It has frequently been asserted that the _Formula of Concord_ greatly
damaged Lutheranism, causing bitter controversies, and driving many
Lutherans into the fold of Calvinism, _e.g._, in the Palatinate (1583),
in Anhalt, in Hesse, and in Brandenburg (1613). Richard says: "The
_Formula of Concord_ was the cause of the most bitter controversies,
dissensions, and alienations. The position taken by the adherents of the
_Formula of Concord_ that this document is the true historical and
logical explanation of the older confessions and is therefore the test
and touchstone of Lutheranism, had the effect, as one extreme generates
a counter-extreme, of driving many individual Lutherans and many
Lutheran churches into the Calvinistic fold, as that fold was
represented in Germany by the Heidelberg Catechism as the chief
confession of faith." (516.)
But this entire view is founded on indifferentism and unionism flowing
from the false principle that quality must be sacrificed to quantity,
eternal truth to temporal peace and unity to external progress and
temporary success. Viewed in the light of God's Word, error is the
centrifugal force and the real cause of dissension and separations among
Christians, while divine truth always acts as a centripetal or a truly
unifying power. The _Formula_ therefore, standing clearly as it does for
divine truth only, cannot be charged with causing dissension and
breeding trouble among Christians. It settled many controversies and
healed dissensions, but produced none. True, the _Formula_ was condemned
by many, but with no greater justice and for no other reasons than those
for which the truths of God's Word have always been assailed by their
enemies.
Nor is the statement correct that the _Formula of Concord_ drove loyal
Lutherans out of their own churches into Calvinistic folds. It clearly
stated what, according to God's Word and their old confessions,
Lutherans always will believe, teach, and confess, as also what they
always must reject as false and detrimental to the cause of the Church
of Christ; however, in so doing, it did not drive Lutherans into the
ranks of the Calvinists, but drove masked Calvinists out of the ranks of
loyal Lutherans into those folds to which they really belonged. Indeed,
the _Formula_ failed to make true Lutherans of all the errorists; but
neither did the _Augsburg Confession_ succeed in making friends and
Lutherans of all Papists, nor the Bible, in making Christians of all
unbelievers. However, by clearly stating its position in thesis and
antithesis, the _Formula_ did succeed in bringing about a wholesome
separation, ridding the Lutheran Church of antagonistic spirits, unsound
tendencies, and false doctrines. In fact, it saved the Church from slow,
but sure poisoning at the hands of the Crypto-Calvinists; it restored
purity, unity, morale, courage, and hope when she was demoralized,
distracted, and disfigured by many dissensions and corruptions.
Whatever, by adopting the _Formula of Concord_ the Lutheran Church
therefore may have lost in extension, it won in intention; what it lost
in numbers, it won in unity, solidity, and firmness in the truth.
True, the _Formula of Concord_ completely foiled Melanchthon's plan of a
union between the Lutheran and Reformed churches on the basis of the
Variata of 1540,--a fact which more than anything else roused the ire of
Philippists and Calvinists. But that was an ungodly union, contrary to
the Word of God; a union involving a denial of essential Christian
truths; a union incompatible with the spirit of Lutheranism, which
cannot survive where faith is gagged and open confession of the truth is
smothered; a union in which Calvinism, engrafted on Lutheranism, would
have reduced the latter to a mere feeder of a foreign life. However,
though it shattered the ungodly plans of the Philippists and Calvinists,
the _Formula_ did not in the least destroy the hope of, or block the way
for, a truly Christian agreement. On the contrary, it formulated the
only true basis for such a union, which it also realized among the
Lutherans. And if the Lutheran and Reformed churches will ever unite in
a true and godly manner it must be done on the basis of the truths set
forth by the _Formula_.