Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church

Brenz had said: "To the one of the entire mass of the human race God gives faith in Christ, whereby he is justified and saved, while He leaves the other in his incredulity that he may perish. Deus ex universa generis humani massa alteri quidem donat fidem in Christum, qua iustificetur et salvetur, alterum autem relinquit in sua incredulitate, ut pereat." (Frank 4, 256.) Again: It was God's will to elect Jacob and to leave Esau in his sin. What is said of these two must be understood of the election and rejection of all men in general. "Potuisset Deus optimo iure ambos abiicere;… sed sic proposuerat Deus, sic visum est Deo, sic erat voluntas Dei, sic erat bene placitum Dei, ut Iacobum eligeret, Esau autem in peccato suo relinqueret; quod de his duobus dictum est, hoc intelligendum erit generaliter de omnium hominum electione et abiectione." (256.) Hesshusius: "In this respect God does not will that all be saved, for He has not elected all. Hoc respectu Deus non vult, ut omnes salventur; non enim omnes elegit." (Schluesselburg 5, 320. 548.) Such statements, when torn from their context, gave color to the inference that God's grace was not universal. The Formula of Concord, therefore, carefully urges that God earnestly endeavors to save all men, also those who are finally lost, and that man alone is the cause of his damnation.

In his Sententia de Declaratione Victorini of 1562 Nicholas Amsdorf said: "God has but one mode of working in all creatures… Therefore God works in the same way in man who has a will and intellect as in all other creatures, rocks and blocks included, viz., through His willing and saying alone… As rocks and blocks are in the power of God, so and in the same manner man's will and intellect are in the will of God, so that man can will and choose absolutely nothing else than what God wills and says, be it from grace or from wrath. Non est nisi unus modus agendi Dei cum omnibus creaturis… Quare eodem modo cum homine volente et intelligente agit Deus, quemadmodum cum omnibus creaturis reliquis, lapide et trunco, per solum suum velle et dicere… Sicut lapides et trunci sunt in potestate Dei, ita et eodem modo voluntas et intellectus hominis sunt in voluntate Dei, ut homo nihil prorsus velle et eligere possit nisi id, quod vult et dicit Deus, sive ex gratia, sive ex ira, derelinquens eum in manu consilii eius." (Schlb. 5, 547; Gieseler 3, 2, 230; Frank 4, 259.) This, too, was not embodied in the Formula of Concord, which teaches that, although man before his conversion has no mode of working anything good in spiritual things, God nevertheless has a different way of working in rational creatures than in irrational and that man is not coerced, neither in his sinning nor in his conversion. (905, 60ff.)

224. Synergistic Predestination

The connection between the doctrines of conversion and election is most intimate. A correct presentation of the former naturally leads to a correct presentation of the latter, and vice versa. Hence Melanchthon, the father of synergism in conversion, was also the author of a synergistic predestination. In his first period he speaks of predestination as Luther did, but, as Frank puts it, "with less of mysticism conformably to reason, following the same line of thought as Zwingli (mit weniger Mystik, auf verstandesmaessige, Zwinglis Ausfuehrungen aehnliche Weise." [transcriber: sic on punctuation] (1, 125; C. R. 21, 88. 93.) In reality he probably had never fully grasped the truly religious and evangelical view of Luther, which, indeed, would account for his later synergistic deviations as well as for the charges of Stoicism he preferred against Luther. After abandoning his former doctrine, he, as a rule, was noncommittal as to his exact views on election. But whenever he ventured an opinion, it savored of synergism. September 30, 1531, he wrote to Brenz: "But in the entire Apology I have avoided that long and inexplicable disputation concerning predestination. Everywhere I speak as though predestination follows our faith and works. And this I do intentionally, for I do not wish to perturb consciences with these inexplicable labyrinths. Sed ego in tota Apologia fugi illam longam et inexplicabilem disputationem de praedestinatione. Ubique sic loquor, quasi praedestinatio sequatur nostram fidem et opera. Ac facio hoc certo consilio; non enim volo conscientias perturbare illis inexplicabilibus labyrinthis." (C. R. 2, 547.)

In the third, revised edition of his Explanation of the Epistle to the Romans, 1532, he suggests "that divine compassion is truly the cause of election, but that there is some cause also in him who accepts, namely, in as far as he does not repudiate the grace offered. Verecundius est, quod aliquamdiu placuit Augustino, misericordiam Dei vere causam electionis esse, sed tamen eatenus aliquam causam in accipiente esse, quatenus promissionem oblatam non repudiat, quia malum ex nobis est." (Gieseler 3, 2, 192; Seeberg 4, 2, 442.) In an addition to his Loci in 1533, Melanchthon again speaks of a cause of justification and election residing in man, in order to harmonize the statements that the promise of the Gospel is both gratis and universal. (C. R. 21, 332.) In the Loci edition of 1543 we read: "God elected because He had decreed to call us to the knowledge of His Son, and desires His will and benefits to be known to the human race. He therefore approves and elected those who obey the call. Elegit Deus, quia vocare nos ad Filii agnitionem decrevit et vult generi humano suam voluntatem et sua beneficia innotescere. Approbat igitur ac elegit obtemperantes vocationi." (21, 917.)

The bold synergistic views concerning conversion later on developed by Melanchthon plainly involve the doctrine that there must be in man a cause of discrimination why some are elected while others are rejected. In his Loci of 1548 he had written: "Since the promise is universal, and since there are no contradictory wills in God, some cause of discrimination must be in us why Saul is rejected and David accepted (cur Saul abiiciatur David recipiatur), that is, there must be some dissimilar action in these two." (21, 659.) Self-evidently Melanchthon would not have hesitated to replace the phrase "why Saul was rejected and David accepted," with "why Saul was rejected and David elected."

Melanchthon held that the sole alternative of and hence the only escape from, the doctrine of absolute necessity (Stoica anagke) and from the absolute decree, which makes God responsible also for sin and eternal damnation, was the synergistic assumption of man's "ability to apply himself to grace —facultas applicandi se ad gratiam." Accordingly, as he dubbed those who opposed his Calvinizing views on the Lord's Supper as "bread-worshipers," so he stigmatized as Stoics all Lutherans who opposed his synergistic tendencies. (C. R. 8, 782. 783. 916; 9, 100. 565. 733; 23, 392.) Seeberg summarizes Melanchthon's doctrine as follows: "Grace alone saves, but it saves by imparting to man the freedom to decide for himself. This synergistic element reappears in his doctrine of election." (4, 2, 446.) "God elects all men who desire to believe." (Grundriss, 144.)

Naturally the Synergists of Wittenberg and other places followed Master Philip also in the doctrine of election. In 1555, John Pfeffinger declared in his Quaestiones Quinque (extensively quoted from in the chapter on the Synergistic Controversy), thesis 17: "If the will were idle or purely passive [in conversion], there would be no distinction between the pious and the impious, or the elect and the damned, as between Saul and David, between Judas and Peter. God would become a respecter of persons and the author of contumacy in the wicked and damned. Moreover, contradictory wills would be ascribed to God which conflicts with the entire Scripture. Hence it follows that there is in us some cause why some assent while others do not assent." Thesis 23: "For we are elected and received because we believe in the Son. (Ideo enim electi sumus et recepti, quia credimus in Filium.) But our apprehension must concur. For since the promise of grace is universal, and we must obey the promise, it follows that between the elect and the rejected some difference must be inferred from our will, viz., that those are rejected who resist the promise while contrariwise those are accepted who embrace the promise."

The Synergists argued: If in every respect grace alone is the cause of our salvation, conversion, and election, grace cannot be universal. Or, since man's contempt of God's Word is the cause of his reprobation, man's acceptance of God's grace must be regarded as a cause of his election. Joachim Ernest of Anhalt, for instance, in a letter to Landgrave William of Hesse, dated April 20, 1577, criticized the Formula of Concord for not allowing and admitting this argument. (Frank 4, 135. 267.)

225. Calvinistic Predestination

While the Synergists, in answering the question why only some are saved, denied the sola gratia and taught a conversion and predestination conditioned by the conduct of man, John Calvin and his adherents, on the other hand, made rapid progress in the opposite direction, developing with increasing clearness and boldness an absolute, bifurcated predestination, i. e., a capricious election to eternal damnation as well as to salvation, and in accordance therewith denied the universality of God's grace, of Christ's redemption, and of the efficacious operation of the Holy Spirit through the means of grace. In his "Institutio Religionis Christianae, Instruction in the Christian Religion," of which the first edition appeared 1535, the second in 1539, and the third in 1559, Calvin taught that God created and foreordained some to eternal life, others to eternal damnation. Man's election means that he has been created for eternal life, man's reprobation, that he has been created for eternal damnation. We read (Lib. 3, cap. 21, 5): "Praedestinationem vocamus aeternum Dei decretum, quo apud se constitutum habuit, quid de unoquoque homine fieri vellet. Non enim pari conditione creantur omnes; sed aliis vita aeterna, aliis damnatio aeterna praeordinatur. Itaque prout in alterutrum finem quisque conditus est, ita vel ad vitam, vel ad mortem praedestinatum dicimus." (Tholuck, Calvini Institutio 2, 133.) In the edition of 1559 Calvin says that eternal election illustrates the grace of God by showing "that He does not adopt all promiscuously unto the hope of salvation, but bestows on some what He denies to others —quod non omnes promiscue adoptat in spem salutis, sed dat aliis, quod aliis negat." (Gieseler 3, 2, 172.) Again: "I certainly admit that all the sons of Adam have fallen by the will of God into the miserable condition of bondage, in which they are now fettered; for, as I said in the beginning, one must always finally go back to the decision of the divine will alone, whose cause is hidden in itself. Fateor sane, in hanc qua nunc illigati sunt conditionis miseriam Dei voluntate cecidisse universos filios Adam; atque id est, quod principio dicebam, redeundum tandem semper esse ad solum divinae voluntatis arbitrium, cuius causa sit in ipso abscondita." (173.) Calvin's successor in Geneva, Theodore Beza, was also a strict supralapsarian. At the colloquy of Moempelgard (Montbeliard), 1586, in disputing with Andreae, he defended the proposition "that Adam had indeed of his own accord fallen into these calamities, yet, nevertheless, not only according to the prescience, but also according to the ordination and decree of God —sponte quidem, sed tamen non modo praesciente, sed etiam iuste ordinante et decernente Deo." (186.) "There never has been, nor is, nor will be a time," said he, "when God has wished, wishes, or will wish, to have compassion on every individual person. Nullum tempus fuit vel est vel erit, quo voluerit, velit aut voliturus sit Deus singulorum misereri." (Pieper, Dogm. 2, 25. 50.)

In foisting his doctrine of election on the Reformed churches, Calvin met with at least some opposition. The words in the paragraph of the Formula of Concord quoted above: "Yet, since this article [of predestination] has been brought into very painful controversy in other places," probably refer to the conflicts in Geneva and Switzerland. October 16, 1551, Jerome Bolsec [a Carmelite in Paris, secretly spread Pelagianism in Geneva; sided with the Protestants in Paris and Orleans after his banishment from Geneva; reembraced Romanism when persecution set in; wrote against Calvin and Beza, died 1584] was imprisoned in Geneva because of his opposition to Calvin's doctrine of predestination. Melanchthon remarks in a letter of February 1, 1552: "Laelius [Socinus] wrote me that in Geneva the struggle concerning the Stoic necessity is so great that a certain one who dissented from Zeno [Calvin] was incarcerated. What a miserable affair! The doctrine of salvation is obscured by disputations foreign to it." (C. R. 7, 932.) Although the German cantons (Zurich, Bern, Basel) advised moderation, Bolsec was banished from Geneva, with the result however, that he continued his agitation against Calvin in other parts of Switzerland. In Bern all discussions on predestination were prohibited by the city council. Calvin complained in a letter of September 18, 1554: "The preachers of Bern publicly declare that I am a heretic worse than all the Papists." (Gieseler 3, 2, 178.) January 26, 1555, the council of Bern renewed its decree against public doctrinal discussions, notably those on predestination – "principalement touchant la matiere de la divine predestination, qui nous semble non etre necessaire," etc. (179.) Later on the doctrine of Calvin was opposed by the Arminians from Semi-Pelagian principles.

226. Calvinistic Confessions

The essential features of Calvin's doctrine of predestination were embodied in most of the Reformed confessions. The Consensus Genevensis of January 1, 1552, written by Calvin against Albert Pighius [a fanatical defender of Popery against Luther, Bucer, Calvin; died December 26, 1542] and adopted by the pastors of Geneva, is entitled: "Concerning God's Eternal Predestination, by which He has elected some to salvation and left theothers to their perdition —qua in salutem alios ex hominibus elegit, alios suo exitio reliquit." (Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum, 218. 221.) The Confessio Belgica, of 1559, and the Confessio Gallicana, of 1561, teach the same absolute predestinarianism. In Article XVI of the Belgic Confession we read: In predestination God proved Himself to be what He is in reality, viz., merciful and just. "Merciful by liberating and saving from damnation and perdition those whom … He elected; just, by leaving the others in their fall and in the perdition into which they precipitated themselves. Iustum vero, alios in illo suo lapsu et perditione relinquendo, in quam sese ipsi praecipites dederunt." (Niemeyer, 370.) The Gallic Confession [prepared by Calvin and his pupil, De Chandieu; approved by a synod at Paris 1559; delivered by Beza to Charles IX, 1561, translated into German 1562, and into Latin, 1566; adopted 1571 by the Synod of La Rochelle] maintains that God elected some but left the others in their corruption and damnation. In Article XII we read: "We believe that from this corruption and general damnation in which all men are plunged, God, according to His eternal and immutable counsel, calls those whom He has chosen by His goodness and mercy alone in our Lord Jesus Christ, without consideration of their works, to display in them the riches of His mercy, leaving the rest in this same corruption and condemnation to show in them His justice. Credimus ex hac corruptione et damnatione universali, in qua omnes homines natura sunt submersi, Deum alios quidem eripere, quos videlicet aeterno et immutabili suo consilio sola sua bonitate et misericordia, nulloque operum ipsorum respectu in Iesu Christo elegit; alios vero in ea corruptione et damnatione relinquere, in quibus nimirum iuste suo tempore damnandis iustitiam suam demonstret, sicut in aliis divitias misericordiae suae declarat." (Niemeyer, 332; Schaff 3, 366.)

The Formula Consensus Helveticae of 1675 says, canon 13: "As from eternity Christ was elected Head, Leader, and Heir of all those who in time are saved by His grace, thus also in the time of the New Covenant He has been the Bondsman for those only who by eternal election were given to Him to be His peculiar people, seed, and heredity. Sicut Christus ab aeterno electus est ut Caput, Princeps et Haeres omnium eorum, qui in tempore per gratiam eius salvantur, ita etiam in tempore Novi Foederis Sponsor factus est pro iis solis qui per aeternam electionem dati ipsi sunt ut populus peculii, semen et haereditas eius," etc. (Niemeyer, 733.)

The same Calvinistic doctrines were subsequently embodied in the Canons of the Synod of Dort, promulgated May 6, 1619, and in the Westminster Confession of Faith, published 1647. In the former we read: "That some receive the gift of faith from God, and others do not receive it, proceeds from God's eternal election… According to His just judgment He leaves the non-elect to their own wickedness and obduracy." (Schaff 3, 582.) "The elect, in due time, though in various degrees and in different measures, attain the assurance of this eternal and unchangeable election, not by inquisitively prying into the secret and deep things of God, but by observing in themselves, with a spiritual joy and holy pleasure, the infallible fruits of election pointed out in the Word of God, such as a true faith in Christ, filial fear, a godly sorrow for sin, a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, etc." (583.) "Not all, but some only, are elected, while others are passed by in the eternal decree; whom God, out of His sovereign, most just, irreprehensible, and unchangeable good pleasure, hath decreed to leave in the common misery into which they have wilfully plunged themselves, and not to bestow upon them saving faith and the grace of conversion." … (584.) "For this was the sovereign counsel and most gracious will and purpose of God the Father, that the quickening and saving efficacy of the most precious death of His Son should extend to all the elect, for bestowing upon them alone the gift of justifying faith, thereby to bring them infallibly to salvation; that is, it was the will of God that Christ by the blood of the cross whereby He confirmed the New Covenant should effectually redeem out of every people, tribe, nation, and language all those, and those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation, and given to Him by the Father." (587.) "But God, who is rich in mercy, according to His unchangeable purpose of election, does not wholly withdraw the Holy Spirit from His own people, even in their melancholy falls, nor suffer them to proceed so far as to lose the grace of adoption and forfeit the state of justification," etc. (Schaff 3, 593; Niemeyer, 716.)

The Westminster Confession declares: "By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death." (Schaff 3, 608.) "As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath He, by the eternal and most free purpose of His will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ are effectually called unto faith in Christ by His Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved but the elect only." (609.) "The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extends or withholds mercy as He pleases for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice." (610; Niemeyer, Appendix 6. 7.)

227. Marbach and Zanchi in Strassburg

In view of the situation portrayed in the preceding paragraphs, it is certainly remarkable that a general public controversy, particularly with the Calvinists and Synergists had not been inaugurated long before the Formula of Concord was able to write that such a conflict had not yet occurred. Surely the powder required for a predestinarian conflagration was everywhere stored up in considerable quantities, within as well as without the Lutheran Church. Nor was a local skirmish lacking which might have served as the spark and been welcomed as a signal for a general attack. It was the conflict between Marbach and Zanchi, probably referred to by the words quoted above from Article XI: "Something of it [of a discussion concerning eternal election] has been mooted also among our theologians." This controversy took place from 1561 to 1563, at Strassburg, where Lutheranism and Calvinism came into immediate contact. In 1536 Strassburg had adopted the Wittenberg Concord and with it the Augsburg Confession which since took the place of the Tetrapolitana delivered to Emperor Charles at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530. The efficient and zealous leader in Lutheranizing the city was John Marbach a graduate of Wittenberg and, together with Mathesius, a former guest at Luther's table. He was born in 1521 and labored in Strassburg from 1545 to 1581, the year of his death. He had Bucer's Catechism replaced by Luther's, and entered the public controversy against the Calvinists with a publication entitled, Concerning the Lord's Supper, against the Sacramentarians, which defends the omnipresence of Christ also according to His human nature.

In his efforts to Lutheranize the city, Marbach was opposed by the Crypto-Calvinist Jerome Zanchi (born 1516, died 1590), a converted Italian and a pupil of Peter Martyr [born September 8, 1500; won for Protestantism by reading books of Bucer, Zwingli, and others; professor, first in Strassburg, 1547 in Oxford; compelled to return to the Continent (Strassburg and Zurich) by Bloody Mary; died November 12, 1562, when just about to write a book against Brenz]. From 1553 to 1563 Zanchi was professor of Old Testament exegesis in Strassburg. Though he had signed the Augsburg Confession, he was and remained a rigid Calvinist, both with respect to the doctrine of predestination and that of the Lord's Supper, but withheld his public dissent until about 1561. It was the Calvinistic doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, according to which grace once received cannot be lost, upon which Zanchi now laid especial emphasis. According to Loescher (Historia Motuum 3, 30) he taught: "1. To the elect in this world faith is given by God only once. 2. The elect who have once been endowed with true faith … can never again lose faith altogether. 3. The elect never sin with their whole mind or their entire will. 4. When Peter denied Christ, he, indeed, lacked the confession of the mouth, but not the faith of the heart. 1. Electis in hoc saeculo semel tantum vera fides a Deo datur. 2. Electi semel vera fide donati Christoque per Spiritum Sanctum insiti fidem prorsus amittere … non possunt. 3. In electis regeneratis duo sunt homines, interior et exterior. Ii, quum peccant, secundum tantum hominem exteriorem, i.e., ea tantum parte, qua non sunt regeniti, peccant; secundum vero interiorem hominem nolunt peccatum et condelectantur legi Dei; quare non toto animo aut plena voluntate peccant. 4. Petrum, quum negavit Christum, defecit quidem fidei confessio in ore sed non defecit fides in corde." (Tschackert 560; Frank 4, 261.)

This tenet, that believers can neither lose their faith nor be eternally lost, had been plainly rejected by Luther. In the Smalcald Articles we read: "On the other hand, if certain sectarists would arise, some of whom are perhaps already extant, and in the time of the insurrection [of the peasants, 1525] came to my own view, holding that all those who had once received the Spirit or the forgiveness of sins, or had become believers, even though they should afterwards sin, would still remain in the faith, and such sin would not harm them, and hence crying thus: 'Do whatever you please; if you believe, it all amounts to nothing: faith blots out all sins,' etc. – they say, besides, that if any one sins after he has received faith and the Spirit, he never truly had the Spirit and faith: I have had before me many such insane men, and I fear that in some such a devil is still remaining [hiding and dwelling]. It is, accordingly, necessary to know and to teach that when holy men, still having and feeling original sin, also daily repenting of and striving with it, happen to fall into manifest sins, as David into adultery, murder, and blasphemy, that then faith and the Holy Ghost has departed from them. For the Holy Ghost does not permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand, so as to be accomplished, but represses and restrains it so that it must not do what it wishes. But if it does what it wishes, the Holy Ghost and faith are not present. For St. John says, 1 Ep. 3, 9: 'Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin… and he cannot sin.' And yet it is also the truth when the same St. John says, 1 Ep. 1, 8: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.'" (491, 42f.)