Luther attacked Erasmus:

"God foreknows nothing contingently [i.e., no events depend upon something other than His will]...This bombshell knocks 'free will' flat, and utterly shatters it...".

Luther failed to provide sufficient biblical support for the total bondage of the will. Luther argues the future is already predetermined, and that itself proves man could not act freely. The truth is, God knowing something will happen, does not cause it to happen.

It is true that, because God knows what Mr. Jones will decide and do in the future, the latter will surely do so (or God would be wrong, which is impossible). But that does not mean Mr. Jones cannot exercise genuine choice in thought, word, and deed; God simply knows in advance what Mr. Jones's free choice will be.

Is the will in bondage because God is sovereign and He has already determined all that will occur? Luther seems to argue as much. Ten years later, Calvin would come to the same conclusion (Spurgeon even said, 'free will is nonsense'), no doubt influenced by Luther, though he would word his thesis differently and avoid giving Luther any credit. If you are an honest calvinist, you will admit free will is an illusion as Luther said: "it may appear to us to be done mutably and contigently..."

If God's sovereignty and foreknowledge are the same thing and eliminated man's free will, however, we would face a far worse dilemma: man's will would be in bondage to God's will, making God the effective cause of every evil thought, word, and deed. The current dark state of our world would be exactly as God wills.

In vain, Luther tried to escape the obvious, uncomfortable quandary that if man cannot do anything except as God wills it, then God is the author of evil. That unhappy conclusion is forced upon us by an extreme view of sovereignty, which we have already seen is contradicted both by Scripture and reason. There is no way to assert that man can only do what God wills without admitting that God is therefore the invisible Hand effecting all the evil that man commits. That assertion is blasphemy-yet it lies at the very foundation of Calvinism as well as Lutheranism.