Thus Luther, from the very beginning of the Reformation, stood for the doctrine of justification, conversion, and salvation by grace alone. Most emphatically he denied that man though free to a certain extent in human and temporal affairs, is able to cooperate with the powers of his natural, unregenerate will in matters spiritual and pertaining to God. This was also the position which Luther victoriously defended against Erasmus in his De Servo Arbitrio of 1525. Goaded on by the Romanists to come out publicly against the German heretic, the great Humanist, in his Diatribe of 1524, had shrewdly planned to attack his opponent at the most vulnerable point. As such he regarded Luther's monergistic doctrine, according to which it is God alone who justifies, converts, preserves, and saves men, without any works of their own. In reality, however, as presently appeared from his glorious classic on the sola-gratia doctrine, Erasmus had assaulted the strongest gate of Luther's fortress. For the source of the wonderful power which Luther displayed throughout the Reformation was none other than the divine conviction born of the Word of God that in every respect grace alone is the cause of our justification and salvation. And if ever this blessed doctrine was firmly established, successfully defended, and greatly glorified, it was in Luther's book against Erasmus.
Justification, conversion, perseverance in faith, and final salvation, obtained not by any effort of ours, but in every respect received as a gracious gift of God alone—that was the teaching also to which Luther faithfully, most determinedly, and without any wavering adhered throughout his life. In his Large Confession of 1528, for example, we read: "Herewith I reject and condemn as nothing but error all dogmas which extol our free will, as they directly conflict with this help and grace of our Savior Jesus Christ. For since outside of Christ death and sin are our lords, and the devil our god and prince, there can be no power or might, no wisdom or understanding, whereby we can qualify ourselves for, or strive after, righteousness and life; but we must be blinded people and prisoners of sin and the devil's own, to do and to think what pleases them and is contrary to God and His commandments." (CONC. TRIGL. 897, 43.)
153. Luther's Doctrine Endorsed.
To adhere faithfully to Luther's doctrine of conversion and salvation by grace alone was also the determination of the loyal Lutherans in their opposition to the Synergists. Planck correctly remarks that the doctrine which Flacius and the Anti-Synergists defended was the very doctrine which "Luther advocated in his conflict with Erasmus." (Prot. Lehrbegriff 4, 667.) This was substantially conceded even by the opponents. When, for example, at the colloquy in Worms, 1557, the Romanists demanded that Flacius's doctrine of free will be condemned by the Lutherans, Melanchthon declared that herein one ought not to submit to the Papists, who slyly, under the name of Illyricus [Flacius], demanded the condemnation of Luther, whose opinion in the doctrine of free will he [Melanchthon] was neither able nor willing to condemn. (Gieseler 3, 2, 232.) In their Confession, published in March, 1569, the theologians of Ducal Saxony (Wigand, Coelestin, Irenaeus, Kirchner, etc.) declared: "We also add that we embrace the doctrine and opinion of Dr. Luther, the Elias of these latter days of the world, as it is most luminously and skilfully set forth in the book De Servo Arbitrio, against Erasmus, in the Commentary on Genesis, and in other books; and we hold that this teaching of Luther agrees with the eternal Word of God." (Schluesselburg, Catalogus 5, 133.)
Luther's sola-gratia-doctrine was embodied also in the Formula of Concord, and this with a special endorsement of his book De Servo Arbitrio. For here we read: "Even so Dr. Luther wrote of this matter [the doctrine that our free will has no power whatever to qualify itself for righteousness, etc.] also in his book De Servo Arbitrio; i.e., Of the Captive Will of Man, in opposition to Erasmus, and elucidated and supported this position well and thoroughly [egregie et solide]; and afterward he repeated and explained it in his glorious exposition of the book of Genesis, especially of chapter 26. There likewise his meaning and understanding of some other peculiar disputations introduced incidentally by Erasmus, as of absolute necessity, etc., have been secured by him in the best and most careful way against all misunderstanding and perversion; to which we also hereby appeal and refer others." (897, 44; 981, 28.) In the passage of his Commentary on Genesis referred to by the Formula, Luther does not, as has been claimed, retract or modify his former statements concerning the inability of the human will and the monergism of grace, but emphasizes that, in reading De Servo Arbitrio, one must heed and not overlook his frequent admonitions to concern oneself with God as He has revealed Himself in the Gospel, and not speculate concerning God in His transcendence, absoluteness, and majesty, as the One in whom we live and move and have our being, and without whom nothing can either exist or occur, and whose wonderful ways are past finding out. (CONC. TRIGL., 898.) And the fact that the Lutheran theologians, living at the time and immediately after the framing of the Formula of Concord, objected neither to the book De Servo Arbitrio itself nor to its public endorsement by the Formula of Concord, is an additional proof of the fact that they were in complete agreement with Luther's teaching of conversion and salvation by grace alone. (Frank 1, 120.)
This sola-gratia-doctrine, the vital truth of Christianity, rediscovered and proclaimed once more by Luther, was, as stated, the target at which Erasmus directed his shafts. In his Diatribe he defined the power of free will to be the faculty of applying oneself to grace (facultas applicandi se ad gratiam), and declared that those are the best theologians who, while ascribing as much as possible to the grace of God, do not eliminate this human factor. He wrote: Free will is "the ability of the human will according to which man is able either to turn himself to what leads to eternal salvation or to turn away from it." (St.L. 18, 1612.) Again: "Those, therefore, who are farthest apart from the views of Pelagius ascribe to grace the most, but to free will almost nothing; yet they do not abolish it entirely. They say that man cannot will anything good without special grace, cannot begin anything good, cannot continue in it, cannot complete anything without the chief thing, the constant help of divine grace. This opinion seems to be pretty probable because it leaves to man a striving and an effort, and yet does not admit that he is to ascribe even the least to his own powers." (1619.) One must avoid extremes, and seek the middle of the road, said Erasmus. Pelagius had fallen into Scylla, and Luther into Charybdis. "I am pleased with the opinion of those who ascribe to free will something, but to grace by far the most." (1666.) Essentially, this was the error held, nursed, and defended also by the Synergists, though frequently in more guarded and ambiguous phrases. But their theory of conversion also involved, as Schaff and Schmauk put it, "the idea of a partnership between God and man, and a corresponding division of work and merit." (Conf. Principle, 600.)
However, these attempts to revamp the Semi-Pelagian teaching resulted in a controversy which more and longer than any other endangered and disquieted the Lutheran Church, before as well as after the adoption of the Formula of Concord. Whether the unregenerate man, when the Word of God is preached, and the grace of God is offered him, is able to prepare himself for grace, accept it, and assent thereto, was, according to the Formula of Concord, "the question upon which, for quite a number of years now, there has been a controversy among some theologians in the churches of the Augsburg Confession." (881, 2.) And of all the controversies after Luther's death the synergistic controversy was most momentous and consequential. For the doctrine of grace with which it dealt is the vital breath of every Christian. Without it neither faith nor the Christian religion can live and remain. "If we believe," says Luther in De Servo Arbitrio, "that Christ has redeemed men by His blood, then we must confess that the entire man was lost; otherwise we make Christ superfluous or the Redeemer of but the meanest part of us, which is blasphemous and sacrilegious." Reading the book of Erasmus, in which he bent every effort toward exploding the doctrine of grace, Luther felt the hand of his opponent clutching his throat. In the closing paragraph of De Servo Arbitrio Luther wrote: "I highly laud and extol you for this thing also, that of all others you alone have gone to the heart of the subject…. You alone have discerned the core of the matter and have aimed at the throat, for which I thank you heartily.—Unus tu et solus cardinem rerum vidisti, et ipsum iugulum petisti, pro quo ex animo tibi gratias ago, in hac enim causa libentius versor, quantum favet tempus et otium." (E. v. a. 7, 367. 137; St. L. 18, 1967; Pieper, Dogm. 2, 543.) And so the Synergists, who renewed the doctrine of Erasmus, also flew at the throat of Christianity. Genuine Lutheranism would have been strangled if synergism had emerged victorious from this great controversy of grace versus free will.
154. The Father of Synergism.
During the first period of his activity in Wittenberg, Melanchthon was in perfect agreement with Luther also on the question of man's inability in spiritual matters and the sole activity, or monergism, of grace in the work of his salvation. As late as 1530 he incorporated these views in the Augsburg Confession, as appears, in particular, from Articles II, V, XVIII, and XIX. His later doctrine concerning the three concurring causes of conversion (the Holy Spirit, the Word, and the consenting will of man), as well as his theory explaining synergistically, from an alleged dissimilar action in man, the difference why some are saved while others are lost, is not so much as hinted at in the Confession. But even at this early date (1530) or soon after, Melanchthon also does not seem any longer to have agreed whole-heartedly with Luther in the doctrine of grace and free will. And in the course of time his theology drifted farther and farther from its original monergistic moorings. Nor was Luther wholly unaware of the secret trend of his colleague and friend toward—Erasmus. In 1536, when the deviations of Melanchthon and Cruciger, dealt with in our previous chapter, were brought to his notice, Luther exclaimed: "Haec est ipsissima theologia Erasmi. This is the identical theology of Erasmus, nor can there be anything more opposed to our doctrine." (Kolde, Analecta, 266.)
That Melanchthon's theology was verging toward Erasmus appears from his letter of June 22, 1537, to Veit Dietrich, in which he said that he desired a more thorough exposition also of the doctrines of predestination and of the consent of the will. (C. R. 3, 383.) Before this, in his Commentary on Romans of 1532, he had written that there is some cause of election also in man; viz., in as far as he does not repudiate the grace offered—"tamen eatenus aliquam causam in accipiente esse quatenus promissionem oblatam non repudiat." (Seeberg 4, 442.) In an addition to his Loci of 1533 he also spoke of a cause of justification and election residing in man. (C. R. 21, 332.) In the revised editions of 1535 and 1543 he plainly began to prepare the way for his later bold and unmistakable deviations. For even though unable to point out a clean-cut and unequivocal synergistic statement, one cannot read these editions without scenting a Semi-Pelagian and Erasmian atmosphere. What Melanchthon began to teach was the doctrine that man, when approached by the Word of God, is able to assume either an attitude of pro or con, i.e., for or against the grace of God. The same applies to the Variata of 1540 in which the frequent "adiuvari" there employed, though not incorrect as such, was not without a synergistic flavor.