The theological connection between Majorism and synergism is much closer
than is generally realized. Both maintain that, in part, or in a certain
respect, salvation depends not on grace alone, but also on man and his
efforts. The Majorists declared good works to be necessary to salvation,
or at least to the preservation of faith and of salvation. Thus
salvation would, in a way, depend on the right conduct of a Christian
after his conversion. The Synergists asserted: Man, too, must do his bit
and cooperate with the Holy Spirit if he desires to be saved. Conversion
and salvation, therefore, would depend, at least in part, on man's
conduct toward converting grace, and he would be justified and saved,
not by grace alone, but by a faith which to a certain extent is a work
of his own. The burden of both, Majorism and synergism, was the denial
of the _sola gratia._ Both coordinated man and God as the causes of our
salvation. Indeed, consistently carried out, both destroyed the central
Christian truth of justification by grace alone and, with it, the
assurance of a gracious God and of eternal salvation--the supreme
religious concern of Luther and the entire Lutheran theology.
Majorists and Synergists employed also the same line of argument. Both
derived their doctrine, not from any clear statements of the Bible, but
by a process of anti-Scriptural and fallacious reasoning. The Majorists
inferred: Since evil works and sins against conscience destroy faith
and justification, good works are required for their preservation. The
Synergists argued: Since all who are not converted or finally saved must
blame, not God, but themselves for rejecting grace, those, too, who are
converted must be credited with at least a small share in the work of
their salvation, that is to say, with a better conduct toward grace than
the conduct of those who are lost.
However, while Majorism as well as synergism, as stated, represented
essentially the same error and argued against the doctrine of grace in
the same unscriptural manner, the more subtle, veiled, and hence the
more dangerous of the two, no doubt, was synergism, which reduced man's
cooperation to a seemingly harmless minimum and, especially in the
beginning, endeavored to clothe itself in ambiguous phrases and
apparently pious and plausible formulas. Perhaps this accounts also for
the fact that, though Melanchthon and the Majorists felt constrained to
abandon as described in the preceding chapter, the coarser and more
offensive Majoristic propositions, they had at the same time no
compunctions about retaining and defending essentially the same error in
their doctrine of conversion; and that, on the other hand, their
opponents, who by that time fully realized also the viciousness of
synergism, were not satisfied with Major's concessions in the
controversy on good works, because he and his colleagues in Wittenberg
were known to identify themselves with the Synergists. For the same
reason the dangerous error lurking in the synergistic phrases does not
seem from the first to have been recognized by the Lutherans in the same
degree as was the error contained in the Majoristic propositions, which
indeed had even during Luther's life to some extent become a subject of
dispute. Yet it seems hardly possible that for years they should not
have detected the synergistic deviations in Wittenberg from Luther's
doctrine of free will. Perhaps the fact that at the time when
Melanchthon came out boldly with his synergism, 1548, the Lutherans were
engrossed with the Adiaphoristic and Majoristic controversies may help
to explain, at least to some extent, why the synergistic error caused
small concern, and was given but little consideration in the beginning.
As a matter of fact, although a considerable amount of synergistic
material had been published by 1548, the controversy did not begin till
1556, while the error that good works are necessary to salvation was
publicly opposed soon after its reappearance in the Leipzig Interim. At
the Weimar Disputation, 1560, Strigel referred to this silence, saying:
"I am astonished that I am pressed so much in this matter [concerning
synergism], since three years ago at Worms no mention whatever [?] was
made of this controversy, while many severe commands were given
regarding others." (Richard, _Conf. Prin.,_ 349.) The matter was
mentioned at Worms, but Melanchthon is reported to have satisfied Brenz
and others by declaring that in the passages of his _Loci_ suspected of
synergism he meant "the regenerated will."