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Thinking Fellows

Why is Luther's Bondage of the Will Ignored?

Thinking Fellows

1517 Podcasts

Society & Culture, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8869 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this live episode of the Thinking Fellows, Caleb, Scott, Steve, and Adam discuss why Martin Luther's The Bondage of the Will is one of the most important yet most overlooked works of the Reformation.

They explore why Luther's debate with Erasmus still matters today and how ignoring this work can lead to confusion about human will, divine grace, and the Gospel itself. Rather than being a cold philosophical text, The Bondage of the Willreveals the comfort of knowing that salvation depends entirely on God's decision and not our effort.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Gail Keith. Today I am joined by Adam Francisco, Scott Keith, and Stephen Paulson to do an episode on The Bondage of the Will, which if you're a listener of the show and your subscriber, you're like, really? Two in a row, guys? Just do it? Two in a row. But yes, we're going to put a little bit of a spin on it. A couple of comments first. When you're the only person on a panel or a podcast like this without a PhD, isn't it a little cooler that you're not like a rest of them? Wow. I mean, I didn't need the credential to figure out how to podcast. You heard something different than I heard. I heard, Dr. doctor, doctor, and Caleb. And Caleb, yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm going to stick with. It's cooler. But also, live podcasting is a bit of an oddity. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It's sort of offensive

1:11.8

because podcasting is one of the most sort of by distance and separated things we do. We get to just

1:17.6

sit in an office, talk to each other, and then, you know, thousands of people listen to it,

1:23.0

each of their own individual timing and things like that. And so a live stream is a little strange,

1:28.7

can be a little uncomfortable, things like that, which is just like the Bangesa

1:33.0

the Will, which feels wrong to us. It goes against our senses. And for today's episode,

1:39.3

we're going to kind of jump on that and go, why is nobody talking about the bondage of will?

1:45.3

Why is it seemingly ignored?

1:47.7

Even amongst Lutherans today, it is rare to hear somebody discuss the bondage of the will.

1:54.0

Or if you're in theological conversations, if you bring it up, it's a conversation ender nowadays.

1:59.6

It's not a conversation starter. In fact, you will talk to

2:04.1

Lutheran pastors, Lutheran theologians, who will say, I kind of read it maybe a little bit in

2:08.4

seminary, but I maybe stay intentionally ignorant of it, so I don't have to answer questions

2:13.8

about it, which is odd, because I think from a historical perspective alone, this is

2:20.0

like a top five work of the Reformation. It's sub- Top five? Top five? Yeah. Top two. Top two.

2:29.0

There you go. I mean, it's, it is, it's just up there. And so to be ignored is strange. So today on the

2:36.3

Thinking Fellows, I want to have a bit of a fun, speculative podcast a little bit, something we don't

2:43.1

do on Outlaw God supposedly, which the theme is from speculation to proclamation. But on Thinking

2:49.7

fellows, we love to speculate, have some fun. And the,

2:53.5

the question for you guys today, for all of us, is why is nobody talking about it? Why are Lutherans

2:59.2

even avoiding the bondage of the will? Oh, boy, do I want to go first. I want to, I want to call

3:04.8

the question, though. Oh, go for it. I mean, I wake up most mornings thinking about the boners of the will.

...

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