# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1892_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20 Proceedings of the fourteenth convention

doctrine it suffices to point to the holiness and righteousness of God attested in Scripture. What God punishes in man, God cannot have worked in man. God punishes unbelief; therefore he cannot have willed it, cannot have worked it.

Nor is God to blame if human beings born as unbelievers die as unbelievers, say through an eternal decree to that effect. Those Reformed make him the cause of this who indeed do not teach that God willed and ordained the fall of man in order to show his punitive justice on one part, but who nevertheless teach that God, foreseeing the fall, which he did not will, decided to leave a part lying in the corruption chosen by itself, not to have mercy on them, not to send them his Son as Redeemer. For in that case these unfortunate people could not and should not have come to faith in Christ. Their unbelief would be traceable to God. But how blasphemous this doctrine is, and how it is abhorred also by us, has in recent years been testified to by us, more than enough, again and again, over against those who accuse us of Calvinism. This doctrine contradicts the universal grace and mercy of God, his holiness and righteousness. For he has had mercy on all human beings without exception, Rom. 11:32, he has sent Christ as Savior to all, John 3:16, he has reconciled all human beings to himself through Christ, 2 Cor. 5:19, he wills that all come to the knowledge of the truth, 1 Tim. 2:4, he has commanded that the Gospel be preached to every creature, Mark 16:15, he laments over unbelief, Matt. 23:37, and punishes it. This horrible doctrine cannot be refuted more briefly and quickly than from the fact that those who are lost are lost precisely on account of their unbelief, are condemned by God on account of unbelief. How can the righteous God punish unbelief if he has willed it? Indeed, how can there be talk of unbelief, which is rejection of God's grace, if this grace is not available for them, is not offered to them? As certainly as those who are lost are lost on account of their unbelief, so certainly was the grace of God in Christ there for them, so certainly God did not will their unbelief and is not to blame for it.

On this a citation from Dr. F. J. Lütkens' *Collegium biblicum*, p. 637, on John 3:18: "The Lord also does not say, second, that the unbelievers are condemned because God, to be sure, gave a Redeemer to those who believe and also willed that they should be saved through faith in him, but to the unbelievers did not show such grace, but did not give them Christ as Redeemer, and never willed that they should believe in Christ. The Mouth of truth likewise did not speak so, nor could it speak