Book Review: Trinitarian Grace in Martin Luther’s The Bondage of the Will by Miikka Roukanen

[1] Miikka Roukanen, professor at Nanjing Theological Seminary, argues that Luther’s account of God’s creation of faith in the believer, and subsequent justification and sanctification, is fully Trinitarian in nature.  I want to be clear from the outset that this review cannot do justice to the carefully grounded, and intricate arguments made in the book.

[2] Roukanen offers a counterpoint to mid-20^th century German Luther scholarship that overlooked the ways Luther spoke about God’s mystical union with believers. Roukanen argues that the philosophical influence of Immanuel Kant led German Luther scholars to miss how God created faith in the believer.  Kant believed that we know God from God’s effects on humanity, and thus kept God’s being at a distance from humanity. In contrast, Roukanen highlights the fully Trinitarian nature of Luther’s account of faith, justification, and sanctification through a careful reading of On the Bondage of the Will, supplemented by Luther’s later writings which further elaborate his thinking on the will’s bondage. The work of Tuomo Mannermaa, the founder of the “Finnish School” of Luther research, advised the dissertation on which this book is based and figures prominently in it. At the same time, Roukanen’s critique and extension of Finnish School interpretation is one of the book’s major contributions.  The book also argues that recognizing the fully Trinitarian nature of Luther’s thought makes it a more fruitful partner in a wide range of ecumenical conversations, especially with Pentecostal traditions.

[3] Roukanen argues that Luther’s bombastic rhetoric in On the Bondage of the Will obscures the fact that many of Luther’s arguments are quite orthodox. That rhetoric also prevented Luther and Erasmus from recognizing ways they might have found common ground. Still, Luther rejects Erasmus’ “logical” solution to justification–namely, that God grants grace to individuals who seek to do the good. For Luther, the mind is not simply logical; it is a constant battlefield between God, who seeks to impart faith and the Gospel, and Satan, who seeks to sow works righteousness and doubt. Luther dismissed Erasmus’ argument that God gave grace to humans who took the initiative to do the good, because that conditioned God’s action on human effort and God was totally free.  For Luther, God justified and saved whomever God chose regardless of their efforts to do good. For Luther, humans were incapable of moving toward grace or contributing to their own salvation after the fall, even if their reason allowed them to do what appeared to be good with respect to the neighbor. Luther saw God, and the spirit of God, working to create and sustain faith among humanity. This begins with the process of reading the Scriptures, since Luther argues that “Only by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit can God’s truth, the substance of Scripture, be truthfully understood and received in such a way that it radically changes the sinner’s relation to the Triune God.” (p. 50)

[4] Roukanen finds that the Holy Spirit is an essential actor in On the Bondage of the Will.  Luther claimed to reject humanist methods of understanding Scripture, claiming that the Holy Spirit made the text Gospel. The Holy Spirit, not the human will, transforms people from a state of doubt to a state of faith.

[5] For Erasmus, logic and effort could lead one to do the good works that would attract God’s help to live a moral life. Luther affirms that good works are helpful before others (coram hominibus) but not for salvation. For Luther, Grace and Spirit are similar. The Spirit gives Grace for Luther since it is “the personal mercy of the person of Jesus Christ offering to the sinner the efficiency of the person of the Holy Spirit, the carrier of divine love (uncreated grace). (p.95)

[6] The book’s eighth chapter is a brilliant synthesis of Luther’s doctrine of grace. For Luther, trust in Christ could only be brought about by the Holy Spirit. That trust transforms believers, allowing them to bear “good fruit.” Faith is not a logical operation as Erasmus believed, but a gift.   As the Finns argued, that gift allows a union between Christ and the believer.   An important contribution of this book is showing that one does not have to choose between the “union with Christ” and “forensic” models of justification. In the United States, theologians influenced by the late Gerhard Forde, such as Mark Mattes, Stephen Paulson, Timothy Wengert, rejected the case made by Finnish scholars, believing that it disavowed a forensic account of justification. Roukanen argues that Luther believes Christ imputes the forgiveness of sins to believers, thereby making them acceptable to God.  Following the logic of Romans 8, believers are “in the spirit” and, hence, full of Christ’s presence.  The gifts the sinner receives are from Christ and are outside the sinner. However, the Holy Spirit infuses those gifts into sinners, transforming them into believers and making them capable of responding faithfully to the neighbor.

[7] In this account, it is not the effect of the proclamation of the external word that makes a sinner righteous, (as in Ebeling and Forde). Instead, it is the trust in the Gospel enabled by the Holy Spirit and the subsequent union with Christ that makes faith, justification, and transformation possible.

[8] Roukanen makes a significant contribution to recent literature exploring the theological and philosophical underpinnings of Luther’s ethics. Roukanen gives Lutherans an important reminder that, despite Luther’s focus on the work of Christ, the Holy Spirit plays a key role in delivering the work of Christ to the believer, creating faith, and sustaining the trust that is integral to Luther’s account of the transformation of an agent’s ethics by faith across time. As such, Roukanen makes Luther a resource for the continuing emphasis on fully Trinitarian doctrines of both ethics and theology. For his careful reading, ecumenically sensitive proposals, and corrective readings of past scholarship, we are in Roukanen’s debt.