LutheranTheology.com

Part 16

The Mystery of Conversion and Election

As noted in the previous part of this series, Walther regards the recognition of a mystery in the doctrines of conversion and the election of grace as decisively important for understanding and presenting these doctrines correctly. This mystery cannot be resolved in this life.

What is this mystery? Walther addresses this point both positively and negatively. Again and again he explains both what the mystery is not and what it is. His numerous statements on the matter may be briefly summarized as follows: We know precisely the reason, and so it is no mystery to us, why those who are lost are not converted and not saved. God’s Word says clearly that the cause of this lies in man himself; not in any unwillingness on God’s part, but solely in the unwillingness and obstinate resistance of man. We also know precisely the reason why those who are saved are converted and saved and have been elected to salvation from eternity. The reason lies not in men themselves, but solely in God’s mercy and Christ’s merit. For us, the mystery begins when those who are saved are compared with those who are lost, that is, when we ask: “Why are some converted and saved rather than others?”

Here is the point where we must call a halt to our thoughts if we do not wish to come into conflict with irrefutable truths. All men are by nature equally corrupt, and those who are converted, come to faith, and remain in faith to the end must ascribe this not to themselves but solely to the grace of God in Christ and to the working of the Holy Spirit, who alone, as the Formula of Concord says, has made “out of their rebellious will an obedient will.” Therefore no man can search out with his reason why all other men do not also come to conversion and faith and persevere therein until death. At this point, then, it is time to keep silence and to confess that here a mystery lies before us which no man will solve in this life, because on this matter there is no revelation of God in His Word. God’s revelation confines itself to this, that man’s ruin comes from himself, but his salvation from God (Hos. 13:9).1 All solutions of this mystery which men have attempted and can yet attempt come down either to Calvinism (denial of universal grace) or to synergism (the conditioning of conversion and the election of grace upon human conduct, human self-determination, etc.).

Walther shows this doctrinal position to be demanded by Scripture, especially by Hos. 13:9 and Rom. 11:33–35.2 This doctrinal position is also that of the Lutheran Confessions. “The Formula of Concord,” says Walther, “reckons among the mysteries of the election of grace not only this: ‘God has appointed to each one the time and hour of his call and conversion,’ but also this: ‘One is hardened, blinded, given over to a perverse mind, while another, though equally guilty, is converted.’”3 Walther shows, with citations from Chemnitz, Andreä, Selnecker, Heerbrand, Körner, Timotheus Kirchner, etc., that this was also the doctrine generally acknowledged and confessed by the Lutheran teachers of the 16th century.4 Walther rightly marveled that, in the face of such plain declarations of the Confessions and of the theologians of the 16th century, anyone could assert that the recognition of a mystery at the point in question was not Lutheran but Calvinistic. Finally, he also points out that recognition of the mystery of the discretio personarum [the distinction of persons] had so entered in succum et sanguinem [into the very flesh and blood] of the Lutheran Church that this teaching repeatedly continued to resurface even among later theologians who had begun to take somewhat different paths. In evidence of this he was accustomed to point to a statement of Johann Musäus. He writes:5

To the question, “Whether the Lutherans hold that the causa discretionis (the cause of the distinction), why some are converted and others are not converted, lies solely and alone with man?” J. Musäus, in his polemical work, replies as follows against the Calvinist Wendelin, who had charged the Lutherans with this: “Our theologians do not customarily say that the causa discretionis, the reason why some are converted, lies solely and alone with man. Rather, they all affirm with one voice that the cause of conversion in all who are converted lies not with man, but solely and alone with God; but the cause of the failure to be converted in those who persist in their ungodliness lies not with God, but solely and alone with man.” Thus Musäus too, and, as he says, together with all Lutheran theologians, admits that here an inexplicable mystery lies before us.

That a mystery be recognized and acknowledged here is of the utmost importance. This belongs to the marks of a pure theologian. Whoever acknowledges no mystery here, but has found a solution agreeable to reason, is necessarily either a synergist or a Calvinist. The nature of the case makes this inevitable. Walther writes:6

It is true, when reason hears that some are elected to salvation without any work or merit of their own, solely by grace, then, if it wishes to follow its principles, it can conclude nothing else than that the others are not saved because God has not also elected them, without any doing or merit of their own, entirely and solely by grace. It is further true, when reason hears that those who are lost are lost solely through their own fault, then, if it wishes to follow its principles, it can conclude nothing else than that those who are saved, attain salvation rather than those others, solely because they are better, or because they have conducted themselves better, than those others.

In order to avoid both wrong paths, that of Calvinism as well as that of synergism, Walther therefore demands the renunciation of all mediating positions and the unqualified acknowledgment of a mystery. He once says quite briefly: “Whoever finds no mystery here must be either a synergist or a Calvinist. Tertium non datur [There is no third possibility].”7 Walther cites with approval the following words of Guericke:

He who is saved, the Lutheran Church teaches, is saved solely through God’s grace (in Christ), without any merit of his own; he who is lost is lost through his own fault, because he continually resists divine grace. That the former’s resistance to divine grace is finally broken is not due to his merit; that the latter’s is not broken is indeed his own fault. The underlying inner disposition of man, insofar as it is good, likewise comes from God alone; insofar as it is evil, it does not come from God. Man, however, with his feeble understanding, darkened by sin, is not able to search out this deepest depth of the divine workshop, and it is greater wisdom to acknowledge the divine mystery than blasphemously to solve it.

Hereupon Walther, turning against the newer theology, continues:8

The newer theology cannot marvel enough at this dilemma which confronted the old theology. In its further development of this doctrine it has found a way to solve the difficulty in the easiest manner in the world, without falling in the least into Calvinistic, blasphemous thoughts; for it says: The reason some are converted and saved while others are not converted and are lost is simply that the former faithfully use the powers of grace bestowed on them before their conversion to bring about their conversion, and freely decide for grace by their own choice, while the latter resist. Thus, to be sure, it is now not only clear why a number are lost, but the mystery is also solved as to the reason why the others, who originally lie in the same corruption, are saved—namely, because of their better conduct!

Without recourse to synergism, the incorporation of the intuitu fidei [in view of faith] into the doctrine of the election of grace likewise offers no solution agreeable to reason. Walther sets forth how the advocates of the intuitu fidei persuade themselves that they can quite readily solve the mystery why the elect are elected rather than others solely out of God’s mercy and for the sake of Christ’s merit — namely, because God looked to the fact that this merit would be apprehended and held fast by them in faith. He continues:9

But this only solves the mystery if God has not also resolved to Himself give faith to the elect, but rather if they have given themselves faith by virtue of their free will, or at least, as people who submit to the divine order, have permitted God to work faith in them. But this is precisely nothing else than the grossest synergism.

We are firmly convinced that, if the church bodies now divided into two camps over the doctrine of conversion and the election of grace are ever to reach an understanding, it can only happen by our opponents honestly acknowledging the mystery of the discretio personarum. To be sure, they too speak of “unsearchable mysteries” in the doctrine of conversion and the election of grace. It has become the fashion to say: “That there are many unsearchable mysteries in the election of grace is self-evident; we cannot comprehend God’s guidance either with respect to whole nations or with respect to individual persons,” etc. But this has so far remained merely a manner of speaking by which men deceived themselves and others while outwardly accommodating themselves somewhat to Lutheran usage. They must genuinely acknowledge the mystery which the Formula of Concord identifies as such, namely: “One is hardened, blinded, given over to a perverse mind, while another, though equally guilty, is converted.”

It must be acknowledged: Although we know, on the one hand, why those who are lost are not converted and saved (namely, solely through their own fault), and, on the other hand, why those who are saved come to faith and remain in faith (namely, solely through God’s grace), it nevertheless, in this life, remains a mystery to human reason why some are converted and saved rather than others; or, what is the same thing: when one considers that God’s grace is universal and that all men lie in the same guilt and in the same total corruption, it remains in this life a mystery for human comprehension why only a part, and not all men, are converted and saved.

To explain this mystery to reason is the endeavor of the more recent theologians; their whole doctrine of conversion and the election of grace is calculated to this end. For this purpose they devised the status medius [intermediate state], cooperation already in conversion, the theory of self-determination, etc.10 Solely for this same purpose, in this country Iowa also advances the proposition: “That of two men who hear the Gospel, in the one resistance and death are taken away, in the other not …, this has its ground in the free self-determination of man.” For the same purpose, Ohio also says that man’s conversion and salvation depend not solely on the grace of God, but in a certain respect also on the conduct of man. For the same purpose, both Iowa and Ohio cling so firmly to the proposition of the later dogmaticians that election took place “in view of faith,” while permitting themselves to substitute “human conduct” for “faith.”

From the same standpoint Ohio, Iowa, and all who side with them also raise against Missouri the charge of Calvinism. For Missouri is accused of Calvinism, not because it directly teaches Calvinism, but because Calvinism is said to follow from Missouri’s position. Missouri is accused of Calvinism because it acknowledges the mystery of the discretio personarum, because it will not allow human conduct to count, alongside God’s grace and Christ’s merit, as an “explanatory ground” for the fact that some are converted and saved rather than others. In short, if Missouri’s opponents did not believe themselves obliged to explain to human reason why some rather than others are converted and saved, or elected, their doctrine of “human conduct,” “self-determination,” etc., would at once collapse, and their accusation that Missouri teaches Calvinism would cease.

Footnotes

  1. L. u. W. 1883. p. 91 f.; Berichtigung etc. p. 23 f.
  2. Berichtigung etc. p. 24 f.
  3. Ibid.
  4. L. u. W. 1872. p. 244 f.; 1883. p. 94 f.; Berichtigung etc. p. 24 f.
  5. L. u. W. 1883. p. 92 f.; Berichtigung etc. p. 25.
  6. L. u. W. 1884, p. 134.
  7. Berichtigung etc. p. 26.
  8. L. u. W. 1872, p. 197.
  9. Beleuchtung etc. p. 38 f. In a lecture on May 6, 1881, Walther expressed himself on this point as follows: “The objection is that the expression ‘in view of faith’ is by no means intended to identify the cause that moved God to choose the elect. Rather, it is used to prevent election from being understood as absolute and purely arbitrary. But if the intuitu fidei is to indicate no cause, what purpose is it then to serve? For if this was no cause for God, then the mystery still stands firm, the appearance still remains that election is absolute and arbitrary, and it still remains inexplicable why God elected precisely the foreknown believers, who after all did not give themselves faith, but to whom God gave faith. But if one says that the difference is precisely that the reprobate resisted while the elect allowed faith to be given to them, then the elect man is plainly made the cause of his own election. The alleged cause is that he offered no resistance to God. But according to God’s Word, God must first take away even the resistance. However our opponents may explain their intuitu fidei, therefore, either it has no sense at all, or faith is made, in Pelagian fashion, into a work of man which God regarded.”
  10. L. u. W. 1872 p. 293 f. Note.