# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1857_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Certain Matters Connected Therewith, etc. 21

everything is necessary and must happen; but I have at the same time also stipulated therewith, that one should look to the God who has revealed Himself —. Therefore you should bear in mind —, that I have taught this thus: namely, that one should not inquire after the providence of the hidden God, but that one should be content with the providence that is revealed through the call and through the office of the ministry; for there you can be certain of your faith and salvation, etc." Cf. Sermons on Genesis (vol. I, p. 9), Preface: "Whoever understands this (that God made the whole world out of nothing, that everything stood solely by His word and command, that He does, creates, and works all things in heaven and on earth), soon becomes aware that he can move not a single vein, nor have even a single thought, without God having to work it, etc." (the thought, insofar as it is one — not so far as it has evil in us for its basis.) P. 15: "There is not a single speck of dust nor a single drop, with which God does not have to do, and which He does not set in motion."

Proposition IV.

When older and more recent Socinians believed they had to exempt future contingent events from the divine omniscience, in order to save the freedom of human actions, they no doubt feared the apparent consequence that follows not so much from God's never-failing providence as rather from His unchangeably fore-willed determinations. For this much is certain, that every creaturely thing is comprehended within the realm of omnipotence, which moves, stirs, creates, and does all things, so that it is driven and must follow its eternal, unavoidable working; and, on a higher plane, man — who, as a self-conscious spirit of divine lineage, cannot feel himself by virtue of God's inward and most powerfully effective presence without also becoming aware of Him. (Acts 17:28. Romans 11:36. Colossians 1:17. Hebrews 1:3. Revelation 4:11, especially 1 Corinthians 12:6. Ephesians 1:11, 23. Psalm 139:10.) But the result we had gained thus far was this: the one side of necessity from God's part does not therefore exclude the (equally warranted) side of the possibility-of-being-otherwise within the creaturely. The difficulty of the question was no longer directed at whether the certainty of divine knowledge in itself and the necessity of what occurs were one and the same thing, but rather at how that which is borne up by God's knowing as well as by His willing — which conditions all existence (including that of evil) — can be, in its measure, free, according to the understanding of one who holds contingency — that something, or something else in its place, can equally be done or left undone — to be a requirement for the actions, in spiritual domains, of a being created in the image of God. We have recognized the possibility, just as we have recognized, that both sides of the relationship — however difficult it may always be for us — must be thought together, as soon as it is proven that contingency is real. What we now have to examine more closely, before all else, is,