1. A house divided: the post-Luther controversies and the Formula of Concord
A house divided: the post-Luther controversies and the Formula of Concord 1. Lutheranism in the melting pot Lutheranism was one of the three forms taken by the great 16th century revolt against the Roman papacy (the other two being the Reformed or Calvinist Reformation, and the Radical or Anabaptist Reformation). The Lutheran faith had become the established religion in much of Germany, and in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland.1
In the period after Martin Luther's death in 1546, the Lutheran Churches passed through a furnace of severe theological testing. As long as Luther was alive, his titanic personality was powerful enough to drag in its wake
Lutherans of every stripe. His right-hand man, Philip Melanchthon (1497– 1560), who disagreed with his master on several matters, kept silence out of respect for Luther's overwhelming charisma and achievements. When
Luther died, however, the Reformer's funeral bells seemed to be tolling not only for his death, but for the end of peace and unity among Lutheran theologians. The fires of controversy were soon blazing fiercely around a number of topics, threatening the entire Lutheran Reformation with selfdestruction.
The original heartland of Lutheranism was Germany, and it was here that these disputes raged over a 30 year period. The following century would see
Lutheran Germany devastated physically by the horrors of the Thirty Years'
War (see section 3); we could say, however, that it had already suffered its Thirty Years' War in a theological sense between 1546 and 1577. Philip
Melanchthon became so depressed by the bitter doctrinal conflict that he looked forward to death as a blessed deliverance. A few days before he departed from the world, Melanchthon wrote a brief note on the pros and cons of dying; the advantages, he thought, were simply two—it would free him from sin, and from the fury of theologians!
Eventually, as we shall see, the issues that so troubled Melanchthon and the Lutheran world were resolved comprehensively by the epoch-making
Formula of Concord in 1577, which (alongside the Augsburg Confession and Luther's Small Catechism) became the chief doctrinal statement for
Lutherans throughout Europe. So it remains among conservative Lutherans today. Indeed, far more than Augsburg or the Catechism, the Formula of Concord defined who Lutherans were against Calvinism, which had played a role in the controversies.
In the course of these Church-fracturing quarrels, a party emerged within Lutheranism that self-consciously saw itself as defending the heritage of Luther and the original Lutheran Reformation against innovators and corruptors. This conservative party was called the "Gnesio-Lutherans". This term comes from the Greek gnesios, "authentic"—hence the authentic or genuine Lutherans. Sometimes the contentions of 1546–77 are perceived as being between the Gnesio-Lutherans and the "Philippists" (disciples of Philip Melanchthon). But this is too simplistic; some of the controversies cannot be described in that way. Gnesio-Lutherans and Philippists were sometimes on the same side against a third party, and on occasion even a Gnesio-Lutheran could go badly off the rails (see the synergistic controversy).
Let us now consider the particular controversies that so tortured the Lutheran Churches over this 30 year period.
2. The antinomian controversy2 This controversy had two phases. In the first, the central figure was Johann
Agricola (1494–1566), who for most of his career was a court preacher in Berlin, capital city of the leading Lutheran state of Brandenberg. Agricola's basic contention was that Law and Gospel are so radically opposed that Christians no longer had any need of the Law to convict them of sin or work repentance in them—the Gospel alone was sufficient to do this.
Agricola was opposed by both Luther and Melanchthon, who insisted on the ongoing relevance of the Law to awaken conviction and repentance in the believer. As long as Luther lived, Agricola was kept in check by the sheer personal force of the great Reformer. After Luther's death, Agricola became more outspoken in his views.
The second phase of the antinomian controversy, in the mid 1550s, involved the so-called "third use" of the Law. In Protestant thinking (both
Lutheran and Reformed), the Law is traditionally seen as having three uses, often described in Lutheranism as curb, mirror, and rule, which we could summarize thus: i. Curb: to restrain people from committing sin (partly through the divinely ordained functions of the state, deterring sinners by the threat of physical punishment); ii. Mirror: to convict the conscience of sin before God by showing the sinner his true condition in the light of God's standards; iii. Rule: to teach Christians about the holy life they are to live.
Some of Agricola's sympathizers now denied this third use of the law. The foremost figures were Andreas Poach (c.1515–85), pastor of Erfurt and an editor of Luther's Table Talk; Anton Otto, pastor of Nordhausen (born 1505, date of death unknown); and Michael Neander (1525–95), rector of a school at Ilfeld, who had a reputation as one of Germany's most learned men. The distinguished Gnesio-Lutheran Andreas Musculus (1514–81), professor at Frankfurt,3 also became involved (Musculus later retracted some statements about the law's third use which he regarded, in retrospect, as antinomian).
These theologians argued that the Law had no teaching or guiding function for the Christian. Indwelt by the Holy Spirit, true believers intuitively knew what was right, and spontaneously did it—they had no need of further
guidance. Such views met with the same resistance as Agricola's had. The disciples of both Luther and Melanchthon maintained that the Law was necessary as a moral guide in the Christian life, not least to safeguard believers from false, imaginary views of holiness.
3. The adiaphorist controversy This dispute broke out as a result of the military triumph of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor (1519–56), over German Lutherans in the Schmalkaldic War in 1546–7.4 The Catholic sovereign imposed on most of the defeated Lutherans a religious settlement called the Augsburg Interim in May 1548. On ducal Saxony, however, he imposed a milder settlement—the Leipzig Interim—as a reward for the loyalty of the Saxon Duke Maurice during the war (a loyalty perceived as treachery by other Lutherans, since
Maurice had invaded the Lutheran heartland of electoral Saxony on Charles' behalf). The Leipzig Interim maintained the key Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith, but restored medieval Catholic ceremonies of worship, e.g. the way that holy communion was celebrated. Philip
Melanchthon, the chief drafter of the Leipzig Interim, defended it on the grounds that the ceremonies were adiaphora (Greek for "things indifferent").
However, one place in Germany had managed to defy the imperial victory: the great Lutheran city of Magdeburg. The emperor's army put it under prolonged siege, but could not conquer it. In this fortress of Lutheran defiance, the Gnesio-Lutheran theologians Nicholas von Amsdorf (1483–
1565) and Matthias Flacius (1520–75) attacked the Leipzig Interim as a dangerous compromise. Because of the Augsburg Interim, which did not clearly teach justification by faith but did recognize papal supremacy, the Gospel itself (they argued) was under threat. In that situation, even things indifferent could become badges of the enemy, and acceptance of those badges by the faithful Church would confuse the weak and encourage a spirit of surrender. The Catholic ceremonies restored by the Leipzig Interim, therefore, could not be tolerated.
The adiaphorist controversy raged for five years, until Maurice of Saxony in 1552 switched sides, declared war on the emperor, and lifted the siege of Magdeburg. Both of the Interims—Augsburg and Leipzig—now became dead letters; Lutherans had regained their military ascendancy. They also regained their political power through the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. Even so, the issues raised by the adiaphorist controversy had not been resolved, and a running sore of bad feeling was left between Melanchthon and his supporters on the one side, and the Gnesio-Lutherans on the other.
4. The Crypto-Calvinist controversy "Crypto-Calvinism" was the term used by Gnesio-Lutherans to describe the views of Philip Melanchthon and his followers concerning the Lord's
Supper. As we saw back in VolumeThree, in the aftermath of the Marburg Colloquy of 1529, Melanchthon moved closer to Reformed pioneer Martin
Bucer's understanding of Christ's presence in the eucharist.5 From the 1540s, Melanchthon's intimate friendship with John Calvin was instrumental in winning Melanchthon over more fully to a Reformed view.
This included Reformed Christology, which denied the Lutheran idea of Christ's human body being omnipresent. We could summarize the two views as follows: i. Luther's followers taught that in a mysterious manner that transcended reason, the bread and wine of the eucharist physically became the body and blood of Christ, yet without ceasing in any way to be bread and wine. This latter point distinguished the Lutheran view from the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, which maintained that the bread and wine ceased to be bread and wine in anything but appearance; their nature or substance was now exclusively Christ's body and blood. Lutherans dissented: the bread and wine, they held, retained their nature, and coexisted with Christ's body and blood. For strict Lutherans, the change in the eucharistic elements was made theologically, if not rationally, comprehensible by the "communication of attributes" in the incarnation (in Latin, communicatio idiomatum).
This meant that the divine and human natures of Christ participated each in the attributes of the other. Hence Christ's human body participated in the omnipresence ("ubiquity") of His divine nature—
He was or could be everywhere in His flesh. ii. The Reformed held that Christ's body and blood were truly given to believers in the eucharist, but to believers alone—unbelievers would receive only bread and wine. They rejected, however, any view which might seem to undermine the localized presence of Christ's resurrection body in heaven, where He now dwelt as Man, remaining there physically until the Second Coming. Hence the only change in the bread and wine was a change of use: they became signs of Christ's body and blood in heaven, whereby the Holy Spirit conveyed the
Saviour's glorified humanity to the soul through faith. The Reformed also rejected the Lutheran understanding of the incarnation; Christ's human nature had indeed been sanctified, enriched with gifts, and immeasurably glorified in heaven, but it remained creaturely and finite. Therefore Christ's humanity did not become omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.6
It was to this Reformed view of the eucharist, classically expounded by Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr, and John Calvin, that Melanchthon and his supporters now strongly inclined. During Luther's lifetime, however,
Melanchthon concealed his shift of opinion for fear of offending Luther.
After Luther's death, Melanchthon became far more positive in teaching his Calvinist views. Indeed, almost the entire theological staff at Wittenberg
University followed Melanchthon's lead. Wittenberg thus became the stronghold of the Crypto-Calvinist party.
Lutherans often refer to the views of Melanchthon and his sympathizers as "Philippist", by which they chiefly mean Melanchthon's views of the eucharist and of human free will. Confusingly for Reformed readers, however, Philippists are also sometimes presented by Lutherans as essentially Reformed in their entire theology—hence "Crypto-Calvinist".
Yet the Philippist understanding of human free will in salvation was radically anti-Reformed. We will examine this further in the section on the synergistic controversy. We should therefore bear in mind that although
Philippists were virtually at one with the Reformed in their eucharistic doctrine, we cannot take "Philippist" to indicate closeness to the Reformed on every issue. The Philippists were Crypto-Calvinists only in their views of the Lord's Supper, but certainly not in their exaltation of human free will in salvation; here, they were basically followers of Erasmus ("CryptoErasmians", perhaps).
It should also be kept in mind that not all disciples of Melanchthon were Philippists! There were those who learned most of their theology from Melanchthon, accepting his general methods and outlook, but did not follow him in his Crypto-Calvinist views of the eucharist, or his synergist views of grace and free will (see the synergistic controversy). When I use the term "Philippist", therefore, I mean those disciples of Melanchthon who embraced their master's Crypto-Calvinism and synergism.
As well as the theologians in Wittenberg, others became key supporters of Melanchthon's eucharistic Crypto-Calvinism within German Lutheranism. These included Caspar Peucer (1525–1602), Melanchthon's son-in-law, who was personal physician to the lord of electoral Saxony,
Prince Augustus I (1553–86), and Georg Cracow (1525–75), professor of jurisprudence, a valued counsellor of the prince. Peucer and Cracow did everything they could to persuade Augustus to favour the Philippists.
The defining moment in the controversy came with the publication of a theological document known as the Corpus Philippicum (or Corpus
Doctrinae) in 1560. This contained an altered version of the Augsburg Confession and of Melanchthon's Apology for the Confession. It also included the latest edition of Melanchthon's Loci Communes, the great textbook of Lutheran theology.7 These all now taught the Crypto-Calvinist view of the eucharist. With Prince Augustus's support, the Corpus
Philippicum became the official doctrinal standard for electoral Saxony.
When Duke John William of ducal or Albertine Saxony lost his throne in 1567 for military adventurism, and was imprisoned for life by Emperor
Maximilian II, Augustus became guardian of the duke's two young sons. He imposed the Philippist view in ducal Saxony too. In fact, Augustus now required actual doctrinal subscription to the Corpus Philippicum in both
Saxonies. One hundred pastors, theologians, and schoolteachers were expelled for refusing to subscribe. The Philippists also now began pressing for a Church union between Lutherans and Reformed. They were in touch with Theodore Beza, Calvin's successor in Geneva, and even had one of his treatises published in Wittenberg.
Resistance to the Crypto-Calvinism of the Philippists came from outside of Saxony. The overwhelming majority of German Lutherans were opposed to this eucharistic departure from Luther's teaching, and to rapprochement with the Reformed. Often the Gnesio-Lutherans used the same strong-arm tactics as Augustus in Saxony: they resorted to legal force to impose a strict
Lutheran view, and expel any who dissented. One fascinating result in Breslau was the expulsion of the Crypto-Calvinist theologian Zacharius
Ursinus. He removed to the Reformed Palatinate, embraced the Reformed faith, and (together with Caspar Olevianus) authored the Heidelberg
Catechism, which became one of the most widely used confessional standards in the Reformed world.
The dominance of Crypto-Calvinism in the Saxonies came to a sudden and unexpected end in 1574. That year Caspar Peucer, the leading
Philippist, wrote a letter to the wife of Christian Schuetze, court preacher in electoral Saxony. He enclosed a Reformed prayer book, asking that it be given to Anna, wife of Prince Augustus. "If first we have Mother Anna on our side," Peucer wrote, "there will be no difficulty in winning his lordship
[Augustus] too." The letter somehow fell into hands of another court preacher, Lysthenius, who gave it to Augustus. The prince was outraged by what seemed palpable evidence that the Philippists were manipulating his family. He now changed sides completely, purged the Saxonies of all
Philippists (many were locked away in prison, and some died there, including Georg Cracow), and restored the strict Lutherans to favour and office. From now on, Augustus's most trusted advisors were to be the two eminent exponents of Luther's eucharistic theology, Jacob Andreae and Martin Chemnitz (see below). Henceforth a rigorous adherence to Luther's view of the Lord's Supper was assured.
5. The Majoristic controversy This took its name from the Lutheran theologian George Major (1502–74), who for most of his career was a theology professor at Wittenberg. The dispute he stirred up was over the question whether good works were necessary for salvation. Major affirmed in 1551 that they were. He was attacked by the Gnesio-Lutherans Nicholas von Amsdorf and Matthias
Flacius, who feared that Major's position was misleading at best, and would encourage people to think that works merited grace. They preferred to say that good works were necessary, not for salvation, but to glorify God in the lives of the saved. There may have been a degree of verbal confusion in the controversy, since Major (at least sometimes) defined salvation not as initial justification exclusively, but as the entire experience of grace, including sanctification.
Amsdorf added to the confusion when he asserted that good works were positively harmful to one's salvation! For this, he was rebuked by other
Gnesio-Lutherans. What Amsdorf meant was that good works, if trusted in as meritorious, were harmful, because they then became an alternative to trust in the Gospel of grace. But Amsdorf's way of putting it only muddied the waters of controversy. In various forms, the quarrel rippled out to other
Lutheran territories, such as Frankfurt and Brandenburg.
6. The Osiandrian controversy Andreas Osiander (1496–1552) was the leading Lutheran of Nuremberg from 1522 to 1548. After the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's victory over Germany's Protestants in the civil war of 1546–7, and the imposition of the Augsburg Interim,8 Osiander fled to Prussia. Here his friend, Count
Albert of Prussia, appointed him chief theology professor in Konigsberg University. In the last two years of his life, Osiander created huge controversy within Lutheranism by his treatise Concerning Justification
(1550). Here Osiander defined justification, not as a forensic declaration (the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the believer's account), but as the actual indwelling of the divine righteousness of Christ in the believer. In His human nature, Osiander argued, Christ was righteous because of His indwelling deity. When we are united with Christ, His divine nature dwells in us too, and sanctifies us. This indwelling of Christ constitutes our saving righteousness before God.
Osiander's non-forensic doctrine of justification isolated him; both the Gnesio-Lutherans and the Philippists attacked him for what seemed a shocking lapse back into medieval Catholic errors about the nature of justification.9 His only comfort was Johann Brenz, the celebrated Reformer of Wurttemberg, who thought Osiander was more guilty of misleading language than real error. After Osiander's death, however, Prussia's Count
Albert canvassed Lutheran divines for a general view on what Osiander had taught, and found a virtually unanimous rejection of it. Albert swung into line: Prussia would offer no further shelter for Osiandrist ideas.
7. The synergistic controversy The Lutheran Reformation had originally been stamped by a strongly
Augustinian stance on the relationship between divine grace and the human will. Luther himself had given classical expression to this in his Bondage of the Will in 1525. Against Erasmus's Semi-Pelagian ranking of the human will alongside God's grace as joint causes in conversion, Luther had insisted that grace was unconditionally sovereign, liberating an enslaved will from sin to make it spiritually free for the first time. Luther's view is known as "monergism" (from the Greek "single energy"—God alone converts), as contrasted with Erasmus's "synergism" ("joint energy"—grace and the human will cooperate in conversion).10 As long as Luther lived, this monergistic understanding of salvation remained unchallenged within the Lutheran Churches.
Philip Melanchthon had initially been an Augustinian monergist. The earliest editions of his Loci Communes taught that the fallen human will was in bondage to sin, and that the causes of its regeneration were wholly divine—the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God. Melanchthon, however, became increasingly ambiguous on the role of the human will in salvation. Later editions of the Loci drifted towards a more Erasmian view, positing the human will alongside the Spirit and the Word as a third factor in conversion. Melanchthon was clearly moving towards a synergist conception of salvation. But no criticism was levelled against him while
Luther lived; Luther seems never to have lost his confidence in Melanchthon's theological integrity, which in hindsight is somewhat puzzling (could Luther have been so wholly unaware of his friend's change of mind about monergism and the eucharist?).
Luther's death removed the restraints on Melanchthon's journey to synergism. His students at Wittenberg were now going out into schools and parishes, openly teaching that the human will must cooperate by its own energy in its conversion. The storm broke in 1555, when one of Melanchthon's disciples, Johann Pfeffinger (1493–1573), professor at Leipzig University in electoral Saxony, published his Five Questions concerning the Freedom of the Human Will. The treatise taught synergism in no uncertain terms, quoting Melanchthon as an authority. Pfeffinger was robustly supported by Victorinus Strigel (1524–69), professor at Jena
University in ducal Saxony.
Melanchthon and his party were attacked by the Gnesio-Lutherans Nicholas von Amsdorf and Matthias Flacius (both lecturers in Jena, like their Philippist colleague Strigel); they upheld Luther's original monergism.
By 1559, the controversy had become intense. At the bidding of Amsdorf and Flacius, John Frederick II of ducal Saxony issued a document entitled
The Book of Confutation, which condemned synergist errors. All pastors in ducal Saxony were to subscribe to this confession. Strigel and others were imprisoned for refusing. But these coercive measures were deemed distasteful, and a colloquy was arranged at Weimar in ducal Saxony in 1560.
The main protagonists at the Weimar colloquy were Strigel and Flacius.
It proved a disaster for Flacius; Strigel manoeuvred him into saying that after Adam's fall, sin now belonged to the very substance of human nature.
This was Flacius' way of trying to affirm the bondage of the will. But it played into the hands of Strigel and the synergists, because it made sin essential to human nature, rather than an unnatural distortion or perversion of it, as Augustine had maintained. And if sin was essential to human nature, did that not make God the author of sin, since He was the Creator of all essences? Flacius' extremism was disowned by the great majority of the other Gnesio-Lutherans. But Flacius himself would not retract what he had said, and it led to his disgrace. He was expelled from ducal Saxony, and tragically spent the rest of his life as an unwanted wanderer.
The colloquy settled nothing, and the synergistic controversy blazed on through the 1560s. John Frederick alternately persecuted the synergists and the Gnesio-Lutherans.
8. The Formula of Concord The controversies that were ravaging Lutheranism almost to desolation finally inspired some theologians (perhaps from sheer desperation) to seek a framework for unity. The movers behind this development were Jacob
Andreae (1528–90), professor at Tübingen University in the Lutheran state of Wurttemberg; Martin Chemnitz (1522–86), who spent most of his adult career in the Lutheran state of Brunswick, where he superintended the churches and helped found the University of Helmstedt (see the next section for more on Chemnitz); and Nicholas Selnecker (1530–92), based mostly in Leipzig in electoral Saxony, where he was pastor of the Saint Thomas
Church. Andreae was a disciple of Johann Brenz, and represented a distinctive "Brenzian" tradition within Lutheranism. Chemnitz and Selnecker were disciples of Melanchthon, but not Philippists (they followed
Melanchthon's general outlook, but did not embrace their master's eucharistic Crypto-Calvinism or his synergism).
Andreae was the main wellspring of this theological peace movement. He published in 1573 his Six Sermons on the Division among Theologians of the Augsburg Confession. Here he set forth a platform which moderate
Gnesio-Lutherans and Melanchthonians could agree on, e.g. he rejected both Flacius' view of original sin, and the Philippist view of synergism.
This formed the basis of the Swabian Concord of 1574 (Swabia was the region where Andreae's Wurttemberg was located), a more purely theological document that abandoned the sermon format. It was then revised by Chemnitz and another Melanchthonian, David Chytraeus (1530–
1600), professor of theology at Rostock (on the Baltic coast). The new document was known as the Swabian-Saxon Concord.
Meanwhile, Prince Augustus of electoral Saxony, in the aftermath of purging all Philippists from his domain, involved another Lutheran prince,
Count George Ernest of Henneberg, in the quest for unity-in-the-truth. In November 1575, George Ernest, together with Duke Ludwig of Wurttemberg and margrave Karl of Baden, appointed a number of theologians to submit proposals for a new doctrinal statement. The theologians were Wurttemberg's court preacher Lucas Osiander the Elder
(not to be confused with Andreas Osiander), Balthasar Bidembach of Stuttgart, and a few others from Henneberg and Baden. The resulting
document, after further discussion, was finally published at Maulbronn (in Wurttemberg) in January 1576.
On the crest of this swelling wave, six of the peace movement theologians then met at Torgau in ducal Saxony, during May and June 1576:
Jacob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, David Chytraeus, Christopher Korner, Andreas Musculus, and Nicholas Selnecker. After much discussion they produced the Torgau Book. The Torgau Book became the basis for the final peace platform that emerged in May 1577, the Formula of Concord. It had
12 articles.11
1. Original Sin 2. Free Will 3. The Righteousness of Faith Before God 4. Good Works 5. The Law and the Gospel 6. The Third Use of the Law 7. The Lord's Supper 8. The Person of Christ 9. The Descent of Christ to Hell 10. Church Rites 11. God's Eternal Foreknowledge and Election
12. Other Factions and Sects That Never Embraced the Augsburg Confession The Formula succeeded in blending together in a healthy synthesis the outlook of moderate Gnesio-Lutherans (but not extremists like Flacius), conservative Melanchthonians (but not Philippists), and those who stood in the somewhat distinct tradition of Johann Brenz (like Jacob Andreae). On all the disputed points, a middle ground was staked out that went beyond mere verbal agreement over ambiguous statements; this was much more in the spirit of the ancient Church's Creed of Chalcedon, which had creatively integrated the genuine concerns of Alexandrian and Antiochene theologians.
It would take too long to consider in any detail the positions adopted by the Formula on each of the 12 points. It would be simpler to say what the Formula ruled out. In the main, it excluded the following:
Synergism. Lutherans were now bound to believe in monergism—that God's energy was the sole positive power at work in human conversion. The human will was free in the earthly sphere (free to choose whether to perform this or that earthly action, like keeping or breaking the law of the land), but in the spiritual sphere it was enslaved to sin and needed divine liberation.
Antinomianism. Lutherans would now acknowledge the third use of the law—its capacity to guide believers in the way of practical holiness.
Lutherans were also to recognize that good works must (on the one side) be excluded from the sinner's justification before God, but were
(on the other side) necessary fruits of true faith, which believers were obligated to do, not to justify themselves, but to render to God the obedience owed to Him.
The Crypto-Calvinist view of the eucharist. Lutherans from now on would be committed to Luther's view of the real presence, stated against Zwingli at the Marburg colloquy. Nothing short of this—not even the "spiritual real presence" advocated by Peter Martyr and John
Calvin—would be tolerated.
The Reformed view of the relationship between Christ's two natures.
Lutherans were henceforth to confess the "communicatio idiomatum", the mutual sharing of attributes by the two natures, so that Christ could be truly omnipresent in His flesh. This provided the Christological undergirding for the robust Lutheran view of the real presence.
The 11th article on God's Eternal Foreknowledge and Election was out of keeping with the others, in not being a response to an existing controversy in Lutheranism. It was instead a "pre-emptive strike" against what most
Lutherans believed was a dangerous tendency in Calvinism, which could infect the Lutheran Churches unless the Formula guarded against it. After all, the Calvinist view of the eucharist had infected many, and there had been disputes between Lutherans and Reformed over predestination in Strasbourg and Brunswick.
The danger that the Formula's architects perceived in the Reformed doctrine of predestination was its view of reprobation. If election to salvation was balanced by a symmetrical reprobation to damnation, this
might sound logical, Lutherans argued, but it threatened the genuineness of God's love revealed in Christ. How could anyone take God's love seriously, or be able to trust it, if all the time, lurking behind the love, there was an eternal purpose to damn some? To preserve the reality, the universality, and the trustworthiness of God's love, the framers of the Formula maintained that God in Christ was equally intent on saving all. If some were actually saved, they must credit this entirely to His grace and not in any sense to themselves. However, if others were lost, they must not ascribe this to any failure of saving intent in God, but exclusively to their own resistance to His grace. If this appeared to violate logic, so much the worse for logic. We must be content with paradox in this life; in the next, all be will be made clear. Such was the Lutheran view.
The Formula of Concord was officially embraced by around two thirds of Germany's Lutheran lands, including 23 dukes and princes and 35 imperial cities. For various local reasons, the remaining third did not subscribe, but often the pastors and theologians of those lands accepted the Formula, even if their prince, duke, count, or city council did not. The rulers of some of these territories later changed their minds and signed the Formula.
Frederick II (1559–88), king of Lutheran Denmark, rejected the Formula in a decree of 1580, not wishing to see a German confession of faith obtaining authority in his dominions. However, despite Frederick, the Danish
Lutheran clergy generally acknowledged the Formula as a summary of Lutheran teaching. The Swedish Lutheran clergy likewise generally accepted the Formula, but could not persuade their successive monarchs to make it legally binding (it was finally given a limited degree of royal recognition in 1686 by King Charles XI). The Hungarian Lutheran Church endorsed the Formula in 1597.
By and large, then, the Lutheran world received the Formula of Concord, at least at the popular level, even where Lutheran rulers hesitated. This gave
Lutherans something the Reformed Churches of Europe never had: an internationally recognized confession of faith.12
When the Formula was officially published in 1580, as the Book of Concord, it was bound with all the other authoritative confessional statements of the Lutheran Reformation (the Augsburg Confession,
Melanchthon's Apology for the Augsburg Confession, Luther's Small and Large Catechisms and his Schmalkald Articles, and Melanchthon's Treatise on the Primacy of the Pope) as together constituting the standard of
orthodox Lutheranism. Two other documents were also routinely published in each edition of the Book of Concord. There was the Catalogue of Testimonies, a list of passages from the early Church fathers, giving patristic backing to Lutheran theology. In Saxony, there was additionally the Saxon Visitation Articles of 1592, dealing with a resurgence of the CryptoCalvinist controversy in Saxony (the topics covered were the eucharist,
Christology, and predestination). The Visitation Articles were published with every version of the Book of Concord in Saxony until the early 19th century.