Free Will: Does Salvation Depend on a Person’s Choice?
Rev. Ronald Hanko defends the Reformed doctrine of predestination and God's sovereign grace against the Arminian doctrine of free will, drawing on Luther's foundational argument in *The Bondage of the Will*. The pamphlet explains how belief in human free will contradicts biblical truths regarding God's election, the gift of faith, and the limited scope of Christ's atonement, and critiques modern evangelistic practices that presuppose human autonomy in salvation.
At the time of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther wrote a book entitled, The Bondage of the Will (1525). This book was written against a man named Erasmus and his teaching that man has free-will, that is, the ability to choose whether or not he would be saved. Luther told Erasmus that this question about free-will was the most important issue of the Reformation. He said, “You [i.e., Erasmus] have not worried me with extraneous issues about the papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and such...
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