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223 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Syncretism Synergism E diaboli excrementa Calixtinas sordes exquirire. Calixtus answered with his Pietatis ofcium Pii viri innocentiam vindicans. This was followed by writings pro and con, prose and verse, reaching its climax in the appearance of a farce in four acts of three or four scenes each celebrating the installa tion of Deutschmann into the prorectorship at Wittenberg, almost blasphemous in terms. The elector caused the printer to be fined and the author to be imprisoned. Likewise, Strauch, called to Danzig in 1669, was detained as prisoner at Kiistrin by order of the elector of Brandenburg, 1675-78; and the elector of Saxony renewed the edict against writing polemics without special permission. Calo vius now wrote under a pseudonym, and pro duced also Systema locorum theologicorum (vols. v.-xii., 1677), more flighty than the first four and including also the new polemic against Jena. In vain was Spener's caution to him that the effort to secure the recognition of his Consensus was both futile and injurious. Besides a quarrel with his col league Meisner and the latter 's humiliation, 1677 1680, he engaged, by sermons, disputations, and writings, in a warfare on Musmus at Jena, who won his displeasure by rendering his allegations against the syncretists void and was now being condemned as worse than they. He succeeded in having the entire faculty of Jena, including Musaeus, compelled to abjure syncretism, if not to adopt the Consen sus. But the limits of his accomplishment were reached. Johann Georg II. renewed the edict against polemical writing (Jan. 12, 1680), and the printers of De syneretismo Musoei were severely dealt with. With the accession of Elector Johann Georg III. in 1680 began a protective alliance with the great elector of Brandenburg. Calovius had to see his Historia syncretistica (1682), a compila tion issued anonymously and without place, con sisting of the blows he had dealt against syncre tists together with fresh fulminations, refused circulation. This made such an impression on him that he referred two questions to his most intimate followers at Giessen: whether, in view of the po litical syncretism made necessary by the danger from France, a Calixtine syncretism with the pa pists and Reformed was still to be condemned; and whether the strife brought on by the univer sities of Helmstedt, Jena, and Konigsberg, on ac count of the elector of Brandenburg and the dukes of Brunswick, should be buried with an amnesty, or the controversy over syncretism be continued. This was taken by friends and foes alike as a wa vering and a sign of alinement with the court. This Calovius denied in a pamphlet relating the corre spondence thereto and reiterating his anathemas against all his opponents inclusive of the Musaean syncretists. The comprehensive publications, Apo dixis articulorum ftdei (1668), and Synopsis con troversiarum cum htereticis modernis (1685) appeared before his death, which practically closed the controversies. 4. Final Influence: The great work with which Friedrich Calixtus closed his career, Via ad pacem inter protestantes restaurandum (Helmstedt, 1700), was the irenic counterbalance to the Historia syn cretistica republished in 1685. The term syncretism
as name of a party gradually disappeared and came to recur only as incidental reference to varying combinations of the unlike. To be sure, the aftereffects of the strife persisted a long time, specially in electoral Saxony. A result was the aversion to affiliation on the part of the German Lutherans and Reformed for a century to come, as seen, for example, in the indifference of the Lutherans to the French Protestants at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685; q.v.). The peaceable separation of religion and theology and the adjustment of the borders between church and schools, confession and science, were not actualized, though they were frequently on the horizon of promise. According to Calovius pure doctrine is the only necessity; it is ready-made and complete, the ecclesiastical norm, admitting of neither addition nor reduction. According to Calixtus, doctrine is not only not the only necessity but it is also of varying degrees of value within itself, giving room for broad unity on essentials. The controversy lest a cloud of suspicion and prejudice specially over the Lutherans, retarding the progress of these distinctions. The despotic determination to force a Consensus repetitus, as the only and final dogma and theology before which all investigation and progress must fall prostrate, raised up its own factional limits, and the most deplorable result, surviving to the present, is the alienation from the church of educated men, and thereby the demoralization of a great unitary spirit, for the need of which the German Evangelical Church is suffering.
BIRLIOQRAFHY: The principal source is A. Calovius, Historia syncretistica, 1685. Consult further: J. G. Walch, Reli*nsstreitigkeiten der lutherischen Kirche, i. 219 sqq., iv. 666, 10 vols., 4ena, 1733-39; W. Gass, G. Calixt and der Synkretismus, Breslau, 1846; E. L. T. Henke, G . Calixtus ecnd seine Zeit, vol. ii., Halle, 1856; A. Tholuck, Akademisches Leben des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. ii., ib. 1854; W. Gass, Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik, vol. ii., Berlin, 1857; 1. A. Dorner, Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie, pp. 600 sqq., Munich, 1867, Eng. transl., Edinburgh, 1871; G. W. Frank, Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie, ii. 4 sqq., Leipsie, 1875.
SYNEISAKTOL See SUBINTRQDUCTA~ VIRGINES.
SYNERGISM AND SYNERGISTIC CONTRO
VERSY: A type of Semi-Pelagianism in the six
teenth century and the dispute which arose concern
ing it. Synergism is the doctrine of the cooperation
of human effort and divine grace in regeneration.
Luther regarded the spiritual life as
Opinions monergistic, the result of the experi
of Luther ence of a divine act. Faith is a gift of
and God. " Free will determined without
Melanch- grace has no power with respect to
thon. righteousness but is necessarily in
volved in sin." Justification follows
" whenever we are made purely passive with re
spect to God with reference to interior as well as ex
terior acts." God's relation to man is considered as
strictly predestinarian. After the Leipsic Disputa
tion Melanchthon maintained that " man is wholly
incapable of doing good "; that " in the choice of
external things " there is some freedom, but inter
nal effects are not within -human power. " All things
that happen, happen of necessity by divine pre
destination; there is no freedom of will." Con-
