# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S481
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

INTERSYNODICAL AND DOCTRINAL MATTERS 481

but precisely the Scriptural teaching of the Lutheran Church as
it is presented in detail in the Formula of Concord (Triglot, p. 1081,
~ §§ 57—59. 60 b. 62. 63; M., p. 716 £.): “That one is hardened, blinded,
given over to a reprobate mind, while another who is indeed in
the same guilt, is converted again, etc., — in these and similar ques-
tions Paul fixes a certain limit to us how far we should go, namely,
that in the one part we should recognize God’s judgment. For
they are well-deserved penalties of sins when God so punished
a land or nation for despising His Word that the punishment
extends also to their posterity, as is to be seen in the Jews. And
thereby God in some lands and persons exhibits His severity to
those that are His in order to indicate what we all would have
well deserved and would be worthy and worth, sincé we act
wickedly in opposition to God’s Word and often grieve the Holy ,
Ghost sorely; in order that we may live in the fear of God and
acknowledge and praise God’s goodness, to the exclusion of, and
contrary to, our merit in and with us, to whom He gives His Word
and with whom He leaves it and whom He does not harden and
reject. ... And this His righteous, well-deserved judgment He
displays in some countries, nations, and persons in order that,
when we are placed alongside of them and compared with them
(quam simillimi illis deprehensi, i. e., and found to be most similar
to them), we may learn the more diligently to recognize and praise
God’s pure, unmerited grace in the vessels of mercy,... When we
proceed this far in this article, we remain on the right way,.as
it is written, Hos. 13, 9: ‘O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself;
but in Me is thy help.’ However, as regards these things in this
disputation which would soar too high and beyond these limits,
we should with Paul place the finger upon our lips and remember
and say, Rom. 9, 20: ‘O man, who art thou that repliest against
God?’” The Formula of Concord describes the mystery which
confronts us here not as a mystery in man’s heart (a “psychological”
mystery), but teaches that, when we try to understand why “one
is hardened, blinded, given over to a reprobate mind, while another,
who is indeed in the same guilt, is converted again,” we enter the
domain of the unsearchable judgments of God and ways past finding
out, which are not revealed to us in His Word, but which we shall
know in eternal life, 1 Cor. 13, 12.

16. Calvinists solve this mystery, which God has not revealed
in His Word, by denying the universality of grace; synergists,
by denying that salvation is by grace alone. Both solutions are
utterly vicious, since they contradict Scripture and since every
poor sinner stands in need of, and must cling to, both the un-
) restricted universal grace and the unrestricted “by grace alone,”

lest he despair and perish.
Proceedings, 1947 31