Luther taught that God does 100% of the saving and that man can do NOTHING to positively affect his salvation (monergism). If man has to 'do' anything to be saved, including choosing to have faith, then salvation isn't by "Grace Alone". Luther was clear on this point. You can see early seeds in his interpretations of Romans and it is crystal clear in his work Bondage of the Will. Calvin later took this ball and ran with it.
He is also clear that monergism is not God choosing who is saved due to His Foreknowledge of them choosing. God isn't peering into the future to see who will accept Him, because this would mean that who is or isn't saved is contingent upon human action, which contradicts "grace alone". God actively predestines the saved individuals to be saved by His singular decree. This is crystalized by Luther and Calvin's successors in the Book of Concord (Lutheran) and Synod of Dort (Calvinism). This leads to a thought experiment around what I think is one of the most important aspects of anyone's earthly life.
Say my 1st born is predestined to be saved. Let's call him Bob. My lived experience is my wife and I wanted to have children, we were physically healthy/capable, and Bob was a result of this desire. It seems to me that we could have chosen not to have children if we wanted. Even though it seems that way to me, in a monergistic framework, this couldn't possibly be our choice. God unilaterally decided Bob would exist prior to creation, and that He would save him. He did not peer into the future to see if we would decide to have a kid. He made certain that Bob was born. He HAD to be born. So the choice to be open to life was not actually a "choice" at all.
That's already uncomfortable, but it gets deeper. If God already decided Bob was going to exist, the next question is how this specific "Bob" came to be? He isn't "Bob" unless my DNA and my wife's DNA come together. This means that God's plan of predestination necessitated that I marry a specific woman. So, not only did I not "choose" to try for a child, I didn't really "choose" my wife? When I "decided" that this woman was the person I wanted to spend my life with, it was instead decided for me. God simply gave me the illusion of choice.
What follows after that is really problematic. I randomly happened to meet my wife at a work event I easily could have skipped (or I at least believe I could have). I got that job through a friend at A&M. I met that friend at a summer internship. I learned about that summer internship through a friend of my brother. All of us were at A&M because we made the grades necessary to gain acceptance there and we "wanted" to go there. Our grades were a product of natural intellect (through DNA of our parents) and hard work (that we think we chose). It also means my boss at that job didn't really choose to hire me. I didn't choose to apply for that job. I didn't choose to go to A&M. All of these things were decided by God in order to make Bob.
If any of these were my choices, then God's plan for me to marry my particular wife to make a particular Bob for Him to save is contingent upon human actions, which is 100% in opposition with the reformers. If we were free to make alternate choices, then God would have to wait on our decisions to know who He would save. These decisions cannot be ours in a reformation framework. What's worse, even though they aren't our decisions, He still makes us feel like they are. Free will is just an illusion that God makes us experience. All of the anxiety, worry, despair, anger, happiness, excitement, etc over making a defining choice in your life are all illusions created by God. Even the emotions you have around your spouse and children. Those feelings of choice don't need to be there, but, for some reason, He wants to put them there.
Zooming back out: A child conceived by rape that God predestined to save? The rapist didn't have a chance to make a different decision because that particular child had to be born from that particular DNA combo to fit God's ultimate plan. He's not "permitting" the bad actions. He's not turning lemons into lemonade. He has unilaterally picked for the bad action to happen. Children that were conceived in second/third/fourth marriages? God ensured the divorce(s) happened so the new couple could marry, despite what Jesus says about marriage. Children from affairs? God wanted the affair, despite what the Bible says about adultery. People refusing to procreate leading to today's population decline? God made them want to not have babies. We can back this all the way up to Eve eating the forbidden fruit. If God had this all planned out from the beginning, then Eve HAD to eat that apple to set it all in motion. God decided she would sin from the very beginning. He didn't simply foreknow it. He decreed it to be so.
This teaching clearly makes God the author of sin. Both Luther and Calvin ran smack dab into this issue. They acknowledge it's the logical conclusion, but they knew God can't possibly be the author of sin. So Calvin played word games to try and explain it away (limited free will, man is still morally culpable for actions he had no agency to choose) while Luther and the Book of Concord taught their adherents not to apply reason to this teaching. To go there is to attempt to gain the knowledge of God, and should be rejected. Leave it a "mystery". It reads to me similar to "ignore the man behind the curtain".
I would like to think this is the point where they would have concluded they made a mistake in interpretation, but sadly they did not. I know the Reformation is usually framed as Luther and Calvin restoring "faith alone" to Christianity, but when you realize that "faith alone" arouse out of this foundational teaching, I think it makes sense why they met so much resistance. They weren't restoring. They were creating. Arminius did his best to try and get things back on track, but that meant moving back towards the synergism the reformers condemned the Catholic Church for holding to. Most protestants today hold to a definition of "faith alone" (Arminian) that the reformers they admire would have abhorred. Luther and Calvin would say you and your pastors are heretics leading souls towards damnation. So for all the protestants out there that think the Catholic Church was trying to suppress the truth and the reformers were the heroes, I hope this gives some context to the resistance they met.
I know this wall of text probably won't change any minds (although if Luther was right, I had no choice but to write it and you have no choice but to disagree ) I'm not trying to "win" some denominational dispute. This doctrine of monergistic salvation split Western Christianity. Not the doctrine of "faith alone". Not "scripture alone". Those were reasons given to defend their claim when challenged on the fact that this belief system logically necessitates some truly wicked things be attributed to God's active will, whether they want to admit it or not.
If this actually happened to be thought provoking, I would ask: if you don't agree with the reformers on this foundational teaching, how much trust should be placed in the "faith alone", "grace alone", "scripture alone" teachings they created to defend their theology? "Luther was human, he wasn't perfect" is the normal answer. I agree. So if he was wrong on the very foundation of his belief, surely the rest of the structure he created on this flawed foundation should be held with a high level of skepticism, no?
He is also clear that monergism is not God choosing who is saved due to His Foreknowledge of them choosing. God isn't peering into the future to see who will accept Him, because this would mean that who is or isn't saved is contingent upon human action, which contradicts "grace alone". God actively predestines the saved individuals to be saved by His singular decree. This is crystalized by Luther and Calvin's successors in the Book of Concord (Lutheran) and Synod of Dort (Calvinism). This leads to a thought experiment around what I think is one of the most important aspects of anyone's earthly life.
Say my 1st born is predestined to be saved. Let's call him Bob. My lived experience is my wife and I wanted to have children, we were physically healthy/capable, and Bob was a result of this desire. It seems to me that we could have chosen not to have children if we wanted. Even though it seems that way to me, in a monergistic framework, this couldn't possibly be our choice. God unilaterally decided Bob would exist prior to creation, and that He would save him. He did not peer into the future to see if we would decide to have a kid. He made certain that Bob was born. He HAD to be born. So the choice to be open to life was not actually a "choice" at all.
That's already uncomfortable, but it gets deeper. If God already decided Bob was going to exist, the next question is how this specific "Bob" came to be? He isn't "Bob" unless my DNA and my wife's DNA come together. This means that God's plan of predestination necessitated that I marry a specific woman. So, not only did I not "choose" to try for a child, I didn't really "choose" my wife? When I "decided" that this woman was the person I wanted to spend my life with, it was instead decided for me. God simply gave me the illusion of choice.
What follows after that is really problematic. I randomly happened to meet my wife at a work event I easily could have skipped (or I at least believe I could have). I got that job through a friend at A&M. I met that friend at a summer internship. I learned about that summer internship through a friend of my brother. All of us were at A&M because we made the grades necessary to gain acceptance there and we "wanted" to go there. Our grades were a product of natural intellect (through DNA of our parents) and hard work (that we think we chose). It also means my boss at that job didn't really choose to hire me. I didn't choose to apply for that job. I didn't choose to go to A&M. All of these things were decided by God in order to make Bob.
If any of these were my choices, then God's plan for me to marry my particular wife to make a particular Bob for Him to save is contingent upon human actions, which is 100% in opposition with the reformers. If we were free to make alternate choices, then God would have to wait on our decisions to know who He would save. These decisions cannot be ours in a reformation framework. What's worse, even though they aren't our decisions, He still makes us feel like they are. Free will is just an illusion that God makes us experience. All of the anxiety, worry, despair, anger, happiness, excitement, etc over making a defining choice in your life are all illusions created by God. Even the emotions you have around your spouse and children. Those feelings of choice don't need to be there, but, for some reason, He wants to put them there.
Zooming back out: A child conceived by rape that God predestined to save? The rapist didn't have a chance to make a different decision because that particular child had to be born from that particular DNA combo to fit God's ultimate plan. He's not "permitting" the bad actions. He's not turning lemons into lemonade. He has unilaterally picked for the bad action to happen. Children that were conceived in second/third/fourth marriages? God ensured the divorce(s) happened so the new couple could marry, despite what Jesus says about marriage. Children from affairs? God wanted the affair, despite what the Bible says about adultery. People refusing to procreate leading to today's population decline? God made them want to not have babies. We can back this all the way up to Eve eating the forbidden fruit. If God had this all planned out from the beginning, then Eve HAD to eat that apple to set it all in motion. God decided she would sin from the very beginning. He didn't simply foreknow it. He decreed it to be so.
This teaching clearly makes God the author of sin. Both Luther and Calvin ran smack dab into this issue. They acknowledge it's the logical conclusion, but they knew God can't possibly be the author of sin. So Calvin played word games to try and explain it away (limited free will, man is still morally culpable for actions he had no agency to choose) while Luther and the Book of Concord taught their adherents not to apply reason to this teaching. To go there is to attempt to gain the knowledge of God, and should be rejected. Leave it a "mystery". It reads to me similar to "ignore the man behind the curtain".
I would like to think this is the point where they would have concluded they made a mistake in interpretation, but sadly they did not. I know the Reformation is usually framed as Luther and Calvin restoring "faith alone" to Christianity, but when you realize that "faith alone" arouse out of this foundational teaching, I think it makes sense why they met so much resistance. They weren't restoring. They were creating. Arminius did his best to try and get things back on track, but that meant moving back towards the synergism the reformers condemned the Catholic Church for holding to. Most protestants today hold to a definition of "faith alone" (Arminian) that the reformers they admire would have abhorred. Luther and Calvin would say you and your pastors are heretics leading souls towards damnation. So for all the protestants out there that think the Catholic Church was trying to suppress the truth and the reformers were the heroes, I hope this gives some context to the resistance they met.
I know this wall of text probably won't change any minds (although if Luther was right, I had no choice but to write it and you have no choice but to disagree ) I'm not trying to "win" some denominational dispute. This doctrine of monergistic salvation split Western Christianity. Not the doctrine of "faith alone". Not "scripture alone". Those were reasons given to defend their claim when challenged on the fact that this belief system logically necessitates some truly wicked things be attributed to God's active will, whether they want to admit it or not.
If this actually happened to be thought provoking, I would ask: if you don't agree with the reformers on this foundational teaching, how much trust should be placed in the "faith alone", "grace alone", "scripture alone" teachings they created to defend their theology? "Luther was human, he wasn't perfect" is the normal answer. I agree. So if he was wrong on the very foundation of his belief, surely the rest of the structure he created on this flawed foundation should be held with a high level of skepticism, no?
