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T-BagBikerStar
2007-11-05, 09:02
Hey, I have an essay due in about a day on Luther and Erasmus's arguments on free will. I essentially have to take the side of one of them, either Luther's in support of free will, or Erasmus against free will. They both wrote books and several additional papers worth of arguments against each other, which if you read it looks a lot like a couple kids arguing on totse. I was hoping to write in support of Luther's views on the subject, because although Luther argues a lot like a 12-year old on the internet, he does present actual irrefutable evidence for his side of the argument, as opposed to Erasmus who just finds pieces of scripture which slightly hint for his side if you read them in his way.

Because of this I'm having a lot of trouble actually finding what Luther's points were in his long and drawn out flames of Erasmus, so if anyone here knows how to put Luther's points in simpler terms, I could really use some help.

KikoSanchez
2007-11-05, 20:17
Maybe you could give us some context and their version of free will. I am assuming Luther is arguing, like Aquinas, as a sort of compatibilist, where god (not materialist determinism) has already determined the future, but we still have free will in that we 'do what we want' (a sort of weak free will argued by compatibilists).

If you are not familiar with free will debate, look up on wikipedia: compatibilism, theological determinism, etc and see if their arguments look similar. If one is a compatibilist, I would likely argue they are searching for different versions of free will and so neither is necessarily in the right/wrong.