# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1857_S78
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

The first act of freedom, on the part of this kind of creature, against the holy norm indwelling in them, was self-determination against God (for otherwise this Being's assistance would by no means have been withdrawn from them forever; rather, it would

Deo avertit se a Deo" etc. Cf. Melanchthon, Loci Theologici, Erlangen 1828, p. 64f.: "Deus adest creaturis non ut stoicus Deus, alligatus causis secundis, ut moveat simpliciter, sicut movent secundae, sed ut agens liberrimum sustentans naturam et suo consilio aliter agens in aliis. — Sic agit Deus cum voluntate, sustentans et juvans ordine agentem, sed non juvans ruentem contra ordinem, etsi eam sustentat; sic enim condidit voluntatem Evae, ut esset liberum agens, quod posset tueri ordinem aut deficere —. Secunda causa non agit sine prima, scilicet sustentante, hoc universaliter verum est; sed non semper adjuvante, non enim adjuvat prima effectum, quem non vult: est igitur voluntas Evae immediata causa sui actus, quum avertit se a Deo. — Secunda non agit sine prima, scilicet sustentante; sed multa facit prima causa praeter secundas, qui (sc. Deus) est agens liberum; et secunda libera, ut voluntas Evae, vitiose agit sine prima adjuvante, quia talis facultas est libertas —. Alii sic dicunt: secunda non agit sine prima, positivum quiddam efficiens; secunda, ut voluntas Evae, agit, aliquid delinquens. Hic respondent: agit non positive, sed aberrans ac deficiens." The good, holy movements are supported and furthered by God; but in that moment of their arising, where they could equally well have turned into the opposite, the freedom of the creature stood upon itself alone. In this way the distinction between (good) angels and devils (and the humans who followed them) came to be. But because evil in its origin cannot proceed from the divine causality that embraces everything that is, it comes about that medieval theology — to which the author of the Confession also owed his formation — following the precedent of Augustine and earlier writers, applied to it the concept of privation, by combining Platonic ideas (of matter, of the non ens, etc.) with the doctrines of Aristotle (who posits the steresis as one of the three principles of change, inasmuch as, by the possibility taking on a form and realizing itself as something particular, it is thereby deprived of, or rendered incapable of, another determinacy). Bellarmine and other defenders of Roman semi-Pelagianism based on this mistaken and harmful conclusions about a loss of certain dona supernaturalia in the case of the first human pair (of original righteousness — cf. below, p. 47 — and of the immortality of the body), conclusions which our church dogmaticians opposed, holding that original sin is not a nuda privatio but a vitiosa qualitas, with concupiscence at home even in the higher powers of the soul. The Papists confused metaphysical terminology with ethical. J. Gerhard, Confessio Catholica, Frankfurt 1679, p. 1406, resists this false conception when he says: "Quando concupiscentiam pravam dicimus esse positivam qualitatem, non intelligimus hoc secundum acribeian metaphysicam. Metaphysici subtiliter distinguunt inter rem ipsam et malum rei adjacens, quod semper dicunt esse privativum, non autem positivum quid. Scriptura quando peccatum originis describit, non nuda tantum privatione, sed etiam per pravam concupiscentiam adeoque per vitiosam qualitatem, imitatur modum loquendi ethicis usitatum. Illi enim agnoscunt vitiosos habitus et malas actiones. Juxta metaphysicam acribeian malum consideratur dupliciter, vel abstractive sive in abstracto, vel concretive sive in concreto. Concretive acceptum malum complectitur simul illud, quod deformat seu vitiat, sive sit actio, sive passio, sive habitus, sive substantia, unde dicitur actio mala, passio mala, habitus malus. Abstractive acceptum malum nihil aliud est, quam ipsa privatio boni seu perfectionis alicujus. Priori sensu peccatum est aliquid positivum non per se et formaliter, sed per accidens et materialiter, sive ratione subjecti, cui inest, seu quod concernit." Cf. Quenstedt II, p. 136. Some of those older teachers of the Church who defined evil as a tendency toward nothingness thereby ingeniously connected with this,