s the death of a sinner--yet
sin and death could never have entered the world without His permission.
Also the will of fallen man receives its power to will from God, and its
every resolve and consequent act proceeds just as God has foreseen,
ordained, or permitted it. The evil quality of all such acts, however,
does not emanate from God, but from the corrupt will of man. Hence free
will, when defined as the power of man to nullify and subvert what God's
majesty has foreseen and decreed, is a nonent, a mere empty title. This,
however, does not involve that the human will is coerced or compelled to
do evil, nor does it exclude in fallen man the ability to choose in
matters temporal and subject to reason.

But while holding that we must not deny the majesty and the mysteries of
God, Luther did not regard these, but Christ crucified and justification
by faith in the promises of the Gospel, as the true objects of our
concern. Nor does he, as did Calvin, employ predestination as a
corrective and regulative norm for interpreting, limiting, invalidating,
annulling, or casting doubt upon, any of the blessed truths of the
Gospel. Luther does not modify the revealed will of God in order to
harmonize it with God's sovereignty. He does not place the hidden God in
opposition to the revealed God, nor does he reject the one in order to
maintain the other. He denies neither the revealed universality of God's
grace, of Christ's redemption, and of the efficaciousness of the Holy
Spirit in the means of grace, nor the unsearchable judgments and ways of
God's majesty. Even the Reformed theologian A. Schweizer admits as much
when he says in his _Zentraldogmen_ (1, 445): "In the Zwinglio-Calvinian
type of doctrine, predestination is a dogma important as such and
regulating the other doctrines, yea, as Martyr, Beza, and others say,
the chief part of Christian doctrine; while in the Lutheran type of
doctrine it is merely a dogma supporting other, more important central
doctrines." (Frank 4, 264.)

Moreover, Luther most earnestly warns against all speculations
concerning the hidden God as futile, foolish, presumptuous, and wicked.
The secret counsels, judgments, and ways of God cannot and must not be
investigated. God's majesty is unfathomable, His judgments are
unsearchable, His ways past finding out. Hence, there is not, and there
cannot be, any human knowledge, understanding, or faith whatever
concerning God in so far as He has not revealed