In the same book Luther makes a distinction between the Word of God and God himself,
or between the revealed will of God, which offers salvation to all, and the concealed or hidden will,
which means to save only some, and to leave the rest to deserved perdition. In this way he escapes
the force of such passages as Ezek. 18:23; 33:11; 1 Tim. 2:4, urged by Erasmus, that God does not
wish the death but the salvation of the sinner (namely, according to his revealed will only).^539 But
this distinction puts a contradiction in God, which is impossible and intolerable.
If we except the peculiar way of statement and illustration, Luther’s view is substantially
that of St. Augustin, whom Erasmus, with all due reverence for the great man, represents as teaching,
"God works in us good and evil, and crowns his good works in us, and punishes his bad works in
us." The positive part is unobjectionable: God is the author and rewarder of all that is good; but the
negative part is the great stumbling-block. How can God in justice command us to walk when we
are lame, and punish us for not walking? The theory presupposes, of course, the apostasy and
condemnation of the whole human race, on the ground of its unconscious or impersonal pre-existence
and participation in the sin and guilt of Adam.
All the Reformers were originally Augustinians, that is, believers in the total depravity of
man’s nature, and the absolute sovereignty of God’s grace. They had, like St. Paul and St. Augustin,
passed through a terrible conflict with sin, and learned to feel in their hearts, what ordinary Christians
profess with their lips, that they were justly condemned, and saved only by the merits of Christ.
They were men of intense experience and conviction of their own sinfulness and of God’s
mercifulness; and if they saw others perish in unbelief, it was not because they were worse, but
because of the inscrutable will of God, who gives to some, and withholds from others, the gift of
saving faith. Those champions of freedom taught the slavery of the will in all things pertaining to
spiritual righteousness. They drew their moral strength from grace alone. They feared God, and
nothing else. Their very fear of God made them fearless of men. The same may be said of the
French Huguenots and the English Puritans. Luther stated this theory in stronger terms than Augustin
or even Calvin; and he never retracted it,—as is often asserted,—but even twelve years later he
pronounced his book against Erasmus one of his very best.^540 Melanchthon, no doubt in part under
the influence of this controversy, abandoned his early predestinarianism as a Stoic error (1535),
and adopted the synergistic theory. Luther allowed this change without adopting it himself, and
abstained from further discussion of these mysteries. The Formula of Concord re-asserted in the
strongest terms Luther’s doctrine of the slavery of the human will, but weakened his doctrine of
predestination, and assumed a middle ground between Augustinianism and semi-Pelagianism or
synergism.^541 In like manner the Roman Catholic Church, while retaining the greatest reverence
(^539) "Multa facit Deus quae verbo suo non ostendit nobis, multa quoque vult, quae verbo suo non ostendit sese velle. Sic non vult mortem
peccatoris, verbo scilicet, vult autem illam voluntate illa imperscrutabili." Vol. VII. p. 222. Erl. ed. Op. Lat. The scholastic divines made
a similar distinction between the voluntas signi and the voluntas beneplaciti.
(^540) In 1537 he wrote to Capito, "Nullum agnosco meum justum librum nisi forte De Servo Arbitrio et Catechismum." De Wette, V. 70.
In the Articles of Smalkald he again denied the freedom of the will as a scholastic error; and in his last work, the Commentary on Genesis
vi:6, and xxvi, he reaffirmed the distinction of the secret and revealed will of God, which we are unable to harmonize, but for this reason
he deems it safest to adhere to the revealed will and to avoid speculations on the impenetrable mysteries of the hidden will. "Melius et
tutius est consistere ad praesepe Christi hominis; plurimum enim periculi in eo est, si in illos labyrinthos divinitatis te involvas." On Gen.
6:6, in the Erl. ed. of Exeg. Opera, II. 170.
(^541) Form. Conc., Art. II. and XI. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, I. 313 sq.