# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Dezember 1856_S360
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

360 On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Matters Connected with It, etc.

It must not be left out of account that Luther expressly sets "creating evil
anew" against p. 84: "Before Adam fell and transgressed, everything that
God had made was still very good," and only afterward calls man "evil by
nature" — cf. p. 86: "— the will of Satan, which He finds evil and does not
make evil anew in him — since Satan, through his falling away, has a
corrupted will," etc., etc. —) so only this one thing is conceivable and
posited as possible: that man, by free choice, gave himself over to
temptation and fell into sin; just as Luther himself concedes the
possibility of the opposite in his commentary on Gen. 3, part 1, p. 367
following, cf. part 2, p. 482 — although he, misunderstood by high-flying
spirits, presses above all, in keeping with his purpose here, the point
that Adam, even though he was spiritual, did not preserve his purity, his
paradise, the firstfruits of his created goodness, even for a single
moment. The mere permission of evil without the concursus Dei simultaneus
(that is, a general and immediate influence) — whereby God, in the realm
of His creatures, which like all power and glory exists only out of, in,
and unto Him, would as it were let them slip from His hands through idle
contemplation, without filling and pervading them with life — could of
course not enter into a doctrinal system that ascribed majesty and honor
to God alone, without paving the way for a blind, fatalistic
predestination, because it lets the Word be everything in itself. (Cf.
p. 87: "Here reason will further ask, why then does God not cease from His
almighty working, by which the evil will of the ungodly is stirred and
moved, so that it continues and only grows worse? To this I answer: that
is to demand that God cease to be God for the sake of the ungodly. For to
demand that His eternal power and almighty working should cease means
demanding as much as that He should cease to be good, so that the ungodly
may not grow worse. Now if reason further asks here why He does not change
such evil desire and will of the ungodly, which He nevertheless stirs and
drives, and could well change it — to this I answer: that belongs to the
secret counsel in heaven and to the divine majesty; for His judgments and
decrees are incomprehensible, and it is not for us to search them out, but
to adore them with fear and trembling.") Without ever giving up or denying
that, alongside divine all-efficacy, creaturely freedom — which in itself,
quite rightly according to him, is a libertas a coactione [freedom from
compulsion], and in the creature, which lets itself be driven, is a
dispositiva qualitas [a disposing quality], p. 27 following — can well
continue to exist (cf., among others, p. 53 following, 118, 119 following,
141 following, also 29, etc., etc.; especially, however, the Instruction to
the Visitors published three years later under his authority, part XIX,
p. 637 following — though he prefers to call and understand by free will
that will which is adorned with God's grace, without which it ought,
according to him, to be called an own will rather than a free one —), he
has, by grasping chiefly the one side (p. 28 following), also sharply and
correctly distinguished the other side from it dialectically and defined
it precisely. Not only does he expressly say, p. 84: "Therefore Satan or
an ungodly