christm@thor.acc.stolaf.edu (Mark C. Christianson) (01/18/90)
In article <Jan.15.03.37.12.1990.14890@athos.rutgers.edu> the moderator writes: >Protestants have generally abandoned the concept of Predestination, which >lay behind the theology of Luther and Calvin. Predestination implies that God has choosen who will and who will not be saved before the begining of time. The Formula of Concord (one of the Lutheran confessions found in the Book of Concord) make it clear that this is not the case. While they use the word "predestination" once. The theologians who wrote it prefered the term "election." They make clear that the doctrine "that God does not want everybody to be saved, but that merely by arbitrary counsel, purpose, and will, without regard for their sin, God has predestined certain people to damnation so that they cannot be saved," is false (Epitome, Article XI). The article says that God wishes to save everyone. We can not save ourselves, but God gives us his Holy Spirit and his Son, Jesus Christ, that we might believe and be saved. But, we have the ability to reject God's calling and thus reject our salvation. The Formula of Concord says "This Christ calls all sinners to himself and promises them refreshment. He earnestly desires that all men should come to him andlet themselves be helped." It if very clear that we are dependent on God for our salvation. However, God does not point to us and say "You shall be saved and you shall not." Rather, God calls us all to be saved. We can choose to heed that call and go along with the saveing grace He is giving us, or we can choose to resist God and reject salvation. Mark C. Christianson chrism@stolaf.edu [I've can't find my book of creeds, so I can't check the Formula of Concord. But my comment was on Luther, not on his successors. Luther himself was much closer to Calvin than the view you portray. It may be that those who wrote the Formula of Concord had backed off from Luther's views. From "The Bondage of the Will", Luther's major work on the subject of free will and election: "So man's will is like a beast standing between two riders. If God rides, it wills and goes where God wills:... If Satan rides, it wills and goes where Satan wills. Nor may it choose to which rider it will run, or which it will seek; but the riders themselves fight to decide who shell have and hold it." (WA 635). Of course Luther doesn't believe that God damns people without regard to their sin. Those who are damned are damned because of their sin. However they are left in their sin because God does not choose to save them. Until God chooses to save them, the saved are in exactly the same situation. There's almost no difference between this position and Calvin's. Calvin's explanations sometimes involve a bit more symmetry between the way God treats the saved and the damned, but in fact I think both Luther and Calvin had pretty much the same idea: Ultimately God decides who he is going to save, and those he doesn't choose are damned because of their sin. The idea that ultimately we choose whether to heed God's call is precisely what Luther was opposing in "Bondage of the Will". --clh]