Martin Luther looked upon The Bondage of the Will and his Shorter Catechism as his most significant writings. The first of these, The Bondage of the Will, was Luther’s exposition of the monergism that characterized the Reformation. Monergism is the view that when a soul passes from death to life, from unbelief to faith, the sole “energizing” power that accomplishes this is the power of God. Monergism is contrasted with synergism, the view that divine and human power freely cooperate in the soul’s regeneration. Luther and the other Reformers derived their monergism from the Bible, read through the lens of the theology of Augustine, the greatest of the Western church fathers.
