Luther and Erasmus: The Controversy Concerning the Bondage of the Will

Protestant Reformed Theological Journal ^ | April 1999 | Garrett J. Eriks

[donmeaker]

Judas was also chosen by Jesus.

[donmeaker]

That is why we don’t cut deals with the communists in the Dem party anymore.

[annalex]

It is always a joy to be reminded of a thread running years ago.

Of course, Judas was a chosen apostle also, but he betrayed his Teacher and the apostolic purpose that the others fulfilled.

[donmeaker]

But he also enabled the sacramental purpose for which Jesus was born.

[annalex]

In that Judas was a tool rather than the master.

[Kleio]

Yeah, right. People don’t seem to read what Luther wrote, instead developing their own ideas about his ideas and propagating those as his. In the Conclusion of “The Bondage of Free Will” (sic!) he writes to Erasmus of Rotterdam (author of “On Free Will”), “I greatly commend and extol you for this thing also, that you are the only man of all my antagonists that hath attacked the heart of the subject, the head of the cause [i.e. Luther’s claim that we are not endowed by God with free will and so, we can’t really be expected to chose good over evil - hence, our evil actions would really be God’s fault, given Luther’s understanding of grace, which is as devious as it is outrageous]; instead of wearing me out with those extraneous points, the Papacy, Purgatory, Indulgences, and a number of like topics, which may more fitly be called trifles, than matters of debate : a sort of chase, in which nearly all my opponents have been hunting me hitherto in vain. You are that single and solitary individual, who hath seen the hinge of the matters in dispute, and hath aimed at the neck : I thank you for this from my heart [...]”. Undeterred by Erasmus’ rebuttal in Hyperaspistes, Luther himself continued to acknowledge that what he wrote in “The Bondage of Free Will” was most important to him, as he wrote 12 years later in a letter to Wolfgang Capito, “Regarding [the plan] to collect my writings in volumes, I am quite cool and not at all eager about it because, roused by a Saturnian hunger, I would rather see them all devoured. For I acknowledge none of them to be really a book of mine, except perhaps the one On the Bound Will and the Catechism.” But then, realizing what Luther really meant would make everyone run, not walk, back to the Roman Catholic Church faster than anyone could say “Luther.”