Theological Origins of Modernity

the contradictions of premodernity 145
I misspoke when I said that free will before grace exists in name only;
rather I should have simply said: ‘free will is a fi ction among real things,
a name with no reality.’ For no one has it within his control to intend
anything, good or evil, but rather, as was rightly taught in the article of
Wycliff , which was condemned at Constance, all things occur by absolute
necessity. Th at was what the poet meant when he said, ‘all things are settled
by a fi xed law.’ [Virgil Aeneid 2.324]. 39
Th is is a striking claim not merely because it puts Luther in league with
the heretical Wycliff but because it puts him outside the previous Christian
tradition altogether. It has no basis or support in Scripture, the church
fathers, or scholasticism. Luther in fact was able to support his claim only
by citing a fatalistic pagan poet. 40
In his Assertion Luther thus left himself open to the charge of necessitarianism
or theological determinism. 41 Th ere is considerable scholarly
disagreement, however, about whether this charge sticks. Th e answer to
this question depends in large measure on how we weigh Luther’s diff erent
utterances on this issue. When the issue came up in the 1520s, Luther
typically sided with Wycliff and seemed to assert that God causes every
last thing to happen. Th is conclusion in his view was the necessary and
unavoidable consequence of the fact that under the doctrine of divine
simplicity God’s foreknowledge and will are one and the same. McSorley,
however, legitimately asks whether Luther means what he says. “While
there can be no doubt that Luther said that all things happen out of absolute
necessity,” it is not clear he understood the crucial diff erence between
necessitas consequentiae (the historical or temporal necessity) and necessita
consequentis (compelling or causative necessity). 42 Moreover, at times
Luther asserted that the will is only unfree in spiritual matters, that is, that
it is bound with respect to everything above it, that is, it is unable to do
anything to gain or lose salvation, but that with respect to everything beneath
it, it is free. How much weight we should give to this assertion, however,
is unclear. Given the purpose of Luther’s argument, he only needed
to show that spiritual freedom did not exist, a more limited claim than
he typically makes. Th e more universal necessitarian claim that there is
no human freedom of any sort also puts him in company of Wycliff and
Hus, two convicted heretics. Th e fact that he does make the broader claim
when he does not need to and when it clearly is disadvantageous to do so
suggests that he really did hold something like that position. If this is correct,
then his occasional statements indicating that he is only concerned
with spiritual freedom have to be discounted as aberrations or rhetorical