Part 15

Conversion and Election

Having thus far sought to present Walther’s struggle for the doctrine of the Church and of justification, we now wish to point in greater detail to the doctrine of conversion and the election of grace, which Walther maintained in opposition to the errors that have come forward in our time.

While the struggle for the scriptural doctrine of the Church occupied Walther in the first period of his activity, the struggle for the pure doctrine of conversion and the election of grace stood in the foreground during the last fifteen years of his life. And we must say: just as the right doctrine of the Church, almost forgotten even within the Lutheran Church, became known again chiefly through Walther, so it is also chiefly to his testimony that we must ascribe it that the biblical doctrine of conversion and the election of grace has not been entirely swept away by the stream of modern false doctrine.

In order to make it more vividly apparent what grace God has shown the Church also in this respect through Walther’s service, we take the liberty of first pointing to the state of modern Lutheran theology regarding these doctrines.

In modern Lutheran theology, synergism reigns, in part the coarser synergism of Melanchthon, in part the finer synergism of Latermann. Kahnis, for example, expressly professes the synergism of Melanchthon when he writes: “Through the doctrine of the cooperation of the human will in the appropriation of salvation (synergism), Melanchthon had entered upon the right, evangelical, and at the same time truly traditional way of holding fast the substance of the Augustinian doctrine without its excesses.”¹ Indeed, Kahnis calls it an exaggeration when one teaches “a complete deadness of natural man toward the good.”²

Most recent Lutheran theologians, however, advocate synergism in the Latermannian form: man’s will is set free by grace to such an extent that man can now decide, by his own activity, for or against grace. According to this doctrine the Holy Spirit works to the extent that man can convert himself; the actual conversion man must accomplish himself. Or: the Holy Spirit imparts the power to believe, the ability to believe; the act of faith, the actual believing, man must himself produce on the basis of that ability imparted by the Holy Spirit. Hence faith is called an “achievement” of man, “man’s own deed,” “a moral act performed by man himself,” etc. Hence a cooperation of man is also posited not merely after conversion, but in conversion, toward bringing it about. The statement of the Lutheran Confessions that man in conversion conducts himself not actively but only passively — mere passive [merely passively] — requires, so the more recent Lutheran theology instructs us, a “limitation,” namely the limitation that man conducts himself not mere passive, but actively, cooperatively; and this “limitation” of the Lutheran doctrine is “now as good as universally acknowledged,” as Dr. Luthardt notes.

The occasion for the modern Lutheran theologians to set up such a doctrine, deviating from the Lutheran Confessions, is the circumstance that they assign to theology a wholly peculiar task, namely the task of convincing human reason of the correctness of Christian doctrine. While the old Lutheran theologians saw their task in collecting and arranging the articles of faith revealed in Scripture, the more recent Lutheran theology has set itself the goal of mediating the articles of Christian doctrine to human reason, and in particular of establishing a connection agreeable to reason among the individual Christian doctrines. And from this standpoint modern Lutheran theology now arrives at synergism. For human reason reasons thus: If those who are saved were converted solely by God’s gracious working, without cooperation on their part, or without a better conduct on their part having had any influence on their conversion, then one would have to assume that God passes by the rest with His grace, or that God’s grace is not universal. But since the assumption that grace is not universal is inadmissible, one must take refuge in the assumption that conversion depends on man’s good conduct.

To acknowledge here, with the Formula of Concord, a mystery that cannot be resolved in this life, and to let the two facts — that those who are saved are converted solely by God’s gracious working, and that those who are lost remain in unbelief solely through their own fault — stand side by side unreconciled, would of course be contrary to the purpose which the more recent theology wishes to serve. Those two truths must be reconciled. The Formula of Concord not only refrains from doing this but also warns against it. It holds fast both to universal grace and to the doctrine that in conversion God alone works everything, and that in man no cause whatever of conversion and of the election of grace is to be acknowledged. It is therefore accused of failing to observe the necessary restraint: it is said to be “not entirely free” of “predestinarian,” that is to say, Calvinistic, “tendencies,” and to “still contain elements of the doctrine of absolute predestination that have not yet been overcome.” Others, who do not venture to speak of Calvinistic tendencies in the confession of the Church to which they wish to belong, permit themselves to interpret the Confession in such a way that the more recent synergistic doctrine still comes out.

Thus the more recent Lutheran theology has turned everything upside down in the articles of conversion and the election of grace. It has corrupted the entire usage of terms. If anyone now teaches that the mercy of God and the merit of Christ alone, and nothing in us — no cooperation, no better conduct — is the cause of conversion and salvation, this is declared to be Calvinizing. According to the usage formerly current in the Lutheran Church, the name absolute election was given to the doctrine of the Calvinists, according to which election is not to be grounded on the merit of Christ, but is to include this merit merely as a means of its execution. Modern Lutheran theology, however, speaks of absolute election when one refuses to allow election to be grounded on man’s self-determination, good conduct, etc.

According to the Lutheran Confessions it is scriptural, and the only right course, when one declines to answer the question why some are converted rather than others, and instead acknowledges a mystery here. In our time the “Lutheran” theologians declare this willingness to keep silence a mark of Calvinism. Nowadays, Lutherans are called Calvinists, and synergists are called Lutherans. According to the Lutheran Confessions it is the highest comfort for a Christian to know that his salvation does not rest in the least in his own hand, but solely in God’s hand. According to the more recent Lutherans the comfort of the Gospel remains undiminished only if one holds that conversion and salvation rest, in the last analysis, on man’s free self-determination or, what is the same thing, on man’s conduct. Men want to rescue universal grace with arguments of reason, and in the process have entirely lost grace altogether.

That is the situation which the synergistic-rationalistic “Lutheran” theology of today has created. Here there appears a depth of Satan³ which fills with horror everyone who by God’s grace has seeing eyes.

The doctrine of the modern Lutheran theologians just described is, in its essentials, now being maintained in America as well, primarily by the Iowa Synod.

As regards the doctrine advocated by Iowa, it is evident from the following quotations. We reproduce here a series of statements by the man who was then the leader of the Iowa Synod and who has since died, in order to make all the more clear what kind of doctrine it was that sought entrance also into the American Lutheran Church, and that has been kept within narrower bounds chiefly through Walther’s counter-testimony. Walther, in Lehre und Wehre, 1872, pp. 204 f., adduces the following statements of Prof. G. Fritschel:

Two propositions must be set side by side and held fast together. First: Man can in no way prepare himself for divine grace, but owes all his salvation wholly and entirely to grace; grace itself must bring it about that he accepts grace. Second: Whether a man is saved or lost, that rests in the last analysis on man’s own free decision for or against grace.
…
That of two men who hear the Gospel, in the one resistance and death are taken away, in the other not … , that has its ground in the free self-determination of man, although this is first made possible by grace.
…
That of two men to whom the Gospel is preached, the one comes to faith, the other not — the ground of this, according to God’s Word, lies solely and alone in the decision of man.
…
Herein lies the real, innermost difference between the biblical and the predestinarian doctrine, that according to the former his eternal destiny is rooted in man’s personal free decision for or against the grace offered him in Christ … He (God) lets it depend on man’s decision on whom He will have mercy and whom He will harden.
…
When the Gospel comes to him (man), grace itself gives him the power to accept that grace, although of course he can also wantonly reject it by setting his will against God. In consequence of the working of grace he receives arbitrium liberatum (a liberated will). His will, enslaved by sin, is by such calling grace released to such an extent that he can now with his own will freely decide for or against God — which decision, to be sure, need not take place in a flash, in an instant.

Finally Prof. F. said, in the words of Philippi:

The ita spiritu sancto agimur, ut ipsi quoque agamus, that is, we are so moved by the Holy Spirit that we ourselves also do something, holds good not only of the converted man, but also of the man who is in the process of conversion … As, accordingly, a certain synergism of man is not to be excluded in the use of the means of grace already before the beginning of the inward divine working of grace, so also a synergism of the human will with divine grace takes place not only after completed conversion, but also during the act of conversion itself — only, to be sure, not a synergism of the naturally free will, but only a synergism [before conversion is complete] of the will liberated by grace.

That was Iowa’s doctrinal position. It is the synergistic doctrine of an intermediate state, in which a man not yet converted is supposed to be placed by grace in a position where he can now convert himself. On the one side is the assertion that man owes all his salvation wholly and entirely to grace; on the other side, however, is the definite assertion that conversion and salvation rest “in the last analysis,” “solely and alone,” on man himself, on his own free decision. “Everything” is to be ascribed to divine grace — only not that which finally tips the balance, that a particular person is converted and saved. So long as one is only speaking of those who are saved considered in themselves, one is willing to ascribe everything to grace. But as soon as those who are saved are placed in comparison with those who are lost, the “self-determination,” the “conduct,” of the former becomes the ultimate ground of salvation.

This doctrinal position of Iowa was appropriated scarcely ten years later by Prof. Schmidt and the Ohio Synod. To be sure, they refrained from the expression that “self-determination” is the decisive factor on the side of those who are saved; but in its place they set the equivalent expression “conduct,” and said outright — going beyond Iowa in their manner of speaking — that man does not owe his salvation wholly to grace. They set up propositions such as these: “Salvation in a certain sense does not depend on God.” In a certain respect “conversion and salvation are dependent also on man and not on God alone.”

Iowa and Ohio sought to support this doctrine with the same rationalistic argument as the Lutheran theologians of Germany. Iowa expressed itself thus: “This remains standing, that if God has predestined only a certain number of men to eternal life” (which Iowa acknowledges as correct), “the ground of this lies either in the unconditional election of God, who, however, simply wills to give faith to these men alone, or in the decision of man foreseen by God.”⁴ On the Ohio side it was said: “It ought to be clear that if God decided the matter, no one would be lost.”⁵

That a mystery lies here, that one must accept the two truths — in man no cause of conversion and salvation, in God no cause of unbelief and damnation — without reconciling them, was also mocked by Iowa and Ohio and declared a mark of Calvinism. On the Iowa side it was said:⁶

Perhaps as such a third possible explanation [namely, alongside the one rejected by Missouri, that either absolute Calvinistic election or human conduct explains the election of particular persons] this one is offered: Why God elects the one and passes by the other we cannot understand; this belongs to the secret will of God which we are not to fathom; and to judge by the synodical report before us, this is probably what the Missouri Synod intends. But that is not a third explanation alongside the two others mentioned above [absolute election or human conduct], but merely a non-explanation. It is merely a forcible suppression of the question, by which nothing is made better.[!]

On the Ohio side men never tired of asserting that it was Calvinistic evasion when the “Missourians” spoke of a mystery and refused to answer the question why some are converted and saved rather than others, either by Calvin’s particular grace or by assuming a better conduct on the part of those who are saved.

Such was the Iowa and Ohio position and its argument.

How did Walther proceed against it? Above all things he combats the assumption on which the entire opposing position rests, namely the assumption that there must be found and given an explanation for the fact that of two men who hear the Gospel the one is converted rather than the other. He shows, on the contrary, that Scripture, and in accordance with Scripture the Lutheran Confessions also, demands that a mystery be acknowledged here. In the longer article in which Walther, for the first time in full detail, combats the synergism that had appeared in the American Lutheran Church, Walther immediately strikes at the heart of their position. For in the article “Ist es wirklich lutherische Lehre, daß die Seligkeit des Menschen im letzten Grunde auf des Menschen freier, eigener Entscheidung beruhe?” [Is It Really Lutheran Doctrine That Man’s Salvation Rests in the Last Analysis on Man’s Own Free Decision?] he writes as follows:⁷

The first reason why this is not Lutheran doctrine, but a doctrine which the Lutheran Church has at all times most decidedly rejected, is this: that thereby the inexplicable mystery of why certain men come to faith and are saved, while other men do not come to faith and are lost, even though both are equally powerless and guilty, is entirely destroyed, for thereby one explains this mystery according to the thoughts of his own reason.

Since, however, this part of Walther’s position, on account of its decisive importance for the whole doctrine of conversion and the election of grace, deserves a more thorough exposition, we reserve such for our next installment.

Footnotes

Baieri Comp. ed. Walther II, 302.
Ibid., p. 301.
[Tr.] Satanstiefe (“a depth of Satan”) alludes to Rev. 2:24.
L. u. W. 1872, p. 243.
L. u. W. 1886, p. 25.
L. u. W. 1872, p. 243.
Ibid., p. 240.