The Bondage of the Will is necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand the roots of Protestant theology. I am a Catholic and found most of what Luther wrote to be poorly based and unscriptural, however, his treatise on the bondage of the will did serve to stress once again the Pauline doctrine of justification by grace alone. This doctrine which teaches that there is nothing a man can do apart from grace to begin, promote, or accomplish his justification before God, but that justification is initiated, begun, and brought to fulfillment completely through God's grace, has been Catholic doctrine from the beginning. Tragically, this doctrine was muddied and distorted by the late Scholastic theology of the "via moderna" - the only theology Luther was really familiar with. Apparently Luther knew very little if any Christian theology pre-dating the 14th Century. The doctrine of justification by grace alone appeared to him therefore as a novelty; something he had "rediscovered." This doctrine, however, is not what the Catholic Church took issue with. It was Luther's insistence upon determinism and his belief that even after justification a man remains totally corrupt. Luther makes plain in this text that even subsequent to justification any good a person accomplishes is done without any human input; all good actions are accomplished by God alone. Luther is very unclear in his explanation of how this occurs. He says man's nature is changed, regenerated, and wills only good after justification, but somehow the man is also evil and deserves only eternal damnation. It is only by the grace of God he is spared this. What part of the man remains evil Luther doesn't clarify. If it is God alone that works the good in us according to our new nature and we have absolutely no ability to reject God's grace and action in our lives (just as under Satan we have absolutely no say in whether we sin since we are then ruled by Satan), we are not only in effect, but in our innermost being nothing more than automatons without any inherent meaning to our existence. Luther makes it extremely clear that in his view man has no free will after justification. He is "free" in the sense that he operates according to his nature, but he has no ability to act otherwise. That man is most free when he acts in accord with his nature has always been Catholic doctrine, but at no time in history did Christianity teach, and nowhere in the Bible does it say man cannot turn away from God or reject his grace. Believing this makes the Bible, indeed the whole of existence, an exercise in futility. Why would Jesus die for men whom he himself causes to sin necessarily? Why would he have to? Luther says this is part of God's "hidden Majestic will" that we have no right to question. He frequently sites Paul's words in Romans 9:14-25 and 11.33-36 in justification of this attitude, but Paul is clearly speaking in these passages of God's providential guidance of history and peoples - not the justification and salvation of individuals. Luther claims to be in agreement with St. Augustine, but anyone who has read Augustine knows there are scarcely two men more distant in thought. Augustine, as all Christianity, held that once an individual is justified he truly becomes a new creation capable of freely choosing the good through the grace of Christ. This action is done through the power of God's grace, yet it is truly the individual's own action as well. Furthermore, as Paul makes clear in numerous passages, an individual always possesses the ability to reject Christ even subsequent to justification. Although Luther claimed his doctrine of "necessity of immutability" offered consolation to those perturbed by conscience, in reality it creates a universe in which we have no control over our own destiny, all things are determined apart from us, and God damns or glorifies those whom he chooses on an absolutely arbitrary basis. I cannot see how this can be comforting, let alone "good news." Luther holds that simply because God has foreseen all things from eternity that everything happens of necessity. He makes a gigantic blunder in confusing God's eternal vision from outside time with the free operations of persons within time. Simply because we remember something from yesterday, it doesn't follow that we caused it to happen. In the same way, because God sees all things due to his being outside time, it doesn't follow that within time they are pre-determined without reference to man's free choice. God allows men to freely choose to reject his grace. He created us free and desires all men to be saved and offers all men his grace. Luther is absolutely right in saying man can do nothing apart from grace to save himself - it is all grace, but he can do something to cause his damnation - he can reject this grace when it is offered to him each day of his life. Perhaps it was providential, though, that Luther stressed "grace alone." Much Christian theology had drifted far from this gospel truth. Finally, I found Luther's caustic sarcasm hard to stomach. I'm not a fan of Erasmus (to whom Luther was responding and who did a poor job of defining the Catholic position), but Luther's anathemas and ad hominem attacks detracted considerably from a book that would otherwise have been quite enjoyable to read.