The following is an excerpt from pages 49 to 51 of the book
Bondage of the Will, edited by J.I. Packer, regarding Martin Luther's thoughts
on the idea of "Free Will", as opposed to his worthy opponent
Erasmus.
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This was just what Erasmus would not say. Standing in the
semi-Pelagian Scholastic tradition, he champions the view that, though sin has
weakened man, it has not made him utterly incapable of meritious action; in
fact, says, Erasmus, the salvation of those who are saved is actually
determined by a particular meritorious act which they perform in their own
strength, without Divine assistance. There is, he affirms, a power in the human
will (though, admittedly, a very little power only), 'by which man may apply
himself to those things that lead to eternal salvation,' and thereby gain merit
(though, admittedly, a very little merit only). It is by this meritorious
application to spiritual concerns that salvation is secured. In expounding this
opinion, Erasmus echoes the Scholastic theory of a distinction between
congruent merit (meritum de congrou) and condign merit (meritum de condigno).
The first of these, according to the theory, was that which a man attained by
what he did in his own strength (ex puris naturalibus) in applying himself to
spiritual concerns. It's effect was to make him a fit subject for the gift of
internal grace. It did not positively oblige God to give internal grace (from
this point of view, it was meritorious only which has hitherto stood in the way
of God's giving it, i.e man's unworthiness of it and his unpreparedness for it;
however, it was held to be a certain fact that God in mercy gives internal
grace to all who have made themselves fit subjects for it. Grace (i.e.
supernatural spiritual energy) having thus been given, it's recipient could use
it to do works of a quality of goodness previously out of his reach, works
which God was necessarily bound, as a matter of justice, to reward which
further supplies of grace and ultimately, with heavenly glory. The merit which
these works secured (condign merit) was meritorious in the strict sense, and
put the Creator under a real obligation. The purpose of the whole theory was to
hold together, on the one hand, the reality of God's freedom in giving
salvation and, on the other, the reality of man's merit in earning it: to show that
God really becomes man's debtor (because He is under obligation to reward man's
merit) while yet at the same time remaining sovereign in salvation (because He
gives grace which creates the merit freely and without obligation)
The distinction, of course, is purely verbal, and Luther
sweeps it away. All ideas of merit, he insists, whatever names you give them
and whatever distinctions you draw between them, come to the same thing - man
performs some action independently of God which does in fact elicit a reward
from God. On this basis salvation comes to man through God's response to what
man has done. Man earns his passage; man, in the last analysis, save himself. And
this is in principle Pelagianism. Erasmus had supposed that by stressing the
smallness of the power which man can exercise, and of the merit offence of his
Pelagian principles and moving closer to the Augustinian position, which denies
all merit and ascribes salvation wholly to God. Not at all, says Luther; all
that Erasmus and those whom he follows are really doing here is cheapening and
debasing their own Pelagianism, by reducing the price of salvation. 'This
hypocrisy of theirs results in their valuing and seeking to purchase the grace
of God at a much cheaper rate than the Pelagians. The latter assert that it is
not by a feeble something within us that we obtain grace. Now, if there must be
error, those who say that the grace of God is priced high, and account it dear
and costly, err less shamefully and presumptuously than those who teach that
it's price is a tiny trifle, and account it cheap and contemptible' (pp. 293f).
To be an inferior kind of Pelagian in
this way, however, is not, as Luther points out, to approach any nearer to the
Augustinia position; it is merely to advertise to the world that, in addition
to holding an unwarrantably high opinion of the natural powers of man, one also
holds a shockingly low opinion of the oral demands of God's character. The
semi-Pelagian compromise, says Warfield, amplifying Luther's thought at this
point, 'while remaining Pelagian in principle, yet loses the high ethical
position of works and fondly congratulating itself that it retains both, it
merely falls between the stools and retains neither. It depends as truly as
Pelagianism on works, but reduces those works on which it nevertheless depends
to a vanishing point.' Pure Pelagianism is bad enough, for it tells us that we
are able to earn our salvation, and this is to flatter man; but
semi-Pelagianism is worse, for it tells us that we need hardly do anything to
earn our salvation, and that is to belittle salvation and to insult God....
But there is a deeper reason why the doctrine of merit, in
all its shapes and forms, must be rejected. The idea of a meritorious act is an
idea of an independent act which is in no way necessitated by God for man or
performed by God in man, but is carried out by man acting in some sense apart
from God. And there is no such action as this in God's universe. The Creator
directly energizes and controls all the acts of His creatures. All events are
necessitated by His immutable, sovereign will. Human actions are genuinely spontaneous,
and authentically express each man' s nature, for God works in all things
according to their nature; but the fact that it is God who works all man's
works in him means that human action can never be independent of God in the
sense required for it to acquire merit in the manner the Pelagians envisage. Man
cannot put God in his debt, because man does not stand apart from God as a free
and independent agent. Luther thus undercuts the whole conception of merit by
affirming the direct sovereignty of God over His world. What he is saying is
that the Pelagian idea of merit is a Deistic idea, and has no place in a
Theistic order of things such as the Bible depicts, in which God works al in
all according to the counsel of His own will. Luther does not shrink from
stating this truth in its bluntest form. God, he says, works every human deed, whether
good or evil. He works in the evil man according to that man's nature, as He
finds it. it is true that evel man is proximately and directly governed by
Satan, the strong man who keeps his goods in peace; yet it is God the Creator
who energizes Satan, according to his nature, and such power as Satan held and
exercised by God's own appointment. When Satan acts, according to his nature,
as God's enemy, he is being used, according to God's purpose, as God's own
agent. Behind the revealed dualism of cosmic conflict between the devil and God
lies the hidden mystery of absolute Divine sovereignty; evil is brought to
expression only by the omnipotent working of the good God. 'Since God moves and
works in all, He moves and works of necessity even in Satan and the ungodly.
But he works according to what they themselves are, and what He finds them to
be; which means, since they are evil and perverted themselves, that when they
are impelled to action by this movement of Divine omnipotence they do only that
which is perverted and evil. It is like a man riding a horse with only three,
or two, good feet; his riding corresponds with what the horse is, which means
that the horse goes badly . . . and so it bound to be, unless the horse is
healed. Here you see that God works in and by evil men, evil deeds results; yet
God . . . is good, and cannot do evil; but he uses evil instruments . . . The
fault which accounts for evil being done when God moves to action lies in these
instruments, which God does not allow to be idle . . . ' (p. 204). Mysterious
though this is in detail, yet if God is absolutely sovereign and omnipotent,
working all in all, then it must in some form be true; and therefore we must
reject out of hand all forms of the Deistic notion of God as an onlooker,
passively watching the acts of man, in whose performance He plays no direct
part. But that means that 'free-will' in Erasmus sense of an inherent power in
man to act apart from God, simply does not exist. Only God has
"free-will', for He is the only independent agent that there is. Man does
not act independently of God's necessitating purpose (though he likes to hink
he does), and therefore "free-will is an empty name, an inapplicable title, when
predicated of him.
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