Recalibrating Human Freedom with Martin Luther

Andrea Vestrucci is Research Professor of Systematic Theology at the Graduate Theological Union. He earned his Ph.D. in Ethics from the University of Lille (France) and the University of Milan (Italy), and his Th.D. in Systematic Theology from the University of Geneva (Switzerland). His most recent book is Theology as Freedom: On Martin Luther's De servo arbitrio (Mohr Siebeck, 2019).

The relationship between free will and determinism is one of the hot topics of current philosophical debate. This paper focuses on a specific way of addressing this relationship: the theological way. The theological way is the following: considering human freedom in relation with a world determined by divine omnipotence and omniscience. Martin Luther explores this path in his famous "Bondage of the Will" (1525). The paper analyzes the logical argument thanks to which Luther challenges the usual idea that freedom and necessity cannot share the same room. As such, the Bondage of the Will clarifies the relationship, and the distinction, between the philosophical and the theological approaches to the issue of freedom.