The Bondage of the Will

Martin Luther’s The Bondage of the Will is fundamental to an understanding of the primary doctrines of the Reformation. In these pages, Luther gives extensive treatment to what he saw as the heart of the gospel. Free will was not merely an academic question for Luther. Rather, he believed that the whole gospel of the grace of God was bound up with it and stood or fell according to how one understands the human will in relation to salvation. Luther affirms our total inability to save ourselves and the sovereignty of divine grace in salvation. He upholds the doctrine of justification by faith and defends predestination as determined by the foreknowledge of God. Luther considered this refutation of Erasmus to be his finest theological work and it has remained a classic in the history of Christian thought.