# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1857_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Certain Matters Connected Therewith, etc. 19

-pen, for He did not give Pharaoh grace or spirit inwardly, p. 85 below, because He knew him from eternity as such, as he was, from whom grace rather withdraws itself by a just judgment — the divine prescience is brought out yet more clearly in what follows by the words: "Therefore He was certain" —,) "in the manner as I have said above, namely, that God was certain that He could not withhold the almighty general workings in Pharaoh or for Pharaoh's sake, since God cannot rest but must work at all times. Moreover He was also certain that Pharaoh's will was by nature evil and turned away from God, and could not accept God's word or work, which was contrary to him. Therefore He was certain that, if the burning desire to will evil remained in Pharaoh through the almighty working, and God also outwardly held before him His word and works, which were contrary to him, it could not happen otherwise than that Pharaoh had to stumble and be hardened. But if God had withheld His almighty working from Pharaoh at the time when He let Moses' offensive preaching be held before him, and if we here supposed that Pharaoh's will had been left to itself alone" (that is, had acted by its own power, without having been first known and willed by God, and therefore without having been, in time, accompanied and pervaded in its natural understanding by His cooperation), "then perhaps it might be spoken of, whither he might then have turned. But now, since he is driven and moved to will, his will is nevertheless not compelled by force (for he is not compelled against his own will), but by the natural, almighty working of God he is driven to will something, naturally and gladly, as good as he himself is (but he is ungodly and evil by nature); therefore he cannot do otherwise than stumble and be hardened."

It would trespass too closely upon the willing and working of God, if we did not absolutely and unconditionally grant that God, what He foreknows as coming to pass in the future, has at the same time already determined it as such; for He indeed is the one who works all things without exception according to the counsel of His will, Ephesians 1:11; unconditioned freedom is the principle of His being, which is itself simply His own act, the presuppositionless primal beginning of being; He Himself is who He is because He wills it — how much more, then, that which is or will be as the finite; He thus thinks everything in advance, in that He has ordered everything beforehand, and because He has foreseen it, He has also thereby resolved that it should so come to pass. *) If, accordingly, our church theology

*) Note: "Prius et posterius secundum nostrum intelligendi modum (likewise Gerhard: ratione nostri conceptus) in aeternitate (before or after the beginning of the world) concipi potest ratione coexistentiae temporis; sed id fit tantum per extrinsecam denominationem a creatura existente in tempore, cujus Fundamentum non in Deo est — successio in nostra mente est, non in aeternitate." (Quenstedt, loc. cit., p. 313.) It is self-evident that the doctrinal concept does not intend to extend what is mentioned here so far as though, for the divine being in general, the succession of moments of time (as the necessary means of existence of the objects of His knowledge in the realm