5. Conversion Is Instantaneous.
Since conversion takes place by believing in God who is gracious through Christ, it always happens
at the moment when, among the terrores conscientiae, a spark of faith is kindled in the heart or a desire for the grace of God is worked in Christ. We can speak of gradual (successive) conversion only if we count as conversion certain movements of the heart which in most cases precede the kindling of faith and which may last for a longer or shorter time.!?8 The doctrine of an intermediate state between conversion and non-conversion (status medius, homo renascens, homo in statu medio constitutus) is an anti-scriptural and dangerous synergistic-pietistic assumption. It is contrary to Scripture because Scripture knows only two classes of people, believers and non- believers, converts and unconverts. According to Scripture, it is impossible for an individual to be, even for a short time, both unbeliever and believer, under wrath and under grace, in death and in life.!78 But the acceptance of a state of medium is also a doctrine dangerous to the soul. For it tempts first of all to treat already converted people as unconverted and thus to torture them unnecessarily, even to plunge them into despair. Such souls, in whom the Holy Spirit has already worked both the horrors of conscience and the wanting or desiring of God's grace in Christ, and who should therefore be treated as already believing children
Chemnitz also speak of a praeparatio from grace, but not in the sense that man prepares himself for conversion, but in the sense that God, through his alone action, leads man to conversion. Only in God's hand is the law a disciplinarian from Christ. How one has spoken of actus praeparatorii in both the right and the wrong sense is explained in detail in my paper "On the Unification of the American Lutheran Church", 2nd ed., pp. 75 ff. The motus praeparatorii can only be called good in so far as they are by God; seen from the nature of man, whose will is still hostile to God before faith in the Gospel, the motus carnales are ober animales. (op. cit., p. 85.)
1873, pp. 41-42): "He who teaches that one may be converted, but cannot be fully converted, contradicts the Scriptures, which always know of only two conditions, either death or life. He who is not in grace is under wrath; he who is not in life is still in death; he who is not on the way of heaven is on the way of hell; he who is not a saved man is a damned man. There is no twilight, no middle state between light and darkness." of God,!*8) are warned against confident trust in God's grace, because knowledge of sin and experience of grace are allegedly not yet deep enough, faith still lacks the necessary quality and quantity, the struggle of the spirit against the flesh is not yet victorious enough, conscious self-determination or self-decision for grace is still lacking, the individual acts of faith have not yet condensed into the habitus of faith, etc. 1? On the other hand, in the assumption of a process of conversion in the sense of status medius there is the danger that souls are led into self-righteousness. The fact that God is already reconciled with the whole human world through Christ's vicarious satisfaction with the whole human world is relegated to the background, and the idea is created that conversion to God does not take place both through faith in the grace of God in Christ and through free self-determination for grace, through right behavior toward grace, through the killing of the old man, in short, through human achievements. Chemnitz has also been called upon for the "process of conversion" in the course of which man already participates (active se habere) in order to bring about conversion. So in the 17th century Latermann, the Musaeus School and the more recent Lutherans. '285) Quenstedt and Calov are said to have gone beyond Chemnitz, if they let the conversion in the true sense, i.e. the conversion taken for the spark of faith, take place in a moment.!78° But there is a misunderstanding of Chemnitz. Chemnitz certainly ascribes the struggle of the flesh and spirit to the man to whom the first beginnings of faith and conversion are given.!87) But for Chemnitz, the person to whom the first beginnings of faith come is already spiritually alive or converted, the word conversion
[Trigl. 885, Sol. Decl., I, 14]
erroneously referred to Chemnitz; cf. L. u. W. 1894, p. 47 f.
conversione liabeat se mere passive, p. m. 199: Quando gratia praeveniens, id est, prima initia fidei et conversionis, homini dantur, statim incipit lucta carnis et Spiritus. [When prevenient grace, that is, the first beginnings of faith and conversion, are given to man, the struggle of the flesh and the Spirit immediately begins. taken in the narrower sense, for becoming a believer in Christ. Just as also the Formula of Concord (591, 14 [Zrig/. 885, Sol. Decl., II, 14]) calls those "pious Christians "feel and sense a little spark and longing for God's grace... 1n their heart", and (601, 54 [Trig]. 903, ibid., 54]) the entry into the fellowship of grace can be accomplished by "lighting a little spark of faith (scintillula fidei) in him (man), accepting the promise of the forgiveness of sins and consoling themselves with the promise of the Gospel". The fact that Chemnitz considers man, to whom he attributes the first beginnings of faith and the struggle of the flesh and the spirit, to be already spiritually alive and believing, he expressly declares himself, when he applies the following scriptural statements to the man, to whom the first beginnings of faith are given: " the Lord in Luke 19:13 says, by giving the talents to the servants: ‘Occupy till I come’; he does not say: hide my talent in the earth, Matt. 25:25. And Paul needs a very significant word 2 Tim. 1:6: "I remind you that you awaken (avaCwmvpetv) the gift of God that is in you. The assumption that Chemnitz ascribes these activities to a person who has not yet been converted is excluded. One does not consider the context in which these words, which have been so persistently misused, are used in Chemnitz. Chemnitz turns against the enthusiasts, who thus think: "I will wait safely and idly until the renewal or conversion after the steps mentioned will be completed by the action of the Holy Spirit without any movement on my part". Chemnitz wants to ward off this enthusiastic thought and adds as justification: "For it cannot be shown by the clock (in puncto aliquo mathematico) the time when the liberated will begins to act, but as soon as the obliging grace, that is, the first beginnings of faith and conversion, is given to man, the battle of flesh and spirit begins immediately. According to this, Chemnitz also teaches a conversion that happens in the moment. It is the moment when "the prima initia fidei et conversionis homini dantur". Only this moment cannot be shown in terms of aliquo mathematico. Incidentally, this whole struggle against " instantaneous conversion" is based on self-deception. The struggle is not at all about instantaneous conversion. The old and new fighters of the same assume even a moment when they declare man converted. For Baier, this is the moment when the sufficiently repeated and strengthened acts of faith enter into the habitus of faith. '788) With newer theologians this is the moment when man under divine inspiration allegedly "freely", "consciously" for the grace "determines himself" or "decides", transforms the possibility of faith by "human will decision" into the act of faith. The struggle against instantaneous conversion is in reality for sola Dei gratia. Conversion is to be thought of "partly as a work of grace, partly as an achievement of man",!®°) or God is only to "establish" faith, not to work faith. '?°° In other words, man's conversion to God is not at all understood as the seizure of God's grace in Christ, with total despair at his own work (terrores conscientiae), but is transferred to the field of "moral" achievement, in short, works. In order to conceal this state of affairs for oneself and others, one speaks against the "instantaneous conversion" and is so vividly interested in a "gradual conversion", because the semi-darkness of gradualness offers the opportunity, at the individual stages of the "process of conversion", to gradually and covertly affix human work, "self- determination", "right behavior against grace", etc. In this way, already in this life one gains an answer to the question which Luther and the Formula of Concord want to have postponed to eternal life, namely the answer to the question why, of two people who both live under the sound of the Word of God, one is converted and the other is not. The one who is converted is the one who, in the course of the conversion process, distinguishes himself before the other by "right behavior" towards grace. This point is to be discussed in more detail in the section "Objections against the sole effectiveness of God in conversion".!?79))
congrui) is not gradually applied, nothing is gained in explaining the fact that of two people one is converted while the other remains unconverted. If God alone works conversion, whether God works conversion in a moment, in four weeks or in a year is of no consequence for the comprehensibility of that fact. The question then comes up again