# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S73
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1884. 71

of whom he knew that he would believe.' See book I of his 'Retractations,' chapter 23, and the book 'On the Predestination of the Saints,' chapter 3." (Loc. de electione, § 166.)

Gerhard, then, did not indeed want to speak as Augustine did, the *intuitu fidei* [in view of faith] pleased him better, but he nevertheless says that Augustine spoke so on account of the Semipelagians or synergists and that it was right. How little right, then, our opponents have when they appeal to Gerhard!

Augustine, as Gerhard mentioned above, wrote a work: "Exposition of Some Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans." In this work he had erroneously said the following: "That God elected in foreknowledge, so that he elected the one of whom he knew that he would believe." And this he later retracted.

So he writes, namely, in the work last cited, directed against the Semipelagians, of the year 428: "Cyprian made the statement: 'In nothing may we glory, since nothing is ours.' And to prove this he called the apostle as witness, who says in 1 Cor. 4:7: 'What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?' And by this testimony in particular I myself also was convinced when I erred in a similar way, in that I supposed that the faith by which we believe in God is not God's gift but is from us in us, and that through it we obtain God's gifts, to live soberly, righteously and godly in this world." (Augustine had thus also thought at first: man must himself, from his free will, accept faith, then God will help him and sanctify him too; if God, to be sure, he had supposed, had not given man the gospel, then man too could certainly not have believed by his own powers; but since he has given it, he can well do so. This Augustine had written, however, before he became bishop of Hippo in North Africa.) "For I also did not hold that God's grace precedes faith, so that through it there be given us what we desired, except in so far as we could not believe if the understanding of the truth did not go before; but I held: that our assenting to the gospel preached to us is our own and that we had it from ourselves. This my error is sufficiently attested by some little books of mine written before I became bishop." (L. de praedestinatione Sanctorum, c. 3.)

Further down Augustine writes in the same work: "The Lord says: 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you'" (John 15:16). (These words had made Augustine particularly clear. Then he saw that if man were elected by God in view of his faith, he would indeed have elected God before God elected him