Monergism

Bondage of the Will

Many today build a theology around the idea which assumes that God's commands to us in the Bible somehow imply our moral ability to keep them ... but we soon forget that Romans 3:20 declares that "...through the law comes knowledge of sin." In other words, the commands exist to reveal our moral inability, not our ability. This inability also includes God's command of all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel, an impossible act of natural will apart from a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit uniting us to Christ. Only the quicking grace of Jesus Christ applied by the Spirit can turn our heart of stone to flesh and illumine the Text in such a way (to open blind eyes and deaf ears) wherein we and able to see Christ's beauty and excellency. Those who are unregenerate cannot see Christ's excellency and thus have no capacity to love what is spiritual and so are not partly but wholly dependent on God to translate them from darkness to light. This means that man's affections are in complete bondage to sin until Christ sets them free ... and if the will is in bondage, it is not free. It chooses, not by coersion but by necessity to sin.

Martin Luther Quotes on the Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther

Man's Utter Inability to Rescue Himself by Thomas Boston

The Free Will of Man in A State of Sin by Francis Turretin

Reformed Evangelism by Morton Smith

God's Part and Man's Part in Salvation by John G. Reisinger

Free Will or the Bondage of the Will: Definitions are Critical by Bob DeWaay

Man's Moral Inability by Dr. Van Lees

Bible Logic Fallacies of Synergism Libertarian Free Will Theism by Hendryx & Smalling Ammunition Against False Presuppositions

A Defense of the Reformed Understanding of the Human Will by Nathan Pitchford

Free Will - A Slave by Charles Spurgeon

Slavery of the Will by W.E. Best

13 Things a Lost Person Cannot Do
by Curtis A. Pugh

Man's Will- Free Yet Bound by Walter Chantry

Inability - Fallen Human Beings are Both Free and Enslaved by J.I. Packer

But Spiritual Discernment is Wholly Lost Until we are Regenerated by John Calvin

Doctrine of Man's Impotence by A.W. Pink

The Unregenerate Will: Voluntary But Not Free by John Hendryx

Is the Will Free by Nature or by Grace? by John Hendryx

A Treatise on Grace and Free Will by Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo

Man Now Deprived of Freedom of Will and Miserably Enslaved by John Calvin

Man's Free Will or Impotency and the Punishment Due Upon Sin by Wilhelmus à Brakel

Human Nature in Its Fourfold State by Augustine

Human Inability by Charles Spurgeon

The External and Internal Call by Wilhelmus a Brakel

We deny that choice is free, because through man's innate wickedness it is of necessity driven to what is evil and cannot seek anything but evil. And from this it is possible to deduce what a great difference there is between necessity and coercion. For we do not say that man is dragged unwillingly into sinning, but that because his will is corrupt he is held captive under the yoke of sin and therefore of necessity will in an evil way. For where there is bondage, there is necessity. John Calvin from Bondage and Liberation of the Will, pg. 69-70