Quote taken from Reformers in the Wings by David C. Steinmetz - on a chapter highlighting Johannes Von Staupitz (1460/9 - 1524)"The problem is not that sinners have lost sight of the demand of God that is laid on them or are slothful and unwilling to make use of their ability to obey the will of God. If that were so, then moral education and exhortation could awaken sinners to their predicament and enable them to assume their responsibilities towards God and the nighbor. The problem is, rather, that the human will is the prisoner of its own self-love and cannot release itself from that bondage. This misdirected love has worked havoc in the human soul. There is no inner citadel of the soul that has fought the enemy to a standstill and escaped the effects of the fall. On the contrary, sinners are not only unable to earn merits, they are even, as Augustine had rightly argued, unable to act virtuously. When the nominalists urged sinners to do their very best and assured them that God would reward their very best with his grace, they were reading a sentence of death over the human race. Fallen men and women cannot love God supremely even if they try--and there is no reason to be sanguine about the possibility that they will try."
Pursue good thoughts...pursue sound theology.
