ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN CONFESSIONS LC2 46 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 800 825 5234 www.captionfirst.com *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> JOSHUA: Thank you, Dr. Rast. My name is Joshua. And I'd like to ask a question now, if I may. I have learned that Article 2 in the Formula is about the freedom of the human will, something we hear a lot about in our times. It seems to me that the previous article on original sin and this one on the freedom of the human will are very closely related. Am I right about this? If human beings are dead in sin, how can they do anything spiritually good? If fact, if they are spiritually dead, doesn't that mean they can't do anything at all to save themselves? If so, then why doesn't God save everyone? It's all very confusing to me, Professor. Can you help me out? >> DR. RAST: Well, Josh, you asked a lot of questions there in a short paragraph. And I agree with you. This can be a very difficult and very confusing kind of subject. That's part of the reason it was so important to lay the ground work that we did in regard to original sin before and make that careful distinction that we made between original sin not being a substance but an accident to human nature and the fact, again, affirming the fact that God created us. So, again, yes, it is confusing. And I hope I can help a little bit, Josh. But we'll see how it works out. Now, the controversy in regard to the freedom of the will is really actually a very old one, one that goes well, well back into the history of the church. Already at the time of Augustin, late 300s, 400s, you have arguments regarding the capability of the human will really coming to the center of Christian discussions. What does it mean for man to be dead in sin? What does it mean for a human being to be in enmity with God? What does it mean that a person can't do anything spiritually good? Augustin would approach the conversation by making some careful distinctions in regard to human capability. In fact, as he put it, human beings actually exist in three states over the course of their history. Namely, you have the reality that human beings experienced before the fall into sin. And in this respect, Augustin would discuss human beings being able not to sin. Pulsae non peccary (ph) is how he put it in Latin, able not to sin. And what that meant is that human beings had the free will to choose between good and evil. Sadly, of course, we know that they fell, that they chose the evil. And at that point Augustin says from that point Augustin says human beings have not been able not to sin. Non passa, non peccary. (ph) The reality then is that, because of sin coming into the world, because of its embeddedness in the human character, we find ourselves in bondage to sin, choosing to sin, seeking sin, desiring sin all at the expense of the revealed will of God. Then Augustin says there will come a third state for those who are believers, that is, in our resurrected state when we enjoy eternal bliss with our Lord in heaven, when we will not be able to sin, non passe peccary, not able to sin. (ph) Well, the Lutherans are working with some of those assumptions, but they actually break down Augustin's three fold division into a four fold division. And part of reason for that is that the argument surrounding the nature of the human will and human salvation in general, in the course of the Reformation, have centered right on that point. And though we can look well back to Augustin and his arguments with other Christians of his time, specifically in regard to the British monk Pelagius, we mentioned before, who said human beings are free, what we need to look at more specifically in regard to the Formula of Concord is the controversy that existed between and was carried out between Martin Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam during the 1520s. Luther and Erasmus disagreed as to human capability, the ability of the human will to choose the good or the evil. Erasmus was convinced that human beings were terribly encumbered by sin and, in fact, in many cases turned away from God. But he wanted to maintain the capability of the human will at least in a miniscule was saying that human beings participated at least in a very minor sense in their own salvation. Luther, on the other hand, said the effects of sin for the spiritual life of the human being are very simple. The effect of sin is death. The reality then for spiritually dead human beings is that they can do no good thing within the spiritual realm. In fact, their wills are in bondage to sin. And you may have heard of Luther's famous book from 1525 called "The Bondage of the Will," that the will itself is bound to choose sin, to seek sin, and not to choose the good. The reason it always chooses that way Luther would say in the formula here already certainly said for us, original sin. In other words, the bound will exhibits itself in its sinful choices. It indicates that it is, in fact, a reality that original sin infects us when we see human beings choosing to commit actual sins. Put it one more way: Original sin manifests itself in actual sin as the human will chooses those things. Luther and Erasmus never came to a conclusion on this point. In fact, Luther more and more would emphasize that particular point stressing that the bondage of the human will makes it all the more necessary for God to be the one who saves us. And, really, what Luther was aiming at in the end of all this was the assurance of the human sinner. That, in fact, they were God's own child. Luther was convinced that, as long as you left any part of salvation within the realm of the human subject, it would throw the entire question of salvation into an uproar. You could never know. Even if the smallest part was played by the human being and the grace of God completely is at stake. And so Luther says this is a marvelous point because it shows the mercy of God in saving that which is dead and calling to life that which has no life within itself. It illustrates and underscores how we can depend on God as the one who not only begins our salvation but who ends our salvation. And here he has in mind, of course, Hebrews. Jesus Christ is the author and the perfector of our faith. Now, why then, if Luther is this clear on the point, is there a controversy regarding this within Lutheran circles? And here there's great controversy even among the historians and theologians. Some have blamed Philipp Melanchthon for introducing unhelpful language in this regard that led to confusion, especially among his followers in regard to the role of a human subject in salvation. Others have defended Melanchthon saying, while he has different vocabulary, while he uses different language than Luther does to describe the freedom or the lack thereof of the human will and the human will in salvation, substantially their positions were not different. What we can say for certain within our context here is that Melanchthon's students did, in fact, go well beyond Melanchthon on this point. And they did develop their teacher's thoughts or perhaps just his vocabulary in some very unhelpful directions. In fact, there's one man in particular who would underscore this point. A man by the name of Johann Pfeffinger, who was a professor at Leipzig. And in 1555 Pfeffinger wrote a volume titled "Five Questions Concerning the Liberty of the Human Will" in which he demanded the necessity of the human will freely deciding to seek God or not to seek God. The human will had to participate in conversion or conversion could not be considered a reality. Pfeffinger's strong language was adopted by some others within the Lutheran tradition. And it led to some extreme concerns on the part of other Lutheran confessors, in fact, those who were involved with the formulation of the Formula of Concord. And, in fact, then that's why they go through great pains to make a more careful distinction even than Augustin does when they describe the human being and the human being's state within this world. Here we are in article 2 in the epitome of the Formula of Concord, the first paragraph. And they write, "Because the human will is found in four dissimilar situations, the primary question concerns only the human will and capacity, specifically, in the second situation." And here's what they say, the four dissimilar situations are these: "Human beings before the fall, after the fall, after the new birth, and after the resurrection of the flesh." Here you see they depart from Augustin in some basic but important ways. Augustin was willing to talk about before the fall, after the fall, after the resurrection. The Lutheran confessors make the distinction between after the fall and after new birth. And here they get to the heart of the issue, namely, the question of why are some moved from point 2 to point 3? Why are some remaining in sinful situations and others come to faith in Christ? What is at stake here? And this gets to your question, Josh. Namely, that, if people are born in sin, dead in sin, what can they do then to get themselves out of that sin? And, if only God can get them out of that sin, then why doesn't God save everybody? Here another important distinction is made by the Lutheran confessors. Number 1, they want to affirm that God himself is the author and perfector of salvation. Salvation is God's work of grace on our behalf. Secondly, however, they want to affirm that because God works through means, through the preached word, through the administered sacraments, the sinful human will can resist the grace of God. To put it in another way, what they're affirming is that if human beings are saved, it is simply due to the work of God on their behalf. If human beings are lost, it is because they have rejected resisted the Gospel. Try to hold these two things together. Some folks say well you can't do that. It doesn't make sense. The response of the confessors is you'll have to take it up with God himself. For example, John chapter 15, verse 5. Jesus himself speaking here to his disciples stating, "I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing." So the words of the Lord himself say that human beings are incapable of saving themselves, of bringing themselves to salvation, in doing any good work in the sight of God, spiritually speaking. How then does God work in the lives of human beings? Paul turns to that in the Book of Romans, first chapter, 16th and 17th verses. "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel," he says, "for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith for faith." The Gospel is the power of God for salvation. The Gospel is the means by which God works in the lives of sinful human beings. The Gospel is the means through which the Holy Spirit creates faith and sanctifies us in that faith. And Paul gets to that point as well as he discusses the reality in which God works in the Book of Romans, the 10th chapter, versus 14 through 17. He says, "But how are they to call on him whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. But they have not all obeyed the Gospel for Isaiah says 'Lord, who has believed that what he has heard us.'" So, concludes Paul, "Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ." This is God's word through the means of preaching and administration of the sacraments. God the Holy Spirit is at work. The third article of the Creed, the explanation by Luther in the catechism so beautifully puts it. Calling, gathering, sanctifying the whole Christian church on earth from the beginning of time to the end. God's work on our behalf. That's what God does. That's his proper work for us, bringing this good news of salvation. Within that Gospel, there's power to give life where there was none before. This is God's work on our behalf, in that he, through this proclamation of the Gospel, creates and sustains faith in us. So we are saved. If we stand before God in faith and hold to Christ, we can say we do so not because of any merit or worthiness in us, but simply because of God's work on our behalf. This is good news. This is God's grace. But that question remains then why doesn't everybody who hears the Gospel, this great news, why doesn't everybody respond? And we come back to this reality that because God works through means, human beings can resist. If God simply worked according to his power and said, "I will convert the world to salvation," he could certainly do that in the abstract. But what kind of a conversion would that be? What sort of a believer would he have? Would you have a person who holds to Christ, who trusts in Christ? Or would you have a person who is coerced by virtue of God's power into that faith? It's very closely related to this question of original sin once again. After all, why did God allow Adam and Eve to choose to sin? Why didn't he simply give them a will that would seek him? That's not how God works. He gave them the will to choose. They chose evil. That's led all human wills to be in bondage to sin and choose that evil. And, sadly, even when the Gospel is presented in all its clearness and all its beautifulness, still human beings can resist and say no to the gracious gift of God. That's what the formulators are affirming at this point in time. So that, if we are saved, it is because of God's action on our behalf. This is what the formulators were driving at when they wrote, again, in the epitome of the Formula of Concord, Article 3, "Likewise, when Dr. Luther wrote that the human will conducts itself puri passiva (ph) that is, it does absolutely nothing at all, that must be understood in respect to divine grace in the creation of new movements. That is, insofar as God's spirit takes hold of the human will, through the word that is heard or through the use of the Holy Sacraments and effects new birth and conversion, for when the Holy Spirit has affected and accomplished new birth at conversion and has altered and renewed the human will solely through his divine power and activity, then the human the new human will is an instrument and tool of God the Holy Spirit, in that the will not only accepts grace but also cooperates with the Holy Spirit in the works that precede from it." So, in other words, in salvation human beings are puri passive, (ph) purely passive. But through the power of the Gospel, the spirit works a new will, new desires. So that we are enabled to receive the good news of the Gospel of Christ, the forgiveness of our sins. And, in receiving that good news, we then are recreated. The scripture puts it this way: In sin we have a heart of stone. God gives us a new heart of flesh. And that new heart seeks and desires God, clings to him alone and desires to do his will. Interestingly enough, stating that in that third point then, after rebirth, the will does cooperate with God. The new will that we've received through the operations of the Holy Spirit is able to seek God, to fulfill his word in our lives, and to pursue the things of God, even while at the same time the old nature remains fighting against it. So what does this all mean? Well, basically, they're trying to say that they want to affirm, again, very basic points. First of all, that God desires that all human beings be saved. Certainly this is true, or why else would got send his son into the world to carry all of the world's sin to live the law perfectly for all human beings, to pay the penalty once and for all for all human sins? God's desire is that all human beings indeed be saved. They put it this way in paragraph 49 the solid declaration on the free will. "It is not God's will that any be damned, but that all turn to him and be saved." how does this happen? Through the means. Proclamation, administration. And so they conclude, "Therefore, in his immeasurable goodness and mercy, God provides for the public proclamation of his divine eternal law and of the wondrous counsel of our redemption, the holy Gospel of his eternal son our only Savior Jesus Christ, which alone can save. By means of this proclamation he gathers an everlasting church from humankind. And he affects in human hearts true repentance and knowledge of sin and true faith in the son of God, Jesus Christ. God wants to call all human beings to eternal salvation, to draw them to himself, to convert them, to give them new birth, and to sanctify them through these means. And in no other way than through his holy word and through the sacraments." That's God's desire. That's what God is at work doing. That's the point of this article. As soon as we introduce human cooperation into salvation, salvation becomes a question mark. Have I done enough? Have I been faithful enough? Have I fulfilled the will of God to the extent he demands of me? God puts an exclamation point on all of that with the death and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ. There are no more questions. This work is for you. The proclamation of that Gospel calls sinners then to faith in that Christ. It really is no coincidence, you know. Because the next article that comes is about well, imagine that. Faith. The formulators have set us up will now to consider exactly what faith means. So, hopefully, Josh, we made a little bit of sense out of what is a rather convoluted problem. And where we find ourselves today in all this discussion about the freedom of the will and be all that you can be and you can be anything you want to when you grow up, all putting the focus on the human subjects and their actions. The formulators of the Formula of Concord turn us back to one focus, namely, Christ crucified and risen again for us. That's good news indeed.