# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1855_S237
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

5 Theses on the Final Reprobation of the Ungodly. 237

Thesis 18. If this doctrine is treated in its proper Gospel context and in the order established by God (according to Romans 8:29–31), the twofold soul-destroying effect of the Calvinistic doctrine is avoided: it drives some to despondency and despair through the delusion of an unconditional decree of reprobation, and others to presumption through the delusion of an unconditional decree of election.

Thesis 19. By contrast, the Lutheran doctrine of election by grace is exceedingly precious and comforting in its practical effects, since the believer can be certain of his eternal salvation in the face of every assault from sin, the Law, conscience, death, the devil, and hell. For his salvation rests essentially not on the strength of his faith or on the fullness of evangelical godliness, nor on this or that degree of sanctification within him, but outside himself, in God’s gracious election in Christ before the foundation of the world, according to the good pleasure of God’s will and to the praise of his glorious grace. Therefore, even the gates of hell cannot tear him from his hand (John 10:29).

5 Theses on the Final Reprobation of the Ungodly.

Thesis 1. The final reprobation of the ungodly is that judicial act of God, decreed from eternity, by which, in accordance with his righteous will to punish, he consigns to eternal torment those people whom he foresaw from eternity as persisting in malicious unbelief against Christ. Matthew 25:41–46; 2 Thessalonians 1:6–9.

Thesis 2. The essential and actual cause of this reprobation is therefore not some obscure and unconditional eternal decree of God by which he predestined and created them for eternal damnation, did not send Christ to make atonement for them, does not offer them the Gospel and the Sacraments with saving efficacy, and is unwilling to give them faith, but instead drives them to evil—thereby in fact making God the author of sins. Rather, its sole cause is the evil will of the devil and of human beings, and the latter’s persistent unbelief against Christ and the Gospel, whether a person continually resists the Spirit and Word of God from the beginning, or believes for a time, then falls away and persists in that apostasy. Hosea 13:9; John 15:6.

Thesis 3. Final reprobation is preceded by blindness and the judgment of hardening, whose actual effective cause is that same malicious and persistent unbelief, but in which God’s punitive will already operates in this life in the following manner: