Q&A: What is Prevenient Grace? Do Lutherans believe in it?

Añadido: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]The first one's on prevenient grace.

[00:00:02]Uh, what do Lutherans believe about so-called prevenient grace?

[00:00:07]How about you tell me what it is and then I'll tell you what we believe about it.

[00:00:11]Well, generally it's understood >> [laughter] [gasps] >> Generally understood, prevenient has idea that it goes before, right? So, it's the grace that goes before that kind of frees your will so that you can cooperate uh, with God for your salvation.

[00:00:26]That's a pretty short I'll tell you what, you sort of free us from >> We have to protect our will like Fort Knox from this freedom creeping in because it wants to get I mean you got Pelagianism and then you got semi-Pelagianism and then you got partially semi- I mean, everybody wants to be a free will theologian. Uh, and and it's dangerous, I I think because we're under the weird illusion [snorts] that to diminish our will in salvation is to diminish our I don't know how we're created by God.

[00:01:01]It's to diminish our humanity. But, the opposite is actually the case.

[00:01:05]As we see in so many practical examples is whenever you have a free will theology then you go on to prevent to create a will-binding institution.

[00:01:17]Sheesh.

[00:01:18]So, you get the free will theology of Rome and then you get Rome and then you get the Pope who enslaves men.

[00:01:25]I mean, and and you do the same thing with any sort of conversion theology is that you like my will is free, but it has to be so our in fact on this side of the fall the highest way to think about man is according to his bound will. We consider that a man is justified by faith. That means a man is a sinner who who is rescued by the grace of God.

[00:01:44]Okay, so, on this specific question we want to understand that our will is the object of conversion, not the instrument of conversion.

[00:01:53]So so that God's word and the spirit are working first and the thing that's converted is our will.

[00:02:02]So, that as Saint Augustine says, the Lord makes willing those who are unwilling.

[00:02:09]So, grace is the efficient cause of conversion, of faith of our willing. It's God's It's God's doing that we will first and then once the Lord makes us willing then our wills cooperate in a very weak and I suppose limited sense with the continuing grace of God.

[00:02:32]But, that first moment of of willing and believing must be understood to be the Lord's work. It is the Lord who works in us to will.

[00:02:45]And uh, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. We have to We have to hold on to that. So, that any any if someone's trying to sneak in the free will through pre- prevenient grace, it's it I mean, the the very name itself wants to drive a distinction between um it Well, to to drive a distinction between God's working so that I can will so that I can be justified, that just that move has to be excluded.

[00:03:19]It might be helpful if we link to people uh, article two of the Formula of Concord on free will since it's so helpful in this I was trying to find a good summary there, but all of it's so good.

[00:03:30]It's hard to It's hard to like pick one part out of it. You know, of course they quote Luther on the third article of the Creed, I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.

[00:03:40]But, there does seem to be this struggle we have we want to be like, well no, I can't do that, but if God does this then I I can do all kinds of stuff.

[00:03:50]But, they don't actually mean salvation, right? They're talking about this idea is that well, God gives you just enough so that you can do what you weren't able to do rather than It's kind of like you're dead and then you get like partially resuscitated and then you can kind of help save yourself rather than being completely dead and brought all the way back to life. That seems to be what prevenient grace is going for. And I understand like you said why they there's that temptation to want to do that, right? You want to be able to say you did something and so God comes along and helps you get there and then you can take it the rest of the way. But, if you check out the Solid Declaration especially free will from our Formula of Concords which we'll try to put a link to in the description uh, it's extremely helpful because it goes into great detail about this how um, it's not just that we're dead in trespasses and sins, but we're actually rebelling against God. We actually don't want anything to do with God. Our will is is completely messed up. Uh, it doesn't just need help. It needs to as you said, it needs to be the object of conversion.

[00:04:58]So, uh, I think it's extremely helpful with that.

[00:05:01]We should do a deep dive into into the formula at some point and just kind of walk through it cuz it's so helpful and needful.

[00:05:11]Is that a word? Needed. That's the word.

[00:05:13]>> Yes.

[00:05:14]>> [laughter] >> I think needful works too.

[00:05:17]It's And you're right, it's >> thing is needful. We have a hymn with that We have a hymn with that in it.

[00:05:22]That's right. Right? You could You wouldn't want to say one thing's needy.

[00:05:26]One thing's needed, that's what you say.

[00:05:28]Okay.

[00:05:29]Good.

[00:05:30]Uh, so we'll do Let's do that, but I think you're because the formula it just quotes the scriptures, too.

[00:05:34]I mean, it's great. And this came up uh I mean, this always comes up in the in the quest I mean, really you can divide theology in this way. You have free will theologians and you have bound will theologians. And and we look at Rome and we're like, ah, free will theology. We look at the East we're like, ah, free will theology. We look at um I mean, Arminianism, ah, free will theology. We look at American Evangelicalism revivalized uh revivalized uh, reformed theology, ah, free will theology. We even look at the reform like when the reformed get tricked into talking about prevenient grace we're like, ah now you're free will theology now, too.

[00:06:10]So, that's there's just two theo- And when we we can and and here's this thing I'm trying to figure out how to articulate. When we become free will theologians, we cease to be theologians. We become philosophers now.

[00:06:22]And we're not really doing theology. So, the object of theology is man the sinner and God the forgiver of sins.

[00:06:31]And so, as soon as we cease to speak of man as sinner but I mean, that that's what we say our free will is free to sin in all different ways.

[00:06:42]But, that's all it's free to do. It's not free to serve God and and to be righteous and holy.

[00:06:46]And this is pro- We should probably remember that like we had this big fight about this with Saint Augustine and Pelagius and everybody else was fighting Saint Augustine. And we kind of settled it back then, so that's great.

[00:06:59]I always point to Luther in The Bondage of the Will. Well, I paraphrase him. He basically says, "Look if you say God is 99.999% responsible for your salvation and you and your will are only 0.001% responsible so, you want to give all the credit to God except for like 0.001% he says, but then you still would never know if you did enough.

[00:07:24]Right? You would never know if your will if you willed enough. And so, you'd always have doubts. And so, that one thing that robs you from is the assurance of your salvation. If you put it into your will at all, even if it's that tiny little percentage and you're like, well but God did most of the work.

[00:07:41]Luther says, "Nope, if God didn't do all of the work then you're just always going to wonder, did I do enough today?"

[00:07:46]And so, it's either 100% God or not. And that's that's Luther's biggest concern in The Bondage of the Will.

[00:07:54]Even though he's often I think misunderstood there. Yeah, it's always the what comes after. So, if it's scripture and the thing that really matters is what is later. What What's and or grace and well, that's the and that matters or um uh, faith and it's the and. Now, does we could I guess we could ask this question as we're talking about prevenient grace.

[00:08:15]Could we say that the grace of God comes to us before that converting gracious act? Well, sure. I mean, this is everything that the Lord does to us is gracious. The The The chief question is in what way is it related to saving faith?

[00:08:30]And to that we have to say that that that saving faith is a work of God in us and we are passive in that work. It is It is We are the ones who believe, but that we believe is crafted in us uh, by God the Holy Spirit through the word.

[00:08:49]All right, you ready for the next one?

[00:08:51]Yeah, oh yeah.

[00:08:53]What kind of question Hey YouTube theologians and Pastor Wolfmueller, Christ is risen. He has risen indeed.

[00:08:58]Hallelujah. Pray that the Lord's resurrection would bring you joy and peace. Thanks for tuning in for this week's episode of the Theology Q&A.

[00:09:06]Pastor Packer and I answering your questions. Today's episode is brought to you This is not really, but it's brought to you by Rome Examined Volume One, Martin Chemnitz's examination of the Council of Trent on Scripture, Original Sin, Doctrine of Justification which is available for free at wolfmueller.co/rome.

[00:09:25]You don't have to You don't have to give me your email or log in or subscribe to some newsletter or You can just download the PDF right there from the page. Uh, you can order a book if you want from Lulu, too, but you get this thing especially on as a PDF because it's searchable and you can look for the topic. It's a It's a new translation of a summary of Martin Chemnitz's examination of Rome. I I hope this is a joy and a great resource for you. All right, here's the episode.