P Redestination
PREDESTINATION
The eleventh article of the Formula of Concord presents a paradoxical doctrine of predestination—one that, to human reason, appears inconsistent.14 The various assertions about God’s will to save all people are not reconciled with other assertions, such as: only by faith in Christ can one be saved, not all are saved, God’s election is a cause of faith, and God does not predestine anyone to damnation. The various statements, supported from Holy Scripture, are left in tension. FC SD XI 4 states clearly that God’s eternal choice (election) is a cause of faith in individual believers. Yet soon after the Formula of Concord was published, Lutherans departed from this position and began to teach that God’s election is based in some way on the faith of individual believers, which He foresees.15 Even one of the authors of the Formula of Concord, Jacob Andreae, asserted in a 1586 colloquy with Theodore Beza that foreseen faith can be called a cause of God’s election. The protocol of the colloquy reports:
[Beza:] III & IV. With this teaching you are opposing Paul himself, Rom. 9, 11. For it is just as false to say that unbelief is the cause of this divine decree about some who shall perish justly as it is false to say that foreseen faith or good works are the cause of predestination, or of the elect, which is the teaching of the Pelagians, as was said concerning the same theses V & VI.
[Andreae:] Faith in Christ is the work not of nature or of our human powers, but of the Holy Spirit. Therefore when faith is said to be a cause of election, this does not at all have the sense of the Pelagians’ teaching; they attributed to the powers of nature what only the Holy Spirit can perform.16
The reason the Lutheran Orthodox felt the need to go beyond the Formula of Concord on this point was not to introduce synergism—the teaching that man cooperates with God in his salvation—but, in part, to answer the challenge of Calvinism. Against the Calvinists’ teaching of God’s absolute decree of predestination (that God both elects some people to salvation and reprobates other people to damnation without any consideration of sin, Christ, and faith), the Lutheran Orthodox were striving to emphasize that election occurs in Christ (Eph. 1:4). But rather than remaining with a doctrine in tension with itself, as FC SD XI sets forth, the Lutheran Orthodox went further and strove to find logically consistent answers to many questions that the Reformation era had preferred to leave unanswered.17 Moreover, the Lutheran Orthodox teaching on predestination was also spurred on by a controversy in their own midst sparked by Samuel Huber (ca. 15471624), who taught that election is universal but changeable if people reject God’s grace and fall into unbelief.18
Johann Gerhard’s commonplace on predestination is the standard, representative presentation of the later Lutheran doctrine. All the Lutheran Orthodox from the time of Aegidius Hunnius present predestination as Gerhard does, though with some variations in details and terminology. For example, Gerhard rejects election “on the basis of the foresight of faith” and the notion that faith is a “cause” of election, while other Lutherans used these expressions.19 In the course of time, many Lutherans explained this doctrine in a way that approached synergism. Finally, in the late nineteenth century in North America, an intra-Luthheran controversy on predestination broke out, with The LutheranChurch—Missouri Synod and its allies returning to the position of FC SD XI, and theOhio Synod and its allies defending the later Lutheran doctrine.20 The amount of literature attempting to explain the views of the Lutheran Orthodox, the Formula of Concord, and Luther on this doctrine was immense. This American predestinarian controversy was so significant for the historiography of this doctrine that it cannot be overlooked.21
One might expect that the Missouri Synod and its allies would simply have branded Gerhard and the later Lutheran Orthodox as heretical teachers of false doctrine regarding predestination. But that is not what happened. A Missourian participant in the controversy, Georg Stöckhardt (18421913), described the Lutheran Orthodox doctrine of predestination in this way:
It is beyond all doubt that the dogmaticians of the seventeenth century make election dependent on faith in some way or other, though they define it in very different ways. When they present the intuitu fidei [“in view of faith”] as though it were a shibboleth; when the expression that God elected those whose faith He foresaw is understood by them in the same sense; when they emphasize the so-called syllogismus praedestinatorius [“syllogism of predestination”], according to which election proceeds logically from the general, gracious will [of God] and foreknowledge of faith—then by doing so they are establishing a dependence of election on faith. They want to explain that astonishing mystery of the discretio personarum [“distinction of person”] in some way and make it plausible to reason. And this is where they erred and deviated from Scripture and Confession. This is where we disagree with them. Meanwhile, it is just as doubtless that they asserted this position of theirs not in opposition to the pure teaching of Scripture and Confession, but in opposition to Calvinism, and they wanted with all their energy to keep the decretum absolutum Calvinisticum [“Calvinistic absolute decree”] far away from Lutheran doctrine…. Their error would have begun to be heresy if they had embraced and defended it consciously and obstinately in antithesis to the divine truth of Scripture. In this case, that did not happen. The Lutheran doctrinal fathers of the seventeenth century were thinking only about “an election to faith” in the Calvinistic sense. And so, pushed by the opposition of the Calvinistic heresy, they were unaware that they had departed from the path of the Formula of Concord. No one on our side has ever branded them as heretics on account of this.22
Stöckhardt was emphasizing that though he considered the Lutheran Orthodox to be in error on this topic, they were not synergists, unlike his opponents.
Whatever his sources were, Gerhard does not deal with Luther’s views on predestination at all. Gerhard quotes Luther for exegetical support, for his teaching on Christology, and for his teaching on unbelief as the capital sin.23 But Luther’s statements on predestination24 are passed over in silence. Another significant document that Gerhard ignores is the eleventh article of the Formula of Concord. Although it is referenced once [§ 201], the Lutheran confessional discussion does not play a role in his commonplace On Election.25 This can be explained in part by the polemical focus of all of the Theological Commonplaces.
The doctrine of predestination has to do with God’s eternal decisions (“decrees”) and the logical order in which He decided various things, such as creation, sending Christ as the Redeemer, and saving this or that individual human being. Calvinists agreedthat God’s decree to send Christ as the Mediator between God and mankind came after the decree of election. That is, according to them, Christ’s atonement is only a means by which God’s predestination is actualized; in no sense was it seen as a basis of God’s eternal election. Moreover, Gerhard demonstrates from their writings how they make human sin into a divine decree, which God supposedly predetermined for the purpose of damning the majority of mankind, to the glory of Himself.26
In the commonplace On Creation and Angels Gerhard explains that there are two main divine decrees, which we know about from revelation and their occurrence in history: creation of humanity in God’s image and the restoration of humanity in Christ.27 Elsewhere he unpacks these decrees as follows: First, creation of man in the image of God (Gen. 1:26). Second, punishment for disobedience (Gen. 2:1617). Third, condemnation for disobedience. Fourth, the Gospel decree of the Seed (Gen. 3:15); whoever believes this will be saved. At this point comes the decree of election in view of Christ, who is to be apprehended by faith, and of reprobation, in view of final unbelief and rejection of Christ.28
Gerhard does not speak in favor of “single predestination.” “Single predestination” is not a sufficient expression of the apparently paradoxical doctrine of predestination set forth by FC SD XI, nor does it describe Gerhard’s doctrine. This expressioon can be taken in a Calvinistic sense, as though God, by electing some people, intentionally passed others by.29 Gerhard actually argues for double predestination: God both elects and reprobates. Hence the name of this Commonplace is On Election and Reprobation. But this double predestination is totally different from Calvinistic absolute predestination. The difference between Gerhard and his Calvinist opponents is not on whether predestination is single or double, but on whether it is in view of Christ’s merit or whether it is absolute (i.e., not in view of anything).
As Gerhard unfolds his doctrine, he makes an important distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent will. According to God’s antecedent will, He sincerely desires to save all people (§§ 5780). But then in some places Gerhard speaks as if God does notwant to save all people (e.g., §§ 9394, 149, 154, 187, 205056). It is clear that when hedoes this, he is speaking of God’s consequent will. That is, God wants to condemn some people only given the fact that unbelief and unrepentance are at hand (§§ 93, 95).
All Scripture confirms this explanation, for if you ask, “On whom, then, does God want to have mercy?” Scripture leads us to Christ and shows that in Him we are pleasing to God and have been loved and elected to eternal life. Indeed, God sent His Son to the entire world, and through the preaching of the Gospel He offers His mercy to all people. But because very many despise and reject this free mercy offered to them in the Gospel, hence, with respect to application and actual enjoyment, only those who persevere in faith in Christ become partakers of the love of God to eternal life.30
This simple distinction helps to make sense of the biblical dataa, which asserts both that God’s will to save is universal, and that not all people will actually be saved. This distinction of God’s antecedent and consequent will is vital for holding both God’s universal saving will and exclusive salvation in and through Christ alone. Its present usefulness would be to help Lutherans respond to well-intentioned yet fundamentally flawed attempts to make God’s grace so radical that faith in Christ is no longer necessary.
The atonement also plays an important role in the commonplace On Election and Reprobation, since election is based on it. Gerhard shows that for Calvin and other Reformed theologians, the suffering of Christ was not only inefficient but even insufficient to be set against God’s wrath (§ 160). This is based on the Reformed division of the two natures in Christ, in which the two natures become the subjects of different actions of Christ. Thus, according to them, only the humanity of Christ suffers. Gerhard’s response dives deeply into Christology and shows that Christ shed His blood on the altar of the cross for all human beings, and that His suffering is the suffering of the entire Godman, not just of one nature (§§ 106ff.).
The absence of the Formula of Concord in this commonplace should probably not be interpreted as though Gerhard intended to depart from its teaching. Instead, Gerhard took the thesis from FC SD XI 65 that election occurred in Christ and developed this thought further. That is, since Christ’s merit can be applied to individuals only by faith, consideration of faith must be included in God’s election.31 Yet Gerhard was not synergistic. Just as the Formula of Concord did, he intended to say that nothing in man is a cause of election. For this reason he so often asserted that even faith is not a cause of election and that foresight of faith is not a source of predestination.32 While the appropriation of Christ’s merit through faith by the individual believer is considered by God in election,33 Gerhard also states that God Himself is the one who creates that faith. In these places Gerhard seems to say that election is dissimilar to reprobation; election is not just a foreknowledge of faith, but it is God who works that faith by the Holy Spirit working through the means of grace.34 In these places, Gerhard appears to uphold a paradoxical doctrine ofpredestination, though it is different from the Formula of Concord’s and does not really solve the mystery of predestination, but merely shifts it elsewhere, to the question of why faith springs up in one person but not in another.35 Perhaps it would be correct to say that, for Gerhard, election is based on the non-rejection of God’s grace in the Gospel. He writes: “He determined to offer His grace and the blessing of Christ to all people in the Gospel, and then only reprobated those who He foresaw would reject those means andjudge themselves unworthy of eternal life. This is what Holy Scripture affirms, as do we, based upon it.”36 In any case, he does not resolve how God could consider faith in electing, yet be the cause of that faith in individuals. To put it in terms that are not Gerhard’s own, he seems to say both that faith causes election and that election causes faith. While Gerhard does not resolve this tension,37 other Lutherans did make an attempt to resolve it.38
Predestination is a topic that can easily lead believers to worry. If only those who die as believers in Christ are elect and saved, and if faith is something that can be lost,39 then how should pastors counsel people who worry about whether they will persist in faith, that is, whether they are truly elect? Much of the Formula of Concord’s eleventh article addressed this worry by directing people to the means of grace and God’s revealed promises (FC SD XI 1121, 3337). Gerhard does the same, but also does not deny that a believer’s internal testimony of faith and good works can give certainty of his election. Yet Gerhard makes clear that this internal testimony is insufficient. It must be supplemented by the external testimonies of the Word and Sacraments.40 Gerhard’s advice is to avoid both despair on one hand and carnal security on the other, and to remain between doubt and absolute certainty.41 Gerhard clarified his teaching of certainty of perseverance infaith (and thus of election) in his Catholic Confession, the last major dogmatic work of his life:
Certainty about perseverance is not absolute but hypothetical. As long as the means of perseverance are not neglected, but rather are used, so long can we be certain of our perseverance. A truly believing person, while he is such, has no reason to doubt his own perseverance because he knows from the divine promise in Phil. 1:6 and 2:13 that his being able and his willing shall never be taken from him, unless he himself resists the Holy Spirit, and he has enough strength from the indwelling Holy Spirit that he does not or does not want to do that. Nevertheless, because it is not impossible for a regenerate man to expel the regenerating and renewing Holy Spirit if these supports of divine grace are not there preventing it, no one can or should assure himself with the certainty that this is an absolute impossibility.42
The publication of Gerhard’s Commonplaces could not happen without the cooperation of a skilled and dedicated team. The Rev. Joshua J. Hayes served as assistant editor for this volume and provided the translation of the difficult Latin of the dedicatory letter so that this beautiful prose could be returned to its proper place in the series. The Rev. Dr. Richard Dinda, the original translator, is to be thanked for helping to make this project come about in the first place. Dawn Mirly Weinstock has served as production editor for the series from the beginning. Many other colleagues, both within and outside of Concordia Publishing House, have given their advice and support. Without their help, this series, the first large-scale translation of Gerhard’s great work, would be impossible. To God alone be the glory.
Benjamin T. G. Mayes