On Good Behavior
Via “What is Christianity?”
Luther proclaimed to the Church and the world with a voice of thunder that God’s holy Law indeed condemns all men to death and eternal damnation; but that Holy Scripture sets forth not only the Law, but also the blessed Gospel, which announces to all men that for the sake of the vicarious satisfaction which Christ rendered in accordance with the Law, heaven has been opened for all men, without any merit or worthiness on their part. Luther writes: “So, then, God’s Gospel, the New Testament, is a joyous message and glad tidings, heralded throughout the world by the apostles, concerning a true David, who fought and conquered sin, death, and the devil and thus redeemed, justified, regenerated, saved, reconciled, and restored to God, without any merit on their part, all those who were held captive by sin, plagued by death, and trampled upon by Satan.” (Cf. St. L. Ed. XIV, 86) Again: “God has given us the Gospel, in which He offers free forgiveness before we prayed for it or even thought of it.” (Large Catechism, Lord’s Prayer, Fifth Petition. 88. Triglot, p. 273) Luther, in fact, calls the mingling of human works and merits into the process of opening heaven an “intolerable and dreadful blasphemy”; for we know from Holy Scripture that “God cannot be reconciled by anything else than by this immeasurable and infinite treasure, the suffering and death of His Son; for one single drop of His blood is more precious than all creation.” (Cf. sub Gal. 2, 20; St. L. Ed. IX, 237ff.) In keeping with this doctrine, Luther demands that every attempt to supplement Christ’s work of reconciliation with human efforts and works must be rooted out of the Church as a “scandal,” or offense. (St. L. Ed. IX, 236, and elsewhere.) However, it cannot be denied that this “scandal” originated in the very heart of the Lutheran Church, even during Luther’s lifetime, and that after his death it boldly raised its head in Luther’s own city of Wittenberg. Melanchthon, who in the beginning had been a loyal and devoted colleague of Luther, in the course of time espoused the doctrine, and gained adherents for it, that the Holy Spirit and the gracious operation of the Gospel are not sufficient to convert a sinner to God, but that there must be a third cause of conversion and salvation, namely, man’s own assenting will, which “applies itself to divine grace,” facultas applicandi se ad gratium. By God’s grace this offense, by which Christ’s glory as the only Savior of the world is impugned and man’s salvation founded upon his own efforts, was cast out of the Church, and the open heaven was restored. This blessing we owe to the Formula of Concord. However, the offense cropped up tim and again within the Lutheran Church during the succeeding centuries. The German theologians of the nineteenth century who are generally regarded as the exponents of Lutheran theology have renounced almost completely the sola gratia doctrine of Luther and of the confessional Lutheran Church and have adapted the synergistic views which Melanchthon propounded in his later years. Accordingly the feel obliged to teach in the last analysis man’s conversion and salvation depend on himself, on his good conduct, on his self-determination and self-motivation toward the acceptance of saving grace. Their doctrine may be stated thus: Divine grace accompanies man up to the portals of paradise, but there it leaves him to his own fate, so that he must open it himself. (Cf. for proofs Christliche Dogmatik, II, footnotes 1296 and 1317.) The neo-Lutheran school of theologians in Germany champion this synergistic doctrine almost to a man. However, also within the Lutheran Church of America Luther’s sol-gratia doctrine has been vigorously disputed and disavowed. The Lutheran theologians here have gone much farther than simply to declare that man’s conversion and salvation depend also on his right conduct; they have actually asserted that any one who does not espouse this synergistic view, but ascribes man’s conversion and salvation solely to divine grace, subverts the foundation of the Christian religion and must therefore be regarded as a false prophet, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a Calvinist, and the like. (Cf. for proofs my monograph Zur Einigung, 2, p. 24) But all those in our country who thus so strenuously oppose the Scriptural doctrine of conversion and election really set themselves in front of the open gate of heaven with the arrogant demand which we may correctly render thus: “No admittance except on good behavior.”
