Douglas A. Sweeney is professor of church history and the history of Christian thought and director of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He I’ve frequently been asked whether Luther was a Calvinist. The answer, of course, is no. Calvinism didn’t emerge until the end of Luther’s life. Arminianism emerged long after Luther had passed away. So Luther himself never engaged the controversy that divided Reformed Protestantism after the Reformation.

It’s true: Calvin was called a Lutheran in the early years of his ministry. And there are notable similarities between the two. But as the Reformed movement grew, it grew apart from Lutheranism in some noteworthy ways. And as Lutheran thought developed during and after the Reformation, Lutherans leaned toward Arminians more than Calvinists on a few of the doctrinal issues that divided the latter groups.

So perhaps it’s worth a minute or two to walk through the ways in which Lutherans came down on the five “points” of Calvinism. We should all understand by now that there’s far more to Calvinism than five simple points, that the five points themselves were sharpened after Calvin’s death, and that some think that Calvin himself did not affirm them all. So Calvinist friends, hold your fire. The goal here is not to oversimplify your faith, but to scan the ways that leading early Lutherans addressed the matters fought about most fiercely at the Reformed Synod of Dordt (1618–1619), and in the subsequent debates between Calvinists and Arminians.

Four Branches

Before we attack this matter directly, let me take just a minute to remind us that, technically speaking, the debate between Calvinists and Arminians really divided but a minority of the early Protestant world.

Despite the tendency of some to assume that all evangelicals fall somewhere on the continuum between Calvinism and Arminianism, it is important to remember that there were four main branches of the Protestant Reformation—Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, and Church of England—and that Calvinists and Arminians were on the same branch (though their controversy would captivate the Church of England as well, and was foreshadowed by developments in the doctrine of the English Reformation).

These branches parted gradually over the course of the 16th century. It wasn’t until the mid-to-late 16th century, for example, that the lines between the Lutherans and the Reformed were drawn clearly. And it wasn’t until the late 16th and early 17th centuries that the lines were drawn starkly between the Calvinists and Arminians.

Arminianism emerged on the Reformed branch of Protestantism. Arminius and his followers considered themselves to be Reformed. They said they wanted to reform Reformed Protestant theology in response to what they deemed unhealthy Calvinist extremes.

Nevertheless, the Synod of Dordt changed the equation once and for all—and eventually affected people all over the Protestant world. So without any further ado, here’s where the Lutherans came down on the poorly named five points of Calvinism.

Lutherans and the Five Points of Calvinism

I’ll take this question point by point, offering evidence from reliable and accessible translations of classic Lutheran texts and confessions: the American edition of Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, Helmut T. Lehmann et al. (Concordia Publishing House and Fortress Press, 1957); the latest English edition of the Lutheran Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Fortress Press, 2000), which contains all the authoritative Lutheran confessions, such as the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord; and Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3d ed., trans. Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs (Augsburg Publishing House, 1899), a compendium of Lutheran scholastic theology. These are exceptionally important Protestant theological sources, which should be read and used frequently by evangelical leaders.

Bear in mind that we are barely scratching the surface in this article. This is a skeletal presentation based on selected representatives of early Lutheran thought. Most Lutherans use the Lutheran confessions when interpreting Bible doctrines such as these. But there is diversity of opinion on the relative weight and authority of the other materials I quote below. Continue reading →