It is hard to sum up The Bondage of the Will succinctly, because it is so rich with Luther’s whole theology….One might consider it the nearest thing Luther wrote to a systematic theology. It has always been admired by Reformation Protestants, both Lutherans and Reformed.

Martin Luther looked upon The Bondage of the Will and his Shorter Catechism as his most significant writings. The first of these, The Bondage of the Will, was Luther’s exposition of the monergism that characterized the Reformation. Monergism is the view that when a soul passes from death to life, from unbelief to faith, the sole “energizing” power that accomplishes this is the power of God. Monergism is contrasted with synergism, the view that divine and human power freely cooperate in the soul’s regeneration. Luther and the other Reformers derived their monergism from the Bible, read through the lens of the theology of Augustine, the greatest of the Western church fathers.

All the Reformers were devout Augustinians and shared Luther’s monergism. But why did Luther think he needed to write a lengthy book defending it? It was because one of Europe’s most influential scholars and most brilliant communicators, Erasmus of Rotterdam, criticized Luther’s theology on precisely this point.

Prior to Luther’s emergence on the public stage, Erasmus had been Europe’s foremost advocate of church reform. He had mocked corruptions within the Roman Catholic Church with devastating satire. He had published many new editions of the writings of the early church fathers and viewed them as better guides than the medieval Catholic theologians. Above all, in 1516 he had published a new scholarly edition of the Greek New Testament (the first ever printed edition) as a corrective to the Vulgate, the Latin translation that had dominated the Western church for one thousand years.

When Luther found himself launched into the business of reform in 1517, Erasmus had at first supported him. However, despite Erasmus’ semi-Protestantism, he could never bring himself to reject the papacy. His ideal was a reformed papacy that championed his views. When he saw Luther, Zwingli, and other Reformers denying papal authority and reforming the church in Germany and Switzerland as a non-papal body, Erasmus’ blood ran cold. He saw this as the destruction of the church’s unity. Lobbied by the supporters of the papacy to speak out, Erasmus finally yielded, and in 1524 wrote a book against Luther titled The Freedom of the Will.

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