# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1892_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36 Proceedings of the fourteenth convention

perseverance. That is the Calvinist solution, which however contradicts the teaching of Scripture on the universal grace of God in Christ and is therefore false.

Others say that man by nature still has so much spiritual power that he can accept the grace offered to him; if he does not use this power, he is himself to blame for his ruin. This is the Semi-Pelagian doctrine, which however contradicts the doctrine of the spiritual death of all natural human beings. Still others assert that man indeed cannot make the beginning of his conversion, but that when the Holy Spirit makes the beginning and offers his grace, forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation, the free will can, out of its own natural powers, meet God and contribute something, however little, help and cooperate, to prepare itself for the grace of God and apply it, and to grasp the same, accept it and believe the Gospel. That is the synergistic solution, but a solution that contradicts Scripture, denies the greatness of the corruption of original sin, the spiritual death, the enslaved will, and knows only a weak will, a wounding, a half-dead condition.

A synergistic solution, further, is the one popular today with many Lutherans. According to them God through his Word makes the unfree man free to such an extent, gives the powerless so much power, that he can now decide for faith himself, now conduct himself rightly toward the grace, now will, now let the conversion please him. Although the unconverted could now have "willed," "conducted themselves rightly," "let the matter please them," "decided for themselves," they did not do it. But they obviously posit a conversion before the conversion, a life before the awakening, a faith before the faith. As soon as man can do anything in spiritual matters, he already has life; if he wills to be converted, he is converted; if he wills to believe, he already believes. Likewise, in those who come to faith, they let faith, as a result of their willing, deciding and conduct, not be God's work alone, even though they assert that the converted had been converted by God's power; according to their teaching conversion is no divine begetting, no regeneration, the converted are no new creatures, not his work created in Christ Jesus. For whoever believes that conversion is a regeneration, God's work from beginning to end, that precisely the will is only the object of conversion, that in conversion man conducts himself *pure passive* [purely passively], wholly inactive in all that brings it about, but very active in all that hinders it, that he, an enemy of God, resists the Word and will of God until God raises him from death, must confess that here lies a mystery which he cannot explain. Whoever nevertheless wants to explain here not only strays onto false paths, in that he other truths of the