The tensions resulting from Luther’s and Melanchthon’s varying approaches [regarding predestination] began to surface in the early 1560s in the conflict between Marbach and Zanchi, a controversy that contributed much to the need for Article 11’s inclusion in the Formula of Concord. . . . the occasion for Article 11 of the Formula of Concord arose primarily from a debate in the Strasbourg church between Lutheran pastor Johann Marbach (1521-1581) and the Reformed theologian Jerome Zanchi (1516-1590). This battle of the late Reformation resulted in a further entrenching of one of the main dividing lines between Lutheran and Reformed orthodoxy, thereby exerting a major influence on determining the Formula of Concord’s position on predestination. Here in Strasbourg, in the late 1550s and early 1560s, the lines of division were practically drawn fifteen years before they were confessionally formulated in Lutheran symbolism. . . .

Neither Marbach nor Zanchi charged the other with denying election, but they disagreed on how it should be preached; more specifically, they disagreed as to how the believer attains to assurance of election. Marbach could not stomach Zanchi’s Aristotelian, scholastic approach. The entire matter, he insisted, must “be approached from the Word of God and the promises of the Gospel.” Both of them spoke of God’s grace “a priori, that is unrestrictedly from that secret predestination of God, or truly a posteriori, that is from that which has been certainly revealed to us in the Word.” Sounding very much like the Formula of Concord to come, Marbach demanded that Zanchi “lead his auditors to the Word of God and His revealed will alone,” and stated that if Zanchi’s approach was correct, “the divine promises of grace by means of Christ the mediator would not pertain to all generally and universally, but separately to however many were assigned to this within God’s hidden judgment.” Marbach, in refusing to preach “beyond” Christ in the predestination question, felt it necessary to prevent Zanchi from doing so as well. . . . For Marbach, only in Christ can believers come to assurance concerning personal election; for Zanchi, the syllogismus practicus (“These are the signs of the predestined; I have these signs; therefore I am predestined”) is both legitimate and profitable. Indeed, he gives believers a number of clear signs, expressed in formal syllogisms, to determine whether they have been predestined to salvation; significantly, he may have been the first Calvinist to use this scholastic approach to ascertaining personal election. . . .

Despite Zanchi’s attempt to formulate the doctrine of predestination in a biblical and Christ-honoring fashion and his appeals to Luther’s De servo arbitrio, Strasbourg ultimately opted for Marbach’s position. . . . When the Strasbourg Formula was adopted in 1563, it assigned predestination to a subordinate and subsidiary position, and its logical consequence, the perseverance of saints, was denied outright.

Joel R. Beeke, Debated Issues in Sovereign Predestination: Early Lutheran Predestination, Calvinian Reprobation, and Variations in Genevan Lapsarianism, 37, 39, 43, 44.