The Bondage of the Will

This may be the only classic theological work you ever read which makes you laugh out loud multiple times. Douglas Wilson, Introduction

In this new offering from the Christian Heritage Series, Luther replies to the arguments of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Erasmus was the most distinguished scholar of Luther’s day, but that only made Luther all the more eager to defend the truth. Erasmus argued that all the commands in Scripture clearly showed that man had the ability to obey God through his own power. In this work, Luther replies that such an argument emptied the Gospel of its power, and that instead man’s will is bound captive to sin, and that only through the Gospel are we freed from its power.

While this rambunctious and punchy book is entertaining, Luther never loses sight of the heart of the matter: man’s inability to earn his salvation and his absolute need for grace and forgiveness.

A man cannot be thoroughly humbled until he comes to know that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsel, endeavors, will, and works, and absolutely depending on the will, counsel, pleasure, and work of another, that is, of God only. Luther in The Bondage of the Will