It was not long, however, before, even in these ` circles of realized Augustinianism, in which the as- cription of salvation to God alone was something like a passion, the old leaven of self-salvation began to work again.^ It was in no less a person than Philip Melanchthon that this new “falling from grace" en- tered into the thought of the Reformation, though in his teaching it made but little progress. Three periods are distinguishable in the development of his doctrine." In the first of these he was as pure an Augustinian as Luther or Calvin himself. In the second, commencing in 1527, he begins to go to school to Aristotle in his | [45 ]
THE PLAN OF SALVATION
general doctrine of the will. In the third, from 1532 on, he allows the will of man, though only as a purely formal power, some place in the very process of sal- vation: it can put the spiritual affections created solely by the Holy Spirit in chains or on the throne. From this beginning, synergism rapidly took form in the Lutheran Church." It met with opposition, it is true: the old Lutherans, an Amsdorf, a Flacius, a Wigand, a Brenz were all fully convinced Augustinians. But the opposition was not as hearty as it might have been had the controversy with the Calvinists not been atits height. Even Brenz permitted Strigel to taunt him at the Weimar Disputation with his predestina- tionism, without boldly taking the offensive. And so Andreà could corrupt Luther's doctrine at the Con- ference at Mompelgard, 1586, without rebuke;" Aegidius Hunnius could teach openly the resistibility of grace; " and John Gerhard could condition election on the foresight of faith." When Melanchthon toyed with such ambiguous phrases as “‘God draws the willing to him," “Етее will is man’s power to apply himself to grace", he was playing with fire. A hundred years later the Saxon theologians, Hoé van Hohenegg and Polycarp Leyser at the Leipzig Conference of March 1631 could confidently present as Lutheran doctrine the declaration that “God certainly chose us out of grace in Christ; but this took place according to his foresight of who would truly and constantly be- lieve in Christ; and whom God foresaw that they would believe, those he predestined and elected to [ 46 |
AUTOSOTERISM
make blessed and glorious.” The wonder-working grace of God which raises the dead that Luther so passionately proclaimed, was now put wholly at the disposal of that will of man which Luther declared to be utterly enslaved to sin and capable of moving in good part only as it is carried along and borne forward by grace.”
Nor have things bettered with the passage of the years. It is one of the best esteemed Lutheran teachers of our own day, Wilhelm Schmidt, Professor of Theology at Breslau, who tells us? that “the divine purpose and love is able to realize itself only with and very precisely through the will of the being to whom it is directed;" that “іп one word there exists over against God’s holy decrees a freedom established by himself, against which they are often enough shattered, and may indeed in every individual case be shat- tered." ^ Accordingly he is not content to reject the praedestinatio stricte dicta of the Calvinists, but equally repudiates the praedestinatio late dicta of the old Lutheran divines, that teaches a decree of God by which all men are designated to salvation by an antecedent will, while by a consequent will all those are set apart and ordained to salvation who, God foresees, “will finally believe in Christ.” For, says he,” *with the divine, that is to say, the infallible foresight of them, the decisions of man cease to be free." Thus not only is the divine predestination but also the divine foresight sacrificed on the altar of human freedom, and the conclusion of the whole
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THE PLAN OF SALVATION