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On Luther's Concept Of The Will Pastor Bill Farrow |
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I
really like Martin Luther's concept of the relation of Gods will to man's
will which could be called necessity without compulsion. He agreed that
God has sure knowlege of the future, and that this knowledge made those
events certain. This is obviously so if the orthodox conception of the
knowledge of God is accurate. However, Luther rejected the idea that this
knowledge necessitated the actions of man that were forekn own. It seems
as though what Luther meant by this is that neither Gods will nor man's
will are under any exterior compulsion that acts with any force upon it.
The will of both simply does what it does without any compulsion. He was
unable to fully explain just how this is so, pointing correctly to the
inadequacy of the human mend and vocabulary to sufficiently explain it! Luther did believe that God necessitates all things but only in the sense that He makes them certain by His knowledge of them. I might add that it is by no means as simple as saying that God doesn't cause them either, as there is a whole nest of problems in that direction. Luther rightly sees that the beauty and the grandeur of providence is that God works His well out infallibly and unstoppably without destroying the real choices of real moral agents. Luther maintained that God's own choices were not made under compulsion and that He does not compel area to do His will either, at least, not in the sense that He does violence to than and coerces their choices. The choices of men are free choices, completely free of outside compulsion indudiog that of God. The great mystery that should confound us all is that God's will is still perfectly and unstoppably certain. The problem that many have with this is that us no real explanation but almost seems to be an evasion and an escape into non-reason and mysticism. This is not necessarily so. I think it more likely that it is simply a honest view of man's real capacity to grasp the infinite in these matters. Theo is absolutely nothing wrong with man admitting that this might just be an area that is a bit beyond his ken. In fact, there is everything right with it! |