SYNERGISM.
135. Synergistic Teaching on Conversion.—In his Confessional Principle, 1911, Dr. T.B. Schmauk rejects Melanchthon's aliqua causa discriminis in homine, some kind of discriminating cause in man. Schmauk writes: "Several qualities and motives in Melanchthon's nature, including his humanist outlook on free will, and his tendency to emphasize the necessity of good works, contributed to inspire him with erroneous views, when the evangelical doctrine began to be wrought out more expansively, and led him to find the cause for the actual variation in the working of God's grace in man, its object. This subtle synergistic spirit attacks the very foundation of Lutheranism, flows out into almost every doctrine, and weakens the Church at every point. And it was practically this weakness which the great multitude of Melanchthon's scholars, who become the leaders of the generation of which we are speaking, absorbed, and which rendered it difficult to return, finally, and after years of struggle, to the solid ground once more recovered in the Formula of Concord." (611; L. u. W. 1912, 33.) Evidently, this is sound Lutheranism; and similar testimonies were occasionally heard within the General Council throughout its history. (L. u. W. 1904, 273: Rev. Rembe; 1917, 473: Rev. G.H. Schnur.) But it was the song of rare birds. The synergistic note was struck much more frequently and emphatically. For making his anti-synergistic utterances Schmauk was called to order by Dr. Gerberding. And in 1916 Schmauk himself opened the Lutheran Church Review to L.S. Keyser, the zealous exponent of synergism within the General Synod, who wrote: "Faith's experience always includes the fact that, while the ability of faith is divinely conferred, the exercise of that ability is never coerced, but belongs to the domain of liberty…. The same is true of all volitions: the ability to will is divinely implanted; the act itself belongs to the sphere of freedom. The ability to repent is from God; the use of that ability belongs to man's liberty." "The Scriptures never command men to regenerate; they always put that category in the passive voice, 'Except any one be born again'; but the Bible again and again commands men to repent and believe, putting the verbs in the active voice, imperative mood. What inconsistent commands these would be if man possessed no freedom in the exercise of repentance and faith!" "God's fiat of the individual's election unto salvation must have been decided upon in foresight and foreknowledge of the whole content of faith, including both its divine enablement and its human element of freedom." (65.) Similar views on man's freedom and responsibility were expressed by Dr. Haas in Trends of Thought, 1915. In his book, The Way of Life, 1917, Dr. Gerberding explains: "After prevenient grace, however, begins to make itself felt, then the will begins to take part. It must now assume an attitude, and meet the question: Shall I yield to these holy influences or not? One or the other of the two courses must be pursued. There must be a yielding to the heavenly strivings or a resistance. To resist at this point requires a positive act of the will. This act man can put forth by his own strength. On the other hand, with the help of that grace already at work in his heart, he can refuse to put forth that act of his will, and thus remain non-resistant." According to Gerberding man "may be said, negatively, to help towards his conversion." (167 ff.; L. u. W. 1917, 214.) Prior to 1901 Rev. C. Blecher, by order of the pastoral conference of Connecticut, belonging to the Council, published a pamphlet which was recommended for the widest possible distribution by the Lutherische Herold. In it Blecher, in direct opposition to the Formula of Concord, Art. 11, section 60 ff., maintains: Two persons are never in equal guilt when the one resists the grace of God from inherited blindness and weakness, like Peter, while the other resists contumaciously and purposely, like Judas." (L. u. W. 1901, 65; 1902, 144.) In 1900 Dr. Seiss had maintained in the Lutheran: "Conversion is largely one's own act. God first makes it possible; but then the responsibility rests upon ourselves to determine whether or not we will comply with the truth brought to our understanding." (L. u. W. 1900, 243. 246.) Misstating historical facts and revealing his own synergistic attitude, Dr. G.W. Sandt wrote editorially in the Lutheran of March 27, 1919, concerning Dr. Stellhorn's polemics against the Missouri Synod: "When the controversy with Missouri was at its height, he [Stellhorn] could do no other but cast his soul into it and stand for the defense of the universal call to grace and salvation as over against the special call as Calvin and others teach it. He resented the charge of synergism which came from his opponents, and renounced it as strongly as any Missourian could."
136. Synergistic Predestination.—Synergism in the doctrine of conversion naturally leads to synergistic teaching on predestination. Moreover, the doctrine of predestination is, as it were, the bacteriological test whether one's Lutheran blood is really and absolutely free from synergistic infection also in the doctrines of conversion and justification. However, also in these tests as to the doctrinal purity of the General Council the results, as a rule, were negative. In his Summary of Christian Faith, 1905, Dr. H.E. Jacobs gives the following presentation of the doctrine of predestination: "Since God has not predestinated all that He has foreknown ('for all that the perverse, wicked will of the devil and of men purposes and desires to do and will do, God sees and knows before,' ib.), but, in His inexplicable will, has allowed a certain measure of freedom and contingency in His creatures, and afforded them a degree of moral responsibility, knowing from all eternity what will be the result of their use of this trust, He also has determined how in every case their decision and activity will be treated." "When, therefore, God has willed that He will be determined in a certain decision by the free decision of a creature, that freedom of the creature will certainly be guaranteed in the result; but what in the exercise of this freedom the decision of the creature will be, as well as the determination of His will concerning it, He knows from all eternity, and makes His plans accordingly." "The fulfilment or non-fulfilment of the proviso or condition is contained in the foreknowledge which determined the free destination." (556 f.) According to Jacobs, then, Predestination depends on the divine foreknowledge of the use that man will make of the freedom with which God has entrusted him. Plainly synergistic doctrine!