Here is the rest of Martin Luther’s discussion on predestination in his lecture on Genesis 26:9 (Concordia ed., vol. 5, pp. 46-50) (continued from here):

But you will say: “I cannot believe.” Thus many are troubled by this trial, and I recall that at Torgau a little woman came to me and complained with tears in her eyes that she could not believe. Then, when I recited the articles of the Creed in order and asked about each one whether she was convinced that these things were true and had happened in this manner or not, she answered: “I certainly think that they are true, but I cannot believe.” This was a satanic illusion. Consequently, I kept saying: “If you think that all these things are true, there is no reason why you should complain about your unbelief; for if you do not doubt that the Son of God died for you, you surely believe, because to believe is nothing else than to regard these facts as the sure and unquestionable truth.”

I hesitated with this term facts, so I checked the original, and it reads as follows: “Quia credere nihil aliud est, quam habere ista pro certa et indubitata veritate.” I hesitated because Philipp Melanchthon famously distinguished justifying faith from “a knowledge of the history” which “even the devils know.” There isn’t anything about facts in the original. Here is perhaps a more precise translation: “For to believe is nothing other than to hold those things as certain and undoubted truth.”

God says to you: “Behold, you have My Son. Listen to Him, and receive Him. If you do this, you are already sure about your faith and salvation.” But I do not know,” you will say, “whether I am remaining in faith.” At all events, accept the present promise and the predestination, and do not inquire too curiously about the secret counsels of God. If you believe in the revealed God and accept His Word, He will gradually also reveal the hidden God; for “He who sees Me also sees the Father,” as John 14:9 says. He who rejects the Son also loses the unrevealed God along with the revealed God. But if you cling to the revealed God with a firm faith, so that your heart is so minded that you will not lose Christ even if you are deprived of everything, then you are most assuredly predestined, and you will understand the hidden God. Indeed, you understand Him even now if you acknowledge the Son and His will, namely, that He wants to reveal Himself to you, that He wants to be your Lord and your Savior. Therefore you are sure that God is also your Lord and Father.

Observe how pleasantly and kindly God delivers you from this horrible trial with which Satan besets people today in strange ways in order to make them doubtful and uncertain, and eventually even to alienate them from the Word. “For why should you hear the Gospel,” they say, “since everything depends on predestination?” In this way he robs us of the predestination guaranteed through the Son of God and the sacraments. He makes us uncertain where we are completely certain. And if he attacks timid consciences with this trial, they die in despair, as would almost have happened to me if Staupitz had not delivered me from the same trial when I was troubled. But if they are despisers, they become the worst Epicureans. Therefore we should rather impress these statements in our hearts, such as John 6:44: “No one can come to Me unless the Father draws him.” Through whom? Through Me. “He who sees Me also sees the Father” (cf. John 14:9) And God says to Moses: “You cannot see My face, for man shall not see Me and live” (Ex. 33:20). And we read (Acts 1:7): “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by His own authority. But go, and carry out what I command.” Likewise (Sirach 3:22): “Seek not the things that are too high for you and search not into things above your ability; but the things that God has commanded you, think on them always, and in many of His works be not curious.” Listen to the incarnate Son, and predestination will present itself of its own accord.

Staupitz used to comfort me with these words: “Why do you torture yourself with these speculations? Look at the wounds of Christ and at the blood that was shed for you. From these predestination will shine. Consequently, one must listen to the Son of God, who was sent into the flesh and appeared to destroy the work of the devil (1 John 3:8) and to make you sure about predestination. And for this reason He says to you: ‘You are My sheep because you hear My voice (cf. John 10:27). ‘No one shall snatch you out of My hands'” (cf. v. 28).

Many who did not resist this trial in such a manner were hurled headlong into destruction. Consequently, the hearts of the godly should be kept carefully fortified. Thus a certain hermit in The Lives of the Fathers advises his hearers against speculations of this kind. He says: “If you see that someone has put his foot in heaven, pull him back. For this is how saintly neophytes are wont to think about God apart from Christ. They are the ones who try to ascend into heaven and to place both feet there. But suddenly they are plunged into hell.” Therefore the godly should beware and be intent only on learning to cling to the Child and Son Jesus, who is your God and was made flesh for your sake. Acknowledge and hear Him; take pleasure in Him, and give thanks. If you have Him, then you also have the hidden God together with Him who has been revealed. And that is the only way, the truth, and the life (cf. John 14:6). Apart from it you will find nothing but destruction and death.

But he manifested himself in the flesh to snatch us from death, from the power of the devil. From this knowledge must come great joy and delight that God is unchangeable, that He works in accordance with unchangeable necessity, and that He cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13) but keeps his promises. Accordingly, one is not free to have such thoughts or doubts about predestination; but they are ungodly, vicious, and devilish. Therefore when the devil assails you with them, you should only say: “I believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, about whom I have no doubt that He was made flesh, suffered, and died for me. Into His death I have been baptized.” This answer will make the trial disappear, and Satan will turn his back.

Thus on other occasions I have mentioned the noteworthy example of a nun who underwent the same trial. For under the papacy there were also many godly persons who experienced these spiritual trials, which are truly hellish and thoughts of the damned. For there is no difference at all between one who doubts and one who is damned. Therefore whenever the nun felt that she was being assailed with the fiery darts of Satan (cf. Eph. 6:16), she would say nothing else than this: “I am a Christian.”

We must do the same thing. One must refrain from debates and say: “I am a Christian; that is, the Son of God was made flesh and was born; He has redeemed me and is sitting at the right hand of the Father, and He is my Savior.” Thus you must drive Satan away from you with as few words as possible and say: “Begone, Satan! (Matt. 4:10). Do not put doubt in me. The Son of God came into this world to destroy your work (1 John 3:8) and to destroy doubt.” Then the trial ceases, and the heart returns to peace, quiet, and the love of God.

Otherwise doubt about some person’s intention is no sin. Thus Isaac doubts that he will live or have a pious host. About a man I can be in doubt. Indeed, I should be in doubt. For he is not my Savior, and it is written (Ps. 146:3): “Put not your trust in princes.” For man is a liar (Ps. 116:11) and deceitful. But one cannot deal doubtfully with God. For He neither wants nor is able to be changeable or a liar. But the highest form of worship He requires is your conviction that He is truthful. For this is why He has given you the strongest proofs of His trustworthiness and truth. He has given His Son into the flesh and into death, and He has instituted the sacraments, in order that you may know that He does not want to be deceitful, but that He wants to be truthful. Nor does He confirm this with spiritual proofs; He confirms it with tangible proofs. For I see the water, I see the bread and the wine, and I see the minister. All this is physical, and in these material forms He reveals Himself. If you must deal with men, you may be in doubt as to the extent to which you may believe a person and as to how others may be disposed toward you; but concerning God you must maintain with assurance and without any doubt that He is well disposed toward you on account of Christ and that you have been redeemed and sanctified through the precious blood of the Son of God. And in this way you will be sure of your predestination, since all the prying and dangerous questions about GOD’S secret counsels have been removed — the questions to which Satan tries to drive us, just as he drove our first parents.

But how great would our first parent’s happiness have been if he had kept the Word of God carefully in sight and had eaten of all the other trees except the one from which he had been forbidden to eat! But he wanted to search out why God had forbidden him to enjoy the fruits from that one tree. In addition, there was Satan, the malicious teacher who increased and abetted this curiosity. Thus he was hurled headlong into sin and death.

Thus God reveals His will to us through Christ and the Gospel. But we loathe it and, in accordance with Adam’s example, take delight in the forbidden tree above all the others. This fault has been implanted in us by nature. When Paradise and heaven have been closed and the angel has been placed on guard there (cf. Gen. 3:24), we try in vain to enter. For Christ has truthfully said: “No one has ever seen God” (John 1:18). Nevertheless, God, in His boundless goodness, has revealed Himself to us in order to satisfy our desire. He has shown us a visible image. “Behold, you have My Son; he who hears Him and is baptized is written in the book of life. This I reveal through My Son, whom you can touch with your hands and look at with your eyes.”

I have wanted to teach and transmit this in such a painstaking and accurate way because after my death many will publish my books and will prove from them errors of every kind and their own delusions. Among other things, however, I have written that everything is absolute and unavoidable, but at the same time I have added that one must look at the revealed God, as we sing in the hymn: Er heist Jesu Christ, der HERR Zebaoth, und ist kein ander Gott, “Jesus Christ is the Lord of hosts, and there is no other God” — and also in very many other places. But they will pass over all these places and take only those that deal with the hidden God. Accordingly, you who are listening to me now should remember that I have taught that one should not inquire into the predestination of the hidden God but should be satisfied with what is revealed through the calling and through the ministry of the Word. For then you can be sure about your faith and salvation and say: “I believe in the Son of God, who said (John 3:36): ‘He who believes in the Son has eternal life.'” Hence no condemnation or wrath rests on him, but he enjoys the good pleasure of God the Father. But I have publicly stated these same things elsewhere in my books, and now I am teaching them by word of mouth. Therefore I am excused.

A few observations:

1. The memory of Johann von Staupitz (d. 1524), his Augustinian superior from years before and immediately after 1517, is quite powerful (his image accompanies this post). This lecture is almost thirty years after these words were likely spoken. But the image of predestination shining from the wounds of Christ and the blood shed for us would be hard to forget. This memory has a slightly different focus from the famous one described in 1545 (the “Tower Experiences”) where the young Luther is weighed down by issues relating to the righteousness of God. A kind of spiritual crisis resulting from the mystery of predestination is perhaps important for coming to grips with Luther’s experience of God and the theological tradition during the 1510s.
2. Here Luther is quite explicit about his concerns about false interpretations of Bondage of the Will. He predicts that some of his statements about the hidden God in that work from 1525 will be misinterpreted after his death. Indeed, that is the reason given for the length of this account of predestination in his lectures on Genesis.
3. The issue of assurance is central. It was a major issue during the 1518 confrontation with Luther by Cardinal Cajetan, the representative of the papacy and a major Thomist (here and here). Cajetan worried that Luther’s view of assurance – “there is no difference at all between one who doubts and one who is damned” – might actually be a burden to believers who, while not doubting God’s mercy or power to save, still doubt their own disposition for receiving the grace of the sacrament. This remained an issue at the Council of Trent which condemns what the Council fathers understood to be Luther’s teaching on assurance in Canon 13.
4. Luther warns not only against despair but also against a certain sort of presumption which – using the words of an ancient hermit – “tr[ies] to ascend into heaven and to place both feet there.”
5. Inquiring into the hidden purposes of God is associated with the original sin itself.
6. As noted in the previous posts, Luther links this assurance to the sacraments. And there is a clear connection here with the Incarnation. God has revealed Himself so that we can see Him and touch Him.
7. This isn’t really all that remarkable because Luther included the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament in the major translation of the Bible into German — as non-canonical but “useful” — but the reference to Sirach is still noteworthy.
8. We might claim that no great theologian has ever said – as Luther notes in his lecture – that predestination makes it pointless to “hear the Gospel.” But I just spoke to someone very close to me this morning who reliably reported hearing that very thing from the leadership of his church. Luther’s warning is not in vain.
9. Perhaps there is some qualification of the dialectic between the hidden God and the God revealed on the Cross when Luther says: “If you believe in the revealed God and accept His Word, He will gradually also reveal the hidden God; for ‘He who sees Me also sees the Father,’ as John 14:9 says.”