A Defense of Free Will Against Luther: Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio, Article 36

＂Lord Acton said that of all the works written against Martin Luther in the beginning of the Reformation, Bishop John Fisher of Rochester’s ’Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio of 1523’ was the most important. Oddly enough this massive work of Catholic apologetics, composed in Latin, has never been rendered into the English language. It contains Fisher’s detailed responses to all forty-one articles defended by Martin Luther against the censures of Pope Leo X found in the bull Exsurge Domine (1520). In this volume Thomas Scheck presents for the first time in English translation, introduced, and annotated, Fisher’s ’Preface to the Reader,’ ’Ten Truths,’ and the most important single article found in Fisher’s ’Confutation,’ namely his ’Confutation of Luther’s Assertion of Article 36,’ in which Fisher defends the existence of free will against Luther’s claim that free will is a fiction with no reality. Fisher’s reply is thoroughly grounded in Scripture and in the interpretation of Scripture found in the ancient Fathers of the Church. Interestingly to defend free will he makes abundant use of Augustine, Origen, Jerome, Tertullian and John Chrysostom.＂

Thomas P. Scheck is a Senior Fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, and an Upper School Latin Teacher at Naples Classical Academy, Naples, FL.