Theological Origins of Modernity

144 chapter five
the young Luther and that an older Luther so decisively and vehemently
rejected.
the development of the notion of
will in luther’s thought
Until 1515, Luther understood the will within the horizon established by
Biel and Usingen. 35 As we saw in the last chapter, the crucial event that
led him to abandon this notion and rethink his theology was his work
on Romans (1515/1516). Th is investigation gave him a new insight into the
nature of divine omnipotence and its meaning for human will. He previously
had imagined God to be a distant and incomprehensible judge whom
he could never satisfy, but he came to the conclusion that his eff orts could
not save or damn him because in his omnipotence God was responsible
for everything. Th us, neither he nor anyone else could either gain or lose
salvation, because faith alone saved and faith came only through grace.
Luther’s soteriology or doctrine of salvation thus rested on the omnipotence
of divine will and the powerlessness of human will. He concluded
in his lectures on Romans that “with God there simply is no contingency,
but it is only in our eyes. For not even the leaf of a tree falls to the ground
without the will of the Father.” 36
Luther reiterates and expands this claim in Article 13 of the Heidelberg
Disputation (26 April 1518), claiming that “free will, aft er the fall, exists in
name only, and as long as it does what it is able to do, it commits a mortal
sin.” Human beings are not able to do anything on their own except sin,
and all of their supposedly autonomous acts are really an expression of a
prideful self-will that is interested only in its own glory and thus in setting
itself against God. However good they may appear to be, such acts are evil.
In the debate with Eck at the Leipzig Disputation (1519) he admitted in the
heat of the argument that he was in general agreement on this issue with
the convicted heretic Hus.
Th e question of the freedom of the will also occupied a central location
in Luther’s Assertion Against All Articles Condemned in the Bull of Leo
X (1520/1521), which he wrote in reply to the papal bull of condemnation,
Exsurge Domine (1520). He asked in the thirty-sixth article, “Where, then,
is free will?” And answered: “It is completely fi ctitious.” 37 Where then did
such an idea come from? He answered: “Th e teaching of Satan brought this
phrase ‘free will’ into the church in order to seduce men away from God’s
path into his own paths.” 38 He thus concluded: