Formula of Concord

The answer: there is no such power. The unregenerate will “is not only averse from God, but has become even hostile to God, so that it only wishes and desires those things, and is delighted with them, which are evil and opposite to the divine will.” We cannot convert ourselves, nor even make a beginning toward our own conversion. Conversion has “two efficient causes only” … “the Holy Spirit and the Word of God” — ⚠ the will cannot be called a third cause acting at the same time (this sentence directly rejects Melanchthon's formula). ⭐ But at the same time: God does not force the will; the Holy Spirit leads the will and opens the heart so that people can hear the gospel; and in outward matters we are free — determinism is rejected. ⚠ The article on original sin closes both doors. On one side it condemns, “as a Manichæan error, the teaching that Original Sin is properly, and without any distinction, the very substance, nature, and essence of fallen man” (this is where Flacius fell); on the other it condemns the teaching that sin is only a slight corruption of human nature, as something that leads to Pelagianism.

⭐⭐Three articles on the line of justification — it settled three quarrels at once. This confession did not deal only with original sin and free will. The three great quarrels over justification inside 16th-century Lutheranism were also settled by it at one stroke, and all three times in exactly the same way: both extremes rejected, and the middle way stated clearly again.

Article III · the answer to the Osiandrian controversy. The question was put like this: is Christ our righteousness according to his divine nature (Andreas Osiander) or according to his human nature (Francesco Stancaro)? The Formula reports the Osiandrian side's view this way: “all the sins of men, compared with that Godhead thus indwelling by faith, are like one drop of water compared with the broad sea.” Both are rejected. The positive statement: Christ is truly our righteousness, “but yet neither according to the divine nature alone, nor according to the human nature alone, but the whole Christ according to both natures, to wit: in his sole, most absolute obedience which he rendered to the Father even unto death, as God and man”. It also declares that God remits our sins “of mere grace, without any respect of our works, going before, present, or following, or of our worthiness or merit.” ⭐ Notice the grammar of this sentence — it uses Chalcedon's two natures, without separation, without confusion, to locate whose righteousness it is. A ruling in Christology became, 1,126 years later, a tool in a quarrel over justification.

Article IV · the answer to the Majoristic controversy. Both sides are rejected. It condemns the phrases “That good works are necessary to salvation” (Georg Major) and, likewise, “that no one has ever been saved without good works”; and it condemns “this bald phrase, full of offense and pernicious to Christian discipline: That good works are detrimental to salvation” (Amsdorf). ⚠ What it rejects are two formulas, not two concerns.

Article VI · the answer to the antinomian controversy. It affirms the third use of the law for believers: that regenerate men, “to all of whom, nevertheless, much of the flesh still cleaves, for that very reason may have some certain rule after which they may and ought to shape their life”. And it condemns as “a false and pernicious dogma, contrary to Christian discipline and true piety” the teaching that the law “is not to be set forth before the godly and true believers, but only before the ungodly, unbelievers, and” the impenitent. ⚠ This article was not a quarrel between the two parties — here the Gnesio-Lutherans and the Philippists agreed, and joined forces against a third opinion.