Calvinists and Synergists have always contended that Luther's original
doctrine of predestination was essentially identical with that of John
Calvin. Melanchthon was among the first who raised a charge to this
effect. In his _Opinion_ to Elector August, dated March 9, 1559, we
read: "During Luther's life and afterwards I rejected these Stoic and
Manichean deliria, when Luther and others wrote: All works, good and
bad, in all men, good and bad, must occur as they do. Now it is apparent
that such speech contradicts the Word of God, is detrimental to all
discipline and blasphemes God. Therefore I have sedulously made a
distinction, showing to what extent man has a free will to observe
outward discipline, also before regeneration," etc. (_C. R._ 9, 766.)
Instead of referring to his own early statements, which were liable to
misinterpretation more than anything that Luther had written,
Melanchthon disingenuously mentions Luther, whose real meaning he
misrepresents and probably had never fully grasped. The true reason why
Melanchthon charged Luther and his loyal adherents with Stoicism was his
own synergistic departure from the Lutheran doctrine of original sin and
of salvation by grace alone. Following Melanchthon, rationalizing
Synergists everywhere have always held that without abandoning Luther's
doctrine of original sin and of the _gratia sola_ there is no escape
from Calvinism.
In this point Reformed theologians agree with the Synergists, and have
therefore always claimed Luther as their ally. I. Mueller declared in
_Lutheri de Praedestionatione et Libero Arbitrio Doctrina_ of 1832: "As
to the chief point (_quod ad caput rei attinet_), Zwingli's view of
predestination is in harmony with Luther's _De Servo Arbitrio_." In his
_Zentraldogmen_ of 1854 Alexander Schweizer endeavored to prove that the
identical doctrine of predestination was originally the central dogma of
the Lutheran as well as of the Zwinglian reformation. "It is not so much
the dogma [of predestination] itself," said he (1, 445), "as its
position which is in dispute" among Lutherans and Calvinists. Schweizer
(1, 483) based his assertion on the false assumption "that the doctrines
of the captive will and of absolute predestination [denial of universal
grace] are two halves of the same ring." (Frank 1, 12. 118. 128; 4,
262.) Similar contentions were made in America by Schaff, Hodge, Shedd,
and other Reformed theologians.
As a matter of fact, however, also in the doctrine of predestination
Zwingli and Calvin were just as far and as fundamentally apart from
Luther as their entire rationalistic theology differed from the simple
and implicit Scripturalism of Luther. Frank truly says that the
agreement between Luther's doctrine and that of Zwingli and Calvin is
"only specious, _nur scheinbar_." (1, 118.) Tschackert remarks: "Whoever
[among the theologians before the _Formula of Concord_] was acquainted
with the facts could not but see that in this doctrine [of
predestination] there was a far-reaching difference between the Lutheran
and the Calvinistic theology." (559.) F. Pieper declares that Luther and
Calvin agree only in certain expressions, but differ entirely as to
substance. (_Dogm_. 3, 554.)
The _Visitation Articles_, adopted 1592 as a norm of doctrine for
Electoral Saxony, enumerate the following propositions on
"Predestination and the Eternal Providence of God" which must be upheld
over against the Calvinists as "the pure and true doctrine of our
[Lutheran] churches": "1. That Christ has died for all men, and as the
Lamb of God has borne the sins of the whole world. 2. That God created
no one for condemnation, but will have all men to be saved, and to come
to the knowledge of the truth. He commands all to hear His Son Christ in
the Gospel, and promises by it the power and working of the Holy Ghost
for conversion and salvation. 3. That many men are condemned by their
own guilt who are either unwilling to hear the Gospel of Christ, or
again fall from grace, by error against the foundation or by sins
against conscience. 4. That all sinners who repent are received into
grace and no one is excluded, even though his sins were as scarlet,
since God's mercy is much greater than the sins of all the world, and
God has compassion on all His works." (CONC. TRIGL. 1153.) Not one of
these propositions, which have always been regarded as a summary of the
Lutheran teaching in contradistinction from Calvinism, was ever denied
by Luther.