LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

BAUE: THE CURRENT DEBATE ON PREDESTINATION 19
As Schmelder outlines the developments, the key questions were: Is
predestination the cause of faith Yes, said the Missouri Synod. Salvation is
by grace alone. Not so, held the Iowa Synod and the Joint Synod of Ohio,
arguing that faith is the cause of predestination. Predestination to salvation
was intuitu fidei—“on account of faith”. This to the orthodox Lutheran mind
was plain synergism, but the Methodist church was surging in the 19 th
century, and Arminian theology—so congenial to the American spirit—was
influencing even the Lutherans. Thus arose the Predestinarian Controversy
in the Synodical Conference. The chief protagonist was F. A. Schmidt
(1837-1928), who had been proposed for the St. Louis seminary faculty. He
accused Missouri of crypto-Calvinism for teaching election by grace alone
without the co-operation of man’s free will. Schmidt thus held the intuitu
fidei position, and publicly opposed Walther on election.
Edward Busch, in Currents in Theology and Mission, argues in favour of
predestination intuitu fidei. 3 In his view, the old Lutherans (Andreae, Johann
Gerhard, Quenstedt, Baier, Hollaz) held that election was intuitu fidei, and
that what brought about the Predestinarian Controversy “was that Walther
was apparently changing his mind”. 4 Did Walther and the old Lutherans hold
this view According to Busch, they did. He goes on:
The concept of “in view of faith” or intuitu fidei, that God had elected people
in view of their final faith, had originally been developed to safeguard the
idea (against the Calvinists) that God sincerely used the means of grace to
bring people to faith in Christ. Faith obviously was necessary before any
“elect” could be saved. So the nineteenth-century knee-jerk reaction to any
challenge to intuitu fidei, to anything that sounded as if faith wasn’t
necessary, was to call that challenge, “Calvinistic.” 5
But Schmelder, writing in 1977, presents conclusive evidence from primary
sources that Walther rejected intuitu fidei—evidence that Busch, writing in
1982, completely and inexcusably ignores.
Walther responded to Schmidt’s accusations at a conference in
Altenburg, Missouri, in 1877, where he said, “It is false and wrong to teach
3 Edward Busch “The Predestinarian Controversy One Hundred Years Later”, Currents in
Theology and Mission 9.3 (1982): 133-34. Currents was the theological journal of Christ
Seminary-Seminex, the breakaway school founded by liberal, ex-Concordia Seminary, St.
Louis, faculty and students who participated in the 1974 Walkout. Both Schmelder and Busch
draw on the Predestinarian controversy as a way to reflect on Seminex conflict, which was
still current in the LCMS at the time they were writing. Not surprisingly, Busch dismisses the
dogmatic issues in the Predestinarian controversy by saying, “This controversy was a
complex combination of personality, theology, and inflamed tempers” (137). In his view, the
Synodical Conference should never have broken up over the mere quibbling of theologians.
Later in the article he advocates Gospel reductionism as basis for church fellowship (146).
4 Busch, 134.
5 Busch, 136.