# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1863_S296
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

296 Some Remarks on a New Apology for the Reformed Church.

[continuing: "...that man is not altogether, in spirit-]ual matters dead to the good, but rather badly wounded and half dead; wherefore, although the free will is too weak to make the beginning, and of its own powers to convert itself to God and to be obedient with the heart to God's law, nevertheless, when the Holy Spirit makes the beginning and calls us through the gospel and offers his grace, forgiveness of sins, and everlasting blessedness: then the free will, out of its own natural powers, can meet God (occurrere) and, in some measure — though little and feebly — do, help, and cooperate toward it, fit and apply itself to the grace of God, and lay hold of, accept, and believe the same and the gospel; and likewise, in the continuation and preservation of this work, cooperate out of its own powers alongside the Holy Spirit." At the same time the Formula of Concord also rejects all the modes of speech that involve this synergism. It writes: "As for the sayings of Chrysostom and Basil: Trahit Deus, sed volentem trahit [God draws, but he draws the one who is willing]; tantum velis, et Deus praeoccurrit [only will it, and God comes to meet you]; likewise the saying of the schoolmen (the Scholastics): Hominis voluntas in conversione non est otiosa, sed agit aliquid [man's will in conversion is not idle, but does something] (that is: God draws, but he draws the one who is willing; likewise, will only, and God will come to meet you; likewise, man's will is not idle in conversion, but works something) — these sayings, introduced to confirm the natural free will in man's conversion, against the doctrine of God's grace, are, from the explanation set forth above, manifestly not conformable to the pattern of sound doctrine, but contrary to it, and are therefore, when speaking of conversion to God, rightly to be avoided. For the conversion of our corrupted will, which is nothing other than an awakening of it from spiritual death, is God's work alone." Hence, in what follows, the Formula of Concord also defends Luther's statement "that man, as regards his conversion, behaves purely passively [pure passive], that is, does nothing whatever toward it, but only suffers what God works in him, .. tanquam in subjecto patiente [as in a passive subject], that is, that man does nothing and works nothing, but only suffers." And when Melanchthon had spoken of three causes of conversion and listed the will of man as the third, the Formula of Concord also expressly rejects this manner of teaching, as one by which "the young were grievously led into error," in that "the understanding and will of the unregenerate man are nothing else but the subjectum convertendum [the subject to be converted], that is, that which is to be converted — namely, the understanding and will of a man spiritually dead, in whom the Holy Spirit works conversion and renewal; toward which work the will of the man who is to be converted does nothing, but lets God alone work in it." Finally, the Formula of Concord also speaks against Melanchthon's expression that free will after the fall is only "hindered in many ways." For in the article on original sin it says, namely: "Accordingly we reject and condemn it when it is taught . that the