The Freedom of the Will or its Bondage?

As we approach the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s classic work, The Bondage of the Will, it is a good chance to be reminded of the importance of the doctrine that we often call “Total Depravity.” In doing so, it will also be necessary to dispel some pervasive myths about what the Reformed think about so-called “Free Will.” Luther’s book was actually a response to a Diatribe on Free Will written by Erasmus, who was the leading humanist scholar of his day. While Erasmus made a valuable contribution to the Reformation with his 1516 translation of the Greek New Testament, his own stance toward controversy with Rome can only be described as a false peace.

The state of the question between the two men was twofold, as Luther described it:

“Whereas, it is impossible that you should know what ‘Free-will’ is, unless you know what the human will does, and what God does and foreknows.”1

Of course that was only the tip of the iceberg. Had the will undergone any change when Adam first sinned, such that we must make a distinction between the essence of will per se and the fallen, or sinful, nature? Let us begin with the “essence question” and then proceed to the “sinful nature” question. 

What is the Will and in What Sense is it Free?

Jonathan Edwards wrote that the will “is the mind choosing.”2 Another word that the older thinkers would use for this aspect of the soul is inclination, because in a choice, the soul “inclined” or bent or tended toward one object as opposed to another. To be a rational being is also to be a volitional (willing) being in this sense. We would call such a motion “free” to the extent that it is uncoerced or unfrustrated by some force alien to itself.

That is a very crucial distinction to observe because it is only something extraneous or alien or contrary to the will that we could pit against the freedom of that will. It would be quite a confusion to suppose that the limitations of the essential nature of that will itself are opposed to freedom of choice. 

With that important distinction understood, one is ready for a working definition.

The freedom of the will means (1) the ability to do what one most desires, (2) given all relevant natural limitations, including (a) limitations on one’s own psychological or genetic capacity, and (b) limitations of available options [known or unknown] external to one’s choice.

There are other understandings of free will. Determinism denies it altogether. Libertarianism (not to be confused with the political philosophy) affirms it without any sense of limitations of the will’s nature. Compatibilism affirms it within both the efficient causality of God and the limitations of the will’s nature. A serious analysis of these three would require a separate writing. For our purposes, it is enough to affirm a “free will” that simply means the ability to do what one desires according to all natural limitations, whether internal or external. 

What is the Will in the Fall?

Contrary to what has long been the slander toward Calvinists, the Reformed doctrine does not deny the freedom of the will per se in the unregenerate, but rather the soundness of that will. When the unregenerate chooses to have a burger for dinner rather than a pizza, he does so as freely as does the regenerate. What an unregenerate will cannot do is to raise itself from the dead to perform truly spiritual works unto God (Rom. 8:7-8).

Now I do not mean to minimize the relationship between this bare volitional aspect of man and more morally serious choices. While the unregenerate may be just as free with the menu, he may be less free with respect to his vocation, his relationships, and his vote in the next election. That is because the heart that is set on the flesh is hostile to God everywhere it moves. Our focus is on the will’s role in coming to salvation. 

A crucial set of texts to relate to each other are Genesis 2:17, 1 Corinthians 15:22, and Ephesians 2:1. Here, we want to ask: What kind of death is being talked about and does the original explain all of those deaths that follow? 

“but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17).

“For as in Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22).

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1).

I will not labor to argue how these three verses are connected. I leave it to the honest reader to simply read them in order. The burden is on the critic of the doctrine to make them mean something other than what they obviously do. To be born in sin is to be born spiritually dead. It is to be spiritually cut off from the life of God from birth. This death was affected by Adam’s sin, as Romans 5:12 also teaches. Psalm 51:5 speaks on this in terms of causing us to sin from the start. While this does not make for the same degree of actual sins in infants as it does in adults, it is still of the same basic essence of self-centeredness that only becomes more skilled. Two places from Jeremiah are instructive:

“Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil” (13:23).

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (17:9)

In view here is a kind of total inability, one that blinds the mind from properly assessing spiritual things. Paul says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). Once again, the language of “inability” is biblical language. This is really what is meant by total depravity. Does the will still choose what it most consciously wants? It certainly does. But what does it want left in sin? As Genesis 6:5 depicts what God saw in mankind, namely, “that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Such a bondage of the will to sin can only be overcome by the new birth, that is, by a free action of the Holy Spirit (see Ezk. 36:26-27; Jn. 3:3-8).

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1. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976), 37-38.

2. Jonathan Edwards, The Freedom of the Will (Orlando: Soli Deo Gloria, 2005), 1.