Martin Luther on Election & predestination
Unconditional — grounded in God's free choice
God foreknows nothing by contingency, but... He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His immutable, eternal, and infallible will. By this thunderbolt, 'Free-will' is thrown prostrate, and utterly dashed to pieces.
THE POSITION
The ground of election is God's own immutable will and nothing in the creature. Luther makes the point as a claim about God's nature rather than about a decree: because God's knowledge and will are eternal and cannot be hindered, everything that happens, including who believes, happens necessarily with respect to that will. He states the consequence bluntly — 'the Elect shall believe it; the rest shall perish without believing it' — and refuses to look for a reason behind it.
18 Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden.
16 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Augustinian friar whose protest over indulgences opened the Reformation, and the theologian for whom justification by faith and the bondage of the will are the whole of the gospel. This entry rests on his own writings only — The Bondage of the Will (1525), the Smalcald Articles (1537), the Large and Small Catechisms (1529), Concerning Christian Liberty (1520), the Heidelberg Disputation (1518), the Church Postil and his biblical prefaces — and deliberately excludes the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord, which are not his.
Cite this page
"Martin Luther on Election & predestination", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/luther/election (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/luther/election).