The Westminster Confession declares: "By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death." (Schaff 3, 608.) "As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath He, by the eternal and most free purpose of His will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ are effectually called unto faith in Christ by His Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved but the elect only." (609.) "The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extends or withholds mercy as He pleases for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice." (610; Niemeyer, Appendix 6. 7.)
227. Marbach and Zanchi in Strassburg.
In view of the situation portrayed in the preceding paragraphs, it is certainly remarkable that a general public controversy, particularly with the Calvinists and Synergists had not been inaugurated long before the Formula of Concord was able to write that such a conflict had not yet occurred. Surely the powder required for a predestinarian conflagration was everywhere stored up in considerable quantities, within as well as without the Lutheran Church. Nor was a local skirmish lacking which might have served as the spark and been welcomed as a signal for a general attack. It was the conflict between Marbach and Zanchi, probably referred to by the words quoted above from Article XI: "Something of it [of a discussion concerning eternal election] has been mooted also among our theologians." This controversy took place from 1561 to 1563, at Strassburg, where Lutheranism and Calvinism came into immediate contact. In 1536 Strassburg had adopted the Wittenberg Concord and with it the Augsburg Confession which since took the place of the Tetrapolitana delivered to Emperor Charles at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530. The efficient and zealous leader in Lutheranizing the city was John Marbach a graduate of Wittenberg and, together with Mathesius, a former guest at Luther's table. He was born in 1521 and labored in Strassburg from 1545 to 1581, the year of his death. He had Bucer's Catechism replaced by Luther's, and entered the public controversy against the Calvinists with a publication entitled, Concerning the Lord's Supper, against the Sacramentarians, which defends the omnipresence of Christ also according to His human nature.
In his efforts to Lutheranize the city, Marbach was opposed by the Crypto-Calvinist Jerome Zanchi (born 1516, died 1590), a converted Italian and a pupil of Peter Martyr [born September 8, 1500; won for Protestantism by reading books of Bucer, Zwingli, and others; professor, first in Strassburg, 1547 in Oxford; compelled to return to the Continent (Strassburg and Zurich) by Bloody Mary; died November 12, 1562, when just about to write a book against Brenz]. From 1553 to 1563 Zanchi was professor of Old Testament exegesis in Strassburg. Though he had signed the Augsburg Confession, he was and remained a rigid Calvinist, both with respect to the doctrine of predestination and that of the Lord's Supper, but withheld his public dissent until about 1561. It was the Calvinistic doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, according to which grace once received cannot be lost, upon which Zanchi now laid especial emphasis. According to Loescher (Historia Motuum 3, 30) he taught: "1. To the elect in this world faith is given by God only once. 2. The elect who have once been endowed with true faith … can never again lose faith altogether. 3. The elect never sin with their whole mind or their entire will. 4. When Peter denied Christ, he, indeed, lacked the confession of the mouth, but not the faith of the heart. 1. Electis in hoc saeculo semel tantum vera fides a Deo datur. 2. Electi semel vera fide donati Christoque per Spiritum Sanctum insiti fidem prorsus amittere … non possunt. 3. In electis regeneratis duo sunt homines, interior et exterior. Ii, quum peccant, secundum tantum hominem exteriorem, i.e., ea tantum parte, qua non sunt regeniti, peccant; secundum vero interiorem hominem nolunt peccatum et condelectantur legi Dei; quare non toto animo aut plena voluntate peccant. 4. Petrum, quum negavit Christum, defecit quidem fidei confessio in ore sed non defecit fides in corde." (Tschackert 560; Frank 4, 261.)
This tenet, that believers can neither lose their faith nor be eternally lost, had been plainly rejected by Luther. In the Smalcald Articles we read: "On the other hand, if certain sectarists would arise, some of whom are perhaps already extant, and in the time of the insurrection [of the peasants, 1525] came to my own view, holding that all those who had once received the Spirit or the forgiveness of sins, or had become believers, even though they should afterwards sin, would still remain in the faith, and such sin would not harm them, and hence crying thus: 'Do whatever you please; if you believe, it all amounts to nothing: faith blots out all sins,' etc.—they say, besides, that if any one sins after he has received faith and the Spirit, he never truly had the Spirit and faith: I have had before me many such insane men, and I fear that in some such a devil is still remaining [hiding and dwelling]. It is, accordingly, necessary to know and to teach that when holy men, still having and feeling original sin, also daily repenting of and striving with it, happen to fall into manifest sins, as David into adultery, murder, and blasphemy, that then faith and the Holy Ghost has departed from them. For the Holy Ghost does not permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand, so as to be accomplished, but represses and restrains it so that it must not do what it wishes. But if it does what it wishes, the Holy Ghost and faith are not present. For St. John says, 1 Ep. 3, 9: 'Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin,… and he cannot sin.' And yet it is also the truth when the same St. John says, 1 Ep. 1, 8: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.'" (491, 42f.)
In an opinion of March 9, 1559, Melanchthon remarks that about 1529 some Antinomians maintained and argued "that, since in this life sin remains in saints, they remain holy and retain the Holy Spirit and salvation even when they commit adultery and other sins against their conscience…. There are many at many places who are imbued with this error [that righteousness, Holy Spirit, and sins against the conscience can remain in a man at the same time], regard themselves holy although they live and persevere in sins against their consciences." (C. R. 9, 764. 405. 473; 8, 411.)
The perseverance of saints as taught by Zanchi was the point to which Marbach immediately took exception. A long discussion followed, which was finally settled by the Strassburg Formula of Concord of 1563, outside theologians participating and acting as arbiters. This Formula, which was probably prepared by Jacob Andreae, treated in its first article the Lord's Supper; in its second, predestination. It rejected the doctrine that, once received, faith cannot be lost, and prescribed the Wittenberg Concord of 1536 as the doctrinal rule regarding the Holy Supper. The document was signed by both parties, Zanchi stating over his signature: "Hanc doctrinae formam ut piam agnosco, ita eam recipio." Evidently his mental reservation was that he be permitted to withdraw from it in as far as he did not regard it as pious. Later Zanchi declared openly that he had subscribed the Formula only conditionally. Soon after his subscription he left Strassburg, serving till 1568 as preacher of a Reformed Italian congregation in Chiavenna, till 1576 as professor in the Reformed University of Heidelberg, and till 1582 as professor in Neustadt. He died at Heidelberg as professor emeritus November 19, 1590. Marbach continued his work at Strassburg, and was active also in promoting the cause of the Formula of Concord. His controversy with Zanchi, though of a local character, may be regarded as the immediate cause for adding Article XI. The thorough Lutheranizing of the city was completed by Pappus, a pupil of Marbach. In 1597 Strassburg adopted the Formula of Concord.
228. The Strassburg Formula.
The Strassburg Formula of Concord sets forth the Scriptural and peculiarly Lutheran point of view in the doctrine of election, according to which a Christian, in order to attain to a truly divine assurance of his election and final salvation, is to consider predestination not a priori, but a posteriori. That is to say, he is not to speculate on the act of eternal election as such, but to consider it as manifested to him in Christ and the Gospel of Christ. Judging from his own false conception of predestination, Calvin remarked that the Strassburg Formula did not deny but rather veiled, the doctrine of election,—a stricture frequently made also on Article XI of the Formula of Concord, whose truly Scriptural and evangelical view of election the Reformed have never fully grasped and realized.
The Strassburg Formula taught that, in accordance with Rom. 15, 4, the doctrine of predestination must be presented so as not to bring it into conflict with the doctrines of repentance and justification nor to deprive alarmed consciences of the consolation of the Gospel, nor in any way to violate the truth that the only cause of our salvation is the grace of God alone; that the consolation afforded by election, especially in tribulations (that no one shall pluck us out of the hands of Christ), remains firm and solid only as long as the universality of God's promises is kept inviolate, that Christ died and earned salvation for all, and earnestly invites all to partake of it by faith, which is the gift of grace, and which alone receives the salvation proffered to all; that the reason why the gift of faith is not bestowed upon all men, though Christ seriously invites all to come to Him, is a mystery known to God alone, which human reason cannot fathom; that the will of God proposed in Christ and revealed in the Bible, to which all men are directed, and in which it is most safe to acquiesce, is not contradictory of the hidden will of God. (Loescher, Hist Mot. 2, 229; Frank 4, 126. 262; Tschackert, 560.)