# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1857_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Certain Matters Connected Therewith, etc. 17

"...eminenter et virtualiter se exserant per multa et in multis." (I, p. 297 and following.) Compare Joh. Gerhard, exeg. loc. II, § 110: "Distinguuntur eminenter et virtute, quia essentia divina propter infinitatem suam ea omnia praestat, quae essentia creata per multas et distinctas qualitates praestat, unde fit, ut de eadem divina essentia possimus formare diversos conceptus." It is not thereby meant that God distinguishes nothing within Himself; for then He would also determine nothing within Himself; what, then, should He determine from eternity, how could there otherwise be a will and a knowing in Him? how indeed could He bring forth anything outside of Himself, if He were not also able, within Himself, to determine Himself and to gather this distinguished element together into the One, in the absolute harmony of His knowledge of Himself? how indeed could He distinguish Himself from the world as its conditioning causality, if He did not distinguish determinations within Himself which raise Him, as the substantially Infinite One, far above it? Does He not, then, think both Himself and the world in an eternal manner? If He had no determinations within Himself, then they would first arise in Him with the being of the world — for without determinateness no life, no self-consciousness is possible, whereby a being recognizes itself as something determining and firmly uniting the manifold at the center of selfhood —; then the Absolute would also not be truly unconditioned, He would need the eternity of the world in order to be the Living One from eternity (pantheism). Far be it! He would not be the Infinite One without an inner infinity of determinations, and the world would not be the finite in outward opposition to Him, but both would be one. He, who has life in Himself, John 5:25, independent of every relation to the world, can only be the Infinite in that the moment of determinateness and the finite is in and outside of Him, excluded and included by Him; wherefore Scripture speaks of a divine nature, 2 Peter 1:4, that is, of a totality of distinguished, mutually interpenetrating determinations, from which alone the reality of all biblical anthropomorphisms can be explained, since otherwise God would have to be conceived as without nature. He is the fullness that is simply sufficient unto itself, and the immeasurable wealth of all being, His center everywhere, His circumference nowhere (Gerhard, loc. II, § 91.). Accordingly there belongs to Him a totality of actions perfectly self-contained, which in undisturbed harmony do not negate one another but only confirm one another, however different their effects may be. Yet the power of God Himself, which acts, is one and simple, because He is the highest perfection; it amounts to a denial of the concept of the Absolute if one ascribes that same power to Him as split up into parts or species, as is found among creatures in the differing applications of differing powers to effects. Accordingly there coincide in Him the purpose of His will, the foreknowledge, and the foreordination of the elect, as well as the rejection of those who are not such, just as all the inner determinations that concern His essence likewise coincide; that is to say: thinking and willing, creating and annihilating, blessing and damning are not all one and the same, but rather, when one takes the one