Note 854 — Chapter XIV · (continued 3)

“The enigmas of predestination were in his case in the last instance inextricably bound up with deterministic ideas—a fact not unimportant for the fate of his predestinarian ideas, for instance, in the hands of Melanchthon.” F. Loofs, “Dogmengesch.,” p. 763. Ibid., p. 757. “He was convinced that he was merely advocating Paul’s doctrine of grace. Yet what he expounds is a deterministic doctrine of predestination which shrinks from no consequences, not even from attributing the Fall directly to God.” Loofs points out, that, according to Luther, Adam fell because “the Spirit [of God] did not render him obedient,” and quotes the “De servo arbitrio,” “Opp. Lat. var.,” 7, p. 207: “Non potuit velle bonum ... id est obedientiam, quia spiritus illam non addebat.” The same author shows (p. 766 f.) how the above ideas remain with Luther even at a later date, and cause him to represent the faith which, in man, is coincident with justification, as “effected by God simply in accordance with His Eternal Providence.” “We can, however, understand how Luther, in his sermons to the people, prefers to state the case as though faith were the condition demanded of man for the forgiveness of his sins and the receiving of the Spirit”; the fact is he “frequently leaves his predestinarian ideas on one side.”