Peter J. Thuesen Predestination, The American Ca

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Do celu tam się wysiada. Lec Stanisław Jerzy (pierw. de Tusch-Letz, 1909-1966)
A bogowie grają w kości i nie pytają wcale czy chcesz przyłączyć się do gry (. . . ) Bogowie kpią sobie z twojego poukładanego życia (. . . ) nie przejmują się zbytnio ani naszymi planami na przyszłość ani oczekiwaniami. Gdzieś we wszechświecie rzucają kości i przypadkiem wypada twoja kolej. I odtąd zwyciężyć lub przegrać - to tylko kwestia szczęścia. Borys Pasternak
Idąc po kurzych jajach nie podskakuj. Przysłowie szkockie
I Herkules nie poradzi przeciwko wielu.
Dialog półinteligentów równa się monologowi ćwierćinteligenta. Stanisław Jerzy Lec (pierw. de Tusch - Letz, 1909-1966)

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.” In reality, Walther declared, God from eternity elected“a certain number” in whom he “foresaw nothing, absolutely nothing” thatmight be worthy of salvation.73 Walther’s “newer theologians” included Friedrich Adolph Philippi (1809–1882), professor at Rostock and a Jewish convert to Lutheranism, who had argued that a certain degree of synergism ought not to be excluded from Lutheran thinking about the process of salvation.Though Missouri theologians prided themselves on avoiding such unapologetic rationalism from the old country, some of Walther’s brethren in the Synodical Conference had become accustomed to teaching election in view of faith and knew that Gerhard himself had used that formula, partly as an antidote against the perceived absolutism of the Calvinists.Walther’s apparent rejection of intuitu fi dei—and his selective reading of Gerhard—therefore did not sit well with some of his colleagues in the synod.74The fateful challenge to Walther soon came, though from an unlikely source.Friedrich August Schmidt (1837–1928) was secretary of the Synodical Conference and Walther’s beloved former student.Born in Germany, Schmidt came to St.Louis with his family as a child and eventually attended Concordia Seminary.After a brief stint as a parish pastor, he won an appointment, on Walther’s recommendation, to the faculty of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.Because the college had been founded by Norwegian immigrants, Schmidt changed his ministerial affi liation from the Missouri to the Norwegian Synod and mastered the art of theological disputation in a language other than German.From 1872 to 1876, he served in a coveted position as the Norwegian Synod’s professor at Concordia Seminary before being transferred to the Norwegians’ newly established Luther Seminary at Madison, Wisconsin.Two years later, a new chair in theology opened at Concordia Seminary, and by some accounts, Schmidt was eager to return to his alma mater.When the Missouri Synod’s convention elected Franz A.O.Pieper instead, Schmidt may have blamed Walther for the outcome.Missouri’s partisans later charged that this was the reason for Schmidt’s attack on Walther.75Whether or not he was motivated by his wounded ego, Schmidt informed Walther by letter in early 1879 that he could no longer abide by the Missouri Synod’s doctrine of election.At Walther’s request, Schmidt summarized his grievances in four “antitheses” to Missouri’s position.Predestination, Schmidt insisted, was not “an election without rules” but rather the “determination to eternal life of all those of whom God foresaw that they willpersevere in faith.”76 After Schmidt distributed his statement to a handfulCatholics and Lutherans157of other pastors, Walther proposed to meet privately with the group after the Synodical Conference gathering in Columbus in July 1879.As Walther explained to a friend, the meeting would afford discussion “in all quietnesswithout causing any sensation and without any disturbance.”77The meeting was indeed held, with Walther, then 67 years old, likely assuming his former role of teacher to the 42-year-old Schmidt.No reconciliation occurred, however, and the following January Schmidt lobbed a grenade when he inaugurated a new theological journal, Altes und Neues (Old and New), for the sole purpose of engaging the predestinarian battle.On the fi rst page of the new journal, Schmidt cited recent Western District reports as evidence of Missouri’s allegiance to a theology that seemed indistinguishable from the “Calvinistic error.”78 Reacting to Walther’s charge that those in disagreement with the Missouri doctrine of election were heretics, Schmidt resolved to “defend our Lutheran skin to the best of our ability.” He went on to blast Missouri’s diminution of human faith, which the new crypto-Calvinists had turned into a “necessity which God wants to accomplish himself,” even in the face of the most wanton resistance on the part of the elect.In Schmidt’s view, Missouri’s strong predestinarianism undermined the sincerity of the gospel’s call to faith in Christ.79Walther was furious, especially at the charge of “crypto-Calvinism,”which for a purebred Lutheran was scarcely better than being branded a papist.Wasting no time, he published a formal response to Schmidt’s “scandal sheet” in Der Lutheraner, for the benefi t of lay readers.In his Thirteen Theses, which the Missouri Synod adopted at a meeting in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in May 1881, Walther repeatedly denounced Reformed doctrines, including the idea of a limited atonement: “We believe, teach, and confess that the Son of God came into the world for all men.and that He fully redeemed all men, none excepted; we therefore reject and condemn the contrary Calvinistic doctrine with all our heart.” Walther further contended that those whom God had particularly elected could not ultimately fall away.This assertion, as he later explained, meant that persons were elected by God’s “unfailing necessity” rather than by the “absolute necessity” claimed by the Calvinists.As for the disputed shibboleth of intuitu fi dei, he declared again that Christ’s merit alone was the cause of election, not any faith orother good conduct foreseen in the elect themselves.80To his opponents, Walther’s salvo betrayed his misrepresentation of intuitu fi dei, which its defenders insisted was about Christ’s merit (obtained through the God-given gift of faith) rather than human merit.Walther’s distinction between “unfailing” and “absolute” necessity, moreover, looked suspiciously ethereal to some observers and raised a host of abstruse questions about justifi cation, perseverance, and other issues connected to election.158PredestinationThe complexity of the dispute became almost comically apparent in January 1881, when the warring factions within the Synodical Conference met for a colloquy at Milwaukee.The participants resolved to debate all the key biblical passages on predestination, but in 10 sessions, the discussion barely moved beyond Romans 8:29 (“For whom he did foreknow, he also didpredestinate”), in which the correct sense of the verb “foreknow” prompteddays of disagreement.81Out of such mind-numbing deliberations, it was perhaps inevitable that the positions of the two sides would fi nally be condensed into warring slogans.The anti-Missourians’ election “in view of faith” emerged as a rival to the Missourians’ election “unto faith,” with the latter formula intended to remove any implication that God’s choice was conditional.Both sides vehemently maintained that they taught in accordance with true Lutheranism, which in their view meant teaching in accordance with the scriptures.Each faction loudly resisted the other’s charge of innovation—decidedly a term of abuse for Lutherans.Indeed, even the allegedly more liberal Schmidt was, like Walther, a dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist whose doctrine was, according to one later observer, scholastic and antiquated, “as if a Kant had never existed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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