Sunday, May 25, 2008

Bondage of the Will

It has been argued, particularly recently among Evangelical Christians, that God made us with Free Will. We have argued that this was for the possibility of Love. For without Free Will we can never Love, so the argument goes. If you were to force someone to Love you, would they indeed Love? We cannot imagine this in our world of intense Individualism. It is possible, though, that our culture is so entrenched in this attitude, perhaps self-delusion, that we have all become myopic.

I raise this issue in response to a reading of Martin Luther's Bondage of the Will. In it he says:

"For I have shown before, that 'Free-will' cannot be applied to any one but to God only. You may, perhaps, rightly assign to man some kind of will, but to assign unto him “Free-will” in divine things, is going too far. For the term 'Free-will,' in the judgment of the ears of all, means, that which can, and does do God-ward, whatever it pleases, restrainable by no law and no command. But you cannot call him Free, who is a servant acting under the power of the Lord. How much less, then, can we rightly call men or angels free, who so live under the all-overruling command of God, (to say nothing of sin and death,) that they cannot consist one moment by their own power." [tr. Henry Cole; Discussion, First Part, p. 60]

Of course, Luther indicates that his treatment of Free Will is in particular toward "divine things." He does not clearly indicate what these are or the nature of them so that we could distinguish them from undivine things. Is there in fact anything in all of the Cosmos or in Life, which is larger and longer lasting than the Cosmos, which is not a divine matter? So then, when you apply Luther's start at a definition you find that people in fact have no freedom in anything whatsoever. Yet, that is his very point.

We must serve a master. Whether our masters be sin and death or the Lord Jesus and His heavenly Father, we cannot but serve one or the other. Do we then have Free Will?

Perhaps our Freedom of Will is confined to orientation only. We are free to choose toward which master we will orient our hearts. Anything beyond that follows as a consequence of this orientation. Perhaps this is what Luther had in mind from his reading of the Scriptures.

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