 In response to Erasmus on this issue, Luther thus offers what has been called his “convicting” view of the law, which is designed to reveal our impotence to us, thus provoking the kind of despair and sense of helplessness that can open us up to grace, in accordance with the “theology of the cross”—a process Erasmus would forestall if we took him seriously, and inferred instead that because we fall under the law, we can take steps to follow it through our own choice (cf. WA 18:680–1/LW 33:133).