Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. This week we have been looking at Luther's writings and today we are looking at the crown jewel of his writings, his magnum opus as it were the bondage of the will. Of course, that's next to his work on the Bible

and bringing the Bible from the original languages

of Greek and Hebrew into the language of Germans and into the German language.

Of the books that Luther wrote, when he gets to the end of his life, he's going to say,

burn them all except to the children's catacism, which we looked at earlier this week and this one the bondage of the will it comes from 1525 at one point

Luther is going to call it the centerpiece of the reformation there are two things going on in the bondage of the

will that are worth note. One is the theological emphasis of the bondage of the

will and the second thing is the methodological emphasis of the bondage of the will. First, the theological

emphasis. Luther wrote this treatise in an engagement with Erasmus. This is the great

humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam. He is the one who labors to give

the Greek New Testament in 1516. He also is the author of In Praise of Folly. A great satire of the Roman Catholic Church of the day.

But Luther did not quite see him as embracing the doctrines of the Reformation.

Luther is going to applaud his criticism of the church, but he is going to say,

I fear that the dear Erasmus does not go far enough in embracing the truth.

And as Erasmus was listening to Luther, he thought Luther was wrong, and Erasmus challenged

Luther on his teaching of the will.

And Erasmus held to a free will, and that scripture is equivocating, there's a lot of wiggle room there

and what scripture teaches about the will and about the relationship between God's

sovereignty and our freedom and Erasmus asserts a free will.

Luther challenges that and goes in the opposite direction and makes the case that the will

is bound.

Luther calls us part of Adam's sinful lump.

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