ther uncertain and
void, as we are daily reminded and admonished that only from God's Word,
through which He treats with us and calls us, we are to learn and
conclude what His will toward us is, and that we should believe and not
doubt what it affirms to us and promises." (1075, 36.) If God cannot be
trusted in His universal promises, absolutely nothing in the Bible can
be relied upon. A doctrine of election from which universal grace is
eliminated, necessarily leads to despair or to contumaciousness and
carnal security. Calvin was right when he designated his predestination
theory, which denies universal grace, a "horrible decree." It left him
without any objective foundation whatever upon which to rest his faith
and hope.

In like manner, when the doctrine of election and grace is modified
synergistically, no one can know for certain whether he has really been
pardoned and will be saved finally, because here salvation is not
exclusively based on the sure and immovable grace and promises of God,
but, at least in part, on man's own doubtful conduct--a rotten plank
which can serve neither foot for safely crossing the great abyss of sin
and death. Only when presented and taught in strict adherence to the
Bible is the doctrine of election and grace fully qualified to engender
divine certainty of our present adoption and final salvation as well,
since it assures us that God sincerely desires to save all men (us
included), that He alone does, and has promised to do, everything
pertaining thereto, and that nothing is able to thwart His promises,
since He who made them and confirmed them with an oath is none other
than the majestic God Himself.

Accordingly, when Calvinists and Synergists criticize the _Formula of
Concord_ for not harmonizing (modifying in the interest of rational
harmony) the clear doctrines of the Bible, which they brand as
contradictions, they merely display their own conflicting, untenable
position. For while professing to follow the Scriptures, they at the
same time demand that its doctrines be corrected according to the
dictate of reason, thus plainly revealing that their theology is not
founded on the Bible, but orientated in rationalism, the true ultimate
principle of Calvinism as well as synergism.

In the last analysis, therefore, the charge of inconsistency against
the _Formula of Concord_ is tantamount to an indirect admission that the
Lutheran Church is both a consistently Scriptural and a trul