Why is Luther's Bondage of the Will Ignored?

Summary

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Thinking Fellows Podcast

Episode: Why is Luther's Bondage of the Will Ignored?

Date: October 27, 2025
Participants: Caleb Keith (host), Scott Keith, Adam Francisco, Steven Paulson

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Overview

This episode of the Thinking Fellows takes a provocative and in-depth look at Martin Luther’s seminal work, The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio), with the central question: Why is this foundational work so widely ignored—especially among Lutherans—despite its enduring importance for Reformation theology? Through a candid, often humorous roundtable, the panel explores historical, theological, and cultural reasons for this neglect, drawing out the challenging claims of the book and their implications for contemporary Christianity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Is The Bondage of the Will Ignored?

• Modern Christianity’s Focus on Moral Virtue

  • Scott Keith contends that most of Christianity, including contemporary Lutheranism, has become “a quest for better moral virtue through Jesus.” Moral improvement and behaviorism have overtaken proclamation:

    “If you are pursuing just morality and virtue as sort of the end … you can’t have at the core the bondage of the will.” (03:29 – Scott Keith)

  • The bound will, as a doctrine, disrupts this by denying human autonomy in being good.

• The Conversation Ender

  • Caleb points out that referencing The Bondage of the Will often ends theological dialogue rather than begins it:

    “…if you bring it up, it’s a conversation ender nowadays, not a conversation starter.” (01:17 – Caleb Keith)

• Historical Ignorance (Not Just a Modern Issue)

  • Steven Paulson notes that the avoidance of this book began almost immediately after its publishing:

    “It was a very popular book. It went like hotcakes. And then absolutely nothing afterward … they wanted to hide it and they wanted to put it in the closet …” (07:22 – Steven Paulson)

2. Theological Stakes: What the Book Asserts

• Scripture’s Clarity

  • Luther’s confidence in the “absolute clarity” of Scripture is unsettling to many:

    “It states bluntly that Scripture is completely clear, that when you read it, you know exactly what it’s saying. And you don’t need to run and get anybody to instruct you about what the Bible is actually saying.” (09:08 – Steven Paulson)

• Law and Gospel: Not Just a Hermeneutic

  • The panel stresses that Luther places law and gospel not as interpretive strategies, but as God’s two ways of speaking, forcing a theological crisis.

    “Law and gospel is not your way of looking at things; it’s the way God does things.” (13:03 – Steven Paulson)

3. Why Luther’s View Is Unsettling

• Assertion vs. Discussion

  • Luther’s bold assertions stand in contrast to Erasmus’s (and modernity’s) preference for intellectual “discussion”:

    “You cannot have preaching without assertions. Think about the preacher coming in to the pulpit … and saying, ‘Christ died for you. Maybe. Let's discuss it.’” (18:15 – Scott Keith)

  • Modern theology tends to opt for endless deliberation to avoid hard claims—mirrored in corporate, consensus-seeking culture:

    “Rather than having assertions, why don’t we put out ideas that all of us can discuss?... I would rather have that than have Luther asserting things, which, by the way, is what a preacher does.” (17:21 – Steven Paulson)

• Repetitiveness as Theological Necessity

  • Luther’s repetition comes from a need to keep refuting the same anthropological objections:

    “The key now is not to try to stop being repetitive, but be repetitive about the right thing. When you get the right thing that you're repetitive on, then what do you want other than to repeat it?” (27:50 – Steven Paulson)

4. Contemporary Avoidance in Practice

• The “Church Growth” Dilemma

  • Pastoral resistance to the doctrine is linked with practicality:

    “The worst thing you can possibly do in order to grow your church is to have the absolution at the beginning of your worship service… you begin your liturgy by telling them they have a bound will … how many of those people are going to come back the next time?” (25:40 – Steven Paulson)

• Scholastic and Anthropological Shifts

  • Modern and Reformed theological traditions tend to absorb or skip over the “bondage” with categories of new spiritual freedom or “restored” will, returning to older “scholastic” ideas:

    “Across Lutheranism and the Reformed, there’s a resurgence in the scholastic traditions right now…confessing the bound will, but jumping very quickly to a new free will…” (24:09 – Caleb Keith)

5. Who Actually Reads The Bondage of the Will Today?

• Reformed Interest

  • The Reformed (Calvinist) tradition, ironically, seems to value and translate the text more than contemporary Lutherans—highlighting its continuity with their own emphases on divine sovereignty.

• Anthropology vs. Theology

  • Modern theology, both inside and outside the church, is more “anthropological” than theological, focusing on human freedom rather than God’s agency:

    “Now we're going to study man...The key thing, the central thing, the main thing about what makes you a human being? Free will. Yep, that's what it is.” (34:40 – Steven Paulson)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On contemporary Christianity’s discomfort:

  • “You can’t talk about the bondage of the will, if that is your presupposition [that Christianity is about striving for virtue].” (04:16 – Scott Keith)

• On assertion vs. endless discussion:

  • “Christ died for you. Maybe. Let’s discuss it.” (18:15 – Scott Keith, satirical tone)

• On the academic neglect:

  • “We’re the only...theologically Lutheran [organization]...on the 500th anniversary of the bondage of the will...even talking about it.” (05:39 – Scott Keith)

• On law and gospel’s existential weight:

  • “God actually only has two words. He has his law and his gospel...the toughest task of a theologian is to wrestle with that your entire life.” (14:44 – Scott Keith)

• On the modern appetite for anthropology over theology:

  • “What do you suppose they figure is the key thing, the central thing...about what makes you a human being? Free will. Yep, that’s what it is.” (34:40 – Steven Paulson)

• On why discussing the bound will feels dangerous:

  • “If you can get around [the bound will], not talk about it very much, all of these categories become open back to those old...more exciting or natural...ideas again.” (11:28 – Caleb Keith)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• 01:17 – Introduction of the main topic and question of the episode
• 03:29 – Scott Keith’s proposal: moralism has replaced proclamation in the church
• 07:22 – Steven Paulson on the early historical neglect of Luther’s book
• 09:08 – The unsettling clarity of Scripture in Luther’s theology
• 13:03 – Law and Gospel as the very voice of God, not merely an interpretive tool
• 18:15 – The necessity of bold assertions in preaching, contra Erasmus
• 25:40 – Church growth pragmatics and resistance to the bound will
• 24:09 – Scholasticism, new will, and the sidestepping of Luther’s core challenge
• 34:40 – The rise of anthropological (man-centered) theology in modernity

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Tone & Style

The conversation throughout is lively, occasionally irreverent, and deeply concerned with the theological integrity of Lutheran (and Christian) tradition. The panelists are self-deprecating, willing to poke fun at themselves and others, but unwavering about the seriousness of Luther’s argument.

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Conclusion

The Bondage of the Will remains at the heart of Luther’s—and the Reformation’s—theology, but is ignored today because its message clashes with the prevailing focus on personal improvement, free will, and consensus-driven religion. The panel argues for a return to its bold assertions, even if uncomfortable, as the very substance of Christian proclamation.

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For further engagement:

• Listen to the full episode for in-depth development of each point.
• Recommended for those interested in the intersections of historical theology, church practice, and contemporary religious culture.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to the Thinking Fellows Podcast. My name is Gail Keith. Today I am joined by Adam Francisco, Scott, Keith and Stephen Paulson to do an episode on the Bondage of the Will, which, if you're a listener of the show and you're a subscriber, you're like, really two in a row, Guys just do two in a row. But yes, we're going to put a little bit of a spin on it. A couple of comments first. When you're the only person on a panel or a podcast like this without a PhD, isn't it a little cooler that you're not like a rest of them?

[B]

Wow.

[A]

I mean, I didn't need the credential to figure out how to podcast.

[B]

You heard something different than I heard. I heard Doctor, Doctor, Doctor And Caleb, thank you.

[A]

So, yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna stick with it's cooler. But also, live podcasting is a bit of an oddity. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It's sort of offensive because podcasting is one of the most sort of by distance and separated things we do. We get to just sit in an office, talk to each other, and then, you know, thousands of people listen to it, each at their own individual timing and things like that. And so a live stream is a little strange, can be a little uncomfortable. Things like that, which is just like the bondage of the will, which feels wrong to us. It goes against our senses. And for today's episode, we're going to kind of jump on that and go, why is nobody talking about the bondage of the will? Why is it seemingly ignored? Even amongst Lutherans today, it is rare to hear somebody discuss the bondage of the will. Or if you're in theological conversations, if you bring it up, it's a conversation ender nowadays, not a conversation starter. In fact, you will talk to Lutheran pastors, Lutheran theologians, who will say, I kind of read it maybe a little bit in seminary, but I maybe stay intentionally ignorant of it so I don't have to answer questions about it. Which is odd because I think from a historical perspective alone, this is like a top five work of the Reformation. Uh, it's top five. Top five.

[C]

Yeah. Top two.

[B]

Top two.

[C]

There you go.

[A]

Uh, I mean, it's. It, it is. It's just up there. And so to be ignored is strange. So today on the Thinking Fellows, I want to have a bit of a fun, speculative podcast, a little bit something we don't do on Outlaw God supposedly, which the theme is from speculation to Proclamation. But on, on thinking, fellows, we love to speculate, have some fun. And the question for you guys today, for all of us, is why is nobody talking about it? Why are Lutherans even avoiding the bondage of the will?

[B]

Oh, boy, do I want to go first.

[D]

I want to call the question, though.

[A]

Oh, go for it.

[D]

I mean, I wake up most mornings thinking about the bondage of the will and just.

[A]

I'm skeptical.

[B]

I'm just saying it's because you're getting old and every time you get out of bed, things hurt and you're like, ah, that bound will. Can I go first?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, you can go first.

[B]

All right. I have permission from both sides. I think it's because all of Christianity, including a lot of Lutheran Christianity, and it makes me frustrated and sad, has become a quest for better moral virtue through Jesus. And if you are pursuing just morality and virtue as sort of the end, as we would say sometimes on the show, the material cause or the material purpose or the main thing of Christianity, you can't have at the core of the bondage of the will. I mean, this was Erasmus entire point in the freedom of the will is that if you talk about the bound will and you tell people that they're free in Christ because he's set you free, not because you've decided or anything like that, people won't be good in anymore. They won't try to be good little boys and girl Christians anymore. And it's. And it was. It's the big fear. And that's all you hear about now. I mean, every conversation within Christianity is about behavior, including within Lutheranism. I just. We don't have TV at home, but we've been in the hotel here since Saturday, which means tv. And we had on. We flip out in the morning, flip through, and inevitably, if you're me, you land on Fox News for a minute and Fox News comes up and it's good news. Christianity, which has been on the decline in America for the past 20 years, is now experiencing a big bump and there's an increase in Christianity. And you say, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I have to watch this segment. And then you watch it and you want to take out the weapon you may or may not have in the drawer and put a.45 slug right through the TV because, you know, they're not describing Christianity, the people that they have on, they're describing at best, moral, therapeutic deism or something like that. And then we'll attach Jesus to it. And you can't talk about the bondage of the will, if that is your presupposition.

[C]

It's.

[B]

It's an alien proposition to that. I've said it on the show and I've been banging my spoon on my high chair about this all year. We're the only Lutheran organization or sort of, you know, organization that's sort of theologically Lutheran that I've heard of this year on the 500th anniversary of the bondage of the will, not only having a conference on it, but even talking about it, even bringing it up as a subject for discussion. And we've just lived through a bunch of 500 year anniversaries that you're kind of probably getting sick of them, you know, and we're on the 500th anniversary of this, which is, you know, top two, if not one works in reformational Christianity. And it's like silence out there, but it's, it's silence because the message of the proclaimed for you gospel on account of Christ alone is so foreign to what we've caught, what Christianity has become in sort of the general mindset.

[C]

Agreed, I completely agree with that. It gives me an opportunity to do something, to talk about that I have wanted to. And that is I simply want to say publicly that I'm all for morality.

[A]

Clip that.

[B]

That was like that. It was like this. He's like. As opposed to this guy. Yeah, I like behaving.

[C]

That is not. That is. That has not been my reputation out there in the world. But I just want to make that clear. But how true this is. And here's another matter. Not only is it currently and not discussed the bondage of the will, currently not discussed either as a book which Luther wrote or as a subject matter. It's verboten. You don't enter into this. And not only is that true now, but it was true right after Luther wrote it. It was a very popular book. It went like hotcakes. And then absolutely nothing afterward. Our friend, and many of you will know, Bob Kolb is a great teacher of the church, has written a whole book on how it is that Lutherans ignored the bondage of the will right after it came out and they didn't want to talk about it and they wanted to hide it and they wanted to put it in the closet and close the door door and just say, this doesn't even exist. So that happened right away. It didn't just happen in our modern situation.

[B]

Well, not to get too technical, but it progressed into the height of Lutheran Orthodoxy within 17th century Lutheranism completely became out of favor and that's what's being modeled today as sort of the flash, the goal, the high career is what we have aim for. And the rediscovering of the gospel in that sort of main time of the Reformation is passe.

[C]

So let's point out a couple of the things that have really made people mad about this. Maybe mad is not quite the right word. I think it's more scared. One of them that is very scary to people is one of the things that you are especially going to be talking about, and that is that it states bluntly that Scripture is completely clear that when you read it, you know exactly what it's saying. And you don't need to run and get anybody to instruct you about what the Bible is actually saying.

[B]

I said something, I said that once to somebody recently and they said, that's really interesting. Then why do you host a podcast called Tough Texts? Solid question.

[A]

Because you don't trust that. Yeah, that's.

[C]

Listen, I've just written a book on the Gospel of Mark. You'll hear many times that is probably going to be 25 volumes. And I just told you that Scripture is clear and you don't need anybody to help you understand what's actually being said. One of the reasons that we actually do have to say a lot is how many false interpretations of Scripture have been put out so that they have to be addressed. That's why we do have to say something about it. But it is amazing to think that you would say, as Luther does, that Scripture is absolutely clear. And he says, erasmus, I know what's bugging you. You're trying to run around like a squirrel chasing its own tail and trying to figure out. It can't possibly say that, can it? It can't possibly say that I don't have any free will, that God in fact does all these things apart from my work. It can't possibly say that. And Luther keeps saying, no, you were right the first time. That's exactly what it said. It's an amazing claim.

[A]

I think the bondage of the will makes you have to take a bunch of different doctrines that are easy for lots of Christians to describe and cling to and go all the way with them. And one of those is the distinction between law and gospel, which almost every single Protestant. It sounds like music to their ears at first. So they will say, yeah, we talk about the law and the gospel, but they stop at its full ends, where the law accuses or the gospel brings to life or has action. It's just descriptive for nice Portions of the text or harsh portions of the text, or pre Christ portions of the text and post Christ portions of the text, where you get confusion, where anything after faith, faith is the gospel, even when it's obviously law and the bondage of the will forces you to be broken of that. And so if you can get around that, not talk about it very much, all of these categories become open back to those old sort of more exciting or natural to us ideas again. And so even things like justification by faith alone, you can get a lot of lip service to that. You can get Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Episcopals all agreeing on what grace means, even though they don't. Because as long as we leave the bondage of the will off the table with this, we can get to a definition on grace that we can all shake hands on and things like that. And so I think a lot of Christians can be shocked when. When you actually have this at the center of your theology, or as Luther said, this is the jugular. All of a sudden, we don't all agree on what grace is or what the distinction between long gospel actually means or how it's produced in preaching and things like that.

[C]

Now, Caleb is not a doctor. Did you heard? Eddie's too young to know these sorts of things. But I. This is the best since I have been teaching for too long. I can't tell you how many times other teachers, students, and everybody writing a book tells me that law and gospel is an interesting theory. Yeah, yeah, it is a theory about how it is. Oh, they have another term. This one comes from our dear Calvin. And Calvin does say, you know, when you come to scripture, you're going to be wearing glasses. And it depends on what glasses you have regarding what you see. Luther was saying exactly the opposite of that. So Luther knew that. That not only was scripture clear, but it was clear about the matter of law and gospel. So that law and gospel is not a interpretive method, not a hermeneutic. It's not a hermeneutic that you can put on with glasses. And you say, well, oh, I'm a law and gospel kind of person, but it's not quite what other people over here do, which might be something like covenant theology or something like that. And the bondage of the will just breaks through all of that. Your point is exactly right. But it's telling you that law and gospel is not your way of looking at things. It's the way God does things. And whether you like it or not, that's what he's laying forward in scripture.

[B]

Itself, the way I've heard it, understand that hit me the explain that hit me the hardest is just to say that God actually only has two words. He has his law and his gospel. And when I think when Luther said that, you know, the toughest task of a theologian is to wrestle with that your entire life. That your entire life you wrestle with the fact that God has two words for you, his law and his gospel. And that for me, the day I don't remember who said that, but the day that hit me, it changed everything. Because you do start, you stop talking about it as an interpretation, you sort of press on scripture and now it's just what scripture is saying.

[D]

Clearly on that. Along those lines concerning the things in the text that make it a bit rough to or tough to swallow is right up front in the bondage. Luther talks about the character of Christianity being one where the Christian delights in assertions.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

Christianity is about confessing boldly, confidently because scriptures are clear and not cowering in a corner or keeping your mouth shut when some false doctrine or what have you is espoused. So given the. Especially in our day and age where Christianity is sort of. I don't know how else to describe it but, but maybe limp wristed, you know, it. The way it describes Christianity is very counter to the way we tend to approach Christianity today.

[C]

Well, it is, it is, it is limp wristed, but it. Erasmus puts it presently excluded. Yes. So you're right. Erasmus picks this up too and he says to Luther, I don't like assertions. I don't like people making assertions. Well, Luther steps back and says, well, what would you like better? What would you like more? Well, he actually proposes something, he says, you know, rather than having assertions, why don't we put out ideas that all of us can discuss?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And when we put them out as ideas that we can discuss, then what we're doing is. Well, what you would do at a corporate meeting. We're having a meeting of the minds. What do you have? You have a little group meeting, the corporate.

[A]

Let's circle back around to that.

[C]

Yeah. There you. Oh yeah, that's right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Pass around a basket with bees.

[C]

And Erasmus literally says, that's what I'd rather have. I would rather have a corporate meeting where we all come together and decide to discuss a topic. And we know by the end of this that the meeting is going to be useless and nothing will have come from it and nobody would have gotten anything out of it. I would rather have that than have Luther asserting things, which, by the way, is what a preacher does. Yep. And Erasmus hated the fact that when Luther wrote back to Erasmus, he wrote it publicly. So he didn't go to his house and say it. He wrote it publicly, but he was preaching to Erasmus and that bothered Erasmus. Like you just wouldn't believe.

[B]

You cannot have preaching without assertions. Think about the preacher coming in to the pulpit for you on Sunday and saying, Christ died for you. Maybe. Let's discuss it.

[C]

No, let's discuss. This is our discussion. This is our point of discussion today. Yes. Are you pro resurrection or against the resurrection?

[B]

Great.

[A]

It's kind of funny because one of the sets of objections that you'll hear is about the work itself and why it's. It's difficult. Ah, the format is hard. Or I picked it up and I didn't finish it. Or it was. We said it on the other podcast. It's just too repetitive. I can't do it. So it's sort of. Of dodging the question. But as. I mean, we get to this, I'm sure people have been rereading it. Maybe you've read it for the first time. Is that really actually true or is that sort of a convenience?

[B]

We might disagree on this. It's a little true. It's not the easiest work to get through if you are not accustomed to the style in which it's for.

[D]

It's.

[B]

It's written in a really particular style. It's not impossible to get through every word in it. You can understand the person who can read can get through it, but it's. It's not. Steve and I were just discussing this before we started recording that the modern reader reads at a different pace and a different tempo than how the bondage of the will is written. And it can be a little difficult to get through. But stick with it. I mean, take Jim's advice, Jim Nestigen's advice from years ago, if you need to, and read the last third first, which are basically the assertions backed up by Scripture. And then go back to the. The first two thirds, which is him sort of wrapping that up for the Erasmus, particularly if you kind of just want the arguments that he's making in positive form, hit the last third first. And that's really easy. This can be his argument backed up by Scripture, argument backed up by Scripture, argument backed up by scripture. And then go to the first part, which is going to be him. He deals with Erasmus. Freedom of the wheel, freedom of the will in that part. And that's where it gets a Little dialectically.

[D]

You and Dr. Paulson could do like a tick tock interpretive dance of the bondage. The will. I think people need to be interested in the book.

[C]

I think I've got the moves for that. I think, I think they could do that. I think, I think they got. Yeah.

[B]

I mean that what you just said is worth loading tick tock on my. I have sworn that I would not do that. But you maybe took me over to the other side.

[D]

I think maybe the best construction on why nobody's talking about the monitor will this year. Yeah.

[A]

8Th Commandment. Let's do it.

[B]

Yeah, let's do it.

[D]

8Th Commandment. Dr. Paulson's all into it.

[C]

Theoretic.

[D]

It is also this year the 17th anniversary of the Nicene Creed. So the, the Lutheran conferences out there.

[B]

Are all doing the creed. Come on. Which one?

[C]

More important.

[B]

Really?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

We say the creed every Sunday.

[B]

Was that one that, that question that Rod always used to say in class? It's like being asked, have you yet stopped hitting your wife?

[D]

So I mean, I think it's a little strange, no offense, that 400 people would come together together and talk about or learn about the bars of the will in Southern California.

[B]

No, it's not. You're totally normal. We love you and need your support.

[D]

Awesome. So that, that, I mean that there's. I don't know how many people in this room, but that there's gonna be 400 people here this afternoon and tomorrow to talk about is actually, I don't mean. I don't think we need to wring our hands that nobody's reading because obviously some people are interested in it. So. And I will at. There are places where it is red like the seminaries and so on. It is red. But yeah, it's not the. Though it's the top. I don't know if it's a top two I like on the barefooted monks and the. The papacy and institution of the devil.

[C]

The first, however, that was, that was, that was Luther's own observation. It was not among.

[D]

Among Lutheran wonks. I think it gets read a bit or at least quoted here and there.

[B]

I, I, I.

[D]

You're reading too much X or Twitter.

[A]

Oh man. Maybe. But I find that people act coy about it and I think it's partially for the, the reasons that my dad stated, which is that it's that to, to everybody involved, it seems like it's a dead stop to instructing on morality. Now if you want to find out why it's not, you can come to my Talk on Saturday on good works. But the reality is that I think they think it's conversation over. If you bring it up, there's nothing left to talk about. What do you mean? Serve my neighbor? Or it's bad news to me because you can't just keep telling me God doesn't want things, I really need to show up to church on Sunday or I really want people to show up. If you just keep telling people that their neighbor needs their good works, God doesn't. We're going to have to stop doing theology. We're going to have to stop sending people to seminary because demand for this job is going to be over. And so I think there is some of that. And you may be right. I might be like chronically online and dealing with that. But across Lutheranism and the Reformed, there's a resurgence in the scholastic traditions right now. And those scholastic traditions are very interested in sometimes when they're compelled to by their confessions, confessing the bound will, but jumping very quickly to a new free will, the new power of the will. Often returning to scholastic categories of grace. And a theory about grace at creation that says that there was a free will that is now restored, empowered, strengthened by the third use of the law to become its own new living man. And that the simul is about strengthening this new living man through the law. And so a new theory of the law comes up too, and they think that they can get away with it and still be confessionally Lutheran because we're saying first there's a bound, well, then there's a free will or something like this, or I can use all the right words to stay within my confessional boundaries. But I can then come back to these scholastic theories about grace, creation, sanctification, theosis, you name it. It's a long list of things. And to them it's more exciting because there's a longer period of history that I can read. I can go back into the medieval tradition, I can go forward into the scholastic Reformation tradition.

[B]

I just want to congratulate everybody in the room. You came into a 100 level class and you've now fast forwarded into a third year seminary class from the non.

[A]

Doctor I will have you. That's a finger act, I'll remind you.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So.

[B]

Most of those concepts would have taken me 18 weeks in a semester in a mattress.

[A]

There you go. So you can just rewind that and.

[C]

It might be we had people teaching. One of the main things that seminaries were trying to teach was how to grow a church rather than how to Ruin a church and how to grow a church always began in the same way. The worst thing you can possibly do in order to grow your church is to have the absolution at the beginning of your worship service, which then begins by saying, not only are you a sinner, but bound in sin. And they said, how many people do you say if you're the pastor and you begin your liturgy by telling them they have a bound will, how many of those people are going to come back the next time? That's it. And the whole idea was that you had to get rid of that entirely. You had to be a decent Methodist, which at least they knew that they had to put a series of songs at the step. You don't begin with an absolution for Christ's sake. So, I mean, it actually still does have a real effect on us.

[B]

That's really insightful. Actually. We've been trying to crack the nut of why we can't get people to come to our church twice.

[C]

I think you have to, you know, three. Three nice guitar songs. First, no and no Absolution. You can sort of slip it in at the end, but you have to do it in sort of semative way.

[B]

So in order to grow your church, you have to ruin your church.

[C]

Yes, that's exactly. And it's also true that this. This particular text that Luther wrote in response to Erasmus. All of my students over the years would always say the same thing, that it was repetitive and it was terribly repetitive, and it kept coming back and saying the same thing over and over and over again. And nevertheless, it's a big book. I happen to like big books.

[A]

No.

[C]

I am told over and over again that you people are not reading big books. But I have to believe that it still happens out there. Luther wrote the big book. Every time you do it, of course it's going to be repetitive. The key now is not to try to stop being repetitive, but be repetitive about the right thing. When you get the right thing that you're repetitive on, then what do you want other than to repeat it? And that is the way he does it. Of course, the reason why that actually happens is that Luther asked for one thing from Erasmus before they started all of this. This had been kind of brewing for some time. And Erasmus knew what Luther's rule was going to be. If you're going to come on and take on Luther publicly, the one thing that Luther would allow you to do is take him on as long as it was from Scripture. So the rule is, you can debate me. You can fight me, you can disagree with me, you can say whatever you want about doctrine this, doctrine that, church history and so on. But I want you to come and I want you to argue from the Bible. So Erasmus starts and says, this is no fun for me.

[B]

I had all these arguments in my.

[C]

Head scripture based and I've read all of the Greek philosophers and I know all of these sorts of things. But Luther, I'm gonna stoop down to your low level and I'm simply gonna argue from scripture. And then as he goes through, he picks out all these things from scripture one after another, going to all the places that he thinks in scripture might possibly imply that you have a free will. He lays them all out. And of course, when Luther finally has to respond to him, Luther has to take up every single one of those. And he says, okay, I'm going to take up every one of them and show you what an idiot you are. And each one of these things is a complete abomination of what is actually said in the scripture. And that's the way they are going to.

[A]

Luther complains about being repetitive in the bonus rule itself. He says multiple times, and you're making me say it again. And it's actually, you can almost boil it down to one word. It's just inference, inference, inference. Every verse that Erasmus has or section, he just. It's an. It's not. It does not indicate there's a free will. There's no command, there's no clear truth from God or proclamation that there's a free will. It's all inference.

[C]

I used to say the same thing about my congregations. I'm not only a doctor, but a pastor. So I would say to congregations, you make me do this. You make me repeat this over and over again. You come with nothing new. It's always the same old thing.

[B]

Start showing up with different sins. I could say something different.

[C]

Try to be a little more creative next week when you come back. Have a good sin. Yeah.

[A]

You'Re gonna. You looked like you were gonna jump in.

[D]

Well, I thought this is. Maybe we'll take us off topic, but.

[A]

We'Re just go from do that.

[D]

It'd be interesting to ask who does read the bondage of the will today?

[A]

Oh, that's a good question.

[C]

It is.

[D]

Can we say I don't. This is more. This is me anecdotal, but it seems that the Reformed quite loves the will.

[B]

Or I think the translation that most people read is from Reformed theologians.

[C]

Reformed, Calvinist theologians. Really? Do they. There are a lot of things they don't like about Luther, but this one they actually do like. And they do. They. They continuously retranslate it.

[D]

It's almost like they like it because it shows continuity in a way with Luther. But there. But Calvin, of course.

[C]

Well, that's true, that's true. But they do recognize something important in the. In the text. And what Luther is doing there in. In the text is what we would call pure theology. The pure theology is telling you who God is and what God does. That means what he actually says. That's pure theology. And theology should be about that and that alone. But if you get books of theology today, or you go to colleges and learn about theology, or you for that matter, even get theology in your congregation, you are getting a mess of things in theology. You are not getting pure theology that is actually giving you who God is, what he does, and specifically what he says. Now, the key thing that gets added is the thing now that Erasmus decided he was going to make the central thing, and that is he was going to take anthropology as the center. So whenever you're studying philosophy, or especially when you're doing something about religion or theology, you are going to be talking about God and you're going to be talking about the human being. And you've got these two areas of discussion. Now, which one do you suppose has become not just a cool work with theology, but the dominant thing in the modern world? It's anthropology. One of the things that we note about what makes the world modern. When the world becomes modern, which is normally we understand in the early 1700s, that's approximately when this is happening. We have what's called the Enlightenment, and we have. Suddenly the Germans come out. They're tired of Luther. They've had Luther run down their throat for a long time. And then they come out and they say, no, what we're going to do now is not study God, what God is, who he is, what he does, what he says, and so on. Now we're going to study man. And when we do that, we're going to start with what we think is the start of man, which is not to talk about God, but to talk about what we think makes a human being human. And once you start doing that and you've separated it from theology from God, then you get exactly what we've got now, which is a bunch of garbage about what makes you a human being, what your real humanness is. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist, you don't even have to be a doctor before you can Figure out where they're going to go with this. What do you suppose the modern world tells you? Anthropology. The study of the human being. What the human being, what do you suppose they figure is the key thing, the central thing, the main thing about what makes you a human being? Free will. Yep, that's what it is. And from that point on, then they build everything else that they've got in their theology. And when you have lived with it this long, we've lived it with it now for at least 300 years, a little bit longer than that, but you've lived it that long, it starts to get very tiring. This is why I like coming to California. This is why the Californians especially will be good at this kind of discussion. Because from my vantage point from the Midwest, and you can't get more Midwest than I am, South Dakota, Sioux Falls, that bit. I mean, that's Midwest. Now when we look over at California.

[B]

We say the land of fruits and nuts.

[C]

What are they doing? Yeah, what are they doing over there? What are they doing? Well, they're studying anthropology. Well, what are they doing when they study anthropology? They're exercising their free will. You Californians have exercised your free will better than anyone in the whole world. And you have every version you could possibly imagine. Non. Bless you all. You've done it. You've laid it out in front of us and now we know where it's all going. And you people are the ones who also say, you know what? This is not working out as well as we first lost. It's not quite where we thought we'd end up. And for that I really am thankful that I'm here and with you Californians.

[B]

Just because we have, we have apps at Track where the poop is.

[A]

Well, we are pretty close to time. I will say to Adam's comment here, Lutherans are bad at knowing who our friends and who our enemies are as well. That old Prussian union makes us so, so afraid of the Reformed. And more and more Lutherans are friendly with the Roman Catholics who are so much more wrong than the Calvinists. And so they are not your friend just because they have the liturgy, I'll tell you that, Marcia. But no, it's a great episode, a lot of fun. We hope you'll subscribe to the Thinking Fellows podcast. You can do it on your favorite podcast here. I have also a theme from Me today, also on YouTube now, so you can go subscribe to that on YouTube and you can see we do short 15 minute video versions of our episodes over on the main 1517 channel as well. So you can subscribe over there and.

[B]

See that Caleb's been trying to grow the YouTube channel so much, he may or may not have told me he's got $5 for everybody that subscribes today. I mean, oh, my gosh, how many of you are there? This is possible.

[A]

So, yeah, please, please do subscribe. And we thank you for joining us for this live show. We'll catch you next time, Sam.