Martin Luther on Open Theism

Posted by darryl on 4. March 2009

As previously noted I’m reading through Martin Luther’s Bondage of the will at the moment.

Along the way several of his thoughts have jumped out at me on various subjects (not the least of which is his stinging assessment of Erasmus’s book (Bondage of the will was written as a response to a book by Erasmus).

If you don’t know what Open Theism is, it essentially states that God doesn’t know the future. Here is what Luther said to Erasmus when he said that God doesn’t know the future:

…If you doubt, or disdain to know that God foreknows and wills all things, not contingently, but necessarily and immutably, how can you believe confidently, trust to, and depend upon His promises? For when He promises, it is necessary that you should be certain that He knows, is able, and willing to perform what He promises: otherwise, you will neither hold Him true nor faithful, which is unbelief, the greatest of wickedness, and a denying of the Most High God!

(Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, p37)

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3/5/2009 8:44:53 AM #

James Hippolite

Was Erasmus ignorant of the scripture that the a true prophet of the Lord is the one who's prophecies came true?  Or did Erasmus reinterpret this to mean that the Lord only made happen those pronouncements that He deemed worthy?  Thus, the prophet could never really know if he was in the Lord's favour until and unless his prophecies were fulfilled.  Whoa, what a radical departure from the doctrine of predestination.

Still, I cling to "I call the future things as though they are" to mean He sees all time and space from eternity in an instant, and knows All and is able to intervene in specific intervals, at His descretion, to effect the changes He desires.  Now THAT's a God worth worshipping!

James Hippolite New Zealand

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