Luther, Calvin and Spurgeon Were Not Christians

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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.

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Spurgeon misread God's Word:

He quotes Christ's indictment of the rabbis, "You will not come to Me that you might have life." He then declares, "Where is free will after such a text as that? When Christ affirms that they will not, who dares say they will?...he cannot like it and will not like it, unless he who ordained the plan shall change his nature and subdue his will."

The statement itself says that they have a will, that by their own will they are rejecting Him: "You will not come to Me..." Nor does Christ say that they cannot will to do otherwise. Indeed, Christ's statement would be meaningless (as calvinism is meaningless to reject the love, mercy and glory of God) unless they could of their own will repent and come to Him. Only two chapters later Christ declares, "If any man will do His [God's] will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God..." (John 7.17).

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Throughout his entire treatise (Bondage of the Will), Luther confuses the ability to will with the ability to perform, and mistakenly imagines he has disproved the former by disproving the latter.

For God to command man to do what he cannot do would be like asking man whose arms are bound to use them. Luther responds that the man is "commanded to stretch forth his hand...to disprove the false assumption of freedom of power..." That God would not just command but earnestly plead, persuade, and beseech man endlessly through His prophets, promising and giving blessing for obedience and warning of and bringing destruction for disobedience, cannot be explained away by Luther's clever but trite rejoinder.

Solomon is appealing to his son to "know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the word of understanding; to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity..." (Prov. 1.2-3). He declares that "A wise man will hear, and will increase learning" (v.5), and he admonishes his son, "if sinners entice thee, consent though not" (v.10). He exhorts, "My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of his correction: for whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth" (3.11-12). Are these persuasive urgings not appeals to the will?

Wisdom is better than folly. Reward for serving God and righteousness far exceeds serving selfish lusts and desires. That the Lord corrects as a father corrects is not, as Luther insists, simply to show that no correction is possible, but so the wise son will heed instruction-which is obviously only possible by an act of the free will. Luther fails either to prove the bondage of the will or to demonstrate what it is that has the will bound so that not a single soul could receive the cross.

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Luther said, "the doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ disproves 'free-will'." That is absurd. Salvation by faith requires a genuine choice by free will. I'm amazed at how mindless Luther was.

Grace cannot be forced on anyone or it would not be grace. Thus, it takes the power of choice for man to assent to God's grace and to receive the gift of salvation God graciously offers.