Part 17

Conversion and Natural Powers

Having discussed the point that, according to Walther, forms the chief point of difference between the modern and the old, sound Lutheran theology in the doctrine of conversion and of the election of grace, we shall now attempt to set forth these doctrines themselves in their principal points.

First, the doctrine of conversion.

Luthardt finds fault with both the Formula of Concord and the orthodox Lutheran dogmaticians because they do not have man’s cooperation begin already in conversion, but only after conversion. Walther’s position, on the other hand, is this: no cooperation of any kind on man’s part is to be admitted in conversion, whether from natural or from so-called spiritual powers. Rather, it must be firmly held that in conversion God is the only one who works, while man is purely passive (mere passive) and is merely the subjectum convertendum [the subject to be converted]. If this is not held fast, if man is allowed to cooperate or contribute toward his conversion, then the distinguishing characteristic of Christian doctrine, by which it differs from paganism, is gone; then man is no longer saved by grace; then the doctrine of justification is overthrown; then the certainty of the state of grace also comes to an end. Walther’s expositions of the doctrine of conversion have as their purpose to exclude Synergism in every form, even the most subtle.

Walther first rejects the doctrine which openly holds that man cooperates toward his conversion, or prepares the way for it, from natural powers. Walther maintains the boundaries between the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace. The difference between these two realms, he explains, “is not merely one of degree, but one of kind.” Between nature and grace there is a gulf which only the almighty working of God’s grace can bridge. There is therefore no preparation for conversion on the part of the natural man, whether by an honorable life, by “the normal use of reason,” by education and culture, etc. In opposition to Kahnis, who credits the rapid spread of Christianity on the soil of the classical world partly to that very classical soil, Walther says: “In classical Athens Paul found nothing to suggest that men there were prepared for Christ rather than others; and we think that Dr. Kahnis, too, finds nothing of the kind in classical Leipzig, but rather the opposite, that is, so far as the Gospel is still preached there at all.”¹ Indeed, not only Scripture² but experience as well teaches that outward civil righteousness is no ground of conversion; “for it is often precisely the most vicious heathen who have been the very first to accept the Gospel.” Indeed, “outward civil righteousness is often the most powerful hindrance to conversion. Therefore God without doubt withdraws his hand from many a man and lets him fall into sin and shame in order to bring him to conversion.”³

But neither is there any cooperation toward conversion through so-called spiritual powers or bestowed powers of grace. Cooperation through such powers was precisely the position of the Latermannian synergists in the 17th century, and it is also the position of most modern Lutherans. They say that man cannot, indeed, cooperate toward his conversion from natural powers, but that the man who lives within the sound of the Word and stands under converting grace can be active toward his conversion through the powers of grace imparted to him. This is also the position of the Iowa and Ohio Synods. Iowa says that the man who is not yet converted, but stands under converting grace, can freely decide for conversion through the powers of grace imparted to him; on this “free decision,” it holds, conversion and salvation depend. Ohio says that the man who is not yet converted can, by God’s grace, so conduct himself that conversion is granted to him rather than to others; on this “conduct,” it holds, conversion and salvation depend. What is asserted, then, is that the man not yet converted can be active in bringing about his conversion through powers of grace. It is also against these forms of Synergism that Walther chiefly directed his fight.

Walther shows again and again that this position already contains a contradiction in itself. The right use of the powers of grace, he argues, already presupposes a spiritual principle of life in man; or, to put it another way, a man who could rightly use the powers of grace would have to be converted already. He says: If someone declares⁴

that he ascribes to man a synergy toward his conversion not through his natural powers, but only in the sense that he cooperates through the powers of grace given him for that purpose, that is nothing but a piece of theological sleight of hand. For whoever can himself effect something through powers of grace must either have by nature the ability to put these powers of grace to use, or else already be converted.

Walther speaks at greater length on the same point: Only when we are converted do we ourselves begin to work. The new man must first be born; then he begins to move, to speak, to do something. Before that he does nothing at all, just as a child does nothing in order to be born. Nor, therefore, can man decide for himself (in conversion). Many picture conversion as if a man were set, as it were, at a crossroads where the ways to heaven and hell part; now the choice as to which way he will go is put before him; if he takes the right way, he is converted; if he takes the wrong way, he is lost. This, too, robs God of all honor. For if man can decide for the good himself, then there must after all be something good in him, and the decision itself would be a good work that he performs before conversion.

Those who hold to this false decision theology say, to be sure: Our doctrine takes nothing at all away from God’s honor, for we do not say that man decides by his own natural powers; we say rather that he does it with the powers of grace that are given him, and so nothing at all is ascribed to man. But they do not consider that only one who is already alive can have and use such powers. Take a stick or a stone and imagine that powers are breathed into it — the stone would take no notice whatever of the powers, and everything would remain as it was. Powers presuppose a thing that uses the powers. Man would thus have to be converted already in order to be able to convert himself; he would have to be awakened already in order to be able to awaken himself; he would have to be renewed already in order to be able to renew himself. No; as soon as a man has come so far that he can use the divine powers of grace, he is already converted. God has already brought his will to a decision, that is, determined his will, has already given him a new heart, has already regenerated him through His Holy Spirit.⁵ Walther says with the old theologians who fought againt Latermannian Synergism: Spiritual powers are not given first, so that man may afterward convert himself by means of them; rather, the bestowal of spiritual powers is, in substance, conversion itself.⁶ If it is said that the Holy Spirit works on man in so liberating a way that man could thereafter convert himself, Walther asks: “Can a man be liberated and yet not be converted or regenerated? Man’s liberation is conversion or regeneration itself.”

Just as this doctrine contradicts itself, so also it contradicts Scripture, the Lutheran Confessions, and experience. According to Scripture, conversion is “a great miracle which God performs,” which God accomplishes according to His good pleasure and in which every kind of cooperation on man’s part is excluded.⁷ According to Scripture, conversion is wrought by God the Holy Spirit, by grace alone, for Christ’s sake.⁸ In particular, Walther points to the passages of Scripture in which conversion is described as a new creation, a raising from the dead, a new birth. He says, for example:⁹

Holy Scripture compares conversion with creation, for we are called [after the change which conversion has wrought in us] new creatures. But what can the thing that is to be created do toward being created? What did the world do in order to be created? It did not yet exist at all, and so it could do nothing. What did Lazarus do in order to come to life again? — for in Holy Scripture conversion is called a quickening — he was dead, and therefore he could do nothing. Christ did it; He said, “Lazarus, come forth!” and then Lazarus came forth. Or what did we do toward our birth? Nothing, for all of that took place without us. Only when we have been created, born, and made alive does our cooperation begin, and not before. All who ascribe to man a cooperation toward conversion therefore overthrow the whole doctrine of Scripture concerning conversion. For, first, we are so completely dead in sins that we can contribute nothing at all toward conversion; and, second, the Apostle says, “God worketh in us both to will and to do,” and he adds besides, “of his good pleasure.”

In L. u. W. 1872, pp. 259 f., 290 f., for example, Walther demonstrates that, according to the doctrine of the Lutheran Confessions, cooperation begins only after conversion. During conversion itself, man is merely the subjectum convertendum: he is purely passive (mere passive), not active. It is true that the advocates of the doctrine that man is active toward his conversion by virtue of grace have also claimed that they could hold fast to the pure passive [purely passively] of the Confessions. But Walther replies:¹⁰

To posit a synergism (cooperation) of the human will with divine grace not only after the completion of conversion, but also during the act of conversion, and yet to be at one with the Confession of our Church in holding that man is pure passive (purely passive) in or during conversion, is plainly a contradictio in adjecto [a contradiction in terms]. — For cooperation and passivity, synergy (that is, activity) and passivity, so completely exclude each other that it seems foolish to waste even a word on the matter.

Walther also appeals to the experience of Christians. He writes, for example:¹¹

For our part, we cannot understand how Prof. F. can regard this as Lutheran doctrine, nor how any Christian at all who has come to true faith can judge in this way [namely, that the conversion and salvation of particular men rest on their free decision]. So many of the companions of our youth have remained in unbelief, though, to say no more, they were no more corrupt than we were. If we claimed that we came to faith because we freely decided for God with our own will, we would have to deny our inmost Christian consciousness. All those, too, who bear the unmistakable marks of truly believing Christians and have shared their experiences with us have always confessed to us that their having come to faith had its foundation truly not in their own free decision, but in nothing else than an incomprehensible, eternal mercy of God in Christ. All who could exclaim in triumph with that poet, “Now I have found the foundation,” we have then heard confess with the same poet:

It is the everlasting mercy
That passes all our thinking;
It is the open arms of love
Of him who stoops to sinners,
Whose heart is breaking evermore,
Whether we come or come not.

This doctrine of self-determination for grace rests on the assumption of an intermediate state (status medius), a state between being unconverted and being converted. There is supposed to be a condition in which man, though not yet converted, is nevertheless already so far liberated by calling grace that he can be active toward his conversion and decide for grace. Walther calls this status medius a fiction, while at the same time carefully distinguishing between truth and error among the assertions brought forward in support of this intermediate state.

Walther does not deny that in most cases stirrings, and powerful stirrings at that, take place before conversion. Here he often used the image of a fortress that is to be taken by storm, which sets off a great commotion within the fortress. So, too, powerful stirrings may take place in unconverted men under the preaching of the Word of God. Walther was accustomed to cite the examples of Felix, Agrippa, etc. The former trembled as Paul reasoned concerning righteousness, chastity, and the judgment to come (Acts 24:25). The latter was so moved by the Apostle’s preaching that he said, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” But these stirrings in men who are not yet converted are no proof of a status medius, or for a cooperation from spiritual powers before conversion. In these stirrings there is as yet no life in the man. “The Holy Spirit works only from without, into the man. The man’s soul, though moved by the Holy Spirit, has not yet become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.” Within the man himself no center of spiritual life has yet come into being. The stirrings have not yet become the man’s own; that is, they do not proceed from a center of life already present in him (principium vitale [vital principle]). Therefore, as soon as the external working ceases, the stirrings also cease.

Here Walther was accustomed to use the image of pressure on gutta-percha:¹² ¹³

As gutta-percha yields to the pressure of the finger, but at once resumes its former place as soon as the finger is taken away, so the working of the Holy Spirit often produces a holy desire and longing in an unconverted man without his being in the least active in it; but as soon as the Holy Spirit withdraws his hand, this desire also vanishes. Only when man has yielded himself to God’s workings, when grace is no longer merely a grace working from without (gratia assistens [assisting grace]), but has become a grace dwelling within him (inhabitans [indwelling]), can he himself cooperate. Whoever teaches otherwise can do so only on Pelagian premises.

Walther declares it very important that one not confuse “the workings of the Holy Spirit from without and from within.” So long as great stirrings do take place in a man, but are only the effect of the Holy Spirit’s working from without, the man is still unconverted, still in the state of wrath, and no cooperation of any kind, no ability to decide for grace, no good conduct by virtue of grace is to be ascribed to him. But as soon as spiritual power has become the man’s own, as soon as a center of spiritual life has come into being in him, a little spark of spiritual life is in him, and the man can now make his own decision, he is already converted. We cite here a few more of Walther’s statements bearing on the matter. He says:¹⁴

The synergists after Luther’s death did not present their false doctrine as finely and subtly as the Helmstedt synergists of the 17th century. It went with Synergism as it always goes with error. First came crude Arianism, then the finer Semi-Arianism; first crude Pelagianism, then refined Semi-Pelagianism; first crude Synergism, then the refined — if one may call it so — Semi-Synergism. It sounds very fine when the more recent theologians say: If God gives the unconverted man the power, then he can cooperate toward his conversion. But it is not right. For a dead man cannot use the powers bestowed on him so long as he lacks the power that is needed for the use of such powers — so long, that is, as he does not have life in himself. One can roll a dead body back and forth, act on it with electricity so that it opens its eyes, opens its mouth, and the like; but these are only the effects of powers working from without. Only one who possesses the power as his own can move himself.
…
When the fathers say that one must not think of conversion as though one could lay there quiet and unmoving, as if it took place while one is sleeping, but that in it much takes place in the understanding, the will, and the impulses of the senses, the more recent theologians wrongly interpret this as man’s cooperation toward conversion. Just as the garrison of a fortress does nothing to blast breaches in the walls and ramparts, or set fire here and there to the defenses, but rather only closes the breaches and puts out the flames, so it is with conversion. However lively the process may be, this liveliness is something man experiences, not activity that he produces; he remains a passive, not an active, person in it. But although he is pure passive in it, he is nevertheless not like sealing wax, which neither knows nor feels anything of the seal being pressed into it; rather, man knows and feels the work of the Holy Spirit upon him.¹⁵

Thus Walther insists that it be firmly held that neither before nor in conversion does any cooperation on man’s part take place. Great stirrings go on in man during conversion, but man is not active in them, not cooperating, but passive. For Walther, therefore, transitive and intransitive conversion are not two different stages in the process of conversion, as though God first converted man, or gave him powers for conversion, so that man might afterward convert himself. Rather, for him transitive and intransitive conversion are the same event. He says: “Transitive and intransitive conversion are only different ways of viewing the same thing. As God converts man, man turns.”¹⁶ “The ship turns when the helmsman turns it.”

Walther also dealt again and again with the common objections that if man in no way cooperates toward his conversion, is in no way active of himself, does not decide, etc., but only undergoes what God works in him, then man is reduced to a machine, conversion is a coerced conversion, the “moral element” in conversion is lost, etc. To the objection that man sinks to the level of a machine if he does not freely decide for or against grace, Walther replies by following the opponent’s argument ad absurdum [to absurdity]. He says: If man is not reduced to a machine when so-called prevenient grace produces stirrings in him without his self-determination and self-activity (motus inevitabiles [unavoidable motions]) — which the opponents concede — then neither is this the case when converting grace works faith without man’s free decision or self-activity.¹⁷

Walther rejects “coerced conversion” as an insinuation which the synergists have been guilty of making time and again against Lutherans faithful to the Confessions. One could talk of a “coerced conversion” only if Lutherans taught a conversion in which no inward change took place in man’s understanding, will, and heart. But the Lutheran doctrine is this: Although the human will is corrupt in the extreme and in no way cooperates toward conversion, yet a total change takes place in the will in and through conversion: in and through conversion the unwilling will becomes willing. This is what conversion is. “God creates this willingness, and by that very act God converts man.” Man’s will is the subject in which conversion takes place. Through conversion it is not the Holy Spirit but man who comes to believe.

In the objection of “coerced conversion” raised by the defenders of self-determination, etc., there lies a feint. They pretend that they only wish to insist that conversion is free from coercion, but in reality they wish in this way to salvage a cooperation toward conversion. Having conceded to Iowa that the “free, personal decision” might be allowed, if all it meant was “that man is not converted by coercion, that in conversion man’s will, too, is moved to will, and that it is man himself who believes,” Walther continues:¹⁸

But that Prof. F., with his “free decision,” does not intend merely to assert a freedom identical with freedom from coercion, alas, is only too plain, since he expressly writes: “He,” the natural man, “receives, as a consequence of the working of grace, arbitrium liberatum [a liberated will]. His will, enslaved by sin, is so far released by this calling grace that he can now freely decide for or against God with his own will.” Indeed, so that he may be rightly understood, he makes Dr. Philippi’s words his own: “Just as a certain synergism of man in the use of the means of grace is not to be excluded even before the beginning of God’s inward working of grace, so there is also a synergism of the human will with divine grace not only after conversion is completed, but also during the act of conversion itself, though, to be sure, not a synergism of the naturally free will, but only a synergism of the will liberated by grace.”

On the expression of the more recent theologians, “faith is free obedience,” Walther remarks: “Faith is, to be sure, ‘free,’ that is, uncoerced; but it is not a matter of ‘free choice and free resolve,’ as the more recent theologians would have it.” And as for the concern of the more recent theologians that “morality” suffers if man does not “freely resolve” for faith, and therefore faith is not an “act of his own,” Walther again points out that most of the more recent theologians themselves have “the first workings” of grace come about without man’s cooperation or act of his own. If, then, “morality” is not destroyed by this process, neither is it destroyed by the process of conversion itself, even though in it God alone is active and man does not act of himself, but only undergoes what God works in him. Walther here points also to creation. “The willing of the good was likewise created in Adam without his (Adam’s) cooperation, and yet the process was not contrary to morality.” Here Walther exclaims: “Men refuse to admit that conversion takes place without their cooperation because they take offense at Christ crucified, at the religion of grace. They suppose conversion to be man’s ‘moral act,’ by which he distinguishes himself from others.” Elsewhere Walther shows that this whole status medius — in which man, though not yet converted, is nevertheless supposed to be already enabled by calling grace to secure his conversion by good conduct — was devised only for the purpose of resolving the mystery that man is saved by grace alone and yet is damned through his own fault.¹⁹

Since Walther rejects this status medius, we already know how he would answer the question whether conversion takes place gradually or in a moment. Conversion can be described as gradual, he explains, only if the term “conversion” includes all the stirrings awakened by the Holy Spirit and directed toward conversion, including those produced by His external working. But if by “conversion” one understands the creation of spiritual life within man, the kindling of faith, the changing from the state of wrath to the state of grace, then conversion takes place in a moment, since no man can at the same time be dead and alive, believing and unbelieving, a child of wrath and a child of grace.

We point out here, further, how Walther refutes some of the proofs men use to try to establish a cooperation toward conversion. Down to the very present, appeal has been made to the fact that in Scripture repentance and faith are demanded of man, that man is called upon to convert himself, etc.; from this, they argue, it follows that man cooperates in conversion. First, Walther again follows the opponents proof ad absurdum. He says: If the inference from demand to ability holds, then man must also be able not merely to cooperate toward conversion, but to work it entirely alone, since repentance or conversion is demanded of man without qualification. Next, Walther points out that the words “Repent, and turn”²⁰ or “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” addressed to men who are dead in sins, are to be understood exactly the same as the words Christ spoke to the dead Lazarus, “Lazarus, come forth!” — namely, that through these words conversion, faith, and life are wrought. “A man can turn in response to these words because God converts him through these words.”²¹ Further, Walther exposes again and again the false inference made by the modern German theologians and our opponents, by which they continually confuse the doctrine of conversion: namely, the inference from the ability not to will to the ability to will, from man’s ability to spurn salvation to man’s ability to accept salvation. They cite passages of Scripture, such as Matt. 23:37, “ye would not,” where all it says is that man, sadly, has the power to reject salvation, and from this make it seem as though they have proven man’s freedom to accept salvation as well. And yet the rejection of salvation flows from the corrupt nature that has been man’s own since the Fall, whereas the acceptance of salvation presupposes his regeneration by grace.²²

We close with Walther’s account of the ruinous consequences of Synergism for Christian doctrine and Christian life.

The doctrine that man cooperates in his own improvement and decides for conversion by his own activity, that faith is a moral act of man’s own, and that conversion and salvation depend on man’s good conduct overthrows Christianity as a whole. With this doctrine, it all comes down to this: that conversion and salvation are decisively grounded, not on God’s grace and free mercy, but on man himself, on his choice, his decision, his good conduct.²³

Christianity would then be a doctrine just like all the others, which say: If you are good, if you are pious, if you amend your ways, then you shall go to heaven; but if you are wicked and ungodly, if you do not amend your ways, then you will go to hell. That, to be sure, is the doctrine of the whole world and of the old Adam, and the one with which we come into the world. But God’s Word says the opposite: If you are to be saved, God must have mercy on you.²⁴

Regarding the effect of the doctrine of self-determination upon the doctrine of justification, Walther says in L. u. W. 1872, p. 352: “A theology that makes faith man’s own act and attributes the salvation of certain men, while others are lost, to those men’s free personal decision, their conduct, and their cooperation now differs from the Roman doctrine of justification only in its terminology.”

But the doctrine of self-determination, that is, of the good conduct on which conversion and salvation are supposed to depend, is also a comfortless, soul-destroying doctrine, one that makes the state of grace uncertain. It blurs the difference between the states of being converted and being unconverted, so that no Christian can know with certainty whether he is converted or not. Walther writes:²⁵

The doctrine that a man not yet converted freely decides for grace himself — and thus, before conversion, is not pure passive but cooperates with the Holy Spirit and has a partly liberated will that already strives for further liberation, longs for grace, etc. — overthrows the whole order of salvation. For that very reason, it is also a most comfortless, dangerous, soul-destroying doctrine. According to God’s Word and our Confessions, anyone who ‘feels and perceives in his heart even a little spark and longing for God’s grace and eternal salvation’ already has faith and is therefore converted (Formula of Concord, Art. 2, p. 591); according to the new, or rather the Iowan, doctrine, those weak in faith and Christians under spiritual trial are robbed of this comfort. May God, therefore, in his grace prevent this dreadful perversion of the Gospel, which is already rife in the Lutheran Church of Germany, from being transplanted into the Lutheran Church of America as well.

Footnotes

L. u. W. 1878, Pp. 261–264.
Bericht des Nördlichen Districts 1873, p. 47.
Ibid., p. 45.
L. u. W. 1885, p. 109.
Bericht des Westlichen Districts 1876, pp. 67, 68.
L. u. W. 1872, p. 268.
Bericht des Westlichen Districts 1876, pp. 63, 65. (Jer. 31:18. Phil. 2:13. Ps. 51:10. Isa. 65:1. 2 Cor. 4:6.)
Bericht des Nördlichen Districts 1873, pp. 43, 44, 56. (Rom. 3:23, 24. Eph. 2:1 ff. 2 Tim. 1:9. Col. 2:12.)
Bericht des Westlichen Districts 1876, p. 69.
L. u. W. 1872, p. 289 f.
Ibid., pp. 243, 244. Cf. also Bericht des Westlichen Districts 1876, pp. 64, 65.
[Tr.] Gutta-percha is a rubber-like natural material obtained from the latex of certain Southeast Asian trees. In the nineteenth century it was widely used for electrical insulation, especially submarine telegraph cables, and for molded objects.
Bericht des Nördlichen Districts 1873, pp. 51, 52.
Ibid., pp. 51–53.
The image which Walther often used of the fortress to be stormed, and which he paints in detail especially in Bericht des Westlichen Districts, 1876, pp. 68, 69, has been exploited above all by Iowa in order to charge Walther with a truly dreadful coerced conversion. They have not tired of writing to all the world that the Missouri Synod, following Walther, teaches a “conversion by bomb and cannon.” The context shows clearly what the tertium comparationis [the point of comparison] in that comparison is: namely, that man in no way responds favorably to the working of the Holy Spirit, but only resists it, and resists it until the heart of man has been changed by the Holy Spirit, that is, converted. But this is also the clear doctrine of the Lutheran Confessions. Formula of Concord, Art. II, par. 21: “Since man does not see or recognize the cruel, fierce wrath of God over sin and death, but goes on continually in unconcerned security, even knowingly and willingly, and so falls into a thousand dangers, and at last into eternal death and damnation; and no pleading, no entreating, no admonishing, yea, no threatening or rebuking avails, yea, all teaching and preaching is lost on him, before he is enlightened, converted, and regenerated by the Holy Spirit.” Shortly before (par. 18), man, so long as he is not converted, is said to “hostiliter repugnare [resist with hostility],” and shortly after (par. 22), to have “a rebellious enmity against God.” That the unconverted man only resists the Holy Spirit, and indeed “resists with hostility,” can come as no surprise to one who holds that there is no longer anything good in the natural man by which he would be ready in any way to respond favorably to the Gospel. But it is just at this point that modern theology falls short, including Iowa and Ohio, as Walther has likewise shown. The Iowan-Ohioan doctrine rests on the assumption that there is still something good in man prior to the spiritual powers. It is said, to be sure, that it is “through the powers of grace” that the not-yet-converted man can decide for or against grace. But the “powers of grace” are surely not neutral, equally capable in either direction (indifferentes [indifferent]), of converting or of turning away. “In this way there would be a power present in man prior to the powers bestowed by the Holy Spirit, by which, with the help of this added grace and bestowed powers, what is needed for conversion is accomplished, and by which the unwillingness to be converted would also be brought about. But this is Pelagianism and Synergism itself.” So it becomes clear, as soon as one looks more closely, that even with the expression that man decides freely by virtue of grace, or that man conducts himself well by virtue of grace, conversion is decisively made to rest on man’s natural powers, or man is credited with natural powers by virtue of which he makes good use of the “powers of grace.” Thus this subtle form of Synergism, that man converts himself through powers of grace, also turns out to be Pelagianism. Walther says: “Synergism is at bottom nothing else than papistic leaven; for the papacy is nothing else than hierarchism on the one hand and Pelagianism on the other. Synergism or Semi-Pelagianism is only a more refined expression, but in substance it is the same as Pelagianism. When the devil sees that he has been found out, and he puts on another garment and seeks by subtle false doctrine to plunge people into gross heresy and to rob them of salvation — the last and decisive question is this: Who is to manage the powers imparted to him from outside himself? A dead man can do nothing with the powers of life that are laid in his coffin unless he has first been raised to life. Christ did not say to Lazarus, to the young man at Nain, and to Jairus’s little daughter, before they were alive: Here you have powers of life; now use them, so that you may come to life! Rather, he made them alive with his Word. — Let the Iowans talk as they please; they still show that they ascribe to the unconverted man the power to use the powers bestowed on him.”^* That they ascribe a cooperation toward conversion to natural powers, in fact comes to light at times quite bluntly. So it is, when Ohio says that conversion and salvation does not depend merely on grace, but in a certain respect also on man’s conduct. Now, what does not depend on grace depends on man’s natural powers. Tertium non datur. [There is no third possibility.] If, therefore, conversion and salvation are supposed to depend not merely on grace, but alongside it and also on conduct, then this conduct must rest on natural powers. Further, that fact that, despite all the talk of a conduct “by virtue of grace” and of a self-determination “by virtue of grace,” what is really meant is a conduct and a self-determination by virtue of natural powers, is also evident from this: that this “conduct” and the “self-determination” is used to explain to human reason why one man is converted rather than another. Such an “explanatory ground” is obtained only if the distinguishing conduct is made to be wrought solely by natural powers.
* Bericht des Nördlichen Districts 1873, pp. 56, 57.
[Tr.] The German sich bekehren is reflexive in form and can mean “to turn” or “to be converted.” Here Walther describes the same conversion from two perspectives: God converts man, and man turns. The reflexive does not itself imply that man produces his own conversion. The following illustration makes the relation explicit: the ship turns when the helmsman turns it.
L. u. W. 1872, p. 296.
Ibid., p. 258.
Ibid., pp. 293, 294, note.
[Tr.] Acts 3:19. The German quoted here, Thut Buße und bekehret euch, may be rendered “Repent, and turn.” The KJV has “Repent ye therefore, and be converted.” Both are commands. The disputed inference is from the command to man’s ability to fulfill it; Walther answers that God effects conversion through these very words.
Bericht des Westlichen Districts 1876, pp. 70, 71.
L. u. W. 1872, p. 268, note.
Ibid., p. 322 f.
Bericht des Westlichen Districts 1876, p. 64.
L. u. W. 1872, p. 296 f.