“It is not unknown to us,” they say, “that this holy doctrine of the malice and impotence of free-will, the doctrine whereby our conversion and regeneration is ascribed solely to God and in no way to our own powers, has been godlessly, shamelessly and hatefully abused.... Many are becoming immoral and savage and neglectful of all pious exercises; they say: ‘Since we cannot turn to God of our own natural powers, let us remain hostile to God or wait until He converts us by force and against our will.’” “It is true that they possess no power to act in spiritual things, and that the whole business of conversion is merely the work of the Holy Ghost. And thus they refuse to listen to the Word of God, or to study it, or to receive the Sacraments; they prefer to wait until God infuses His gifts into them directly from above, and until they feel and are certain by inward experience that they have been converted by God.”
“Others,” they continue, speaking of the case as a possibility and not as a sad reality, “may possibly give themselves up to sad and dangerous doubts as to whether they have been predestined by God to heaven, and as to whether God will really work His gifts in them by the help of the Holy Ghost. Being weak and troubled in mind they do not grasp aright our pious doctrine of free-will, and they are confirmed in their doubts by the fact that they do not find within themselves any firm and ardent faith or hearty devotion to God, but only weakness, misery and fear.” The authors then proceed to deal with the widespread fear of predestination to hell.[195]
We have as it were a sad monument set up to the morality of the enslaved will and the doctrine of imputation, when the Book of Concord, in spite of the sad results it has just admitted, goes on in the same chapter to insist that all Luther’s principles should be preserved intact. “This matter Dr. Luther settled most excellently and thoroughly in his ‘De servo arbitrio’ against Erasmus, where he showed this opinion to be pious and irrefutable. Later on he repeated and further explained the same doctrine in his splendid Commentary on Genesis, particularly in his exposition of ch. xxvi. There, too, he made other matters clear—e.g. the doctrine of the ‘absoluta necessitas’—defended them against the objections of Erasmus and, by his pious explanations, set them above all evil insinuations and misrepresentations. All of which we here corroborate and commend to the diligent study of all.”[196]
Melanchthon’s and his school’s modifications of these extreme doctrines are here sharply repudiated, though Luther himself “never spoke with open disapproval” of Melanchthon’s Synergism.[197]
“From our doctrinal standpoint,” we there read, “it is plain that the teaching of the Synergists is false, who allege that man in spiritual things is not altogether dead to what is good but merely badly wounded and half dead.... They teach wrongly, that after the Holy Spirit has given us, through the Evangel, grace, forgiveness and salvation, then free-will is able to meet God by its natural powers and ... co-operate with the Holy Ghost. In reality the ability to lay hold upon grace (‘facultas applicandi se ad gratiam’) is solely due to the working of the Holy Ghost.”
What then is man to do, and how are the consequences described above to be obviated, on the one hand libertinism, on the other fear of predestination to hell?
Man still possesses a certain freedom, so the Book of Concord teaches, e.g. “to be present or not at the Church’s assemblies, to listen or close his ears to the Word of God.”
“The preaching of the Word of God is however the tool whereby the Holy Ghost seeks to effect man’s conversion and to make him ready to will and to work (‘in ipsis et velle et perficere operari vult’).” “Man is free to open his ears to the Word of God or to read it even when not yet converted to God or born again. In some way or other man still has free-will in such outward things even since Adam’s Fall.” Hence, by the Word, “by the preaching and contemplation of the sweet Evangel of the forgiveness of sins, the spark of ‘faith’ is enkindled in his heart.”[198]
“Although all effort without the power and work of the Holy Spirit is worthless, yet neither the preacher nor the hearer must doubt of this grace or work of the Holy Spirit,” so long as the preacher proceeds according to God’s will and command and “the hearer listens earnestly and diligently and dwells on what he hears.” We are not to judge of the working of the Holy Ghost by our feelings, but “agreeably with the promises of God’s Word.” We must hold that “the Word preached is the organ of the Holy Ghost whereby He truly works and acts in our hearts.”[199]
With the help of this queer, misty doctrine which, as we may notice, makes of preaching a sort of Sacrament working “ex opere operato,” Luther’s followers attempted to construct a system out of their master’s varying and often so arbitrary statements. At any rate they upheld his denial of any natural order of morality distinct from the order of grace. It was to remain true that man, “previous to conversion, possesses indeed an understanding, but not of divine things, and a will, though not for anything good and wholesome.” In this respect man stands far below even a stock or stone, because he resists the Word and Will of God (which they cannot do) until God raises him up from the death of sin, enlightens and creates him anew.[200]