[soc.religion.christian] comments on heretical books on catholicism

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]