dermdoc said:
AgLiving06 said:
Have you yet caught on that the entire Reformed position is based on the way they read "The Bondage of the Will?"
Have you noticed they don't turn to his actual doctrinal works that I listed? They rely on a single letter that Luther wrote decades prior to Calvin being a theologian and expressing double predestination as a belief. Odd isn't it.
So basically you are saying aluther did not believe in double predestination but the Calvinists tried to make it look like he did?
Correct.
As I noted, and you've shown, their entire justification for "Luther supporting double predestination" is to try and read that belief into a single book. The Bondage of the Will.
When you look at the actual history of that book, you find a couple things.
1. It was written well before Calvin came into the picture. Calvin is 26 years younger than Luther.
2. It was not a response Luther wanted to write to Erasmus and he delayed in doing it until his wife stepped in.
3. The language is not careful. Even for Luther, the language is aggressive. It's reported that Melanchthon was really pretty upset with Luther because of the language he used. If you ever read it, it's a verbal beatdown.
4. It's not a doctrinal work of Luthers. We know what those were and have sufficient record of them.
5. When double predestination comes up later in his life, Luther or any of his students do not show any support for it.
6. There was certainly more cooperation between Melanchthon and Calvin, that people look to as justification for how close the two sides were. Forgetting that Melanchthon's students chided him for it.
So what you end up with, as you saw, is a bunch of modern Reformed, looking at a single book, and trying to read double predestination into Luther's theology through that book by using similar words, but changing Luther's meaning.
What they don't do is point to the Small/Large Catechism (which was designed to teach the faith to parents and pastors) or the Smalcald Articles (he directly wrote as his Confession) or in any other truly doctrinal statements that lend support. There's a reason for it and it's that they can't point to those and find support.