# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1863_S298
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

according to his absolute will did not will to save, but determined them
from eternity to sin and damnation, and therefore also did not earnestly
call them — so that God is thus the cause of sin and damnation; so
it likewise by no means asserts, on the other hand, that the cause
of the election and salvation of the elect is their better conduct, their
steadfast faith, or anything at all in them, but rather that this cause
is solely and alone God's free grace and mercy in Christ.
The Calvinists draw this conclusion: if God out of free grace has elected a
number of men to salvation, and He alone does everything to bring them
to faith, to preserve them in faith, and finally to save them,
without their contributing the very least thing to it — then it must, of course,
since all men by nature lie in the same corruption, rest
with God alone that the others do not come to faith, or
do not remain in it and are not saved but damned; it must lie in
the fact that he converts and preserves the former by an irresistible working
of grace, while he passes the latter by with his grace and leaves them lying
in their corruption, because he does not will their salvation but has,
for the glorification of his righteousness, determined them from eternity
to sin, to death, and to damnation, and created them in time. And it is indeed
true that unenlightened reason — that is, reason not following the Word —
can do no other; reason must, if it does not inquire of Scripture
and instead follows its own thoughts, draw this conclusion. But not so
our precious Formula of Concord, and with it the whole rightly-believing
Lutheran Church! It does not draw this conclusion. It holds fast to this:
that men become blessed has its ground solely in God's
free grace; whereas that men are damned has its ground
solely in man's own sin and guilt. It
also sees that this cannot be reconciled by reason; it also sees
that, by reason, if men are damned only for their sin's sake, then
the others must be saved for the sake of their being better,
or, if men are saved only out of free grace, the others must be
damned for lack of God's gracious will — yet because
both stand in God's Word, that God has already from eternity elected
the elect solely according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his
glorious grace, and that the damned, while God wills the salvation of
all men, are rejected for the sake of their own sin and guilt*)
— so the Formula of Concord believes, teaches, and confesses both; it does not strike

*) For it is precisely in Romans 9:22-23 that this distinction is made, that of the
"vessels of mercy" it is said: "which he had before prepared" or appointed
"unto glory" (ἃ προητοίμασεν εἰς δόξαν), whereas of the "vessels of wrath" it says
only: "which are fitted" unto destruction (κατηρτισμένα εἰς ἀπώλειαν). Of
the latter, then, it says, by way of distinction, neither that God fitted them, nor that
he had already before fitted or appointed them, but only that they are prepared for destruction;
a distinction which does not emerge as clearly in Luther's translation as it does in the original text.