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Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method: From Martin Luther to the Formula of Concord is unavailable, but you can change that!

Galvanized by Erasmus’ teaching on free will, Luther wrote De servo arbitrio, or The Bondage of the Will, insisting that the sinful human will could not turn itself to God. This groundbreaking study investigates the sixteenth-century reception of De servo. Robert Kolb unpacks Luther’s theology and recounts his followers’ ensuing disputes through their resolution in the Formula of Concord.

of God that the Spirit uses to create that faith. Important in the assessment of Melanchthon’s view is not only the difference between his view and Luther’s but also the fact that, whatever some of his students and later adherents may have thought, Luther himself used the doctrine of predestination as such relatively seldom. In the early writings of both colleagues the term rarely refers specifically and explicitly to predestination to salvation; its normal usage refers generally to God’s determination
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