What is the Lutheran view on predestination vs free will?

There's a difference between what Luther taught on predestination and free will and what later Lutherans have taught on this subject. Also there's no unanimity between the different Lutheran denominations on this subject. But just to compare Luther's position with the conservative Lutheran position, the main difference is that whilst Luther followed Paul in Romans 9 in teaching predestination to both heaven and hell, conservative Lutherans only teach predestination to heaven. This truncated predestination was adopted in the Formula of Concord of 1580, some 34 years after Luther's death, and was largely due to the influence of Melanchthon who rejected Luther's absolute predestination.

Luther wrote a book called “The Bondage of the Will” in which he set out, in response to Erasmus, how the will according to Scripture isn't free to choose between being saved and damned and that it depends entirely on God's predestination of a person to either heaven or hell as to whether a person would be saved or not. Luther therefore rejected free will. The Lutherans who came along a generation later didn't like this position of absolute predestination, labelling it Calvinistic, and they proposed an illogical position that God predestines people to heaven, but that those who aren't saved are damned purely because they reject the Gospel, and God isn't in any way involved in the fact that they're not saved.

Arguing with those who hold this ridiculous position is largely pointless. They will admit that the only reason people are saved is because God has predestined them from eternity to be saved and that only the elect will be saved, but they won't accept the logical necessity of the conclusion that those who are damned are damned because God chooses not to save them from eternity (i.e. that God chooses to predestine them to be damned). They insist that God wills to save everyone and that the only reason people are damned is because they’ve resisted the Holy Spirit’s attempt to convert them. In which case this position logically entails that a person possesses a certain degree of free will. However this is denied in the Formula. So those who follow the Formula deny both free will and predestination to hell which is obviously a ridiculously illogical position. However conservative Lutherans have convinced themselves that it must be true because according to them the Scriptures teach this.

The Scriptures however don't teach this. As Luther explains in The Bondage of the Will God's will must be understood in a twofold manner in that from eternity everything must happen, and is predestined to happen, according to God's hidden will of Majesty, but at the same time God also desires everyone's salvation through Christ. It's because conservative Lutherans don't take into account these two wills that they’re reduced to believing in absurdities.

Calvinsts believe that only the ones whom God 'predestined' will be saved. Others believe that God 'predestined' ALL to be saved but not all received.

It decided last year to permit homosexuals in it; this disqualified it as "Christian". As the Bible states it is now a devil following one. The Presbyterian, UCC, and USA Episcopalian are NOT Christian anymore! Disobeying GOD way too much!