I’m thankful for the engagement on the previous post.

Calvinists and Lutherans argued for decades – perhaps centuries – about whether De servo arbitrio or On the Bondage of the Will (1525) supported their side of the debate over predestination for decades. Here are a couple of a major Reformed figures in Reformed orthodoxy (p. 1120 and p. 392); here is a major Lutheran figure (p. 56). I need to examine this book with greater care.

For grasping Luther’s teaching on justification at the end of his career, Luther’s Table Talk is perhaps less decisive than his lectures on Genesis that he gave for a decade starting in 1535. Here he is commenting on Genesis 26:9: “So Abim′elech called Isaac, and said, ‘Behold, she is your wife; how then could you say, “She is my sister?”‘ Isaac said to him, “Because I thought, ‘Lest I die because of her.’”

It appears from student notes that he lectured on this verse in February 1542. I’ll transcribe the whole text here in a couple of posts (Luther’s Works, vol. 5, pp. 42-46).

But it pleases me to take from this passage the opportunity to discuss doubt, God, and the will of God; for I hear that here and there among the nobles and persons of importance vicious statements are being spread abroad concerning predestination or God’s foreknowledge. For this is what they say: “If I am predestined, I shall be saved, whether I do good or evil. If I am not predestined, I shall be condemned regardless of my works.” I would be glad to debate in detail against these wicked statements if the uncertain state of my health made it possible for me to do so. For if the statements are true, as they, of course, think, then the incarnation of the Son of God, His suffering and resurrection, and all that He did for the salvation of the world are done away with completely. What will the prophets and all Holy Scripture help? What will the sacraments help? Therefore let us reject all this and tread it underfoot.

These are devilish and poisoned darts and original sin itself, with which the devil led our first parents astray when he said (Gen. 3:5): “You will be like God.” They were not satisfied with the divinity that had been revealed and in the knowledge of which they were blessed, but they wanted to penetrate to the depth of the divinity. For they inferred that there was some secret reason why God had forbidden them to eat of the fruit of the tree which was in the middle of Paradise, and they wanted to know what this reason was, just as these people of our time say: “What God has determined beforehand must happen. Consequently, every concern about religion and about the salvation of souls is uncertain and useless.” Yet it has not been given to you to render a verdict that is inscrutable. Why do you doubt or thrust aside the faith that God has enjoined on you? For what end did it serve to send His Son to suffer and to be crucified for us? Of what use was it to institute the sacraments if they are uncertain or completely useless for our salvation? For otherwise, if someone had been predestined, he would have been saved without the Son and without the sacraments or Holy Scripture. Consequently, God, according to the blasphemy of these people, was horribly foolish when He sent His Son, promulgated the Law and the Gospel, and sent the apostles if the only thing He wanted was that we should be uncertain and in doubt whether we are to be saved or really to be damned.

But these are delusions of the devil with which he tries to cause us to doubt and disbelieve, although Christ came into this world to make us completely certain. For eventually either despair must follow or contempt for God, for the Holy Bible, for Baptism, and for all the blessings of God through which He wanted us to be strengthened over against uncertainty and doubt. For they will say with the Epicureans: “Let us live, eat, and drink; tomorrow we shall die” (cf. 1 Cor. 15:32). After the manner of the Turks they will rush rashly into the sword and fire, since the hour in which you either die or escape has been predetermined.

But to these thoughts one must oppose the true and firm knowledge of Christ, just as I often remind you that it is profitable and necessary above all that the knowledge of God be completely certain in us and that we cling to it with firm assent of the heart. Otherwise our faith is useless. For if God does not stand by His promises, then our salvation is lost, while, on the other hand, this is our comfort, that, although we change, we nevertheless flee for refuge to Him who is unchangeable. For in Mal. 3:5 He makes this assertion about Himself: “I the Lord do not change.” And Rom. 11:29 states: “The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” Accordingly, this is how I have taught in my book On the Bondage of the Will and elsewhere, namely, that a distinction must be made when one deals with the knowledge, or rather with the subject, of the divinity. For one must debate either about the hidden God or about the revealed God. With regard to God, insofar as He has not been revealed, there is no faith, no knowledge, and no understanding. And here one must hold to the statement that what is above us is none of our concern. For thoughts of this kind, which investigate something more sublime above or outside the revelation of God, are altogether devilish. With them nothing more is achieved than that we plunge ourselves into destruction; for they present an object that is inscrutable, namely, the unrevealed God. Why not rather let God keep His decisions and mysteries in secret? We have no reason to exert ourselves so much that these decisions and mysteries be revealed to us.

Moses, too, asked God to show him His face; but the Lord replies: “You shall see My back, but you will not be able to see My face” (cf. Ex. 33:23). For this inquisitiveness is original sin itself, by which we are impelled to strive for a way to God through natural speculation. But this is a great sin and a useless and futile attempt; for this is what Christ says in John 6:65 (Cf. John 14:6:) “No one comes to the Father but by Me.” Therefore when we approach the unrevealed God, then there is no faith, no Word, and no knowledge; for He is an invisible God, and you will not make Him visible.

Furthermore, God has most sternly forbidden this investigation of the divinity. Thus when the apostles ask in Acts 1:6, “Has it not been predestined that at this time the kingdom should be restored?” Christ says to them: “It is not for you to know the times” (Acts 1:7). “Let Me be hidden where I have not revealed Myself to you,” says God, “or you will be the cause of your own destruction, just as Adam fell in a horrible manner; for he who investigates My majesty will be overwhelmed by My glory.”

And it is true that God wanted to counteract this curiosity at the very beginning; for this is how He set forth His will and counsel: “I will reveal My foreknowledge and predestination to you in an extraordinary manner, but not by this way of reason and carnal wisdom, as you imagine. This is how I will do so: From an unrevealed God I will become a revealed God. Nevertheless, I will remain the same God. I will be made flesh, or send My Son. He shall die for your sins and shall rise again from the dead. And in this way I will fulfill your desire, in order that you may be able to know whether you are predestined or not. Behold, this is My Son; listen to Him (cf. Matt. 17:5). Look at Him as He lies in the manger and on the lap of His mother, as He hangs on the cross. Observe what He does and what He says. There you will surely take hold of me.” For “He who sees Me,” says Christ, “also sees the Father Himself” (cf. John 14:9). If you listen to Him, are baptized in His name, and love His Word, then you are surely predestined and are certain of your salvation. But if you revile or despise the Word, they you are damned; for he who does not believe is condemned (Mark 16:16).

Therefore we should detest and shun these vicious words which the Epicureans bandy about: “If this is how it must happen, let it happen.” For God did not come down from heaven to make you uncertain about predestination, to teach you to despise the sacraments, absolution, and the rest of the divine ordinances. Indeed, He instituted them to make you completely certain and to remove the disease of doubt from your heart, in order that you might not only believe with the heart but also see with your physical eyes and touch with your hands. Why, then, do you reject these and complain that you do not know whether you have been predestined? You have the Gospel; you have been baptized; you have absolution; you are a Christian. Nevertheless, you doubt and say that you do not know whether you believe or not, whether you regard as true what is preached about Christ in the Word and the sacraments.

Just a few notes:

1. This lecture is almost certainly not directed against John Calvin. Besides the fact that there are some significant differences between the position described here (even if allow for a polemical construal) and Calvin’s mature position (e.g., the tendency to libertinism, the rather harsh fatalism, etc.), the timing isn’t right (though I’m open to correction). Luther’s colleague and friend, Philipp Melanchthon, just met Calvin a few months earlier in the events surrounding the Colloquy of Regensburg (though correspondence began in 1538). Calvin seems to have noted Melanchthon’s shift in free choice and his basic silence on predestination in the late-1530s. But I don’t believe that there was open conflict on this issue at this point (winter of 1542). As late as 1543 (more than a year after this lecture), Melanchthon simply encouraged Calvin to use a mode of expression on the matter of predestination “better adapted for practical use.” Also, there are not too many references in Luther’s works to Calvin, and the critical ones tend – as far as I know – to be about the Lord’s Supper.
2. The issue here is not simply the gratuity of God’s saving grace, but the way in which God reveals himself in the Incarnation, the Cross, the Word, and the sacraments. The attention to the sacraments resonates with the passages from Table Talk discussed in the previous post. There is a claim even in the best scholarship that Protestant accounts of salvation undermine the sacraments. It seems that Luther is concerned that particular views of predestination might actually have that effect, but he certainly did not see this as an implication of his own view of justification by faith alone.
3. Luther associates original sin itself with the sort of inquisitiveness that leads one to ask certain kinds of questions or make certain kinds of assertions about predestination.
4. Besides the echoes of Luther’s earlier theology of the Cross, we see here – late in his career – the emphasis on assurance from Luther’s earliest days as a reformer.
5. Luther gives us an indication here about how to interpret On the Bondage of the Will. The distinction there between the hidden and the revealed God is crucial here in 1542. It would be interesting to think more about how Luther – and other theologians in the early Protestant tradition – think of this distinction in light of the traditional vision of the theologian: faith seeking understanding. How should one deepen one’s meditation upon these mysteries? Karl Barth apparently had some worries about Luther’s account of the “hidden God,” but there are difficulties here that I haven’t quite straightened out: https://www.amazon.com/Covering-Up-Luther-Rustin-Brian/dp/1498215319. It would be quite interesting to compare Luther’s view of Moses seeing God’s back to others in the Christian theological and spiritual tradition.
6. Luther takes the issue of misinterpreting predestination in the way described above quite seriously; it is not merely an academic issue; he wishes that he had the health to debate anyone who made these claims.