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To: aruanan
The question, though, was whether Luther believed in a type of predestination by which God controlled the destinies of every single human being no matter where they ended up, in heaven or in eternal torment. I think these paragraphs from The Bondage of the Will indicate that at the time he wrote this work he did.

And yet 'your thinking he did' doesn't make it so. BOW is chiefly about the sovereignity of God. 5 yrs after BOW, not a trace of double predestination within Lutheranism as a doctrine. Because it isn't explicit in Scripture.

13. On the other hand, we reject also the Calvinistic perversion of the doctrine of conversion, that is, the doctrine that God does not desire to convert and save all hearers of the Word, but only a portion of them. Many hearers of the Word indeed remain unconverted and are not saved, not because God does not earnestly desire their conversion and salvation, but solely because they stubbornly resist the gracious operation of the Holy Ghost, as Scripture teaches, Acts 7:51; Matt. 23:37; Acts 13:46.

14. As to the question why not all men are converted and saved, seeing that God's grace is universal and all men are equally and utterly corrupt, we confess that we cannot answer it. From Scripture we know only this: A man owes his conversion and salvation, not to any lesser guilt or better conduct on his part, but solely to the grace of God. But any man's non-conversion is due to himself alone; it is the result of his obstinate resistance against the converting operation of the Holy Ghost. Hos. 13:9.

Conversion

3,248 posted on 02/04/2011 9:05:07 PM PST by xone
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To: xone
"The question, though, was whether Luther believed in a type of predestination by which God controlled the destinies of every single human being no matter where they ended up, in heaven or in eternal torment. I think these paragraphs from The Bondage of the Will indicate that at the time he wrote this work he did."

And yet 'your thinking he did' doesn't make it so. BOW is chiefly about the sovereignity of God. 5 yrs after BOW, not a trace of double predestination within Lutheranism as a doctrine. Because it isn't explicit in Scripture.

BOW is chiefly about the sovereignity of God.

And predestination to salvation and/or damnation is entirely about the sovereignty of God.

And yet 'your thinking he did' doesn't make it so.

You really must pay more attention to the text. Notice my last sentence above.
"I think these paragraphs from The Bondage of the Will indicate that at the time he wrote this work he did."
Because it isn't explicit in Scripture.

Of course. Notice my sentence introducing the Luther quote:
"There is a much shorter distance from these [quotes from The Bondage of the Will] to the concept of double predestination than there is from any scripture anywhere in the Bible to either single predestination to salvation or double predestination to salvation and to damnation."

3,283 posted on 02/05/2011 7:19:44 AM PST by aruanan
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