# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1856_S324
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

324 On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Matters Connected Therewith, etc.

From all this it follows at least this much, that even the believers as such are foreseen from eternity, and, in view of their beforehand-known steadfast faith, are elect — not because they believe, but in foresight of that; rather, because of the divine mercy and the merit of Christ, whose atoning death is so far from being limited by the election that it is, on the contrary, its ground. Hence the Formula of Concord rightly says, p. 861 (Latin p. 619 f.): "And in this respect a Christian should take hold of the article of God's eternal election as it is revealed in the Word of God, which holds Christ before us as the Book of Life, which He opens and reveals to us through the preaching of the holy Gospel, as it is written: Whom He has elected, them He has also called, in that we are to seek the eternal election of the Father in Him, who in His eternal divine counsel has resolved that, apart from those who know His Son Christ and truly believe in Him, He will make no one blessed," etc. It derives election here from the purpose of making blessed only those who believe steadfastly; but this connection of the two is conceivable only as mediated through foreknowledge, insofar as God, who wills absolutely to impart His salvation, restricts Himself, solely under the condition of a persevering faith, to this His counsel of salvation, and has also ordained thereunto all those whom He has foreknown as such and thereby foreseen unto salvation — since it neither can nor shall deceive; for a blind predestination, unilluminated by knowledge, is unknown to the Confession. And thus the strictly Lutheran Leonhard Hutter, who in his Compendium speaks for the most part in the very words of the symbolical books, teaches nothing less than something contradicting this (Ed. Leipzig 1636, p. 332 ff.): Christ, in the decree of election, is considered not only as universal mediator, but also insofar as He Himself is actually apprehended by men through faith, etc. Question 27: Do you then hold,

[the All-knowing conceives] each doer of such actions through something that constitutes his individual personality. The individual specimens in which a species of the natural realm appears are, with respect to that species, merely passive, and therefore, in order to exist ideally in God prior to their outward existence, need only their general type-concept, since they, once set into their existence, realize that concept in a series of causes and effects, all of which follow with necessity from their first determining ground. For this reason the Socinians denied even the possibility that God infallibly foresees our free actions, because with perfect certainty only that could be known which is so and not otherwise determined by its causal connection, whereas the contingentia, as still undetermined in the future, are accordingly foreknown by God, by virtue of the truth of His knowledge, as being precisely such — that is, as still flexible in utramque partem (toward either alternative). Personal beings, on the other hand, who are capable of making their generic idea an object of their consciousness, are also to determine their relation to it themselves, so that they either give themselves over to it or turn away from it; whereby a manifold of elements arises which, on the basis of the individuality originally implanted in each subject, combines into a fixed, persisting point of unity in selfhood. This individuality of the acting person is, in God, the ground of knowledge of the future contingent, which has its sufficiens — not determinans — principium essendi (sufficient, not determining, principle of being) in that person, but for the divine understanding it is the ground of His certainty.