeatedly refer to faith, Colossians 2.2; I Thessalonians 1.5; Hebrews 6.11; 10.22

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, “YOU WILL BE MADE FREE?”

Virgil Thompson

At a point in John’s Gospel, Jesus promises “to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word . . . You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.’” To which the people protest, “What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free? We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone’” (8:31-33, NRSV translation altered). The irony, of course, is that despite their adamant denial, the people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt. This brief exchange between Jesus and the believers of John’s Gospel begs the question addressed in this essay. Do humans have free will or not?

Throughout history, among believers and unbelievers alike, human freedom appears to be all but taken for granted. It is no less true today. The modern imagination clings to, cherishes, and fights for the presumption of human freedom as fiercely as ever. In fact, one might say that the presumption of human freedom qualifies as the ecumenical dogma that unites all persuasions of faith and unfaith alike Catholicism,

Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, Atheism, and Agnosticism. If, however, the Bible has anything to say about it, then what humans regard as their freedom, God regards as their bondage. If Jesus speaks for God, as he does here in John’s story, then there’s no escaping it. In fact, this is the consistent message the whole Bible through, from Genesis to Revelation. Humans, as Jesus presumes, are in fact “unfree.” His promise is to make us free. My purpose in this essay is twofold. As a reader, I will report the sense in which humans, according to the biblical story, are unfree in relation to self, neighbor, and God. As a believer in Christ’s promise, I seek to declare the truth of God’s word that makes us free. The arc of the essay is taken from Gerhard Forde’s The Captivation of the Will: Luther vs. Erasmus on Freedom and Bondage. “If you start from freedom; you will end in bondage. If you start from bondage, you are more likely to end in freedom.”1 In that sense the arc of the essay travels the path of the biblical narrative itself.

The Scope of the Question

If, however, the Bible has anything to say about it, then it appears that what humans regard as their freedom, God regards as their bondage.

We begin by defining the scope of the question that we are dealing with in the essay. With respect to human freedom, the biblical witness draws a distinction between the things above and the things below. In the biblical view, humans are not free with respect to the things above. Namely, humans are not free in

relation to God. What else belongs to the things above is perhaps a bit fuzzier to distinguish. I will come back to the matter further along in the essay. With respect to the things below, however, God has, according to the biblical story, granted humans freedom. Among the things below are choices related to work, family, friendship circles, and civic involvements; moral, political, and economic choices; personal preferences in diet, style, and pastimes; and so forth.

To clarify the Bible’s distinction between things above and below we turn to its stories of creation, of which there are several—not only in Genesis, but also in the Psalms and Prophets. Here the focus is on the first two stories as they appear in Genesis 1 and 2. Both stories speak in one accord on the question of human freedom with respect to the things below. In the first of the Genesis stories (1:1-2:4a) God grants to his human creatures the freedom to “Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control. I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds, and all the wild animals . . . So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female” (Gen 1:2728 TEV2). In the second story (beginning at 2:4bff TEV), it is reported that God “took some clay from the ground and formed a man out of it; he breathed life-giving breath into his nostrils and the man began to live . . . God formed a woman out of the man’s rib, brought her to the man as a partner . . . God placed the couple in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it . . . God took more clay from the ground and formed all the animals and all the birds. Then he brought them to the couple to see what they would name them; and that is how they all got their

names” (Gen 2:19 TEV, translation altered).

Together, the stories attest that God has granted human freedom with respect to the things below. Humans are free to decide what to eat; how to dress; where to live; what to do to earn a living; who to have as friends; to live a moral life or an immoral life; to care for creation or to trash creation; how to order, or disorder, social, political, and economic life; to make war or to make peace. People are free to attend the church, synagogue, or mosque of their choice. “See, no strings!” People are even free to do stupid and self-destructive things. And they do so all the time. Of course, there are consequences to the way in which humans exercise or forsake their freedom in the things below. But that is a matter for another essay, another time.

Human Unfreedom in the Things Above

Human freedom in the things below is not unrelated to human unfreedom in the things above, as we will observe further on in the essay. But not to get ahead of ourselves, let us return to the central focus of the essay. We began with Jesus’ promise, “If you continue in my word . . . You will know the truth and the truth will make you free,” to which the people, contrary to the historical and biblical evidence, responded, “What do you mean by saying, ‘you will be made free’? We have never been slaves to anyone” (8:31-33 NRSV). The promise “to make humans free” presumes that they are unfree. This does not appear, however, to be an assumption that the

Human freedom in the things below is not unrelated to human unfreedom in the things above.

people in the narrative share with Jesus. So, our question is: Are humans free or unfree? Who is correct about it, Jesus or humanity?

John’s story, consistent with the rest of the Christian scriptures, argues that there is no choice in the matter. John’s narrative and all the biblical stories tell the story of God and humanity to bring the reader, through the power of Jesus’s death and resurrection, to the same mind on the matter. In that interest, the first point is to observe that the biblical evidence is absolutely and indisputably overwhelming on God’s freedom to do as God sees fit with his own creation.

Let me draw attention to a few of the more famous instances that drive the point home. There’s the elderly couple, Abraham, ninety-nine years old, and his wife, Sarah, ninety years old. At their advanced age they thought that the Lord’s promise of a child was hilariously ridiculous. But regardless of what they thought, God gave them no choice in the matter. “God dealt with Sarah as he had promised. She conceived and bore a son” (Gen 21:1-2). And just to draw a line under it, the child was named, Isaac, which means laughter, great belly-rolling laughter, as in guess who gets the last laugh when it comes to God’s freedom to do with his creation whatever he wills.

There was also Moses, dithering before God at the burning bush, tossing out every excuse in the book as to why he should not be the one sent to do God’s bidding in Egypt. But God wasn’t having any of it. Moses was given no choice in the matter. There is no escaping the truth. God had elected Moses to be the one to do his bidding in Egypt and Moses was compelled by God to do it. And then practically in the same biblical breath there was the

mighty Pharoah, king of all Egypt, to whom Moses was sent to declare God’s will: “Let my people go!” Just so no one misunderstands who is God and who is not, who is free and who is not, God hardened the heart of Pharoah in opposition to God (Ex 4:21). So, when finally, the willful Pharoah is defeated and compelled to let God’s people go free, there can be no mistake about it. Not in the mind of Pharoah. Not in mind of the Israelites. And not in the mind of the readers. As God himself declares to his elect people, “I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God” (Ex 6:6-7a NRSV).

It is not an isolated chapter in the long history of God and his people. It is a summary of the entire history from Genesis to Revelation.

Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Deborah, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, they all get the same treatment from God. The story of faith is driven forward by the will of God. God elects to have his way, and God does have his way with the people of his creation. The only conclusion to be drawn is the conclusion drawn by the prophets of God. Jeremiah (18:5-6) and Isaiah (64:8) are driven, the hard way to confess, “God is the potter, we are the clay.” At some point readers of the biblical story are bound to recognize that a pattern emerges with respect to humans in relation to God.

Karl Barth, one of the twentieth century’s theological giants, somewhere in his vast corpus of writings, put the matter in stark

Karl Barth

terms. Either God is free, or humans are free. It does not appear according to the Bible’s report of God’s acts in history that there is much doubt in God’s mind with respect to which one is free. The biblical record leaves no room for doubt in any one’s mind. It’s indisputable on the face of it. Readers believers and unbelievers alike can complain about it. Reject it. Attempt to weasel around it. Save some little bit of freedom for humanity. “But, but, but we need to decide, don’t we? We need to accept, don’t we?” Humans can and will protest the fairness of it. In fact, we are bound to protest. “If humans are not free in relation to God, it ruins everything. What’s the point? Who will be good?” God appears to be neither unaware of the protests nor much moved by them. When Job complains about the injustice of being swept up in the almighty ways of the willful God, God meets the complaint head on. Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? “Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you declare to me . . . Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements . . . who stretched the line upon it? . . . Will you condemn me that you may be justified? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?” (Job 38:2-5; 40:6-9).

So it goes through the rest of the biblical story of God and his people. Act One concludes as it had begun. God is free; humans are not free in relation to God. Readers can protest it all they want but what does it change? Malachi, whose book brings the long saga of Act One to a close, reports God’s answer, “I the Lord do not change.” With that divine declaration, glory of glories, the promise of God as the saving God breaks through. God, give us

ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts to believe. God continues to speak pure, unbound promise, “therefore you, O children of Jacob have not perished. Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statues and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’” (Mal 3:6-7). With that question Act Two of the biblical story begins.

Unfree, the Choice Humans are Bound to Make

The problem of not knowing the path by which to return to God is muddied by the fact that humans do not want to know the path to return to God as God. We will not have a God who determines all things. We will not have a God who chooses to exercise God’s freedom regardless of what we think about it. The reader of the Bible experiences this truth at many points in the story. For example, God declares, “Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated” (Mal 1:2). It is not that Jacob is deserving of God’s love and Esau undeserving. According to the story, it was simply a decision that God exercised apart from any worthiness or merit of the recipients at all. The apostle Paul draws a line under the promise of it as the pathway out of our bondage. Quoting the Lord’s declaration from Malachi, “Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated,” Paul faces the anticipated protest head on, “What are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part?” He is quick to answer, “By no

The problem of not knowing the path by which to return to God is muddied by the fact that humans do not want to know the path to return to God as God.

means! For God says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So,” Paul concludes, “it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy” (Rom 9:13-16). In other words, the path out of our captivity to self is not a path that humans travel to God. It is the path that God travels to us. God in Christ takes sinners, who will not have God as God, away from their captivity. That is the word, the truth, that makes us free.

The problem is that humans on this side of Genesis 3 do not have ears for the good news of it. In my experience of reading the Bible with others—believers and unbelievers alike, with members of the church and students in the university classroom—readers struggle to accept God’s resolve in its plain sense. Frequently the readers’ response is the old song and dance that Adam and Eve perfected in the garden. They seek to assert their freedom to choose at the expense of God’s freedom to save. The impulse is not isolated to just Genesis 3.

Think, for example, of how readers commonly respond to the vineyard owner in Jesus’ parable. The owner pays the vineyard laborers the same wage regardless of what time of day they were hired. Readers are incensed. The parable sets off a litany of resentment, incredulity, and grumbling among readers: “It isn’t fair! It makes no sense. Who would do any work if they all get the same at the end of the day?” The response of readers sounds very much like the grumbling of the parable’s laborers who had worked from the early hours: “These last worked only one hour and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat,” they complain (Matt 20:12). To which the landowner replies, “Am I not allowed to do what I

choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matt 20:15).

Or think of this. At one point in Mark’s report of Jesus’ public ministry the disciples ask him why he teaches in parables. Jesus answers, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything comes in parables; in order that they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven” (4:11-12).

Clearly, according to the grammar of Jesus’ reply, he teaches in parables to prevent those outside from entering the inside community or the kingdom of God. Again, readers frequently have difficulty taking Jesus in the plain sense of his explanation. He teaches in parables to harden the hearts of those outside, lest they “turn again and be forgiven.” This is what readers will not have. They will not have a God who unilaterally does the choosing apart from any worthiness or merit of the elect at all. The human heart is set hard against it. In other words, the parable accomplishes exactly what Jesus has said about why he teaches in parables. Hearts are hardened in relation to God who insists upon doing what he wants with what belongs to him. But there’s the promise. Being convicted of our bondage—our hardness of heart, our desire to protect our freedom at all costs qualifies us to hear Christ’s promise that he will free us from our self-imposed captivity.

Being convicted of our bondage-our hardness of heart, our desire to protect our freedom at all costs-qualifies us to hear Christ’s promise that he will free us from our self-imposed captivity.

That’s the singular aim of the biblical story on every page. The disciples themselves, according to Mark’s story, suffer the same fate as typical reader. The longer Peter and the cohort of followers are with Jesus, the more uncomprehending of him and his ways they become. To illustrate: In the boat, after Jesus calms the storm and the panic of the disciples in the same breath, they can only ask, “Who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (4:41 NRSV). On another occasion, when he comes walking toward them on the sea, they fail to recognize him. They can only imagine that he is a phantom, coming to do them harm. They are terrified. But Jesus does not, as he had intended, pass them by, leaving them stranded in the sea of their hardheartedness, rather he climbs into the boat with his uncomprehending, unbelieving, scared witless humanity. He takes them into his merciful heart. “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” (6:50). The storm of wind and fear simultaneously calm, to their utter astonishment.

So the story of faith goes, bounding over rough and stormtossed seas of unbelief and fear, until finally, in exasperation, Jesus confronts human bondage once and for all, “Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? . . . Do you not yet understand?” (Mark 8:17b-18, 21 NRSV). Judging from what transpires in the remainder of the story the only answer can be that the disciples do not understand. To make matters even worse, they grow ever more fearful of even asking for explanations. Finally, despite their avowals to the contrary, they all forsake Jesus in his deepest hour of trial. One of them betrays him into the hands of his enemies. Peter denies ever having had any association whatsoever with Jesus. He confesses

to the mob, “I do not know this man you are talking about” (14:71). But if Peter was aiming to free himself from the peril of being associated with, or believing in, the willful God in Christ, he fails miserably. He only succeeds in confessing his sin of biting the hand that promises to feed him.

That is the last the reader hears from Peter and the rest of Jesus’ disciples in the story. They have burned their bridges with their Lord and God. Jesus seals the judgment, “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of Father” (Mark 8:38 NRSV). And then he overturns the judgment. He promises to forgive the unforgivable. He comes to them like a physician comes to the terminally ill, in the promise of life beyond death.

It is not that the disciples have been forced into failing Jesus, as though God is a puppet master pulling the strings. Rather they suffer self-inflicted bondage. They are bound to think human thoughts, unfree to think the thoughts of God. The promise of the freedom that Christ brings is lost in their desperate obsession to protect their theoretical freedom. They betray themselves to be blind, deaf, and dumb to the ways of God. They prove powerless to free themselves. Think of Peter vowing to Jesus that he will stick with him, never forsake him, let alone deny association with him. But that is exactly what he does. He was bound to do it.

It is not that the disciples have been forced into failing Jesus, as though God is a puppet master pulling the strings. Rather they suffer selfinflicted bondage.

The Promise by Which Christ Makes Free to Be

If there is hope for Peter and the rest of them it will have to come from outside themselves. In this sense the disciples are much like the sick and possessed that Jesus helps. The sick and demon-possessed are bound by their condition and powerless to help themselves. A leper, condemned to a life of isolation apart from the saving promise of God, a paralytic paralyzed by sin, a demoniac driven by his demons into a living death among the tombs, a daughter sick unto death—they all receive the same thing from Jesus. As he explains, when he is criticized for keeping company with tax collectors and sinners, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come not for the righteous but for sinners” (2:17).

Sinners who are bound by this sickness unto death to their own judgments; to trust, above all else, their own attempts to save themselves; bound to their unbelief in all things related to God—cannot free themselves from their bondage. They cannot because they will not. They don’t want to do it. Jesus seems to be aware of this from the outset. “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered” (3:27). And that is what Jesus does in his public ministry. He defeats Satan for the sake of those in the grip of unbelief (1:12-13). Jesus preaches release to the captives. “And they were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they have no choice about it, they are compelled to obey him” (Mark 1:27, NRSV translation altered). He restores the outsider to God and

the community of faith. The kingdom that he creates is like a mustard seed, the tiniest of all the garden seeds, but when it is grown it becomes the greatest of shrubs and puts out branches so that the birds of the air can nest in its shade and fly free. That is the good news which the Bible has to proclaim. But the good news consists of merely silent words on the biblical page. It requires someone to give voice to the words, so that the promise of Christ may silence the debate about whether humans are free or not. The promise of Christ renders the question moot. I like the way that Paul declares it to the Galatians and so I pass it along to you, the readers of this essay, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of the Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God” (Gal 4:4-7). Free to be, as God set you free in your baptism, by trust in the promise of Christ for you and by love in the neighbor, here and now, to dwell evermore in the everlasting kingdom of Christ’s righteousness, blessedness, and innocence. This is most certainly true!

And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of the Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God” (Gal 4:4-7)

Rev. Virgil Thompson retired from Gonzaga University as a Senior Lecturer in biblical studies. In retirement he has continued to serve the church as Managing Editor of Lutheran

Quarterly, Adjunct Professor at St. Paul Lutheran Seminary, and as author and lecturer. He and his wife Linda currently make their home on Lummi Island, across the bay from Bellingham, WA.

Endnotes:

1Gerhard Forde, The Captivation of the Will: Luther vs. Erasmus on Freedom and Bondage (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), 52.

2Good News Bible (Philadelphia: American Bible Society, 2003), other citations in this article will reference TEV, except as noted.

THE

THEOLOGY OF

PREDESTINATION/

ELECTION AND THE BOUND

WILL IS FOR PROCLAMATION: LUTHER’S SWEET SERMON IN THE BONDAGE OF THE WILL

Marney Fritts

Free will is a fallacy.1 Truly fake news. The human free will is a deep fake, but God’s almighty predestinating and electing will is reality. And this is truly good news. But not at first. The question Formula of Concord, Article II: Concerning the Free Will and Human Powers is trying to respond to is the fundamental question of all theology, which is: “whether or not we have a free will”2 in relation to God’s justification, sanctification, and salvation. The answer the Formula writers eventually give is no, but the fact that Melanchthon’s students

labelled this article “Concerning the Free Will,” instead of using Luther’s language of the bound will,3 simply demonstrates the existence of the dispute itself. Then, Formula XI: Concerning God’s Eternal Foreknowledge and Election starts out by saying there was “no public, scandalous, widespread conflict among the theologians of the,” Augustana.4 So, none of the Lutheran reformers believed in free will, and there was no widespread scandal over predestination and election. Right.

Now, I have the pleasure and honor to speak to you on these two topics, one of which doesn’t exist, and the other over which there is no notable dispute. And I do this in my office being a seminary professor, teaching people who are going to fill the pulpits. Why on God’s green earth would I agree to do this? Because we sinners believe our own snake oil semi-Pelagian sermons in which we tell ourselves that we are free, even if just a little bit (minimum quiddum = the least thing), when it comes to salvation. Why do this?

Because I, too, was once a seminarian. I, too, was, am, and shall continue to be a beggar. Why do this? Because a professor(s) once, and then repeatedly, gave me a sweet sermon that saved me from my own snake oil of semi-Pelagianism. Why do this?

Because God’s necessitating, predestining, electing, almighty will, is the only true comfort for those bound and dead in their sin. Luther says it better, “the Christian’s chief and only comfort in every adversity lies in knowing that God does not lie, but brings all things to pass immutably, and that his will cannot be resisted,

Book of Concord (1580)

altered, or impeded.”5

If theology is for proclamation, and it is, then my thesis is simply this: the theology of the human bound will and God’s predestination and election is for proclamation. Election is to be preached. That is, preaching elects. It even elects seminarians. The bound will then also must be taught, addressed, declared, and confronted. Today I will be taking up this two-sided theological coin of the bondage of the will and election, which Luther often called a “sweet sermon.”6 Preaching on Exodus Luther writes, “This is how the LORD Christ always gets the eyes, thoughts, and hearts of his disciples fixed …on the humanity of Christ... then you will find a sweet sermon about why God hardens pharaoh’s heart and how He handles predestination … He also has the hearts of his enemies in his hand…There is nothing to worry about. Christ and the Father (whom I have) have everything in their hand and power.” The sermon is sweet because it quells God’s wrath against his sinners and leads the slaves out of captivity. When God preaches this sweet sermon, then he becomes sweet to us. He does not deal with us according to the law, with “Christ-less, Spirit-less”7 words. Nor does he leave us in the stench of our speculation. Regarding Isaiah 61:1, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.” In addition, Luther sprinkles these words, “It is because of his humanity and his incarnation that Christ becomes sweet to us, and through him God becomes sweet to us.”8 You see, the root of offense that stinks to high heaven, is our reoccurring

speculation, our unfaith, the attack of the conscience, that comes when we live in terror of God and his disposition toward us. And, as Moses notes, this can be triggered by something so seemingly insignificant as the “rustling of a leaf” (Leviticus 26:36). This terror, this offense taken against the predestining and electing God, is what Luther called the predestination sickness. And we all have it. God, however, is determined to cure you of this. For that, a little apocalypse and a bolus of mercy is required. Christ is coming in his preached word of law and gospel to slay our old, sick selves and raise up new creatures. Christ places you, the new creature of faith, into a lush meadow9 of freedom from the law, sin, death, the haranguing of the devil, to at last be at peace with God.

Sweet Sermon of Predestination

When Luther preaches on Exodus in 1524 (some ten years after his lectures on Romans), he clearly understands that just the utterance of these words–predestination, election–cause the old sinner to bristle, exposing his bondage. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29). Luther writes, “These words—elect, predestined and foreknew—form the central matter of theology because they inevitably lodge in the conscience, and either terrorize or comfort. Everything in this doctrine of predestination, and in life, depends upon whether those words

This terror, this offense taken against the predestining and electing God, is what Luther called the predestination sickness.

of Paul are taken as speculation or proclamation…Predestination is the doctrine of God’s mercy prior to and beyond any justice according to the law. It is precisely justification apart from the law.”10 This means that teaching predestination to seminary students elicits at least one bristled, scared creature to ask, “Dr. Fritts, I believe all that we are justified by faith alone, and that we are saved by grace, etc., but I have a hard time believing that God elects us without our acceptance and does so by preaching. I just can’t believe we don’t have some say in the matter” or “But we do have to accept it?” or “Can’t we reject it?” Strange question, isn’t it? or “Doesn’t that make God a determinist, which would mean there’s no reason to do anything good, or anything at all, since he controls everything?”

But how one replies to these kinds of offenses and confessions is a matter of life and death – death and life. When Luther preaches on Exodus 7: 3-5, “But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them,” Luther immediately identifies the card we keep hidden close to the chest, until we have no choice but to play it: “If God is doing the hardening, then who else can be blamed?”11

Seelsorge of a Seminarian

During my first semester in Luther Seminary in 2000, I was sitting in the Lutheran Confessional Writing’s class during the precept hour on the first level of Gullixson Hall, and Dr.

Nestingen and Dr. Forde were answering questions on the Augsburg Confession, specifically the Fourth Article. Dr. Forde once again, expounded on the fact that, “we are justified by faith alone, apart from works of the law.” But I thought I might be able to trap Dr. Forde. So, I raised my hand and he called on me. Loaded for bear, sure and certain that I would land him in the trap he himself had set, I confidently asked, “But isn’t faith our work?”

Now, I have to tell you, that he was slow to respond as he looked up at me, and with a grin that seemed to say, “Thank you. Now who’s caught?” the hunter had become the hunted. In his quiet, gentle, monotone voice he said, “How can it be since you are dead in sin?” At that moment, something particularly biblical happened: I was astonished, yes, but it was more than that. I was apocalypsed, slayed and raised into a lush meadow of freedom and peace - just by a simple sentence. A sweet sermon, which in typical Forde fashion, was brief.

Faith, Not “Free Will”

The correlate to justification by faith alone apart from works of the law is not just that we lack free-will, but that we are in bondage. This is why our chief doctrine is bristly and why there comes a point, fairly quickly in fact, when free willers are

At that moment, something particularly biblical happened: I was astonished, yes, but it was more than that. I was apocalypsed, slayed and raised into a lush meadow of freedom and peacejust by a simple sentence. A sweet sermon, which in typical Forde fashion, was brief.

confronted with the radical nature of this teaching. Because Lutherans are the only ones who say “no, not even a little bit,” when it comes our own influence concerning the things of God. Dr. Forde called this desire for a modicum of spiritual free will, the “Christianity of little bits.” For Erasmus, it was minimium quiddam (the least part).12 But these are simply the labels of semi-pelagianism. “The truth of the gospel is that our [justification] comes by faith alone, without works of the law. The falsification or corruption of the gospel is this, that we are justified by faith but not without works of the law.”13 The free will depends upon an uncertain future because it believes that the law is given to instruct it on how it might align itself with God’s will. With just a little bit of striving, and with just a little bit of grace to help along the way, along with some spiritual disciplines, the will can apply itself to the law, becoming more and more like God. In his debate with a full-fledged Pelagian, Augustine argued that not a single soul has ever managed to accomplish this. We have to repeatedly go back to scripture to hear what the purpose of the law is: to reveal sin (Galatians 3:19), not to make us righteous before God. The strength of the law, Paul says, is sin. The strength of the gospel, however, is the creation of faith, ex nihilo, out of nothing. The law brings wrath (Romans 4:15), but the gospel brings peace. Unlike the pipe dream of the free will, faith has a certain future because it is not based on the law and the power of the human will, but upon the necessitating mercy of God in his unthwartable promise. This is the assurance of faith, the plerophorium that we hear about in Colossians 2:2, “to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ,” and in 1 Thessalonians 1:5, “because our gospel came to you not

only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full assurance,” and, again, in Hebrews 10:22, “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” It’s not even with some assurance or occasional assurance, but each time it is full assurance. Because it is based on the promise which comes from Christ’s blood.

Faith is not the work of a so-called free will; the “free will and the Holy Spirit are not identical.”14 Faith is not my gift up to God. This is precisely what Paul is unpacking from Deuteronomy in his letter to the Romans, chapter 10 verses 6-7: “But the righteousness based on faith says, ‘Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).” Faith comes from heaven above to earth below, in the form of the Holy Spirit preaching a sweet sermon – the contents of which is the unconditional absolution of sin, on account of Christ and his cross, for you.

Faith is not something like a divine spark within you that needs to be cultivated. This is what Fredrick Schleiermacher suggested is going on. He suggests faith is the “feeling of complete dependence on God.”15 One of the problems with Schleiermacher is that faith is not a feeling, but what Paul calls a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). Feeling may accompany faith from time to time, but it is not merely that nor is it dependent on that. The other problem is that faith for Schleiermacher is a feeling of complete dependence on God,

without the external preaching of the sweet sermon. It is a dependence on God, even if one is not sure who this God is. This is problematic because Paul clearly states that faith comes from hearing a sermon on Christ (Romans 10:17).

Nor is faith defined as a “tripartite division of knowledge (notitia), assent (assensus), and trust (fiducia) so that fiducia is the essential quality of regenerative faith, whereby one not only knows of and assents to the universal merit of Christ, but also ‘appropriates His merit to oneself,’”16 as 17th century Lutheran Orthodoxy, exemplified by the theologian Johannes Andreas Quenstedt, would have it. In this view, faith was reduced to epistemology: understanding the correct doctrine and accepting it as true. This understanding puts doctrine where Christ belongs, knowledge where faith belongs, and human assent to doctrine where the descent of God in the sweet absolution belongs. Doctrine is useful for preaching, but it is not, strictly speaking, the content of proclamation. Doctrine does not justify and save, only Christ does.

Desiderius Erasmus believed that faith and salvation are attained through the workings of the free will. Erasmus was chiefly interested, as were all Renaissance Humanists of a specific Mediterranean sort, in “manners and morals, seeking in scripture and other ancient literature the ideal patterns of personal and public life.”17 As a humanist, he approached scripture with two unchecked presuppositions. First, that scripture is unclear and must be clarified by an interpreter. And second, that the Bible is primarily a book of laws, an instruction book for cultivating the moral human creature. Erasmus then proceeds to go through the text, “collecting passages and authorities for and against the

issue at hand and then weighing them and totaling up the ‘box score.’ It was kind of a ‘word study’ method…but numbers do not and cannot settle the matter of the free will.”18 Erasmus finds what he thinks are only two passages against free choice, which he labels as “a contemptible little rabble:”19 First, Exodus 9:12, “The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart,” and, second, Malachi 1:2-3, “Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated.”

Erasmus reasoned that the human must have a free will since God has given us his law. And if God gave us the law, then we must have a will which can fulfill it. After all, it would be unjust of God to give us a law that we could not obey! For if we cannot keep the law, how can we be responsible for sin? The result of Erasmus’ clarification of what he believes is the ambiguity of God hardening Pharoah’s heart is a remarkable inversion of what Scripture actually says. Luther writes, “When God says: ‘I will harden Pharoah’s heart,’ is ‘thrown topsy-turvy…and taken thus’ ‘Pharoah hardens himself by my longsuffering’! God hardens our hearts means: ‘we harden ourselves while God postpones punishment.’”20 In order to protect free will, Erasmus turns the text inside-out to mean: wrath is when God comes near, here in the present, and imposes his will on us, and mercy is God withdrawing to give time and space to the free will to apply the law correctly, and to repent. In this case, He gives time and space for Pharoah to let God’s people go! Luther draws out the implications of Erasmus’ interpretation:

Erasmus’ clarification of what he believes is the ambiguity of God hardening Pharoah’s heart is a remarkable inversion of what Scripture actually says.

Your ‘figures’ will ultimately bring you to the point of saying that God had mercy on the children of Israel when he sent them to Assyria and Babylon because he punished the sinners and invited them to repentance by means of affliction; but when he brought them back again and set them free, he did not then show mercy towards them, but hardened them; that is, he gave them occasion of hardening by his own longsuffering and mercy.

So, too, his sending Christ the Savior into the world will not be called God’s mercy, but God’s hardening, because of this act of mercy he gave men an occasion of hardening. But his destroying of Jerusalem and scattering of the Jews, even to this day, that will be an act of mercy on them, because by punishing those who sin he invites them to repentance!

Furthermore, his carrying his saints into heaven at the day of judgement will be an act, not of mercy, but of hardening, because by his goodness he will give them an occasion of abusing goodness! But he will be showing mercy to the wicked whom he thrusts down to hell, because he is punishing the sinners! Pray tell me, who ever heard of such acts of Divine mercy and wrath as these?21

This is what happens when we think that God’s will is the law and that we are truly human when we are applying our free will, with a minimum quiddum of grace to that law, and in so doing that we are aligning our will with God’s will. This notion,

however, is nothing but hot garbage. It’s not even a steaming pile of manure. That at least would be useful. This is also why I make sure to tell my students that there is nothing more antievangelical than to preach, “Are you ready to meet your maker? Well, if not, now is the time to surrender your life to Christ. Time is running out! Hurry before it is too late!” That is not the gospel, but what comes out of a preacher who is under the curse of the law and the fallacy of the free will and subsequently binds their hearers to their sin and condemnation. It rejects the God who is all in all, who is the almighty and electing God. With this so-called preaching, “God will elect nobody…But if God is robbed of his power and wisdom in election, what will he be but just that idle chance, under whose sway all things happen and randomly? Eventually, we shall come to this: that men may be saved and damned without God’s knowledge!”22 We finally come to the pipedream of the free will theologian: God elects no one, but he is waiting on you to accept or reject his offer.

This is the Christianity of minimum quiddum (little bits), also known as semi-Pelagianism or synergism, which was asserted by Johann Pfeffinger and opposed by Nicolas von Amsdorf in their famous 1558 debate. This dispute over synergism is what Formula II hoped to resolve. Instead of the snake oil of semipelagianism, the muscle of Article II assists preachers in handing over the goods by preaching a sweet sermon:

In spiritual and divine matters, the mind, heart, and will

Nicholas of Amsdorf

of the unreborn human being can in absolutely no way, on the basis of its own natural powers, understand, believe, accept, consider, will, begin, accomplish, do, effect, or cooperate. Instead, it is completely dead to the good completely corrupted. This means that in this human nature, after the fall and before rebirth, there is not a spark of spiritual power left or present with which human beings can prepare themselves for the grace of God or accept grace as it is offered. Nor are they capable of acting in their own behalf or of applying this grace to themselves or to prepare themselves for it. Nor do they have the ability, on the basis of their own powers, to help, act, effect, or cooperate—completely, halfway, or in the slightest, most insignificant way—in their own conversion; they cannot bring it about or cooperate in it “of ourselves, as coming from us” (2 Corinthians 3:5). Rather they are “the slave of sin” (John 8:34) and prisoners of the devil, by whom they are driven (Ephesians 2:2; 2 Timothy 2:26). Therefore, according to its own perverted character and nature, the natural free will has only the power and ability to do whatever is displeasing and hostile to God.23

In other words, the human will is bound in sin; on its own it does only evil continually (Genesis 6:5). “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does

good, not even one” (Psalm 14:2-3). And the chief good which is not accomplished by the human will is faith in Christ and his cross. God himself creates faith in us, while we were yet sinners, by sending his son to die for us and sending us a preacher of the word of Christ, who delivers a sweet sermon, the absolution from our hostility to God and the freedom to enter the lush meadow which is Christ and his righteousness for you. God elects when you hear that sweet sermon, the absolution, extra nos. 24 And this is true for the infant being baptized, the seminary student, the seasoned pastor, the convert baptized at fifty-nine, or the believer on his death bed. And this is because faith, justification, and salvation are entirely out of our hands and in God’s hands. “For I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith” (Luther’s explanation of the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed).

God elects when you hear that sweet sermon, the absolution, extra nos.

God Not Preached is Bitter Death, God Preached is Sweet Freedom

When Luther is writing to Erasmus, he recognizes that Erasmus is not merely his most formidable debate partner, the one who finally focused on the will (the hinge upon which all theology turns),25 but that Erasmus was in need of actual pastoral care, Seelsorge. This was not a mere academic exercise for either

of them, but only Luther recognized what was really happening between them. Fortunately, for Erasmus’ sake, and also for ours, Luther realized this and knew what to say. “If I seem too bitter against your Diatribe, you must pardon me. I do not act so out of ill-will; but I was concerned that by the weight of your name you were greatly jeopardizing the cause of Christ… And who can always so govern his pen as not on occasion to show warmth?... we must freely pardon each other.”26 He understood that Erasmus was inflamed with anti-predestination sickness, the disease of the soul when one has been infected with the fallacy of the free will. The only remedy for this disease is this the grace of God in forgiveness, and thus his mention of “freely pardoning” one another. But that’s not all, for Luther sought to fully cure Erasmus’ soul. Very early on for Luther, in his commentary on Romans, he identifies the key tool for the preacher, professor, and fellow Christian in the cure of a soul: an ear that hears the creature waiting. When Luther comments on Roman 8:19 (“For the expectation of the creature waits for the revelation of the sons of God,” Luther’s translation), he pauses to point out that, “The apostle… does not speak of the ‘essence’ of the creature, and of the way it ‘operates,’ or of its ‘action’ or ‘inaction,’ and ‘motion,’ but using a new and strange theological word, he speaks of ‘the expectation of the creature.’ By virtue of the fact that his soul has the power of hearing the creature waiting, he no longer directs his inquiry toward the creature as such but to what it waits for.”27

Erasmus was caught in the death spiral that is a result of life without a preacher of Christ. He was steeped in a world of abstractions and generalizations about predestination and

blinded by his speculation on what God was doing with scripture. For him, God was not preached, and it was a bitter death for him, not least of which because he believed himself to be alive and well. In one of the most famous observations in in Luther’s response to Erasmus, he shines a bright light into the grave of the free will theologian, “Scripture sets before us a man who is not only bound, wretched, captive, sick and dead, but who, through the operation of Satan his lord, adds to his other miseries that of blindness, so that he believes himself to be free, happy, possessed of liberty and ability, whole and alive.”28 Luther’s pastoral cause for concern in Erasmus was that he identified this double malady of bondage and blindness within him, so much so, that he knew he had to deliver the God preached goods which would lead Erasmus out of bitter death to sweet freedom and life. He sprinkles Erasmus with the blood of Christ29 as we hear in Isaiah 52:13 and Hebrews 12:24 because it “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel,” because it is not a curse but a promise which brings the age-old curse to an end. An immutable, almighty, predestining promise.

Talk about predestination is, as Luther observed, utterly nauseating and dreadful. But this is because talk about predestination does not accomplish the deed of predestining. To talk about it is only within the realm of speculation, or what Luther calls, God not preached. The old Adam gets hung up on the “pre”

Luther’s pastoral cause for concern in Erasmus was that he identified this double malady of bondage and blindness within him, so much so, that he knew he had to deliver the God preached goods which would lead Erasmus out of bitter death to sweet freedom and life.

portion of God’s destining will and fights against God. “If God predestines before all-time, then why bother trying to obey the law? Why bother going to church? Why bother preaching at all? Isn’t this just determinism?” Dreadful, indeed. The first thing we need to understand is that this is a series of questions from the pit of hell, where the devil roams. He is a liar and a tempter. He is tempting us to despair and unbelief and other great and shameful sins.

The second thing we learn from such questions is how much they tempt us. Our human reaction to these and similar questions is to give an answer to the question, “Why?” But here is where we are actually being met with the limit of theology and its answers. An explanation appeals to reason and logic, but it cannot absolve and cast out the devil and rescue us from the pit of hell. For that, something else needs to take place. A doctor may be able to explain why you have the cancer you do, but that explanation does not remove the cancer. Nor does it bring ultimate comfort to the terrorized conscience. For that, a true healer with a different word is needed. The more explanations we receive, the worse we get, just like the woman who suffered for a dozen years with the flow of blood; the more the doctors treated her, the worse she became (Mark 5:26).

Erasmus, in dreadful fear that people might understand that their salvation comes solely through grace rather than also through personal morality, wrote “what a flood gate of iniquity would spread of such news open to people! What wicked man would amend his life? Who would believe that God loved him? Who would fight against his flesh?”30 But in listening to Erasmus’ words, which had intended to trumpet new life, Luther heard

only a death rattle. The creature was waiting with great expectation, though unbeknownst to Erasmus it was not going to be an explanation. Rather, an apocalyptic thunderbolt from Christ in heaven, through the mouth of the preacher Luther, would put him out of the misery of his predestination sickness. Luther’s pastoral response would bring an end to Erasmus’ fallacy of the free will, his fear of the electing and predestining God, and instead grant him true Christian freedom. So who can justify himself? Luther wrote, “Nobody! Nobody can! God has no time for your practitioners of self-reformation, for they are hypocrites! The elect will be reformed by the Holy Spirit, the rest will perish unreformed… Who will believe? Nobody! Nobody Can! But the elect shall believe it.”31 Erasmus finally had God’s grace preached to him. This preaching first comes, however, by the law which exposes the root of sin and puts it to death. With Luther’s proclamation, Erasmus’ heart became God’s destination; at once, God’s predestination of Erasmus arrived though God’s electing preacher. The sweet sermon of the sprinkling of the blood reveals what glorious news this is that God rules all things by his immutable electing will. “For if you hesitate to believe, or are too proud to acknowledge that God foreknows and wills all things…how can you believe, trust, and rely on his promises? When he makes promises, you ought to be out of doubt that he knows, and can and will perform, what he promises! … And how can you be sure and certain unless you know that certainly, infallibly, immutably, and necessarily, he

The sweet sermon of the sprinkling of the blood reveals what glorious news this is that God rules all things by his immutable electing will.

knows, wills, and will perform what he promises?”32

This is why Luther calls the hardening of pharaoh’s heart a “sweet sermon” for Israel. Because God has even his enemies in his hand, and this means mercy and freedom for his elect! When God is preparing seminarians, he is giving them the full assurance of their own salvation by the power of the Holy Spirit and the external word, so they have the chutzpah to set the captives free, by announcing the “promise of all promises called the office of the keys: Ego te absolvo, ‘I absolve you,’ which is to say Ego te opto, ‘I choose you.’”33 Luther lands his jumbo jet on a dime with the closing promise, the sweet sermon, the sprinkling of the blood of Christ:

I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want ‘free will’ to be given to me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavor after salvation; not merely because in the face of so many dangers, and adversaries, and assault of the devils, I could not stand my ground and hold fast my ‘free will’ (for one devil is stronger than all men, and on these terms, no man could be saved); but because, even were there no dangers, adversaries, or devils, I should still be forced to labor with no guarantee of success, and to beat my fists at the air. If I lived and worked to all eternity, my conscience would never reach comfortably certainty [plerophoria] as to how much it must do to satisfy God. Whatever work I had done, there would still be a nagging scruple as to whether it pleased God, or whether He required

something more. The experience of all who seek righteousness by works proves that; and I learned it well enough myself over a period of many years, to my own great hurt.

But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of his, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to his own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty [plerophoria] that he is faithful and will not lie to me, and that he is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break him or pluck him from me.”34

But now, I, too, must land this plane and say to you that God has taken your salvation out of the control of your own will, and put it under the control of his, and promised to save you, not according to your working or running, but according to his own grace and mercy. May you have the comfortable certainty [plerophoria] that he is faithful and will not lie to you, and that he is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break him or pluck him from you. Ego te absolvo, Ego te opto.

Welcome to the lush meadow of freedom in Jesus Christ, with no more law in it.

(This lecture was originally delivered at the LCMC’s Augustana District Convocation of the Cross on February 5, 2024)

Rev. Dr. Marney Fritts is an instructor of Systematic Theology for Saint Paul Lutheran Seminary. Her Ph.D. dissertation was

“Responses to Gustaf Aulén’s Christus Victor and their Impact on the Doctrine of Atonement for Proclamation” (Luther Seminary, 2011). She has written an essay for the festschrift, Handing Over the Goods: Determined to Proclaim Nothing but Jesus Christ and Him Crucified (1517 Publishing: Irvine, California, 2018), in honor of Dr. James A. Nestingen, and is a regular contributor to the Connections magazine published by Sola Publishing.

Endnotes:

1Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, translated by J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnson (Baker Academic: Michigan, 1957), 52, 65, 271; Gerhard Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1997), 52; Gerhard Forde, The Captivation of the Will: Luther vs. Erasmus on Freedom and Bondage (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2005), 47.

2Steven D. Paulson, Doing Theology: Lutheran Theology (T & T Clark: London, 2011), 23.

3Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2000), 543 n 53.

4Book of Concord, 640.

5The Bondage of the Will, 84.

6Luther’s Works 62, 139.

7The Bondage of the Will, 75.

8LW 17, 331, The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), the ESV version is used throughout this article.

9LW 12, 162.

10Steven D. Paulson and Jerome Klotz, “The Promise of Predestination,” in Lutheran Quarterly, 30 no 3 Fall 2016, 250.

11LW 62, 112

12The Bondage of the Will, 32.

13LW 26, 88.

14The Bondage of the Will, 257.

15Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, edited by Richard Crouter (Cambridge University: Cambridge, 1996) 22-3.

16Paulson and Klotz, Promise, 269.

17Forde, Captivation, 1.

18Forde, Captivation, 24.

19The Bondage of the Will, 190.

20The Bondage of the Will, 195.

21The Bondage of the Will, 196.

22The Bondage of the Will, 199.

23BC, 544, par. 6-7

24Gerhard O. Forde, Theology is for Proclamation (Fortress: Minneapolis, 1990), p. 132

25The Bondage of the Will, 78.

26The Bondage of the Will, 271-272.

27Martin Luther, Luther: Lectures on Romans, translated and edited by Wilhelm Pauck, in The Library of Christian Classics volume XV (Westminster Press: Philadelphia, 1961), 235-236.

28The Bondage of the Will, 162

29LW 17, 217.

30The Bondage of the Will, 97.

31The Bondage of the Will, 99

32The Bondage of the Will, 84.

33Paulson and Klotz, Promise, 257

34The Bondage of the Will, 313-314

BOOK REVIEW

Massing, Michael. Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther and the Fight for the Modern Mind. New York: Harper Perennial, 2018.

There’s an old saying: “never judge a book by its cover.” But when you buy a book entitled Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther and the Fight for the Modern Mind, a tome that spans 987 pages, you would think you would be getting a comprehensive discussion of Erasmus and Luther’s free will debate – which would have, by the way, fit nicely with the theme of this issue of SIMUL. But you’d be wrong. I soon discovered that a mere twenty pages or so of Massing’s hefty work are devoted to their famous debate. And this is despite the fact that the free will/bound will debate itself is the “Fatal Discord” (Chapter 38 calls it the “Fatal Dissension”) the book references.

But throughout the work, Massing does touch on some of the major theological differences between Luther and Erasmus which drove the debate. For instance, Erasmus believed that the Bible was unclear at times, requiring the Church’s clarification, while Luther disagreed. He believed that God’s Word was obvious and self-evident; anyone could interpret it accurately. So the question was really who should be able to interpret scripture and participate in theological debates. Erasmus believed that discussions on God’s foreknowledge and election should be the purview of academics, since these kinds

of discussions, aired publicly, might foment unrest. However, Luther had no problem discussing such matters in the daylight and in German (rather than the academic Latin). Luther wrote, “Truth and doctrine must be preached always, openly and constantly, and never accommodated or concealed.” To Luther, political unrest should be expected, since the world is always “shaken and shattered on account of the Word of God” (p. 673).

Massing also describes the disputants’ attitudes on where theology is best discussed. He writes, “For Erasmus, the ideal setting is a dinner party at which scholars amicably discuss Bible passages over capon and wine. For Luther, it is the pulpit, from which God’s unassailable Word is ardently proclaimed” (p. 675).

Massing also reveals that Luther’s and Erasmus’s arguments were based upon their differing anthropologies. Erasmus likened the human being to a fumbling child, dependent upon the gentle guidance of a loving father (God). Luther, on the other hand, compared man to a stubborn donkey, “who has no free choice, but is captive, subject and slave of either the will of God or the will of Satan” (p. 673). To Luther, man’s bound will was replete in scripture: i.e., God is the potter, we are the clay; Pharoah’s hardened heart; Judas’s necessary betrayal, etc., while Erasmus felt that the preponderance of Holy Writ indicated at least some level of free will on behalf of the believer.

But perhaps Massing’s most insightful take is on the disputants’ view of the nature of God himself. Massing writes, “Erasmus’s God is an even-tempered rationalist who sagely judges men and women by how they behave in the world. Luther’s God is an inscrutable being who acts according to his own unfathomable

Michael Massing

logic, apart from human understanding and expectation ...Whereas Erasmus wanted to protect the freedom of man to choose, Luther wanted to safeguard the freedom of God to act” (p. 675).

Now in graduate school, there is another saying: “only read books written by PhDs.” However, I have never ascribed to this kind of intellectual snootiness. Wonderful books on church history can be written by journalists, as Eric Metaxas’s Martin Luther (2018) amply demonstrates. But I believe that Fatal Discord, at least at times, falls into the category my professors warned me about. At the end of the book, Massing makes a number of claims designed to connect Erasmus’s and Luther’s theologies with present-day Christianity. This is the most disappointing section of the book. For example, Massing writes, “Under the related doctrine of ‘soul competency,’ the [Southern] Baptists affirm the ‘accountability of each person before God…it comes down to you and God.’ This is a plainspoken version of Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone” (p. 815). But this is in no way Luther’s doctrine – because Luther’s doctrine was all about God’s action, not ours. It never comes down to “us,” even partially.

Perhaps even more discouraging were his two concluding chapters, “Aftermath: Erasmus” and “Aftermath: Luther,” where Massing attempts to “suggest a pathway” of their influences into the future. Now there is a lot of ink spilled on this subject, but the thrust of his conclusion seems to be: Luther’s thinking created today’s evangelicals, while Erasmus’s reasoning resulted in today’s humanists. Perhaps Massing would have been somewhat closer in his conclusions if he made the case for Arminius’s influence on today’s evangelicals and Erasmus’s influence on Vatican II, but I’ve never thought that sweeping

conclusions on any nuanced theological matters are ever that accurate, or even helpful.

Massing takes a parting shot at Lutherans on page 814. He writes, “Proportionately fewer Lutherans have served in Congress or the Cabinet than have Episcopalians, Presbyterians or Methodists; the highest office attained has been that of chief justice of the Supreme Court (William Rehnquist). This record reflects Luther’s own rejection of political engagement. All in all, the Lutherans are an inconspicuous presence in America.” Here Massing confuses the two kingdoms theology with a rejection of political engagement. Luther never dissuaded laypeople from public service. As to his assertion that Lutherans are an “inconspicuous presence” in American society, I thought...what about Tim Walz? Oh well, I guess the truth hurts, and that’s something not even Rick Steves can guide us out of.

Having said all this one might think I am panning this book. I am not, in fact I urge everyone to read it. Not for its conclusions mind you, but rather for its detail. Massing has researched this book meticulously and provided much of the juicy nuggets one might expect from a journalist, which he of course is. This might serve as a nice supplementary text for a Reformation or early modern church history class. I feel that after having read the book I have a much better perspective on the personalities of both Luther and Erasmus.

One such nugget Massing includes is when famed humanist Ulrich von Hutten, a sick and desperate friend of Erasmus’s (on the run from the papacy), was refused an audience with him in Basel, probably out of Erasmus’ fear of being associated with an outlaw. Crushed, von Hutten picked up his pen, and wrote a

William Rehnquist

scathing expose on his old friend. In it, von Hutten zeroes in on what I have often felt was Erasmus’ fatal flaw: fear. Von Hutten writes that there is “a certain cowardice inherent in your [Erasmus’] character,” a “timidity which causes you to at the slightest provocation to fear the worst and thus despair” (p. 586). These kinds of untold personal stories: including the persecution of Protestants by Thomas More, Erasmus’ last days in Freiburg, and many others, make Fatal Discord a fast-paced, informative, and enjoyable read for any church history buff.

Rev. Dr. Dennis R. Di Mauro is Pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, Warrenton, Virginia (NALC), and the editor of SIMUL.

Image Credits

(Pages 1, 3, 75) “Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam with Renaissance Pilaster,” by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523, woodcut, Wikipedia Commons, National Gallery, London, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holbein-erasmus.jpg

(Page 8) “Joshua Stops the Rotation of the Sun,” by Carlo Maratta, ca 1700, Fondation Bemberg, Toulouse, France, Public Domain, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua#/media/File:Collection_Motais_de_Narbonne__Josu%C3%A9_arr%C3%A8te_la_course_du_soleil_-_Carlo_Maratta.jpg

(Page 10) “Erasmus,” by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1528, Louvre, Paris, Public Domain, The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus#/media/File:Hans_Holbein_d._J._-_Erasmus__Louvre.jpg

(Page 14) “Portrait of John Calvin,” Anonymous, 1550, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Inventory number 1211 1979: lent to the Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, Inventory number RMCC s84, by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Calvin_Museum_Catharijneconvent_RMCC_s84 _cropped.png

(Page 22) “Unforgiven,” Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6417738

(Page 36) “Karl Barth,” By Bundesarchiv, Bild 194-1283-23A / Lachmann, Hans / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51061479

(Page 47) “Title Page of Book of Concord,” (1580), Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Concordia,_Dresden_1580 -_fba.jpg

(Page 53) “Friedrich Schleiermacher,” in the German annual handbook 1838 by Karl Büchner, Berlin, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29091

(Page 57) “Nikolaus von Amsdorf,” by Peter Gottlandt (1558), etching, British Museum, London, Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_von_Amsdorf#/media/File:Portrait_of_Nikolaus_von_A msdorff_Bishop_of_Naumburg_by_Peter_Gottlandt_1558.jpg

(Page 69) “Michael Massing,” New America, 2015, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, https://www.flickr.com/photos/newamerica/22757450759/

(Page 71) “William Rehnquist, Official Portrait as Chief Justice,” Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain, Getty Images, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rehnquist#/media/File:William_Rehnquist_Official_Portr ait_as_Chief_Justice_(cropped).jpg

Hence:—If we believe that Satan is the prince of this world, ever ensnaring and fighting against the kingdom of Christ with all his powers; and that he does not let go his captives without being forced by the Divine Power of the Spirit; it is manifest, that there can be no such thing as—“Free-will!”

– Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will, section 167.