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| Confessing Election in the 16th Century | | Date Created: Dec 24, 2003, 10:20 PM |
The Lutheran churches of the sixteenth century offered no explicit treatment of the doctrine of election in their confessional documents until Article XI in the Formula of Concord (1577). Reformed churches, on the other hand, began incorporating this doctrine in their confessions and catechisms early on. When the Lutheran church did come to confess election was it substantially different than the Reformed confessional understanding of the doctrine? How do the two ways of confessing the doctrine of election compare? Specifically, are the concerns of the Formula's Article XI directed at the Reformed confessions and catechisms? Without conducting a detailed historical investigation into the actual intentions of the Formula's authors (whether they had Reformed theologians and/or symbolic documents in mind), we might nevertheless profitably ask if the pastoral and theological concerns addressed by the Lutherans in this article apply to the Reformed church's way of confessing predestination and election. Answering this question would necessarily involve a careful examination of the texts of the Reformed symbolic documents in the light of the concerns articulated in the Formula of Concord. This essay attempts to do just that. I will examine the doctrine of election as confessed in the Reformed symbolic documents of the sixteenth-century confessions and catechisms in order to determine continuities and discontinuities between the Lutheran and Reformed ways of confessing election.
My thesis is that there was no substantial difference in theological content between the two ways of publicly confessingthe doctrine in the sixteenth century. Reformed confessions and catechisms treat the doctrine of election positively as the light that illumines the reality of the experience of salvation, thereby grounding the Reformation doctrine of justification sola gratia in God's eternal counsel. The shadow of preterition (or reprobation), however, finds little or no place in the Reformed church's public confession of the Gospel. The article of election might have any number of minor uses or functions within the system of Christian doctrine, nevertheless, its fundamental confessional function involves illuminating and thereby anchoring the central Reformation confession of justification in God's eternal purpose. Election is confessed in both Lutheran and Reformed communions as the flip side of sola gratia, or better, election is a way of confessing the Gospel of grace from the perspective of eternity. Read more.
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I still like this paper. But I continue to procrastinate about getting it published. I suspect, however, that some of you may find my thesis disturbing. I argue that the Reformed church has not always confessed election in the same way that Westminster confesses it (WCF chapt. 3). In earlier Reformed confessions it is always found in the context of Christ and salvation. Well, read it and decide yourself. If you don't care about what the Lutherns say about election in their Formula of Concord, just skip the first section to the beginning of my treatment of the Reformed confessions.
Since this essay is long and may contain some characters that don't not show up very well in the web page document, you may download it as a pdf file here. |
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