Debated Issues in Sovereign Predestination: Early Lutheran Predestination, Calvinian Reprobation, and Variations in Genevan Lapsarianism [1 ed.] 9783666552601, 9783525552605

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Joel R. Beeke

Debated Issues in Sovereign Predestination Early Lutheran Predestination, Calvinian Reprobation, and Variations in Genevan Lapsarianism

Reformed Historical Theology Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis in Co-operation with Emidio Campi, Irene Dingel, Elsie Anne McKee, Richard Muller, Risto Saarinen, and Carl Trueman

Volume 42

Joel R. Beeke

Debated Issues in Sovereign Predestination Early Lutheran Predestination, Calvinian Reprobation, and Variations in Genevan Lapsarianism

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISSN 2197-1137 ISBN 978-3-666-55260-1 You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our Website: www.v-r.de © 2017, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Author’s Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part I: Predestination in Early Lutheranism Chapter 1: Historical Germination in Luther . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 2: Further Germination in Melanchthon . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 3: The Marbach-Zanchi Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 4: The Doctrinal Position of the Formula of Concord . . . . . .

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Chapter 5: Doctrinal Comparison of Concord and Dordt . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 6: The Historical Reception of and Doctrinal Reflections on Concordist Predestination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part II: Reprobation in Calvin’s Theology Chapter 7: The Study of Calvin’s Doctrine of Reprobation . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 8: The Sources of Calvin’s Doctrine of Reprobation . . . . . . .

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Chapter 9: Embryonic Reprobation in the Young Theologian (1535–1538) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

111

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Contents

Chapter 10: Systematic Reprobation in the Strasbourg Theologian (1538–1541) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 11: Developed Reprobation in the Theologian Par Excellence (1542–1564) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 12: Conclusions and Implications of Calvinian Reprobation . .

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Part III: Lapsarian Variations among Later Genevan Theologians Chapter 13: Introduction to Post-Calvin Predestinarianism and the Lapsarian Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

165

Chapter 14: Theodore Beza’s Supralapsarianism and Infamous Tabula .

175

Chapter 15: Predestination in Beza’s Other Writings . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 16: From Beza’s Successors to Francis Turretin . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 17: The Decline under Francis Turretin’s Successors . . . . . . .

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Chapter 18: Conclusions on Sovereign Predestination . . . . . . . . . . .

215

Bibliography of Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Foreword

Predestination is a biblical doctrine that clearly highlights God’s initiative in salvation. But this doctrine, especially double predestination, has given rise to considerable controversy throughout the course of church history, particularly in the Reformed tradition, with flashpoints in Calvin, Beza, and the Arminian controversy. Rather than presenting a complete history of this doctrine in early Protestantism, in this volume Joel Beeke tackles three debated issues relating to predestination that have not been fully addressed: early Lutheran views on predestination and their relationship to Reformed views; Calvin’s stance on reprobation; and treatment of the supralapsarian-infralapsarian issue by early Genevan theologians. Though there is affinity between Luther’s early theology and the Reformed tradition on predestination, Beeke shows that, beginning with Melanchthon, later Lutheranism diverged from Luther on this issue, especially by downplaying the role of reprobation. In exploring the relationship between early Lutheran and Reformed views, Beeke focuses on the controversy between Marbach and Zanchi, as a backdrop for the respective confessional expressions on predestination presented in the Lutheran Formula of Concord and the Canons of Dordt. Calvin’s view of predestination has been thoroughly studied, but such studies usually treat reprobation together with election, with the emphasis on election. However, it is reprobation, the darker side of predestination, that has been the focus of most criticism of the predestination views held by Calvin and later Reformed theologians. Though election and reprobation should not be separated, the doctrine of reprobation has a long history of its own and is a theme that deserves treatment in its own right. Beeke provides the most thorough analysis, to date, of Calvin’s view of reprobation, as expressed throughout the various phases of his career. Beeke especially notes how Calvin sees in this doctrine pastoral implications for the elect. The supralapsarian-infralapsarian issue is a somewhat abstruse question that has often been sorely misrepresented. Since Calvin’s successor Theodore Beza first formulated the supralapsarian position, this is an issue that has frequently

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Foreword

plagued debates about predestination, especially in the Reformed tradition. Sometimes the issue is simplistically portrayed as if the supra position teaches that God predestined people before the fall into sin, while the infra position teaches that God predestined people after the fall. Actually, whether the issue is posed in terms of the object of predestination or in terms of the order of divine decrees, the real issue is how God from eternity considered those he predestined —as not yet fallen, or as fallen and justly deserving of condemnation. The whole question probes the limits of human knowledge about the inner workings of God’s mind. But practically speaking, the question centers on where the emphasis should be placed—on God by his good pleasure sovereignly predestining people to everlasting life or death, or on God graciously and justly predestining them as sinners. Beeke well sorts through the intricacies of these matters, as he explores the historical trajectory of Genevan lapsarian views—from Beza to the Genevan delegates at the Synod of Dordt, and on to Francis Turretin and his successors. Beeke addresses these difficult matters with sensitivity to historical context and development, with systematic acuity, and a broad grasp of secondary scholarly literature with which he dialogues. The result is a balanced analysis of these issues that should bring greater clarity to scholarly understanding of the doctrine of predestination in the early modern era. Donald Sinnema Professor of Theology emeritus, Trinity Christian College

Author’s Preface

This book explores specific and controversial questions regarding the doctrine of double predestination in the historical theology of the Reformation. First, I examine the views of Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and the authors of the Formula of Concord on double predestination. Scholars have long puzzled over the partnership between the two Reformers often polarized as the Augustinian Luther and the synergistic Melanchthon, but recent scholarship has demonstrated that the two Wittenberg professors actually stood closer together than once thought and they contributed together to the peculiar combination of doctrines evident in articles two and eleven of the Formula. Second, I trace the doctrine of reprobation through its development in John Calvin’s corpus of writings. Reprobation tends to be viewed as the “dark side” of predestination, but Calvin consistently insisted upon it as a biblical and logical corollary of election. Third, I follow the line of predestinarian teaching at Geneva from Theodore Beza through Jacob Vernet, giving special attention to their positions on the order of God’s decrees. The post-Calvin Genevans varied in their lapsarian positions, but maintained an orthodox Reformed view of predestination until Amyraldianism penetrated into the academy and opened the door for Arminianism, and later virtual Socinianism. In a sense, I’ve wanted to publish this book for more than thirty years. I began the research for it in the early 1980s when studying for my PhD at Westminster Theological Seminary. I was convinced that election, and in some senses, even reprobation, were doctrines that were “friends of sinners” rather than obstacles to their salvation. For the last few decades I continued to read substantively in the area of predestination, especially the thornier questions of reprobation and the supralapsarian-infralapsarian debate among Reformed theologians concerning the conceptual order of God’s decree from eternity. Recently, I returned to this subject in earnest, and am grateful to my publisher for helping me see this book through to the press. Heartfelt, belated thanks are in order to my primary teachers at WTS: Sinclair Ferguson, Clair Davis, and Rick Gamble. Without their impetus, insights, and encouragement, this book would

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Author’s Preface

never have been written, much less published. I also wish to thank Richard Muller for his profound impact on my thinking in the area of predestination over the last three decades, as well as for his friendship and conversations—especially about supralapsarianism. Another friend who has impacted my thought, particularly on the doctrine of reprobation is Don Sinnema, whose doctoral dissertation, “The Issue of Reprobation at the Synod of Dort (1618–19) in Light of the History of This Doctrine,” is a masterpiece of careful scholarship on the Reformation understanding of reprobation. I appreciate deeply his wise counsel on various matters raised in this book and am grateful for his foreword. Thanks too to Robert Kolb, one of my best Lutheran friends and a stellar scholar of Lutheranism, for taking time to meticulously examine and comment on the first part of this book related to Lutheranism. I also value the suggestions on the manuscript made by my nephew, Jonathon Beeke, PhD candidate at the University of Groningen studying Christ’s twofold kingdom in Reformed theology, as well as the editorial skills of Greg Bailey and Ray Lanning. I am indebted to the Dutch scholar and publisher, Pieter Rouwendal, a friend of many years who has graciously engineered the translation and publication of a number of my books into Dutch, for showing me that, contrary to what other scholars and I had been saying for years, primary source evidence shows that the Genevan theologians between Theodore Beza and Francis Turretin did not follow Beza’s supralapsarian convictions but were largely infralapsarian in their approach to the order of God’s decree. Finally, I am deeply grateful to Paul Smalley, my valued assistant, for his invaluable insights and research. Paul, this is a much better book because of your work than it ever would have been without you. To Mary, my extraordinarily special helpmeet, I owe far more thanks than feeble words can ever express. Your love and support and involvement in my ministry is more than any grateful husband/pastor/author could wish for. As you and I are fast becoming empty-nesters and are beginning the enjoyable grandparenting phase of life, I pray that the precious doctrine of eternal predestination as an act of a covenant-keeping, faithful, God for thousands of generations will increasingly become even more meaningful to us (2 Sam. 23:5). If this book sheds light on theological and historical issues relative to the Reformation view of predestination and simultaneously assists scholars, pastors, and other church leaders to grapple with these issues in such a way that those whom they lead will receive real and practical benefit from them, I would count my labor more than repaid. Joel R. Beeke

Part I: Predestination in Early Lutheranism

Chapter 1: Historical Germination in Luther

The definitive statement on predestination for confessional Lutheranism appears in Article 11 of the Formula of Concord.1 Despite notable exceptions,2 this article, entitled “God’s Eternal Foreknowledge and Election,” has received inadequate attention in secondary sources from Reformation historians or dogmaticians. In one sense, this is no surprise. These doctrines have taken a back seat to more upfront doctrinal disputes of early Lutheranism on topics such as original sin, free will, good works, law and gospel, the Lord’s Supper, and the person of Christ. Artricle 11 is sandwiched between the consideration of “Ecclesiastical Practices Which Are Called Adiaphora or Indifferent Things” (Art. 10) and “Other Factions and Sects That Never Subscribed to the Augsburg Confession” (Art. 12). The eleventh article of Lutheran orthodoxy’s definitive symbol does not appear to 1 The Formula of Concord, Epitome, Art. 11, and Solid Declaration, Art. 11, in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 517–20, 640–56. Hereafter the Epitome of the Formula of Concord will be noted as Epitome and Solid Declaration as SD, with article and section numbers. 2 F. Bente, Historical Introductions to the Book of Concord (St. Louis: Concordia, 1965), 195–227; Gerrit C. Berkouwer, Divine Election, trans. Hugo Bakker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960), 38– 42; Werner Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, vol. 1, trans. Walter A. Hansen (St. Louis: Concordia, 1962), 133–40; Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jensen, Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 153–63; Robert Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method, Lutheran Quarterly Books, ed. Paul Rorem (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 244–70; J. L. Neve, Introduction to Lutheran Symbolics (Columbus: F. Heer, 1917), 423–28; Timothy J. Wengert, A Formula for Parish Practice: Using the Formula of Concord in Congregations, Lutheran Quarterly Books, ed. Paul Rorem (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 180–96; Charles P. Arand, Robert Kolb, and James A. Nestingen, The Lutheran Confessions: History and Theology of the Book of Concord (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 214–15. See also Rune Söderlund, Ex praevisa Fide. Zum Verständnis der Prädestinationslehre in der lutherischen Orthodoxie (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1983), cited in Kolb, Bound Choice, 293n25. I am indebted to a lecture at Westminster Theological Seminary on Lutheran orthodoxy by D. Clair Davis (September 1982) for seminal thoughts leading me to do this research. I am also grateful to Robert Kolb and Jonathon Beeke for their helpful comments on this study.

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Part I: Predestination in Early Lutheranism

have been intended by its framers to have front-line significance in the ongoing debates of Reformation theology.3 The framers of the article seem to have desired to reduce predestination to a sub-point under the comforting and assuring aspects of soteriology. The Formula of Concord shifted gears from Luther’s bold assertion of predestination in De servo arbitrio (The Bondage of the Will) to the idea of foreknowledge or prescience (praescientia or praevisio). This downshift has provoked criticism. Philip Schaff charged the Formula with contradicting itself by its extremely “Augustinian” statements on human depravity and inability (Art. 2) and “antiAugustinian” statements on predestination (Art. 11).4 G. C. Berkouwer said that in the case of “many Lutherans” we find “the projection of synergism into the counsel of God” by their reduction of predestination to prescience—the mere recognition by God of human choice rather than the divine choice of pure sovereignty.5 The Formula of Concord separates reprobation from predestination, asserting the former to be a divine response of rejection (based on foreknowledge) to persistent human resistance of God’s grace, whereas the latter is a sovereign preordination of the elect to calling, illumination, conversion, justification, and salvation.6 Retreating from the dreaded implications of full-orbed predestination, the composers of the Formula of Concord addressed predestination exclusively from the comforting aspect of election unto life and explicitly rejected the doctrine of predestination unto damnation as “blasphemous, horrible, and erroneous.”7 The concordists pursued a dichotomous, paradoxical line of thought regarding election and reprobation. They attempted to combine particularism and universalism.8 How could God elect some sinners to salvation by grace alone, and yet fully will that all sinners be saved? How can man be dead in sin and utterly opposed to God, and salvation be entirely of God’s grace, and yet the reason that some are saved be that they did not resist God when others did? As a result, the Formula’s position gives rise to numerous, thorny, historical and theological questions. 3 That is not to say that predestination has never been a front-line issue in Lutheranism since the Formula of Concord. Regarding the controversy over predestination in American Lutheranism in the late nineteenth century, see Hans R. Haug, “The Predestinarian Controversy in the Lutheran Church in North America” (PhD Dissertation, Temple University, 1968); Edward Busch, “The Predestinarian Controversy 100 Years Later,” Currents in Theology and Mission 9, no. 3 (June 1982): 132–48. 4 Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (New York: Harper and Bros., 1877), 1:314–15, 329– 30. 5 Berkouwer, Divine Election, 34–35. 6 SD, XI.40. 7 Epitome, XI.16–21. 8 Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:330.

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First, what historical/theological climate gave rise to Lutheranism’s paradoxical answer to predestination’s question? More specifically, what was the germination of sixteenth-century Lutheran thought that bore fruit in the Formula of Concord’s conception of divine predestination? To remain within the scope of the subject at hand, I will limit myself to a cursory sketch of the views of Luther and Melanchthonian predestination and conclude this first section with the Marbach vs. Zanchius debate which encouraged, to say the least, the formulation of an article on predestination in the Formula of Concord. Secondly, what actually is the historical/theological position of the Formula of Concord on predestination? What tensions result, for example, from its attempt to pursue predestination along a middle path between semi-Pelagianism and full Augustinianism? Is the denial of predestination unto damnation a viable answer scripturally, theologically, historically, and practically? Is the Formula of Concord trying to say that Lutheranism has no room for, and, what is more, no need for, such a strong view of reprobation in its theology and life? By rejecting predestination unto damnation, how far does and must Lutheran orthodoxy reject election as well? Does Lutheran orthodoxy, as represented in the Formula of Concord, loosen the bond between election and conversion if and when it limits predestination to the sole prerogative of giving encouragement in personal Christian life? What role does uninhibited gospel preaching play in Lutheran orthodoxy’s view of predestination? Moreover, does Lutheran orthodoxy’s analytical method in soteriology negate the theological value of predestination beyond an auxiliary role of affording consolation and assurance? Does this analytical view of salvation preclude reprobation apart from man’s persistence in sin specifically on the grounds that we cannot discern its function in solving spiritual problems? Is Lutheranism’s ultimate answer on reprobation (which is, after all, the most hotly contested aspect of predestination) neither an affirmation nor a denial, but merely a vote to abstain? “We don’t deny it, but don’t know how to fit it in; we don’t repudiate it, but have no need for it?” Such questions as these comprise the task before us when we make the transition from a consideration of the historical/doctrinal germination of the Formula of Concord’s Article 11 to its final historical/doctrinal formulation. Thirdly, I desire to fortify Sections One and Two by pursuing a comparison of a relevant Reformed standard (the Canons of Dordt) with its Lutheran counterpart on the doctrine of predestination. I trust that a comparative historical/doctrinal analysis of predestination in the Formula of Concord will be of assistance in delving into our limited human understanding of divine predestination. I will inevitably aim at the burning question of the whole: Is Lutheran symbolism correct when it views reprobation as worthless at best or as undermining the gospel at worst? Is Lutheran orthodoxy biblical when it confesses that repro-

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bation is indeed logical, but that we must not be logicians when we approach the awesome mystery of predestination? Or, is Reformed orthodoxy more consistently biblical when it asserts that the doctrine of predestinarian reprobation can be presented in a useful, contributory, and consoling manner to the church of God (but not, of course, to the reprobate). Berkouwer asks whether the decree of reprobation is “a lapsus in the history of the doctrine of election or an echo of the gospel of God?” He asks, “Is it possible and therefore legitimate and necessary to be silent about rejection, and to discuss the task of the Church implied in election: the eu-aggelion, the glad tidings?”9 Finally, by way of conclusion of this part, I wish to examine briefly the historical reception of Article 11 of the Formula of Concord in both Lutheran and Reformed orthodoxy. Was Article 11 influential in promoting greater unity between the Lutheran and Reformed camps, or did it serve a divisive role by contributing to further “cold war” polarization between them? Did it at least consolidate Lutheranism within itself ? Thus, by way of analyzing Article 11 of the Formula of Concord in its historical/doctrinal germination, formulation, comparison, and reception, I hope to show that its role in historical theology’s development of a scriptural doctrine of predestination is by no means negligible as commonly assumed. If its forthrightly paradoxical concept of predestination sharpens our sense of the awesomeness, mystery, and grace of divine predestination by driving us to bow before God, so that the Spirit might impress upon us all the more clearly the image of Jesus Christ, the primary aim of predestination in us will have been achieved, though many secondary questions may remain unanswered. Before taking up the historical consideration of the germination of Article 11, it should first be noted that Lutheran and Reformed scholars approached the issue of predestination from slightly different perspectives. The primary concern of the Lutherans was the origin and continuation of evil: how can a sovereign God be righteous and holy despite the presence of sin in the world He created, and, furthermore, how should repentance be preached to the chosen of God, who, having received God’s baptismal promise, still show evidences of sin in their lives? The methodological framework or lens through which Lutherans sought to answer such questions was a law/gospel hermeneutic; on these terms, reprobation does not serve the purposes of gospel, nor can it be said to lie properly in the domain of law. The Reformed, on the other hand, while they also addressed such questions, held that the Bible placed its highest priority in the revelation of God’s sovereignty, which is absolute. It is these two different methodological approaches, further explained below, that helped lead to the varying positions on election and reprobation developed by Lutheran and Reformed scholars. 9 Berkouwer, Divine Election, 175, 172.

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Luther on Predestination Martin Luther’s precise stance on predestination is not easy to ascertain. Primarily and practically, he sought to focus the doctrine of predestination on the elect under the consoling umbrella of salvation in and through Christ. However, his polemical comments suggest a robust doctrine of divine and sovereign election no more limited or qualified than that of John Calvin. In 1517 he wrote, “The best, infallible preparation for grace, and the only disposing factor for its reception, is God’s eternal choosing and predestination.”10 In 1516, Luther lectured on Romans 9 and declared his fundamental agreement with the doctrine of predestination found in the later writings of Augustine.11 Human flesh cannot produce children of God, but only the Spirit of God working “because they have been chosen by God from eternity.”12 No man entered this world better than any other, “but by their own merit they were the same and equal and belonged to the same mass of perdition.”13 Though salvation must involve the human will, it does not arise from the will, but is “of the mercy of God, who has given this power of willing and doing,” and that to those whom God had “predestined to receive mercy.”14 God has chosen from eternity to show mercy to some individuals out of the mass of damned humanity.15 As to the person not elected, Luther thought it likely that Paul’s reference to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (Rom. 9:17–18) meant God hardened the non-elect man in his sin, “for He wills that His power be magnified in his perdition” (cf. v. 22).16 Though man contributes no more to his salvation than an ax is able to swing itself, nevertheless Luther warned that men should not become fatalistic and “fall into the abyss of horror and hopelessness,” but instead cleanse their minds with “meditations on the wounds of Jesus Christ.”17 Predestination must not be opposed to the gospel or to hope. Some of Luther’s strongest affirmations of divine sovereignty appear in De servo arbitrio (1525): “If grace comes from the purpose or predestination of God, it comes by necessity and not by our effort or endeavor, as we have shown 10 Dr. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–1993), 1:225 [hereafter noted as WA], cited in Kolb, Bound Choice, 38. 11 Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, trans. Walter G. Tillmanns and Jacob A. O. Preus, ed. Hilton C. Oswald, in Luther’s Works (Saint Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1958–1986), 25:394 [hereafter noted as LW]. WA 56:405. See David C. Steinmetz, Luther in Context, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 16–20. 12 Luther, Lectures on Romans, in LW 25:385; WA 56:394–95. 13 Luther, Lectures in Romans, in LW 25:386; WA 56:395–96. 14 Luther, Lectures in Romans, in LW 25:386, 388; WA 56:395–98. 15 Luther, Lectures in Romans, in LW 25:391; WA 56:401–402. 16 Luther, Lectures in Romans, in LW 25:394; WA 56:404. 17 Luther, Lectures in Romans, in LW 25:389; WA 56:399–400.

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Part I: Predestination in Early Lutheranism

above.”18 Luther said, “God’s love towards men is eternal and immutable, and his hatred is eternal… and everything takes place by necessity in us, according as he either loves or does not love us from all eternity.”19 Wilhelm Niesel goes so far as to assert that Luther “stressed the doctrine of predestination far more than Calvin did. We shall look in vain in Calvin for as harsh a form of the doctrine and such extreme expressions of it as we find in Luther’s De servo arbitrio.”20 Some have even placed Luther, somewhat anachronistically, in the camp of the supralapsarians.21 Yet even Luther foresaw that this polemical book would be misunderstood by people after he died, and required careful interpretation.22 He denied that God produces sin and spiritual evil in people, like a malicious innkeeper pouring poison into a cup of good wine.23 Rather, God rules over wicked men “as a woodcarver might make statues out of rotten wood.”24 God did not harden Pharaoh’s heart by injecting evil into his soul, but by “not sending him his Spirit.”25 Luther’s concern in De servo arbitrio can be summarized as, “Let God be God.”26 James McGoldrick writes that Luther understood that this theocentric view opposes and offends the anthropocentric inclinations of fallen mankind. Luther said, “Man by nature is unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God and does not want God to be God.”27 And yet the God-ness of 18 Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, trans. Philip S. Watson with Benjamin Drewery, in LW 33:272; WA 18:772–73. 19 Luther, Bondage of the Will, in LW 33:199; WA 18:724. 20 Wilhelm Niesel, Reformed Symbolics: A Comparison of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism, trans. David Lewis (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1962), 232–33. Cf. Herman Hanko, “Predestination in Calvin, Beza, and Later Reformed Theology,” Protestant Reformed Theological Journal 10 (April 1977): 1–24, which solidly refutes several statements of Niesel by emphasizing the continuity of Calvin’s thought regarding predestination throughout his theology. 21 Berkouwer, Divine Election, 257. 22 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis, in LW 5:50; WA 43:462–63. Robert Kolb notes, “1) in treating De servo arbitrio it is important to take seriously the context, in the specific dispute with Erasmus and the Diatribe. That determines both the way in which Luther shapes his content, or the ‘binary opposite’ with whom and whose arguments he is fencing, and also the disputation-style of the argument; 2) it is also important to look at Luther’s own commentary on DSA in his commentary on Genesis 26 (see Luther’s Works 5: 45–50). There he warns against its misinterpretation—not in any way disavowing it, but trying to explain what he had “really” meant. It is also important to point out that Luther seldom uses the term ‘praedestinatio’ in De servo arbitrio and when he does, it seems to refer more to ‘providentia’ in general rather than election” (personal communication with author). 23 LW 33:178; WA 18:711–12. 24 LW 33:175; WA 18:709. 25 WA TR 4:642–43, #5071, cited by Kolb, Bound Choice, 53. See also LW 33:179; WA 18:712–13. 26 Kolb, Bound Choice, 32. 27 James E. McGoldrick, “Luther’s Doctrine of Predestination,” Reformation and Revival Journal 8, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 90, citing LW 31:10.

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God is essential to the gospel. Luther said, “Here, then, is something fundamentally necessary and salutary for a Christian, to know that God foreknows nothing contingently, but that he foresees and purposes and does all things by his immutable, eternal, and infallible will.”28 He said, “For this is the one supreme consolation of Christians in all adversities, to know that God does not lie, but does all things immutably, and that his will can neither be resisted nor changed nor hindered.”29 Luther stressed that everything flows forth from God’s eternal decree in accordance with His sovereign will: [God] would be equally ridiculous if he could not and did not do everything, or if anything took place without him. But granted foreknowledge and omnipotence, it follows naturally by irrefutable logic that we have not been made by ourselves, nor do we live or perform any action by ourselves, but by his omnipotence. And seeing he knew in advance that we should be the sort of people we are, and now makes, moves, and governs us as such, what imaginable thing is there, I ask you, in us which is free to become in any way different from what he has foreknown or is now bringing about? 30

Luther traced all events back to God’s active omnipotence, and emphasized the initiative of God in salvation. Man does nothing towards his new birth, or his preservation in God’s kingdom after he has been born again, “but the Spirit alone does both of these things in us, recreating us without us and preserving us without our help in our recreated state.” However, “he does not work without us, because it is for this very thing he recreated and preserves us, that he might work in us and we might cooperate with him.”31 This Augustinian language communicates Luther’s belief that all good things in the soul come entirely of God’s grace, and yet grace does not nullify the human will but vivifies it to live to God. Luther’s writings do contain occasional references to divine reprobation: “Admittedly, it gives the greatest possible offense to common sense or natural reason that God by his own sheer will should abandon, harden, and damn men as if he enjoyed the sins and the vast, eternal torments of his wretched creatures, when he is preached as a God of such great mercy and goodness.”32 Yet he could also write that, “It is likewise the part of this incarnate God [i. e., Christ] to weep, wail, and groan over the perdition of the ungodly, when the will of the Divine Majesty purposely abandons and reprobates some to perish.” Luther immediately adds, “And it is not for us to ask why he does so, but to stand in awe of God who both can do and wills to do such things.”33

28 29 30 31 32 33

LW 33:37; WA 18:615. LW 33:43; WA 18:619. LW 33:189; WA 18:718. LW 33:243; WA 18:754. LW 33:190; WA 18:719 (emphasis added). LW 33:146; WA 18:690 (emphasis added).

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However, Luther’s over-all thrust is essentially soteriological. Kolb writes, “His doctrine of predestination was not merely a topic in a theological system but rather a tool in delivering God’s consolation through the gospel of Christ.”34 Indeed, as Werner Elert repeatedly stresses, “the doctrine of predestination is merely an auxiliary thought” for Luther, having “only a subsidiary significance.” Yet the doctrine is necessary in order to humble human pride in our own powers and to place us in a position where we must trust the God we cannot fully understand. From this soteriological perspective, Elert says that Luther believed that “predestination is proclaimed only ‘for the sake of the elect.’”35 Luther sought to solve the tension between his theoretical predestinarianism and his practical soteriology by resorting to his distinction between the “hidden God” (Deus absconditus) and the “revealed God” (Deus revelatus). This should not be understood as the positing of a double reality or a double will in God. God “revealed”in Christ is the same “hidden” God who predestines.36 Luther later clarified his position by portraying the Lord as saying, “From an unrevealed God I will become a revealed God. Nevertheless, I will remain the same God. I will be made flesh, or send My Son.”37 The difference between God hidden and God revealed is not absolute or ontological, but only consists in the extent to which He is made known to us. Luther said, “If you believe in the revealed God and accept His Word, He will gradually also reveal the hidden God; for ‘He who sees Me also sees the Father,’ as John 14:9 says.”38 Though the hidden God and the revealed God are one and the same, Luther stressed the necessity of approaching God always and only through His self-revelation in Christ. The revealed will of God, synonymous with Holy Scripture, approaches man with life-giving mercy and not death (Ezek. 33), but the hidden will of God (before which we must tremble with godly fear) is that whereby God “ordains by his own counsel which and what sort of persons he wills to be recipients and partakers of his preached and offered mercy.” God, according to Luther, “does not will the death of a sinner, according to his word; but he wills it according to that inscrutable will of his.” God as revealed in His Word mourns the sinner’s death and seeks to save him from it; “but God hidden in his majesty neither deplores nor takes away death, but works life, death, and all in all. For there he has not bound 34 Robert Kolb, “The Plan behind the Promise: Luther’s Proclamation of Predestination,” Reformation and Revival Journal 12, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 42. 35 Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, 122–23. On the need to preach the doctrine of divine sovereignty for the humbling of human pride and formation of Christian faith, see LW 33:61– 62; WA 18:632–33, and the discussion in Gerhard O. Forde, The Captivation of the Will, ed. Steven Paulson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 41–43. 36 I am indebted to Robert Kolb on this point (personal communication with author). 37 LW 5:45; WA 43:459–60. 38 LW 5:46; WA 43:460.

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himself by his word, but has kept himself free over all things…. God does many things that he does not disclose to us in his word; he also wills many things which he does not disclose himself as willing in his word.”39 From his limited perspective —according to Luther, the only perspective available to creatures incapable of comprehending their Creator—Luther freely maintained strict monergism regarding salvation while affirming an unconditional offer of grace to all mankind. Working with his distinction between the revealed and hidden God, Luther reached the following salient points in his doctrine on predestination: 1) The boundary of human speculation regarding predestination is established by the Word of God, for Scripture represents God’s revealed will, beyond which we cannot go. If Scripture speaks little of predestination from a decretal viewpoint, though often from a soteriological perspective, and speaks of reprobation but rarely, then we must follow suit. If Scripture decries probing into the secret will of God (Deut. 29:29), we must also abhor all speculative intrusions into the divine decree. Since everything that is not of faith is sin, and since faith only encounters the revealed will of God, one must never pry into the secrets of the “hidden” God and expect to remain alive; indeed, to attempt to know the hidden God is the work of devils and even opened the door to the commission of original sin.40 Thus, all trains of thought relative to predestination that lead us beyond the plain dictates of Scripture are rejected as attempts to reach the hidden God and into “the incomprehensible secrets of the divine majesty.”41 This confinement of human reasoning on predestination within the bounds of Scripture maintains the important distinction between the Creator and His creatures in Luther’s thought.42 2) By fencing off, as it were, the hidden God from the very life of faith, Luther felt scripturally justified in maintaining simultaneously the universality of divine grace and the negation of human will and merit in receiving such grace. Luther, as it were, pushes the paradox that God wills that all men be saved and yet only some are saved, and that due to nothing in them, back into the unfathomable will of the hidden God, in whom there is neither confusion nor contradiction. Speaking bluntly, Luther’s parallelism between the hidden God/secret will of God and revealed God/revealed will of God, allows him to leave the most challenging predestination questions behind the veil of the hidden God. To the modern-day charges of pragmatism, inconsistency, dualism, and escapism, Luther has a comprehensive answer: Beyond the revealed will of God in Scripture our finite

39 40 41 42

LW 33:139–40; WA 18:684–86. Bente, Historical Introductions, 224; Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, 125. Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, 121–22. I am indebted to a personal communication from Robert Kolb for this insight.

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minds cannot and must not tread; we must not think to be wiser than God, nor place our reason above God’s revelation. 3) Refusing to yield to “the temptation of theo-logic,”43 Luther equated the need to remain within Scripture’s boundaries when discussing election with remaining within the “Christ-boundary.” It was Luther’s aim “to keep solely to Christ in the discussion of election, and not to go beyond Him.”44 The boundary of God’s revealed will limits our minds to the boundary of Scripture, which, in turn, focuses on Christ as presented to us in the means of grace. In the light of the gospel, Luther would not discuss divine predestination apart from faith in Christ. Christ was the heart of predestination for Luther, for Christ crucified is the center of God’s revelation. For Luther, all theology fell under what he called a “theology of the cross;” all attempts of logical enquiry that went beyond the cross and revelation of God, he labeled “theologies of glory” that no longer distinguish between the hidden and revealed God.45 Luther’s Christocentric approach to predestination (which Gritsch and Jenson define as, “whatever God might have planned, or is still planning for the world of men, is known in the gospel—the cheering news that the Jesus of Israel is our destiny”46) was emphatically reinforced by his personal experience. Luther nearly succumbed to despair in the formative period of his Christian life due to his inability to see within himself solid marks and proofs of election. His eyes were brought to see things in a new light when his spiritual father, Staupitz, told him to abandon all thoughts of what God might have thought or done in eternity and to direct his attention to Christ. If he would find himself “in the wounds” of Christ he would find full assurance of salvation, for God’s eternal Father-heart of electing grace is only revealed in his Son. Only then he would know perfectly what God had planned for him from all eternity.47 Luther gave similar advice in later life to many similarly troubled souls (including Flacius), instructing them that the correct way to learn the truth is not by starting with God’s eternal decrees, but with a personal embrace of Christ revealed in the gospel. Once Christ became one’s personal Savior, He would also become both personal Elector and personal Election. Luther said of predestination, “The old Adam must first die before he 43 Gritsch and Jensen write, “[The] temptation of ‘theo-logic’ [is] to solve the mystery of the relationship between God hidden in creation and the God revealed in the gospel through syllogisms” (Lutheranism, 154). 44 Berkouwer, Divine Election, 24. 45 LW 33:139; WA 18:685. For more on Luther’s distinction between “theology of the cross” and “theology of glory” see Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997). 46 Gritsch and Jensen, Lutheranism, 154. 47 LW 5:47; WA 43:460–61. For more on Staupitz’s significant influence on Luther see especially Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 134–46.

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can tolerate this thing and drink the strong wine. Therefore beware that you do not drink wine while you are still a suckling. There is a limit, a time, and an age for every doctrine.”48 4) Finally, since the church must only deal with predestination in terms of God’s revealed will (which is bounded by Scripture and by Christ who is the Book of Life,49 and the means of grace), the keynote of predestination is soteriological, especially with regard to the advanced steps of the ordo salutis. Predestination promotes assurance, comfort, and perseverance. Luther sought to utilize predestination as a pastoral divine, who “attempted to comfort the despairing without permitting the libertine to use election as an excuse for sin.”50 The doctrine of predestination, according to Luther, was a motivation to rest in the promises of God’s Word, which are able to keep a sinner from plunging himself into the despairing abyss of reprobation. Since God does not lie, anyone who trusts His promises “will be saved and chosen.”51 In his doctrinal writings, correspondence, and even at his table, Luther constantly reiterated this pastoral use of predestination, always seeking to use it as a guarantee of forgiveness and a pleading ground; predestination is for, rather than against, salvation.52 As John Dillenberger writes: [Predestination] was an affirmation on the part of the believer that God could be trusted, trusted even at the point where one’s faith was weak and wavering. It was the confession that God could be trusted, that He had a sure and safe destiny for us. Predestination was confessed by those who, by a miracle they could ascribe only to God, discovered themselves delivered from the incapacity of their wills and now living by God’s grace and promise.53

The priority which Luther assigned to the consolatory aspect of predestination, above and apart from its connection with the sovereignty of God and conversion itself, contains the incipient seeds of later Lutheranism’s outright rejection of the doctrine of double predestination. Though later Lutheranism could not discern any possibility of comfort via reprobation (which in turn led to the rejection of double predestination), Luther himself maintained that reprobation does serve to promote the welfare of the 48 LW 35:378, cited in Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 285. 49 Cf. Berkouwer, Divine Election, 110. 50 Robert Kolb, “Nikolaus von Amsdorf on Vessels of Wrath and Vessels of Mercy: A Lutheran’s Doctrine of Double Predestination,” Harvard Theological Review 69, no. 3–4 (July–October 1976): 325–26. 51 LW 54:387. 52 Kolb, “Nikolaus von Amsdorf on Vessels of Wrath and Vessels of Mercy,” 336. 53 John Dillenberger, introduction to Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (New York: Doubleday, 1961), xxviii.

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elect. The advanced Christian was to draw comfort from the decree of reprobation, first, by considering that God could also have passed him by, which enables an unworthy believer to magnify the free, distinguishing grace of God toward him. since there are no grounds for this election from the sinner’s side. Second, the elect sinner continually needs to be reminded of reprobation to remain humble in receiving grace. If redemptive grace was universal in application, would we not take the gift of eternal life for granted? Faith would then divorce itself from the humble fear of God and become swollen with pride. Third, Luther taught the hidden God, His secret will, and His sovereign decree must be preached for this purpose: “that the faith of Christians will really remain faith that humbly fears God,” as Althaus writes.54 Thus, to praise grace, to be humbled under grace, and to exercise the grace of faith, constitutes the threefold benefit that reprobation renders (under the Spirit’s blessing) to the mature Christian. It is clear that Luther did, at least early in his career as is evident in the writing of De servo arbitrio, assert a doctrine of double predestination. His presentation of it was not in the theological sense as seen in Calvin, but in a pastoral sense. The whole doctrine of predestination (reprobation included) is intended to console the believer by purifying faith from all secret claims of merit and from selfsecurity, so as to move him to rely on, and solely proclaim, the Pauline emphasis on the freedom of God’s grace in Christ Jesus (Romans 9–11). For Luther, who once confessed of himself, “I am not only miserable, but misery itself,” nothing could be more consoling.55

54 Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, 285. He also writes, “The hiddenness of God’s grace [in Luther’s thought] under the terrible reality of rejection creates room for faith and for its character as a risky ‘nevertheless.’ Faith fully becomes faith only when confronted by temptation through its knowledge of the hidden God. Beyond this: The knowledge that God has man’s salvation and damnation completely in His hand and that He chooses and rejects and chooses by His own free will, completely frees a man from the delusion that he could contribute something to his own salvation. This teaching of God’s hidden will and activity serves to ‘humble our pride and lead us to know God’s grace.’ Only this can destroy man’s final self-trust before God. When he completely despairs of himself, is made nothing, he becomes ripe for faith, that is, ready to throw himself without reservation into the arms of God. Preaching about the hidden God thus leads to despair and Luther testifies that this condition is terrible; at the same time, however, he asserts that it is salutary and ‘very close to grace.’ For God has promised to be gracious precisely to the despairing. This is revealed ‘that those who fear God might in humility comprehend, claim, and receive His gracious promise’” (The Theology of Martin Luther, 283–84). See also chapter 20 in this same work for an excellent summary of Luther’s teaching on the hidden and revealed God. 55 For additional material on Luther’s view of predestination, consult in particular Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, 159–60, 274–86; Bente, Historical Introductions, 209–228; Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, 117–25.

Chapter 2: Further Germination in Melanchthon

Apart from Luther, no other theologian wielded such a pervasive influence on Lutheran orthodoxy as the peace-loving Philip Melanchthon, remembered today as the Praeceptor Germaniae (“Instructor of Germany”). Relative to predestination, Berkouwer said that Melanchthon’s doctrines of synergistic election and nearly non-existent reprobation paved the way for Lutheran orthodoxy’s abandonment of double predestination.1 Indeed, Schaff went so far as to state that Melanchthon’s synergistic view of predestination was, at best, “an improved evangelical form of semi-Pelagianism and an anticipation of Arminianism.”2 On the other hand, Hans Engelland maintains that regarding predestination, Melanchthon “stands theologically nearer to Luther than the traditional view indicates. The important theological deficiencies of the time following Melanchthon are more the responsibility of students who fragmented what he had fused.”3 Timothy Wengert more recently affirmed the same,4 though recognizing a substantial difference between Calvin and Melanchthon concerning predestination.5 1 Berkouwer, Divine Election, 42. 2 Philip Schaff, The Harmony of the Reformed Confessions (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1877), 24. 3 Hans Engelland, introduction to Philip Melanchthon, Christian Doctrine: Loci communes 1555, trans. and ed. Clyde L. Manschreck (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1982), xli. 4 Timothy J. Wengert, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philip Melanchthon’s Exegetical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology, ed. David Steinmetz (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). After noting that Melanchthon did indeed make “small, subtle shifts” from 1530 onwards, Wengert writes, “Melanchthon’s comments about [the human will] not repudiating the Word did not for him simply connote a kind of synergism. Instead, he seemed finally to have found a place in his theology for paradox (simul); not in the tension between iustus and peccator, as with Luther, but in the simultaneous nonrejection of human minds and the work of the Holy Spirit, who moved the hearts of true hearers of the Word and helped them effect true virtues” (141–42). 5 Timothy J. Wengert, “‘We Will Feast Together in Heaven Forever’: The Epistolary Friendship of John Calvin and Philip Melanchthon,” in Melanchthon in Europe: His Work and Influence beyond Wittenberg, ed. Karin Maag, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation

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Due in part to Luther’s ringing endorsement of both his person and his writings, Philip Melanchthon rapidly acquired the reputation of being an astute theologian in the circles of prominent Reformation leaders. His Loci communes, first published in 1521, exercised great influence in the infant German evangelical movement and served for several decades as the major European systematic textbook of Reformation doctrine.6 In the Loci and additional early writings Melanchthon echoed Luther’s concept of strict divine monergism; in no uncertain terms he rejected all synthesis or cooperation between the works of God and the works of man in soteriology. Indeed, William Cunningham, among others, argued that Melanchthon’s early high-predestinarian tenets went above and beyond even Calvin’s, for he thoroughly denied the possibility of predestination leaving anything open to the freedom of man’s will at any time—including pre-fall man.7 Clyde Manschreck plausibly asserts that “the conflict over free will between Erasmus and Luther in 1524 and 1525 caused Melanchthon to re-examine the place of man’s will in conversion.”8 Robert Kolb writes that Melanchthon’s role as the diplomatic representative for evangelical Saxony did not permit him to thunder at the adversaries as Luther had done, but he “had to be prepared to explain his and Luther’s views within the framework set by scholastic theologians who believed that the truth came only in scholastic (Aristotelian) form.”9 Melanchthon sought to answer the charge from scholars such as Erasmus and Johannes Cochlaeus that the Wittenberg theology was simply recasting Stoic and Manichean teachings.10 Manschreck writes,

6

7 8 9 10

Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999): 19–44. Wengert writes, “Calvin also developed a radically biblical theology. However, he insisted that the biblical witness itself set the limits not just of terminology but of content and that therefore any comfort had to be found within the totality of that witness. What appeared to Melanchthon as speculation was for Calvin faithfulness. And Melanchthon’s moderatio, for all its appeal, could only be construed by Calvin as timidity, or worse yet, the result of philosophical scruples. It is finally this hermeneutical divide that continues to mark the differences between these two great streams of the Protestant tradition and between their ablest spokesmen” (44). Philip Melanchthon, Commonplaces: Loci Communes 1521, trans. and ed. Christian Preus (St. Louis: Concordia: 2014). Luther praised the Loci as worthy of “immortality” in 1525, and in the winter of 1542–1543 recommended it to be “read diligently and well” as the best compact book of theology available. See Benjamin T. G. Mayes, introduction to the second edition, Philip Melanchthon, The Chief Theological Topics: Loci Praecipui Theologici 1559, trans. J. A. O. Preus, Second English Edition (St. Louis: Concordia, 2011), xv–xvi (henceforth noted as Loci 1559). William Cunningham, Reformers and Theology of the Reformation (London: Banner of Truth, 1967), 161; Schaff, The Harmony of the Reformed Confessions, 24. Clyde L. Manschreck, preface to Melanchthon, Loci communes 1555, xii. Kolb, Bound Choice, 75. Kolb, Bound Choice, 75. On Johannes Cochlaeus’s attack on Melanchthon’s Loci communes,

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First, he [Melanchthon] could not accept “stoical fatalism,” or determinism, for this meant that God was imprisoned by the causal laws of nature—a denial of miracles, prayer, and so forth. He could not find determinism in Scripture, nor could he tolerate the idea inherent in determinism that God is responsible for man’s sin. Second, predetermined election seemed to undercut the Biblical message of salvation for all men. Also, a divinely forced justification would mean that man participated no more than a stone; he felt that man is responsible for accepting or rejecting the promises of God and that God does not force salvation upon a man as if he were inanimate.11

Melanchthon’s response to these attacks appears in the more nuanced statements on predestination in his 1527 Scholia on Colossians, which Wengert says “represents a thoroughgoing refutation of Erasmus’s position on Melanchthon’s own terms.”12 While denying that God is the author of sin and affirming that mankind has freedom and responsibility in regard to external obedience to civil laws, he still asserted, “Therefore this must be held: that human nature is not able by its natural powers to bring about true fear of God or true trust in God and the remaining spiritual affections and motions” (citing John 6:44; 15:5; Rom. 8:6–7; 1 Cor. 2:14).13 In the 1528 edition he declared that men cannot prepare themselves for righteousness or grace by their own powers—only the Spirit works faith.14 Melanchthon’s shifting emphasis on predestination became more pronounced in the early 1530s.15 Manschreck writes, “He did not include predestination in the Augsburg Confession [1530] lest any attempted explanation lead to more confusion.”16 In his Commentary on Romans (1532), Melanchthon asserted that “divine compassion is truly the cause of election, but that there is some cause also in him who accepts, namely, in as far as he does not repudiate the grace offered.”17 The complexity of interpreting Melanchthon is compounded by the

11 12

13 14 15 16

17

see Wengert, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness, 80–82. Wengert argues that Melanchthon’s Scholia on Col. 2:8 responds directly to Erasmus, not as much to Cochlaeus. Manschreck, preface to Melanchthon, Loci communes 1555, xiii. Wengert, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness, 87. See Timothy J. Wengert, “Philip Melanchthon’s Contribution to Luther’s Debate with Erasmus over the Bondage of the Will,” in Philip Melanchthon, Speaker of the Reformation: Wittenberg’s Other Reformer, Variorum Collected Studies Series (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2010), VI.110–24. Cited in Wengert, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness, 90. Wengert, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness, 98. Gritsch and Jensen claim that Melanchthon has been known as the “pussy-footer” (Leisetreter) ever since (Lutheranism, 22–23, 25). Manschreck, preface to Melanchthon, Loci communes 1555, xiii. Melanchthon wrote to Brenz, “In the whole Apology [for the Augsburg Confession, 1531] I have shunned that long and perplexing discussion of predestination. Everywhere I speak as if predestination followed our faith and works. And I do this deliberately, for I do not want to perturb consciences with those intricate labyrinths” (cited in Elert, Structure of Lutheranism, 129). Cited in Bente, Historical Introductions, 197. For a study of the various editions of Melanchthon’s exegesis of Romans, and that of his students after him, see Robert A Kolb, “Melanchthon’s Influence on the Exegesis of his Students: The Case of Romans 9,” in Philip

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various nuances of the term “cause,” which will be discussed further below. In the 1540 edition he dropped this formulation and asserted the priority of divine grace as the cause of human cooperation, for it is the result of the Spirit’s work.18 In 1535 Melanchthon published an extensive revision and expansion of his Loci.19 In this and later editions of the Loci, Melanchthon rejected human merit or worthiness as a cause of election, and asserted that “the entire number of those who are to be saved is chosen for the sake of Christ.”20 Yet he also wrote that it is the will of God that all people repent and believe in the gospel.21 He said, “God is not the cause of sin, and God does not will sin. The causes of sin are the will of the devil and the will of the human creature.”22 Melanchthon quoted Chrysostom, “God draws, but He draws those who are willing.”23 As Melanchthon explained in the 1543 edition of his Loci, mankind has fallen into a condition of inability to turn back to God, but when God comes in the gospel, those who hear must not resist Him—a line of explanation he attributed to the early church fathers.24 In 1548, he exhorted his readers, saying: I therefore answer those who excuse their idleness because they think that free will does nothing, as follows: It certainly is the eternal and immovable will of God that you obey the voice of the Gospel, that you hear the Son of God, that you acknowledge the Mediator. How black is that sin which refuses to behold the Mediator, the Son of God, presented to the human race! You will answer: “I cannot.” But in a manner you can (immo aliquo modo potes), and when you sustain yourself with the voice of the Gospel, then pray that God would assist you, and know that the Holy Spirit is efficacious in such consolation. Know that just in this manner God intends to convert us, when we, roused by the promise, wrestle with ourselves, pray and resist our diffidence and other vicious affections. For this reason some of the ancient Fathers have said that free will in man is the faculty to apply himself to grace; i. e. he hears the promise, endeavors to assent, and abandons sins against conscience.25

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25

Melanchthon (1497–1560) and the Commentary, ed. M. Patrick Graham and Timothy J. Wengert (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 194–215. Philipp Melanchthon, Commentary on Romans, trans. Fred Kramer (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992), 8–9, 188. Kolb, Bound Choice, 84. Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 325, 327; cf. Commentary on Romans, 187. Kolb, Bound Choice, 86–87; Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 326. Melanchthon, Loci 1535, cited in Kolb, Bound Choice, 87. Melanchthon, Loci communes 1555, 190. Kolb, Bound Choice, 91. On Melanchthon’s frequent use of the statement, “Only will, and God has preceded you” from (Pseudo) Basil’s sermon “On Repentance,” see E. P. Meijering, Melanchthon and Patristic Thought: The Doctrines of Christ and Grace, the Trinity and the Creation (Leiden: Brill, 1983), 40–41. Melanchthon, Loci 1548, cited in Bente, Historical Introductions, 130; cf. Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 62.

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In order to investigate Melanchthon’s views in more depth, I will pose specific questions of his mature teachings contained in his writings from 1535 onward. 1. What is the relationship between divine providence and human sin? Melanchthon asserted that there must be contingency in the sphere of human actions, for holding to a strict or absolute necessity of everything that God wills would ultimately make God the cause of sin. Although God actively preserves His creation and nothing finally takes place against His will, God did create human beings with free wills. Scripture admonishes people to perform works of civic righteousness, so they must have the ability to make contingent decisions, even if God is in control in determining those contingent situations. In his explanation, Melanchthon used the fine scholastic distinction between necessitas consequentis and necessitas consequentiae (absolute necessity and a necessity that follows as a result of certain conditions).26 Luther had rejected this distinction, but Calvin affirmed it in order to explain how events are contingent and fortuitous by nature and yet determined by God’s providence.27 Melanchthon sought to set forth a doctrine of divine sovereignty that guarded God’s name from any accusation of being the cause of sin or of willing that sin should take place.28 He aimed to strike a balance between God’s “prevision” of events, the “necessity” of God’s will being accomplished, and the “contingency” and “liberty” of human choices such that the will of man is “properly the cause of his evil action.”29 How, in this view, does God exercise sovereignty with respect to human sin? God determines “the outcome or success of an act of the will,” including sinful acts (Jer. 10:23).30 Melanchthon said, “He sets limits to the evils which He does not will, that is, He sets boundaries and does not allow evils to go beyond them.”31 God does not operate in the world on the same level as “secondary causes,”32 but above them as “a completely free agent” who can work 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Kolb, Bound Choice, 87; Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 52–53. LW 33:39–40; WA 18:616–17; Calvin, Institutes, 1.16.9. Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 46, 49. Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 50. Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 50–51. Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 53. The Christian distinction between primary and secondary causes goes back to the modified Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas, and was employed by other Reformation theologians such as Calvin (Institutes, 1.17.9). The Reformed perspective on the decree was summarized with such language a century later by the Westminster divines as follows: “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established” (Westminster Confession of Faith [3.1], in Westminster Confession of Faith [Glasgow: Free Presbyterian Publications, 1994], 28). Regarding providence, the confession again affirms that God orders things “according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently” (WCF 5.2, p. 34).

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apart from secondary causes. He sustains His creatures according to their created properties, and thus “established the will of Eve” as “a free agent”; but when Eve sinned her will “is a personal and independent cause of her action.”33 For Melanchthon this distinction of causes did not put the will of man on the same level as the will of God, because He remains the cause of all good in man, in his choices, and in his actions (John 15:5).34 When man wills to sin it is not the creation of something new but “a disturbance or confusion of the divine order… a defect or a lack.”35 2. What is the cause of a sinner’s turning back to God in faith and repentance? Melanchthon said, “Since the promise is universal and since in God there are not conflicting wills, it is necessary that there is some cause within us for the difference why Saul is rejected and David received.”36 Regarding the cause of a person’s conversion, Melanchthon mingled the proclamation of God’s sovereignty with exhortations pressing home the necessity of human submission and faith: “We must be aided by God, but it is necessary that we hear the Word of God and do not struggle against God when He draws us…. God draws our minds so that they are willing, but it is necessary that we assent and not struggle against Him.”37 When interpreting the biblical statement that God hardens sinners’ hearts (Rom. 9:18), Melanchthon wrote that “to harden” means to permit them to continue to resist by not setting them free.38 A heavy emphasis in his writings on this topic is the warning to take care not to resist God’s grace. Melanchthon asserted three causes of human repentance, good works, and conversion: “the three causes of good works [are], namely, the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, and the human will which assents to and does not contend against the Word of God.”39 In another place, he said, “Accordingly these causes concur in conversion: the Word of God, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father and the Son send in order that he may enkindle our hearts, and our will when it assents and does not oppose the Word of God.”40 This doctrine of three causes has opened Melanchthon to charges of synergism because it appears to deny that in regeneration all is caused by God’s grace. Man is no longer passive in regeneration, but must contribute something to his conversion that God’s Spirit does not work in him. 33 Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 53–54. He later wrote, “God is truly present with them [the church] and is doing many things which are above and beyond the order and area of activity of secondary causes” (324). 34 Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 51. 35 Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 48. 36 Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 63. 37 Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 328. 38 Melanchthon, Commentary on Romans, 191 (Rom. 9:18–24). 39 Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 61. 40 Cited in Lowell C. Green, “The Three Causes of Conversion in Philip Melanchthon, Martin Chemnitz, David Chytraeus, and the ‘Formula of Concord,’” Lutherjahrbuch 47 (1980): 91.

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However, Green shows that early Lutheran writers could use “conversion” to refer either to initial repentance or to the continuous repentance of the Christian life.41 In the latter case, Melanchthon’s statements would pertain not to the unregenerate, but to those already under grace. The question is complicated by the fact that in the Lutheran state church, all the baptized (nearly all the local population!) were considered regenerate.42 One must also carefully interpret the meaning of “cause” when considering Melanchthon’s doctrine of the three causes of conversion. Green observes that the “Preceptor of the Germans” wrote a textbook listing the multiple causes of Aristotelian philosophy, and another contemporary Lutheran, Tilemann Hesshus, explicitly identified the Holy Spirit as the efficient cause, the Word and sacraments as the instrumental cause, and the human will as the material cause on which the Spirit works.43 Meijering writes of Melanchthon’s doctrine that “these are not three causae efficientes besides each other, but that God’s Spirit is the only causa efficiens, the Word of God is the causa instrumentalis and human will the causa materialis, that which is worked upon.”44 As Kolb explains, in the Aristotelian scheme of causes, “A material element thus could be the passive recipient of the action of the effective cause,” and so the three “causes” can be taken to describe the Holy Spirit acting sovereignly upon the human will through the instrumentality of the Word.45 Therefore, the language of three causes remains ambiguous regarding synergism, and continued to be used for a time by Martin Chemnitz and David Chytraeus. When some of Melanchthon’s students did embrace synergism, such ambiguity proved dangerous. Green wrote, “Melanchthon, Chytraeus, and Chemnitz may have been right in thinking that their formulation excluded synergism, but their teaching had been misunderstood” as implying that man’s will is an efficient cause in regeneration.46 Thus the doctrine of three causes was rejected by Lutheranism, and Chytraeus and Chemnitz ceased using it after Melanchthon died. Another element of Melanchthon’s teaching that provoked controversy was his assertion that “the will is not idle” in the struggle of conversion.47 Kolb 41 42 43 44

Green, “The Three Causes of Conversion,” 93–94. Green, “The Three Causes of Conversion,” 113. Green, “The Three Causes of Conversion,” 97. Meijering, Melanchthon and Patristic Thought, 134n130. He cites K. Haendler, Wort und Glaube bei Melanchthon (Gütersloh, 1968), 551ff. 45 Kolb, Bound Choice, 93. For further analysis, see Timothy J. Wengert, “Philip Melanchthon and the Origins of the ‘Three Causes’ (1533–1535): An Examination of the Roots of the Controversy over the Freedom of the Will,” in Philip Melanchthon: Theologian in Classroom, Confession, and Controversy (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 183–208. 46 Green, “The Three Causes of Conversion,” 109. 47 Kolb, Bound Choice, 93.

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observes that the statement “admits of two interpretations,” either that the Spirit moves the will to accept salvation or that the will must add its act to the Spirit’s work for conversion to occur.48 Melanchthon drew on the tradition that spoke of “freedom of choice” as “the faculty for applying itself to grace” (facultas applicandi se ad gratiam).49 Walther states, “This is the notorious statement … usually cited to prove that Melanchthon was a genuine synergist.”50 Erasmus had drawn upon this same tradition in attacking Luther, and Luther flatly rejected it. For Melanchthon to use it positively seems to put him at odds with the Augustinianism of his fellow Wittenberger.51 If, however, Melanchthon had denied monergism in grace, it is puzzling that we have no record of a reaction from Luther.52 It is therefore likely, as Haendler has argued, that in Melanchthon’s view the ability to apply oneself to grace belongs only to homo renatus, and not to unregenerate mankind, and thus is the fruit of the new birth.53 This reading would place Melanchthon’s statement in harmony with the Formula of Concord, which states, “The facultas applicandi se ad gratiam (that is, the power to dispose oneself naturally towards grace), does not arise out of our own natural powers but alone through the activity of the Holy Spirit.”54 Here again, we find ambiguity, but with the distinct possibility that Melanchthon was not synergistic. Melanchthon wrestled with the question of the causes of salvation in his 1540 commentary on Romans. He affirmed salvation by undeserved grace: “Therefore, one’s own worthiness, merits, or fulfillment of the Law are not causes of election…. the mercy of God is the cause of election.”55 However, he refused to draw the conclusion that God also determined who would not be saved. He said, “When we wonder: If merits make no difference, then why is not mercy shown to all? I answer: As far as the Word and the promise are concerned, we must hold fast to universality. But not all attain the benefits because very many resist the Word. And it is evident that resistance is an act of the human will, because God is not a cause of sin.”56 If we stopped reading at this point, it would seem clear that Melanchthon attributed the causes of election jointly to God’s mercy and to the response of 48 Kolb, Bound Choice, 83. 49 Kolb, Bound Choice, 94. 50 C. F. W. Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel (St. Louis: Concordia, n. d.), 265. 51 Kolb, Bound Choice, 94. 52 Kolb, Bound Choice, 95. 53 Haendler, Wort und Glaube bei Melanchthon, 544ff, cited in Meijering, Melanchthon and Patristic Thought, 136n137. 54 SD II.78. 55 Melanchthon, Commentary on Romans, 187 (Rom. 9). 56 Melanchthon, Commentary on Romans, 187 (Rom. 9).

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those who do not resist the gospel. However, Melanchthon proceeded to attribute their receptive response to the gospel to God’s grace: “The elect do not resist the calling, but believe the Gospel, and do not in the end reject it. Nevertheless, it must be held in the meantime that to believe and not to resist are results which come about when the Holy Spirit impels.” Why then did Melanchthon not simply attribute all to God? He insisted on describing election from the perspective of the universal gospel call: “I am speaking about our judgment, which does not search out the hidden majesty without the Word, but looks at the God who calls through the promise and apprehends his will in the Word, which is universal.” He concludes with a strong affirmation of unconditional and efficacious divine election: “Thus Paul says [Rom. 9:16]: ‘It is not of him who wills and runs, but of God who has mercy,’ that is, mercy is indeed the cause of election, not our willing and running. Nevertheless, these things are done in the will and in running, not in resisting.”57 In other words, God does not elect sinner because He knows they will have faith to obey, but rather, His election results in the Spirit’s work in a person’s life, and thus is evidenced by faith, submission, and obedience. Melanchthon’s answer to the cause of salvation was complex. He strongly emphasized human responsibility and exhorted his readers to not resist God’s grace, lest they be damned and that for their own fault. At key points, however, he affirmed that non-resistance to God is itself the gift of God’s electing mercy. In this way he could attribute all glory to God for each person’s salvation. Yet his ambiguous statements and frequent insertion of exhortations about the activity of the human will into doctrinal discussions left him open to charges of synergism. 3. What should we think of God’s reprobation of sinners to damnation? Melanchthon warned against seeking a knowledge of election outside of the gospel of Christ. The universal call to repentance and universal promise of grace to believers should dominate our minds, rather than questions about the secret counsels of God.58 He concludes, “So also regarding our election, we must judge from the effects (a posteriori), that is, there is absolutely no doubt that the elect are those who in faith take hold of God’s mercy, which has been promised for the sake of Christ, and who never give up this confidence.”59 The “cause of our election is the merciful will of God,” but “the cause of reprobation is the sin in men.”60 Melanchthon said, “The cause of reprobation is our stubborn rejection of the Son,” saying of Israel (Rom. 9:31–32), “they were rejected because they were unwilling to hear the Son.”61 57 58 59 60 61

Melanchthon, Commentary on Romans, 188 (Rom. 9), emphasis added. Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 326–28. Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 327. Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 327. Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 330.

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Melanchthon strongly objected to “the idea that God is sitting in heaven and writing unchangeable decrees on the tablets of the Fates”; he asserted “God is truly free and wills only good things,” and queried how an unconverted person can believe that “if he receives these tablets of the Fates—it has already been decreed that you have been rejected, that you are not written in the number of the elect.”62 He said in the same context, “God wills that the entire human race not perish.”63 Thus it appears that he rejected double predestination as Calvin understood it and believed that the universal call of the gospel expressed a universal saving will of God. When speaking of the charge of injustice against the God who elects (Rom. 9:14), Melanchthon appealed to God’s freedom in showing undeserved mercy to some sinners: “Equal things are to be rendered when a debt is paid. In the case of a gift or when something is done through mercy, there is no need to render equal things to equals.” He then stated again that man’s positive response to the gospel is caused by election, and not the cause of it: “Men are chosen and called through mercy in order that they may will and run.”64 Facing a similar objection that hardening negates the guilt and accountability of the hardened (Rom. 9:19), he spoke of their inability not in terms of absolute necessity but “necessity of the consequence,” and said that their guilt precedes their hardening: “It is true that the multitude is rejected and that it cannot be converted, because it has been rejected; but it has been rejected on account of its own ungodliness.” Yet this rejection fulfills God’s purpose (Rom. 9:22–23): “the ultimate cause [causam finalem] why God ordained things in this way—in order that both wrath and mercy might be more clearly seen.”65 However, Melanchthon insists “the cause of reprobation” (causam reprobationis) is “because they fight against the Gospel.”66 Thus Melanchthon attributed the efficient cause of reprobation to the sin and stubbornness of men, but its final cause to God’s purpose of glorifying Himself. In summary, Kolb states that even to Melanchthon’s last years, “He steadfastly held to the Wittenberg assertion of total divine responsibility for salvation and total human responsibility for obedience to God’s command.”67 Following Luther’s law/gospel distinction, he taught that the law places all guilt for sin upon man, but the gospel gives all glory to God for salvation and sanctification. In this 62 63 64 65

Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 331. Melanchthon, Loci 1559, 331. Melanchthon, Commentary on Romans, 190 (Rom. 9:14–16). Melanchthon, Commentary on Romans, 191 (Rom. 9:18–24); Commentarii in Epistolam ad Romanos (Wittenberg: Joseph Klug, 1540), CCXIIIv, http://digitale.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/ vd16/content/pageview/1083388, accessed May 6, 2016. 66 Melanchthon, Commentary on Romans, 192 (Rom. 9:18–24); Commentarii… Romanos, CCXIIIIr. 67 Kolb, Bound Choice, 99.

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regard, he was monergistic in affirming conversion by grace alone. However, he shrank back not only from double predestination, but also from a strong assertion of single predestination (divine election, but no corresponding divine reprobation), perhaps recognizing that one implied the other. Kolb writes, “He had always avoided the concept of particularity—that God has chosen a particular number of the elect—because he believed it implied predestination to damnation, and thus deprived believers of the comfort of God’s promise.”68 Calvin wrote that Melanchthon’s moderation is an example of his “being a timid man,” but Melanchthon saw it as a refusal to “venture beyond the biblical and patristic witness in theological discourse,” as Wengert writes.69 Melanchthon did not reject Luther’s doctrine of predestination entirely, but in attempting to defend the doctrine against charges of fatalism or determinism Melanchthon so highlighted human responsibility that the sovereignty of divine grace receded into the background, and divine sovereignty in reprobation disappeared almost entirely.70

68 Kolb, Bound Choice, 100. 69 Wengert, “‘We Will Feast Together in Heaven Forever,’” in Melanchthon in Europe, 31–32, 43. 70 Berkouwer, Divine Election, 33.

Chapter 3: The Marbach-Zanchi Controversy

The tensions resulting from Luther’s and Melanchthon’s varying approaches began to surface in the early 1560s in the conflict between Marbach and Zanchi, a controversy that contributed much to the need for Article 11’s inclusion in the Formula of Concord. Though German Lutheranism had dealt with the doctrine of predestination in relation to the role of the human will in conversion, it never became a major issue of debate between Philippists and Gnesio-Lutherans,1 though some minor controversies arose over it.2 Rather, the occasion for Article 11 of the Formula of Concord arose primarily from a debate in the Strasbourg church between the Lutheran pastor Johann Marbach (1521–1581) and the Reformed theologian Jerome Zanchi (1516–1590).3 This battle of the late Reformation resulted in a further entrenching of one of the main dividing lines between Lutheran and Reformed orthodoxy, thereby exerting a major influence on determining the Formula of Concord’s position on predestination.4 Here in Strasbourg, in the late 1550s and early 1560s, the lines of division were practically drawn fifteen years before they were confessionally formulated in Lutheran symbolism. Kittelson states that the two year Marbach/Zanchi debate on predestination and the Lord’s Supper should not be regarded as a naive “product of theological

1 The concordists wrote, “To be sure, there has been no public, scandalous, or widespread conflict among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession on the eternal election of the children of God” (SD XI.1). 2 Martin Chemnitz and Cyriakus Spangenberg were involved in some disputes in the 1560s and early 1570s pertaining to predestination (Kolb, Bound Choice, 127–28, 198–243; Book of Concord, 641n318). 3 The controversy in Strasbourg is probably the primary reference of the statement in the Formula, “Very violent disputes concerning this article took place elsewhere that aroused some concern among our own people” (SD XI.1). See James M. Kittelson, “Marbach vs. Zanchi: The Resolution of Controversy in Late Reformation Strasbourg,” Sixteenth Century Journal 8, no. 3 (1977): 31. 4 Kittelson, “Marbach vs. Zanchi,” 31–32.

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misunderstanding,” as Jurgen Moltmann asserts.5 Rather, the debate between Marbach and Zanchi forwarded the development of both Lutheran and Reformed positions on predestination through the Formula of Concord and beyond into the seventeenth-century Lutheran-Reformed polarization.6 Johann Marbach received his doctorate in 1543 from Wittenberg where he lived with and became a devoted follower of Martin Luther.7 He came to Strasbourg, his lifelong field of labor, in 1545, and quickly asserted himself as leader of the city’s ecclesiastical life upon the removal of Martin Bucer. In contrast to Strasbourg’s civic leaders, who were bent on pursuing a middle path between the Lutherans and the Reformed in the early 1550s, Marbach pragmatically and (ultimately) successfully set out to “Lutheranize” the entire city.8 Jerome Zanchi, Italian exile and pupil of Peter Martyr, had been schooled in the revived Thomist scholasticism of the mid–l6th century before his conversion to Protestantism in the 1540s. Zanchi was hired to teach in the famous Strasbourg Academy in 1553. Zanchi’s stay at Strasbourg (1553–1563), during which he lectured on Isaiah, Hosea, and Aristotle’s Physics, was tainted by his long, bitter controversy with Marbach. Marbach’s suspicions were aroused by Zanchi’s inaugural address in which he pledged to use insights from Zwingli and Calvin, as well as from Luther, providing they were in accord with Scripture. Later in the 1550s tension arose between Marbach and his fellow preachers on the one side, and Zanchi and his fellow professors at the academy on the other, over a number of issues, including the degree of clergy influence in the school, which Marbach, as ecclesiastical superintendent, was eager to foster. This tension dramatically increased in 1557 at the Colloquy of Worms when Marbach’s patience broke down after he was almost excluded from the discussions “because Flacius and his followers had not only heard about what was taught in Strasbourg’s school, but had also come into possession of a letter Zanchi had written to the Heidelberg theologians on the subject.”9 Matters came to a head in 1560 when Frederick III of the Palatinate prevailed on Zanchi and Sturm (rector of the Strasbourg academy) to oppose Marbach’s attempt to publish Tilemann Hesshus’s De praesentia corporis Christi in Coena Domini, a fiercely polemical work which caustically attacked the Reformed view of the Lord’s Supper. When Zanchi persuaded the magistrate to suppress its publication, Marbach declared all-out war. Refusing to greet Zanchi in person, he 5 Jurgen Moltmann, Prädestination und Perseveranz; Geschichte und Bedeutung der reformierten Lehre “de perseverantia sanctorum” (Neukirchen: Nieukirchner Verlag, 1961), 85– 89, cited in Kittelson, “Marbach vs. Zanchi,” 31. 6 Kittelson, “Marbach vs. Zanchi,” 31. 7 Kittelson, “Marbach vs. Zanchi,” 40. 8 Kolb, Bound Choice, 174. 9 Kittelson, “Marbach vs. Zanchi,” 33.

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gathered notes from his students in order to amass a collection of “anti-Augsburg” statements, and then proceeded to file a formal complaint against the professor, with both the civil authorities and the governing board of the school. The conflict, with its many charges and counter-charges, lasted two long, bitter years. Kittelson has argued that the prevalent issue was not the Lord’s Supper controversy so much as the predestination question: Late in the struggle Marbach himself stated that the controversy really began when he learned that Zanchi was teaching God’s foreknowledge and election in a manner contrary to what he and the other pastors preached and contrary to the content of the Augsburg Confession…. Marbach charged that Zanchi was introducing a new teaching that would lead only to anxiety among the faithful and that tended to open the door to the freedom of the will. With Augustine, Zanchi replied that “to abstain from preaching the predestination of the saints is the same as abstaining from preaching the love of God for us.”10

Neither Marbach nor Zanchi charged the other with denying election, but they disagreed on how it should be preached; more specifically, they disagreed as to how the believer attains to assurance of election.11 Marbach could not stomach Zanchi’s Aristotelian, scholastic approach. The entire matter, he insisted, must “be approached from the Word of God and the promises of the Gospel.” Both of them spoke of God’s grace “a priori, that is unrestrictedly from that secret predestination of God, or truly a posteriori, that is from that which has been certainly revealed to us in the Word.”12 Sounding very much like the Formula of Concord to come, Marbach demanded that Zanchi “lead his auditors to the Word of God and His revealed will alone,” and stated that if Zanchi’s approach was correct, “the divine promises of grace by means of Christ the mediator would not pertain to all generally and universally, but separately to however many were assigned to this within God’s hidden judgment.”13 Marbach, in refusing to preach “beyond” Christ in the predestination question, felt it necessary to prevent Zanchi from doing so as well. Berkouwer infers that the heart of Marbach’s opposition was his refusal to establish “the assurance of salvation by way of an inference from election.”14 For Marbach, only in Christ can believers come to assurance concerning personal election; for Zanchi, the syllogismus practicus (“These are the signs of the predestined; I have these signs; therefore I am predestined”) is both legitimate and profitable. Indeed, he gives believers a 10 Kittelson, “Marbach vs. Zanchi,” 34. 11 Robert A. Kolb, “Historical Background of the Formula of Concord,” in A Contemporary Look at the Formula of Concord, ed. Robert D. Preus and Wilbert H. Rosin (St. Louis: Concordia, 1978), 54. 12 Kittelson, “Marbach vs. Zanchi,” 35. 13 Kittelson, “Marbach vs. Zanchi,” 35–36. 14 G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Perseverance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 58.

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number of clear signs, expressed in formal syllogisms, to determine whether they have been predestined to salvation; significantly, he may have been the first Calvinist to use this scholastic approach to ascertaining personal election.15 Persuaded that practical, pastoral concerns must supersede, even negate, a speculative doctrine of election and reprobation, Marbach looked with great suspicion upon Zanchi’s assertion that his scholastic theology was indeed both practical and pastoral in its outworking. He feared that the way of salvation, synonymous with the way of consolation through the gospel, would be seriously weakened through Zanchi’s apparently non-Christocentric approach. Was it not paramount for all believers in all areas of doctrine, predestination included, to cling firmly to the simplicity of being chosen in and saved by Jesus Christ? To reason from the unchangeable decree of election to the inalienability of grace signaled to Marbach a minimizing of Christ’s centrality and a stepping into the abyss of never-ending human introspection and speculation. According to Otto Grundler, Marbach had good cause to be suspect of Zanchi’s doctrine of predestination, for Grundler sought to prove that the theology of Calvin represents a distinct break from “the Aristotelian Thomism of Roman Catholic theology which preceded him, but that Zanchi represents a reversion to Thomism and therefore a significant turning point in the transition from Reformation to decadent orthodoxy in Reformed theology.”16 Norman Shepherd found Grundler’s dissertation itself to be suspect for its tendency to line up with the proneness of modern theology “to seek respectability for a radical departure from orthodoxy by means of an appeal to the Reformers, and to find in classic Reformed theology a rapid deterioration of Reformed principles.”17 After an examination of Zanchi’s theology, Richard Muller concludes, “The interplay of scholasticism and Reformed theology in Zanchi’s thought does not produce a predestinarian system in which the decrees dominate as the central dogma. Predestination demonstrates that salvation is given entirely graciously and in Christ alone. Christology and Christ-centered piety pervade his system of doctrine.”18 Charged by Marbach with heterodoxy, Zanchi laid down fourteen theses to summarize his teaching on the disputed points. In the theses regarding predestination, he taught: 15 John Patrick Donnelly, “Italian Influences on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism,” Sixteenth Century Journal 7, no. 1 (1976): 98–99. 16 Norman Shepherd, “Zanchius on Saving Faith,” Westminster Theological Journal 36, no. 1 (Fall 1973): 32; cf. Otto Grundler, “Thomism and Calvinism in the Theology of Girolamo Zanchi (1516–1590)” (ThD dissertation, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1961). 17 Shepherd, “Zanchius on Saving Faith,” 47. 18 Richard A. Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology, Studies in Historical Theology 2 (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth, 1986), 121.

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God has determined both the number of those chosen for eternal life and the number of those rejected. Just as those elected to life cannot lose it and are, therefore, necessarily saved, so also those who are not predestined to life cannot be saved and are, therefore, necessarily damned. He who is once elected can never be rejected.19

However, Zanchi also taught that mankind retains a freedom of will even in our fallen condition, a freedom defined as willing or choosing without coercion.20 Thus his view of double predestination did not treat men as if they were blocks of stone, but as corrupt moral agents.21 Marbach’s abhorrence for Zanchi’s explication of reprobation led Marbach to part with his beloved master, Martin Luther, by denying predestination to damnation altogether, prefiguring the Formula of Concord’s merging of monergistic grace and single predestination. Later in Zanchi’s work De Natura Dei (1577), he expanded his concept of reprobation to include (1) rejection from the grace given to the elect in Christ, (2) designation to dishonorable use, and (3) destination to eternal death.22 Grundler summarizes, First, as privatio gratiae electionis, a withholding of divine grace as well as its effects, for God is free to confer His grace upon whom He chooses. Second, as the destination and ordination to be used within the plan of God’s providence. Third, as destination and ordination toward eternal punishment of the reprobate for their own sins. As God punishes because of sin, He also decrees from eternity to punish because of sin.23

Zanchi distinguished between election and reprobation with regard to causality of salvation and damnation. As Grundler writes:

19 Joseph N. Tylenda, “Girolamo Zanchi and John Calvin: A Study in Discipleship as Seen through Their Correspondence,” Calvin Theological Journal 10, no. 2 (Nov. 1975): 123. For Zanchi’s teaching on double predestination, see Girolamo Zanchi, De religione christiana fides—Confession of Christian Religion, ed. Luca Baschera and Christian Moser, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1:136–43. 20 Zanchi, De religione christiana fides—Confession of Christian Religion, 1:174–77; R. T. te Velde, “Always Free, but Not Always Good: Girolamo Zanchi (1516–1590) on Free Will,” in Reformed Thought on Freedom: The Concept of Free Choice in Early Modern Reformed Theology, ed. Willem J. van Asselt, J. Martin Bac, and Roelf T. te Velde, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 84. See te Velde’s translation of Zanchi’s theses on human freedom on pp. 53–75. 21 Zanchi, De religione christiana fides—Confession of Christian Religion, 1:180–81. 22 Donald W. Sinnema, “The Issue of Reprobation at the Synod of Dort (1618–19) in Light of the History of the Doctrine” (PhD Dissertation, University of St. Michael’s College, 1985), 74. 23 Grundler, “Thomism and Calvinism,” 155.

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[For Zanchi] reprobation is the cause of rejection from grace and of destination to punishment. [More precisely, reprobation is rejection from grace and destination to punishment.] The actual condemnation, however, is caused by the reprobate’s own sin. In this sense, God is not the cause of sin, as He is the cause of good works. Yet reprobation and predestination as such have no other cause than the free will of God, who elects and reprobates men not on the ground of foreknown good works nor foreseen sins, but on no other ground than the free will of God Himself…. From this it follows that the reprobate, destitute of grace, must be said to sin necessarily—non posse non peccare. God permits sin, but is not its author. He moves men to action as such, yet the sinful nature of the action is due entirely to the sinful nature of the reprobate himself. For this reason Zanchi prefers to speak of the “consequences” rather than the effects of reprobation.24

Although Zanchi’s understanding of predestination ultimately lost out in Strasbourg and in Lutheran orthodoxy, his placement of predestination as the cause of Christ’s incarnation, life, and death gained considerable support in late sixteenth, seventeenth, and even eighteenth century Reformed orthodoxy. The influence of Zanchi’s writings on predestination can hardly be overestimated. His works contain over five hundred folio pages dealing with his controversies at Strasbourg regarding predestination; this material was translated into numerous languages and reprinted many times. Examples of Zanchi’s influence on Reformed orthodoxy could be easily multiplied. Donnelly points out that Francis Gomarus, one of the Counter-Remonstrants that triumphed at Dordt, was a student of Zanchi.25 More concretely, Zanchi’s concern with the intricate causal relationship between predestination and various branches of soteriology was carried on in Reformed Orthodoxy through William Perkins and Elizabethan Puritanism. Particularly, Zanchi’s predestinarian views were quoted at length and spread by Perkins’s Golden Chain. Twenty-two editions of this Zanchi-influenced work were issued in England alone.26 Herman Witsius warmly endorsed “the very learned Zanchius.”27 When Augustus Toplady, an eighteenth-century English Calvinist, sought to oppose John Wesley’s Arminianism, he chose to translate and expand part of Zanchi’s treatise, which he entitled The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination. The book went through multiple editions in Britain and America and is still being reprinted today.28 24 25 26 27

Grundler, “Thomism and Calvinism,” 156. Donnelly, “Italian Influences on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism,” 98. Donnelly, “Italian Influences on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism,” 99. Herman Witsius, The Oeconomy of the Covenants between God and Man. Comprehending a Complete Body of Divinity (New York: by George Foreman, for Lee and Stokes, 1798), 1:63. 28 Joel R. Beeke, introduction to Jerome Zanchius, Absolute Predestination, trans. Augustus Toplady (Conway, Ark.: Free Grace Press, 2012), 9–21; Donnelly, “Italian Influences on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism,” 99.

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John Bray, leaning on Armstrong, goes so far as to suggest that Zanchi, together with theologians such as Theodore Beza and Peter Martyr, may have had far greater influence on the doctrine of predestination in Reformed circles than Calvin himself—part of the argument for the Calvin-versus-the-Calvinists dichotomy.29 Donnelly similarly argued that Peter Martyr and Zanchi played key roles in promoting Aristotelian scholasticism in Reformed theology, trading paradox and mystery for a kind of systematic “Calvinistic Thomism.”30 Though Zanchi used the methodological tools of scholasticism, such an assessment overlooks his extensive work as an exegete of the Holy Scriptures, and the pastoral and Christ-centered character of his ministry. John Farthing says, “Biblical exegesis is prominent, indeed pervasive, in Zanchi’s project. A substantial portion of his writings take the form of biblical commentary, and even when he is working in some other genre Zanchi lived and breathed in dialogue with Scripture.”31 His writings are characterized by “generous warmhearted spirituality,” not “idle speculation.”32 His writings give extensive attention to Christ; to suggest that “Zanchi’s theology led to an undervaluation of the role of Christ is simply misleading,” as Christopher Burchill writes.33 Despite Zanchi’s attempt to formulate the doctrine of predestination in a biblical and Christ-honoring fashion and his appeals to Luther’s De servo arbitrio, Strasbourg ultimately opted for Marbach’s position. Initially, when Marbach and Zanchi debated before the university chapter, Zanchi was judged to be in the right. Ecclesiastical bureaucrat as he was, Marbach quickly invalidated their findings on a technicality, arguing that, “Because I act in this controversy against Zanchi not as a deacon and chapter member, but out of the duty of my office as superintendent of the Strasbourg church, the controversy which I and the pastors have with Zanchi is therefore none of the chapter’s business in any way.”34 Marbach viewed his exchanges with Zwingli before the chapter merely as closing endeavors at mediation and reconciliation before the case could be brought

29 John S. Bray, Theodore Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination (Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1975), 64– 65. For a rebuttal of the postulated dichotomy in Reformed theology, see Richard Muller, “Calvin and the ‘Calvinists’: Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy, Part One,” Calvin Theological Journal 30, no. 2 (1995): 345–75; “Part Two,” Calvin Theological Journal 31, no. 1 (1996): 125–60. 30 Donnelly, “Italian Influences on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism,” 81–101; “Calvinistic Thomism,” Viator 7 (1976): 441–55. 31 J. L. Farthing, “Zanchi, Jerome (1516–1590),” in Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, ed. Donald K. McKim (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Academic, 2007), 1076–77. 32 Farthing, “Zanchi,” in Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, 1079. 33 Christopher J. Burchill, “Girolamo Zanchi: Portrait of a Reformed Theologian and His Work,” Sixteenth Century Journal 15, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 206. 34 Kittelson, “Marbach vs. Zanchi,” 38–39.

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before a special commission of the civil government, which began its work by soliciting depositions from parties to the dispute. Schaff summarizes the result: The theologians of Marburg, Zurich, and Heidelberg decided in favor of the thesis of Zanchi. The ministers of Basel counseled peace and compromise; the divines of Tubingen approved of the doctrine of predestination but dissented from the theses on perseverance; even Brenz thought the matter might be amicably settled. The divines of Saxony decided according to their different attitudes towards Melanchthon.35

Finally, in the spring of 1563, the city council invited representatives from Württemberg, Basel, and Zweibrucken to come to Strasbourg to work out a consensus statement. At the high price of untold strife, wrangling, and “doubtful methods in the heat of conflict”36 (such as attempts to influence the council to invite only divines with “moderate” views on predestination), Marbach ultimately won the case, leveraging every theological, ecclesiastical, and political factor to his advantage.37 When the Strasbourg Formula was adopted in 1563, it assigned predestination to a subordinate and subsidiary position, and its logical consequence, the perseverance of saints, was denied outright. Substantially, Marbach’s views were reflected throughout: “God does not will sin nor create vessels of wrath for destruction; why some are saved and others are not cannot be ascertained, but the question should not trouble consciences, which must be directed to Christ alone.”38 With serious reservations, Zanchi signed the Consensus, adding a disclaimer, “as I understand it.”39 When Calvin heard of this submission, he urged Zanchi to not hide in ambiguities but to declare plainly to the Senate his stance on the Lord’s Supper, divine predestination, and perseverance of the saints, which he did, receiving this commendation from the Genevan reformer: “When we have performed our duty, it remains for us to rest quietly in the decisions of God.”40 Despite Zanchi’s humiliating defeat, the foreign arbitrators did work out a formal, personal reconciliation between him and Marbach. Under continuing 35 Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:306. 36 Paul Grunberg, “Johann Marbach,” in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), 7:167. 37 See Kittelson’s arguments in “Marbach vs. Zanchi,” 40–43, and contrast his estimate of Marbach’s character with Schaff ’s unsympathetic estimate: “. . . a little man with a large beard, incessant activity, intolerant and dominating spirit…. He delighted to be called Superintendent, and used his authority to the best advantage. He abolished Bucer’s Catechism and introduced Luther’s… undermined the authority of the Tetrapolitan Confession, crippled the church of French refugees… weakened discipline, introduced pictures into churches, including those of Luther” (Creeds of Christendom, 1:305–306). 38 Kolb, “Historical Background,” in A Contemporary Look at the Formula of Concord, 55; cf. Bente’s Historical Introductions, 201. 39 Kolb, “Historical Background,” in A Contemporary Look at the Formula of Concord, 55. 40 Tylenda, “Girolamo Zanchi and John Calvin,” 132–36.

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pressure, however, Zanchi resigned his position a few months later and accepted a pastoral call to Chiavenna. The Strasbourg controversy proved to be a watershed event in the movement of Lutheranism towards a confessional denial of double predestination. Jakob Andreae (1528–1590), one of the two drafters of Concord’s Article 11, was present throughout the long Strasbourg council meetings as a member of the arbitration team. Kolb reports that, “Andreä carried the position of the arbitration team with him into the efforts that resulted in the Formula of Concord a decade later.”41 Given this historical germination and background in Luther’s and Melanchthon’s views on predestination, mediated by the Marbach vs. Zanchi debate resulting in the Strasbourg Consensus, Article 11 of the Formula of Concord becomes eminently understandable.

41 Kolb, “Historical Background,” in A Contemporary Look at the Formula of Concord, 56.

Chapter 4: The Doctrinal Position of the Formula of Concord

No Lutheran symbol prior to the Formula of Concord addressed the doctrine of predestination. No debate was raging in Lutheran circles concerning predestination in the 1570s, and therefore no formative Lutheran treatment of this doctrine substantially added to what Luther and Melanchthon had stated. What need was there for Lutheran symbolism to take up the matter so late in the sixteenth century? The writers of the Formula of Concord did not offer a discussion on predestination without good reason. First, the ambiguities of Melanchthon regarding synergism were carried one step further by John Pfeffinger, who taught that God elected persons to eternal salvation upon a sinner’s believing in Christ. This position differed markedly from that of Luther’s good friend, Nikolaus von Amsdorf, who held to an absolute double predestination.1 The increasingly divergent approaches to predestination within Lutheranism was begging for a synthesizing or symbolic statement on the subject.2 Second, Flacius and the Gnesio-Lutherans increasingly drew their verbal swords against Strigel, Pfeffinger, and numerous Philippists on the doctrines of the bondage of the will and original sin. This led to Articles 1 and 2 of the Formula of Concord and necessitated a special article on predestination, for these three doctrines are inseparably related.3 Finally, this article was necessary due to the rise of Calvinism and the increasing attention Calvinist theologians gave to predestination. Almost unwillingly, Lutheranism had to elaborate its position on predestination or else risk numerous aberrations within her own ranks; consequently, the future unity of Lutheranism demanded it. Calvin’s views, widely known and discussed, had been

1 Kolb, “Nikolaus von Amsdorf on Vessels of Wrath and Vessels of Mercy,” 326–27. 2 On various attempts among German Evangelicals to set forth the doctrine of predestination after Luther, see Kolb, Bound Choice, 179–243. 3 SD XI.44.

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published in the Consensus Genevensis of 1552.4 Theodore Beza defended the views of his Genevan predecessor and carried them forward in his explicit supralapsarianism.5 Both the Belgic and Gallic Confessions clearly express a Calvinistic approach to predestination. Zanchi, Peter Martyr, and others as well, had engaged in strong controversies with Lutherans.6 Two men of varying backgrounds were the principal authors of Concord’s Article 11: Jakob Andreae and Martin Chemnitz. The former had come under the influence of Johannes Brenz and Württenberg Lutheranism, while the latter was a student of Melanchthon.7 After an introduction drawn from various sources, Concord’s “Solid Declaration” actually contains a double presentation of the doctrine: first, in the words of Chemnitz (SD XI.9–64), and second, in the words of Andreae (SD XI.65–93).8

Outline of Article 11 in Concord’s “Solid Declaration” I.

Preliminary Statement A. The reason for inserting this article (1–3). B. The distinction between foreknowledge and predestination. 1. Foreknowledge deals with all creatures (4), but is not the cause of evil (6–7). 2. Predestination deals only with God’s children (5), and all good things; it is the cause and source of our salvation and everything that pertains to it (8). II. Presentation of Chemnitz A. Declaration that the method is not speculation about God’s secret will. 1. The speculative approach may produce either indifference or despair (9–11). 2. The scriptural approach produces better results (12). B. Synopsis of the whole doctrine considered “in Jesus Christ.” 4 John Calvin, Consensus Genevensis, in Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries in English Translation, Volume 1, 1523–1552, ed. and intro. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008), 692–820. 5 David C. Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1971), 168. See Joel R. Beeke, “Theodore Beza’s Supralapsarian Predestination,” Reformation and Revival 12, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 69–84. 6 For the derivation of material in SD XI.9–64 from Chemnitz’s Handbuechlein or Enchiridion and other writings, and SD XI.65–93 from Andreae’s “Swabian Concord,” see the editorial notes in Book of Concord, 641–55. See also Allbeck, Studies in the Lutheran Confessions, 294. 7 Lewis W. Spitz, “The Formula of Concord Then and Now,” in Discord, Dialogue and Concord, ed. Lewis W. Spitz and Wenzel Lohff (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 5–6. 8 Neve, Introduction to Lutheran Symbolics, 424–26.

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1. Analysis of what pertains to the predestination of God (13–22). 2. Assertion that this doctrine must be understood in concrete reference to each individual (23). 3. Assertion that this approach in concrete form is the doctrine of predestination to adoption (24). C. Development and application to every Christian. 1. This docrine is not to be learned from reason nor from the law, but only from the gospel (25–27). 2. Both the law and the gospel are universal and apply to all (28–29). 3. Hence the elect are believers in Christ, and they are the children of God (30–31). 4. God has promised to them final glorification if they remain steadfast to the end (32–33). D. Application to “others”—those who do not believe and are not saved (34–42). The only reason why all men do not belong to the number of the elect is that they do not accept the free grace of God. E. First conclusion: The practical test of this doctrine (suggested in sec. 12) shows it to be in full accord with all other doctrines (43–51). F. Second conclusion: There are many other things still secret to us; but we should not concern ourselves with God’s secrets (52–64). III. The Presentation of Andreae. A. This doctrine has been revealed by Christ as God’s messenger (65). B. This doctrine is taught by Christ in the gospel (66–67). C. This gospel must be heard and accepted through faith wrought by the Holy Spirit (68–69). D. Hence we should not speculate concerning the secret will of God, but should heed what Christ reveals concerning God’s eternal will and heed His invitation (70–71), believe in His promised help (72), and be diligent in doing good works, trusting in His mercy (73–75), for it is God who draws us to Christ through His Word (76–77). E. First Conclusion: That many are lost is due to their neglect of the means of grace and their rejection of saving grace (78–86). F. Second Conclusion: The test of this doctrine is that it gives all glory to God and does not produce despair (87–90), while every other doctrine producing another result is against the Word (91–92). G. Third conclusion: We adhere to this plain and useful doctrine and avoid all speculation (93).

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Doctrinal Terminology in Article 11 Fortunately, the framers of the Formula of Concord possessed a fondness for defining terms for each article of faith presented; Article 11 is no exception. It begins with a definition of foreknowledge (Vorsehung) and predestination or foreordination (die ewige Wahl Gottes; Verordnung Gottes). In these definitions they followed the distinctions of Prosper of Aquitaine.9 In both the Epitome and the Solid Declaration, foreknowledge is usually spoken of in the sense that God knows in advance all that occurs but is not necessarily the cause of these events. Although such foreknowledge, in the sense of divine providence, does set limits on evil and controls all things for God’s glory, nevertheless it is in no sense the cause of evil, which must be ascribed exclusively to the perverse will of the devil and of fallen men (SD XI.7). Occasionally the term foreknowledge is used synonymously with predestination or election (SD XI.10, 12). God’s eternal election or predestination, however, not only foresees all things (who will be saved and lost) but effects, foreordains, and causes everything that pertains to the salvation of individually chosen sinners. Unlike foreknowledge, predestination pertains only to true believers; it is “a cause which creates, effects, helps, and furthers our salvation and whatever pertains to it” (SD XI.8). The Concord understanding of predestination must be analyzed in this context. Since we are not to search out “the absolute, secret, hidden, and inscrutable foreknowledge of God” (SD XI.13), predestination must not be viewed as a kind of deterministic foreknowledge that would discourage repentance, faith, prayer, or a godly life. On the contrary, predestination must be viewed in the context of the gospel, in the light of Christ’s universal redemption, the efficacy of the means of grace, justification by faith, the sanctifying work of the Spirit, and certainty of eternal life for all who are elected, called, and justified (SD XI.15–22).

Doctrinal Essence of Article 11 It may be safely asserted that the Formula of Concord makes use of Luther’s distinction between the “hidden” God of predestination and the “revealed” God of the gospel. However, whereas Luther intended the distinction to prevent speculation beyond Scripture, the concordists went a significant step beyond Luther in invoking it to virtually reduce predestination to God’s revealed work of salvation offered to all mankind (SD XI.15–22). The hidden God is not affirmed as a mysterious reality, but virtually disappears. Kolb writes, “Into the realm of the 9 Prosper of Aquitaine, Pro Augusto Responsiones ad Capitula Gallorum (PL 51:167–70, 174), cited in Kolb, Bound Choice, 193, 335n75.

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hidden God the concordists refused to peer; they did not want even to glance in that direction.”10 The doctrine of predestination then collapses into an affirmation of the gospel. Viewing predestination as part and parcel of the gospel, it is defined as the ordination of “God’s children to eternal life” (SD XI.13) in the fullest sense possible, including a predestination to faith and to everything that pertains to the salvation of the elect in time (SD XI.23–24). He has not only determined for each person “the time and hour of calling and conversion” (SD XI.56), but is also intimately concerned with every individual’s justification and sanctification (SD XI.45). The Formula often affirms the universal grace of God and His will to bring all to faith and to save all effectually (SD XI.14, 24, 28; Epitome XI.17–19). Our election is based solely on the work of Jesus Christ (SD XI.75). It does not depend on us, nor is it due to the arbitrary actions of God (SD XI.5, 9). Its cause is only the mercy of God and the most holy merit of Christ (SD XI.88). This is why it is such a comforting doctrine, for we seek our election “in Christ” (SD XI.89), in the gospel of reconciliation (SD XI.25–27), and in the fact that the promise of the gospel extends to all men (SD XI.28–33). Consequently, the Solid Declaration teaches that we make sure of our personal election simply by applying to ourselves the promises of Scripture that affirm God’s universal love (e. g., John 3:16), Christ’s universal atonement (e. g., John 1:29), and the universality of the gospel call (e. g., Matt. 11:28). As we come to know that God, in history, has loved us and saved us in Christ and calls us effectually through the gospel by His Word and Spirit, we can then be assured that He has also loved, saved, and called us from all eternity. Thus, certainty of election results from our own particularizing of God’s universal grace in Christ.11 In short, the Formula argues for the possibility of assurance and comfort from election as follows: 1) Scripture teaches election; 2) Scripture teaches that its purpose is consolatory at root, no matter how much it may be abused; 3) consequently, whatever election may be, it is never the type of thing that would lead a person to despair; and 4) therefore predestination has nothing to do with unbelief but everything to do with faith, assurance, encouragement, and perseverance in and through Christ. Arand, Kolb, and Nestingen write that for Concord, “The predestination of God’s chosen people is to function only as gospel, that is, as comfort and assurance for believers.”12 This gospel-anchored view of predestination inevitably grounds the certainty of election on the certainty of faith itself which has but one object: the person and work of Christ. Accordingly, those who are troubled with satanic doubts re10 Kolb, Bound Choice, 268. 11 Elert, Structure of Lutheranism, 134–35. 12 Arand, Kolb, and Nestingen, Lutheran Confessions, 215.

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garding election must constantly look to Christ, for it is in Him that we are elected. And how are we to look to Christ? By seeking Him and relying upon Him in the means of grace, both Word and sacrament, in which the promise of the gospel is offered to every individual (SD XI.37–39). Only here lies certainty and abiding assurance; assurance is not found in anything outside of Christ or apart from His means of grace. Piety, virtues, or anything that a sinner may find in himself only yields serious doubt and uncertainty at best; at worst, it is a tragic diversion from the Christ of the gospel, for no man can look to Christ and to himself simultaneously. Thus, the Formula upholds unabashedly the monergistic character of God’s grace in Christ alone (SD XI.70–75). The Formula of Concord (SD XI.46) says that the consolation of election is that [God] desired to guarantee my salvation so completely and certainly—because it could slip through our fingers so easily through the weakness and wickedness of our flesh or be snatched and taken from our hands through the deceit and power of the devil and the world. For he has preordained this salvation through his eternal intention, which cannot fail or be overthrown, and he has placed for safekeeping into the almighty hand of our Savior Jesus Christ, from which no one can snatch us away (John 10[:28]).

Thus, persevering grace shall be ours despite our frequent lapses into sin, for our election takes place in Christ and in the gracious will of the Father who cannot deny Himself. Berkouwer summarizes, “God will call His children again to repentance through His Word, whenever they are disobedient and stumble.”13 Consequently, though God’s children fall away (which must be maintained against Calvinism, SD XI.10, 42), predestination serves to assure them that God’s grace will be restorative for them (SD XI.12,43, 46, 75), for the promise of the gospel is that God loves us in Christ and has chosen us from eternity to be His own. Any presentation of the gospel or any interpretation of Scripture that would displace the Christ-centeredness and consolation of predestination must be false and be despised (Epitome XI.13; SD XI.29, 32, 92). Finally, since predestination is part and parcel of the gospel, there is no divine ordination to damnation. The concordists argued there cannot be room for reprobation in a divine predestination which “should be considered in Christ and not apart from or outside of Christ” (SD XI.65). Only those are rejected who reject themselves; in no way is God the instigator of such resistance, for He wills all men to repent and believe and is wholeheartedly in earnest when He extends gospel invitations and promises to all (Epitome XI.17–19). Thus, God “concluded in his counsel that he would harden, reject, and condemn all those whom he called through the Word when they spurn the Word and resist and persist in resisting the Holy Spirit, who wants to exercise his power in them and be efficacious 13 Berkouwer, Faith and Perseverance, 71. See SD XI.75.

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through the Word” (SD XI.40). The only acceptable form of reprobation then for the concordists is a divine rejection based on foreknowledge of man’s final rejection of God. How can the elect be objects of unconditional, gracious election and the reprobate not be objects of predestinarian reprobation? In true Lutheran fashion, Elert answers, By distinguishing between foreknowledge (praescientia) and predestination (praedestinatio) the Formula of Concord attempted to meet the objection that God’s unconditional power over destiny is questioned by tracing damnation back to autonomous resistance on the part of man. Predestination, of course, extends only to the children of God (SD XI 5); but foreknowledge extends to all creatures as such (SD XI 4). One cannot deny that both are necessary assertions of evangelical faith. The constantly repeated charge that the confession is merely a way out of a dilemma is invalid as soon as one grants the premise of the confession that according to the New Testament predestination means God’s decree of salvation.14

Can we properly distinguish in God’s decree between levels of ordination, that is, between full-scale ordination in election but only half-scale foreknowledge in reprobation? The Formula of Concord simply says that this is the answer of Scripture. The Formula accepts this paradox without attempting to solve it; indeed, to make such an attempt would be to probe the mysteries of God unlawfully (Epitome XI.6). Though we know that it is God who gives His word in one place and not in another, and that He hardens those who will not repent, “we should not explore the abyss of God’s hidden knowledge” (SD XI.33). Ultimately, brooding over such matters may lead to a deterministic view of what happens in the world: “What God foresees must take place,” and “I can neither hinder nor change what God foresees” (SD XI.10)—precisely the Stoic conclusion Melanchthon so insistently warned against. The concordists thus concluded we must not transgress the revelation of God’s foreknowledge that we find in His Word (SD XI.43), a Word which speaks only of an election and predestination of the children of God. In sum, the Formula teaches the following: 1) Predestination is the cause of the salvation of the elect but not the cause of the damnation of the reprobate (Epitome XI.5; SD XI.8), for ordaining must be distinguished from foreknowing (Epitome XI.2; SD XI.4). 2) Predestination’s relevance does not lie in human reason’s probing of God’s hidden counsel, but in faith’s searching of the revealed will of God in His Word to be found in Christ (Epitome XI.66, 9, 13; SD XI.9, 13, 26, 36, 43, 52, 65, 68) and embraced in His promises (SD XI.28).

14 Elert, Structure of Lutheranism, 137.

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3) Predestination will then become a most precious, comforting doctrine which embraces the entire saving work of God, confirms justification by grace, assures of salvation, strengthens in most intense afflictions, and admonishes to repentance (Epitome XI.1, 11, 13; SD XI.12, 15, 28, 43, 41, 71). 4) Though the cause of election does not lie in the believer, but in God’s gracious will and Christ’s merit, so that all of salvation declares free grace (Epitome XI.5; SD XI.61, 75, 88), the cause of non-election (damnation) does not lie in God whatsoever, but in man and in his sins, particularly in his scorning of God’s Word and his refusal to believe in God’s Christ and God’s promises in Christ, notwithstanding the Spirit’s earnest attempts to invite and draw the sinner to the sweet pastures of salvation’s living and written Word (Epitome XI.5, 12; SD XI.34, 35, 40, 61, 78, 80). Article 11, though often neglected, actually forms the crowning summary of the Formula of Concord: God’s universal decree of salvation overcomes the consequences of original sin (Art. 1), but does not abolish the relative freedom which constitutes man’s humanity (Art. 2). Based upon Christ’s merit, this saving will of God effects both justification and sanctification (Arts. 3–6). Among the means of grace by which this will of salvation is actualized in history, the Lord’s Supper— being the center of numerous controversies—is singled out for special discussion (Art. 7), and in close connection, the mysteries surrounding Christ’s person (Art. 8) and work (Art. 9) are dealt with. According to the devout Lutheran this is orthodoxy at its best; indeed, Article 11, though placed inconspicuously, played a strategic role in laying the foundations upon which Lutheran orthodoxy was erected.

Chapter 5: Doctrinal Comparison of Concord and Dordt

The Canons of Dordt1 serve as a historic symbol for Reformed orthodoxy in similar fashion to the Formula of Concord’s representative role for Lutheran orthodoxy. Both symbols in their respective traditions addressed questions which were either not dealt with or were cursorily handled by previous confessional statements. This is particularly true concerning the doctrine of predestination. The Augsburg Confession’s silence only enhanced the concordists’ compulsion to speak out. Correlatively, the Heidelberg Catechism’s briefly noted but not elaborated doctrine of election did not fill the Reformed need to grapple confessionally with the doctrine of predestination.2 The post-Concordian, Reformed divines at Dordt were obliged, due to the challenge of the Remonstrants (Arminians), to spell out the biblical doctrine of predestination in greater detail than the Formula of Concord was ever compelled to employ. The delegates at Dordt found themselves at the center of both the church’s faith and comfort when they delivered the First Head of the Canons against Arminianism. Given the centrality of Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone and the corresponding emphases of Lutheranism’s treatment of predestination as soteriological comfort, the Formula of Concord could afford (or was even compelled) to be less specific and more ambiguous, leaving a multitude of questions unanswered. Besides, no contemporary predestinarian controversy coerced the Formula of Concord to address many of the most important questions at stake, as was the case with the Synod of Dordt (1618–1619). 1 “The Canons of Dordt,” in Doctrinal Standards, Liturgy, and Church Order, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 1999), 96–117. Hereafter noted as CD. For an overview of the controversies over predestination just before and during the Synod of Dort, see Donald Sinnema, “The Doctrine of Election at the Synod of Dordt (1618–1619),” conference on “The Doctrine of Election in Reformed Perspective” held in Emden, Oct. 2014; ed. Frank van der Pol (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming). 2 For predestination in general, the Heidelberg Catechism has a rather bold and pointed statement of it in Q. 26–28, 31. Election is mentioned in Q. 54; reprobation is not mentioned at all.

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The Reformed theologians of the Netherlands faced the direct challenge of the Remonstrance (1610) to the doctrine of predestination. The Remonstrants asserted: God by an eternal unchangeable decree has in Jesus Christ his Son decreed, before the foundation of the world was laid, to save, in Christ, for the sake of Christ, and through Christ, those from the fallen human race who by the grace of the Holy Spirit will believe in this his Son Jesus and persevere in the same faith and obedience of faith by the same grace to the end; and, on the other hand, to leave the impenitent and unbelievers in sin and under wrath, and to damn them as alienated from Christ.3

Later, at the Synod, the Remonstrants declared, “No one is rejected from eternal life or from the means sufficient for it by any absolute antecedent decree… no one is destined to unbelief, impiety, and sins, as means and causes of damnation.”4 Thus, the Heidelberg Catechism’s silence on reprobation became more conspicuous and provocative to Reformed theologians under pressure from Arminian challenges than Augsburg’s silence was to the Lutherans. Considering that the Heidelberg Catechism, frequently denominated the “book of comfort,” was written by Reformed theologians who firmly believed in double predestination,5 why is only passing reference made to God’s “eternal counsel” (Q. 26), so little space devoted to election (Q. 52, 54), and none at all to reprobation? Though it is true that this catechism begins with the believer and speaks analytically from the perspective of faith, why does it never arrive at the question, “How does it profit you now that you believe in divine election and reprobation?” Scholars have proposed two explanations for the Heidelberg’s sparse treatment of election. First, given that Heidelberg’s population included those influenced by Melanchthon, Bullinger, and Calvin, it may be that “the authors intentionally steered clear of it for the sake of doctrinal harmony,” as Lyle Bierma writes.6 Second, since the catechism aimed at the instruction of children and laypersons, it may have avoided probing deeply into topics such as predestination. As Klooster points out, in this regard the Heidelberg Catechism resembles Calvin’s Catechism (1541/1545), which makes two passing references

3 Remonstrance, Art. 1, cited in Sinnema, “Issue of Reprobation,” 157–58. 4 The Remonstrants’ Sententia (I.6), cited in Sinnema, “Issue of Reprobation,” 306. 5 The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. G. W. Williard (1852; repr., Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., [1985]), 293–305. Ursinus wrote, “The two parts of predestination are embraced in election and reprobation…. Reprobation is the eternal, and unchangeable purpose of God, whereby he has decreed in his most just judgement to leave some in their sins, to punish them with blindness, and to condemn them eternally, not being made partakers of Christ, and his benefits” (297). 6 Lyle Bierma, et al., An Introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism: Sources, History, and Theology, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 96.

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to election and one to election and reprobation.7 A comparison to Ursinus’s Smaller Catechism, which Bierma calls a “primary textual foundation” for the Heidelberg Catechism, and his Larger Catechism, which probably served as “a midlevel theological text for university students,” may favor the first explanation.8 While the Larger Catechism contains many references to election,9 even the Smaller Catechism contains a significantly more developed treatment of election than the Heidelberg Catechism, casting doubt on the intention to avoid deep subjects in basic instruction, and favoring the diplomatic solution.10 The involvement of other divines besides Ursinus in producing the Heidelberg Catechism complicates the matter. Whatever the root cause may have been, the Synod of Dordt was obliged to take up the task left undone by the Heidelberg Catechism. This circumstance raises questions regarding the relation of comfort and reprobation. The Catechism has been noted for “its central concern with man’s need and the way that need is met by the gracious provisions of the gospel,” as Davis writes.11 How could the clarifications of Dordt consistently supplement the affirmations of Heidelberg by addressing reprobation and simultaneously express the same comforting spirit as the Catechism? Or must the Canons be reserved for a defense against heretics and the Heidelberg Catechism for the comfort of the godly? If the Heidelberg approach of presenting God’s decrees in a limited fashion and a purely positive vein “provided a way to see the continuity between the heart of Lutheranism and the heart of Calvinism,”12 does the role of Dordt, which ultimately destroys this finding of common ground, polarize Lutheranism and Calvinism in very much the same way that the Formula of Concord had polarized them forty years before? Is Dordt merely a reinforcement for Heidelberg, propping up thicker braces at its weaker places, or is it in fact a coin of new minting rather than the other side of the coin? A comparative analysis between Dordt and Concord on predestination will, I trust, provide some answers to this series of questions.13 7 Fred H. Klooster, A Mighty Comfort: The Christian Faith according to the Heidelberg Catechism (Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1990), 36. See Calvin’s Catechism (1545), Q. 93, 100, 157, in Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1:481, 482, 489. 8 Bierma, Introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism, 138–39. 9 Zacharias Ursinus, The Larger Catechism, Q. 63, 109–110, 113, 123, 125, 216–19, 264, 266–67, in Introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism, 173, 183–86, 202–203, 211–12. 10 Zarcharias Ursinus, The Smaller Catechism, Q. 17, 39, 40, 43, 50–52, trans. Lyle Bierma, in Introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism, 143, 147–50. Thus Bierma (95–96). 11 D. Clair Davis, “The Reformed Church of Germany: Calvinists as an Influential Minority,” in John Calvin: His Influence in the Western World, ed. W. Stanford Reid (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 132–33. 12 Davis, “The Reformed Church of Germany,” in John Calvin, 134. 13 On the degree of involvement of Reformed confessions regarding predestination, see Herman

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Noteworthy as the parallel need to address the predestination issue may be in Lutheran and Reformed Orthodoxy respectively, of equal or even greater interest are the confessions’ parallel answers within the confines of their respective heritages: orthodox Lutheranism rejected synergism in the Formula of Concord and orthodox Calvinism rejected Arminianism, which is profoundly synergistic, in the Canons of Dordt. Both played roles of right-wing consolidation, as Schaff interprets it: “The Canons of Dort have for Calvinism the same significance which the Formula of Concord has for Lutheranism. Both betray a very high order of theological ability and care. Both exerted a powerful conservative influence on these churches.”14 The first of the Canons, or First Head of Doctrine, “Of Divine Predestination,” deals with the particulars of the doctrine in eighteen affirmations or points of doctrine, followed by nine “Rejections” or refutations of particular errors. The starting-point is a broad statement of the doctrine of original sin and humanity’s universal guilt (CD I.1). Then the provisions for fallen man’s salvation are adduced—the gift of faith, the gift of Christ, and the proclamation of the gospel (CD I.2–6)—and it is pointed out that the gospel is sent to whom and at what time “God pleaseth” (CD I.3), implying that faith is not obtained by all, but both gospel and faith are gifts of God. Thus, this distinction among men is traced back to God’s eternal “decree of election and reprobation revealed in the Word of God” (CD I.6).15 The topic having been presented, the doctrine of election is now defined (CD I.7), and the details of the doctrine developed (CD I.8–14). The unity of the decree of divine election and the divine ordination of the way or means of salvation is asserted (CD I.8). Its relation to all good motives in the creature is carefully explained as cause and not effect (CD I.9–10), followed by an emphasis on election’s particularity and unchangeability (CD I.11). The use of the doctrine for assurance, humiliation before God, and promoting repentance, gratitude, and love in true believers is described at length, with an explanation of how election incites them to good works (CD I.12, 13). Finally, the necessity and utility of

Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003–2008), 2:359; Homer Hoeksema, The Voice of Our Fathers (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1980), 41–42; Benjamin B. Warfield, “Predestination in the Reformed Confessions,” The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 12 (1901): 49–128. It must be noted that Berkouwer rejects most of the theses Warfield presents in this article on the basis “that in the Reformed Confessions there is an intuitive and reflexive understanding of the scriptural message of election” (Divine Election, 194–97). 14 Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:515. Unfortunately, Schaff proceeded to criticize both confessions under the false assumption that highly developed theology necessarily militates against vital piety. 15 Quotations from the Canons of Dordt are drawn from The Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible, gen. ed., Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014), 2007–25.

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teaching this biblical doctrine in the church is asserted and confirmed from Scripture (CD, I.15). The decree of reprobation is then introduced as “peculiarly tending to illustrate and recommend to us the eternal and unmerited grace of election” and is carefully defined (CD I.15). Believers whose faith is weak and who lack assurance of grace and salvation are warned against misuse or misapplication of this doctrine, lest they despair, or neglect to use the means of grace (CD I.16). Little of importance is added to this positive statement in the “Rejections” that follow, or in the “Conclusion” at the end of the Canons. By refuting Remonstrant errors, the positive affirmations are reinforced, so that “the whole constitutes the fullest and one of the most prudent and satisfactory expositions of the Reformed doctrine of predestination ever given wide symbolical authority.”16 For all the differences between the Formula of Concord and the Canons of Dordt, it would be a gross misrepresentation not to acknowledge that these symbols do find much common ground regarding predestination. Consider the following points summarized from Article 7 of the Canons’ First Head: 1) Election is the unchangeable and eternal purpose of God. 2) The objects of this election are a certain definite number of fallen men, fallen through their own fault from their primitive state of rectitude into sin and destruction. 3) The source of this election is the free or sovereign good pleasure of God. Election is pure grace. 4) Election includes Christ, who is eternally elected and Mediator and Head of the elect and the foundation of salvation. 5) Election finds no reason or ground in its human objects for their election to salvation; they are neither better nor more deserving than others by nature. 6) Election includes not only the end, that is, final salvation and glory, but also the means to that end, that is, union with Christ, calling, faith, justification, sanctification, preservation, and final glorification of the elect persons.17 Much of this is very sympathetic towards the doctrine of the Formula of Concord. Thus, though the Formula and Canons have little, if any, ground in common on reprobation, numerous aspects of the doctrine of election are embraced unreservedly by both. The focus of our study, however, must now turn to the distinctives and tendencies within these two symbols as they seek to define predestination in accord with Holy Scripture, for the welfare of the church and the glory of God.

16 Warfield, “Predestination in the Reformed Confessions,” 72. 17 Hoeksema, Voice of Our Fathers, 158.

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Comparative Juxtaposition #1 Though the Formula and Canons both maintain that the doctrine of predestination must be grounded in and circumscribed by Scripture, the Canons implicitly view the boundaries of scriptural truth as including that which “by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture,” as the Westminster divines put it. The legitimacy of recognizing reprobation as a logical deduction from the scriptural doctrine of election hinges on this distinction. Lutheranism, as is evident also in the Formula of Concord (Epitome XI.12), has always maintained that the theologian may not be a logician in the matter of God’s hidden decree. In the matter of reprobation, Lutheranism’s first and last question is: Does Scripture itself teach that God eternally foreordained some sinners to damnation apart from any foreknowledge of their response to His grace? To this, the Formula hesitantly responds in the negative, while the Canons respond in the affirmative, maintaining that the doctrine of reprobation is both directly taught in Scripture and is a logical deduction from the doctrine of election (SD XI.5; CD I.6, 15, R8). Whose interpretation is most biblical? 18 Historically in Reformed theology proof-texts such as Isaiah 6:9–10; Luke 22:21–22; John 17:12; Romans 9:14–24; 11:7–10; 1 Peter 2:8; and Jude 4 have supplied the major support for the doctrine of reprobation, even as such texts have been supplemented by the appeals to the inherent logic of God’s decree. For example, Calvin argued for reprobation not only on the basis of Romans 9:14–23 and Proverbs 16:4, but also because “election itself could not stand except as set over against reprobation,” and without both sides of predestination, we find ourselves affirming “highly absurd” consequences.19 Sinnema writes, “In Calvin’s view, the act of election implies reprobation…. Though Calvin could thus present reprobation as a logical implication of election, his usual emphasis was that he taught only what Scripture teaches.”20 At the Conference of The Hague (1611) the Calvinists stated: “When we posit an eternal decree of election of certain particular persons, it clearly follows that we also posit an eternal decree of rejection or reprobation of certain particular persons, for there cannot be an election without a rejection or reprobation. When a certain number of persons are elected, then by this very act others are rejected, for he who takes them all does not elect.”21 Similarly, some delegates at Dordt argued that God’s activities in time must reflect what He decreed in eternity; 18 19 20 21

Berkouwer, Divine Election, 23. Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.1, 6. Sinnema, “Issue of Reprobation,” 59–60. Cited in Klaas Runia, “Recent Reformed Criticisms of the Canons,” in Crisis in the Reformed Churches, ed. Peter Y. DeJong (Grand Rapids: Reformed Fellowship, 1968), 175.

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others said that if the only cause of reprobation was unbelief, God would have rejected all mankind since the fall began in unbelief.22 When the Canons speak of reprobation, at times they offer general biblical statements about God’s decree of all things (as Acts 15:18; Eph. 1:11; see CD I.6), or refer to “the express testimony of sacred Scripture that not all, but some only are elected,” without citing specific Scriptures (CD I.15), or they quote Romans 9:18, Matthew 13:11, and Matthew 11:25–26 (CD I, R8). This Reformed use of logical deduction has been reiterated in twentieth century theologians. Berkhof, for example, opens his proof of reprobation as follows: The doctrine of reprobation naturally follows from the logic of the situation. The decree of election inevitably implies the decree of reprobation. If the all-wise God, possessed of infinite knowledge, has eternally purposed to save some, then He ipso facto also purposed not to save others. If He has chosen or elected some, then He has by that very fact also rejected others.23

Berkhof then proceeds to say, “Since the Bible is primarily a revelation of redemption, it naturally does not have as much to say about reprobation as about election. But what it says is quite sufficient, cf. Matt. 11:25, 26; Rom. 9:13, 17, 18, 21, 22; 11:7; Jude 4; 1 Pet. 2:8.”24 While the Canons do not rely solely or even primarily on logic, it cannot be denied that logic has played an important role in Reformed theology concerning reprobation. The burning question remains very much alive beyond Concord, Dordt, and Westminster—even until today: How far can logic play a role in biblical hermenuetics? If the church has relied on “good and necessary consequences” in formulating trinitarian and Christological doctrine, why may it not do so in regard to reprobation?

Comparative Juxtaposition #2 Due to the narrowness of their Scripture-boundary in regard to God’s hidden will, Luther and Lutheranism as confessed in the Formula of Concord are united in their intent to prevent prying into the theology of predestination. Viewing predestination as a doctrine designed to console the church (Epitome XI.12), they made predestination, at best, a helpful doctrine of secondary importance. Ultimately, the Formula of Concord has only one great theme: justification by faith alone, apart from works of law. Predestination must serve justification by faith; it 22 Runia, “Recent Reformed Criticisms,” in Crisis in the Reformed Churches, 175. 23 Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1958), 117–18. 24 Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 118.

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must fall within the realm of soteriology (SD XI.15–22). In fact, Concord compels the accent of predestination to fall almost exclusively on the sub-point of affording comfort and promoting assurance. Predestination is not the heart nor the foundation, but only the comfort of the church. The Formula of Concord says, “Scripture presents this teaching [predestination] for no other purpose than to point us to the Word (Eph. 1[:13, 14]; 1 Cor. 1[:21, 30, 31]), to admonish us to repent (2 Tim. 3[:16, 17]), to encourage godliness (Eph. 1[:15ff.]; John 15[:3, 4, 10, 12, 16, 17]), to strengthen our faith and to assure us of our salvation (Eph. 1[:9, 13, 14]; John 10[:27–30]; 2 Thess. 2[:13–15]).”25 Kolb comments, “Classic Lutheran formulations reflect a struggle to retain Luther’s pastoral use of the doctrine, which attempted to comfort the despairing without permitting the libertine to use election as an excuse for sin. Pastoral concern created the ragged edges of Luther’s concept of election, and Lutheran orthodoxy tried to leave these ragged edges showing.”26 The Canons and Reformed orthodoxy, on the other hand, strove to leave no ragged edges; either predestination meant nothing and was unscriptural, or else it was integrally connected to every locus of theology. Though also concerned about illegitimate enquiry into God’s hidden counsel, the Canons, following Calvin, did not operate on the presupposition that whatever does not serve to the comfort of all must be rejected (compare SD XI.91 with CD I.15). Retaining high priority on the consolatory note of predestination (CD I.13, 16), Dordt nevertheless relegated consolation to a sub-point of predestination (and not vice– versa, as Concord).27 The Dordt divines were not only concerned about illegitimate penetration into God’s secrets; they were equally troubled with illegitimate presentation of God’s revealed truth. In all good conscience, they could not ignore predestination’s theological usage any more than they could deny its pastoral usage. Their motivating concern was not simply the welfare of the church. They believed that the church would best profit from a balanced presentation of the truth. To borrow William Perkins’s phrase, the heart of the matter must be weighed in “balance in the sanctuary.”28 They trembled at the thought of losing biblical perspective in dealing with predestination. Consequently, their more logical and systematic framework, according double predestination a place in their doctrinal system, was impelled by their desire to remain true to God and His Word, like the 25 SD XI.12. 26 Kolb, “Nikolaus Van Amsdorf on Vessels of Wrath and Vessels of Mercy,” 326. 27 For a solid defense of how Dort’s consolatory note still remains powerful in predestination, see Edwin H. Palmer, “The Significance of the Canons for Pastoral Work,” in Crisis in the Reformed Churches, 137–49; Hanko, “Predestination in Calvin, Beza, and Later Reformed Theology,” 22–23. 28 Cited in Irvonwy Morgan, Puritan Spirituality (London: Epworth Press, 1973), 25.

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Lutherans. Judicious pursuits by these two branches of the magisterial Reformation, however, ended in two different core convictions: the Dordt divines trembled at the thought of minimizing divine predestination so as to rob God of His honor, and subsequently, the church of her comfort; the concordists trembled at the thought of maximizing divine predestination so as to rob the church of her comfort, and subsequently, rob God of His honor.

Comparative Juxtaposition #3 Although the Canons posit God’s decree as the ultimate reason why some have faith and others do not (CD I.6), they cannot be considered to artificially deduce their doctrines from the sovereignty of God. Rather, they begin their consideration of election with the biblical doctrines of man’s fallen state, God’s love in sending Christ, the preaching of the gospel, and the mixed response of faith or unbelief (CD I.1–4). Only then do they look to God as the reason why some have faith, still blaming man alone for his unbelief (CD I.5). Thus they make God supreme and sovereign over salvation, but do not fall into an artificial, rationalistic approach. Concord, on the other hand, labors with the same concern that all sin flows from Satan or from fallen man’s depraved will and cannot be blamed on God, but does so in a manner that reduces reprobation to a divine recognition of man’s choices (SD XI.6). Contrary to Concord, Dordt’s approach is theocentric: it centers on the sovereignty, glory, and greatness of God. As Hoeksema notes, “Not the salvation of the elect is ultimately the purpose of God. But the demonstration of His mercy and the praise of the riches of His glorious grace is the purpose of the sovereign God of our salvation.”29 Bavinck wrote, “For the Reformed, predestination not only has anthropological and soteriological but also and especially theological importance. In Reformed theology the primary interest is not the salvation of humankind but the honor of God.” Bavinck notes that this approach, even when it manifests itself theologically in treating the doctrine of predestination under the doctrine of God instead of the doctrine of salvation, “involves a deeply religious motive,” and does not produce “an arid, lifeless dogma.” Rather, it arises from a godly desire to glorify the Lord.30

29 Hoeksema, Voice of Our Fathers, 169. See CD I.7. 30 Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:360–61.

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Comparative Juxtaposition #4 Contrary to Lutheran charges, the priority exemplified at Dordt, which places the glory of God and the safekeeping of His sovereignty as chief purposes in predestination, does not deny Paul’s assertion in Ephesians 1:4 that election takes place in Christ. It is true that Concord focuses more on Christ in its discussion of predestination than does Dordt by anchoring election itself as well as its “signs” in Christ only, by affirming “single predestination” in the unconditional promise of God’s love in Christ, and by exercising more of what Gritsch calls, “Christocentric restraint,” with respect to predestination’s challenging questions.31 However, to charge the Canons with denigrating Christ in its treatment of predestination is simply erroneous (CD I.7; II.8, 9, etc.). Though the Canons prioritize the “good pleasure of God,” the Lutheran charge that this beneplacitum Dei is detached from the grace of God is roundly defeated by Berkouwer.32 The Canons explicitly teach that our election is never to be separated from the election of Christ. Referring to Ephesians 1:4, the divines at Dordt speak of the election of Christ “whom He [God] from eternity appointed the Mediator and Head of the elect and the foundation to salvation” (CD I.7). Both legally and organically, the Christ-elect relation is one of the Head and body, for Christ has been appointed Head from eternity. The fact that the Canons do not ultimately end in Christ in isolation from the Trinity, but in God’s good pleasure as the ground of election, neither negates Christ’s involvement in election nor denies Him as the sole foundation of our salvation. The “in Christ” problem, to which Berkouwer devotes forty pages in Divine Election,33 is certainly a complex one. Modern discussion of it was spearheaded by Karl Barth, who advocated that the Canons (and Reformers more broadly) taught a decretum absolutum in which “in Christ” is not the final word and sharply criticized the notion that behind this “in Christ” existed a deeper ground of election and reprobation. The notion of the Canons’ lack of Christ-centeredness in predestination was made an ongoing debate via the more moderate tone of Berkouwer himself, and has since come under heavy fire from Reformed theologians, such as J. Daane, W. Niesel, A. Polman, H. Boer, H. Pietersma, and K. Runia.34 Not all Reformed theologians agree with Barth, however, nor with the charge that the Canons “downplay” Christ in predestination. Cornelius Van Til, for example, states that “the Synod of Dort had no nominalist notion of a will of

31 32 33 34

Gritsch and Jensen, Lutheranism, 156–57; Berkouwer, Divine Election, 17–22. Berkouwer, Divine Election, 215. Berkouwer, Divine Election, 132–71. Runia, “Recent Reformed Criticisms,” in Crisis in the Reformed Churches, 161–80.

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God to which a second decision of God had to be added in order to connect election properly with the love of Christ.”35 Though the Canons may have unintentionally given cause for deterministic misunderstandings in later centuries of Reformed theology by omitting the “in Christ” aspect altogether from I.6, the conclusion that there is a decretum absolutum wholly apart from Christ cannot be legitimately deduced. As Runia states: [Though the Canons] do not always state the matter clearly and adequately, there is no doubt that the fathers of Dort would all reject the idea of a decretum absolutum, apart from Jesus Christ. Chapter 1.7 states that God has chosen from the whole human race “a certain number of persons to redemption in Christ, whom he from eternity appointed the Mediator and Head of the elect and the foundation of salvation.” Unfortunately, the English translation of this sentence is somewhat ambiguous. First, the phrase “He chose… to redemption in Christ” could be interpreted as meaning that Christ is only the fundamentum salutis. The Latin text, however, reads: “ad salutem elegit in Christo.” In other words, the “in Christ” qualifies the act of choosing. Secondly, in the last clause of the above quoted sentence the word “also” has been left out. Both the Latin and the Dutch versions read: “whom He also from eternity appointed….” In other words, the article clearly distinguishes between our election in Christ (i. e., Christ as the foundation of election) and Christ’s appointment as Mediator (i. e., Christ as the foundation of salvation). The Canons do not only see Christ as the executor of the (previously decreed) election, but the election itself is in Christ.36

Runia here uses the terminology, “Christ as the foundation of election,” not in the way of the Arminians at Dordt (which has always been rightly criticized, for they saw divine election as “motivated” by Christ’s act),37 but in the way it was used by the English delegates at Dordt: from all eternity God appointed Christ as the Head of the elect and the elect themselves as members of Christ. It cannot be denied, however, that the judgments of the various groups of delegates at Dordt varied on this point. Runia writes, Some very clearly state that our election was “in Christ,” e. g., the English and the Genevan delegates, cf. Acts, 342, 385. Others mention Christ as executor only, e. g., the delegates from Switzerland (375), Nassau (368, 382), Bremen (394), and Emden (399, 409). The reason for this emphasis of Christ as executor lies no doubt in the fact that the Arminians explained the phrase “election in Christ” in the sense of a “fides praevisa,” viz., He chose us as being in Christ. Hence the Swiss delegates declare: “But although the election refers to Christ, the Mediator, in whom we are all elected unto salvation and

35 Cornelius VanTil, Christianity and Barthianism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962), 166. 36 Runia, “Recent Reformed Criticisms,” in Crisis in the Reformed Churches, 164. 37 Berkouwer, Divine Election, 134.

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grace, yet God chose us, not as being in Him before we were elected, but in order that we should be in Him and saved by Him” (Acta, 375).38

Historically and doctrinally, it appears that the Canons have purposefully attempted to cast the doctrine of election in a trinitarian mold, which necessarily includes Christ (CD I.7, II.8; III–IV.10–11, etc.). Even Franciscus Gomarus, ardent supralapsarian though he was, did not reduce Christ to a means of realizing a decree established apart from His person and work. Gomarus knew that the expression, “Christ is a means to execute the decree of God,” did not do justice to scripture’s profundity when it speaks of election “in Christ.” Reflecting on Ephesians 1:4, Gomarus “came to the conclusion that ‘in Christ’ should be understood as ‘through Christ,’ but he did not intend that to mean that Christ was only the means and executor of God’s decree. He found a solution by saying that ‘Christ in accordance with His divine nature also participated in the work of election.’”39 Thus, by viewing election as a divine plan formed in the sovereign mind of the Trinity (and wrought through Christ), so as not to make Christ equivalent with predestination, Dordt not only left the door open for reprobation, but also found room for the roles of the Father and Spirit within Scripture-boundaries. Dordt’s spirit resonates with Berkouwer, who writes, “For a correct analysis, one must avoid the dilemma between saying that Christ is either the foundation of election or only the executor of a decree established apart from Him.”40 In sum, Concord exercised Christocentric restraint in predestination, while Dordt exercised trinitarian restraint. Concord began and ended in Christ with both election and its signs; Dordt viewed Christ as Mediator in both: in election, God appointed Christ as the Mediator to draw us to the triune God, and the signs of election flow from God through Christ into the elect themselves as inevitable fruits of their being in Christ (CD I.7, 12, 16). Concord viewed predestination as peculiarly Christ’s glory; Dordt, as the glory of triune God. As Elert comments, “If another confession boasts of having made its doctrine of predestination redound wholly and solely ‘to the glory of God,’ Lutheranism may claim that in its confessions everything is said for the glory of Christ. And Lutheranism may con-

38 Runia, “Recent Reformed Criticisms,” in Crisis in the Reformed Churches, 179n16. By “Acts” and “Acta” he refers to Acta of Handelingen der Nationale Synode… te Dordrecht, ed. J. H. Donner and S. A. van den Hoorn (repr., Houten: Den Hertog, 1987). See also Donald Sinnema, Herman J. Selderhuis, and Christian Moser, eds., Acta et Documenta Synodi Nationalis Dordrechtanae, vol 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015). 39 Berkouwer, Divine Election, 143. 40 Berkouwer, Divine Election, 137. Cf. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:403; John Murray, “Calvin, Dort, and Westminster on Predestination—A Comparative Study,” in Crisis in the Reformed Churches, 159.

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fidently look forward to the investigation whether in this way it has decreased or increased the ‘glory of God.’”41

Comparative Juxtaposition #5 Finally, we must conclude our comparative analysis of Concord and Dordt by returning to the treatment of reprobation, for it is here that the respective distinctives come sharply into focus. While Dordt wholeheartedly accepts Concord’s rejection of “foreseen faith” with respect to the elect, with equal fervency it rejects Concord’s conclusion that reprobation is limited to foreknowledge (prescience). Dordt correctly rejected praescientia as the foundational motive for both election and reprobation. With Calvin,42 the Dordt divines realized teaching such an error is nothing less than a latent doctrine of justification by works and an attack on the greatness and sovereignty of God. Dordt’s utter rejection of prescience as the foundation of election and reprobation allowed for a more consistent declaration of absolute grace than did Concord’s “divided” prescience, though both desired to affirm salvation by free grace alone to the full. Indeed, for the Dordt divines it was neither possible nor legitimate to negate God’s ultimate decisiveness in reprobation, for such negation would be subtracting from the whole counsel of God, yes, from God himself. On this ground alone Dordt asserts that reprobation can be presented in a useful, contributory, and consoling manner to the church. Furthermore, Dordt believed reprobation serves to the glory and exaltation of God as God in His sovereign and holy justice. Dordtian reprobation (CD I.6, 15, R8) sought to defend God’s sovereignty at all costs, while simultaneously clearing Him from the charges of arbitrariness, authorship of sin, and injustice. Thus, the Canons do not minimize reprobation or sidestep any issue when they declare in their Conclusion that reprobation, though certainly included in the divine decree, does not bring about its effects “in the same manner” as election. Nor are they contradicting what they asserted in I.6 and I.15. The phrase “in the same manner” has been so emphasized by Berkouwer, Daane, Holtrop, and others that this one phrase has actually come to mean, in effect, a rejection of the Canons’ own affirmation of the decree of reprobation itself! 43 With Shepherd, however, I believe Daane and company err “in thinking that the Canons have 41 Elert, Structure of Lutheranism, 140. Elert views the comment, “Therefore God’s predestination is to be considered in Christ and by no means outside Christ the Mediator” (SD XI.65), as the pivotal statement of Concord’s Art. 11. 42 Berkouwer, Divine Election, 36. 43 Norman Shepherd, “Election as Gospel,” Westminster Theological Journal 36, no. 3 (Spr. 1974): 308.

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thereby rejected the equal ultimacy of election and reprobation, or that they have in effect denied the single decree of God involving both election and reprobation. This is evident from the language in Article 6 of the First Head of Doctrine: ‘That some receive the gift of faith from God, and others do not receive it, proceeds from God’s eternal decree.’”44 As Sinnema notes, even the term “equal ultimacy” needs further clarification, given that Dordt (and Reformed theology generally) speaks of ways in which election and reprobation are parallel and yet others in which they are not parallel.45 As the Conclusion itself explains, “not in the same manner” means that God softens the hearts of the elect inclining them to believe, whereas He does not cause the reprobate to sin but leaves the non-elect in their hardness and unbelief, treating both elect and reprobate according to His own sovereign decree. In sum, the Canons confirm that the decree and fulfillment of divine election provide mercy for the elect while the efficacy of reprobation provides justice for the reprobate. God shows mercy sovereignly and unconditionally to some, and gives justice to those passed over in election (CD I.6, 15). No one is the victim of injustice (CD I.15). To fail to receive mercy is not to be treated unjustly. God is under no obligation to show mercy to all; in fact, He is under no obligation to show mercy to any. The divine prerogative to show mercy voluntarily cannot be faulted (Rom. 9; CD I.R9); rather, it must be glorified, for in this divine prerogative lies the very possibility of salvation for lost sinners, who have no ground upon which to base hope outside of sovereign predestination.46 Concord is not only oblivious to God-glorifying sovereignty and justice in predestinarian reprobation, but also chooses, in Dordt’s eyes, to ignore the positive role of reprobation in the lives of the elect: “What peculiarly tends to illustrate and recommend to us the eternal and unmerited grace of election, is the express testimony of sacred Scripture, that not all, but some only are elected, while others are passed by in the eternal decree.”47 The doctrine of reprobation “illustrates and recommends” to the elect the necessity of humble thanksgiving and complete self-abnegation before God. In Pauline fashion, it teaches us to beware of all self-exaltation, either before God or in contrast to the reprobate. Consequently, Cornelis Trimp rejects the idea of calling reprobation “the dark shadow of election,” for its positive thrust “shows us very clearly that our salvation is only a matter of grace,” and “by this doctrine we learn to fear God, to 44 Shepherd, “Election as Gospel,” 307. 45 Sinnema, “Issue of Reprobation,” 446. 46 Berkouwer said, “Bavinck could say that the doctrine of election is an ‘inexpressible comfort’ for both the believer and the nonbeliever since it proclaims that there is hope for the ‘most miserable of men.’ He thought that pelagianism was mercilessly hard because, in its demand for meritorious virtue, the poor publican has no chance” (A Half Century of Theology, 103). 47 CD I.15, emphasis added.

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work out our own salvation with fear and trembling,” and “we thus know Him as the eternal enemy of sin.”48 Most detailed, however, is Boettner’s list of reprobation’s benefits to the elect: In beholding the rejection and final state of the wicked, (1) they learn what they too would have suffered had not grace stepped in to their relief, and they appreciate more deeply the riches of divine love which raised them from sin and brought them into eternal life while others no more guilty or unworthy than they were left to eternal destruction. (2) It furnishes a most powerful motive for thankfulness that they have received such high blessings. (3) They are led to a deeper trust of their heavenly Father who supplies all their needs in this life and the next. (4) The sense of what they have received furnishes the strongest possible motive for them to love their heavenly Father, and to live as pure lives as possible. (5) It leads them to a greater abhorrence of sin. (6) It leads them to a closer walk with God and with each other as specially chosen heirs of the kingdom of heaven.49

Three decades after Dordt, Westminster echoed this “illustrating and recommending” spirit when it claimed that the doctrine of this high mystery of predestination affords matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God; and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation.”50 Against Concord’s teaching, Calvin, Dordt, and Westminster consistently maintain that election and reprobation (in both its God-glorifying and elect-comforting aspects) must ultimately stand or fall together. As John Murray writes, On this crucial issue [of reprobation], therefore, Calvin, Dort, and Westminster are one…. The undissenting unity of thought on a tenet of faith that is a distinguishing mark of our Reformed heritage and without which the witness to the sovereignty of God and to his revealed counsel suffers eclipse at the point where it must jealously be maintained. For the glory of God is the issue at stake.51

48 Cornelis Trimp, “Canons of Dort, First Head of Doctrine: Divine Election and Reprobation,” in J. Faber, H. J. Meijerink, C. Trimp, and G. Zomer, To the Praise of His Glory: Outlines on the Canons of Dort (Launceton, Australia: Publication Organisation of the Free Reformed Churches of Australia, 1971), 24. 49 Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1932), 122. 50 Westminster Confession of Faith (III.8), in Westminster Confession of Faith, 31. 51 Murray, “Calvin, Dort, and Westminster on Predestination,” in Crisis in the Reformed Churches, 157.

Chapter 6: The Historical Reception of and Doctrinal Reflections on Concordist Predestination

Having analyzed the content of the Formula of Concord on predestination and compared its teaching to that of the Canons of Dordt, it remains for us to consider how the concordist formulation was received by Lutherans and the Reformed, and then to summarize our findings on the doctrine of predestination in early Lutheranism.

Reception in Lutheran Orthodoxy By treating predestinarian reprobation as a lapsus in the history of the doctrine of election, and not an echo of the gospel of God, Concord’s denial in Article 11 of double predestination and promotion of prescience (as well as its confinement of election to soteriological comfort and assurance) served: (1) to temporarily consolidate Lutheran orthodoxy, and (2) to ultimately steer Lutheran orthodoxy away from the solid ground of the divine election of man into the tragic chasm of man’s election of God. Completed in 1577, over the next few years the Formula of Concord was disseminated and promoted among the evangelical German churches, two-thirds of which approved them.1 It was signed by over 8,000 divines and incorporated into the Book of Concord (1580). Not surprisingly, some Lutheran churches rejected it, such as those influenced by the Flacian stream of thought.2 Despite the rapid acceptance of the Formula as a definitive symbol of Lutheran orthodoxy within the majority of its own ranks,3 the seeds of praedestinatio via praescientia in Concord’s Article 11 eventually led Lutheranism into 1 Kolb and Wengert, “Editors’ Introduction to the Formula of Concord,” in Book of Concord, 484. 2 Kolb and Wengert, “Editors’ Introduction to the Book of Concord,” in Book of Concord, 2. 3 Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:332–33; Gerhard Müller, “Alliance and Confession,” Sixteenth Century Journal 8, no. 4 (1977): 138–39.

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more confusion than consolidation.4 Article 11’s presentation of predestination allowed formal doctrinal consensus on paper, but it inevitably failed to resolve the predestination question at large. Preus, while sympathetic to Lutheran orthodoxy, even has to acknowledge that “the theology of the Formula of Concord clearly corresponds to that of later orthodoxy on every point of doctrine except the doctrine of election.”5 After the Formula of Concord, several Lutheran dogmaticians, though trying to follow the Formula as they developed a new approach to predestination, began to advocate the theory that God by an antecedent act of the will not only desires the salvation of all men, but that by a consequent act of the will He desires the salvation of those whose faith and salvation He has foreseen.6 Particularly, Aegidius Hunnius, author of the Saxon Visitation Articles of 1592, De providentia Dei et aeterna praedestinatione (1597), and De libero arbitrio (1598), began to emphasize foreknowledge at the expense of foreordination. Election was considered to be done “in view of faith” (intuitu fidei), that is, according to God’s foresight of the merits of Christ apprehended by faith. Preus states, Beginning with Aegidius Hunnius the intuitu Christi meriti fide apprehendendi and the simple intuitu fidei formulae are brought into the picture; and in the end the election eis uiothesian (Eph. 1:5) is denied; speculation replaces simple biblical theology, and the purpose of the doctrine to comfort and lead one to sola gratia is vitiated…. Hunnius and his successors sincerely tried to combat with their formulae the supralapsarian or sublapsarian doctrines of the Calvinists and the bizarre doctrine of Samuel Huber that all human beings were elect. But they succeeded only in muddying the waters.7

4 Berkouwer writes, “It seems that wherever the idea of prescience has gained admittance as a solution, it has grown in power and has finally broken through the boundaries to which it was at first confined. It could be asked whether such danger was perhaps already implicit in the Formula of Concord” (Divine Election, 40). It should be further noted that the initial criticisms of the Formula of Concord dealt with the Lord’s Supper, Christology, and questions regarding the authority accorded to Luther and Augsburg. Cf. Irene Dingel, Concordia Controversa, Die öffentlichen Diskussionen um das lutherische Konkordienwerk am Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1996). 5 Robert D. Preus, “The Influence of the Formula of Concord on the Later Lutheran Orthodoxy,” in Discord, Dialogue, and Concord, 101. 6 Benjamin T. G. Mayes, editor’s preface to Johann Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces: On Creation and Angels, On Providence, On Election and Reprobation, On the Image of God in Man before the Fall, trans. Richard J. Dinda, ed. Benjamin T. G. Mayes and Joshua J. Hayes (St. Louis: Concordia, 2013), xvii. Hereafter noted as Theological Commonplaces: On Creation and Predestination. 7 Preus, “The Influence of the Formula of Concord on the Later Lutheran Orthodoxy,” 99. See also Söderlund, Ex praevisa Fide. Zum Verständnis der Prädestinationslehre in der lutherischen Orthodoxie.

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Johann Gerhard, whose “common place on predestination is the standard, representative presentation of the later Lutheran doctrine,”8 wrote, “The elect of God are all of them, and they alone, whom God foresaw were going to believe perseveringly in Christ, the restorer of the human race, by the efficacy of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word.” Similarly, he said, “The reprobate of God are all of them, and they alone, who He likewise foresaw from eternity were going to persist in impenitence and unbelief by their own fault until the end of their life.”9 Yet, paradoxically, he denied that faith is the cause of election,10 writing, “Faith is not the meritorious cause either of election or of eternal salvation, nor does it arise from the powers of the free will. Instead, it is a work of God.”11 Mayes observes that Gerhard was not a synergist, but Mayes says, “He does not resolve how God could consider faith in election, yet be the cause of that faith in individuals…. He seems to say both that faith causes election and that election causes faith.”12 When the Remonstrants were condemned at the Synod of Dordt, the Lutherans felt the finger was also being pointed at them, despite Dordt’s careful and constant assertion to the contrary. Indeed, the thinking of Lutheran theologians of the seventeenth century approached the Remonstrant doctrine of election, even while striving to avoid synergism. The antecedent will begin to crowd out the consequent will. Predestination was nothing more than God’s general decree to save men by means of persevering faith in Christ. The Jesuit doctrine of scientia media was essentially embraced.13 Man’s faith becomes the condition of election; unbelief only confirms the decree of election to be universal in formulation but not in realization. Traveling from the rejection of sovereign reprobation (as definitively formulated in Article 11) to the rejection of election (in its Reformed sense), Lutheran orthodoxy ended where Calvin always feared it would: predestination is man’s election of God. The Formula of Concord paved the way for this later Lutheran conception of predestination in which the human will is stronger than God’s decree, Christ’s blood, and the Spirit’s application. Concord’s assertion that man’s resistance to the Word blocks “the Holy Spirit’s ordinary path, so that he cannot carry out his work in them” (Epitome 11.11),14 assisted in planting the seed of departure, which 8 Mayes, editor’s preface to Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces: On Creation and Predestination, xiv. 9 Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces: On Creation and Predestination, 126 (10.17). 10 Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces: On Creation and Predestination, 143, 207 (10.52, 161). 11 Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces: On Creation and Predestination, 236 (10.188). 12 Mayes, editor’s preface to Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces: On Creation and Predestination, xviii. 13 Thus Gerhard and Quensted, cited in Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:199. 14 Emphasis added. Cf. Berkouwer, Divine Election, 39.

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can hardly avoid the fruit of exalting prescience over and against predestination. Speaking of Article 11, Schlink asks the inevitable questions: Does not the Holy Spirit always meet with man’s resistance?… Must not enslaved man resist the Holy Spirit until he is conquered and on the last day is entirely renewed?… Is maybe this rejection of a double predestination in the distinction between election out of grace and foreknowledge, in spite of all hesitancy and respect regarding the mystery of divine election, the beginning of a rational solution to its problems as it afterwards came to light in Lutheran orthodoxy? 15

Lutheran history confirms that monergistic, single predestination is neither a biblical nor rational solution; repressed reprobation must end in repressed election. Divine election, confined exclusively to comfort and assurance at most, must ultimately be buried beside divine reprobation. Concord already implies that gospel preaching places divine predestination in its shadow: God’s will to save, His callings and invitations to salvation, and His promises come to all men. Lutheranism had but little choice—it had to go the distance: by first denying Luther’s double predestination, it later had to jettison his single predestination as well. Though Concord’s Article 11 had little discernible impact on Lutheran Orthodoxy directly, it certainly assisted indirectly in sweeping the entire movement into the polluted waters of synergism, free will, and man-centered salvation so thoroughly detested by Martin Luther.

Response from Reformed Orthodoxy Even less documented than the Lutheran response is Concord’s reception in Reformed circles. The Formula as a whole was certainly viewed as an untimely blow against pan-Protestant unity throughout Europe, and prompted a vigorous reaction from the Reformed divines.16 Pierre Loyseleur de Villiers, a Dutch Reformed minister, took up his pen against the Formula in two successive volumes, the second of which adds predestination or providence to the list of points of contention between Lutherans and Reformed (in addition to the Lord’s Supper 15 Cited in Berkouwer, Divine Election, 40. 16 Davis, “The Reformed Church of Germany,” 126; W. Robert Godfrey, “The Dutch Reformed Response,” in Discord, Dialogue, and Concord, 177; Preus and Rosin, A Contemporary Look at the Formula of Concord, 276; Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:335; John T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), 272–75; Warfield, “Predestination in the Reformed Confessions,” 124–125. Also, the Formula itself, Epitome, XI.19–21; SD 8.38–43 (the language of Antithesis confirms strongly anti-Calvinistic element). Only Krauth disagrees with this assertion, stating that Concord only codified the division already existing between the Lutherans and Reformed (Charles Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology [Philadelphia: General Council Publication Board, 1899], 325–26).

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and person of Christ). Nevertheless, Villiers only devotes one page in response to Article 11, in which he maintains “that God was not the author of sin, that Christians did not believe in ‘Stoic fate or fatalistic necessity,’ and that God’s actions did not destroy the reality of secondary causes.”17 He maintained that the only major controversy in predestination was the interpretation of such texts as “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (Ex. 9:12), but felt that all such differences were merely verbal ones, easily capable of being resolved at a Lutheran-Reformed colloquy.18 A second example of Reformed response to Concord’s Article 11 came from Zacharias Ursinus, primary author of the Heidelberg Catechism.19 According to Schaff, he led the Reformed in 1581 in exposing “the doctrinal contradiction between Articles II and XI,” and “quoted Luther’s views on predestination against the Formula.”20 It seems likely that William Perkins had the Formula of Concord and its defenders in view when, in his treatise on predestination, A Golden Chaine (1591), he spoke of the “Lutherans” who “teach, that God foreseeing how all mankind being shut up under unbelief, would therefore reject grace offered, did hereupon purpose to choose some to salvation of his sheer mercy without any respect of their faith and good works, and the rest to reject being moved to do this, because he did eternally foresee that they would reject his grace offered them in the gospel.”21 This was one of the views Perkins sought to refute. As an appendix to A Golden Chaine there was published an excerpt from Theodore Beza’s disputation with none other than the Lutheran concordist Andreae at the Colloquy of Mümpelgart or Montbéliard (1586)—an excerpt dealing with comfort and predestination.22 Predestination was one of the main topics of the Colloquy.23 The Formula of Concord, written nine years earlier and

17 Godfrey, “The Dutch Reformed Response,” in Discord, Dialogue, and Concord, 176. 18 Godfrey, “The Dutch Reformed Response,” in Discord, Dialogue, and Concord, 176. 19 Zacharias Ursinus, De Libro Concordiae… Admonitio Christiana (Neustadii in Palatinatu: Matthaeus Harnisch, 1581). For example, see pp. 111–12. 20 Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:333. 21 William Perkins, “To the Reader,” in A Golden Chaine: Or The Description of Theologie, Containing the Order of the Causes of Salvation and Damnation (London: Edward Alde, 1591), fol. A2r. 22 “An Excellent Treatise of Comforting Such, As Are Troubled about the Predestination, Taken Out of the Second Answer of M. Beza to D. Andreas, in the Act of Their Colloquie at Mompelgard,” in A Golden Chaine, fol. X2r–X7r. See Eugène Choisy, “Beza, Theodore,” in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 2:80. 23 The Andreae-Beza colloquy on predestination was published with polemical comments by Andreae in Acta Colloquii Montis Belligartensis… 1586 (Tubingae: Georgium Guppenbachium, 1587), 502–552. See Beza’s response in Theodori Bezae, Ad Acta Montibelgardensis Tubingae Edita (Geneva: Joannes le Preux, 1588). For a helpful summary, see Jill Raitt, The

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publicly ratified just six years before, was very much on the table, for the ministers of Montbéliard were now required to sign the Formula.24 Chung-Kim writes, “While Beza sought an international conciliation that would transcend national boundaries since pockets of Reformed congregations were scattered throughout various regions in Europe, Andreae focused on uniting the German people in a theological agreement as outlined in the Formula of Concord.”25 It is interesting to note that Beza would have preferred not to dispute on predestination in this setting, but Andreae insisted.26 The debate very much engaged the question of reprobation. In an echo of Marburg, at the end of the colloquy Andreae refused to extend “the hand of brotherhood” to Beza, calling him a heretic, but offered him “the hand of humanity,” which Beza, deeply offended, would not receive.27 Another significant Reformed respondent to the concordists’ doctrine of predestination was Swiss theologian Rudolph Hospinian in his Concordia Discors (1607).28 Hospinian’s polemics were generally reserved for Rome, but this book reportedly “exasperated the Lutherans in a high degree.”29 In the decades after the Formula of Concord, the gap between the Reformed and Lutheran churches only widened. Forty years later, some of the divines at Dordt continued to desire to keep the door open towards the Lutherans, but in the end other concerns predominated. Godfrey comments: DuMoulin’s quest for Protestant unity and sensitivity to Reformed relations with Lutheranism clearly expressed the feelings that were explicit or implicit in the mediating and moderate groups at the Synod. Bishop Carleton, for instance, expressed his desire, when the time came to frame the Canons, that a real effort be made not to offend the Lutherans…. This sensitivity did not move the strict group, however. The strict German and Swiss delegations through bitter experience had already been disillusioned about hopes of concord with Lutherans. The Dutch provincial delegations had other reasons for disregarding an appeal to Lutheranism. They read such an appeal in the context of their

24 25 26 27 28

29

Colloquy of Montbéliard: Religion and Politics in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 147–55. Jill Raitt, “The French Reformed Theological Response,” in Discord, Dialogue, and Concord, 181. Esther Chung-Kim, Inventing Authority: The Use of the Church Fathers in Reformation Debates over the Eucharist (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2011), 127. Raitt, The Colloquy of Montbéliard, 134–35. Raitt, The Colloquy of Montbéliard, 156. John L. von Mosheim, Institutes of Ecclesiastical History: Ancient and Modern, trans. James Murdoch (New Haven: A. H. Maltby, 1832), 3:177. See Rodolpho Hospiniano, Concordia Discors: De Origine et Progressu Formulae Concordiae Bergensis Liber Unus (Tiguri [Zurich]: In Officina Wolphiana: 1607), fol. 106r, 209r–212v. Erasmus Middleton, Evangelical Biography (London: W. Baynes, 1816), 2:444.

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own struggles with the Remonstrants and construed the call to Protestant unity as another Remonstrant smoke screen designed to obscure the real issues. This fear seemed to be supported because as early as 1609 defenders of Arminius had claimed that their teachings were no different from what was taught by Lutherans on the matters at hand.

Godfrey then concludes: Although the strict Calvinist group at the Synod was not moved by an appeal to Lutheran feelings, there were three grounds upon which an effective appeal for compromise might succeed with them. In fact, the final compromise was accomplished on the basis of these appeals. The first plea was the need for the decisions of the Synod to be approved unanimously. The second appeal was the form in which final Canons were to be stated [i. e., that the Canons were to be formed for the edification of the Dutch church, not to settle subtle academic questions; hence, the style should be popular and not scholastic], and the third was the need to placate the English delegation that represented the largest Reformed church and was the strongest political ally of the United Provinces.30

It appears that the separation between Lutheran and Reformed views on predestination were simply assumed by 1618. At most, Article 11 added to the alienation between Lutherans and Reformed; it does not appear to have stimulated any significant Reformed reexamination or redefining of terms any more than the Canons did among the Lutherans.

Concluding Reflections Concord faced predestination as a theological problem: How could Christians embrace God as the loving and just God of the gospel and also the God of predestination without forming a split-image of God as a two-willed Being? Concord rejected the Calvinistic answer that subordinated God’s gospel offer to His absolute and omnipotent sovereignty over all things. While a systematic and in some respects simple response, the concordists saw it as fraught with anxiety for those unable to answer the question, “Am I one of the elect?” The Formula of Concord also rejected the medieval expedient of making man’s will determinative, and reducing God’s predestination entirely to His foreknowledge of man’s choices. This was the answer which later Lutheranism

30 William Robert Godfrey, “Tensions within International Calvinism: The Debate on the Atonement at the Synod of Dort, 1618–1619” (PhD Dissertation, Stanford University, 1974), 252–53, 254–55.

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adopted with the doctrine of intuitu fides (election “in view of faith”), but it is not the position of Concord.31 Schaff placed the Formula of Concord’s view of predestination in a mediating position between the early Luther and the late Melanchthon.32 According to Niesel, though it vehemently rejects Luther’s double predestination and double will of God, even more strongly does the Formula of Concord abhor the Melanchthonian role ascribed to the human will in conversion.33 Bavinck wrote that Melanchthon swerved into synergism while Luther increasingly avoided the topic of predestination, leading Lutheran theologians to reject both synergism and absolute predestination, “deriving predestination from the human condition, not the idea of God.”34 However, our investigation has revealed a more nuanced situation. Regarding Luther, while he affirmed God’s sovereignty over all events, his view of predestination was logically asymmetrical or “broken,” to use the language of Rune Söderlund. Luther’s strong law/gospel distinction resulted in a tendency to ground the damnation of the reprobate entirely in their own responsibility, and the salvation of the elect entirely in the grace of God.35 Since Luther identified predestination unto damnation with the “hidden God,” but found the “revealed God” in the gospel, his writings after De servo arbitio focused on soteriology more than sovereignty. Regarding Melanchthon, the charge of synergism proves not as well founded as sometimes thought, for in the midst of asserting human responsibility he also made monergistic statements about regeneration, and it is not always clear whether he is speaking of initial regeneration or the ongoing conversion of those who are regenerated. The Reformer and the Preceptor stood closer together than later interpreters recognized, and jointly contributed to the stream of thought that flowed into Article 11 of the Formula. However, some of Melanchthon’s students seized on their teacher’s ambiguities in order to promote synergism, resulting in fierce controversy and necessitating the statements of Articles 1 and 2. Thus, Luther himself opened the door for Concord’s paradoxical declaration of the enslaved human will that can be renewed by grace alone, alongside a view of predestination limited only to election. Surely in this context no doctrinal symbol can afford to ignore speaking out on the absoluteness of the decree of predestination, for how else shall a dead sinner be brought to life? Precisely here, however, the Formula consciously chooses to ignore the ultimate question of the absoluteness of God’s decree, thereby equating predestination and election (SD 31 32 33 34 35

Kolb, Bound Choice, 266. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:304. Niesel, Reformed Symbolics, 238–39. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:356. Kolb, “The Plan Behind the Promise,” 48.

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XI.5). Consequently, a divine decree of reprobation is forced out of the realm of theology through the escape hatch of an unbiblical use of the term “foreknowledge” (i. e. confining it to foreseeing rather than including foreordaining, cf. Rom. 9). Since God only rejects those who persevere in rejecting Him, reprobation is simply reduced to a human decision known to God. In short, reprobation becomes a human act, not a divine decree; practically speaking, unbelievers reprobate themselves, while God stands by as an observer, apparently powerless to prevent the approaching tragedy. The Formula of Concord denies the existence of divine predestination to damnation.36 A God whose hidden will is one with His revealed will, which seriously yearns for the salvation of the entire world, cannot be a God of active reprobation without denying Himself. Active reprobation would be outside of the boundaries of His nature. Passive reprobation, which is confined to foreseeing and punishing disobedience, would be the extreme limit His essence would allow. The Lutheranism of the Formula asserts that active reprobation would make God the cause of sin. It invokes the hiddenness of God to justify the paradox of election without reprobation, instead of bowing to God’s hiddenness to justify the paradox of double predestination joined with the free offer of the gospel, as Reformed theologians do. In the final analysis, the inexplicably unique position of the Formula is both within and outside of Article 11 by asserting that universalis gratia and sola gratia are both biblical. In seeking to avoid the Scylla of double predestinarianism and the Charybdis of synergism, Lutheran orthodoxy attempted to navigate the turbulent waters of single, yet monergistic predestination; of totally depraved, yet willing sinners; of a willing, yet ineffectual God. Schaff was right when he said, “The Lutheran system, then, to be consistent, must rectify itself, and develop either from Article II in the direction of Augustinianism and Calvinism, or from Article XI in the direction of synergism and Arminianism.”37 How does Lutheranism answer this objection? Repeatedly, by sheltering behind its unique biblical hermeneutic, as Allbeck illustrates: The point of the criticism is removed when it is frankly acknowledged that the Lutheran doctrine includes logical incompatibles. The Formula of Concord paradoxically includes both sola gratia and gratia universalis because both of them are taught in Scripture. The Formula specifically refuses to make reason superior to revelation in such a way that grace alone is accepted and universal grace is rejected. It knows of no way of solving the logical problem and therefore calls it a mystery, just as Luther did. Even Schaff had to admit the paradoxical nature of several theological doctrines, for he

36 Epitome, XI.19. 37 Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:315. For a synopsis of the problem see especially Allbeck, Studies in the Lutheran Confessions, 294.

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ended his discussion with this sentence: “The human mind has not been able as yet satisfactorily to set forth the harmony of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility.”38

Indeed, Preus goes so far as to say that this is the Lutheran asset rather than its dilemma: In refusing to answer the cur alii, alii non question (SD XI 53–59) and maintaining the paradox that salvation is entirely God’s doing and is utterly undeserved, whereas the cause of damnation is entirely man’s doing (SD XI 60, 78, 82), the Formula of Concord teaches the Biblical and only possible evangelical doctrine of predestination. And this is the only way the evangelical doctrine can be maintained against Calvinism, Synergism and Enthusiasm (a form of synergism at this point). This theological hermeneutic or approach of our Confession places a higher priority on scripturalness than on apparent consistency and is the genius of the Formula of Concord. The teaching side by side in Article 11 on Election (particular election) of universalis gratia and sola gratia—which are both Gospel and both Biblical—is unique to Lutheranism and indicates the faithful and profound Biblical and evangelical commitment of our Lutheran Confessions.39

However, the Reformed found the paradoxical position of the Formula of Concord to be neither faithful to the biblical testimony to the reality of divine reprobation, nor logically consistent with the biblical teaching of God’s selection of some but not all sinners for salvation.

38 Allbeck, Studies in the Lutheran Confessions, 299. 39 Preus and Rosin, A Contemporary Look at the Formula of Concord, 277.

Part II: Reprobation in Calvin’s Theology

Chapter 7: The Study of Calvin’s Doctrine of Reprobation

The doctrine of reprobation acts as a hinge upon which the entire doctrine of God’s sovereignty in salvation turns. If He chose some for salvation, then He must have chosen not to save others. To deny that God chose not to save some people is to raise the question whether God made any choice at all about whom He would save. One’s view of reprobation functions as a window into his understanding of election. Therefore, we would expect the study of John Calvin’s teaching on reprobation to shed much light on his doctrines of election and salvation. However, as soon as we embark on this investigation of Calvinian1 theology, we hear a number of voices calling us to turn back lest we distort and dishonor Calvin’s true teaching. We must address these arguments before we proceed.

Arguments against the Study of Calvinian Reprobation Three cardinal theses have been raised repeatedly by Reformed scholars to argue that a study of John Calvin’s doctrine of reprobation in isolation from other doctrines must be regarded as illegitimate and unnavigable. The first and primary thesis outlawing the isolation of reprobation in Calvinian study draws its force from Calvin’s own dictum: election and reprobation are interdependent. In his definitive 1559 edition of the Institutes, Calvin unequivocally states: Election itself could not stand except as set over against reprobation. God is said to set apart those whom he adopts into salvation; it will be highly absurd to say that others acquire by chance or obtain by their own effort what election alone confers on a few. Therefore, those whom God passes over, he condemns; and this he does for no other

1 Since the word “Calvinist” is often used for the views of Reformed writers after Calvin, I am using “Calvinian” here to refer to the theology of Calvin himself.

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reason than that he wills to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his own children.2

For Calvin, the inseparability of election and reprobation is not a mere inference.3 The union of election and reprobation under the genus of predestination is logical in Calvin’s thought, but the basis for this logic is sola Scriptura.4 Thus, Calvinian predestination can be represented as follows:

rather than:

As already stated, Calvin believes election and reprobation are inseparably united because Scripture dictates this relation. Calvin affirms this inseparability in the context of exegeting Ephesians 1:3–4 and Romans 9, respectively, in his treastise on “The Eternal Predestination of God”: In the first place, there is, most certainly and evidently, an inseparable connection between the elect and the reprobate. So that the election, of which the apostle speaks, cannot consist unless we confess that God separated from all others certain persons whom it pleased Him thus to separate. Now this act of God is expressed by the term predestinating, which the apostle afterwards twice repeats.5

Calvin went on to say: The mind and intent of the apostle, therefore, in his use of this similitude, are to be carefully observed and held fast—that God, the Maker of men, forms out of the same lump of His hands one vessel, or man, to honour, and another to dishonour, according to His sovereign and absolute will. For He freely chooses some to life who are not yet 2 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics, vols. 20–21 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 3.23.1. 3 Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.2–4. 4 Paul Jacobs, Prädestination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin (Neukirchen: Erziehungsvereins, 1937), 148. 5 John Calvin, “The Eternal Predestination of God,” in Calvin’s Calvinism, trans. Henry Cole (reprint, London: Sovereign Grace Union, 1927), 45. See also J. K. S. Reid’s translation under the title Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God (London: James Clarke, 1961). Henceforth cited as Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961). The Cole volume also includes a translation of Calvin’s “Defence of the Secret Providence of God,” 221–350—which, unfortunately, is not always faithful to the original and contains some interpolations by Cole.

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born, leaving others to their own destruction, which destruction all men by nature equally deserve. And when Pighius holds that God’s election of grace has no reference to, or connection with, His hatred of the reprobate, I maintain that reference and connection to be a truth. Inasmuch as the just severity of God answers, in equal and common cause, to that free love with which He embraces His elect.6

According to Calvin the doctrine of reprobation is inseparable from election in two significant scripturally indicated ways: first, reprobation is dependent on the model of divine activity displayed in election, and second, reprobation reinforces the gratuitous nature of election.7 This view is reiterated in Calvin’s first paragraph on predestination in the Institutes: “We shall never be clearly persuaded, as we ought to be, that our salvation flows from the wellspring of God’s free mercy until we come to know his eternal election, which illumines God’s grace by this contrast: that he does not indiscriminately adopt all into the hope of salvation but gives to some what he denies to others.”8 Among secondary sources, David Wiley has perceptively observed Calvin’s accent on this score: “Therefore, divine rejection, with all the problems it caused in the realm of human responsibility, must be maintained else the grace of God effecting salvation will perish”; nevertheless, Wiley goes too far when he adds, “Indeed, rejection may be more important theologically for defending the grace of God than election.”9 Though Calvin would agree with the modern description of “full double predestination,”10 he would regard full and double as redundant since both adjectives are incorporated reflexively in predestination. Far from being embarrassed by the doctrine of full-orbed predestination, Calvin insists that volition and permission—though distinguishable from a human perspective—are identical for the utterly sovereign God.11 Moreover, since God wills all that He permits, He determines reprobation in His eternal decree in the same manner as election, namely, out of His sovereign will and good pleasure.12 6 Calvin, “The Eternal Predestination of God,” 75. 7 Cf. Calvin’s Commentaries, 22 vols., various translators (reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), on Eph. 1:3–4 and Romans 9, for additional confirmation of this two-pronged Calvinian interrelationship. 8 Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.1. 9 David Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination: His Principal Soteriological and Polemical doctrine” (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1971), 119. Cf. John Weeks, “A Comparison of Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election” (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1963), 75, 106. 10 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. T. H. L. Parker, et al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), II/2, 17. 11 Calvin, Institutes, 3.22.11. 12 Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.5, 7; 3.22.6.

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Thus, for Calvin, election and reprobation are coordinate halves of a single divine counsel,13 so that an attack upon reprobation is by definition an attack on election.14 The two stand or fall together under the one umbrella of God’s decree. Calvin emphatically rejected the notion of two decrees in divine predestination, as well as the notion of two wills in God.15 Election and reprobation are but two aspects of one decree.16 According to Calvin, what appears to us as two decrees is but one in God, and what appears as two wills is but one in God: “To our perception, God’s will is manifold…. How wonderfully he wills what at the moment seems to be against his will.”17 Indeed, the joint and equal affirmation of election and reprobation lies at the very heart of the doctrine of predestination for Calvin.18 The second argument against studying Calvinian reprobation in isolation from election stresses that Calvin viewed predestination primarily from a soteriological perspective, and that he consequently placed his heaviest accent on the election syllable (the “bright side” of predestination). Therefore, any focused study of reprobation (the “dark side” of predestination—Calvin’s minor accent) must be deceptive. This thesis posits that to examine Calvin on reprobation is to focus on the wrong aspect of predestination, thereby contradicting the Reformer’s dual emphasis on Christology and soteriology. If predestination’s prime task in Calvin’s thought is to undergird the basic Reformation doctrine of divine and gratuitous justification apart from meritorious works, why give reprobation more than a few parenthetical comments? Moreover, since Calvin says so much more about election than about reprobation, does scholarship not commit a grave injustice when it grapples with the one “sore finger” of reprobation (to 13 Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.5. 14 Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.1. 15 On Calvin’s rejection of two wills in God in his interpretation of Ezek. 18:23, see Richard A. Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), 113–19; James W. Anderson, “The Grace of God and the Nonelect in Calvin’s Commentaries and Sermons” (PhD dissertation, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1976), 97–103. 16 John S. Bray, Theodore Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination (Nieuwkoop, The Netherlands: B. DeGraaf, 1975), 52. 17 Calvin, Institutes, 3.24.17. 18 B. B. Warfield in his “Predestination in the Reformed Confessions,” The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 12 (1901): 49–128, persuasively shows how Calvin’s emphasis on the inseparability of election and reprobation was confessionally confirmed throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Reformed statements: “For all these creeds alike discrimination constitutes the very essence of soteriological predestination. That is to say, it is a praedestinatio gemina that they teach; and that again is to say that they are at one in the conception of the necessary implication in the sovereignty of election, of a sovereign preterition as well” (125). Van Til goes so far as to call this “the heart of the matter.” Cornelius Van Til, The Theology of James Daane (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1959), 78; cf. 72– 79 for additional support of Warfield’s article.

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borrow Reid’s metaphor) while virtually ignoring the nine good fingers of election? 19 Did not Calvin himself regard reprobation as a “horrible decree” (decretum horribile)? 20 Edward Dowey, a leader in modern scholarship’s attempt to downplay, and even eradicate Calvinian reprobation, writes, “Reprobation is an isolated doctrine for Calvin, literally in its place in the Institutes, in its comparative rarity in Calvin’s commentaries and sermons, as well as in its theological scope.”21 Dowey further adds that any relevance attributed to reprobation must be denied on epistemological grounds. Since only believers know the doctrine of reprobation in the first place, and, much more important, since they must treat their neighbors as potentially elect, Dowey reasons that no room is left for reprobation. Dowey thus concludes, “The doctrine . . . enters into neither the relation to God, nor the relation to one’s fellow man, neither the worship nor the ethics, of the only one for whom it is a doctrine: the believer…. There are in Calvin’s theology no ethical, ecclesiastical, or soteriological corollaries to the doctrine of reprobation. It brings about no harmonizing modifications in other doctrines.”22 Dowey’s influence on scholarship in this area has been pivotal.23 Since Dowey a major trend in Calvinian scholarship is towards the conviction not only that Calvin’s followers overestimate Calvinian reprobation and outdo Calvin on this score, but that Calvin even outdid himself! Influenced by this “Calvin vs. the Calvinists” thesis, Bray rather boldly insults the genius of Calvin by stating, “In short, Calvin overestimated the role played by the doctrine of reprobation in his theology.”24 Dewey Wallace ponders the Calvin vs. Calvinists movement, and voices a misgiving: “One suspects in such efforts to separate earlier Reformed theology from later Calvinistic theology that there is an underlying motive of clearing some favored movement or thinker of any imputation of ‘Calvinism.’”25 19 “Reprobation is of course an essential part of his [Calvin’s] doctrine of Predestination; but it is rather less than dominant, and the prominence it has is because it tends to stick up like a sore finger” Reid, Concerning Eternal Predestination, 17. 20 Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.7. 21 Edward Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 217. 22 Dowey, Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, 213. 23 E. g., Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 61–63. Bray, however, does reject two of Dowey’s more radical theses when he concludes: “Reprobation was an important doctrine for Calvin because it was part of God’s revelation concerning his nature and activity. Furthermore, Calvin did relate reprobation to other doctrines” (63). Cf. Weeks, who notes, “Calvin made little use of the reprobation doctrine…. The fact of teaching reprobation does not in itself show a primary orientation to the glory and majesty of God” (“Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 105–106). 24 Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 63. 25 Dewey Wallace, Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology, 1625–1695 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 4.

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How much more mistrust is aroused when Calvin himself is declared guilty of misrepresenting his own theological emphases! While the Calvin vs. the Calvinists argument may have been the trend in the latter half of the twentieth century, more recently this argument has been challenged.26 Finally, a third argument discouraging study of Calvinian reprobation is forged from historical predestination debates, for concentration on reprobation is a major ploy for opponents of election to use. From the Arminians at Dordt27 to the more recent formulations of Harry Boer, for example, antagonists of the historic Reformed faith have endeavored to penetrate the fortress of decretal predestination by breaking through the back door of reprobation. “It is a favorite stratagem of the opponents of sovereign election,” Homer Hoeksema writes, “to attack this doctrine by attacking sovereign reprobation.”28

Arguments for the Study of Calvinian Reprobation My response to these objections to a detailed investigation of Calvinian reprobation can be brief. First, in this study I wholeheartedly concur with—and trust that I adequately account for—Calvin’s emphasis on the inseparability of election and reprobation.29 I will turn repeatedly to parallel and/or non-parallel 26 Especially noteworthy in this regard is the work of Richard Muller. See his “Calvin and the ‘Calvinists’: Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy,” Calvin Theological Journal 30 (1995): 349. Throughout this essay Muller evaluates the five responses to the period of Reformed Orthodoxy. The first four responses, with representatives such as Brian Armstrong, Basil Hall, Hans Emil Weber, and Heinrich Heppe, can be summarized under the one heading of divorcing Calvin from his followers. For a more extensive analysis see Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2003). Also see the fine collection of essays in Carl R. Trueman and R. Scott Clark, eds., Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999). 27 For the Arminian attempt to capitalize on reprobation at the expense of, and separation from, election, see William Cunningham, The Reformers and Theology of the Reformation (reprint, London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1967), 536–39; Historical Theology (reprint, London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 2:428–30. Especially pertinent in this regard is the monumental work by Sinnema, “Issue of Reprobation.” 28 Homer Hoeksema, “Attacking Election Via Reprobation,” Standard Bearer, 54, no. 2 (1977): 29–30. Hoeksema notes from the Acts of the National Synod of Dordrecht the Arminian ploy answering Dordt’s first article with six out of ten paragraphs making direct reference to absolute reprobation, and three of the ten dealing with reprobation exclusively. This must be contrasted with the Canons’ approach of referring to reprobation in four, or at most five, of the eighteen articles of its First Head. Ultimately, the Arminian ploy was laid on the table when the Synod’s president, Johannes Bogerman, admonished the Arminians to confine themselves in future deliberations to “the questions concerning the comforting truth of election, instead of hatefully dragging in and discussing the doctrine of reprobation.” 29 For a more recent example of such a balanced approach see Donald Sinnema, “Calvin’s View

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concepts in election while treating reprobation. This is true particularly for core issues in contemporary research on Calvinian predestination, such as its decretal and Christocentric character, and the so-called equal ultimacy of election and reprobation. Unfortunately, the limited scope of this book does not allow for much detailing of the doctrine of election proper beyond synoptic annotations, in which I list primary and secondary sources to facilitate further study, as well as offering a concise conclusion. Neither do I attempt to skirt the second objection, but submit to the limitations of this study here as well; indeed, I desire the reader to bear in mind throughout this investigation of Calvinian reprobation that the Reformer weighted the majority of his pastoral concern and writing on the election side of predestination.30 I thus agree fully with J. I. Packer when he posits that for Calvin: Predestination . . . is the undergirding of the Gospel, the ultimate explanation of why the Son of God became by incarnation Jesus the Christ, and whence it is that some who hear the Word come to faith and how it is that Christians have a sure hope of heaven. Predestination, as Calvin treats it, is merely a spelling out of the basic thesis about God in the epistle of the Romans, that ‘of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.’ We only understand Calvin’s predestinarianism when we see its evangelical significance and motivation, as finally establishing the sola gratia and thus compelling the soli Deo gloria.31

Nevertheless, we must not forget that the principle of soli Deo gloria moved Calvin to include discussions or comments on reprobation throughout his wide range of expositions on election. The lack of space devoted to reprobation at certain expected junctures or in individual works does not prove that Calvin subordinates reprobation to many of the other doctrines he propounds; rather, the very interdependence of election and reprobation in Calvin’s thought highlights the need for an exposition of Calvinian reprobation as such. In fact, this study attempts to prove reprobation’s significance for Calvin. As to Calvin’s phrase decretum horribile, I would note that the latter word is not properly translated “horrible” here but should be understood as that which inspires dread and awe. Calvin used the same term to refer to the majesty of God which makes men tremble in fear.32 Calvin did not hate the decree any more than of Reprobation,” in Calvin For Today, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2009), 115–36. 30 This one-sidedness in Calvin was not out of partiality but out of an avid concern to remain scripturally balanced. For a concise statement of Scripture’s election accent, see Cunningham, Reformers, 535. 31 J. I. Packer, “Calvin the Theologian,” in John Calvin, ed. G. E. Duffield (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 171–72. 32 Calvin, Institutes, 3.20.17. The Latin horribilis is a derivative of the verb horreo, meaning “to tremble” or “to stand in awe.” For support of the translation “awe-inspiring” or “dreadful” in

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he hated the glory of God. Furthermore, to be precise Calvin did not use this phrase for reprobation, but for God’s decree of the fall of Adam, which cast not only the reprobate but all mankind into death.33 He wrote, “Scripture proclaims that all mortals were bound over to eternal death in the person of one man…. Whence does it happen that Adam’s fall irremediably involved so many people, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God?… The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess.”34 Therefore, Calvin used the term decretum horribile to communicate the awe-inspiring majesty of God’s decision that man would fall. It is not a direct statement about God’s reprobation of some individuals to remain in that state and be condemned forever. Finally, and in a positive vein, far from using reprobation as a back-door entrance to assail the doctrine of election, this study seeks to underscore election via reprobation in true Calvinian and Calvinistic (Reformed) fashion. Thus, I aim to reverse the negative stream of thought about Calvinian reprobation by showing that its proper understanding is requisite for the church’s maintenance of a biblical doctrine of divine election. Despite these cautions, I believe the positives of a concentrated study of Calvinian reprobation outweigh the negatives. These positives go far beyond the necessity of conservative Reformed scholarship to reply to opponents of predestination and especially reprobation. From the first-generation Reformers onward through contemporary Reformed theologians, fundamental questions relative to decretal theology and predestination—not to mention Christology, soteriology, and ecclesiology—continually involve the doctrine of reprobation. The following sampling of such questions shows the significance of studying Calvinian reprobation: • Do the Reformed confessions pursue a biblical, edifying, and logical route in asserting double predestination?

the sense of awesome, see R. A. Finlayson, “Calvin’s Doctrine of God,” Able Ministers of the New Testament (London: Puritan and Reformed Studies Conference, 1964), 13; Edwin Palmer, “Believe It or Not: The Decree of Reprobation is Not Horrible,” Outlook 29, no. 10 (1979): 6–7; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids: AP & A, 1975), 3:260–61; Reid, Concerning Eternal Predestination, 20; Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin, 110; Engelsma, “The Reformed Doctrine of Reprobation,” 35; John McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism (repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 211; Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 116; and the Battles translation of Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.7. Berkouwer thinks Klaas Schilder is closer to Calvin’s intention with the description: “dazzling, striking one dumb, and gainsaying all objections” (see Berkouwer’s A Half Century of Theology, ed. and trans. Lewis B. Smedes [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977], 88; cf. Klaas Schilder, Heidelbergsche Catechismus, 4 vols. [Kampen: Kok, 1938–42], 4:91–93). 33 I am indebted to Donald Sinnema (personal communication) for this insight. 34 Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.7.

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Does Christ play any role in reprobation, and if so, what? If not, how can Reformed orthodoxy present reprobation in a useful, contributory, and consoling manner to the living church, as the Canons of Dordt state? 35 What are the roles of preaching, divine sovereignty, and human responsibility in regard to reprobation? How can election and reprobation be regarded as equally ultimate and yet not completely parallel? Is God equally glorified by reprobation as He is by election? How can divine activity in decreeing reprobation and in hardening sinners leave God free from accusations of authoring or causing sin? How can reprobation be harmonized with God’s revealed will? Does reprobation indicate divine hatred of sinners or only of sin? How can the free or “promiscuous” offer of grace be well-meant against the backdrop of reprobation? Is it possible to teach that Christology and soteriology can harmonize with reprobation? Do the contemporary attacks on reprobation in Reformed circles prove that there is neither room nor need for this doctrine in Reformed Christology, theology, and life?

There are also questions regarding the relationship between the distinctive doctrines of Reformed and Lutheran confessions on predestination. If historic Calvinian reprobation is downplayed or eliminated, must Calvinian election be foregone as well? Does single predestination cater to a limited view of election that has the believer’s comfort and assurance as its sole function, as we observed in Lutheran orthodoxy? Does this limitation weaken the bond between election and regeneration? Should the contemporary Reformed church throw in the towel on reprobation, assume a pose of agnostic neutrality, and assert four centuries behind Lutheranism, “We neither affirm nor deny reprobation—we simply don’t know how to fit it in; we don’t repudiate it, we just have no concrete need for it”? Or is Lutheran orthodoxy’s attempt to mediate between synergism and double predestination an albatross that the Reformed are increasingly and tragically embracing? In sum, must reprobation be regarded as worthless at best and as an undermining of the gospel at worst, after the fashion of Berkouwer, James Daane, and Harry Boer? 36 35 CD I:6, 15, 16. 36 See David Engelsma, “The Reformed Doctrine of Reprobation” (in multiple parts), Standard Bearer 55 (1978–1979): 34–36, 133–35, 156–58, 202–204, 256–58, 282–84, 332–34; Standard Bearer 56 (1979–1980): 34–36, 258–60.

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Questions such as these—some of which are beyond the scope of this book— certainly legitimize an unprejudiced study of Calvinian reprobation. I will undertake this task primarily by surveying the historical development of Calvinian reprobation, roughly parallel to Calvin’s first Genevan residence (as embryonic reprobation), his Strasbourg interim (as elaborated reprobation), and his second Genevan residence (as fully sytematized reprobation). Secondarily, and by way of conclusion, I briefly discuss the theological implications of the mature Calvinian doctrine of reprobation (as represented in the definitive 1559 Institutes primarily), including such pivotal issues as the supremacy of divine glory; divine hardening and human responsibility; hatred of the reprobate and the offer of grace; the role of Christ in reprobation; and the lapsarian issue, as well as the overall place and importance of reprobation in Calvin’s theology. Ultimately, as we shall see, Calvinian reprobation is replete with inherent tensions, but Calvin utilized such tensions to present a uniform doctrine that accords with Scripture’s presentation and balance.

Chapter 8: The Sources of Calvin’s Doctrine of Reprobation

Calvin did not love human misery, gross caricatures notwithstanding.1 Calvin’s teaching of divine reprobation arose from his adherence to the principle of “Scripture alone” (sola Scriptura). Calvin’s core conviction that all loci of theology must be centered on the Word is not only affirmed throughout his writings, but is further ratified by his scriptural treatment of all doctrines, including predestination. In his definitive treatment of predestination, Calvin cites nearly three hundred Scripture proof-texts in less than seventy pages! 2 These citations, it must be noted, are scattered uniformly throughout his organized discussion of both election and reprobation. For Calvin’s treatment of doctrines such as predestination, according to his own wish (see the letter to the reader prefacing the 1559 Institutes), one must turn first of all to the Institutes. Nevertheless, his polemical treatises that defend predestination, his comments on predestination in his correspondence, his inclusion of predestination in confessional and catechetical writings, and particularly his expositions on predestination interspersed throughout the commentaries, all rely heavily on Scripture.3 Calvin’s above-mentioned core conviction

1 For a concise summary of caricatures of Calvin, consult the list of Lester DeKoster’s “unfriendly biographies” in his “Living Themes in the Thought of John Calvin: A Bibliographical Study” (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 1964), 34–39. 2 Calvin, Institutes, 3.21–24. 3 Texts consulted in which Calvin deals with predestination from a scriptural perspective in the commentaries include: Gen. 25:22; 27:30; 48:17, 19; Ex. 7:3; 32:31; 33:19; Num. 14:11; Deut. 31:19; 1 Kings 22:22; Ps. 5:4; 16:7; 32:1; 33:12; 37:37; 65:4; 81:13; 87:6; Is. 6:9–10; 14:1; 41:22; 45:7; Jer. 13:13–14; 24:7; Amos 3:6; Mal. 1:2; Matt. 28:4; Mark 14:21; Luke 13:34; John 6:37, 40; 13:18; 17:2; Rom. 8:30; 9:11, 14, 17, 18, 22, 23, 26; 10:16–17; 11:2, 7, 17, 34; Gal. 1:15; 4:9; Eph. 1:3– 5, 8; Phil. 1:6; 1 Thess. 1:4; 2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Tim. 2:19; Heb. 1:14; 4:12; 1 Peter 1:2; 1 John 2:2; 4:6. Weeks notes fifty-eight Old Testament references and 124 New Testament references throughout Calvin’s commentaries on the subject of election, and cites the following books in order of descending frequency: John, Romans, Ephesians, Psalms, Isaiah, and Matthew. Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 70–71. Clearly, Scripture was the source.

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has been violated nearly at whim by some scholars’ novel interpretations of his thought, often trimmed and reshaped to fit a Barthian mold.4

Calvin’s Primary Source: The Holy Scriptures From the theological treatises Calvin wrote while yet in his twenties (in which he set forth reprobation in an embryonic or rudimentary fashion), to the final edition of the Institutes and the commentaries of his later years (in which he systematically integrated reprobation into a preeminently practical theology), Calvin taught this doctrine for one reason: the God he served and sought to glorify had revealed the doctrine of reprobation in His infallible Word. Calvin wrote, “I can declare with all truth that I should never have spoken on this subject, unless the Word of God had led the way, as indeed all godly readers of my earlier writings, and especially of my Institutes, will easily gather.”5 A mere recognition of Calvin’s constant citation of Scripture references to predestination, however, does not do justice to the Reformer’s preoccupation with interpreting Scripture accurately. As S. Leigh Hunt says, “The doctrine of predestination occupies a prominent place in his system, primarily because he found it so clearly revealed in Holy Scripture.”6 Thus, as Bavinck notes, those who would confront Calvin with the charge of teaching reprobation must first lay this charge before Scripture, for Calvin was first and foremost a biblical theologian.7 Consequently, when accused of inventing the notion of divine hardening, Calvin answered, “We are certainly not the author of this opinion, for Paul taught this before us…. We contend for nothing that is not taught by him.”8 With Scripture as his authoritative source, Calvin warns against two dangers peculiar to theological enquiry regarding predestination: first, inquiring beyond what God has revealed for our use by speculating about His secret counsel in an impious manner, and second, the opposite extreme of refusing to study predestination, thereby blasphemously judging as useless what God has revealed in 4 Basil Hall, “Calvin Against the Calvinists,” in John Calvin, ed. G. E. Duffield (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 22–23; Fred Klooster, Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), 13n. 5 Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 61–62. 6 S. Leigh Hunt, “Predestination in the ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion,’ 1536–1559,” Evangelical Quarterly 9, no. 1 (January 1937): 38. 7 Herman Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” in Calvin and the Reformation, ed. W. P. Armstrong (repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 116. See also William Moreau, “Divine Foreordination and Human Responsibility in the Theology of John Calvin” (MA thesis, Westminster Theological Seminary, 1962), 4; A. Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin (London: James Clark, 1950), 100–101. 8 Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 60.

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His Word for our use.9 These twin dangers are compressed into Calvin’s often quoted summary: “The secret things of God are not to be scrutinized, and those which he has revealed are not to be overlooked, lest we may, on the one hand, be charged with curiosity, and, on the other, with ingratitude.”10 Concerning the latter hazard of ungrateful silence, Calvin argues that this approach (or lack thereof) to predestination must be rejected because of the nature of the subject matter itself. His syllogistic argument follows: (1) Scripture teaches nothing that is not beneficial and necessary for us to know, and (2) Scripture unequivocally teaches predestination; hence, (3) predestination is necessary and beneficial for us to know.11 Consequently, for Calvin, Philip Melanchthon’s attempt to downplay predestination in general and to avoid reprobation in particular is inexcusable.12 Calvin perhaps refers to Melanchthon (though not by name) when he notes, There are others who . . . all but require that every mention of predestination be buried; indeed, they teach us to avoid any question of it, as we would a reef…. Some object that God would be contrary to himself if he should universally invite all men to him but admit only a few as elect. Thus, in their view, the universality of the promises removes the distinction of special grace; and some moderate men speak thus, not so much to stifle the truth as to bar thorny questions, and to bridle the curiosity of many.13

Strictly speaking, teaching the doctrine of reprobation does not depend on the palatability of its uses and benefits; the fact that Scripture teaches reprobation is sufficient reason for the conscientious pastor and theologian to go and do likewise.14 Scripture is both the field and boundary of all pious teaching15—the faithful minister ought to teach neither more nor less. Calvin said, 9 10 11 12

Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.3–4. Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.4. Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.3. Cf. Calvin’s famous preface to Melanchthon’s Loci (1546 French edition), in which he refers explicitly to the avoidance of disputed points of predestination. 13 Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.3; 3:22.10; note McNeill’s footnote references as well. 14 Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.1. 15 The sola scriptura emphasis of Calvin was adopted by his Reformed successors to a much greater degree than modern scholarship is willing to concede. For example, Engelsma notes that Boer assumes to have exhausted scriptural references to reprobation by dealing in his gravamen with the texts explicitly listed in the Canons of Dordt. Engelsma, “The Reformed Doctrine of Reprobation,” 157. See Harry Boer, The Doctrine of Reprobation in the Christian Reformed Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983). However, the Christian Reformed Church’s study committee on the Canons of Dordt did extensive work on the use of Scripture by the Dordtian fathers in their support of reprobation. Contrary to the common assumption that reprobation was more of a logical deduction than a scriptural statement for Dordt, the study committee published a separate section in its report entitled, “Scripture Passages Adduced by the Delegates to the Synod of Dort,” which includes more than one hundred passages subsumed under twelve aspects of the doctrine: “1. That God has determined not to elect some people but to leave some in their sins and not to have mercy on them in Christ.

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If this thought prevails with us, that the Word of the Lord is the sole way that can lead us in our search for all that is lawful to hold concerning him, and is the sole light to illumine our vision of all that we should see of him, it will readily keep and restrain us from all rashness. For we shall know that the moment we exceed the bounds of the Word, our course is outside the pathway and in darkness, and that there we must repeatedly wander, slip, and stumble.16

Because all of God’s Word is true and “profitable” or beneficial, without exception, not only election, but also reprobation has positive pastoral consequences when presented in scriptural fashion. As Calvin summarily notes, “God’s truth is so powerful, both in this respect and in every other, that it has nothing to fear from the evilspeaking of wicked men.”17

Teachers and Traditions: Influences on Calvin Calvin’s interpretation of Scripture did not develop in a vacuum, but took up and modified strands of thought reaching back over a thousand years. Direct influences of Calvin are debated; his view of predestination may be indebted to the humanist and theologian Jacques LeFevre d’Etaples (1455–1536) and his pupil Gerard Roussel (1500–1550), one of Calvin’s instructors.18 Augustine’s writings certainly played a significant role in shaping Calvin’s doctrine, despite Calvin’s divergences from his thought. Augustine is referenced 222 times in the 1559 Institutes alone, and 25 of those are in the chapters on predestination, where Calvin repeatedly uses Augustine’s words to express his own understanding, to answer objections, and to summarize his teaching.19 Nevertheless, though Calvin defended Augustine’s doctrine of election, he parted ways with him on several significant factors relative to reprobation, and on

16 17 18 19

2. That God does not give faith, repentance, and salvation to some. 3. That some have not been given to Christ. 4. That certain ones were previously consigned to condemnation. 5. That reprobation has been decreed from eternity. 6. That the cause for reprobation (or preterition) lies in the free will or good pleasure of God. 7. That the decree of preterition is unchangeable. 8. That the decree of preterition is not a cause of sin nor of condemnation. 9. That those who are condemned are condemned because of their sins. 10. That God permits the reprobates to walk in their own ways. 11. That the reprobates in various ways and stages reject the gospel which is preached to them. 12. That the end of reprobation is not the perdition of the reprobates but the honor and glory of God.” Report of the Committee on Dr. Harry Boer’s Confessional-Revision Gravamen (Art. 87), in Christian Reformed Church, 1980 Acts of Synod (Grand Rapids: Board of Publications of the Christian Reformed Church, 1980), 534–35, accessed August 25, 2015, www.calvin.edu/library/database/crcnasynod/1980agendaacts.pdf. Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.2. Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.4. Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin, 99. Cf. Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.13–14.

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Augustine’s view of the relationship between predestination and providence, as well as Augustine’s philosophy in general.20 The theological relationship between Luther and Calvin is complex. Calvin believed that there was no essential difference between the Confessio Augustana and his own teachings, except perhaps in the manner of Christ’s presence in the Holy Supper.21 Calvin regarded Luther as a great man and “an outstanding servant of God,” as he wrote to Bullinger in 1544.22 The previous year, Calvin wrote of Luther as “a most distinguished apostle of Christ whose labour and ministry have done most in these times to bring back the purity of the gospel.”23 At times Luther stands silently in the background of Calvin’s thought. For example, the first edition of Calvin’s Institutes shows remarkable parallels to Luther’s Small Catechism and other writings.24 Although Calvin’s commentary on Genesis names Luther only five times, Calvin actually referred to Luther’s work over a hundred times.25 It is difficult to trace Luther’s specific influence on Calvin’s view of predestination. In the controversy between Calvin and Albert Pighius over the bondage of the will, neither theological combatant appears to have Luther’s debate with Erasmus in view.26 However, Luther’s name does appear in the skirmish between Calvin and Pighius, for example, with respect to Luther’s doctrine of original sin, which Calvin defended as orthodox and catholic.27 Calvin also defended Luther’s teaching on God’s total sovereignty over man, and man’s entire corruption after 20 See Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 71–73, for the best summary of Augustinian influence; for more detailed expositions of precisely how much Calvin went beyond Augustine in his explicit assertion of double predestination in which the reprobation of those not elected is a specific determination of God’s inscrutable will, consult the whole of Polman, De praedestinatieleer; Luchesius A. H. Smits, Saint Augustin dans l’oeuvre de Jean Calvin (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1957–1958), 1:254–71, and vol. 2, for elaborate statistical tables; J. Cadier, “Calvin et Saint Augustin,” in Augustinus Magister (Paris: Études Augustiennes, 1954), 2:1033–56; Doede Nauta, Augustinus en de Reformatie (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1954). 21 CO, XVI, 263. See also Willem Nijenhuis, “Calvin and the Augsburg Confession,” Ecclesia Reformata: Studies on the Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 101–114. 22 CO, XI, 774–75, cited in Willem Nijenhuis, Ecclesia Reformata: Studies on the Reformation, Volume 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 63. 23 John Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will: A Defense of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice against Pighius, ed. A. N. S. Lane, trans. G. I. Davies, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 28. 24 Alexandre Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, trans. David Foxgrover and Wade Provo (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987), 137–45; Chun-ming Abel Fong, “Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin: The Dynamic Balance between the Freedom of God’s Grace and the Freedom of Human Responsibility in Salvation” (PhD dissertation, Westminster Theological Seminary, 1997), 273–75. 25 Anthony N. S. Lane, John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 2. 26 Lane, John Calvin, 151. 27 Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 26.

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the fall.28 It may be that Luther’s influence on Calvinian predestination centered upon the German Reformer’s emphasis on sola gratia. Calvin remained an independent thinker, however, and critiqued Luther at times both in regard to attitude and scholarship.29 Though the differences between Calvin and Luther are significant, it is not fair to dichotomize their respective theologies as theologia gloriae and theologia crucis.30 Among other Reformers, Bucer has been credited with the lion’s share of influence on Calvin’s Romans commentary and the revised 1539 Institutes, works that present Calvin’s increasing elaboration and systemization of the doctrine of predestination. That influence was facilitated by Calvin’s knowledge of Bucer’s writings prior to their 1537 meeting, by his familiarity with Bucer’s Romans commentary (1536), and by his frequent contact with Bucer during his Strasbourg years (1538–1541). Bucer wrote in his Romans commentary, “Some were elected by God to life before he created the world; others, because they were not elected to life, were assigned, also before anything was made, to that for which the Lord at last uses them, namely, that he might bring forth an example of his wrath in them and in that way sanctify his name in them.”31 Calvin scholarship is divided, however, on the precise timing and degree of Bucer’s impact on Calvin. One minority opinion reduces Bucer’s influence to a negligible level for both the 1536 Institutes and the 1539 writings. A second minority holds to definite Bucerian influence on both the 1536 and 1539 writings, with the accent on the latter. The majority embrace the mediating position of a minimal Bucerian input into the 1536 Institutes but a marked role on Calvin’s 1539 writings.32 Ultimately, however, Calvin must be regarded as God’s man rather than Augustine’s, Luther’s, Bucer’s, etc. He never hesitated to part ways with his highly 28 Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 49. 29 William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 18. 30 As Ritschl does in his Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus, 4 vols. (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1908– 1912; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1926–27), 3:169. Cf. Wendel, Calvin, 131–34; Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 74–75; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 22–23; D. Nauta, “Calvin and Luther,” Free University Quarterly 2 (1952– 1953): 14–15; and 4n13. 31 Quoted in Sinnema, “Issue of Reprobation,” 116n39. 32 The best study of Bucer’s influence on Calvinian predestination is Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 314–24; cf. Wendel, Calvin, 138–39; Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 77–80; Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin, 99; Walker, John Calvin, 148; Donnelly, Calvinism and Scholasticism, 129; Packer, “Calvin the Theologian,” 175; and Klaas Dijk, Om’t Eeuwig Welbehagen (Amsterdam: N.V. Dagblad en Drukkerij de Standaard, 1925), 125. The first two chapters of W. P. Stephens, The Holy Spirit in the Theology of Martin Bucer (Cambridge: University Press, 1970), represents the best treatment of Bucer’s teaching on predestination; also of interest is Johannes VanDenBosch, “De Ontwikkeling van Bucer’s praedestinatiegedachten voor het optreden van Calvijn” (PhD dissertation, Amsterdam, 1922).

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esteemed forebears (not even Augustine, whom he said was “one with me,” and of whom he stated, in regard to his predestinarian views, that “we need no other volume than his”),33 the moment he felt that they parted ways with Scripture.

Other Sources of Knowledge: Experience The fact that Calvin bases his teaching of reprobation on Scripture, however, does not negate the influence of secondary elements that inform such teaching, provided these secondary elements are restrained within scriptural boundaries. Such secondary elements include philosophy, logic, and in particular, experience. Karl Barth, for one, has accused Calvin of allowing too much room for experience as a second source of confirmation of predestination. According to Barth, Calvin’s view of election and reprobation was molded too sharply by the fact that the Word of God is received by only a remnant of hearers: “Much of the pathos and emotional power with which he defended [the doctrine of predestination], and to an even greater extent the form in which he did so, were determined by this experience, the effects of which were inevitably serious from the point of view of the purity of the doctrine.”34 Heinz Otten goes several steps beyond Barth’s criticisms, declaring, “At the very outset, before he had consulted the Bible, [Calvin had] reached a decision which—quite independently of the answer of Scripture—determined the character of his outlook on predestination in accordance with the question put by experience.”35 Barth and Otten cannot be answered sufficiently by appealing to Calvin’s practice of approaching his congregation as saved hearers, implying that Calvin was not discriminatory in practical ministry after all.36 Contrary to this oftrepeated assumption, Calvin refers more than thirty times in his Commentaries and nine times in his Institutes (only counting references within 3.21 to 3.24) to the small number of church attenders who actually possess vital faith. For example, he observes, “If the same sermon is preached, say, to a hundred people, twenty receive it with the ready obedience of faith, while the rest hold it valueless, 33 Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 63, cited in Anthony N. S. Lane, “Augustine and Calvin,” in The T & T Clark Companion to Augustine and Modern Theology, ed. C. C. Pecknold and Tarmo Toom (London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2013), 185. 34 Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2:39. 35 Heinz Otten, Calvins theologische Anschauung von der Pradestination (Munich: Kaiser, 1938), 29. 36 Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin, 101; Charles Partee, “Calvin and Experience,” Scottish Journal of Theology 26 (1973): 180–81.

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or laugh, or hiss, or loathe it.”37 Again, “For though all, without exception, to whom God’s Word is preached, are taught, yet scarce one in ten so much as tastes it; yea, scarce one in a hundred profits to the extent of being enabled thereby to proceed in a right course to the end.”38 Again, “We are hereby taught that faith hath taken deep root then when it hath a place in the heart. Wherefore it is no marvel, if scarce one of ten of those who profess faith do stand unto the end, seeing that very few know what the affection and purpose of heart meaneth.”39 Clearly, when Calvin assessed the number of the redeemed in the visible church, he was less optimistic about his hearers than many contemporary scholars assume. A better answer, therefore, is needed to counteract the accusations of Barth, Otten, and others relative to Calvin’s view of experience. The Barthian misgiving fails to do justice to the Calvinian notion of interpreting experience by and subordinating it to Scripture. Concerning life’s realities and experiencies, Calvin’s stress was fidelity to Scripture. Hence, Otten’s accusation is entirely unjust; Calvin’s Commentaries make it clear that Scripture dictated the Reformer’s view of practical experience, and never vice versa. If Calvin is free of any charge, it certainly must be the charge of adjusting Scripture to fit the realities of life he witnessed around him. For Calvin, experience merely confirmed what Scripture was saying everywhere. Harro Hopfl puts it best: “The answer to the question why Calvin insisted on the doctrine of double predestination cannot, therefore, be that experience, pastoral considerations or the manifest usefulness of doing so demanded it; on his own showing, the only unequivocal reason for doing so is that Scripture teaches it, and the evangelical theologian must therefore do the same.”40 When Calvin rejected scholastic treatments of predestination—whether Thomist attempts to reconcile human responsibility and divine omnipotence and justice, or nominalist ones41—he did so not out of an aversion to logical thinking or to philosophy as such,42 but out of his personal conviction that such presentations were at odds with the scriptural presentation of predestination.43 37 38 39 40

Calvin, Institutes, 3.24.12. Calvin, Commentary on Ps. 119:101. Calvin, Commentary on Acts 11:23; cf. Commentary on Ps. 15:1. Harro Hopfl, The Christian Polity of John Calvin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 237. 41 For example, consult William Ockham, Predestination, God’s Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents, trans. Marilyn McCord Adams and Norman Kretzmann (New York: Meredith, 1978), 34–79. 42 Most valuable on this score is Charles Partee’s Calvin and Classical Philosophy, Studies in the History of Christian Thought, vol. XIV (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977). 43 Hopfl notes that Calvin’s objection against nominalism is that it implies a God who is ex lex and whose mere will is law, while against Thomism he laid the charges of denying providence

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Scholars vary widely on Calvin’s degree of divergence from Thomas Aquinas on predestination.44 Friethoff appears to deal most carefully with both the similarities and differences. Both thinkers assert that predestination to blessedness is the cause of good works, not vice versa. They differ profoundly, however, Thomas holding that God ordained that men receive eternal salvation as the reward of their own merit, albeit merit earned by grace; whereas Calvin denies the meritorious character of works, and asserts that man comes into possession of eternal life only through good works being an evidence of his salvation—hence, works are an order of sequence rather than a cause.45

Other Sources of Knowledge: Philosophy For Calvin, logic, philosophy, and experience all serve the role of handmaiden to Scripture, and thus their role is to assist in fleshing out edifying doctrine within a scriptural framework. It is in this light that we must view Calvin’s occasional and non-apologetic use of Aristotelian terms, such as essential and accidental relationships, or primary and secondary causes. Although it is true that Calvin never developed a philosophical set of assumptions with regard to the Aristotelian division into efficient, material, formal, instrumental, and final causes in dealing with salvation, his repeated use of this classification certainly reveals a more significant role than merely providing “a and acceding to Pelagianism. For Calvin, all attempts to restrict predestination to divine foreknowledge must be vigorously resisted, as well as any venture intent on separating or even distinguishing God’s will from His permission (see his Christian Polity, 231). 44 Mozley sees no substantial difference in his A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1878), 401. Hunt claims that Calvin only objects to Thomas’s treatment of the matter, but not to its actual substance, since “Thomas argued that the predestination of the individual to eternal life included in it the confirming of all necessary graces and qualification as effects, not causes, of predestination, for which no cause could be assigned but God’s sovereign will and pleasure” (“Predestination,” 41). Andries Polman distances Calvin somewhat more from Aquinas advocating that the latter had made Augustine’s paradoxical doctrine static and stratified, and thereby remained enveloped within determinism, whereas Calvin rescued predestination from Thomism’s rigid forms via restoration of the dynamic that both aspects of the paradox require allegiance: God is fully sovereign and man is fully responsible (see his De praedestinatieleer van Augustinus, Thomas van Aquino en Calvijn: Een dogmahistorische studie [Franeker: T. Wever, 1936], 205–392). R. Garrigou-Lagrange accents Calvin’s departure from Thomas negatively, and believes that Calvin surpasses Luther and Ulrich Zwingli in drawing logical distinctions, particularly in the doctrine of reprobation (see his Predestination [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967], 117–23). 45 C. Friethoff, “Die Pradestinationslehre bei Thomas von Aquin and Calvin,” Divus Thomas, III, 4 [1926]: 71–91, 195–206, 280–302, 445–46). Also, see Calvin, Institutes, 3.22.9, and John W. Beardslee, ed., Reformed Dogmatics: J. Wollebius, G. Voetius, F. Turretin (repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), 17–18.

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theoretical device,” as Weeks minimizes it.46 The fact that Calvin was not concerned with solving the problems of philosophical determinism, nor with producing a philosophical theology,47 does not necessarily make him a thoroughgoing anti-scholastic.48 In every case, however, Calvin borrows these Aristotelianisms for his own nonAristotelian ends. Calvin applied the Aristotelian terminology of the four causes to personal salvation, which are outlined as follows in his Ephesians commentary as a summary of the doctrine of election: Three causes of our salvation are here mentioned and a fourth is shortly afterwards added. The efficient cause is the good pleasure of the will of God, the material cause is, Jesus Christ, and the final cause is, the praise of the glory of his grace…. He now comes to the formal cause, the preaching of the gospel, by which the goodness of God, overflows upon us.49

Calvin stresses that not one of these causes is the work of man. Even where he allows good works on the scene as an “inferior cause,” Calvin quickly credits the works themselves to divine grace.50 Calvin’s usage of metaphysical categories, however, does not mean that he was of a metaphysical bent in structural terms. Primarily due to his fear of transgressing scriptural boundaries through philosophical speculation, and secondarily on account of his background in the Renaissance and humanism,51 Calvin used Aristotelian categories cautiously and exclusively for theological concerns—not for the promulgation of a metaphysical structure per se.52 Muller argues persuasively that Calvin merges a Christocentric approach to predestination with a carefully developed “causal structure of the decree and its execution [which] provides much of the basis for the later doctrine of Calvinism which conceives of predestination in similar causal patterns and represents 46 Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 117. 47 Dowey, The Knowledge of God, 218–19; Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 52. 48 See Francois Wendel, Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 126–30, who is much more balanced than Dowey at this juncture. For further usage of Aristotelian fourfold causation translated into a scriptural framework, see Calvin’s comments on Rom. 3:24, as well as Institutes, 3.14.17, 21. 49 Calvin, Commentary on Eph. 1:5, 8. 50 Calvin, Institutes, 3.14.21; cf. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 71–72. 51 See Quirinus Breen, John Calvin: A Study in French Humanism (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1968). 52 Even the sizable portion of his Reformed orthodoxy descendants who were simultaneously excellent theologians and first-class metaphysicians (e. g., Francis Gomarus among the Dordtian theologians and Samuel Rutherford among the Westminster divines) did not use metaphysical structuring for an end in itself, but as undergirding for theological systematics grounded in Scripture. In general, Reformed Orthodoxy did go a step further than Calvin by viewing metaphysical structuring in a favorable light (with notable exceptions). Nevertheless, even Francis Turretin was concerned ultimately with theological, not philosophical, truth.

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Christ as the foundation and material cause of election.”53 Muller furthers his case by arguing that Calvin planted the seed of the Bezan distinction between the decree and its execution, which is fundamentally a positive, non-speculative device, for it “designates the part of predestination that remains hidden and manifests the part of predestination that may be explained.”54 Muller concludes: “The decree and its execution are resolved into a single plan of salvation by the Deus manifestatus in carne.”55 In sum, Calvin’s usage of Aristotelian terminology and concepts must be neither exaggerated (as if his entire doctrine of predestination were set simply according to a pre-conceived epistemological framework) nor downplayed by relegating such expositions to ignorance or contradiction—much less speculation.

Other Sources of Knowledge: Rational Speculation I believe that confusion on this score has infiltrated Calvin studies primarily because the bulk of modern scholarship insists on dichotomizing a trinitarian, causal, metaphysical, systematic, eternal, and discriminatory concept of predestination from a Christocentric, soteriological, historical, pastoral, doxological, and scriptural approach.56 Though one may ring the changes on this approach in a variety of ways, the basic argument runs like this: If Calvin had adhered exclusively to the latter approach in his doctrine of predestination as he did in expounding many other doctrines, he would have been content to stop with election to salvation and refuse to speculate about reprobation. Moreover, by that 53 Richard Muller, “Predestination and Christology in Sixteenth-Century Reformed Theology” (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1976), 78–79. 54 Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 66; contrary to Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 152–54, 226. 55 Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 437. 56 The major argument of Weeks’s dissertation, for example, centers around this theme: Calvinian predestination is soteriological while Edwardsean predestination is cosmological. According to Weeks, cosmological predestination houses a threefold accent: divine sovereignty, divine glory, and “the metaphysical concern of the cosmological type of election thought” which precedes a priori from the decrees of God; soteriological predestination emphasizes God’s grace which is sovereign, finds its center in Christ (versus the decree), and tends “to treat the reprobate as those who were passed by when the elect were chosen.” Predictably, Weeks places supralapsarianism into the negative cosmological mold and infralapsarianism into the positive soteriological mold. Such a division, which subsequently attempts to acquit Calvin by pressing him into the soteriological contour, is not only too simplistic and sweeping in its generalization, but also does not ring true to Calvin himself, whose constant stress was on sovereignty and glory. Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 5–8, 100–101, 117, and 226–56.

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refusal, he would not have tempted subsequent Reformed orthodoxy to walk through the door of decretal, scholastic theology that he left slightly ajar through his notion of reprobation.57 In short, Calvin’s treatment of reprobation contradicts his own principles of remaining within scriptural boundaries and avoiding human speculation.58 A two-pronged response is in order here. First, this argument does not treat the historic position of Calvin faithfully. From Calvin’s perspective, his treatment of reprobation is fully consistent with his principles. Following his principle that we should ignore nothing that God has revealed for our use, Calvin discusses and teaches reprobation through metaphysical categories (in distinction from structures) 59 and theocentric concerns precisely because he believes he finds such categories and concerns in Scripture.60 Muller writes, Much of the existent scholarship has associated the use of Aristotelian categories incorrectly with the promulgation of a metaphysical structure. While it is clear. . . that the Reformed doctrine of predestination with the Aristotelian causal structure given it by sixteenth century dogmaticians [Calvin in a minor way; Beza to a major degree] could be employed as the central element in a metaphysical and synthetic structure of doctrine, it is nevertheless the case that this use was not contemplated by sixteenth century theologians.

And following the principle that what is not revealed should not be pried into, Calvin refuses to subordinate Scripture to metaphysical structures; in fact, he neither feels called upon to give reasons why God should choose to damn some nor thinks it necessary to justify the ways of God to man.61 Second, such dichotomizing is foreign to Calvin’s theology, which refuses to set divine soteriology over against divine discrimination, and insists on harmonizing trinitarian decretalism with Christocentric soteriology. Wiley accurately represents Calvin when he asserts that the “proper context for understanding Calvin’s division of election into the categories of fourfold causation” can only be found in his viewing predestination as a trinitarian decision, “subsequently attributed to the three persons separately.”62 Thus, Wiley writes, when 57 For such characterizations of Reformed orthodoxy, see Berkouwer, Divine Election, 25–26; Philip Holtrop, “Review of The Freedom of God by James Daane,” Calvin Theological Journal 10 (1975): 214–15; Brian Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 162–65. 58 Along this line, Neuser writes, “The idea that ‘God’s counsel’ is merely a logical conclusion and doesn’t have a basis in Scripture doesn’t bother Calvin.” Wilhelm H. Neuser, “Predestination,” in The Calvin Handbook, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis, trans. Henry J. Baron, et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 315. 59 Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 6n. 60 E. g., Rom. 3:24–26; 9:11–26; Eph. 1:3–8. 61 Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.1–4. 62 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 285.

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God’s will is represented as the efficient cause of predestination, Calvin views this will as attributable to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while the material cause was Christ the mediator. Even if one here understands the term God to refer to the Father, viewing this as an attribution to the Father because of his preeminence in order, this would not separate out the Son, for he was wholly one with the Father. The distinction between efficient and material, then, was that between God in his eternity versus Christ as mediator, and the dependence of the material upon the efficient was none other than what one normally finds expressed in Calvin in terms of the mediator being ordained to his work.63

These comments, plus the fact that by definition none of the four causes could ever be inoperative or be the cause of another, help correct the contention of Dantine that “the relegation of Christ to the material effected a truncation of the role of Christology in soteriology.”64 Calvinian theology, therefore, must be viewed as both theocentric and Christocentric; Calvin’s use of the four causes only illustrates his attempts to unite both emphases in one whole.65 Furthermore, for Calvin, the doctrines of cosmological sovereignty and personal union with Christ stand or fall together with the idea of predestination as sovereign, theocentric discrimination. Such discrimination, therefore, is both irrevocable and inseparable from Christ; it is inherently soteriological, and above all, scriptural.66 Additionally, Calvin did not condemn metaphysics or causal ordering as such. Ample proof has been given that Calvin himself engaged in metaphysics categorically (though not structurally) as the science of first causes, but he did not view such engagements as speculative thinking. Rather, “it was simply the formal statement of his profound faith in the omnipotence of God who creates, preserves, and redeems.”67 Consequently, even the epistemological 63 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 286. 64 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 286n1. 65 H. Paul Santmire, “Justification in Calvin’s Romans Commentary,” Church History 33, no. 3 (1964): 298. 66 Cf. Van Til, Theology of Daane, 75–79, and especially B. B. Warfield, “Predestination in the Reformed Confessions,” 118–28. Warfield claims, “Hard experience had made Calvin’s judgment, that without preterition election itself cannot stand, the deep conviction of the whole Reformed Church: and whether at Dordt or Zurich, London or Dublin, the essence of the Calvinistic contention was found in the free discrimination among men which was attributed to God…. For all these creeds alike discrimination constitutes the very essence of Soteriological Predestination” (121, 125). 67 Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 67. Cf. Institutes, 3.22.10 and 3.24.1 on causality in predestination; 2.17.1 on God’s “ordinance” as “the first cause” of merit in Christ; and 2.17.2 on God’s love as the “highest cause” of salvation (faith in Christ being “the second and proximate cause”). Calvin’s entire ordo salutis can be viewed as a movement from its first cause as the love of God, to its proximate cause as saving faith, to its proximate end as the sanctification of the elect, to its final end as the glory of God. “The effect of the ordo salutis is, however, to focus the attention of the believer not on the first or final cause, but on the

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order of the 1559 Institutes does not yield categorical rejection of all other loci orderings as commonly assumed. Muller correctly notes, “We may infer that, had Calvin been intent upon establishing a definitive order of the loci, rather than setting forth the ‘order of faith,’ he might well have considered the use of a causal sequence which placed election and reprobation in the doctrine of God: in any case, the elements of such an order are present in the Institutes of 1559.”68 In sum, Calvin set forth the hallmark of sixteenth-century Reformed theology: the systematic integration of theocentric causality and Christocentric soteriology on a scriptural foundation.69 All of this, however, must not blind us to Calvin’s anti-speculative emphases; the moment exploration of the doctrine of predestination transgresses scriptural boundaries it degenerates into human speculation and impious curiosity. Consequently, though the ultimacy of predestination may not be ignored in either its trinitarian framework or Christocentric foundation as revealed in Scripture, mere creatures must refrain from pressing beyond Scripture’s perimeters by searching for answers too complete or too tidy with respect to this ultimately sovereign doctrine. The difficulties entailed here include, first, that it is one thing for Calvin to say, “Let this then be our sacred rule, to seek to know nothing concerning predestination, except what Scripture teaches us: when the Lord closes his holy mouth, let us also stop the way, that we may not go farther,”70 and quite another to determine Scripture’s boundary in precise terms and specific instances. Though scholars unitedly understand that Calvin’s warnings against speculation are aimed not only at heretical thinkers but particularly at Zwingli (as confirmed by Calvin’s correspondence),71 considerable disparity exists as to precisely where

68 69

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proximate end [i. e., sanctification]: this is the meaning of the warning against speculation.” Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 90–91. Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 76. “Reformed soteriology succeeds in remaining Christocentric precisely because it insists on a theocentric causality. Arminian soteriology fails to be Christocentric because it insists upon an anthropocentric causality.” Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 438; cf. 437–38. In this vein, both Donnelly and McLelland have reaffirmed through the study of Peter Martyr’s theology that Aristotelian causality and Christocentric theology need not be regarded as mutually exclusive as Kickel, Vernunft und Offerbarung, 167–68, Niesel, The Theology of John Calvin, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), 160, and others have made them out to be. See J. C. McLelland, “The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination According to Peter Martyr” Scottish Journal of Theology 8 (1955): 267, 271; Donnelly, Calvinism and Scholasticism in Vermigli’s Doctrine of Man and Grace, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, vol. 18 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976), 131n, 134, and this notwithstanding that Martyr’s use of fourfold causality in conjunction with Christocentric predestinarianism was arrived at independently from Calvin, and was worked out in a somewhat more structural and rigid system than Calvin’s (134). Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:14. For a most cogent presentation on Zwinglian predestination, see Gottfried W. Locher,

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Calvin would stand on various issues possibly tinged with speculation. For example, Hopfl claims that Calvinian reprobation is “precisely that sort of ‘metaphysical speculation’ which Calvin deplored in the scholastics,”72 whereas Dowey rejects a speculative and metaphysical motif in Calvinian reprobation altogether, labeling it rather as “reckless consistency in the working out of the Biblical teaching of the gratuitousness of divine mercy.”73 Second, though Niesel’s attempt to illegitimize the very question of predestination in Calvinian thought is echoed by Bray (on the grounds of terror, uncertainty, and despair as its fruit),74 Muller argues that Calvin posits “no barrier to formulating a scriptural doctrine of the decrees,” providing that we “seek evidence of our salvation not in the decree but in its temporal execution in Christ.”75 Third, any apparent deviation from his hermeneutic can be explained in light of the Westminster Confession’s principle of necessary consequences: “The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (I.6). Would Calvin have wholeheartedly subscribed to this notion? Berkouwer implies not,76 but Alvin Baker implies yes, stating, “Calvin worked harder than Berkouwer to show the logical consistency of what God has revealed.”77 Finally, the much-discussed but anachronistic question of Calvin’s position in the supralapsarian/infralapsarian debate relative to the logical or moral order of God’s decrees (if any) must claim a lion’s share for the extent of this deviation (discussed further below). Niesel reads too much of Barth into Calvin. Hopfl and Dowey’s concerns are prejudiced attempts from opposite poles uniting to challenge what Calvin viewed as the scriptural doctrine of reprobation. Berkouwer’s caution is exaggerated to remove the sharp edges from Calvinian reprobation. Baker and Muller’s expositions are most true to Calvin. Calvin could have embraced the Westminster Confession’s use of “good and necessary consequence” with respect to predestination, providing that the unnecessary consequence of seeking one’s “own or

72 73 74 75 76 77

Zwingli’s Thought: New Perspectives, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 25 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 121–41. For an argument positing a minimal influence of Zwingli on Calvin regarding predestination, see Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 74– 77. Hopfl, Christian Polity, 236 Dowey, The Knowledge of God, 218–19. Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 50, 161. Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 67–69. Berkouwer, Divine Election, 16–26. Alvin Baker, Berkouwer’s Doctrine of Election: Balance or Imbalance? (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1981), 27.

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others’ salvation in the labyrinth of predestination” be carefully avoided as a “mad” enterprise, and that the good consequence of knowing election in Christ remains central.78 Ultimately, divine predestination must always remain shrouded in mystery since the very distinction of God’s eternal truth and the accommodated nature of temporal, revealed truth necessitates that there be matters God chooses not to reveal. Who are we, Calvin argues, to probe vainly into divine and just secrets? Must we not continually be aware of the grave danger inherent in the incapacity of the temporal when it seeks to plumb the eternal? Was Adam not cast out of Eden because, in his pride, he sought to be like God—to know the end from the beginning? In his most famous passage against the excesses of human curiosity, Calvin warns: Human curiosity renders the discussion of predestination, already somewhat difficult of itself, very confusing and even dangerous. No restraints can hold it back from wandering in forbidden bypaths and thrusting upward to the heights. If allowed, it will leave no secret to God that it will not search out and unravel…. First, then, let them remember that when they inquire into predestination they are penetrating the sacred precincts of divine wisdom. If anyone with carefree assurance breaks into this place, he will not succeed in satisfying his curiosity and he will enter a labyrinth from which he can find no exit. For it is not right for man unrestrainedly to search out things that the Lord has willed to be hid in himself, and to unfold from eternity itself the sublimest wisdom, which he would have us revere but not understand that through this also he should fill us with wonder. He has set forth by his Word the secrets of his will that he has decided to reveal to us. These he decided to reveal in so far as he foresaw that they would concern us and benefit us.79

The intention to restrict our research to the database of revelation permeates Calvin’s thought with regard to both election and reprobation.80 Ultimately, rather than questioning the mind of God, man must cast himself down before God and His revelation in humility and reverently submit to the apostle’s admonition: “Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God?” (Rom. 9:20). Man must bow and be content to know that God has elected some to salvation and rejected others, that Christ as the agent of election has provided the means of salvation, and that the Holy Spirit applies divine redemption to election’s full fruition. In short, God reveals as much about predestination in the Scriptures as man needs to know; beyond this, man cannot and must not proceed. Typically, Calvin underscores his conviction by appealing to Paul:

78 Calvin, Institutes, 3.24.5. 79 Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.1. 80 Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.2; 3.23.1–13; 3.24.14, 17; 1.17.2; Commentary on Rom. 11:33; Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 65.

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When therefore we hear, Oh! the depth, this expression of wonder ought greatly to avail to the beating down of the presumption of our flesh; for after having spoken from the word and by the Spirit of the Lord, being at length overcome by the sublimity of so great a mystery, [Paul] could not do otherwise than wonder and exclaim that the riches of God’s wisdom are deeper than our reason can penetrate to. Whenever then we enter on a discourse respecting the eternal counsels of God, let a bridle be always set on our thoughts and tongue, so that after having spoken soberly and within the limits of God’s Word, our reasoning may at last end in admiration. Nor ought we to be ashamed, that if we are not wiser than he, who, having been taken into the third heaven, saw mysteries to man ineffable, and who yet could find in this instance no other end designed but that he should then humble himself.81

These scriptural emphases—engaging with all of Scripture and avoiding all speculation, conjoined with thoroughgoing subordination to the Word—served Calvin well on several counts throughout his increasingly polemical discussion of divine predestination. Consistency, balance, sobriety, and a perpetual soteriological accent are scriptural hallmarks of sound doctrine that Calvin never forfeited, not even in the long years of controversy and the heat of various debates on predestination. Calvin’s writings do not display any development from soteriological affirmations on predestination in the 1530s to less soteriological defenses of predestination via the increased precisianism of the 1550s.82 Wiley stresses that Calvin did not hold different emphases on predestination during his lifetime, despite his increasing use of technical terminology.83 Paul Henry also makes a strong case for Calvin’s lifelong consistency on predestination.84 And Beza, who had more opportunity to observe Calvin’s doctrinal convictions at firsthand than anyone else, wrote, “In the doctrine which he delivered at the first, he persisted steadily to the last, scarcely making any change. Of few theologians within our recollection can the same thing be affirmed.”85 81 Commentary on Rom. 11:33. Out of this Pauline spirit, Calvin approvingly quotes Augustine: “I see the depth, but can’t reach the bottom.” For this reason, Calvin did not strive to harmonize apparently contradictory ideas in every case—to the dismay of the thoroughgoing logician—nor did he feel bound to give an airtight explanation for why God created men He destined to hell (Institutes, 3.23.5), though he did always maintain that reprobation was sovereign and just. No one will ever end in hell who did not deserve to be there. 82 Contrary to Otten, Calvins theologische, 130–35; Heinrich Quistorp, “Sichtbare und unsichtbare Kirche bei Calvin,” Evangelische Theologie 9 (1949–1950): 95; and the mediating position of Johannes Dantine “Die Pradestinationslehre bei Calvin und Beza” (PhD dissertation, Göttingen University, 1965), 34. 83 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 9–10. 84 Paul Henry, The Life and Times of John Calvin, trans. Henry Stebbing, vol. 1 (London: Whittaker, 1849), 86–87. 85 Theodore Beza, Life of Calvin, in John Calvin, Tracts Relating to the Reformation, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1844), 1:xcviii.

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J. I. Packer writes, As for the doctrine of predestination, where Calvin is supposed to have surpassed his fellow-Reformers in boldness of speculation, the unexpected truth is that he stated it more cautiously, biblically, and devotionally, than either Luther or Zwingli had done…. Zwingli handled the theme speculatively, and Luther paradoxically, and it was left to Calvin to treat it in a consistently scriptural and pastoral way. His vigour of assertion and debate on this issue must not blind us to the essential sobriety of his exposition.86

Scripture’s imprint on Calvin prevented him from rejecting reprobation. As a theologian convinced that true piety consists of fear and love toward God, Calvin embraced the humbling doctrine of reprobation as one truth among many in the word of the Lord, and trembled before it.

86 J. I. Packer, “Calvin the Theologian,” 171. Cf. Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” 117; Berkouwer, Divine Election, 24.

Chapter 9: Embryonic Reprobation in the Young Theologian (1535–1538)

Calvin’s first years as a theologian on the Reformed scene roughly paralleled his first Genevan ministry (1536–1538). During this period, the young Calvin dealt primarily with the doctrine of predestination in terms of election, despite notable exceptions to the contrary. Though the doctrine of reprobation was not yet explicitly integrated into his theology, the seeds of full-fledged Calvinian reprobation were present at least implicitly. Three major writings of Calvin appeared in print during these years—the 1536 Institutes, the 1536–1537 Confession of Faith, and the 1537 Instruction and Confession of Faith—each of which must be examined in some detail to arrive at Calvin’s initial position on reprobation.

The 1536 Institutes The implications of reprobation in Calvin’s first major publication in theology,1 the 1536 edition of the Institutes, have been minimized unjustly on three significant counts. First, it has been stressed that this edition had no independent consideration of predestination, much less of reprobation. Against this stress on Calvin’s lack of independent placement of predestination, one must consider that he expressly followed Luther’s pattern of law, Lord’s Prayer, creed, and 1 Christianae Religionis Institutio totam fere pietatis summam et quidquid est in doctrina salutis cognitu necessarium complectens, omnibus pietatis studiosis lectu dignissimum opus as recens editum (Basel, 1536). See Ioannis Calvini, Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Guilielmus Baum, Eduardus Cunitz, Eduardus Reuss, 59 vols., vols. 29–87 of Corpus Reformatorum (Brunswick: Schwetschke, 1863–1900), vol. 1, cols. 1–252. See also Johannis Calvini, Opera Selecta, ed. Petrus Barth and Guilelmus Niesel, 5 vols. (Munich: Kaiser, 1926–1952), 1:19–283. The English translation used here is John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 Edition, trans. and ed. Ford Lewis Battles, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: H. H. Meeter Center/Eerdmans, 1986). Hereafter, Calvin, Opera quae supersunt omnia, is cited as CO, with volume references to Calvin’s works rather than the entire series; Opera Selecta, as OS; and Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 Edition, as Institutes (1536).

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sacraments.2 Moreover, each of the 1536 Institutes’ six chapters (including the additional chapters on false sacraments and Christian liberty) was written to meet a pressing contemporary need.3 Second, both the number of times and places in which Calvin broached the subject of reprobation has been minimized.4 Third, the content of reprobation teaching in the Institutes’ first Latin edition has been downplayed. Bray claims that “the concept of reprobation as the result of a special decree of God” is unclear,5 following Wendel, who calls it “not certain.”6 Williston Walker says reprobation is “simply mentioned.”7 Even DeKoster dismisses any significant election content in the 1536 Institutes, claiming that “at the beginning (when he first enunciated the doctrine [of election], almost in passing, in the first edition of the Institutes) [election was] only a truism, namely that God is omnipotent.”8 A closer examination of the 1536 Institutes reveals that the embryonic form of the doctrine of reprobation is certainly present. The most explicit statements relative to reprobation are reducible to three major tenets that Calvin would later develop in a polemical context: divine activity in reprobation, “certain signs” of reprobation, and human responsibility despite reprobation.

2 Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, 81. 3 Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 319; against Wendel, Calvin, 265; and Niesel, Theology of John Calvin, 165. 4 Wendel claims “two places” (Calvin, 265); Bray states, “clearly only in one passage” (Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 46); Niesel limits it to “only within the framework of the doctrine of the church” (Theology of John Calvin, 165); and Jacobs notes that the word electio was used only fifteen times and the word reprobatio only three times in the section dealing with the church (Prädestination, 22). Neuser goes so far as to say, “Calvin does not teach double predestination in the Institutes of 1536.” Neuser, “Predestination,” in The Calvin Handbook, 313. 5 Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 46. 6 Wendel, Calvin, 266. 7 Williston Walker, John Calvin: Organiser of Reformed Protestantism (New York: G. Putman’s Sons, 1969), 138. 8 DeKoster, “Living Themes in the Thought of John Calvin,” 247. Further writers who undermine Calvin’s predestination doctrine in his 1536 Institutes by limiting election to ecclesiological statements and by bypassing reprobation altogether include Paul Wernle, Calvin (Tubingen: Mohr, 1919), 278, who denies outright Calvin’s references to election and reprobation from the soteriological perspective presented in the first chapter on law; G. Oorthuys, De Leer der Praedestinatie (Wageningen: H. Veenman, 1931), 207; Peter Barth, “Die Erwahlungslehre in Calvins Institutio von 1536,” in Theologische Aufsatze Karl Barth zum 50. Geburtstag (Muchen: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1936), 434; Niesel, “Calvins Erwahlungslehre,” Reformierte Kirchenzeitung, 82 (1932): 218. Cf. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 16–17 for a direct rebuttal of Niesel’s charges.

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Divine Activity in Reprobation Calvin’s initial reference to divine rejection appears in the first chapter of his 1536 Institutes (the law), where he says, “Those who have no part in Christ, whatever their nature, whatever they may do or undertake, depart into ruin and confusion and into the judgment of eternal death; they are cast away from God and are shut off from all hope of salvation.”9 Apart from Christ, all men are rejected by God in the sense of being condemned. However, though a divine decree may stand in the background, Calvin said nothing here about eternal reprobation, only damnation outside of Christ. Calvin addressed reprobation in his exposition of the ninth article of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe an holy catholic church.” Here Calvin brings to the fore a variety of issues that would be lifelong concerns: the wisdom of God in decreeing double predestination within the ecclesiastical domain; the identification of the church’s members who are the elect of God in contrast to the equally difficult task of identifying the reprobate within the church; and the interrelationship of church, predestination, and assurance. In his first formal statement of double predestination (presupposed throughout),10 Calvin states that, “We indeed cannot comprehend God’s incomprehensible wisdom, nor is it in our power to investigate it so as to find out who have by his eternal plan been chosen, who condemned [or reprobated, reprobati].”11 For Calvin, divine activity in reprobation is more than mere permission. As Wiley aptly summarizes it: Previously, Calvin had spoken of rejection as the lot of all who failed either to obey the law or to appropriate the redemption offered in Christ. That is, rejection had been seen primarily as the result of God’s permitting men to remain in that state into which they had fallen by themselves. Although this passage did not contain the precise statement of double predestination later found in the 1539 Institutes and other writings, it did speak of rejection as dependent upon divine activity to a greater degree than would have been the case with permission. For Calvin, even at this time, both rejection and election were 9 Calvin, Institutes (1536), 1.6 (p. 18); CO, I, 31; OS, I, 41: “Rursum qui partem in Christo non habent, quales quales sint, quidquid agant vel moliantur, in exitium tamen ac confusionem, aeternaeque mortin iudicium abeunt, a Deo abiecti, et omno salutis expectatione exclusi.” 10 P. Barth, “Die Erwahlungslehre,” 437, and Jean Rilliet, who re-read the 1536 Institutes with the hope of not finding double predestination but came to the conclusion that it is there “et si nettement qu’on ne peut l’en oter” (De l’election eternelle de Dieu, 63). 11 Calvin, Institutes (1536), 2.23 (p. 59); CO, I, 74; OS, I, 87–88: “Comprehendere quidem non possumus incomprehensibilem Dei sapientiam, nec eam excultere nostrum est: ut nobis constet, qui aeterno eius consilio electi, qui reprobati sint (Roman 11).” By “it,” Calvin is referring more to the wisdom of God that can never be plumbed than he is to the marks or signs of ascertaining the elect and the reprobate within the church (cf. 38–40).

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by God’s eternal counsel. The position taken was stronger than saying that election was by that counsel but rejection was by man’s default coupled with God’s permission to let that be sufficient cause.12

“Certain Signs” of Reprobation One of Calvin’s major concerns during the development of his doctrine of reprobation from 1536 to 1559 was the identification of the elect and the reprobate within the church.13 Ultimately, of course, such identification of others can never be foolproof, for human weal or woe is determined by God’s sovereign will first and foremost—not by the quality of human activity. Consequently, Calvin protested polemically against the Roman Catholic assertion that Matthew 16:19 proved that an external circumstance, such as membership in the visible church, was sufficient to distinguish the elect from the reprobate.14 For Calvin, wheat and chaff were mixed within the church, and a cautious approach must be taken to determine valid, scriptural marks and signs that might serve to enlighten members as to their spiritual state and citizenship. These signs Calvin called “certain sure marks . . . by means of which we may distinguish the elect and the children of God from the reprobate and alien, insofar as He [God] wills us so to recognize them.”15 These signs extended beyond external marks such as a profession of faith, an exemplary life, and participation in the sacraments to include the Pauline ordo salutis from vocatio to glorificatio. Nevertheless, Calvin believed we should hope for the best in regard to those who display such external marks: “Consequently, all who profess with us the same God and Christ by confession of faith, example of life and participation in the sacraments, ought by some sort of judgment of love to be deemed elect and members of the church.”16 Calvin believed that the judgment of charity must not be extended to those who appear to possess the marks of the reprobate—such as a refusal to make confession of faith, to lead an exemplary life, or to participate in the sacraments, 12 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 40. Otten is supportive of Wiley’s assertion, stating that as early as the 1536 Institutes Calvin understood reprobation as “ein Handeln Gottes” and not merely as a result of permission (see his Calvins theologische, 19). 13 Already in the 1536 Institutes, Calvin hinges the doctrine of the church at nearly every significant point to the doctrine of gracious election. Polman lists six critical connections: “wezen . . . eigenschappen . . . eeuwigheidswerk . . . continuiteit . . . kenmerken . . . tucht.” Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 320–21. 14 Calvin, Institutes (1536), 2.25 (p. 60); CO, I, 74–75; OS, I, 88–89. 15 Calvin, Institutes (1536), 2.26 (p. 61); CO, I, 75; OS, I, 89: “certas quasdam notas nobis describit, . . . quibis electos et filios Dei a reprobis et extraneis distinguamus.” 16 Calvin, Institutes (1536), 2.26 (p. 61).

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as well as a purposeful suppression of the gospel and an express intention to malign the name of God. Still, he said that we have no right to judge the eternal state of such people: Let us not claim for ourselves more license in judgment, unless we wish to limit God’s power and confine his mercy by law. For God, whenever it pleases him, changes the worst men into the best, engrafts the alien, and adopts the stranger into the church. And He does this to frustrate men’s opinion and restrain their rashness—which venture to assume for themselves a greater right of judgment than is fitting.17

Calvin thus held to a tension in his “certain signs” of reprobation: on the one hand, the signs are definite indicators of spiritual life or death; on the other hand, the church must exercise extreme caution on two important grounds—first, human certainty of another’s reprobation is impossible, and second, God’s saving power is illimitable. Hence, the “signs” are more profitable for selfexamination and humiliation than for the examination and judgment of the reprobate.

Human Responsibility despite Reprobation Finally, in the 1536 Institutes Calvin underscores the responsibility of the reprobate for his own condemnation. Though God actively works in the reprobate to harden him, the reprobate voluntarily carries out the works for which he is condemned. God is neither the author of evil nor the cause of evil via injustice. Rather, His righteousness and the reprobate’s unrighteousness are displayed in the very same act: Let us bring to mind that in the same act we are to discern the work of a perverse man and of a just God. We are to see that depraved [or reprobate, reprobum] man has the root of evil fixed in himself, by himself thinks evil, by himself wills it, by himself attempts it, by himself carries it out. For this reason we must impute to him whatever evil and guilt there is in his works. For he is striving against God in intention, in will, and in deed. But God as he wills, now bends, now forces and controls man’s evil will and his evil effort; he gives a happy issue and adds strength. But God does all things justly.18

17 Calvin, Institutes (1536), 2.27 (p. 62). 18 Calvin, Institutes (1536), 2.8 (p. 46); CO, I, 60; OS, I, 73: “in eodem facto respiciendum percersi hominis, ac iusti Dei opus. Hominem reprobum mali radicem in se habere fixam, a se malum cogitare, a se velle, a se conari, a se perpetrare. Ideo illi imputandum, quidquid in opere mali ac culpae est, quia consilio, voluntate, facto, contra Deum nititur. Deum vero malum voluntatem ac malum conatum, quo vult inflectere, nunc coercere ac moderari, nunc successum dare et vires addere. Sed omnia iuste.”

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This tension of God’s determining the perverse will and actions by which man voluntarily condemns himself is a consistent position throughout Calvin’s writings. Calvin consistently refuses to forego either divine sovereignty or human responsibility in reprobation. In sum, a close examination of the 1536 Institutes reveals that Calvin’s doctrine of reprobation lay in embryonic or seed form within its brief compass. In subsequent, expanded editions, this seed would develop by means of elaboration, assimilation and adjustment until its classical definition in the Institutes’ final edition of 1559. Throughout this quarter-century, Calvin is consistent in the positive sense of the word—for consistency from first to last does not preclude, but demands, progressive development: in 1536, the principle was present and fixed, and by 1559, the system would be fully developed and realized.

The 1536–1537 Confession of Faith This confession was written for the citizens of Geneva as a standard to which all might subscribe.19 It comes no closer to the doctrines of election or reprobation than the following statement, which aims to ascribe all praise in salvation to God alone: “And finally that all the praise and glory may be rendered to God (as is due), and that we may be able to have true peace and quiet in our consciences we acknowledge and confess that we receive all the blessings now recited from the mercy of God alone, without any consideration of our worthiness or the merit of our works, to which is due no return except eternal confusion.”20 Two reasons have been given for the 1536–1537 Confession of Faith’s omission of the doctrine of predestination: first, its authorship resides primarily with Guillaume Farel, though Calvin had a hand in its compilation;21 and second, the nature of the confession itself. Supported by Pieter Muller, Wiley has argued that 19 Confession de la foy laquelle tous bourgeois et habitans de Geneve et subiects du pays doibvent iurer de garder et tenir extraicte de linstruction dont on use en leglise de la dicte ville (in French, CO XXII, 77–96; IX, 693–700; OS, I, 418–26; in Latin, CO, V, 355–63). English translations are given in Calvin: Theological Treatises, ed. and trans. J. K. S. Reid, LCC, vol. 22 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 25–33; Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 1:393–401. 20 Geneva Confession (1536), art. 10, cited in Warfield, “Predestination,” 87–88. 21 Reid acknowledges Farel’s authorship, but adds that “the complicity of Calvin, if not his sole authorship, may then be admitted” (Theological Treatises, 25). Though Wiley admits of Calvin’s collaboration due to the theological sophistication of the Confession, together with its presentation by both men to the Little Council and the Council of Two Hundred, he attributes the omission of both election and rejection as “due to Farel’s pre-eminence in the Genevan reformation at that time.” Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 51–52. Cf. Arthur Cochrane, ed. Reformed Confessions in the 16th Century (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966), 118–19; Emil Doumergue, Jean Calvin, les Hommes et les Choses de son Temps, 7 vols. (Lausanne, 1899–1917), 2:237–39.

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the confessional nature of some of Calvin’s writings seems to have played a major role in their relative silence regarding predestination, and reprobation in particular. Wiley notes: It appears, therefore, that Calvin distinguished between two kinds of theological writings and treated predestination accordingly. (1) If the purpose was primarily confessional rather than instructional, no need existed to mention the decree of rejection, for in confessing one’s faith one affirmed those things whereby he would be saved. Accordingly, election was mentioned because it was the final ground of salvation. The decree of rejection need not be mentioned for the confession of faith to be complete. Hence, in confessions primarily designed for use beyond Geneva, the omission of rejection was not due to a compromising of theological content for the sake of church unity but to the purpose of the writing. (2) On the other hand, if the primary purpose of the writing was instructional, informing one of the complete doctrinal content of Scripture . . . then one finds therein both the mention of rejection and its decree. Such was necessary not for salvation, but that the exposition and instruction be faithful to the total witness of Scripture.22

The 1537 Instruction and Confession of Faith Somewhat surprisingly, Calvin’s first formal exposition of double predestination under a discreet locus does not appear in one of his Institutes’ various editions, but in his earliest symbolical writing—the Instruction and Confession of Faith, published in April 1537.23 Why this is so has been a debate among scholars that has yielded little unanimity. The core question behind the debate is this: Why would Calvin set forth his doctrine of double predestination as a discreet separate locus for the first time in the 1537 Instruction when its purpose was to serve as a compendium to the 1536 Institutes under the express intention of meeting the 22 The one exception to this categorization is Calvin’s De Aeterna Dei Pradestinatione (CO, VIII, 249–366), which may claim exemption to this classification due to the fact that its origin is grounded in the heat of controversy. Later confessions, which mention election only after double predestination had long been solidified as part and parcel of Reformed theology, include the following statements either authored or shaped by Calvin: Consensus Tigurinus (1559); Confession au Roy (1557); Confession des escholiers (1559); Confession des eglises de france (1559); and Confession a presenter a l’empereur (1562). 23 Instruction et confession de foy dont on use en l’eglise de Geneve (CO, XXII, 5–75; OS, I, 378– 417); also known as the 1538 Catechismus sivi Christianae religionis institutio Genevensis ecclesiae from the Latin translation made for the use of other churches (CO, V, 313–62). English translations include Paul T. Fuhrmann, Instruction in Faith (1537), trans. Paul T. Fuhrmann (London: Lutterworth Press, 1949); Warfield, “Predestination,” 88–89; Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 1:353–92. This document is also called the Catechism or Genevan Confession, and must be distinguished from the later Genevan Catechism (1545) as well as the earlier Confession of Faith (1536–37), which is occasionally called First Genevan Confession (hereafter: 1537 Instruction).

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needs of Geneva’s youth? Answers have covered the following range: Calvin’s interim reflection during 1536–1537, born out of the painful pastoral experience of a mixed response (faith and unbelief) to the proclamation of the gospel;24 his examination and first expositions of the Epistle to the Romans, which, when brought to final fruition, would produce his watershed Romans commentary;25 his increasing concern with the Augustinian/Bucerian question of the apostasy of Israel;26 and his increasing concern to retain the absoluteness of divine sovereignty in conjunction with the dangers he saw inherent in the 1535 Loci of Melanchthon.27 Whatever the answer to this question may be—most likely a combination of the several answers given above—the element of surprise is tempered by the fact that the specific mention of decretal rejection in a separate predestination article28 is no radical break from the first edition of the Institutes; rather, it is a fleshing out of the anticipatory elements of decretal rejection embedded in the 1536 Institutes. This is not to imply, however, that the 1537 Instruction does not contain significant evidences of the development of Calvin’s doctrine of reprobation. These enrichments may be summarized under three heads: the placement of reprobation in relation to election, the starting point of reprobation, and the role of the divine will, justice, and glory in reprobation.

The Placement of Reprobation As is typically the case for Calvin, reprobation appears in the context of election, and election, in turn, is viewed soteriologically. The positioning of predestination within the soteriological context varies considerably in Calvin’s symbolical writings. In the 1537 Instruction, predestination is set directly following Christology (chap. 12, in which Calvin notes that there are both believers and nonbelievers in the church) and directly before the out-workings of soteriology: the true nature of faith (chap. 14), its status as a gift of God (chap. 15), justification by imputed righteousness (chap. 16), sanctification (chap. 17), the interrelationship of repentance and regeneration (chap. 18), and the relationship of justification by faith to good works (chap. 19). The Revised Geneva Catechism (1542) would return to the arrangement of the 1536 Institutes, whereas the French Confession would embrace a still earlier position, allowing predestination to precede both 24 25 26 27

Cf. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 61–62. Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 327. Dantine, “Die Pradestinationslehre bei Calvin und Beza,” 29. Max Scheibe, Calvin’s Pradestinationslehre: Ein Beitrage zur Wurdigung der Eigenart einer Theologie und Religiositat (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1897), 74–85. 28 1537 Instruction, chapter 13 of 33. See Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 1:366–67.

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Christology and soteriology. In general, however, this post-Christology placement is on the earlier side for Calvin, particularly when compared with his definitive 1559 placement at the end of soteriology—resurrection excepted.29 The reasons for this earlier placement are not known. Wernle roots the reason in pedagogical concerns prior to Calvin’s later concern for more caution.30 Otten sees this placement in later editions as motivated by a desire to avoid a deterministic thrust. Wiley suggests that Calvin’s later shift away from the 1537 placement may have been due to increased polemical possibilities as well as commensurate importance attached to its later placement within soteriology.31 Jacobs32 and Barth,33 on the other hand, view the 1537 Instruction’s placement of predestination as Calvin’s best choice.34 However, it certainly emphasizes Calvin’s concern to discuss predestination within “the practical soteriologicalecclesiological question of the cause of belief and unbelief within the visible church.”35

The Starting Point of Reprobation As in the later 1539 Institutes, the 1537 Instruction works back to double predestination in a posteriori fashion from the anthropological consideration that not all men who hear the gospel believe it. By avoiding the deterministic overtones implicit in linking predestination to the bondage of the will (cf. 1536 Institutes), Calvin now chooses to approach predestination directly through the doorway of faith; indeed, the lack of faith becomes his formal starting point for introducing election and reprobation in chapter 13: Beyond this contrast of attitudes of believers and unbelievers, the great secret of God’s counsel must necessarily be considered. For the seed of the word of God takes root and brings forth fruit only in those whom the Lord, by his eternal election, has predestined to be children and heirs of the heavenly kingdom. To all others (who by the same counsel

29 30 31 32 33 34

Calvin, Institutes, 3.25. Wernle, Calvin, 279. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 19, 57. Jacobs, Prädestination, 26. Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, 88. Among Reformed systematicians subsequent to Calvin, Peter Martyr (Loci communes, 1576; The Common Places of the Most Famous and Renowned Divine Doctor Peter Martyr [London: H. Denham and H. Middleton, 1583]) and Hermann Witsius (The Economy of the Covenants [repr., Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R, 2001], first published in Latin as De oeconomia foedorum, 1693) have paralleled this order. 35 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 56.

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of God are rejected before the foundation of the world) the clear and evident preaching of truth can be nothing but an odor of death undo death.36

The advantage of using faith/unbelief vis-à-vis the proclaimed Word of God is that it allowed Calvin to retain the vibrancy of a threefold bond: divine predestination, human responsibility, and divine activity within the church. Consequently, God retains full sovereignty via His counsel and will, and man retains full responsibility via his response of faith or unbelief.37

Divine Will, Justice, and Glory in Reprobation In addition to accenting divine counsel in predestination (as quoted above), Calvin let his heaviest stress to date fall on divine activity in terms of God’s will, justice, and, for the first time, His glory: Now the reason why the Lord shows mercy towards the ones and exercises the rigor of His judgment towards the others must be left to be known by Him alone; the which He has willed should be concealed from us…. Let us only be assured of this—that the dispensation of the Lord, although it is concealed from us is nevertheless holy and just: for had He willed to destroy the whole human race He had the right to do it, and in those whom it withdraws from perdition, we can contemplate nothing but His sovereign goodness. Therefore, let us recognize the elect to be vessels of His mercy (as they truly are), and the reprobates to be vessels of His wrath, which nevertheless is only just. Let us take from the one and the other alike ground and matter for the proclamation of His glory.38

In sum, Calvin’s reasoning guides him irrevocably via pastoral experience into the roots of divine counsel: (1) the mixed gospel response cannot have its deepest source in anything human, nor in anything less than the will of God; (2) the will of God must be holy and just, for injustice can never be ascribed to Him; and (3) since even rejection is just, not only election, but reprobation as well, must serve to the glory of God.39 36 Fuhrmann, chapter 13; CO, XXII, 46–47; OS, I, 390–91: “En une telle difference est a considerer necessairment le grand secret du conseil de Dieu: car la semence de la parolle de Dieu prent racine et fructifie en ceux la seulement lesquelz le Seigneur par son election eternelle a predestine pour ses enfans et heritiers du royaulme celects. A tous les autres, qui par mesme conseil de Dieu devant la constitution du monde sont reprouvez, la claire et evident predication de verite ne peult estre aultre chose sinon odeur de mort en mort.” 37 Scheibe, Calvin’s Pradestinationslehre, 15–16; cf. Dantine, “Das christologische Problem im Rahmen der Pradestinationslehre von Theodor Beza,” Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte 40 (1966): 82. 38 Warfield, “Predestination,” 88. 39 As Polman notes: “Niet de praedestination duplex, uiteenvallend in election en reprobation, wordt hier voor het eerst geleerd, maar de gedachte, die ook als onderstroom reeds in de le

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Finally, Calvin works his way back from God’s glory to man’s welfare, for the causality of divine reprobation cannot but heighten the desire for certitude of salvation. That certitude is found, of course, in Jesus Christ, whom Calvin here calls the “seal,” “mirror,” and “pledge” of certainty—terms soon to be numbered among his favorite and dominant motifs: And on the other hand also let us not, in order to confirm the certitude of our faith, seek (as many are accustomed to do) to penetrate into the heavens and to search out what God has from eternity determined to do concerning us (which cogitation can only agitate us with miserable anxiety and perturbation): but let us be content with the testimony by which He has sufficiently and amply confirmed this certitude to us. For as in Christ all those are chosen who have been foreordained to life before the foundations of the world were laid, so He is presented to us as the seal of our election if we receive and embrace Him by faith. For what is it that we seek in election except that we may participate in eternal life? And this we have in Christ: for from the beginning He has the life, and He is proposed to us for life, to the end that all who believe in Him shall have eternal life. Since then in possessing Christ by faith we possess also life in Him we have no need to search further into the counsel of God; for Christ is not only a mirror in which the will of God is represented to us, but also a pledge by which it is as it were sealed and confirmed to us.40

With the 1537 Instruction, the broad outline of Calvin’s teaching on election and reprobation is already established. Calvin only needed the quiet of his Strasbourg pastorate to flesh it out into a full statement—a task he fulfilled most admirably in his Romans commentary and in the 1539 Institutes.

editie het geheel beheerschte, dat alles Gods eer verhoogen moet, wordt hier voor het eerst ook op het reprobatiebesluit toegepast.” Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 327 (emphasis mine). 40 Cited in Warfield, “Predestination,” 88–89; see also his discussion of Christ’s role in predestination, 91–92.

Chapter 10: Systematic Reprobation in the Strasbourg Theologian (1538–1541)

The contrast between the turmoil of Calvin’s early Genevan ministry and the peace of his subsequent Strasbourg pastorate was great. The hands-on training of Calvin’s first rough Genevan years provided abundant material for mature theological reflection and study during his tranquil Strasbourg stay. Though this reflection was multifaceted, the Geneva background served Calvinian predestinarianism particularly well; a more advanced terminology, greater theological precision, and achieving systematic presentation characterized the two major works of Calvin’s interim ministry—the 1539 Romans commentary1 and the 1539 Institutes.2

The 1539 Romans Commentary Calvin’s Commentary on the Gospel of John contains more references to predestination than his Commentary on Romans; nevertheless, the latter is considerably more seminal in the development of his doctrines of election and reprobation. Scholarship no longer doubts that the Romans commentary is the most consequential in the Calvinian series—both for the Reformer himself and for his thought. Nevertheless, precisely how formative this Romans study was for 1 John Calvin, Commentarius in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos (CO, XLIX, 1–292); Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, trans. John Owen, in Commentaries, vol. 19 (repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979). 2 The intertwining of these two major works in both time and content is another token that Calvin the exegete must not be set in stark contrast with Calvin the dogmatician. Calvin’s refusal to make doctrinal excursions beyond the grammatical and historical meaning of a text reinforces his sincere effort to make his exegetical work complement his Institutes as a doctrinal base. In the preface of his revised edition of the Institutes (1539), written nearly simultaneously with the Romans commentary, Calvin himself denies any such contrast by viewing his two kinds of works as supplementary. John Calvin, “The Epistle to the Reader [prefixed to the second edition, published at Strasburg in 1539],” in Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1863), 1:21.

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Calvin is a matter of ongoing debate.3 This much is certain: from the Romans commentary onward, i. e., from the 1539 Institutes through the 1559 Institutes, Calvin sought to have his thinking controlled by the Pauline concept of predestination as presented in Romans in general and Romans 9 in particular. In his comments on Romans 9, Calvin addresses a number of issues relative to double predestination, four of which deserve particular attention in this study of Calvinian reprobation.

A Decretal “Passing by” in Reprobation The first distinctive mention of double predestination in the Romans commentary is Calvin’s division of Romans 9:11 into three propositions: Then the first proposition is,—“As the blessing of the covenant separates the Israelitic nation from all other people, so the election of God makes a distinction between men in that nation, while he predestinates some to salvation, and others to eternal condemnation.” The second proposition is,—“There is no other basis for this election than the goodness of God alone, and also since the fall of Adam, his mercy; which embraces whom he pleases, without any regard whatever to their works.” The third is,—“The Lord in his gratuitous election is free and exempt from the necessity of imparting equally the same grace to all; but, on the contrary, he passes by whom he wills, and whom he wills he chooses.”4

Calvin intended all three of these propositions to be expounded under the framework of double predestination from a decretal perspective. This intention is especially evident when working backward from Calvin’s third proposition; it is certain from the outset that the Calvinian notion of “passing by” is understood as a decretal act of God. For Calvin, “passing by” was the result of the reprobation decree, not merely a matter of divine justice passing sentence on sinners already viewed as fallen. The very fact that God passes by “whom he wills” shows that such “passing by” (subsequently called preterition in Reformed theology) is derived from His all-embracing, prior, and predestining will. Hence, far from being passive, preterition must be understood as an act of the divine will in reprobation. This is not to say that decretal reprobation swallowed up every remnant of the concept of preterition for Calvin. Calvin uses the terminology of “passing over” or “passing by” in his final edition of the Institutes quite frequently.5 Never3 For example, Polman tends to maximize the impact of the Romans commentary on Calvin (De praedestinatieleer, 327–31, 355), whereas Wiley minimizes it (“Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 71n) despite extensive coverage (67–83). 4 Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:11. 5 Calvin, Institutes, 3.22.1; 3.23.1; 3.23.10; 3.24.13.

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theless, his theology posits unequivocally that God passes over some for no other reason than that He wills to exclude them from the inheritance He predestines for His children. In sum, since those whom God passes by, He rejects or reprobates,6 Calvin’s third proposition must be taken together with the double predestination foundationally unfolded in propositions one and two. As Wiley notes, “Such passing-by (preterition or permission) was a consequence of the prior predestining will of God. Although in itself passing-by did not constitute the basis of rejection, within the process of history it was the means whereby rejection was manifested.”7 These propositions, according to Calvin, serve as an outworking of the overarching principle of Pauline thought, namely, the will of God reigns supreme.

The Cause of Reprobation Second, and continuing our backward journey through Calvin’s three propositions, the Romans commentary adds to the Reformer’s positing the cause of reprobation as ultimately lying in the will of God.8 At most, the cause of damnation lay only proximately in the unbeliever’s demerits; ultimately, it was ordained by the divine will and counsel. The Romans commentary makes it clear that divine foreknowledge plays the same role in reprobation as in election: though God foreknows everything, His choosing or rejecting can never be ultimately attributed to any human action.9 Calvin felt that he could preserve the utter gratuitousness of election only through such Pauline reasoning, and this conviction could not but enhance the theological status of reprobation by paralleling it to election—at least in terms of ultimacy. For Calvin, the divine cause of reprobation contributes to the divine end of reprobation: the glory of God. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Romans commentary places a heavier accent on the glory of God resulting from double predestination than do any of Calvin’s earlier writings. In fleshing out his predestinarian principles, Calvin now begins to relate divine glory to one set of attributes corresponding with election—goodness and mercy—and to another set of attributes corresponding with reprobation—righteousness and justice. Calvin writes, “Paul divides his subject into two parts; in the former of which he speaks of the elect, and in the latter of the reprobate; and in the one he would have us to contemplate the mercy of God, and in the other to acknowledge his right6 7 8 9

Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.14. Cf. McNeill, introduction to Institutes, lix. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 78. Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:18. Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:18.

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eous judgement.”10 Again, he writes, “God, according to his own will, favours with mercy them whom he pleases, and unsheathes the severity of his judgment against whomsoever is seemeth him good.”11 Both God’s mercy in election and His justice in reprobation are subsumed under the divine will as the ultimate boundary of causation, a boundary beyond which human reasoning cannot go. Calvin says, “Inasmuch as God elects some and passes by others, the cause is not to be found in anything else but in his own purpose.”12 And again, “No cause higher than his own will can be thought of, why he does good and shows favour to some men but not to all.”13 Calvin acknowledged that there are various “means” and “proximate causes of our salvation,” but the highest cause of “why God, before the foundation of the world, chose only some and passed by others” is that “God was led to make this difference by nothing else, but by his own good pleasure.”14

The Absolute Mystery of Reprobation Third, though Calvin’s first proposition merely hints at the mystery of reprobation, his notes on Romans 11:33 bring this ultimate mystery to the foreground as the outgrowth of the divine will and counsel in its active, decretal function: “The more he elevates the height of the divine mystery, the more he deters us from the curiosity of investigating it. Let us then learn to make no searchings respecting the Lord, except as far as he has revealed himself in the Scriptures; for otherwise we shall enter a labyrinth, from which the retreat is not easy. It must however be noticed, that he speaks not here of all God’s mysteries, but of those which are hid with God himself, and ought to be only admired and adored by us.”15 Therefore, we must “be satisfied with the difference which exists between the elect and the reprobate, and may not inquire for any cause higher than the divine 10 Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:14, emphasis added. 11 Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:18. 12 Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:14. Cf. Polman’s comments under heads II, III, and VI (De praedestinatieleer, 328–30, 332–33). 13 Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:15. 14 Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 11:6. 15 Cf. Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 328: “Daarom zijn alle menschen ganschelijk blind, om de praedestinatie Gods met hun verstand te beschouwen en over deze onbekende zaak kunnen zij niet anders dan lichtvaardig en verkeerd handelen. Zelfs de door Gods Geest verlichte kinderen Gods, die naar Paulus’ woord den zin des Heeren kennen, staan hier voor een verborgen raad, waarvan de hoogte noch de diepte met onderzoeken kan worden gepeild (11:34).”

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will.”16 When faced with human objections that divine sovereignty is unjust (Rom. 9:19), Paul is silent regarding any difference among men which would satisfy our sense of fairness in election, but instead says that it is the will of God, and we have no right to dispute with our Maker (Rom. 9:20–21). Calvin observes, “By his silence he reminds us, that a mystery which our minds cannot comprehend ought to be reverently adored, and that he thus checks the wantonness of human curiosity.”17

The Covenant and Reprobation Finally, Calvin’s Romans propositions and subsequent annotations introduce for the first time in significant measure the notion of covenant as an outworking of predestination. Calvin placed election within the contextual framework of God’s dealings with Israel according to the terms of the covenant. Due to Israel’s unfaithfulness, according to Paul, divine election necessitated two classes of men under covenantal bonds: the physical descendants of Abraham who belonged to the covenant by virtue of a general election, and those who might or might not have descended from Abraham but were brought into the covenant by saving faith via a special election.18 This subdivision necessitated ultimate reprobation of those in the first class who lacked saving faith. Scholars have adopted a variety of viewpoints on Calvin’s relationship to covenant theology, ranging from a denial that Calvin had any covenant theology and perhaps opposed covenant theology, to a belief that he gave the covenant of grace an incomplete and minor treatment, to the idea that he taught an extensive covenant theology, though inchoate compared to later developments.19 Wiley reflects a minimalistic view of Calvin’s covenant theology in his summary of Calvin’s discussion of covenant and reprobation in Romans 9: Because the discussion of predestination in the Romans Commentary was set within the framework of the covenant, rejection was derived out of the general and special covenant motifs rather than from the observation of human experience, its basis for discussion in the 1537 Instruction. This is what one would expect when speaking of rejection in Romans and, therefore, one ought not to make too much of Calvin’s treating election and rejection in a covenant context. He had not suddenly become a covenant

16 17 18 19

Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:18. Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:20. Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:6. Peter A. Lillback, The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 13–28.

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theologian! Rather, in the covenant motif, one has what amounted to the biblical version of what he had earlier observed about experience.20

However, Peter Lillback sees the covenantal context of reprobation as an outcropping of the substantial covenant theology pervading Calvin’s teachings, for “Calvin was able to wed both the covenant and the decrees of predestination and reprobation into the same theological system.”21 Lillback writes, “The covenant can thus be used synonymously in a decretal sense pertaining to the secret election of individuals and in a non-decretal sense, with reference to the corporate election of a people into the family of God.”22 In sum, the Romans study brought Calvin to deeper theological precision (and ultimacy) relative to divine reprobation. That, in turn, yielded additional systemization in the 1539 and subsequent editions of the Institutes. However, this systematic development should not be read as cold or harsh. Clark observes that Calvin noted from the apostolic example (Rom. 9:2), “there is no conflict between grieving over the reprobate and recognizing that they are ‘destined by the righteous judgment of God.’”23

The 1539/1541 Institutes The second Latin edition of Calvin’s Institutes (1539) 24 represents a major advance and expansion, bringing the work to a new level of redaction and clarity of purpose. It should not be viewed simply as an amplified work that multiplies six chapters into seventeen; rather, its enlargement includes both new material and a new scope for his intent. Formerly, the Institutes had been a foundational sketch of basic Reformed tenets published primarily for apologetic purposes. The 1539 Institutes, however, was designed to be serviceable in “the preparation of candidates in theology for the reading of the Divine Word.”25 As McNeill observes, “Thus Calvin’s book, at first mainly an apologetic treatise exhibiting in a favorable light the faith of his fellow-religionists, was transformed by skillful ex20 21 22 23

Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 77. Lillback, The Binding of God, 210. Lillback, The Binding of God, 215. R. Scott Clark, “Election and Predestination: The Sovereign Expressions of God,” in A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes, ed. David W. Hall and Peter A. Lillback (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R, 2008), 104. I have removed Clark’s Latin quotations from Calvin in this quote. See Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:2. 24 Institutio Christianae Religionis nunc vere demum suo titulo respondens (Strasbourg: Rihel, 1539). Hereafter: 1539 Institutes. CO, I, 254–1151 presents the texts of the Institutes produced between 1539–1554 (cf. OS, vols. III–V; and for text of French edition of 1541, Jacques Pannier, ed., 4 vols., Paris, 1936–1938; reprinted, 1961.) 25 McNeill, History and Character, 126.

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pansion into a compendium of scriptural doctrine for student use. It was accordingly published in a format adapted for the desk rather than the pocket. Each of the 436 pages measures about 13 x 8 inches and has wide margins inviting the reader’s notes.”26 Though not yet systematically complete, the 1539 Institutes “began to assume much more the shape of a set of theological loci than a series of catechetical lectures.”27 New pedagogical and polemical concerns account for most of the new material in the 1539 Institutes, along with Calvin’s continued reflection and study during the interim period, as previously noted.28 Particularly for laymen, Calvin produced a 1541 French translation of the Institutes based on the 1539 Latin redaction.29 McNeill calls it “a landmark in the history of French prose,” recognized by scholars as a “French classic.”30 Despite the major additions and changes made in the 1539/1541 Institutes, Calvin’s doctrine of predestination contains no new elements. Nevertheless, his discussion of predestination—and particularly reprobation—in this edition is significant for tracing the doctrine’s development. For our purposes, this discussion can be limited to three reprobation emphases: its systemization, definition, and defense.

26 McNeill, History and Character, 126. 27 Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 50; see Wendel, Calvin, 146–47, for further discussion. 28 In addition to predestination, new material is added on faith, penance, justification, baptism, the Christian life, and the unity of the two testaments. Also, the Calvinian duplex cognitio dei is greatly expanded, as well as the defense of the doctrine of the Trinity. Such augmentation in both detail and subject matter allowed Calvin to claim that this work finally agreed with its title, i. e. as containing the full sum of piety. Though still remaining more pastoral than theological in scope, Calvin desired his work to be viewed as both a summa theologiae and a summa pietatas. Cf. Ford Lewis Battles, introduction to Analysis of the Institutes of the Christian Religion of John Calvin (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980); The Piety of John Calvin, trans. and ed. Ford Lewis Battles (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2009). 29 Institution de la religion chrestienne: en laquelle est comprinse une somme de piete, et quasi tout ce qui est necessaire a congnoistre en la doctrine de salut (Geneva: Girard, 1541). The English translation used here is John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: A New Translation of the 1541 Institutes, trans. Robert White (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2014). Henceforth cited as Institutes (1541). See also John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: The First English Version of the 1541 French Edition, trans. Elsie Anne McKee (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). 30 McNeill, History and Character, 126. On the 1541 French Institutes see also Wendel, Calvin, 116–17; Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 49–50. In the latter half of the 1541 French edition, Calvin somewhat rearranged the chapters from their 1539 order, moving chapter 16 on the five false sacraments to a new position (chap. 12) after the treatment of the Lord Supper. Frans H. Breukelman, The Structure of Sacred Doctrine in Calvin’s Theology, ed. Rinse H. Reeling Brouwer, trans. Martin Kessler (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 5.

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The Systemization of Reprobation Though the doctrine of reprobation is hidden at times beneath Calvin’s thorough discussions, chapter 8 of the 1539/1541 Institutes provides a fairly compact systematic and organizational structure. After discussing the new covenant in chapter 7, Calvin introduces chapter 8 with the experiential truth that “the covenant of life” was neither “equally preached” nor “equally welcomed.”31 He then plunges into a copious deliberation of theological concerns on the relationship of predestination to God’s foreknowledge of merits,32 as well as a variety of topics converging on the definition of predestination. After defining predestination so that election and reprobation are reducible ultimately to the divine will active in the decree, he forges onward from soteriological to ecclesiological concerns33 by dealing respectively with the implications of this definition for calling, faith, assurance, perseverance, the general and special aspects of calling, the seed of election,34 reprobation, and the calling of men from “all estates.” Calvin divides this material into three parts: (1) the effectual calling of the elect; (2) their perseverance under Christ’s guidance; and (3) calling and reprobation. Finally, the discussion of these historical revelations of the decree leads inexorably to the doctrine of providence, which governs not only the world in general but the lives of the elect and reprobate in particular. This more precise theological systemization of various aspects of predestination yields several important implications for Calvin’s doctrine of reprobation: 1) Calvin’s opening paragraphs on predestination go beyond his previously stated reasons for speaking of this doctrine (i. e., the witness of experience and of Scripture) to a systematic one rooted in his conviction that profane men always will find anti-predestination propaganda to sport with. Since silence in the face of their blasphemies would necessitate having “to keep quiet about the main articles of our faith,” it would be paramount to ignoring other chief doctrines as well, such as the Trinity and creation.35 Through this 31 Calvin, Institutes (1541), 463. 32 Such deliberations support Muller’s contention that “Calvin never did move the doctrine of predestination definitively out of the doctrine of God.” Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 41 (emphasis mine). 33 Hence Jacobs construes that predestination here serves Calvin as the bridge between soteriology and ecclesiology. Jacobs, Prädestination, 62–63. Thus also Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 47, and Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 90, under the stipulation that this connection is derived theologically and not structurally. For the place of predestination in the 1539 Institutes see Wendel, Calvin, 267–68; Hunt, “Predestination,” 43–44; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 89–92. 34 Against Bucer. See Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 122–24, for an excellent summary. 35 Calvin, Institutes (1541), 465.

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analogy, Calvin implies some degree of parallel theological importance of both branches of predestination—election and reprobation—to such other major doctrines.36 2) In the 1539/1541 Institutes, Calvin again demolishes the argument that either election or reprobation is dependent on merit or demerit, actual or merely foreknown, but he now adds to his defense a systematic place for reprobation by integrating it into the heart of his soteriological polemic, i. e., the complete abnegation of works theology. Calvin says, “The apostle’s very words [Rom. 9:11–13] tell us that the salvation of believers is based on God’s good pleasure in election, and that this grace is not acquired by works but comes to them from his unmerited goodness.”37 As Wiley observes, “Even though rejection had formerly been traced to the divine decree, it had been tangential to the doctrine of predestination as a whole; now, it was fully integrated into the concept of predestination, causing the definition to be given through the term predestination rather than by the earlier, more restricted method of defining it through election. This took place because the general concept of predestination was better able to contain election and rejection, both being equally posited in the will of God.”38 3) Finally, the increasing weight of reprobation as part and parcel of the soteriological organizing principle of full-fledged divine predestination now enables Calvin to move providence into soteriology proper. This repositioning of the outworking of the decree of predestination in history serves, in turn, to accent election and reprobation all the more. Providence acts as the handmaid of predestination rather than predestination being a minor subdivision of providence.39 Providence is nothing more than the outworking of predestination. Consequently, the systemization of reprobation comes full circle, and thereby becomes permanently interwoven with Calvinian soteriology.

The Definition of Reprobation Nowhere is Calvin’s systematic formulation of reprobation more evident than in his foundational definitions given in the 1539/1541 Institutes. Coming to grips with the basic terminology of prescience, predestination, election, and provi36 37 38 39

Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 94. Calvin, Institutes (1541), 470. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 126. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 94–102; 175–222, for the best study of the Calvinian relationship of predestination/providence. Cf. Muller, Christ and the Decree, 22–24; Moreau, “Divine Foreordination and Human Responsibility,” 13–14.

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dence, Calvin proceeds to state his own definitions. He writes, “We call predestination God’s eternal counsel by which he has determined what he wishes to do with each and every person. For he does not create them all in like condition, but appoints some to eternal life and others to eternal damnation. Thus, according to the end for which a person has been created, we say that he is predestined to death or to life.”40 Clearly, Calvin could no longer use election and predestination as synonyms; rather, he saw that just as providence must be distinguished into the categories of general and special due to its all-embracing scope, so the comprehensiveness of predestination necessitates distinguishing election and reprobation. But he also saw that this distinction must never be used to separate election or reprobation from the fountainhead of predestination. By including election and reprobation within the compass of predestination as defined above, Calvin was no longer involved with two—much less, three—definitions. Ultimately, the definition is one, for in predestining God did not decree the separate categories of election and reprobation first, then proceed to fill each grouping; rather, he decreed the election or reprobation of individual persons. For Calvin, therefore, election and reprobation do not need distinct definitions because they are defined in the definition of predestination. When speaking from the divine perspective of foreordination, predestination is the most appropriate term for Calvin, for it points to God as the first cause of human destiny. However, when speaking from the human perspective of appropriation as historically manifested in relationship to Christ, Scripture, and the church, election and reprobation are the more pertinent terms. In sum, the very definition of Calvinian reprobation requires more integration, a more systematic place, for it stems from the dual and equal affirmation of election and rejection as part and parcel of decretal predestination, addressed comprehensively.

The Defense of Reprobation The increasing role of reprobation in Calvin’s thought entailed a parallel need for its defense. In his 1539 Institutes, Calvin directly confronts four objections: (1) reprobation makes God unjust, (2) reprobation minimizes human responsibility for guilt, (3) predestination portrays implicit partiality in the divine will, and (4) predestination destroys moral zeal.41 The third and fourth objections involve predestination as a whole, and are really modifications of the first two, which deal

40 Calvin, Institutes (1541), 467. 41 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 115.

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more directly with reprobation. It is these first two fundamental objections that Calvin is most concerned to refute. In answering the first objection, Calvin once again takes refuge in Romans 9. God, he writes, is not unjust in rejecting individuals before they have an opportunity to respond to offered salvation, for Scripture states that He has a right to have mercy on whom He pleases and to harden whom He pleases.42 His will must reign supreme. Calvin emphasizes, “If, then, we can see no reason why God accepts his elect other than his good pleasure, neither will we discover why he rejects others except that such is his will.”43 This right and will of God is not only paramount in the context of Jacob and Esau as an illustration of election and reprobation, but the history of Jacob and Esau leads us deeper to consider that God’s will is the pith and marrow of righteousness itself. Since God is just by nature, whatever He wills must be righteous. No injustice, therefore, can be ascribed to Him for choosing and rejecting without regard to works or merit. Moreover, Calvin asks, who is not worthy of condemnation? All those whom God predestines to death are entirely deserving of such condemnation, for their very condition and nature as fallen human beings are odious to God.44 Consequently, Calvin concludes, true piety attests that the divine will in reprobation is always an “infallible rule of justice”; though incomprehensible, it remains humbling and awe-inspiring.45 Second, the teaching of God’s sovereign justice and will in predestination does not remove one speck of human responsibility or guilt for Calvin. Calvin would not surrender to his opponents’ frontal attack, i. e., the charge that since predestination was the ultimate cause of condemnation, no sinner could really be declared guilty for anything. In response, Calvin reaffirmed, “No one should think it strange if I say that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and with it the ruin of all his posterity, but also willed it. For just as it is part of his wisdom that he foresees all future events, so it is part of his power that he rules and governs all things by his hand.”46 Nevertheless, “their perdition so results from God’s predestination that its cause and substance will always be found themselves…. Hence man stumbled according as God had ordained, but he stumbled through his own fault.”47 Consequently, a proper response is one that contemplates the most evident cause of destruction—the corrupt nature of man

42 43 44 45 46 47

Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 115; cf. OS, IV, 393. Calvin, Institutes (1541), 474. Calvin, Institutes (1541), 475. Calvin, Institutes (1541), 476. Calvin, Institutes (1541), 478–79. Calvin, Institutes (1541), 479–80.

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rather than the hidden will of God.48 By both forthright sin and rejection of the gospel call, the individual is responsible for his condemnation. Calvinian reprobation has now come to full fruition. With the 1539/1541 Institutes, it is definitively and systematically complete.49 Yet Calvin’s answers to his opponents were still to be considerably refined, for the development of his predestination doctrine would continue via its elaboration and defense throughout his long second Geneva ministry. The ongoing debates would help the Genevan Reformer to crystallize his concept of reprobation in finely drawn angles of the 1559 Institutes.

48 Calvin, Institutes (1541), 480. Later, Calvin would elaborate on this point in his renowned distinction of proximate and remote causes. 49 Cf. Scheibe, Calvin’s Pradestinationslehre, 27; Wernle, Calvin, 277; Theodore Herman, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” Reformed Church Review 13 (1909): 191; Otten, Calvins theologische, 21.

Chapter 11: Developed Reprobation in the Theologian Par Excellence (1542–1564)

Despite local opposition, Calvin returned to Geneva in 1541, where he remained until his death in 1564, facing a formidable array of opponents who challenged his power and theology on a wide assortment of matters for the major part of his ministry there. His writings aside, one must observe with amazement the work of divine grace in Calvin that enabled him to persevere in his labors, often against great odds. From 1542 to 1559, Calvin was obliged to articulate his doctrine of reprobation in an increasingly coherent, uniform manner. Negatively, he was compelled to do so out of polemical motivations from 1543 to 1558; positively, he produced the final presentation of his systematic account of predestination in the definitive 1559 Institutes, which in turn was elaborated by sermons he preached on predestination in relation to Jacob and Esau near the end of his life (1562).

Reprobation Negatively Presented: Calvin’s Polemical Writings (1543–1558) During Calvin’s second Genevan stay, predestination became his principal polemical doctrine. Through double predestination, he defended the theological validity of the Reformation’s primary doctrine of gratuitous justification apart from meritorious works and enhanced the predominant soteriological emphasis of his theology. His major predestinarian opponents included Albert Pighius, Jerome Bolsec, Jean Trolliet, and Sebastian Castellio, each of whom challenged various facets of Calvinian reprobation.

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Challenges to Calvinian Reprobation Albert Pighius (c. 1490–1542) was a Dutch Roman Catholic controversialist who studied philosophy and mathematics at the University of Louvain and completed his theological studies at the University of Cologne in 1517. Subsequently, he served as canon (1524–1535) and provost (1535–1542) at the Church of St. John the Baptist, Utrecht. His various writings, which ranged from a defense of the papacy to the assertion of free will, provoked responses from various Reformers,1 Calvin among them. Calvin refuted the ten books of Pighius’s De libero hominis arbitrio et devina gratia libri decem with his Defensio doctrinae de servitute arbitrii contra Pighium in 1543,2 and his De aeterna Dei praedestinatione in 1552.3 Calvin used the former work to attack the first six books of Pighius’s De libero hominis arbitrio and the latter work to answer Pighius’s last four books. The ninth chapter of Calvin’s latter work, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, was written against a rather minor opponent, Georgius. Sandwiched between these two studies was the separate reprinting of the 1539 Institutes’ chapter, entitled “De Praedestinatione et Providentia” (1550), which may be regarded as indicative of the renewed interest in predestination in and beyond Geneva.4 Though Pighius is frequently regarded as an ardent Pelagian, when set beside Calvin’s second major opponent, Jerome Bolsec (c. 1510–1584), his unorthodoxy was comparatively minor.5 Bolsec, who is far too often viewed as “a follower of the vacillating Melanchthon,”6 embraced doctrines that were far more despicable in Calvin’s eyes. A former Carmelite monk with a perpetual interest in dabbling in theology, Bolsec settled in Geneva and often disputed against Calvinian predestination both privately and publicly, but was not arrested until after he claimed at a public gathering that predestination made God the author of sin and that Calvinists therefore worshipped an idol. In self-defense, Bolsec claimed that

1 2 3 4

E. g., Peter Martyr, cf. Donnelly, Calvinism and Scholasticism, 124–37. CO, VI, 225–404. CO, VIII, 249–366. For an excellent study of, and bibliography on, Pighius, consult Pierre Pidioux, “Albert Pighius de Kampen, adversaire de Calvin, 1490–1542: Controverse sur les doctrines du libre arbitre et de la predestination” (PhD dissertation, Universite de Lausanne, 1933). A summary of Pighius’s thought on free will, foreknowledge, and predestination is available in A. P. Linsenmann, “Albertus Pighius und sein theologischer Standpunkt,” Theologische Quartalschrift 48 (1866): 629–44. 5 See Philip C. Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy on Predestination from 1551 to 1555: The Statements of Jerome Bolsec, and the Responses of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and Other Reformed Theologians (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen, 1993). 6 Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 340.

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he agreed with Calvin in every vital doctrine except predestination. Ultimately, Bolsec was imprisoned for his radical assertions and anti-Calvin propaganda. The Geneva Council, somewhat perplexed by Bolsec’s assertions on various matters related to predestination, accepted the proposal of the clergy to ask the advice of the Swiss churches. For Calvin, the Swiss churches responded in a very disappointing and mild manner. Zurich responded that they regretted the bitter tone taken on both sides of the dispute; Geneva would do well to seek peace. Berne’s answer was to do nothing. Only Basel wrote back that Bolsec was heretical, but even they admonished Geneva to pursue simplicity with respect to the doctrine of predestination. In general, only individual friends such as Farel and Beza gave Calvin unequivocal support.7 On December 22, 1551, however, Bolsec’s increasingly rash statements against Geneva’s clergy and the doctrine of predestination earned him banishment from the city. During the interim, Calvin’s assistance toward the banishment of Bolsec came primarily through an address given to Genevan pastors on the subject of election, Congregation sur l’election eternalle (1551, but not published until 1562).8 Bolsec found refuge with the Bernese, who in turn banished him in 1555, after which he returned to the Roman Catholic fold and wrote his grossly fictitious and slanderous biography of Calvin.9 The Bolsec affair (April 1551–January 1552) excited few Genevan opponents of Calvin until Jean Trolliet (a former monk who held a grudge against Calvin for hindering his ordination as a Genevan pastor) took up the anti-predestination mantle of Bolsec and pressed charges against Calvin in June 1552. Allied with the Perrinist party, Trolliet harped much on the notion that Calvin’s God was the author of sin. In subsequent debates before the Little Council, both sides were heard and feelings were mixed. Through his appeals to Melanchthon and his numerous friends, Trolliet pressed on until Calvin threatened to resign his ministry and demanded that justice be carried out. On November 9, the Little Council finally voted in favor of Calvin and declared that “in [the] future no one should dare to speak against that book [i. e., the Institutes] or that doctrine [of predestination].” Nevertheless, when Trolliet finally acquiesced, the Little Council officially declared him to be “a good man and a good citizen” only six 7 Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 67–68. 8 CO, VIII, 85–140. 9 Beza, “Life of Calvin,” Tracts, vol. 1, trans. by Beveridge, 57–58, 69–70; Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 340–42; Berkouwer, Divine Election, 192; Walker, John Calvin, 315–20, 346–47; T. H. L. Parker, John Calvin: A Biography (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975), 111–13; Philip Hughes, ed. and trans., The Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 21–24; Doumergue, Jean Calvin, 4:146–61; and Franz Kampschulte, Johann Calvin: seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1869–1899), 2:125–49.

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days later! It is quite possible (though not certain) that Calvin wrote his Articles of Predestination10 sometime during 1552 to withstand the onslaught of Trolliet and his Perrinist friends.11 Finally, Calvin intermittently dueled with the French Reformer Sebastian Castellio for much of the remainder of his second Genevan ministry. The author of three dialogues on predestination, election, and free will, Castellio engaged in controversy with Calvin on his doctrine of double predestination from 1554 to 1558. Calvin’s three works in response to Castellio were: (1) Response a certained calomnies et blasphemes dont quelques malins sefforcent de rendre la doctrine de la predestination de Dieu odieuse (1557),12 (2) Brevis responsio ad diluenda nebulonis cuiusdam calumnias quibus doctrinam de aeterna Dei praedestinatione foedare conatus est (1557),13 and (3) Calumniae nebulonis cuiusdam, quibis odio et invidia gravare conatus est doctrinam de occulta Dei providentia (1558).14 In addition to the seven works mentioned above, Calvin rounded out his controversial period with a variety of positive works in which he went on the offensive in presenting predestination doctrine. These works may be divided into two major groups: (1) his commentaries, including 1 and 2 Corinthians (1546– 1547); Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Timothy (1548); Titus and Hebrews (1549); 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and James (1550); Jude, 1 and 2 Peter (1551); Acts and Isaiah (1552); and John (1553), et alia; and (2) his confessional statements.15 In general, however, both these groups of writings add no essential elements to his predestinarian doctrine per se; rather, they are in the business of exegeting, clarifying, stressing, and reiterating it. The only exception to this is Calvin’s Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, also denominated the Genevan Consensus, which, although included in confessional statements,16 is nevertheless primarily a polemical writing (against Pighius and Georgius as outlined above). In sum, our pertinent discussion on Calvinian reprobation from 1542–1558 must center around Calvin’s seven polemical defenses and the issues at stake in the challenges of his four major predestination opponents, even though it must not be forgotten that Calvin continued to write on decretal subjects in his commentaries and confessional statements.

10 11 12 13 14

B. B. Warfield, “Predestination,” 102. CR, XIV, 371–83; Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 342; Walker, John Calvin, 320–21. CR, LVIII, 199–206. CR, IX, 253–66. CR, IX, 269–318; Cf. F. E. Buisson, Sebastian Castellion: sa vie et son oeuvre, 2 vols. (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1892), 1:2–3, 56–77, 103–27; A. Schweizer, “Sebastian Castellio als Bestreiter der calvinischen Pradestinationslehre,” Theologische Jahrbucher 10 (1851): 16–25; H. M. Stuckelberger, “Calvin und Castellio,” Zwingliana 7 (1939): 114–19. 15 Warfield, “Predestination,’” 64–65, 102–104, and Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, 84. 16 Warfield, “Predestination,” 63–64, 90–101.

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Briefly, Pighius’s chief arguments against Calvin’s reprobation doctrine included “that his teaching leads to moral licentiousness, that it implies God desires sin, that it causes men to hate God as an arbitrary tyrant, that it imposes necessity on man’s conduct and thereby destroys the notion of responsibility and guilt, and that it virtually denies the goodness of God since the possibility of salvation is open only to a few men.”17 Bolsec’s arguments were not dissimilar. First, Bolsec claimed it was a “pernicious opinion” that God would set from eternity the destiny of men, for none can be regarded by God as among the elect or reprobate apart from belief and unbelief. For Bolsec, “it was belief which preceded election and unbelief which preceded damnation.” Second, he asserted that double predestination from eternity makes God both a tyrant and the author of evil. Third, he argued that no biblical proof can be given that clearly asserts that God “willed, ordered, and determined” the fall of Adam. Fourth and finally, Bolsec challenged the notion of “the hidden will of God” as advocated by Calvin.18 Wiley writes that Trolliet rebuked Calvin primarily for “(1) relieving men of responsibility by affirming that God had caused Adam to fall, (2) for thereby making God the author of sin, and (3) by virtue of God’s causing the fall of Adam, necessarily imposing predestination upon mankind.”19 As for Castellio, his criticism of Calvin sprang from an assertion of God’s desire that all men be saved, and a denial that Adam’s sin had plunged mankind into spiritual bondage. Men were sinners by the habit of repeated choice, but not by fallen nature. Therefore Calvin’s error, Castellio said, consisted in making God the author of evil and destroying the freedom of man.20

Presuppositions of Calvin’s Response to the Controversies Calvin stated that prior to making a specific response to these theological challenges, one must have a certain foundation laid in the knowledge of God and of ourselves, as to “what is God’s and what is ours.”21 First, what belongs to God in every case is glory. Calvin said that “the final reason that moved God to elect us” is “that his grace might be praised by it, yes, not after a common and ordinary 17 Donnelly, Calvinism and Scholasticism, 137. Cf. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 137–39; Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 339–40; and Van Til, Theology of Daane, 49–57, who accuses Daane of having become a full-blooded Pighius. For Calvin’s direct refutation of Pighius on reprobation see CO, VIII, 313–318; Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 120–25. 18 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 135–37. See CO, VIII, 149, 157, 161, 179–80. 19 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 140. See CO, VIII, 180; cf. CO, XIV, 171–72. 20 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 140–43. 21 CO, VIII, 111, cited in Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 143.

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manner, but with a certain glory.”22 The ultimate purpose of the salvation of sinners does not consist in their own salvation, but in the glorification of God— thereby placing the debate about election and reprobation in a God-centered, and not man-centered context. What belongs to man is sin. For Calvin, an acknowledgment that sin permeates the whole life of natural man is a prerequisite for understanding why the salvation of any individual is possible only through double predestination. Man’s imprisonment to sin is total by nature, Calvin claims, “There is no salvation for man, save in the mercy of God, because in himself he is desperate and undone.”23 Wiley summarizes, In various ways Calvin described the totality of man’s imprisonment to sin: he was totally given over to evil, he was full of pollution and has in himself not even “a single taste or grain of purity,” in looking upon him God saw only “complete misery and poverty,” and in a striking analogy Calvin said that “just as a fish is nourished in water so men are confined in sin and iniquity.”24

Man’s sinfulness, moreover, cannot but yield unbelief. Hence, any spark of true faith must begin from, continue through, and end in God.25 Thus, election is the source of all saving benefits, apart from which God can never have mercy on grossly sinful man in himself.26 Calvin intends to undercut his numerous opponents’ arguments by returning to his penultimate explanation of the issue of sin and unbelief over against reprobation: “But if all whom the Lord predestines to death are naturally liable to sentence of death, of what injustice, pray, do they complain?”27 In other words, Calvin claims we all deserve to be condemned forever on account of the sin and unbelief irresistibly rooted in our corrupt natures. If we see truly what “is ours,” will not the miracle of election be much more staggering for us than the awesome decree of reprobation? For Calvin, the wonder of predestination is twofold: negatively, that not all are reprobated; positively, that any are elected. The response of Pighius, Bolsec, Trolliet, and Castellio to Calvin’s penultimate argument is unanimous: Even if all this were true, why did not God decree the miracle of election for all? If there is no distinction among men’s works—much

22 John Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1973), 42 (Eph. 1:6); cf. CO, VIII, 277. 23 Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 121. 24 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 145–46, citing CO, VIII, 95–96; XXXIII, 724. 25 Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 158–62. Cf. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 148–52. 26 CO, LVIII, 40; Klooster, Predestination, 47; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 148– 51. 27 Calvin, Institutes, 2.5.3; Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 133–41.

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less their faith—why did not God determine to save all for the sake of His own glory? In short, why and whence reprobation? The effect of these and similar questions was to drive Calvin to his renowned ultimate explanation, namely, that reprobation is of God, reprobation is both sovereign and just, reprobation serves to exalt divine glory, and, above all, reprobation is the will of God. Consequently, the answer to Pighius and company as to why God wills reprobation is this: We have no answer, for to attempt one is to seek for something higher than the will of God, which there is not—at least certainly not from the side and perspective of mere man. Hence, why God wills reprobation is not for us to know; indeed, we cannot even comprehend it. We need to embrace “instructed ignorance”28 and there let the matter rest, bearing in mind that we can understand this much: God is fully just in reprobating, for the reprobate are all hell-worthy sinners who have no right to cast charges of wrongdoing on God when their very lives reveal damnation as their just desert. Here is vintage Calvin refuting Pighius: Since a man may find the cause of his evil within himself, what is the use of looking round to seek it in heaven? . . . Though men delude themselves by wandering through obscure immensities, they can never so stupefy themselves as to lose the sense of sin engraved on their hearts. Hence, impiety attempts in vain to absolve the man whom his own conscience condemns. God knowingly and willingly suffers man to fall; the reason may be hidden, but it cannot be unjust…. God wills not iniquity…. In a wonderful and ineffable way, what was done contrary to His will was yet not done without His will, because it would not have been done at all unless He had allowed it. So He permitted it not unwillingly, but willingly…. in sinning, they did what God did not will in order that God through their evil will might do what He willed. If anyone objects that this is beyond his comprehension, I confess it…. Therefore let us be pleased with instructed ignorance rather than with the intemperate and inquisitive intoxication of wanting to know more than God allows. Let all the powers of the human mind contain themselves within this kind of reverence: in the sin of man God willed nothing but what was worthy of His justice.29

The Decreed Fall and Particular Reprobation The first and second major foci of the questions Calvin’s opponents challenge him to confront are inevitably interdependent. Out of the problem of sin and unbelief in the light of damnation flows the difficulty of the origins of this sin and unbelief in a decreed fall. Once again, Calvin refuses to flinch before his accusers. He determines to begin and end in the Word of God, declaring from the outset 28 Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 123. 29 Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 122–23.

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that “the inscrutable judgment of God [is] deeper than can be penetrated by man.”30 Unlike Pighius, he resists the temptation of human reason to confuse God with man or to reduce God to man’s level. Calvin thus questions, “Is there no justice of God, but that which is conceived of by us?”31 Rather than accepting Pighius’s answer, Calvin asserts fully both the sovereignty of God in decretal reprobation and the responsibility of man in voluntarily falling despite the irrevocable decree behind this fall. Calvin’s goal in pursuing this two-pronged argument of absolute divine sovereignty and absolute human responsibility is a scriptural attempt to keep at bay all charges against God of being the author or the real cause of sin, while simultaneously assigning full blame and guilt for all sin where it properly belongs—to fallen Adam and his descendants. His polemic follows: The nature of the whole human race was corrupted in the person of Adam. Not that the still higher and deeper purpose of God did not precede the whole. But it was from this fountain that the curse of God commenced its operation. From this source began, in effect, the destruction of the human race. Correspondingly, the apostle testifies that God had afore prepared the “vessels of mercy” unto glory…. For although long before the fall of Adam God had, for secret reasons of His own, decreed what He would do, yet we read in the Scripture that nothing was, or is, condemned by Him but sin…. What we maintain is this: that man was so created, and placed in such a condition, that he could have no cause whatever of complaint against his Maker. God foresaw the fall of Adam, and most certainly His suffering him to fall was not contrary to, but according to, His divine will…. Adam could not but fall, according to the foreknowledge and will of God. What then? Is Adam on that account freed from guilt? Certainly not. He fell by his own full free will, and by his own willing act….

Calvin then concludes: And though Adam fell not, nor destroyed himself and his posterity, either without the knowledge or without the ordaining will of God, yet that neither lessens his own fault, nor implicates God in any blame whatsoever. For we must ever carefully bear in mind that Adam, of his own will and accord, deprived himself of that perfect righteousness which he had received from God; and that, of his own accord and will, he gave himself up to the service of sin and Satan, and thus precipitated himself into eternal destruction. Here, however, men will continually offer one uniform excuse for Adam—that it was not possible for him to help or avoid that which God Himself had decreed. But to establish the guilt of Adam for ever, his own voluntary transgression is enough, and more than sufficient. Nor, indeed, is the secret counsel of God the real and virtual cause of sin but manifestly the will and inclination of man.32

30 Cole, Calvin’s Calvinism, 32. 31 Cole, Calvin’s Calvinism, 32. 32 Cole, Calvin’s Calvinism, 76, 89, 92, 93, 125.

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Out of this line of reasoning grew Calvin’s renowned distinction between God as the remote cause of events and man as the proximate cause of his own actions: If then, nothing can prevent a man from acknowledging that the first origin of his ruin was from Adam, and if each man find the proximate cause of his ruin in himself, what can prevent our faith from acknowledging afar off, with all sobriety, and adoring, with all humility, that remote secret counsel of God by which the fall of man was thus preordained? And what should prevent the same faith from beholding, at the same time, the proximate cause within; that the whole human race is individually bound by the guilt and desert of eternal death, as derived from the person of Adam; and that all are in themselves, therefore, subject to death, and to death eternal? Pighius, therefore, has not sundered, shaken, or altered (as he thought he had done) that pre-eminent and most beautiful symmetry with which these proximate and remote causes divinely harmonize! 33

From the extended quotation above it is evident that the distinction of proximate and remote causes is of prime importance for Calvin and it greatly assists him in achieving four major goals. First, Calvin believes that this distinction refutes a variety of distinctions propounded by his antagonists. Specifically, it negates Castellio’s thesis of God’s permissive will,34 by which he taught God did not cause evil in any way, but merely permitted it. Furthermore, this distinction undermines Pighius’s dichotomizing of the will of God as absolute versus ordained, which necessarily implies events occurring outside of the boundary of the divine will. Through his proximate/remote distinction, Calvin argues against Castellio that to confine God to mere permission is to deprive Him of His rightful role as Judge and Sovereign.35 And it allows him to maintain against Pighius that there is no ultimate cause for the fall outside the will of God; besides, no culpability tinges the holy and just divine will at that level since “removing from God all proximate causation of the act [of the fall] at the same time removes from Him all guilt and leaves man alone liable.”36 Second, by means of the proximate/remote distinction, Calvin not only leaves God in full control but preserves the particularity of His relationship to man. Indeed, the failure to acknowledge the validity of this distinction, Calvin declares, is precisely where his opponents err; moreover, a host of errors follows in the wake of this one, leading ultimately to blatant heresy and confusion; “[It is not

33 Cole, Calvin’s Calvinism, 91 (emphasis added). On the remote and promimate causes of damnation, see Sinnema, “Calvin’s View of Reprobation,” in Calvin for Today, 128–31. 34 Cf. Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin, 128, in the light of Klooster’s reminder: “Permission must not be confused with the term permissive decree employed by some Reformed theologians. The permissive decree concerns God’s decree and His will. Calvin was contemplating a distinction between will and permission.” Klooster, Predestination, 67. 35 Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 59–61. 36 Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 123–28.

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surprising that Pighius] should indiscriminately confuse everything in the judgments of God, when he does not distinguish between causes proximate and remote.”37 Specifically, if God is not acknowledged as the remote cause of the fall, particular reprobation must soon give way, and eventually, particular election as well. If there is a reason outside the will of God for the reprobation of certain people, then by implication others who are not reprobated are favored on account of merit or lack of demerit. Furthermore, as Calvin saw it, if particular election is denied, the most solid defense of utterly gratuitous redemption is obliterated. The doctrine of sovereign grace is then abandoned for the inclusion of human merit, which posits an imaginary salvation that refuses to reckon with the seriousness of sin, the depth of the fall, and, above all, the bondage of the will. Third, distinguishing of proximate and remote causes is an invaluable asset for Calvin’s delicate presentation that balances election and reprobation as equally ultimate and yet not fully parallel.38 As the cause of election and reprobation, God’s sovereignty by very definition demands equal ultimacy in the sense that the will of God is just as much the cause of reprobation as it is of election. Calvin is plain that neither sin nor foreknowledge is the cause of either election or reprobation; the cause of both must be the divine will.39 Nevertheless, the insertion of a proximate cause of sin, fall, and condemnation allows Calvin to avoid divine arbitrariness and fatalism, for in this sense election and reprobation are by no means parallel. The proximate cause allows for the most radical of all nonparallel elements, namely, that election is foundationally gratuitous while reprobation is foundationally just and meritorious. Election is gratuitous in virtue of the just and yet undeserved mercy of God realized in and through Jesus Christ. Other non-parallel elements in Calvin’s thought include an accentuated role of Christ in election, the glorification of various divine attributes in election and reprobation respectively, and a major emphasis in preaching and writing placed on election.40 Parallel elements include 37 Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 100. 38 Joel R. Beeke, “Election and Reprobation: Calvin on Equal Ultimacy,” Banner of Truth, no. 489 (June 2004): 8–19. 39 Calvin, Institutes, 3.22.11; 3.23.1, 2, 5, 8, 13–14, etc.; Commentary on Rom. 9:14, 18, 22. See Klooster, Predestination, 60, for an excellent summary. See also John Murray, Calvin on Scripture and Divine Sovereignty (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1960), 60; Herman, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 198–99; Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin, 107–108; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 114, 245–46; Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 90–91; Wendel, Calvin, 272–73; Boer, Doctrine of Reprobation, 12; Moreau, “Divine Foreordination and Human Responsibility,” 20–21, 37–40; Walker, John Calvin, 417–18; Cornelius Van Til, Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1955), 415–16; Marion Conditt, More Acceptable than Sacrifice: Ethics and Election as Obedience to God’s Will in the Theology of Calvin (Basel: Friedrich Reinhardt Kommissionsverlag, 1973), 104. 40 Klooster, Predestination, 51–52; cf. Muller’s warning relative to attributes in his “Predes-

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ultimate causation in the sovereign will of God, equality in contributing to divine glory,41 the negation of works as a cause of the decree, the eternal duration of consequent destinies,42 and the means of attaining the end results of election and reprobation, i. e., as equally decreed, though reprobation is “effected in the ‘reverse way’ from election.”43 Though human action can never play the role of proximate cause in divine election, since no individual can merit God’s sovereign choosing, sinful actions certainly involve themselves as the proximate cause of the condemnatory aspect of reprobation. Sinful actions, however, are not the proximate cause of the decretal act itself. Miskin writes, “Human sinful action is the proximate cause of the condemnation aspect of reprobation, but Calvin never referred to it as even a proximate cause of election.”44 Klooster is helpful at this juncture: While God sovereignly passes some by in His decretive will, the ground of His final condemnation of them is their sin and guilt. This sin is our sin…. It is important to observe, however, that sin is not the ground or the proximate cause of God’s ultimate discrimination between elect and reprobate…. On this proximate cause Calvin did place great emphasis, and concentration upon it makes crystal clear that God is just; the blame for sin and final condemnation is ours, not God’s.45

To grasp Calvin’s precise thought here, it is essential to understand that he did not view sin and guilt as the ground of eternal reprobation, but as the proximate cause of condemnation in time only: “When God prefers some to others, choosing some and passing others by, the difference does not depend on human dignity or indignity. It is therefore wrong to say that the reprobate are worthy of eternal destruction,”46 i. e., as though the elect were not. Concerning the ground of reprobation, J. Hoek comments, “In response to the inquiry regarding the grounds for reprobation, Calvin does not give an unequivocal and rationally transparent answer. He bows in the dust before God’s sovereign majesty, saying with Paul, ‘Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?’ (Rom. 9:20). At the same time, however, he addresses with an outstretched arm all who harden themselves in unbelief, saying, “‘Thou art the man’ (2 Sam. 12:7). You must look for the cause of your punishment within yourself.”47

41 42 43 44 45 46 47

tination and Christology,” 88; Murray, Calvin on Scripture, 62; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 247–48. See Reid, introduction to Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 35, for the best insight on this critical point. Murray, Calvin on Scripture, 60–61. Klooster, Predestination, 77–79; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 239–47. Arthur Miskin, “Calvin on Predestination,” Puritan Reformed Journal 6, no. 2 (July 2014): 51. Klooster, Predestination, 76–77. Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 120–21. J. Hoek, “De Grond van de Verwerping,” Theologia Reformata 18 (1975): 131: “Op de vraag naar de grond van de verwerping geeft [Calvin] geen eenduidig, rationeel doorzichtig ant-

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Further clarification may be had by taking into account Calvin’s frequently overlooked distinction of a supernatural and a natural order. Calvin limited the proximate cause to the natural order only, which reinforced his conviction that sin and guilt had no role in the decretal aspect of reprobation (on the supernatural order), though it was intimately involved in the condemnatory aspect of reprobation (on the natural order). Hence, for Calvin, God not only is not but could not be the author of evil, for culpability can never extend beyond the natural order.48 Consequently, as Reid says, “that God is indeed the remote cause of all things as little removes culpability from the human agent as it destroys the reality of the natural order of necessity.”49 Failure to understand Calvin walking the tightrope between parallelism and non-parallelism in respective aspects of election and reprobation has caused much confusion—particularly in the ongoing debate on Calvin’s view of reprobation, as Klooster has pointed out.50 In a word, as Calvin succinctly states, “none undeservedly perish,”51 for condemnation, while sovereignly executed, is always related to human sin and guilt.52 Bavinck says, “Every one of them (Zwingli, Calvin, Beza, Zanchius, Go-

48 49 50

51 52

woord. Hij knielt in het stof voor Gods souvereine majesteit: ‘O mens–wie zijt gij die tegen God antwoordt?” (Rom. 9:20). Tegelijkertijd spreekt hij met uitgestoken vinger naar ieder die zich verhardt in ongeloof: ‘gij zijt die man!’ (2 Sam. 12:7). De oorzaak van de straf is in uzelf te zoeken” [translation mine]; cf. additional helpful comments, 131–32. Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 113–20. Reid, introduction to Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 25. Klooster, Predestination, 71n. In addition to Dowey, The Knowledge of God, 211–12, T. F. Torrance, Kingdom and Church (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1956), 107, Quistorp, “Sichtbare und unsichtbare Kirche bei Calvin,” 144ff., Paul VanBuren, Christ in Our Place: The Substitutionary Character of Calvin’s Doctrine of Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), 102–106, and the various writings of Daane; confusion has been added by Boer, who tries to ignore the condemnatory aspect of reprobation as one that is joined to the proximate cause of demerit. Norman Shepherd’s address, “Reprobation in Covenant Perspective: The Reformed Doctrine,” correctly points out the fallacy of attempting to detach demerit from reprobation (cf. Boer, Doctrine of Reprobation, 31–35, 49) Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 125. Cf. Murray, Calvin on Scripture, 55–71, especially 61. Later Reformed theology would take Calvin’s implications further by developing the formal distinction in the late medieval terminology of negative and positive reprobation—the former characterizing God’s act as of the nature of a praeteritio (preterition or passing over) or an indebitae gratiae negatio (the denial of unmerited grace); the latter, as praedamnatio (predamnation) or debitae poenae destinatio (pre-ordaining to merited punishment). Cf. Sinnema, “Calvin’s View of Reprobation,” in Calvin for Today, 123; “Issue of Reprobation,” 32–40, 76–77, 87–88, 107–110, 112; A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology (Chicago: Bible Institute, 1878), 222; Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:453; Baker, Berkouwer’s Doctrine of Election, 115; Alexander Comrie, “Over de praedestinatie,” in Alexander Comrie and Nicolaus Holtius, Examen van het Ontwerp van tolerantie, om de leere in de Dordrechtse Synode Anno 1619 vastgesteld met de veroordeelde leere der Remonstranten te verenigen (Amsterdam: Nicolaas Byl, 1753–1759), 7:455; Van Til, Theology of Daane, 84–85; Hunt, “Predestination,” 40; Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin, 128; Engelsma,

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marus, Comrie, et al.) has maintained that God is not the author of sin, that humans were not created for perdition, that in reprobation also the severity of God’s justice is manifested.”53 Since culpability attaches itself to the proximate cause of any sinful action, and is so completely absorbed by it, no guilt can or need remain for attachment to the remote cause—hence, God is always righteous and man is always guilty. Moreover, our very consciences confirm this truth, for condemnation is that part of reprobation that we can understand and endorse by the “internal feeling of the heart,” which gives a sense of sin and a conviction that the decree of God to perdition necessarily involves “righteous severity” ( justa severitas).54 Selderhuis writes, “Even when the deepest causes for their blindness lie hidden in the secret purposes of God, their conscience yet accuses them of their own guilt.”55 In this connection, Calvin sometimes prefers to label proximate and remote causes as evident and hidden causes, in order to encourage this heart-sense of guilt: I teach that a man ought to search for the cause of his condemnation in his corrupt nature rather than in the predestination of God…. I expressly state that there are two causes: the one hidden in the eternal counsel of God, and the other manifest in the sin of man…. Here then, is the very core of the whole question: I say that all the reprobate will be convicted of guilt by their own conscience and that thus their condemnation is righteous, and that they err in neglecting what is quite evident to enter instead into the secret counsel of God which to us is inaccessible.56

Finally, Calvin’s proximate/remote distinction moves him closer to presenting a coherent, systematic doctrine of reprobation that is consistent with the rest of his theology. By asserting that ill-desert is not the reason for decretal determination,

53 54 55 56

“The Reformed Doctrine of Reprobation,” 156. Hence, the decree of reprobation came to be thought of as being realized by means of man’s own guilt. Cf. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:396; Amandus Polanus, The Substance of Christian Religion, trans. E. W. (London: R. F., 1595), 251; William Perkins, The Workes of That Famovs and Vvorthy Minister of Christ in the Vniuersitie of Cambridge, Mr. William Perkins, 3 vols. (Cambridge: John Legate, 1612–13), 1:769; Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. Ernst Bizer, trans. G. W. Thomson (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1950), 132; W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971), 1:409n. Note also the Westminster Confession’s Calvinian balance at this juncture (chap. 3, sec. 7). Cf. Van Til, Defense, 413–14.; Murray, Calvin on Scripture, 61. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:388. Cf. Donnelly, Calvinism and Scholasticism, 133; Cunningham, Reformers, 550–51. Calvin, Commentary on Rom. 9:11; for an outstanding synopsis of Calvin’s justa severitas, cf. Murray, Calvin on Scripture, 62. Herman J. Selderhuis, Calvin’s Theology of the Psalms, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 104. See Calvin, Commentary on Ps. 69:27. Quoted in Holmes Rolston III., John Calvin versus the Westminster Confession (Richmond: John Knox, 1972), 31–32; cf. CO, XIV, 379.

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but only the cause for the condemnation executed in the case of the reprobate, Calvin acknowledges the judicial or penal aspect of reprobation while refusing to detract from the absolutely sovereign will of God.57 Consequently, the proximate/ remote distinction allows Calvin to maintain both that saving faith is not irrational and that it is ultimately “impossible for man to penetrate the relation of God’s counsel to human responsibility.”58 Though faith avoids gross irrationality, not all mystery is taken away. God’s incomprehensible, sovereign, perfectly just, and holy will59 remains the ultimate answer to reprobation contentions—as indeed it must if reprobation is allowed to come to systematic fruition, declaring that God is God over against man. Calvin says, “But how it was ordained by the foreknowledge and decree of God what man’s future was without God being implicated as associate in the fault as the author or approver of transgression, is clearly a secret so much excelling the insight of the human mind, that I am not ashamed to confess ignorance.”60 And again: For although God did not create the sins of men, who but God did create the natures of men themselves? which are, in themselves, undoubtedly good, but from which there were destined to proceed evils and sins according to the pleasure of His will, and, in many, such sins as would be visited with eternal punishment. If it be asked, Why did God create such natures? The reply is, Because He willed to create them. Why did He so will? “Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God?”61

In short, by asserting the universal agency of God, by repudiating philosophical explanations as to how His agency operates, and by recognizing the importance of proximate causes for daily life, Calvin develops a remarkably complete and coherent doctrine of reprobation in contrast to election. Calvin

57 Murray, Calvin on Scripture, 63–64: “The formula, ‘the equal ultimacy of election and reprobation’ is not one that, in my judgment, is most felicitous because it is liable, by reason of its brevity, to obscure the penal, judicial, and hell-deserving ingredient which must enter into the concept of reprobation. But we must not affirm less than the equal ultimacy of the pure sovereignty of God’s good pleasure in election and reprobation and that the sovereign discrimination that is exemplified in election is brought to bear upon reprobation at the point of its judicial execution as well as at the point of preterition.” This concept of Calvinian reprobation is not given justice by Berkouwer due to his distaste for all that smacks of causality. Berkouwer, Divine Election, 177–79, 187–90; Baker, Berkouwer’s Doctrine of Election, 76, 81– 82, 87. 58 Van Til, Theology of Daane, 52. Van Til adds, “[Calvin] maintains asymmetry, mystery against the rationalism of Pighius. He also maintains symmetry against the irrationalism of Pighius.” 59 Polman summarizes Calvin’s stress on the will of God under these major heads: “Ondoorgrondelijk!. . . Souverein!. . . Volkomen rechtvaardig en heilig!” Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 349–52. 60 Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 124. 61 Cole, Calvin’s Calvinism, 70.

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achieves this feat without falling prey to the error of positing a double will in God.62

Soteriology and Reprobation The systematic presentation of reprobation is essential for upholding systematic salvific election. It is the concern for a sound doctrine of salvation that motivates Calvin to be so remarkably consistent in response to his assailants in seven works written over seventeen years. Consequently, it is inaccurate to say of Calvin’s polemical years that he moved predestination from a soteriological emphasis to a more abstract theology proper so as to defend reprobation and his conception of double predestination.63 Rather, Calvin learns to embrace the parity of election and reprobation—insofar as they are rooted in the will of God—precisely out of a soteriological concern.64 Equal ultimacy must be taught, for it maintains and undergirds a biblical doctrine of soteriology that glorifies God in His triune being and perfections.65 This systematic treatment of reprobation Calvin finalizes in the 1559 Institutes.

62 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 247–49; Cunningham, Reformers, 454–56; Murray, Calvin on Scripture, 68; George Hendry, “Election and Vocation on the Basis of Calvin,” in De L’Election Eternelle de Dieu (Geneva: Editions Labor, 1936), 89; Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyrault Heresy, 188–91; Niesel, Theology of John Calvin, 238–39; Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 37—in the light of Institutes, 3.24.17. 63 E. g., Otten, Calvins theologische, 90, 132–35. 64 As Wiley writes, “To clarify to his opponents’ satisfaction how God’s justice related to mankind and to individual men, [Calvin] would have had to alter his basic affirmation of gratuitous justification through particular election, for it was particular election—and its corollary of particular rejection—which his opponents saw as the injustice on God’s part. But he could not make this change, for it was particular election which saved and nothing else. Hence, although one could admit incomprehensibility regarding the justice of God, particular election and rejection could not be surrendered. Accordingly, those aspects of his doctrine of predestination which were more immediately derived out of the doctrine of God—such as the ordination of the fall—were like petals surrounding a bud and not a different flower replacing one which had bloomed earlier” (Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 166–167). 65 I.e., the notion of equal ultimacy propounded above—not the precise terminology itself, which, of course, was anachronistic with respect to Calvin. As Reid notes: “[Calvin] regularly contented himself with a juxtaposition of the two counsels; and from this one can only conclude that he thinks of them as equal expressions of God’s disposition toward men” Reid, introduction to Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 36.

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Reprobation Positively Presented: The 1559 Institutes The interim editions of the Institutes (1543–1554) add nothing substantial in the area of predestination except additional quotations from Augustine correlative to Calvin’s polemics.66 Though greatly enlarged (by roughly eighty percent from his original Institutes) and divided into four books and eighty chapters, Calvin’s 1559 Institutes67 posits nothing substantially new in the four chapters set aside for the examination of predestination (3.21 through 3.24). Just as he wrote in the 1539/1541 Institutes, so he offers the same definition two decades later: We call predestination God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death.68

Calvin’s defense of predestination is nevertheless augmented throughout, as would be expected in light of the preceding decades, and several items seem to be stressed more than before.69 Wiley mentions the following: The refutation of a new objection to predestination [i. e., that predestination made all admonitions meaningless]…. Further, reflecting the increased need to hold a doctrine of particular predestination . . . he pointed out how election protected the graciousness of God. In addition, he brought over from the controversy period his statement that election cannot truly stand without the correlative doctrine of reprobation. Finally, in agreement with the heightened precision found in the controversy period, he revised his 1539 statement on the relationship of election and faith to bring it into line with the explicit statements of the controversy period that election preceded faith. There was one “new” element added to the 1559 Institutes, although one clearly anticipated, that Christ was the author of election.70

The major difference in the 1559 Institutes is clearly the increased theological precision and uniformity, or, as Polman expresses it, samenvatting or “summing up”—that is, here Calvin’s developed doctrine of reprobation is summarized and recapitulated in a helpful and perspicuous way. Though Calvin says nothing novel in his treatment of reprobation in the 1559 Institutes, his summary is both effective and practical. Placed in book 3 together with election by Calvin’s explicit

66 Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 337–39. 67 Institutio Christianae Religionis (Geneva: Estienne, 1559). 68 Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.5. Cf. Calvin, Institutes (1541), 467; Sinnema, “Calvin’s View of Reprobation,” in Calvin for Today, 120n20. 69 For a detailed chart of such augmentation see Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 354. 70 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 163–64; cf. Calvin, Institutes, Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.1; 3.23.13. Cf. the conclusion concerning the role of Christ in predestination.

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wish,71 reprobation is accorded a significant place and major import within his theology as a systematic whole. Calvin’s focus remains on showing that also this doctrine is designed to promote genuine piety (pietas). As Clark writes, “Ignorance of this doctrine has two effects: First, it diminishes the glory of God. Second, it detracts from true humility.”72

Reprobation Plainly Preached: The 1562 Sermons on Jacob and Esau Calvin continued to preach and write on predestination after the 1559 Institutes. In September 1559, he began preaching through Genesis, and in 1562 the French text of his sermons on Jacob and Esau (Gen. 25:12–27:38) were printed as a separate book and then translated into English in 1579.73 On the text in which God announces that “the elder shall serve the younger” for the as yet unborn brothers (Gen. 25:23), Calvin said, “For both these were descended of Abraham, yea they were twins, their mother bare them in one belly: yet that one is received, and the other rejected: one is chosen, and the other refused.”74 These two represented two sets of people in God’s purposes: “He chose according to his liberty, such as he thought good, and that the rest should remain in their accursed state.”75 Predestination produces results: God gives His Spirit to the elect to stir them to strive for heaven; God lets loose the bridle of the reprobate so that the wisest of them live for this passing world.76 Calvin emphasized that our practical response to God’s predestination should be humility and worship. Since God made this declaration before Jacob and Esau were born (Rom. 9:11), it is clear that God’s choice had nothing to do with “their merits,” and we can do nothing more than “adore with astonishment the secret counsel of God.”77 Election and reprobation are not based upon God’s foresight of anything good in individual men, “for what could he foresee, but this corrupted mass of Adam, that brings forth no other fruit but malediction?”78 God has “just cause” to hate the entire fallen human race for its sins; yet Calvin takes his hearers even further back than God’s justice against a fallen race to before the 71 Calvin wrote that he was satisfied only with the definitive placement of subjects in the 1559 Institutes. 72 Clark, “Election and Predestination,” in Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes, 108. 73 David J. Engelsma, foreword to John Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation (Audubon, N.J.: Old Paths, 1996), vii–viii. 74 Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, 27. 75 Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, 28. 76 Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, 94, 105. 77 Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, 31. 78 Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, 39.

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fall and creation itself, where we find no answers except the majesty of God, and “here we must hold ourselves mute and be still.”79 God has His reasons, Calvin said, and they are not for us to know, “but the counsel of God ought to be unto us in all respects the rule of righteousness, wisdom, and equity.”80 God’s purpose is His praise: “God will have the whole praise of our salvation to be attributed to him. For what is the root and beginning of the church? It is his election.”81 Therefore, Calvin admonished his audience to take care not to respond to the doctrine of predestination as “dogs” or “hogs.” Canine respondents bark and growl at God over this doctrine, and would tear Scripture apart to avoid God’s sovereignty. Spiritual swine embrace divine predestination, but only to excuse their rebellion against God while wallowing in their sins. Instead, like Malachi in the first chapter of his prophecy, Calvin preached election and reprobation to emphasize the absolute grace of God in order to move men to holiness of life.82 Thus Calvin characteristically ended with prayer: But now let us fall down before the majesty of our good God, in acknowledging of our faults, praying him that he will in such sort make us to feel them, that it may be to humble us, and to draw us to true repentance, to the end, we may renounce all our fleshly lusts and affections: and that being so cast down in ourselves, we may be enlightened by the power of his Holy Spirit, to the end to serve and honor him all the time of our life: and that by this means we may so much the more be stirred up to give ourselves wholly to him, knowing that we hold all of his mere goodness: and that this may be to glorify his holy name, not only in mouth but in our whole life.83

For Calvin, predestination was a call to piety.

79 80 81 82 83

Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, 44. Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, 36–37. Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, 37. Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, 45–46. Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, 47, emphasis added.

Chapter 12: Conclusions and Implications of Calvinian Reprobation

The implications of Calvinian reprobation for other theological issues are much greater than is usually acknowledged. We now turn to these implications by way of conclusion—implications that powerfully reveal how the historical development of one Calvinian doctrine testifies that Calvin aptly earned his Melanchthonian title as “The Theologian.” Confirming Melanchthon’s approbation— despite the rise of advanced systematicians after Calvin’s day—the study of Calvinian reprobation conveys an abiding conviction that our Genevan forebear was not only a prince among Reformed exegetes but “the Reformed Theologian” par excellence. From embryonic (1535–1538) through elaborated (1538–1541) to fully systematized (1542–1559) reprobation, Calvin never wavers in his major goals: first, the ultimate end of glorifying God in His sovereignty and grace within the context of soteriology.1 Klooster notes, “Three complex factors work together in contributing to God’s glory: the eternal decree of God, the wickedness of man, and the final condemnation of the unbeliever by a just God.”2 Hence, Calvin could write, “The whole world is constituted for the end of being a theatre of His glory.”3 Second, the proximate end of sanctification, as for all doctrine—including reprobation —is the welfare of the elect.4 Specifically, reprobation ought to keep 1 2 3 4

Commentary on Eph. 1:4–6; cf. Klooster, Predestination, 42–43, 79–81. Klooster, Predestination, 80. Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 97. Within the plethora of saving benefits, Calvin lays special stress on assurance in Christ. For further study of this topic see Joel R. Beeke, The Quest for Full Assurance: The Legacy of Calvin and His Successors (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1999), 36–72; Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 160; Walker, John Calvin, 416–17; DeKoster, “Living Themes in the Thought of John Calvin,” 248; James Henley Thornwell, Collected Writings (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1874), 2:188; Hopfl, Christian Polity, 234–39; Niesel, Theology of John Calvin, 163–64, 169–81; Baker, Berkouwer’s Doctrine of Election, 162–69; Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin, 102– 103, 132; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 157–58; Wendel, Calvin, 275–77; Paul Helm, Calvin and the Calvinists (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), 23–24; William

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the elect humble and teach them to look to the mercy of God while continually exalting the glory of God. Chalker provides a helpful summary of Calvin here; though elsewhere, through Dowey’s influence, he wrongfully minimizes Calvinian reprobation, he rightly concludes: The real use of the doctrine of double predestination is for the believers, to convince them that there is absolutely nothing of their own, of which they can boast, which distinguishes them from non-believers…. They are not ‘one whit’ different in themselves from non-believers. Their present favor in God’s sight can be attributed to nothing of their own—merit, decision, acknowledgment, or the like—but solely to the fact that God has discerned them in Christ. Far, then, from being merely a product of idle speculation, the doctrine of double predestination functions as a testimony to Christ, reminding believers that their confidence cannot be placed on themselves, but that it really rests on the promise of mercy in Jesus Christ.5

Accordingly, double predestination must be preached “openly and fully,”6 albeit with wisdom and reverence.7 Predestination and preaching are closely linked, for it is by means of the ministry of the Word that God executes His decree, granting grace through the Word to the elect but withholding such grace from the

Chalker, “Calvin and Some Seventeenth Century English Calvinists” (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1961), 70–71, 80–83; Leroy Nixon, John Calvin, Expository Preacher (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950), 86–93; Berkouwer, Divine Election, ch. 9; Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 20–21; Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 369–71; Wallace, Puritans and Predestination, 198–202; Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 68–69, 91; Klooster, Predestination, 50–51. For Calvin’s position on the so-called syllogismus practicus see W. Balke, “The Word of God and Experientia According to Calvin,” in Calvinua Ecclesiae Doctor, ed. W. H. Neuser (Kampen: Kok, 1978), 29; Helm, Calvin and the Calvinists, 28–29; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 3–4; Chalker, “Calvin,” 76n; Conditt, More Acceptable than Sacrifice, 106–13; Klooster, Predestination, 51–52; Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 59; Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 92. 5 Chalker, “Calvin,” 81–82. Cf. Hopfl, Christian Polity, 228–30, 233; Barth, Church Dogmatics II/ 2, 37; Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 96, 133; Klooster, Predestination, 17–19; Hunt, “Predestination,” 45; Thornwell, Collected Writings, 2:186–87, 191; Niesel, Theology of John Calvin, 168. 6 Commentary on 2 Tim. 1:8–9. In this vein, Calvin maintained the free offer of grace, testifying, “They that think to abolish the doctrine of God’s election destroy as much as possible the salvation of the world” (ibid.), to which is coupled endless assertions that the offer of salvation comes to all who hear the gospel (Institutes, 3.24.1, 2, 8, 17). For further study, cf. Baker, Berkouwer’s Doctrine of Election, 144–45; Moreau, “Divine Foreordination and Human Responsibility,” 51–59; Van der Zanden, Praedestinatie: Onze verkiezing in Christus (Kampen: Kok, 1949), 88–94; Klooster, Predestination, 85; and numerous references in Engelsma’s series of articles, where this offer is denied in typical Protestant Reformed fashion (consult Herman Hoeksema, De Plaats der Verwerping in de Verkondiging des Evangelies [Grand Rapids: n.p., 1927], 18–22). 7 Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.14; 3.24.5.

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reprobate.8 This withholding is not merely passive on the side of God; rather, as Klooster writes, “in reprobation He withholds, hardens, and blinds.”9

Reprobation and Christ the Mediator Inevitably, this active role of God in executing reprobation by withholding and hardening raises the difficult question of Christ’s role (if any) in reprobation. Certainly Christ is central to election, both in its decree and its execution. Stephen Edmundson writes, “Christ for Calvin is both the author and the artisan of our election into his kingdom, choosing us in communion with the Father and the Spirit and then working out our salvation in his office as Mediator.”10 It appears that Calvin says little about Christ’s personal involvement in the execution of reprobation, though He was not excluded from the trinitarian decision involved in the decree of reprobation—with the possible exception of Christ’s judgment at the end of time.11 Commenting on the promise of Psalm 110:1 that Christ’s enemies will be made His footstool, Calvin says that, “This prediction will not be accomplished until the last day,” and, “Moreover, in this passage he is speaking solely of the reprobate who fall under Christ’s feet to their own ruin and destruction.”12 Though Calvin never hints at a trinitarian framework for reprobation’s execution, he certainly includes all of God’s decretal work within his trinitarian formula of primary but not exclusive attribution while holding that the external 8 Klooster, Predestination, 44–45, 81–83, who quotes from 3.21.1, 7; 3.22.10; 3.24.1, 2, 11–13, and a number of additional citations from Calvin’s writings. Nevertheless, Calvin always regarded the external call in the preaching of the gospel as evidence of God’s goodness. Klooster, Predestination, 84. 9 Klooster, Predestination, 81. For further study on divine hardening, cf. Institutes, 3.24.12–14; Berkouwer, Divine Election, 213–17; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 409n; Baker, Berkouwer’s Doctrine of Election, 149–50; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 78. For the closely correllative question asking whether or not God hates the reprobate see Klooster, Predestination, 86; Baker, Berkouwer’s Doctrine of Election, 143–46; Thornwell, Collected Writings, 2:162; DeKoster, “Living Themes in the Thought of John Calvin,” 249; and Institutes, 3.24.17. Despite elements of hardening and hatred, however, Calvin clearly argues for the maintenance of full human responsibility, as already discussed. For further study, cf. Moreau, “Divine Foreordination and Human Responsibility,” section III; Baker, Berkouwer’s Doctrine of Election, 115–50; Cunningham, Reformers, 551–52; Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 22– 23; Donnelly, Calvinism and Scholasticism, 140–41; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 45–46; Rolston, John Calvin, ch. 2. 10 Stephen Edmundson, Calvin’s Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 147. 11 Calvin, Institutes, 2.15.5; 2.16.17; cf. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 287–89, whose comments here are invaluable. 12 Calvin, Commentary on Ps. 110:1.

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works of the Trinity are undivided.13 Calvin said, “To the Father is attributed the beginning of activity, and the fountain and wellspring of all things; to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and the ordered disposition of all things; but to the Spirit is assigned the power and efficacy of the activity.”14 Hence it must follow that the Spirit works the hardening of the hearts of the reprobate in them, and withholds from them anything that would save them. However, Calvin did not focus as much attention on Christ’s divine activity in election and reprobation. Wiley explains, Why the role of Christ as elector and rejector was not more strongly stressed by Calvin was because the theological debate about salvation in the sixteenth century was centered upon those things more immediately connected with the individual believer, his actions, efforts, worth, freedom, and faith. In that context, the concern was to refute meritorious works. In pursuing that task Calvin felt it sufficient to say, on the one hand, that election was because of God alone, and, on the other, that election in Christ demonstrated the preclusion of such meritorious bases. Other times and other basic problems might have dictated that Christ as elector be given more explicit treatment.15

Another question is the relation of the supralapsarian-infralapsarian debate to Calvin. Basically, there are six schools of thought on Calvin’s position: (1) Calvin was supralapsarian;16 (2) he was infralapsarian; (3) the whole problem is irrelevant since it is anachronistic to Calvin; (4) neither supra nor infra is a valid option for Calvin since he refused to speculate on decretal theology; (5) he would have tilted to the supra side had he lived through the heat of the debate; and (6) a combination of all five of the above, with the explanation that Calvin was basically supra when considering matters from God’s perspective of sovereign will and basically infra when dealing with man’s perspective of human responsibility.17 No conclusive demonstration has yet won the field on this 13 Cf. Klooster, Predestination, 57–58, 77; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 286, 296–298. 14 Calvin, Institutes, 1.13.18 15 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 298–99. 16 A recent argument that Calvin was supralapsarian may be found in J. V. Fesko, Diversity within the Reformed Tradition: Supra- and Infralapsarianism in Calvin, Dort, and Westminster (Greenville, S.C.: Reformed Academic Press, 2001), 57–149. 17 See especially Klaas Dijk, De Strijd over Infra- en Supralapsarianisme in de Gereformeerde Kerken van Nederland (Kampen: Kok, 1912). Cf. Berkouwer, Divine Election, 17n and chapter 8; Cunningham, Reformers, 364–65, and Historical Theology, 2:435–36; Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 118–25; Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:361–66, 383–92; Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, 127–45; Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 349, 377; Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 55–56; Dowey, The Knowledge of God, 213–14; Van Til, Theology of Daane, 84–85, 89; Thornwell, Collected Writings, 2:110; Packer, “Calvin the Theologian,” 174n; Herman, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 195; Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin, 126–28; Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 10–11, 83–84, 110–116; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” v, 91, 100n, 223–38; Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, 113–15; Boer,

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question, in part because Calvin does not seem to have explicitly addressed the order of the decrees of predestination, creation, and the fall. Calvin’s emphasis on election in Christ should not be taken to imply that the non-elect are similarly “reprobated in Christ.” Some would go so far as to say that the involvement of Christ in reprobation must be limited to the activity of His deity and never be allowed to enter into His mediatorial work as the incarnate Savior—except, of course, in the purely negative role of “that from which [the reprobate] are alienated.”18 Hence, the position of the reprobate may be defined only by negation over against Christ as Mediator, but not over against Him as a divine person who cooperated in the trinitarian decision to reject. For Calvin, the twofold decree of predestination as election and reprobation necessitated the involvement of Christ as the eternal Son in the unity of that decree, though Christ as the incarnate Redeemer may have been freed from participation in the execution of reprobation in any positive manner in this life, except in His use of the keys of the kingdom (i. e., the preaching of the gospel), to shut them out. However, there are hints of a role for Jesus Christ in the execution of reprobation prior to judgment day. Though we may not speak of reprobation in Christ (with the “in” of union), it is possible to consider reprobation as executed through Christ. One hint appears in Calvin’s use of Psalm 2:9, “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” Calvin identifies that rod with the Word of Christ, “the doctrine of the gospel,” and comments that, “When David speaks, therefore, of breaking and bruising, this applies only to the rebellious and unbelieving who submit to Christ, not because they have been subdued by repentance, but because they are overwhelmed with despair.”19 Christ then as King executes spiritual judgment upon the wicked by driving them to despair even in their hardened unrepentance. Calvin also cites Psalm 2:9 (with Ps. 110:6) in the 1559 Institutes regarding Christ’s office as King, commenting on the slaughter of Christ’s enemies, “We see today several examples of this fact, but the full proof will appear at the Last Judgment, which may also be properly considered the last act of his reign.”20 Christ, the Doctrine of Reprobation, 39, 83–85; John C. Godbey, “Arminius and Predestination” The Journal of Religion 53 (1973): 492; Herman Hanko, “Predestination in Calvin, Beza, and Later Reformed Theology,” Protestant Reformed Theological Journal X, 2 (1977): 8; Warfield, “Predestination,” 126–27; Emil Brunner, Dogmatics, trans. Olive Wyon, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1950–62), 1: 343; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 37n; Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy, 163: Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy, 144–45. 18 Reid, “The Office of Christ in Predestination,” Scottish Journal of Theology 1 (1948): 18. Reid neglects to consider Christ’s role both in the trinitarian decision and in the condemnatory aspect reserved for the day of judgment (17–19). Dowey is guilty of the same error (see his The Knowledge of God, 216–18), as is Jacobs (Prädestination, 147–48). 19 Calvin, Commentary on Ps. 2:9. 20 Calvin, Institutes, 2.15.5.

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incarnate Mediator, enthroned as King over all, is even now executing God’s judgments against His enemies. There is also evidence that Calvin may have viewed Christ as an agent of reprobation in his prophetic work as the Light of the world. Regarding Christ’s statement in John 9:39, “For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind,” Calvin said, “This then is one of the secret judgments of God, by which he casts down the pride of men.” In congruity with his view of reprobation as the ultimate cause of condemnation, but man’s sin as the proximate cause, Calvin explained that the light of Christ does not blind men “by its own nature,” but as “an accidental result” proceeding from “the fault of men.” We note here that “accidental” does not indicate a lack of purpose on God’s part, but is contrasted with “by nature” as in Aristotelian philosophy and Western theological terminology. Thus “accidental” means that it is not an essential property of Christ’s light to blind, but only what we would today call a “side effect” or “collateral damage.” The light of Christ provokes a reaction from the “reprobate” man who is “elated by proud confidence in his own opinion” so that he rises up “in open war” against God, becoming “doubly blind.” Though man’s sin produces this effect, the result is also a judgment from God: “God, in righteous vengeance, entirely puts out their eyes.”21 Thus for the reprobate, the light of Christ actually blinds, though in itself it has a tendency to illuminate. Again, Calvin linked Christ’s use of parables to the execution of reprobation, following the Gospels (Matt. 13:10–17; Mark 4:11–12). He said that “the word of God is not obscure…. And yet the Lord conceals its mysteries, so that the perception of them may not reach the reprobate.” He conceals them in two ways: by speaking in ambiguous metaphors, or by speaking clearly but striking them with spiritual “stupidity, so that they are blind amidst bright sunshine.” Calvin explicitly identifies this work with the teaching and preaching of Christ: “Christ has purposely dispensed his doctrine in such a manner, as it might be profitable only to a small number.”22 Calvin also said, “When persons of a weak sight come out into sunshine, their eyes become dimmer than before, and that defect is in no way attributed to the sun, but to their eyes. In like manner, when the word of God blinds and hardens the reprobate, as this takes places through their own depravity, it belongs truly and naturally to themselves, but is accidental, as respects the word.”23 These references may suggest that Calvin regarded Christ as the executor of reprobation in a manner linked to His mediation of salvation to the 21 Calvin, Commentary on John 9:39. 22 Calvin, Commentary, Matt. 13:11. 23 Calvin, Commentary on Mark 4:12. In Calvin’s harmony of the Gospels, this comment follows shortly after his comments on Matt. 13 earlier quoted.

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elect as both Prophet and King, but further research would be required to substantiate this possibility.24 Though Christ acts participant in His divinity as a participant in the trinitarian decree of predestination, His paramount task in the trinitarian salvific economy is to be the recipient and guardian of the elect; the center, author, and foundation of election; the guarantee, promise, and mirror of the believer’s election and salvation; and the model and example of election, for the believer is part of the body of Christ, and so his election as part of that body is grounded in the election of Christ. God elected us with an eye upon His beloved Son: “God had no regard to what we were or might be, but our election is founded in Jesus Christ.”25 Christ is not only the book of life in whom God writes the names of His elect, but is also the mirror in which God views them with sovereign love.26 In short, election is in, by, and through Christ; hence, the accent of Christ’s economical role in the trinitarian decree must fall on the predestinarian syllable of election.27

Conclusion: Calvinian Reprobation in Its Christologically Theocentric Context In sum, the place and importance of reprobation is by no means parenthetical in Calvinian theology. For Calvin, reprobation is part and parcel of the predestination decree; consequently, it stands in tension, but not in conflict, with election —neither in its content nor in its place and importance within theology. In fact, Calvin rejects all attempts to negate reprobation as attacks on both God’s greatness and election. Hence, reprobation is not wrongly placed when conjoined 24 Later, William Perkins did place the execution of reprobation in the hand of the Mediator. He said that Christ as mediatorial king presently sends judgments on the souls of his enemies, including the hardening of their hearts and final despair. William Perkins, Exposition of the Symbole or Creed (London: John Legatt, 1595), 367–69. In this context, Perkins cited the iron rod text in Psalm 2:9, which may suggest an exegetical tradition shared by Calvin. 25 Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, 55. 26 Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians, 33; cf. Clark, “Election and Predestination,” in Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes, 119. 27 Cf. Calvin, Institutes, 3.22.7; 3.24.5; Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 52–53; Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, 62–67, 120; Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 8–10, 89; Wallace, Puritans and Predestination, 31; Chalker, “Calvin,” 71–75; Moreau, “Divine Foreordination and Human Responsibility,” 10–12, 26–31; Wendel, Calvin, 274–78; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 274, 276; Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 109; Niesel, Theology of John Calvin, 237; Van Til, Theology of Daane, 92–94; Klooster, Predestination, 40–41, 48–49; Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 38–40; Reid, “Office,” 5–16; Murray, Calvin on Scripture, 58; Hopfl, Christian Polity, 288n; Van Til, Defense, 411; Baker, Berkouwer’s Doctrine of Election, 103; Helm, Calvin and the Calvinists, 27; Conditt, More Acceptable than Sacrifice, 97–99.

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with election under soteriology. This ought to say much against those who engage in contemporary rebuttals of Calvinian reprobation, as if Calvin himself either did not understand his own theology or may now be interpreted through exclusively Christocentric spectacles.28 Properly speaking, it would be more accurate to say that Calvin is not only Christocentric in his theology, but Christologically theocentric.29 Both the placement and importance of Calvinian predestination became hotly contested items in twentieth-century scholarship.30 Too little attention has been accorded Calvin’s intention in writing the Institutes, which primarily was to be a system of piety; hence, not a definitive, systematic order, but an “order of faith” and experience. In terms of substance and contents, even liberal scholarship is compelled to admit that Calvin’s actual placement of predestination had little import. Though the placement is important according to Calvin’s own declaration, one suspects that the heavy concentration on the placement issue (at times over and above the content issue) is a back-door attempt by some scholars to tone down the definitiveness and sharpness of Calvin’s thought.31 In fact, though Calvin has no one doctrine that serves as foundational or central theme for his systematics as a whole, predestination serves not only as the keystone of his soteriology but also as its heart in a posteriori fashion.32 By way of 28 Cf. Engelsma’s series of articles, “The Reformed Doctrine of Reprobation,” 202–204, where he opposes four such contemporary attacks. 29 Cf. Klooster, Predestination, 14n. 30 For the placement issue, cf. Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings, 167–68; Beardslee, Reformed Dogmatics, 17; Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 376–77; Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 48–50; Duffield, ed., 24, 109; Bromiley, 251; Thornwell, Collected Writings, 2:19; Herman, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 190–91; Hendry, “Election and Vocation on the Basis of Calvin,” 76–77; Hopfl, Christian Polity, 232; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” iii–v, 2–6, 26n, 30–31, 57, 89–92; Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election,” 82, 100–110; Wendel, Calvin, 263–64, 268; Daane, Freedom of God, 38, 116–17; Hanko, “Predestination in Calvin, Beza, and Later Reformed Theology,” 19; Moreau, “Divine Foreordination and Human Responsibility,” 3; Chalker, “Calvin,” 67–68; Dowey, The Knowledge of God, 218; Shepherd, 311; Van Til, Theology of Daane, 83–84; Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy, 42n, 162; Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy, 141; Calvin, Eternal Predestination (1961), 29–30; Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, 39, 46, 86; and especially, Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 3–6, 19, 30–31, 47–49, 51–52, 72, 76. 31 For particularly profound and perceptive thoughts on this score, cf. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:358–61. 32 Cf. esp. Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 436–37; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” introduction and conclusion. On the issue of importance, cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, 85–86; A. Schweizer, Die protestantischen Centraldogmen in ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der reformierten Kirche, 2 vols. (Zurich: Orell und Fu¨ ssli, 1854), 1:10ff.; Doumerque, Jean Calvin, 4:357ff.; Polman, De praedestinatieleer, 354ff.; Jurgen Moltmann, Pradestination und Preseveranz: Geschichte und Bedeutung der reformierten Lehre “de perseverantia sanctorum” (Neukierchen: Neukierchener Verlag, 1961), 37ff.; Dantine, “Die Pradestinationslehre bei Calvin und Beza,” 36ff.; Hunt, “Predestination,” 45; Tadataka Ma-

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a full-orbed presentation of predestination, Calvin defends gratuitous justification and salvation to the glory of God and the humility of the elect. Wiley says, Gratuitous justification and predestination appeared to be distinguished as follows: when looking at the relationship between God and man from the viewpoint of man, gratuitous justification was the key doctrine, for it stated what happened to reconcile God to man; when looking at the relationship from the viewpoint of God, predestination was the key doctrine, for it indicated who [was] justified and what man’s role was. Binding them together was the overriding soteriological thrust of Calvin’s theology.33

This does not imply, however, that the relevance of election and reprobation is limited to soteriology; on the contrary, Wiley and Hanko have furnished us with irrefutable proof that predestination permeates all loci of Calvin’s theology and served both to shape and qualify numerous individual doctrines in the Genevan Reformer’s thought.34 Not that predestination ever became Calvin’s starting point for either theologizing in general or systematizing on any given doctrine; rather, it became a doctrine in relation to other doctrines and in terms of which those doctrines were stated and evaluated.35 The remarkable outcome of all the theological tensions inherent in Calvinian reprobation is that they never became more than tensions for Calvin himself. That is to say, though Calvin willingly confronted within the bounds of Scripture some six tensions—the glory of God and man’s sanctification; human responsibility and divine hardening; assurance in Christ and ascertaining signs; the wellmeant offer of grace and divine hatred of the reprobate; the role of Christ in ruyama, The Ecclessiology of Theodore Beza (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1978), 141; Hendry, “Election and Vocation on the Basis of Calvin,” 75; Niesel, Theology of John Calvin, 159; Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin, 94–96; Hanko, “Predestination in Calvin, Beza, and Later Reformed Theology,” 7–19; Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 4–5, 171–72, 299– 312; Helm, Calvin and the Calvinists, 22; Donnelly, Calvinism and Scholasticism, 124n; Muller, “Predestination and Christology,” 8–10, 71, 437; Ronald Seeberg, Textbook of the History of Doctrines, trans. Charles Hay (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), 407; Packer, “Calvin the Theologian,” 171–72; Henry Meeter, Calvinism: An Interpretation of Its Basic Ideas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1939), 32ff.; Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, 44–46; Klooster, Predestination, 13–24; Ritschl, Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus, 3:156, 167; Kampschulte, Johann Calvin, 1:251–78; Hermann Bauke, Die Probleme der Theologie Calvins (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrich’sehen, 1922), 11ff., 31. 33 Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 172. Note the interesting parallel between this thought, and the sixth position on the supra/infra debate above. 34 Next to soteriology, Calvinian predestination had its largest roles in theology proper and ecclesiology. Cf. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 300–306, and Hanko’s valuable study, “Predestination in Calvin, Beza, and Later Reformed Theology,” 1–24, which serves as a serious challenge to modern, liberal scholarship’s assumption not only of a Calvin/Beza dichotomy, but also of the notion (even supported by Wendel) that Calvin speaks little of predestination—much less, reprobation—outside of a soteriological context. As far as I know, to date no liberal scholar has responded to Hanko’s challenge. 35 Cf. Wiley, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination,” 170.

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election and in reprobation; and the place and importance of election and reprobation in theology—not one represented a conflicting truth for him. This acknowledgement of tension conjoined with a lack of conflict lays bare the uniquely complete systematization of Calvinian reprobation. Calvin achieved this systematization, I believe, because he was divinely graced with the gift of commencing and remaining Bible-centered in method, God-centered in outlook, and Christ-centered in message. Calvin, in the words of Packer, “was controlled throughout by a vision of God on the throne and a passion that God should be glorified. His theological aim in the last analysis was to declare his vision, as he had received it from the Scriptures, in order that God might receive praise thereby.”36 Moreover, as Packer concludes—and may God bless us with like grace —Calvin “lived as he preached and wrote, for the glory of God. Good theologians are not always good men, or vice versa, but Calvin’s life and theology were all of a piece. Consistency was his hallmark, both as a thinker and as a man.”37

36 Packer, “Calvin the Theologian,” 173. 37 Packer, “Calvin the Theologian,” 173.

Part III: Lapsarian Variations among Later Genevan Theologians

Chapter 13: Introduction to Post-Calvin Predestinarianism and the Lapsarian Question

“Calvin versus the Calvinists” was the battle cry in vogue with much Reformation and post-Reformation scholarship in the mid-twentieth century.1 Since the 1960s many scholars have argued that the supposed Calvin-Calvinist cleavage finds its real culprit in Theodore Beza (1519–1605)—Calvin’s hand-picked successor and apparent transformer of his theology. From Ernst Bizer through Johannes Dantine and Walter Kickel to Basil Hall, Brian Armstrong, Robert Kendall, and Philip Holtrop, the thesis has been championed that Beza, as the father of Reformed scholasticism, spoiled Calvin’s theology2 by reading him through Aristotelian spectacles.3 An array of theories has emerged as to who influenced Beza toward Aristotelianism: Philip Melanchthon,4 Thomas Aquinas,5 Peter Martyr,6 1 For a historiographical overview of this controvery, see Scott M. Manetsch, Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536–1609, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 241–45. 2 Ernst Bizer, Frühorthodoxie und Rationalismus (Zurich: EVZ-Verlag, 1963), 6–15; Johannes Dantine, “Die Prädestinationslehre bei Calvin und Beza” (PhD dissertation, Göttingen, 1965); and “Les Tabelles sur la Doctrine de la Predestination par Théodore de Bèze,” Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie 16 (1966): 365–77; Basil Hall, “Calvin against the Calvinists,” in John Calvin, ed. G. E. Duffield (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 25–28; Walter Kickel, Vernunft und Offenbarung bei Theodor Beza: Zum Problem des Verhältnisses von Theologie, Philosophie und Staat (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag des Erziehungsvereins, 1967); Brian G. Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), xviii, 38–42, 128– 33, 158–60; R. T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: University Press, 1979), 1–41, 210; and “The Puritan Modification of Calvin’s Theology,” in John Calvin: His Influence in the Western World, ed. W. Stanford Reid (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 199– 216; Philip Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy on Predestination, from 1551–1555 (Lampeter: Mellen, 1993). The following chapters are expanded, adapted, and updated from Joel R. Beeke, “The Order of the Divine Decrees at the Genevan Academy: From Bezan Supralapsarianism to Turretinian Infralapsarianism,” in The Identity of Geneva: The Christian Commonwealth, 1564–1864, ed. John B. Roney and Martin I. Klauber, Contributions to the Study of World History 59 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998), 57–75. 3 Kickel, Vernunft und Offenbarung bei Theodor Beza, 46–68. 4 Kickel, Vernunft und Offenbarung bei Theodor Beza. 5 Dantine, “Die prädestinationslehre bei Calvin und Beza.”

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Pietro Pomponazzi,7 or a combination of Martyr, Jerome Zanchius, and Pomponazzi.8 In response, other scholars such as Richard Muller have argued that Beza’s theology stood in significant continuity with previous Reformed theologians like Calvin, though with Beza’s own distinctives and developments.9 Still other scholars have taken a mediating approach.10 According to the first group of scholars, Beza’s departure from Calvin has been described repeatedly as scholastic, Aristotelian, non-Christological rigidity —not only in ecclesiastical discipline and doctrinal loci in general, but more specifically in the Bezan “innovation” of supralapsarian predestinarianism.11 The real culprit in the Calvin versus Calvinist debate, however, is not Theodore Beza, but this stream of modern scholarship. Kickel’s attempt to prove that the 6 Robert Kingdon, Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, 1561– 1572 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967). 7 F. Aubert, H. Meylan et al., Correspondance de Théodore de Bèze IV (Geneva: Droz, 1963). 8 Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy; Bray, Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination. 9 Richard Muller, “Predestination and Christology in Sixteenth Century Reformed Theology” (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1976); revised as Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988); “Calvin and the ‘Calvinists’: Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy,” Calvin Theological Journal 30, no. 2 (Nov. 1995): 345–75; part 2, Calvin Theological Journal 31, no. 1 (April 1996): 125–60; Herman Hanko, “Predestination in Calvin, Beza, and Later Reformed Theology,” Protestant Reformed Theological Journal 10, no. 2 (1977): 1–24; Ian McPhee, “Conserver or Transformer of Calvin’s Theology? A Study of the Origins and Development of Theodore Beza’s Thought, 1550–1570” (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1979); Paul Helm, Calvin and the Calvinists (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1982); Dewey D. Wallace, Jr., Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Richard Gamble, “Switzerland: Triumph and Decline,” in John Calvin: His Influence in the Western World, 55– 73; Robert Letham, “Theodore Beza: A Reassessment,” Scottish Journal of Theology 40, no. 1 (1987): 25–40; Joel R. Beeke, Assurance of Faith: Calvin, English Puritanism, and the Dutch Second Reformation (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 78–104; Raymond A. Blacketer, “The Man in the Black Hat: Theodore Beza and the Reorientation of Early Reformed Historiography,” in Church and School in Early Modern Protestantism: Studies in Honor of Richard A. Muller on the Maturation of a Theological Tradition, ed. Jordan J. Ballor, David S. Sytsma, and Jason Zuidema (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 227–41. These contemporary responses augment William Cunningham’s careful study of the relationship of Calvin and Beza: The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation (1862; repr., London: Banner of Truth, 1967), 345–412. On the meaning of scholasticism with regard to Post-reformation theology, see Willem J. Van Asselt et al., Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, trans. Albert Gootjes (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011). 10 For a mediating response on the Calvin vs. Beza thesis, see Jill Raitt, The Eucharistic Theology of Theodore Beza: Development of the Reformed Doctrine (Chambersburg, PA: American Academy of Religion, 1972); John Bray, Theodore Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination (Nieuwkoop: B. DeGraaf, 1975); Tadataka Maruyama, The Ecclesiology of Theodore Beza: The Reform of the True Church (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1978); Peter White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge: University Press, 1992). 11 Gamble, “Switzerland,” 66; Hanko, “Predestination,” 3; Maruyama, Ecclesiology of Beza, 139.

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influence of Aristotelian philosophy on Beza’s thought was all-pervasive is fraught with problems: (1) his sources are limited and inherently prejudicial in scope, neglecting Beza as preacher and pastor; (2) his zeal to dichotomize Calvin and Beza has led him beyond the historical fact that any substantial deviation from Calvin in Beza must be thought of as a gradual development which went unrecognized in Beza’s lifetime; (3) he fails to integrate theology and history properly in his analysis of Beza’s theology, not recognizing that Beza lived in a somewhat different theological and historical milieu than did Calvin.12 The carelessness of some modern scholarship reveals a bias against Beza. To mention only one example, Armstrong implies that because Beza requested to examine one of the works of Pomponazzi, an Italian Aristotelian, it follows that, “in Beza reason and Aristotelian logic were elevated to a position equal to that of faith in theological epistemology, for in this work… Pomponazzi had demonstrated how reason and logic could and should be made integral to the science of theology.”13 Almost any theologian could be fitted into a preconceived mold if he were held accountable for every work he happened to read as representative of his own viewpoint. A careful examination of the emphasis of the major theologians at the Genevan Academy from Beza to Francis Turretin (1623–1687) on the order of the divine decrees in predestination will acquit Beza of the weightiest charges levelled against him and his colleagues. Scholars advocating the Calvin-versus-the-Calvinists thesis are using an antiquated approach. The argument that Calvinism’s departure from Calvin lies in their respective views on predestination dates back to Alexander Schweizer’s hypothesis that asserted predestination as Calvin’s central dogma.14 Though Schweizer’s position on Calvin has long since been disposed of by painstaking and capable scholarship, a corresponding change in the understanding of later Reformed writers did not begin until the last quarter of the twentieth century.15 In this examination of major Genevan Academy theologians from Beza to Turretin on the narrow question of the order of God’s decrees in predestination, I have two specific goals: first, to answer the unwarranted accusations of presentday academia by revealing the Christological emphases of both Bezan and Turretinian predestinarianism; second, to shed some light on the movement from Beza’s supralapsariansim to Turretin’s infralapsarianism in terms of theology proper and church history. 12 Cf. Lynne Courter Boughton, “Supralapsarianism and the Role of Metaphysics in SixteenthCentury Reformed Theology,” Westminster Theological Journal 48 (1986): 63–96. 13 Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy, 38–39. 14 Alexander Schweizer, Die Protestantischen Centraldogmen in ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der reformierten Kirche, 2 vols. (Zürich: Orell, Freussle und Comp., 1854–1856). 15 Muller, “Predestination,” 5.

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To reach these goals, I will first describe the various views on the order of God’s decrees in late-sixteenth and seventeenth-century Protestantism, after which I will present the teaching of Geneva Academy’s major theologians on this doctrine, focusing primarily on Beza and secondarily on Turretin.

Lapsarian Options The first and second generation Reformers asked: Was the fall of man in Paradise actively willed or only passively foreseen by God in His eternal counsel and decree? Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the majority of the Reformers argued for an active willing of God regarding the fall. Heinrich Bullinger and a few minor Reformers refused to go this far, teaching instead that only God’s foreknowledge could be linked with the fall. Subsequent Reformers and Puritans realized that Bullinger’s reasoning could not offer a solution for the relationship between the counsel of God and sin. Eventually a Reformed consensus developed that the fall must not be divorced from the divine decree.16 However, other questions arose regarding the relationship between predestination and man’s fall into sin: Was divine reprobation ultimately based on the mere good pleasure of God or was it an act of divine justice exclusively connected with sin? Were both election and reprobation to be considered equally ultimate as acts of pure sovereignty, or was election to be viewed as an act of divine grace and reprobation as an act of divine justice? In connection with questions such as these, i. e., questions which concerned the conceptual and logical order of God’s decree related to man’s eternal state, the main difference between what came to be called infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism (often abbreviated as infra and supra) came more sharply into focus. The “lapsarian question” (lapsus = the fall of man into the estate of sin and misery) has roots reaching back before the Reformation. For example, Bavinck writes, “In his understanding of the order of the decrees Augustine is usually ‘infralapsarian.’”17 That is, Augustine ordinarily discusses election as God’s choosing individuals out of mankind viewed as fallen. Medieval theologians also discussed an order or sequence of non-temporal moments within God’s predestination. For example, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus both rejected the idea that God predestined men based upon foreseen human decisions or merit, but differed on the logical order within the decree. Thomas represented divine election as first, choosing which sinners to whom God would give saving grace; second, choosing the means to give them grace; and third, choosing to bring the 16 Berkouwer, Divine Election, 254–77. 17 Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:362.

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elect to glory. Scotus reversed the order and placed predestination to the ultimate goal of glory first, and then predestination to grace.18 The question reappeared during Reformation polemics when Pighius employed his own version of a decretal sequence in his attack on Calvin: First, God chose to bless all humanity forever; second, He foresaw the fall of man; third, He appointed the grace of Christ to save believers; fourth, He predestined to salvation those whom He foresaw would receive grace.19 In his emphasis upon God electing those whom He foresaw would choose Him, he followed the medieval synergists such as Alexander de Hales.20 Notably, though Vermigli critiqued Pighius’s order, he did not offer a Reformed version of the decretal order, nor did Calvin. Donald Sinnema argues that it was Beza who first formulated a distinctly Reformed decretal order, one which is supralapsarian; however, the term “supralapsarian” appears to have been first used during or shortly before the Synod of Dordt (1618–1619).21 Thus the terminology of supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism can only be utilized anachronistically prior to Dordt.22 What are infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism? Infralapsarians maintain that the decree of predestination must logically follow the decree of creation and the fall, believing it to be inconsistent with the nature of God for Him to reprobate any man without first contemplating him as created, fallen, and sinful. The infralapsarian proposes that God’s election is in its deepest sense a loving act of grace in which He decreed to save certain individuals whom He already contemplated as created and fallen, while His reprobation is a righteous passing by of others, leaving them to their eternal rejection and condemnation. Thus, the decree of predestination must come after or “below” the decree of the fall (infra = below). Supralapsarians believe that the decree of divine predestination must logically precede the decree concerning mankind’s creation and fall. They teach that God’s predestination is in its deepest sense a pure, sovereign act of good pleasure, in which God decreed to elect certain individuals and to reprobate certain individuals, contemplating them in His decree as “creatible and fallible,” but not as already created and fallen. Supralapsarians stress that everything, including all

18 David C. Steinmetz, Misericordia Dei: The Theology of Johannes von Staupitz in Its Late Medieval Setting, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought IV (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 77– 78. 19 Donald Sinnema, “Beza’s View of Predestination in Historical Perspective,” in Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605): Actes due Colloque de Genève (septembre 2005), ed. Irena Backus (Genève: Droz, 2007), 229. 20 Steinmetz, Misericordia Dei, 76. 21 Sinnema, “Beza’s View of Predestination,” in Théodore de Bèze, 225. 22 Carl Bangs, Arminius (New York: Abingdon, 1971), 67.

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decrees, flows out of God’s sovereign good pleasure. Thus the decree of predestination must come before or “above” the decree of the fall (supra = above). The point at issue in the infra-supra debate is the conceptual and logical order of the decrees of God antecedent to creation and the fall. Neither infras nor supras find their distinctives in a chronological ordering of God’s decrees. All God’s decrees are eternal or “from eternity”; it is impossible to posit a chronologically first or last decree. To define supralapsarianism as the doctrine that the decree of predestination preceded the fall of Adam and infralapsarianism as the doctrine that the decree of predestination came after the fall is simply wrong and misses the point of this theological debate.23 Both infras and supras agreed that predestination was “from before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). The question is: Was man, as the object of predestination, contemplated in the divine mind as created and fallen (infra) or only as creatible and fallible (supra)? To summarize, the supra viewpoint teaches the logical order of God’s decrees concerning the eternal state of man to be: (1) the glory of God as the purpose and end of all things; (2) predestination as an act of pure, sovereign good pleasure, including the election of Christ as the Head of the church, the gracious election of certain individuals who are contemplated as creatible and fallible, and the just reprobation of other individuals who are also contemplated as creatible and fallible; (3) the decree of creation; (4) the decree of the fall as the means of executing the decree of predestination; (5) the sending of Christ to redeem the elect on the grounds of divine justice; and (6) the sending of the Holy Spirit to apply the ordo salutis within the elect.24 The infra order of God’s decrees may be summarized as follows: (1) the glory of God as the purpose and end of all things; 23 E. g., F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed. (Oxford: University Press, 1988), 1319. 24 This order is open to slight variations or preferred wordings by individual supralapsarians: note Armstrong’s listed order (Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy, 41n), as well as J. I. Good’s in which reprobation is placed last (History of the Swiss Reformed Church Since the Reformation [Philadelphia: Publications & Sunday School Board of the Reformed Church, 1913], 133). Beardslee rightly points out that Good is mistaken at this juncture (“Theological Development at Geneva Under Francis and Jean-Alphonse Turretin, 1648–1737” [PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1956], 412), but does not acknowledge that there were later theologians who did follow Good’s order by espousing supralapsarian election in conjunction with infralapsarian rejection, e. g., Jonathan Edwards. Cf. John S. Weeks, “A Comparison of Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election” (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1963), 213; John Gerstner, Steps to Salvation: The Evangelistic Message of Jonathan Edwards (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960); reprinted as Jonathan Edwards, Evangelist (Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1995).

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(2) the decree to create; (3) the decree to permit mankind to fall; (4) the election of certain individuals to salvation as an act of grace, the passing by of others as an act of justice by leaving them to the just consequences of sin, and the election of Christ to provide redemption; and (5) the sending of the Holy Spirit to apply the ordo salutis within the elect.25 Though both decretal orders stress God’s sovereign grace in Christ toward His elect, supralapsarianism places its stress on the sovereignty of God, and infralapsarianism, upon the mercy of God.26 The arguments against supra and infra are well-known.27 Less known are the positive claims of supra and infra, which can be summarized as follows: Supras assert supralapsarianism to be (1) the position of Scripture (Prov. 16:4; Isa. 10:15; Eph. 3:9–11; Rom. 8:29, 9:21); (2) the position that best promotes the absolute sovereignty, omniscience, omnipotence, and glory of God; (3) the position that holds a proper teleological method of God as divine architect who always knows His end from the beginning; and (4) the position that is most consistent with God’s dealings with the angels, i. e., if God dealt with the angels in a supralapsarian manner, why not also with man? Infras assert that their view is: (1) the position of Scripture (Deut. 7:6, 8; Eph. 1:4–12); (2) the position that best upholds the righteousness and goodness of God; (3) the position that best protects Reformed theology from the charge of divine authorship of sin; and (4) the position that does not artificially separate the election of the elect from the election of Christ, and thereby avoids a “hypothetical Christ.” Jacob Arminius (1560–1609) developed another order of divine decrees that the Reformed churches rejected, a system of two absolute decrees, one consequent, and one conditional.28 The following order presupposes God’s decree to create the world, and His foreknowledge of the fall:29

25 Compare these charts to the helpful chart of Pieter Rouwendal, “The Doctrine of Predestination in Reformed Orthodoxy,” in A Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 555. 26 Cf. Weeks, “Calvin and Edwards,” 10. 27 Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giver, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 1992), 1:418; Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 1877), 2: 318–19; Beardslee, “Turretin,” 404; William Hastie, The Theology of the Reformed Church in its Fundamental Principles (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1904), 242–52; G. H. Kersten, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 1:126–30; Berkouwer, Divine Election, 254–77. 28 Richard A. Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition on the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 147. 29 Richard A. Muller, “God, Predestination, and the Integrity of the Created Order: A Note on Patterns in Arminius’ Theology,” in Later Calvinism: International Perspectives, ed. W. Fred

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(1) the absolute decree to save sinners by appointing His Son to die as the mediator; (2) the absolute decree to save whoever would repent, believe, and persevere in Christ; (3) the consequent decree to provide sufficient means for repentance and faith; (4) the conditional decree to save those individuals whom he foresaw would believe and persevere by grace, and to damn those who would not.30 Arminius particularly objected to the supralapsarian construction of the decrees, arguing that God cannot enter into relations with merely possible individuals, and creation cannot be subordinated to the purposes of election and reprobation.31 With the innovations of Moise Amyraut (1596–1664) and the Academy of Saumur, a third Reformed option, dubbed “postredemptionism,” entered the arena of seventeenth-century Reformed theology. By placing election after redemption in God’s decree, Amyraut allowed for universal atonement in the following scheme: (1) the decree to create; (2) the decree to permit mankind to fall; (3) the decree of redemption for all, if they believe; (4) the decree to elect (as God foresaw that none would believe and subsequently determined to choose some, which choosing included the grant of His Spirit to work out the ordo salutis within them); and (5) the decree of preterition (i. e., God’s passing over all those who do not believe).32 Though Reformed orthodoxy usually regarded Amyraldianism as a semi-Arminian error, Amyraut himself felt his viewpoint fairly represented Calvin’s theology and was closer to infralapsarianism. Though postredemptionism was never officially condemned by a Reformed synod, it never found expression in Reformed confessions nor gained respectability in circles of Reformed orthodoxy.33

30 31 32 33

Graham, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies XXII (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal, 1994), 434–35. Jacob Arminius, Declaration of the Sentiments, in The Works of James Arminius, trans. James Nichols (repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986), 1:653. Cf. Rouwendal, “Doctrine of Predestination in Reformed Orthodoxy,” in Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy, 569. Muller, “Patterns in Arminius’ Theology,” in Later Calvinism, 435–37. Cf. Armstrong, Calvinism and Amyraut Heresy; Rouwendal, “Doctrine of Predestination in Reformed Orthodoxy,” in Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy, 581–82. B.B. Warfield, Calvin and Augustine (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1956), 298– 99. Cf. D.D. Grohman, “The Genevan Reactions to the Saumur Doctrine of Hypothetical

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By limiting the options of Reformed lapsarianism to three schools of thought, I do not deny the existence of Cocceian views of the divine decree. Of the Cocceian school, James I. Good states: “This seems to be a modification of the infralapsarian view, and arranged its decrees in the same order, but they made the covenants the guiding principle. Yet, in doing this, they made more prominent the human element in election. God made a covenant with man, who it is true, is a silent party in the election. Yet this system shows that God respected man’s condition more than appears among the infralapsarians.”34 Ultimately, infralapsarianism won the day, perhaps in part because it was seen as the most effective means of refuting the charges of Arminianism. We will follow the thought of the Genevese from Beza’s supralapsarianism to Francis Turretin’s infralapsarianism, and ultimately, to the abandonment of Calvinism in Jacob Vernet (1698–1789).

Universalism: 1635–1685” (PhD dissertation, Toronto, 1971); Rouwendal, “Doctrine of Predestination in Reformed Orthodoxy,” in Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy, 583. 34 James I. Good, History of the Reformed Church of Germany (Reading, Pa.: Daniel Miller, 1894), 319. Cf. Johannes Cocceius, The Doctrine of the Covenant and Testament of God (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2016).

Chapter 14: Theodore Beza’s Supralapsarianism and Infamous Tabula

Calvin’s Genevan legatee, Theodore Beza (1519–1605),1 was born at Vézelay, France into lesser nobility. He studied with the Protestant humanist Melchoir Wolmar. Wolmar formed Beza, Geisendorf quips, “who, in turn, would form French Protestantism after Calvin.”2 After Wolmar left France for Germany in 1534, Beza studied law, but his heart remained in humanism, classical studies, and literature. Beza’s conversion to Protestantism (1546–1548) resulted from “a crisis of mind, heart and body.”3 After reading considerable Reformed literature and upon recovering from illness, the fruits of Beza’s internal struggle with sin and subsequent joy in deliverance through Christ became evident: “From the moment that I could leave my bed, I broke all the bonds that until then had enchained me. I gathered all my belongings and left my country, my family and friends in order to follow Christ, willingly retiring to Geneva with my wife.”4

1 For the biography of Beza, see Friedrich C. Schlosser, Leben des Theodor de Beza (Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer, 1809); Johann Wilhelm Baum, Theodor Beza, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung, 1843–1851); Heinrich Heppe, Theodor Beza, Leben und ausgewahlte Schriften (Marburg: R. G. Elwet’scher Druck und Verlag, 1852–1861); Henry Martin Baird, Theodore Beza: the Counsellor of the French Reformation, 1519–1605 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899); Paul F. Geisendorf, Théodore de Bèze (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1949); Bray, Predestination, 22–44; David C. Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981; rev. ed. 2001); Richard A. Muller, “Theodore Beza (1519–1605),” in The Reformation Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Early Modern Period, ed. Carter Lindberg (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002), 213–24; Scott M. Manetsch, Theodore Beza and the Quest for Peace in France, 1572–1598 (Leiden: Brill, 2000); “Theodore Beza (1519–1605) and the Crisis of Reformed Protestantism in France,” in The Theology of the French Reformed Churches From Henri IV to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, ed. Martin I. Klauber, Reformed HistoricalTheological Studies (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014), 24–56; Shawn D. Wright, Theodore Beza: The Man and the Myth (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2015), 15–38. 2 Geisendorf, Bèze, 11; Bray, Predestination, 22. 3 Raitt, Eucharistic Theology, 2; Baird, Beza, 32–33. 4 Raitt, Eucharistic Theology, 2.

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When no teaching positions opened for Beza in Geneva, he responded to a call from Pierre Viret to teach Greek at the Lausanne Academy, where he remained for ten years. All the while he retained close ties with Calvin, seldom, if ever, publishing anything that was not first submitted to him for approval.5 Beza accepted a call to the Genevan Academy to serve as its first rector (1559– 1563) and as professor of theology (1559–1599). He moderated Geneva’s venerable Company of Pastors (Compagnie des Pasteurs) from Calvin’s death until 1580, served as chief counselor to the French Reformed churches, and became a leading spokesman for Reformed Protestantism. Beza’s defense of Reformed doctrine at various colloquies is well-known and these colloquies represent highlights in his career, e. g., the Colloquy of Poissy (1561–1562), where he defended the evangelical cause against Roman Catholicism; the Colloquy of Mümpelgart or Montbéliard (1586), where he sought to promote the cause of unity between Lutherans and the Reformed; and the Colloquy of Bern (1587), where he defended the doctrine of supralapsarian predestination.6 Few Reformers produced such a varied literary corpus as Beza. In addition to theological writings, he composed Latin poems, dramas, satires, polemical treatises, Greek and French grammars, biographies, and political treatises. He also edited an annotated text of the Greek New Testament and bequeathed to Cambridge one of the most valuable of the ancient New Testament manuscripts, subsequently called the Codex Bezae. In this section, we will examine Beza’s doctrinal treatises which deal most explicitly with predestination.7 The last years of Beza’s life were spent quietly. When he died in 1605 at eightysix, he had outlived by decades all the Reformers who had labored initially to establish the Protestant cause throughout Europe. His length of life, his position in the Geneva academy, his extensive correspondence and activity on behalf of the Reformed cause throughout Europe, his graceful style and prolific writings assured his transitional role between the turbulent era of Calvin and the new age of Protestant orthodoxy, as well as his profound influence on many seventeenth century theologians and pastors.8

5 6 7 8

Correspondance de Théodore de Bèze, 1:169–72; 2:72–73. Steinmetz, Reformers, 170. For a bibliography of Beza’s writings, see Maruyama, Ecclesiology, xvi–xix. Jill Raitt, “Théodore de Bèze,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand (Oxford: University Press, 1996), 1:151.

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Bray’s Mediating Position on Beza A word is in order on the treatise of John S. Bray, Theodore Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination, since this represents to date the most detailed study made of Bezan supralapsarianism. Bray takes a mediating position on the Calvin-Beza dichotomy debate. On the one hand, he views Beza as a systematic and logical Aristotelian, who was precise on God’s purposes but refused to structure all of theology under the overarching doctrine of predestination. Though Bray dares not conclude that predestination for Beza is the crown of theology, in contrast to Calvin for whom it is at least the crown of soteriology, he is persuaded that for Beza predestination is even more basic than justification by faith. For proof he quotes Beza as saying that “the question of faith must always return to its headsprings, providence and predestination.”9 Further, Bray says that Beza, being more of a rationalist and scholastic than Calvin, is willing to go beyond Calvin particularly in supralapsarian doctrine and in reprobation.10 On the other hand, Bray is sympathetic to Beza’s position. He notes that his tendency to systematize was more than the nature of the man; the development of rationalistic and scholastic elements in the theology of those times, as well as the obligation to defend Calvin’s view of predestination, must be reckoned with in assessing his supralapsarianism. Moreover, Beza hesitated to probe into divine decrees; far from being speculative and cruel, his theology is marked by cautious, pastoral, and comforting overtones. He lovingly sought to persuade the unconverted to seek after reconciliation with God, for the “second cause” (a term borrowed from Calvin) of damnation lies in them, while to the converted he asserts that the doctrine of reprobation is comforting in four ways: (1) it urges greater fear of God and leads to deeper assurance in Christ; (2) it magnifies the goodness of God in not condemning them as well; (3) it serves to make them more alert to exercise faith; (4) it consoles them under persecution to know that God is in charge of everything, including reprobation.11 Bray concludes that Beza is best viewed “as a transitional figure who bridged the gulf between the biblicalChristocentric position of Calvin and the scholasticism of those who followed him.”12 Bray’s work suffers from uncritical dependency on the works of Kickel, Dantine, and Armstrong.13 Though Bray’s study has corrected several injustices done to Beza, his mediation has not gone far enough. Richard Muller goes further, rightly asserting that Beza’s writings do not demonstrate an adherence to a 9 10 11 12 13

Bray, Predestination, 82. Bray, Predestination, 84–85, 99–100, 113–14. Bray, Predestination, 81. Bray, Predestination, 21. Maruyama, Ecclesiology, 139.

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rationalistic system of doctrine founded on the concept of God’s decree.14 But we will let Beza speak for himself.

Tabula Praedestinationis (1555) The Tabula praedestinationis,15 which contains Beza’s influential diagram of the order of predestination, was probably written as a polemical tract to counter the arguments of Jerome Bolsec (c. 1524–1584), French physician and opponent of Calvin.16 The Bolsec-Calvin debate did not represent the emergence of new strands of theology, but restated the long-standing controversy between medieval synergism and the Augustinian monergism recovered by the Reformers.17 In his diagram, Beza divides mankind into elect and reprobate, and posits God’s decree as foundational for such cardinal doctrines as divine calling, conversion, grace, faith, justification, sanctification, the glorification of believers and the damnation of sinners, eternal life and eternal death. Whether this diagram was first circulated (without its explanatory text) among the populace or only to leading Reformers, may never be known with certainty. It is known, however, that Peter Martyr wrote Beza in March 1555 to advise that a descriptive text be appended to the diagram, which Beza completed and published within months.18 14 Muller, “Predestination,” 188; Christ and the Decree, 96. 15 For a translation of the diagram, see Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, trans. G.T. Thomson (London: Allen and Unwin, 1950), 147–48. The Tabula’s full title, Summa Totius Christianismi, Sive Descriptio et Distributio Causarum Salutis Eletorum, et Exitii Reproborum, ex Sacris Literis Collecta (The Sum of all Christianity, or the description and distribution of the causes of the salvation of the elect and of the destruction of the reprobate, collected from the sacred writings), leads Kickel to assume that predestination summarizes the whole of theology, but Beza’s intention was to indicate “the sum total of the Christian life.” The full work was first published in English as A Briefe Declaration of the chiefe points of the Christian religion, Set Forth in a Table, trans. William Whittingham (London: Dauid Moptid and Iohn Mather, 1575), but became better known in a subsequent translation of John Stockwood as The Treasure of Trueth, Touching the grounde works of man his salvation, and Chiefest Points of Christian Religion: with a brief Summe of the Comfortable Doctrine of God His Providence, comprised in 38 Short Aphorisms (London: Thomas Woodcocke, 1576). For a modern translation, see “The Potter and the Clay: The Main Predestination Writings of Theodore Beza,” trans. Philip Holtrop (Grand Rapids: Calvin College, 1982), 19–94. I will cite the Holtrop edition. 16 McPhee, “Conserver or Transformer?,” 68–69; cf. Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy. For an overview of the chronology of the controversy and Beza’s book, see Richard A. Muller, “The Use and Abuse of a Document: Beza’s Tabula Praedestinationis, The Bolsec Controversy, and the Origins of Reformed Orthodoxy,” in Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment, ed. Carl R. Trueman and R. S. Clark (Carlisle, Cumbria, UK: Paternoster, 1999), 35–41. 17 Muller, “The Use and Abuse of a Document,” in Protestant Scholasticism, 42. 18 Bray, Predestination, 70–71.

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From this Tabula mid-twentieth-century scholarship gathered most of its ammunition against Beza, labelling him as rigidly theocentric, coldly deterministic, and overwhelmingly scholastic.19 Beza was judged to be the transformer of Calvinian thought into a Reformed scholasticism which structured all theology under supralapsarian predestination, but these scholars have neglected to take into account four important considerations: First, the Tabula was written in the context of attacks on Calvin’s doctrine of predestination; consequently, Beza would naturally focus on predestination more in this work than if he had written a non-polemical work of Christian theology.20 Secondly, modern scholars have erred in dwelling more on the diagram than on his exposition. Without warrant, Kickel suggests that his diagram forms the base of a necessitarian system and summarizes his Christian theology.21 Third, the Tabula consists of relatively brief theological aphorisms, each supported by a substantial list of quotations from the Holy Scriptures. Rather than a deductive system of logic, it most likely sought to answer Bolsec’s accusation that Calvin’s theology was not proven by clear testimonies from the Bible.22 Fourth, Beza’s Tabula was not a systematic theology, but a treatise specifically on predestination written for edification. Muller notes, “Beza’s Tabula is nothing more than a presentation of the doctrine of predestination in its relation to the ordo salutis, based on the standard scholastic distinction between the decree and its execution in time. It is hardly a prospectus for a system.”23 We should not take it as an attempt to establish predestination as the central dogma of Reformed theology. Instead, “the intention of the Tabula is to show that the doctrine of the decree and its execution, as presented through the collation of biblical texts, is a source of consolation and strength.”24 Beza’s commentary reveals that the Tabula praedestinationis was written with a practical emphasis. In chapter 1, Beza commences by explaining why predestination must be preached, quoting the words of Augustine: “that ‘he who has ears to hear’ may glory, from God’s grace, not in himself but in God.”25 As stated 19 E. g., Steinmetz once epitomized this view when he wrote: “Predestination becomes in the hands of this speculative theologian a form of philosophical determinism scarcely distinguishable from the Stoic doctrine of fate” (Reformers in the Wings, 168–69). Steinmetz changed his view of Beza as more research was done in this area by Muller. See Blacketer, “The Man in the Black Hat,” in Church and School, 227. 20 Bray, Predestination, 71. 21 Kickel, Beza, 99; cf. Bray, Predestination, 72. 22 Muller, “The Use and Abuse of a Document,” in Protestant Scholasticism, 46. 23 Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to c. 1725, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 1:128. 24 Muller, “The Use and Abuse of a Document,” in Protestant Scholasticism, 35. 25 Beza, “Tabula,” I, in “Potter and the Clay,” 27. He cited Augustine, On the Gift of Perseverance, ch. 20.

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in chapter 8, Beza’s concern with predestination is pastoral and consolatory; he aims to strengthen in believers their assurance, perseverance, love, and fear towards God.26 Muller writes, “From the outset Beza emphasizes not the development of a predestinarian system of theology but the application of election to the life of piety.”27 This strongly soteriological note runs throughout the entire work. In fairness to Beza, it is important to note that it was not his intention to set forth an explicit “ordering of decrees” in chapters 2 and 3, nor anywhere else in the Tabula. Fullfledged seventeenth century supralapsarianism was not as yet in view in 1555. Rather, his sense of logical priority in the ordering of the decrees flows out of a recognition of the temporal reality of sin and the fall. Muller observes, “Beza refrains from prolonged discussion of God’s eternal purpose and concentrates on salvation and damnation as present, temporal, and individual concerns.”28 This is not to say that Beza was not specific concerning the priority of God’s will. While affirming with regard to “the destruction of the reprobate” that the “total blame remains within themselves,” Beza still stated that God’s will is “that high mystery that precedes in order all causes of their damnation.”29 He noted that when the apostle Paul answered objections against predestination in Romans 9, he did not say “that God so willed because he foresaw that they would be corrupt that the cause of the decree was thus grounded in their own depravity,” but that to find the ultimate reason, we must “ascend to God’s supreme will, which is the only rule of justice.”30 Similarly, in a 1555 letter to Calvin he described both the infra and supra approach, and opts for the latter. Beza wrote, “But I, on the contrary, have subordinated all these things [creation, fall, original sin, and Christ’s mission] in my tables to that first purpose of God to elect and to reprobate, and I make nothing at all superior to that.” He did so not only because of the medieval axiom, “the end is first in intention” (and last in execution), but because of Paul’s rebuttal of an objection against predestination in Romans 9:20–21. The objection is not, Beza observed, that God passed over some and chose others out of the same fallen race, but that “they are bound by God’s will, which they cannot resist.” Beza wrote, “I think that Paul compares the human race which is not yet created to clay in order to show that God, like some potter, both before he created the human race, and even before he decided to create it, thought about declaring

26 27 28 29 30

Beza, “Tabula,” VIII, 1–4, in “Potter and the Clay,” 78–88. Muller, Christ and the Decree, 80. Muller, “Predestination,” 206. Beza, “Tabula,” II, 5, in “Potter and the Clay,” 35. Beza, “Tabula,” II, 5, proof 2, in “Potter and the Clay,” 36.

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his glory in a double way,” namely by graciously saving the elect through Christ and justly damning the reprobate for their sins.31 Though chapter 2 does not represent full-fledged supralapsarianism, it anticipates the supra position by its careful systematic balance between election and reprobation as proceeding from God’s eternal decree. Thus, on the one hand, Beza argued that the cause of God’s secret decree of reprobation is His will, while he affirmed on the other hand that the reprobate are damned for their own sins and stubborn refusal to break with the yoke of unbelief.32 He distinguished the decree of reprobation from actual reprobation,33 which, in turn, would lead to his parallel distinction between the divine decree from eternity and its execution in time.34 This distinction sets the stage for Beza’s move from eternity to the unfolding of God’s decree in time. Beza reasoned that the eternal decree necessitated the fall of mankind into sin and disobedience. Though the decree of reprobation always leads to just condemnation, and the decree of election always leads to merciful salvation, both the decree of election and of reprobation flow ultimately out of God’s sovereign pleasure.35 Muller perceptively states, Here we see the clearest note of determinism in the entire Tabula. Beza implies a necessary fall and the necessary imputation of sin to all mankind. Yet Beza negates his own logic by denying that God is the author of sin and stating that man sinned without necessity and without compulsion. Certain things are not allowed by God but nevertheless occur by His will, even as God ordains all things and extends His providence even to secondary causes. The intrusion of the doctrine of providence at this point indicates a deterministic tendency. The relationship created between providence and predestination demonstrates a non-soteriological function of the doctrine of the decree. This interrelationship of necessity, providence, and predestination was not entirely absent from Calvin’s thought, but Beza’s is the more rigid formulation.36

The structure that shapes Beza’s treatment of predestination is the distinction between the eternal decree in God and the execution of that decree in time through secondary causes until the ultimate end of the decree is achieved.37 31 Beza, Letter to Calvin, July 19, 1555, Correspondance, 1:170, in “The Potter and the Clay,” 16– 17. 32 Beza, “Tabula,” II, 5, in “Potter and the Clay,” 35–36; cf. Sinnema, “Issue of Reprobation,” 69– 70. 33 Beza, “Tabula,” II, 6, in “Potter and the Clay,” 37. 34 Bray feels that this distinction became Beza’s “most significant original contribution to the question of predestination” (Predestination, 91). Cf. White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic, 17–19. 35 Beza, “Tabula,” III, 1–5, in “Potter and the Clay,” 38–41. 36 Muller, “Predestination,” 208. 37 Donald Sinnema, “God’s Eternal Decree and Its Temporal Execution: The Role of this Distinction in Theodore Beza’s Theology,” in Adaptations of Calvinism in Reformation Europe: Essays in Honour of Brian G. Armstrong, ed. Mack P. Holt (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007), 56–58.

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Sinnema traces the use of this distinction in Beza’s various writings, concluding that it is a basic structure or framework for his thought, but this does not make predestination the central dogma of his theology, nor does it displace Christ or necessarily control the literary shape of a particular document, which is determined by its audience and circumstance. Instead, Beza employed the distinction to safeguard the doctrines of God’s sovereignty, God’s righteousness, the reality of secondary causes, and the responsibility of angels and men for their own sins.38 Chapter 2 of the Tabula addresses the decree itself. In chapter 3 and onward Beza dealt with the execution of the decree. Throughout these chapters, he, like Calvin, placed major emphasis on Christ and upon the believer’s apprehension of redemption offered in Him. Beza stressed Christ as foundational in the execution of election. In chapter 5 he stated forthrightly that “Christ, the second Adam from heaven, is the foundation and entire substance of the salvation of the elect.”39 The Christocentric character of Beza’s theology is crystal clear, notwithstanding the refusal of Barthian-inclined scholarship to acknowledge it.40 Attempts to turn Beza’s Tabula into a rigid, decretal system of theology fail to do justice to the specific, occasional nature of the book, and to its actual contents. Beza did not write this treatise in order to construct a holistic theological system, but to explain the doctrine of predestination and its execution through the whole Christian life. His taught that the execution of predestination centers upon the work of Christ as mediator, and the implications of predestination are practical for personal piety. These are patterns that we will see in other writings of Beza where predestination also appears.

38 Sinnema, “God Eternal Decree,” in Adaptations, 55–78. 39 Beza, “Tabula,” V, 1, in “Potter and the Clay,” 61. 40 Cf. Hanko, “Predestination,” 21.

Chapter 15: Predestination in Beza’s Other Writings

Insofar as Beza is remembered today, he is too often viewed through the narrow lens of his table on predestination. In point of fact, Beza produced a wide variety of writings on many topics, some of which rarely mention predestination. In this chapter, we will examine several of those works, with a view to how they display Beza’s teaching on election and reprobation. If Beza did subsume all of theology under a deductive, decretal structure, then one would certainly expect to find this in his systematic presentation of the Christian faith by way of a confessional statement. To this statement we turn our attention first.

Confessio Christianae Fidei (1559/1560) Beza’s Confessio was penned to persuade his father of the reasonableness of Beza’s renouncing Romanism and embracing the Reformed faith, as well as to serve as a personal statement of faith.1 Though written earlier, it was not published until 1559 (French; Latin in 1560). The Confessio represents Beza’s most comprehensive and systematic theological work. It reveals his stand on the interrelationship of various doctrines shortly after he published his now controversial Tabula. In the Confessio, Beza arranges doctrinal heads under seven major divisions: (1) the unity and trinity of 1 Theodore Beza, Confessio Chistianae fidei, et eiusdem collation cum Papisticis haeresibus (Genevae: Eustathium Vignon, 1587); translated into English from French by R(obert) F(yll), A Briefe and Pithie Summe of the Christian faith, made in forme of a Confession, with a confutation of al such superstitious errors, as are contrarie therunto (1565; reprint London: Roger Ward, 1639). Modern editions include Theodore Beza, The Christian Faith, trans. James Clark (Lewes, East Sussex: Focus Christian Ministries Trust, 1992); “Theodore Beza’s Confession (1560),” in Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries in English Translation, Volume 2, 1552–1566, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008), 234–369.

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God, (2) the Father, (3) the Son, (4) the Holy Ghost, (5) the church, (6) the last judgment, and (7) the contrast between “the doctrine of the Papists and that of the holy catholic church.”2 Thus Beza did not structure his confession around predestination and its execution, but according to the trinitarian pattern of the Apostles’ Creed, though the decree-execution distinction appears in various places through the book.3 In this work the only reference Beza made to predestination in his first division of theology proper deals with angels as “messengers for the preservation of His elect.”4 He placed the doctrine of providence in conjunction with that of the Trinity, but separate from predestination. The creation of man, the fall, and the decrees of God, including election and reprobation, are placed under the third head of Christology.5 Though he proceeded to establish a relationship between the attributes of God, providence, and predestination under Christology, he did not draw this line out of metaphysical principles. On the contrary, he makes such connections in order to provide a foundational ground for the mediatorial ordination of Christ rather than to subsume predestination under providence.6 Three important observations may be made at this juncture: First, in Beza’s most comprehensive doctrinal treatise, predestination serves as one basic concept, not as the overarching principle of all theology. Dantine attempts to sidestep this contradiction of his basic view of Beza by noting that the lack of emphasis upon predestination in the Confessio may have been borne out of fear of offending his Roman Catholic father.7 In his unpublished dissertation, Bray concurs with Dantine, even adding that it was also written for “a non-Protestant audience” as well.8 Maruyama was the first to show the fallacy of this unsatisfactory theory: “This cannot explain, for example, why the entire Confessio is so polemically anti-Catholic, why it contains point seven, ‘a brief comparison of the doctrine of the Papacy with that of the Universal Church,’ and why its Latin edition, designed for the learned public, maintained the same non-predestinarian scheme.”9 In his published dissertation, Bray, persuaded by Maruyama’s comments, contradicts his opinion, and adds: The basic mistake is to assume that the position held by predestination in the Tabula is normative for Beza, and then to try and explain deviations from that pattern. On the contrary, there are good reasons for starting with the Confessio as normative for Beza’s 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Beza, “Confession (1560),” 7, heading, in Reformed Confessions, 2:334. Sinnema, “God’s Eternal Decree,” in Adaptations, 62–66. Beza, “Confession (1560),” 2.2, in Reformed Confessions, 2:243. Beza, “Confession (1560),” 3.2–15, in Reformed Confessions, 2:244–47. Muller, “Predestination,” 219–27; Bray, Predestination, 74–75. Dantine, “Les Tabelles,” 374–75. Bray, “Predestination,” 121. Maruyama, Ecclesiology, 140n.

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theology and then explaining deviations from that structure. The Confessio was Beza’s most comprehensive theological work. As such, it would be the most appropriate place to analyze the importance and the position of the doctrine of predestination in his general theology. The Confessio was written in a clear, vigorous, unsophisticated style that would allow Beza to communicate the essence of Reformed doctrine to the average Frenchman.10

Muller sums up this first observation aptly: “The Confessio is not a predestinarian system and it does not demonstrate the influence of a predestinarian conceptuality on other doctrines. The necessitarian structure of the decree and the fall into sin does not shape other doctrines. This structure is taken up into the larger structure of mediation.”11 As Shawn Wright observes after surveying a broad assortment of Beza’s writings, Beza did not regard predestination as the heart of the gospel (for that is the person and work of Christ), and predestination did not hold a conspicuous place in his systematic works, although he did regard it as an important support for the Christian’s hope, grounding confidence in God’s sovereignty.12 Secondly, the intriguing question implicit in Beza’s Christological-soteriological placement of predestination in his most thorough dogmatic work, is this: Instead of Beza parting ways with Calvin on soteriological predestination, is it possible that Beza himself influenced Calvin in the location of predestination in the last edition of the Institutes (1559)? Not only was the Confessio written years prior to Calvin’s soteriological placement of predestination in the Institutes, but we also know that Beza discussed his work with Calvin prior to its publication.13 Though both sides of this question could be argued, one thing is certain: In the late 1550s Beza himself viewed predestination from a primarily Christologicalsoteriological context. Otherwise he would not have placed predestination between his doctrine of the divinity of Christ and his account of the incarnate Lord.14 Finally, accusations against Beza as being rigid and cold in his doctrine of predestination, run contrary to even a cursory reading of the Confessio. Whether Beza discussed predestination in connection with the doctrine of God or of Christ, he refused to divorce predestination from the Christian’s comfort, the walk of godly piety, and the work of redemption as a whole. One quotation from the Confessio must suffice here:

10 Bray, Predestination, 74–75; cf. Geisendorf, Théodore de Bèze, 79. 11 Muller, “Predestination,” 227. 12 Shawn D. Wright, Our Sovereign Refuge: The Pastoral Theology of Theodore Beza, Studies in Christian History and Thought (Carlisle, Cumbria, UK: Paternoster, 2004), 167–73. 13 Muller, “Predestination,” 211; Christ and the Decree, 90. 14 Beza, “Confession (1560),” 3.1–19, in Reformed Confessions, 2:243–48.

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Good works are certain testimonies of our faith and also assure us of our eternal election, for faith is necessarily joined to election…. Now when Satan puts us in doubt of our election, we may not first search the resolution in the eternal counsel of God, whose majesty we cannot comprehend. On the contrary, we must begin at the sanctification which we feel in ourselves to ascend up more highly, since our sanctification (from whence good works proceed) is a certain effect of faith (Rom. 8:5–9); or rather of Jesus Christ dwelling in us by faith. And whoever is united to Jesus Christ is necessarily called and elected of God to salvation in such a way that he will never be rejected or forsaken (John 6:37).15

Beza’s words demonstrate that his doctrine of predestination was no merely academic theory, but a teaching intertwined with personal faith, godliness, and union with Jesus Christ. As Beza confessed before the Roman Catholic authorities at Poissy in 1561, good works have great value because “by them our God is glorified and men are attracted to recognize Him,” and “we are assured that the Spirit of God is in us (which we recognize by His effects), that we are numbered among the elect and predestined to salvation.”16 We might say of Beza what others have said of the English Puritans: he was a practical predestinarian.

Ad Sebastian Castellionis Calumnias (1558) Beza’s treatise on predestination against Sebastian Castellio (1515–1563), a humanist scholar and advocate of religious toleration, has never been accorded much status among his writings, not because it is not a thorough demolition of Castellio’s theology, nor because it does not state important predestination concepts, but because of its polemical, repetitive nature. Beza says little in this work that he had not already written in principle in the Tabula and Confessio; besides, due to his following Castellio in his structural order, nothing can be gained here relative to Beza’s placement of predestination in theology.17

15 Beza, “Confession (1560),” 4.19, in Reformed Confessions, 2:268–69. 16 “Theodore Beza’s Confession at Poissy (1561),” in Reformed Confessions, 2:415–16. 17 Geisendorf, Théodore de Bèze, 68. Excerpts of this treatise may be found in “Potter and the Clay,” 95–159.

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Quaestionum et Responsionum Christianarum Libellus (1570/1576) The first part of Beza’s Quaestionum (1570) 18 deals with the doctrines of God, Scripture, the Trinity, satisfaction and Christology, man, sin, faith, the order of salvation, providence, and predestination; the second part (1576), with pneumatology, ecclesiology, prayer, and hope. Like Calvin, Beza represents predestination as the mysterious God-given cause of faith and as the revelation of God’s will to save fallen and sinful men. Quaestionum is unique among his works published down to that time for the quantity of material devoted to predestination and related matters; nevertheless, by maintaining a soteriological concern, he did not go beyond Calvin’s emphases.19 Despite the large concern with predestination in Quaestionum, decretal theology does not serve as its organizing principle. With one exception—the adoption of an analytical approach to predestination,20 Beza does not qualitatively differ from Calvin on predestination, though he does exceed him quantitatively in expounding God’s decree of election and reprobation. This quantitative difference may well be a major factor in misleading many scholars to assume a qualitative distinction as well. It is also notable that in this treatise, Beza emphasized the centrality of union with Christ in salvation. He asked, “What therefore is the way to life eternal?” and answered, “Christ himself.” In order to be saved, a person must be “one with Christ by faith, which is the gift of God.” Beza proceeded to describe the nature of this union, its spirituality, and its benefits in knowledge of salvation, justification, sanctification, and ultimate deliverance (1 Cor. 1:30).21 Far from displacing Christ and union with Him with a rigid predestinarian system, Beza remained Christcentered and practical in his theology.

18 English translation: Theodore Beza, A Book of Christian Questions and Answers, wherein are set foorth the cheef points of the Christian religion, trans. Arthur Golding (London: William Horn, for Abraham Veale, 1574); A Little Book of Christian Questions and Responses in which the principal headings of the Christian Religion are briefly set forth, trans. Kirk M. Summers (Allison Park, Pa.: Pickwick, 1986). 19 Bray notes that a third of part one of the Quaestionum is devoted to the doctrines of predestination and providence, though part two allots no role at all to these doctrines (Predestination, 76). 20 Bray, Predestination, 76. Note that this is one of Beza’s first works to advocate the syllogismus practicus as a viable basis for assurance. See Beeke, Assurance of Faith, 82–86, for Beza’s usage of the syllogismus practicus. 21 Cited Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition, 222–24.

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De Praedestinationis Doctrina (1582) In this, his last treatise composed on the doctrine of predestination, Beza included a theological exposition of Romans 9. Based on Paul’s statement about God’s freedom to make what He will out of the unformed lump of clay (Rom. 9:21), Beza argued that “the highest, eternal, and unmoved decree of God” to predestine each individual man must logically precede both God’s intent to create and His foreknowledge of original sin.22 Bray writes, Although there are strong similarities between the Tabula of 1555 and Beza’s De praedestinationis doctrina of 1582, the differences are significant and consistent. By 1582 it appears that the scholastic, rationalistic tendencies within Beza have come more to the fore. The basic terms used in both works—decree, predestination, foreknowledge —are given a more precise, rationalistic definition. By 1582 Beza has dropped such anthropocentric terms as “love” and “hate.” There has been an infusion of Thomistic terminology. And, perhaps most significantly, Beza’s earlier structures which reminded one of the mystery involved in predestination are almost entirely absent from this later work.23

However, Blacketer argues that what Bray called “scholastic” and “rationalistic” is simply academic depth and precision. Furthermore, Beza often wrote of love and hate in the De praedestinationis doctrina, and this can scarcely be called “anthropocentric” because the reference is to God’s love and hatred.24 There is also significant continuity between Beza’s treatments of predestination in 1555 and 1582. In the end, the latter must be seen not as a metaphysical speculation but an exegesis of Romans 9 along the lines of humanistic scholarship, with applications drawn out for the controversies of Beza’s time, and applications to godliness.25 Even when using academic methods, Beza still wrote as a pastor. Maruyama says, “In various writings, especially in his lectures on Romans 9 (De praedestinationis doctrina), sermons on the Song of Songs and the Passion of Christ and the commentary on Job, we find clear evidence that he was consciously relating the doctrine of predestination to the reality of the church.”26

22 23 24 25 26

Beza, De praedestinationis doctrina, on Rom. 9:21, in “Potter and the Clay,” 357. Bray, Predestination, 73. Blacketer, “The Man in the Black Hat,” in Church and School, 233. Blacketer, “The Man in the Black Hat,” in Church and School, 234–40. Maruyama, Ecclesiology, 141.

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Miscellaneous Writings Beza’s annotations in his translated Novum Testamentum (1556) reflect the same theology of predestination, and at some points the same polemical thrust, as his treatises, though in a necessarily more compressed presentation.27 For example, on John 6:37, Beza noted, “The gift of faith proceedeth from the free election of the Father in Christ, after which followeth necessarily everlasting life. Therefore faith in Christ Jesus is a sure witness of our election, and therefore of our glorification, which is to come.”28 On Romans 9:18, Beza wrote that the doctrine of reprobation vindicates God from the charge of unrighteousness: Hardening, which is set against mercy, presupposeth the same that mercy did, to wit, a voluntary corruption, wherein the reprobate are hardened: and again corruption presupposeth a perfect state of creation. Moreover, this hardening also is voluntary, for God so hardeneth being offended with corruption, that he useth his own will whom he hardeneth [the will of him whom he hardens], to the execution of that judgment. Then follow the fruits of that hardening, to wit, unbelief and sin, which are the true and proper causes of the condemnation of the reprobate. Why doth he then appoint to destruction? Because he will. Why doth he harden? Because they are corrupt. Why doth he condemn? Because they are sinners. Where is then unrighteousness? Nay, if he should destroy all after this same sort, to whom should he do injury? 29

Beza’s short confession, Altera Brevis Fidei Confessio (1559), was published with the longer Confessio, and soon translated into Dutch and German.30 Its thrust is

27 Bray, Predestination, 77–78. 28 The New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ, translated out of Greek by Theod. Beza, trans. L. Tomson (London: Deputies of Christopher Barker, 1599), on John 6:37. “Ex gratuita Patris in Christo electione manat fidei donum, quam necessario consequitur vita aeterna. Est itaque fides in Christum, certum electionis ac proinde future nostrae glorificationis testimonium.” Jesu Christi D.N. Novum Testamentum, trans. Theodore Beza (Geneve: Eustache Vignon, 1575), 138 (viewed on www.e-rara.ch). 29 Beza, New Testament, on Rom. 9:18. “Induratio quae misericordiae opponitur, eadem atque illa praesupponit, nempe voluntariam corruptionem in qua indurantur reprobi: et rurfus corruption integrum creationis status. Est autem ista quoque induration spontanea, quia fic indurate Dominus corruption offensus, ut ipsa corum voluntate quos indurate, ad id iudicium exercendum utatur. Sequuntur deinde indurationis fructus, nempe incredulitas et peccata, quae verae sun et germanae reproborum damnationis causae. Cur igitur exitio destinat? Quia vult. Cur indurate? Quia corrupti. Cur damnat? Quia peccatores. Ubi ergo iniustitia? Imo si omnes hoc modo perderet, cui faceret iniuriam?” Jesu Christi D.N. Novum Testamentum, 232 (on Rom. 9:18). On Beza’s insistence on dividing reprobation (God’s eternal will) from damnation (immediately arising from man’s sin), see “Tabula,” V, 1–2, in “Potter and the Clay,” 61. 30 Theodore Beza, Altera Brevis Fidei Confessio, in Tractationum Theologicarum (Anchora [Geneva], Joannis Crispini, 1570), 1:80–84. It was originally appended to Beza’s fuller Confession, and translated with it as Another Brief Confession of Faith, in Briefe and Pithie Sum (1565), 184–96. On its provenance, see Lyle D. Bierma, The Theology of the Heidelberg Ca-

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the necessity of the incarnation and death of the Son of God to satisfy God’s justice on behalf of sinners, and the necessity of the work of the Holy Spirit to apply the mediator’s work to the souls of sinners for their salvation.31 Beza hinted that the mission of the Son was grounded in God’s eternal decree, for the Father sent the Son “when the time was come which he had eternally appointed according to his eternal and infinite wisdom.”32 He also taught that men do not respond to the preaching of God’s word with faith and repentance unless God’s Spirit “worketh inwardly by his infinite power.”33 However, predestination does not explicitly appear in the Altera Brevis Fidei Confessio, another indication that Beza’s theology was not dominated by or deduced from the decree. Instead, this little confession breathes a spirit of evangelistic fervor. The brief Catechismus Compendarius (1575) 34 sets forth simple questions and answers about God, Christ, salvation, good works, prayer, and the sacraments. There are two brief references to God’s sovereign grace in it. Beza queried, “Cometh this faith of ourselves? No, but from the only grace and goodness of God, which doth freely give it to his elect and chosen ones.” Later he asked, “What then maketh us children and sons of God? The only grace and mercy of God, by his Holy Spirit, because he hath elected and chosen us from before all everlastingness, according to his good pleasure.”35 Though conversion is grounded in election, predestination is not central to this catechism. Andrew Woolsey summarizes that in Beza’s long confession, short confession, and brief catechism, “predestination was not at all prominent… and could in no sense be considered an organizing principle of theology.”36 At the Colloquy of Mümpelgart or Montbéliard (1586), discussed earlier in connection with the Reformed orthodox response to the Formula of Concord,37 Beza argued that making the incarnation and work of Christ subject to God’s decree in no way diminishes the glory of Christ. Christ must be considered as both the eternal Son and the incarnate Mediator when we examine His role with respect to predestination. Beza said, “On the one hand, therefore, Christ is

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

techism: A Reformation Synthesis, Columbia Series in Reformed Theology (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2013), 24. Wright, Our Sovereign Refuge, 122–26. Beza, Another Brief Confession, art. XIII, in Briefe and Pithie Sum, 187r. Beza, Another Brief Confession, art. XVII, in Briefe and Pithie Sum, 188v. Theodore Beza, Catechismus Compendarius, in Tractionum Theologicarum, 2nd ed. (Genevae: Apud Enstathium Vignon, 1576), 1:689–94; English translation: A Little Catechisme (London: Hugh Singleton, 1578). Beza, Little Catechisme, sig. A2v, A4v (sec. 4, q. 5; sec. 6, q. 7). Andrew Woolsey, Unity and Continuity in Covenantal Thought: A Study in the Reformed Tradition to the Westminster Assembly, Reformed Historical-Theological Studies (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 355. See chapter 6, “The Historical Reception and Doctrinal Reflections of Concordist Predestination.”

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considered as the efficient cause of predestination with the Father and the Holy Spirit: on the other as being the first effect of the predestination itself.”38 Beza presented this twofold aspect of Christ’s involvement in predestination in a number of his works, though his emphasis remained on Christ’s role as the mediator through whom the decree is executed: we are “chosen in Christ” in that we are predestined to be saved through Christ.39 Beza argued for a larger Christological structure, capable of containing the doctrine of predestination. Consequently, he refuted the charge that his speaking of Christ as election’s executor negated the foundational role of Christ in the decree. He resolved this tension by distinguishing Christ as Mediator on the one hand, and as the eternal Son of God on the other. Thus, Christ is both the efficient cause of predestination together with the Father and the Spirit and the first effect of predestination itself on account of those who are mercifully elected in Him. Muller concludes that “this particular Christological formulation is not a dominant structure in Beza’s thought, but in the context of the developing doctrinal structures of Reformed theology, it demonstrates the presence of a powerful soteriological impulse capable of offsetting the deterministic, rationalistic implications of certain other of Beza’s formulations.”40 Though significant for historical study, Theses Theologicae in Schola Genevensi (1586) 41 cannot be used as a definitive statement of Beza’s views because they were composed when Beza’s activity was diminishing and the work of his fellow professor, Antoine de la Faye (c. 1540–1615), was increasing.42 The Theses present a doctrine of unconditional election and reprobation based solely on the will of God, but view the objects of these decrees as created and ungodly—the infralapsarian view.43 Beza’s sermons and meditations do not present scholastic treatments of predestination, but exude a warm, evangelical spirit of faith in God as Father and Christ as the suffering Savior.44 For example, his Christian Meditations declare: If our sins are unnumberable, his mercy is infinite toward those who repent, believe, hope, and pray. What greater proof of this does one need other than the incomprehensible love through which this good Father was moved not even to spare his Son; than the infinite love of this great shepherd who made himself of no account to

38 39 40 41

Quoted in Muller, Christ and the Decree, 82. Sinnema, “Beza’s View of Predestination,” in in Théodore de Bèze, 229–34. Muller, “Predestination,” 213. Theodore Beza and Anthony Faius, Theses Theologicae in Schola Genevensi (Genevae: Apud Eustathium Vignon, 1586); English translation: Propositions and Principles of Divinitie Propounded and Disputed in the Universitie of Geneva (Edinburgh: Robert Waldgrave, 1595). 42 Muller, “Predestination,” 201–202. 43 Beza and Faius, Propositions and Principles, 12.24, 31, 33, 35 (35, 37–38). 44 Bray, Predestination, 79–80.

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enrich us; who has charged himself with all of our sins; who was obedient for his poor Israel, that is, his elect, even to the death of the cross? I embrace you with both of my arms, O Jesus Christ, who has reconciled me to the Father and has assured me by your Spirit of the comfort of my salvation in you.45

At the same time, we note that the doctrine of salvation by sovereign grace alone pervades Beza’s pastoral writings. Occasionally the reader encounters an explicit outcropping of double predestination in a sermon, but they do not explicitly deal with supralapsarianism.46 Beza often spoke of mankind’s total depravity, willful and responsible rebellion, inability of self-redemption, and worthiness of divine wrath, together with God’s sovereign and sufficient grace in Christ to change man’s will, adopt sinners, and bring them safely to glory because of his “eternal compassions,” as for examples, in Beza’s Household Prayers and sermons on the Song of Songs.47 Overall, Beza’s sermons reveal a skillful preacher who used plain language, simple structure, dramatic rhetoric, continual quotation of the Bible, and holy zeal to apply the great doctrines of God’s Word to his listeners.48

Conclusion Three major conclusions may be drawn from studying Beza’s supralapsarian predestination as presented in his own writings: First, Beza’s supralapsarianism can easily be overestimated. Bangs’s charge that Beza went beyond supralapsarian is irresponsible; rather, Kendall’s observation that he showed supralapsarian tendencies which would later emerge into full-fledged supralapsarianism is more accurate.49 These tendencies are not found in his sermons but are most apparent in his polemical writings where he felt obliged to defend Calvinian predestination in the arena of theological debate, and ultimately was led increasingly into supralapsarian thought. Second, Beza’s departure from Calvin can also be easily overestimated. Neither Calvin nor Beza had an inkling of any differences between them. Nor did the sixteenth century Reformed movement. In England, for example, O.T. Hargrave notes,

45 Theodore Beza, Chrestienne Méditations sur huict Psaumes du prophète David (Geneva, 1582), 92, cited in Bray, Predestination, 128. 46 Theodore Beza, Sermons sur l’Histoire de la Passion et Sepulture de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ (Geneva: Jean le Preux, 1592), 842, cited in Wright, Our Sovereign Refuge, 177. 47 Wright, Our Sovereign Refuge, 179–82; Muller, “Predestination,” 218; Bray, Predestination, 77–80. 48 Manetsch, Calvin’s Company of Pastors, 169–71. 49 Bangs, Arminius, 67; Kendall, English Calvinism, 30.

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After those of Calvin, the works of Theodore de Beza were the most important for the Calvinist predestinarian movement in England. As with Calvin, Beza was also widely read by Elizabethan Englishmen, something over forty separate editions of his various works seeing publication during the period. And in a number of those Beza was led to expound upon the doctrine of predestination and related topics, on which points he was one of the ablest defenders of the Calvinist position, going even further if anything than Calvin himself.50

Here lies the key to the Calvin-Beza debate: the charge of going further than Calvin himself. Beza was prone to use the methods of scholasticism to a greater extent than Calvin; nevertheless, the times and the defense of the Reformed faith called him to take this route. Increasing pressure was placed on the second and third generation Reformers to expound questions relative to God’s decrees and will. Beza’s interest in expounding such questions does not apply to the whole of his thought, but only to a few treatises, and even these treatises manifest no greater interest in that subject than shown by other sixteenth century Calvinist theologians, such as Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563), Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562), and Jerome Zanchi (1516–1590).51 Beza’s doctrine of predestination has its own nuances, but it cannot be regarded as a serious departure from that of Calvin. It is most remarkable that the work from which twentieth-century scholarship built its case against Beza, the Tabula, was not published without Calvin’s approval. Beza’s doctrine of predestination shared the following traits with the major stream of Reformed thought where Calvin also stood: that double predestination involves election and reprobation, that predestination is a decree or act of God’s will, that the location of this decree is in eternity (not in time), that election’s only cause is God’s good pleasure (not foreseen faith), that reprobation’s ultimate cause is God’s will and condemnation’s cause is the sin of the reprobate, that God’s decree of the fall does not implicate Him as actually being the author of sin, and that the ultimate end of election and reprobation is the manifestation of God’s glory in mercy and justice.52 However, as Sinnema notes, Beza’s doctrine is different from Calvin’s in that Beza made use of the decree-execution distinction as a basic framework to structure his teaching of predestination regarding eternity and time, whereas Calvin merely acknowledged the distinction, occasionally making use of it regarding providence, but not emphasizing it regarding predestination.53 Finally, even in his supralapsarian predestination, Beza was convinced that he was not going beyond Sacred Writ. Beza’s teachings on predestination did not 50 O.T. Hargrave, “The Doctrine of Predestination in the English Reformation” (PhD dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1966), 204. 51 Muller, “Predestination,” 196. 52 Sinnema, “Beza’s View of Predestination,” in Théodore de Bèze, 220–22. 53 Sinnema, “Beza’s View of Predestination,” in Théodore de Bèze, 222–24.

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arise from rationalism, but from biblical exegesis with the tools provided by medieval scholasticism and renaissance humanism, as Jeffrey Mallinson notes. Human reason cannot comprehend God. Beza wrote that, “God does not totally reveal himself, since we are not capable of it…. For how will finite things be capable of infinity?”54 The natural limitations of human knowledge of God are further constrained by the damage of Adam’s fall, which has left man’s mind “as the ruins of a most magnificent edifice,” and “changed the light of the understanding into darkness.”55 This circumstance places humanity under a double need: the objective revelation of divine truth and the personal liberation of the sinner’s soul. Beza admitted that mere “ink and paper” before the eyes and words spoken to the ear cannot make us know God, for such knowledge requires “the power of God who works within”; however, Beza refused to separate God’s effectual illumination from His written instrument, and asserted that the only basis for faith is the truth contained in the Holy Scriptures.56 Scripture alone is the source of the Christian faith, “for it is altogether true, that in matters of doctrine we rest wholly content in Sacred Scripture.” Beza did not limit Scripture’s teaching to its express words, but also to what it implies “by sound and firm inference.”57 Mallinson writes, “It is hard to see how this infringes upon the pre-eminence of Scripture any more than does Beza’s use of philology. For in this case, ‘drawing consequences’ is not identical to the alleged practice of deducing theology from a Centraldogma, or to importing material reason, but is rather a hermeneutical tool applied to the biblical text.”58 For Beza, human reason cannot supplement Scripture as a source of doctrine, but should serve Scripture so that interpreters can draw out its truths with valid arguments and avoid logical contradictions—indeed, human rationality is God’s gift for this purpose.59 Beza’s predestinarian doctrine did not arise out of a metaphysical agenda, but out of his sincere, albeit fallible, interpretation and application of the written Word of God. Beza must be acquitted of the unfair charges of scholastic rigidity, of transforming Calvinian theology into a theology governed by supralapsarian pre54 Theodore Beza, Cours sur les Épîtres aux Romains et aux Hébreux, 1565–66, ed. Pierre Fraenkel and Luc Perrotet (Geneva, 1988), 40, quoted in Jeffrey Mallinson, Faith, Reason, and Revelation in Theodore Beza (1519–1605), Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 110. 55 Beza, Tractationem Theologicarum (1570–1582), 1:678–79, quoted in Mallinson, Faith, Reason, and Revelation, 115, 117. 56 Beza, Tractationem Theologicarum (1570–1582), 1:503, quoted in Mallinson, Faith, Reason, and Revelation, 143. 57 Theodore Beza, Reponse aux cinq premieres et principals demandes de F. Iean Hay (Geneva, 1586), 46, quoted in Mallinson, Faith, Reason, and Revelation, 144. 58 Mallinson, Faith, Reason, and Revelation, 145. 59 Mallinson, Faith, Reason, and Revelation, 74–79.

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destination, and of promoting non-Christological predestination, as is frequently ascribed to him by modern academia. The fact that Beza’s sermons emphasize Christology and soteriology significantly more than theology proper adds to the evidence presented above that his theology was not subsumed in toto under supralapsarian predestination. Cunningham summarizes the issues well: The fuller discussion which this important subject [of predestination] underwent after Calvin’s death, led, as controversy usually does when conducted by men of ability, to a more minute and precise exposition of some of the topics involved in it. And it has been often alleged that Beza, in his very able discussions of this subject, carried his views upon some points farther than Calvin himself did, so that he has been described as being Calvino Calvinior. We are not prepared to deny altogether the truth of this allegation; but we are persuaded that there is less ground for it than is sometimes supposed, and that the points of alleged difference between them in matters of doctrine, respect chiefly topics on which Calvin was not led to give any very formal or explicit deliverance [such as the supra-infra debate], because they were not at the time subjects of discussion, or indeed ever present to his thoughts.60

Beza did not hold the supralapsarian view so narrowly and decisively that he could not unite with infralapsarians in authentic communion. The infralapsarian Confessio Gallicana (1559) was adopted by the Synod of La Rochelle in 1571 without objection from its chairman, Theodore Beza.61 Furthermore, as we will see in the next chapter, Beza trained and passed the torch on to men who did not embrace his supralapsarianism, though they wholeheartedly followed him in declaring God’s sovereign predestination.

60 Cunningham, Reformers, 349, editorial additions in brackets added by me. Though attempts have been made to classify Calvin as supra (Hastie, Kersten) or infra (Good, Bray), Calvin himself never addressed the lapsarian question (cf. Fred Klooster, Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977], 55–86). 61 Robert M. Kingdon, Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, 1564– 1572 (Genève: Droz, 1967), 97. Cf. Dijk, De Strijd over Infra- en Supralapsarianisme, 284.

Chapter 16: From Beza’s Successors to Francis Turretin

Beza’s supralapsarian expression of the Reformed doctrine of predestination did not become a new standard of orthodoxy, but one strand among others in Reformed orthodoxy. This is evident in the infralapsarianism of Lambert Daneau (1530–1595), who served as a professor at Geneva from 1574 to 1581, as well as Beza’s student Franciscus Junius (1545–1602), who went on to serve at Leyden.1 As noted in the last chapter, Beza’s colleague Antoine de la Faye appears to have favored the infralapsarian view that the objects of predestination were viewed as created and fallen.2 Muller notes, “Geneva produced not one form of theology but several.”3 However, though we see some variety in formulations, we also see that the Genevan theologians stood in essential unity over the basic doctrine of predestination.

Beza’s Successors After Beza’s death, Geneva’s leading theologian was Giovanni Diodati (1576– 1649).4 He studied under Beza, and received a doctorate in theology from the Genevan Academy when only nineteen years of age. Diodati served as professor of theology from 1599 to 1645 at Geneva. Beza also delegated Hebrew instruction to him, a position he held until 1618, at which time he assumed the rectorship of the Genevan Academy. Diodati became most famous as a gifted linguist. From 1 2 3 4

Muller, “Predestination,” 235, 241. Beza and Faius, Propositions and Principles, 12. 33, 35 (38). Muller, “Predestination,” 241. For Diodati’s biography, consult G. D. J. Schotel, Jean Diodati (‘s-Gravenhage: Noordendoorp, 1844); Maria Betts, Life of Giovanni Diodati: Genevese Theologian (London: Charles J. Thynne, 1905); William A. McComish, The Epigones: A Study of the Theology of the Genevan Academy at the Time of the Synod of Dort, with Special Reference to Giovanni Diodati (Allison Park, Pa.: Pickwith, 1989). See also Andrea Ferrari, John Diodati’s Doctrine of Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006).

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1603 to 1607 he prepared a widely acclaimed Italian translation of the Bible, which, in its revised edition of 1640–1641, has served as the standard Bible of Italian Protestantism; a modernized revision, the Nuova Diodati, was also published in 1991. Diodati also published a complete French translation of the Bible in 1644. Diodati increased his international reputation when he served the Synod of Dordt (1618–1619) as one of Geneva’s two representatives.5 At Dordt, he played a prominent role in defending the orthodox position; in fact, when he movingly addressed the synod on the doctrine of perseverance, Dordt’s president, Johannes Bogerman, declared that the address appeared to have been divinely inspired! 6 As an additional testimony of its respect for Geneva’s new rector, the synod chose Diodati to assist in the drafting of its canons. The statement of the Genevan delegation on predestination to the Synod of Dordt has much in common with Head I of the Canons of Dordt on predestination, though the Genevans had neglected to stress that God is not the author of sin and that man is responsible for his own sin.7 Diodati blended doctrinal orthodoxy and biblical piety throughout his Pious and Learned Annotations Upon the Holy Bible. He wrote that man’s salvation ultimately comes from God’s good pleasure and eternal, free election, not based on any good foreseen in us, and is obtained only through union with Christ and worked by secondary causes of God’s appointing.8 God’s omnipotence and immutability guarantee that the “sequence of the salvation of God’s children” cannot be broken for those whom He elected and predestined to glory in Christ.9 The apostle Paul said that we can know with certainty that we are God’s elect if “the Holy Ghost hath imprinted in your hearts the gospel which I have preached to you, and hath begotten a lively faith in you,” that is, a faith that produces “the fruits and effects” of love and works.10 Diodati taught the same combination of sovereign reprobation and damnation for the guilt of sin as Beza did: those who reject the gospel “are the causes of their own ruins… in which ruin God hath from everlasting and immutably decreed to let them fall through their own fault.”11 In his notes on Romans 9, he wrote, 5 6 7 8

DeJong, Crisis, 113. Good, Swiss Reformed, 34. McComish, The Epigones, 80–85. Giovanni Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations upon the Holy Bible, 3rd ed. (London: by James Flesher, for Nicholas Fussell, 1651), on Acts 13:48; Eph. 1:4–5, 11; 2 Thess. 2:13; 2 Tim. 1:9; 2:10, 19; 1 Peter 1:2. 9 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, on Rom. 8:29–30. 10 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, on 1 Thess. 1:3–4. 11 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, on 1 Peter 2:8; cf. his note on Jude 4.

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[Rom. 9:11] Neither having done, viz. God considering them in their natural estate, wherein they were both sons of Adam, equally sinners and corrupt, having done no actual good or evil more one than the other, which should deserve this distinction. [Rom. 9:20] Nay but, viz. To answer such false opinions, and wicked objections of the reprobate, it is sufficient to say, that the work of grace is of God’s mere free will: wherefore if he doth deprive some of it, he doth them no wrong, seeing he is not bound to it; and that he proceeds against them in justice for their sin, of which this privation is no cause. Made me, not that God doth indeed make a man a sinner, or that he is author of sin; but by this word of making, is here meant the appointing of man’s last end. [Rom. 9:21] The clay, Which here represents human nature in its universal corruption, there being no other difference in it, but only what God makes by his free will and destination (1 Cor. 4:7).12

Diodati denied that predestination is based upon anything foreseen in individuals, following the Augustinian and Reformed trajectory. However, he did not follow Beza in teaching that God predestined men apart from a consideration of their fall, but portrayed God as viewing the objects of predestination (“the clay”) as fallen and corrupt, which is an infralapsarian accent. Armstrong claims that after Beza, the “supralapsarian expression of the doctrine of predestination” became “the more common position in Geneva.”13 However, this does not appear to be the case for Diodati.14 When Diodati assumed the rectorship in 1618, his able Genevan associate at the Synod of Dordt, Theodore Tronchin (1582–1657), took his place in teaching Hebrew. Son-in–law of Theodore Beza, Tronchin was by no means a novice at Dordt or Geneva; he had already been professor of Oriental languages at the Genevan Academy since 1606. When representing Geneva at Dordt, Diodati and Tronchin strongly urged the condemnation of the Remonstrants as heretics.15 However, Nicolas Fornerod writes that while they avoided saying anything that might dishonor Beza, “they maintained their distance from his supralapsarian schema of predestination, leaving only Gomarus to defend this doctrine against everyone else at Dort”—indeed Diodati “considered the attempting to establish an excessively rigid logical order among the divine decrees had generated many misunderstandings.”16 Du Moulin thought that Tronchin held to supra12 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, on Rom. 9:11, 20–21. 13 Armstrong, Amyraut Heresy, 136. 14 Viewing Diodati as infralapsarian is a change from my previous view, expressed in “The Order of the Divine Decrees,” in Identity of Geneva, 64. 15 Nicolas Fornerod, “‘The Canons of the Synod Had Shot Off the Advocates Head’: A Reappraisal of the Genevan Delegation at the Synod of Dordt,” in Revisiting the Synod of Dordt (1618–1619), ed. Aza Goudriaan and Fred van Lieburg, Brill’s Series in Church History 49 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 197. 16 Fornerod, “Reappraisal,” in Revisiting the Synod of Dordt, 209. Though Gomarus was alone in

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lapsarianism, but Tronchin did not seem eager to defend it.17 What is remarkable, however, is that the two Genevan delegates to Dordt presented theses to the synod that described the objects of God’s election and reprobation as individuals fallen in Adam, guilty and corrupt.18 We also note that when Tronchin and Antoine Léger wrote a set of theses in 1649 to address the controversy with Alexandre Morus, the Genevan theses included this statement: “Fallen men are the object of predestination, yet not as unbelieving and rebellious to the call.”19 In other words, predestination is not based on a foreseen response to the gospel, but does look upon men as fallen into sin and misery. These sources militate against the idea that supralapsarianism prevailed in Geneva after Beza. Though later overshadowed by his son Francis and his grandson Jean-Alphonse, Benedict Turretin (1588–1631) played an important role in maintaining predestinarian thought at Geneva. From 1612 to his premature death in 1631, Benedict Turretin served as a pastor and professor of theology. He held the Canons of Dordt in high esteem, and was influential in their adoption by the Genevan20 and French churches.21 Friedrich Spanheim (1600–1649) 22 assumed the chair of philosophy at Geneva in 1626, served as Geneva’s rector (1633–1637), and took Benedict Turretin’s place in theology in 1631, until 1642, when he transferred to Leyden.23 Herman

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defending supralapsarianism at Dordt, he was not the only divine there who believed it. Gisbertus Voetius would later teach the supra view when at Utrecht. Rouwendal, “Doctrine of Predestination in Reformed Orthodoxy,” in Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy, 571n52. However, Voetius did not agitate for the supra view at Dordt. Fornerod, “Reappraisal,” in Revisiting the Synod of Dordt, 210–11. Sinnema, “Issue of Reprobation,” 350, 386. The theses read as follows. De Electione ad Vitam Aeternam, Thesis I: “Deus ab aeterno, ex mero beneplacito voluntatis suae, certas personas, ex semine et posteris Adae, in, et cum eodem lapsas, reas et corruptas, decreuit in Christo per et propter Christum, ex eadem eudokia in hunc sinem ipsis singulariter a Patre destinatum, gratiose et efficaciter vocare, fide donare, iustificare, per Spiritum regenerationis sanctificare, et per haec, et post haec omnia, tandem in aeternum glorificare.” De Reprobatione, Thesis I: “Deus ab aeterno, liberrima sua voluntate, aliquas certas personas, in et cum Adamo lapsas, reas et corruptas, statuit apud sese, in statu peccati, et corruptionis suae propriae relinquere, nec erga illas remedium gratiae efficacis, et salutaris in Christo adhibere.” Acta Synodi Nationalis (Dordrechti, Isaaci Elzeviri, 1620), 2:46, 51. “The Geneva Theses (1649), in Reformed Confessions, 4:419. Beardslee, “Turretin,” 49. New Schaff Herzog Encyclopedia, XII, 43; Donald Sinnema, “The French Reformed Churches, Arminianism, and the Synod of Dort (1618–1619),” in Theology of the French Reformed Churches, 121–22. To be distinguished from the younger Friedrich Spanheim (1632–1701), an infralapsarian professor of theology at Leyden. Klaas Dijk, De Strijd over Infra- en Supralapsarianisme in de Gereformeerde Kerken van Nederland (Kampen: Kok, 1912), 43. On Spanheim’s life and writings, see Roger Nicole, “Friedrich Spanheim (1600–1649),” in Through Christ’s Word: A Festschrift for Dr. Philip E. Hughes, ed. W. Robert Godfrey and Jesse L. Boyd III (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1985), 166–79.

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Bavinck wrote, “Spanheim used to say that when he lectured in a theological classroom, he was a supralapsarian, but when speaking to his congregation he was an infralapsarian.”24 Spanheim was a faithful adherent of the Genevan tradition, which is amply confirmed by his major theological writings.25 In fact, Spanheim is credited with being the first (1635) to commence the Genevan attack against Amyraut’s unorthodox view on predestination, and was subsequently joined by Diodati and Benedict Turretin in admonishing the French Synod against “innovations.”26 Nevertheless, Spanheim’s admission about taking a different approach in the classroom than in the church reveals an underlying tension in attempting to show allegiance to both the tradition of Beza and the mainstream position of Dordt.

Francis Turretin’s Infralapsarianism Francis Turretin (1623–1687) stood in the front ranks of the defenders of Genevan orthodoxy. All four of Beza’s major successors (Diodati, Tronchin, Spanheim, and Francis’s own father) had a hand in forming his background.27 After completing the course of study at Geneva under the Academy’s pillars of orthodoxy, he traveled to Holland and France where he made significant contacts: in Holland with Voetius, Polyander, Rivet, Salmasius, Heinsius, Trigland, Hoornbeeck, Golius, and Schurman; in France with Fulcar, Drelincourt, Albertini, Blondel, Daille, Gassendi, and the school of Saumur.28 In 1648 he was ordained as pastor for the Italian church in Geneva. After declining the chair of philosophy in Geneva, he accepted Geneva’s call to the professorship in theology, a position he held from 1653 until his death in 1687. Turretin’s theology has sometimes been described as orthodox Cocceianism. He possessed an uncanny ability for extracting the more orthodox elements of Cocceius’s Bible-centered covenant theology, and for incorporating them into his Reformed scholasticism.29 Turretin located the decrees and predestination in the realm of theology proper in his renowned Institutio Theologicae Elencticae.30 Predestination, his 24 25 26 27

Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:384. Particularly, Disputatio de gratia universali, 3 vols. (Leyden, 1644–1648). Beardslee, “Turretin,” 50. Calling his son Francis when but eight years old to his deathbed, Benedict Turretin stated with faltering lips, “This child is marked with God’s seal!” Samuel Alexander, “Turretin,” The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 20 (1848): 455. 28 Alexander, “Turretin,” 455–56. 29 Beardslee, Reformed Dogmatics, 20. 30 Turretin, Institutes, vol. 1.

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“Fourth Topic,” follows a discussion of the existence, attributes, and trinitarian essence of God, and precedes a consideration of creation, providence, angels, and man. He believed that the decrees, predestination inclusive, are properly examined immediately following the essence of God as representing His “essential internal acts.” For Turretin, predestination is the major decree of God; it ought not be avoided, as it is a doctrine of utmost importance for biblical theology, godly living, and Christian comfort.31 After defining predestination as narrower than providence, but broader than election, and as God’s decree respecting the eternal state of the fallen—either to salvation out of mercy or to damnation out of justice, Turretin proceeded to unfold his understanding of predestination in questions 8 to 18. One may see the breadth of Turretin’s theological discussion by the questions that he chose to address: 8. Was there a predestination of angels, and was it of the same kind and order with the predestination of men? 9. Whether the object of predestination was man creatable, or capable of falling; or whether as created and fallen. 10. Is Christ the cause and foundation of election? 11. Is election made from the foresight of faith, or works; or from the grace of God alone? 12. Is the election of certain men to salvation constant and immutable? 13. Can the believer be certain of his own election with a certainty not only conjectural and moral, but infallible and of faith? 14. Is the decree of reprobation absolute, depending upon the good pleasure of God alone; or is sin its proper cause? 15. Is infidelity, or unbelief in the gospel, presupposed as a cause of reprobation? 16. Is the will of God to save persevering believers and condemn the unbelieving, the whole decree of reprobation? 17. Can there be attributed to God any conditional will, or universal purpose of pitying the whole human race fallen in sin, of destinating Christ as Mediator to each and all, and of calling them all to a saving participation of his benefits? 18. Is any order to be admitted in the divine decrees, and what is it? In question 9 Turretin asserted that the proper objects of predestination with respect to mankind must not be contemplated as merely “creatible and fallible” persons (supra); rather, the object of predestination is man who had been created and had sinned. It is not, however, until his last question that he addresses in detail our topic of consideration: “Question XVIII: Concerning the Order of 31 Turretin, Institutes, 1:329–31 (IV: 6, 1–11).

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Decrees of God in Predestination: Whether any order should be recognized in the decrees of God, and what it should be.”32 Turretin rejected supralapsarianism, Amyraldianism, and Arminianism as being neither biblical, logical, nor edifying. He prefaced his remarks by placing the blame for his consideration of lapsarianism on his opponents. The godly need no such discussion, but to resist heresy something must be said about decretal order.33 Moreover, the discussion of decretal order only concerns our human perspective since there is no order in God’s decrees within Himself. Supralapsarianism was the first option to be rejected by Turretin. He advanced four major objections: First, supralapsarianism is untenable in teaching that “the first act of God’s will towards some of his creatures is made to be an act of hatred, . . . which does not appear to agree sufficiently with his unspeakable goodness.” Second, “It is also harsh because, according to this order, God is considered to have imparted to them by far the greatest effects of love from a principle of hatred, while he is made to create them in a state of integrity for the purpose of illustrating his justice in their damnation.” Third, “It is falsely supposed that God exercises an act of mercy and justice towards his creatures in the destination of salvation and destruction who are neither miserable nor guilty; yea, who are not even conceived of as yet existing.” Fourth, “It is also gratuitously asserted that the creation and the fall are the means of election and reprobation, since they are antecedent to them.”34 Turretin argues that supralapsarianism, though not heretical, is not edifying for the church, not logically coherent, and not scriptural.35 Nothing could possibly be decreed concerning a non ens, nor could the nature of morality allow predestination simply to exist without its objects being guilty or innocent. Interestingly, Dijk remarks that at this juncture Turretin has difficulty avoiding predestination as divine foreknowledge rather than as divine sovereignty.36 For Turretin, sin must be present in the object in order to warrant the decree of rejection.37 Second, Turretin demolishes the lapsarianism of Arminianism. He outlines Arminian lapsarianism under the following scheme of subordination:

32 33 34 35

Turretin, Institutes, 1:417–30 (IV: 18, 1–25). Turretin, Institutes, 1:417 (IV: 18, 1). Turretin, Institutes, 1:418 (IV: 18, 5). Paul T. Jensen, “Calvin and Turretin: A Comparison of Their Soteriologies” (PhD dissertation, University of Virginia, 1988), 88–91. 36 Cf. Dijk, De Strijd over Infra- en Supralapsarianisme, 42. 37 Beardslee, “Turretin,” 404, 412–13. Turretin mentions Beza’s supralapsarianism only once, but without condemnation (IV: 9, 16), though he is harder on William Twisse, the supralapsarian chairman of the Westminster Assembly (IV: 9, 19 and 23).

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(1) The destination of Christ as Mediator who should acquire for sinners the right to salvation; (2) the ordination of faith and perseverance as the condition of the salvation to be communicated; (3) the ordination of the means to the end by the help of which sinners may believe and persevere; (4) the ordination of salvation itself, made for particular persons as believing and persevering.38

Subsequently, Turretin accuses Arminianism of corrupting the doctrine of gratuitous predestination, of denying God’s good pleasure, of limiting God’s knowledge to mere praescientia, of denying all election to faith, of leading back to Pelagianism and popery. In sum, Arminianism does not at any point “touch upon the true meaning of election.”39 Third, Turretin addressed Amyraldian postredemptionism, a system taught by those Turretin regarded as “among the Reformed,” yet approaching Arminianism on some points by postulating general decrees to give Christ for all men, but special decrees to give faith and salvation only to some while rejecting others.40 Turretin, with Johann Heidegger and Lucas Gernler, composed the Formula Consensus Helvetica (1675) against the theory of the Saumur theologians. The preface of the formula acknowledges its opponents as “the honorable foreign brothers, whom we otherwise cherish and fraternally esteem as having obtained a faith of equal standing,” even as it laments the dangerous tendencies of their “error.”41 After outlining the order of God’s decrees according to the school of Saumur in his Institutes, Turretin argued against them on the following grounds: (1) It is foolish to suppose that God can zealously love people in one decree (general), whom he equally hates in another (special).42 (2) It is foolish to assume that God determined means before end, that is, He thought of Christ, who is the most important means of carrying out the decree of election, before He thought of the salvation of the elect. (3) It is foolish to assume that “Christ has not merited faith for his own because the satisfaction for all is conceived to precede the decree to give faith to some.” (4) It is foolish to assume that calling precedes election. (5) It is foolish to base God’s decrees on the distinction between “God as legislator” and “Father,” or “manager” and “disposer of events.”43 38 39 40 41 42

Turretin, Institutes, 1:419 (IV: 18, 6). Turretin, Institutes, 1:419–20 (IV: 18, 7–8). Turretin, Institutes, 1:422–23 (IV: 18, 13). “Formula Consensus Helvetica (1675),” in Reformed Confessions, 4:519. Turretin’s first argument is based upon his belief that God’s decrees “are not many and divided acts, but one only and a most simple act by which he from eternity decreed all things.” Though in our limited understanding, we may rightly conceive them as decrees in a particular order, the simplicity and unity of the decree in the divine mind require that these individual decrees cohere, and do not require a succession or change of intent. Turretin, Institutes, 1:417, 24 (IV: 18, 2 and 14). 43 Turretin, Institutes, 1:423–28 (IV: 18, 14–19).

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Finally, Turretin proposes and defends the final and fourth lapsarian option, infralapsarianism, as the “mediating” view between Amyraldianism and supralapsarianism and as “the common one among the Reformed” who teach that there is a double decree.44 According to this order, the first decree with us concerns the creation of man. The second concerns the permission of his fall by which he drew with him into ruin and destruction all his posterity. The third concerns the election to salvation of some certain ones from the fallen human race and the leaving of others in their native corruption and misery. The fourth concerns the sending of Christ into the world as the Mediator and surety of the elect…. The fifth concerns effectually calling them by the preaching of the gospel and the grace of the Holy Spirit.45

Turretin produces three sorts of evidence on which he bases his proof of infralapsarianism: (1) Scripture, which subordinates the mission of Christ and redemption to election, and attributes the saving gifts of the Spirit, faith, and repentance to the merit of Christ; (2) the nature of the case, in which the intention of accomplishing the end should come before the intention of providing the means; and (3) the mode of the work of each of the divine Persons which best fits the infra scheme—the election of the Father, the redemption of the Son, and the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.46 And ultimately, infralapsarianism is most appropriate because “it may not afford any occasion either to the desperation of men or to their profane license—the two terrible rocks upon which the wicked (falsely abusing it) are accustomed to strike.”47 In summary, Turretin opts for the infralapsarian perspective because he believes it best suits the end of how predestination must be taught, not for the satisfaction of curiosity, but with great sobriety and prudence, remaining within the limits of Scripture, always giving consideration to the occasion, not simply repeating formulae, with emphasis on its helpful and consoling side (election), and less said about reprobation; it must not be given to ordinary folk in the same way that it is given to the “initiate” in schools. Finally, it must be taught a posteriori, ascending from effect to cause, not a priori from cause to effect. Its purpose is edification, not the satisfaction of the vanity of those who suppose themselves elect.48

It should also be noted that Turretin saw the doctrine of predestination as very practical. In a sermon on 2 Peter 1:10, he said that sinners do abuse the doctrine of divine grace and twist it into an encouragement to continue in sin. However, “the saints think differently,” for God’s grace motivates them to live holy lives, and 44 45 46 47 48

Turretin, Institutes, 1:428 (IV: 18, 21). Turretin, Institutes, 1:429 (IV: 18, 22). Turretin, Institutes, 1:429–30 (IV: 18, 23). Turretin, Institutes, 1:430 (IV: 18, 25). Beardslee, “Turretin,” 419.

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they understand that while obedience cannot merit eternal life, it is the effect of life and the road to enjoying that life forever.49 Like Beza, Turretin distinguished in his sermon between the eternal decree of election and its execution in time through calling, the one being the “source” and “cause,” the other the “stream” and “effect.”50 Election is an abyss that cannot be fully probed, but it is an abyss of divine love and grace upon which we may meditate for our faith and consolation. This is a doctrine that strips away all our claims to be more righteous than others, humbles and silences our reason, and gives us great cause to glorify God for His undeserved grace.51 It also propels believers to holiness: In election God shows us mercy as sovereign and he writes the decree. Calling is like the letters of grace which give us knowledge of it. But neither the decree nor the letters can be certain in regards to us if the seal of the Spirit of sanctification is not applied to it. When one is in sin, carrying the imprints of the devil, there is no reason to hope for God’s love. But where there is holiness, there also is the seal of God and consequently the certainty of his grace.52

Thus holiness is the pathway to assurance of one’s election and calling, and the road to glory. For all his scholasticism, Turretin never lost sight of the experiential and practical aspects of biblical Christianity. His infralapsarianism was no less insistent on the glory and sovereignty of God than the doctrines of Beza, though they ordered the inner logic of the decree differently. However, the generations that followed Turretin did not carry on this God-centered vision. As James Dennison writes, “Orthodoxy could not survive the anthropocentric focus of Amyraldianism…. The progressive optimism of these proponents of modernity was not a newfound rationalism, scientism and toleration, it was an old cancer perennially threatening the foundation of orthodoxy—anthropocentrism.”53

49 J. Mark Beach, “Preaching Predestination—An Examination of Francis Turretin’s Sermon, De l’affermissement de la Vocation et de l’election du fidele,” in Mid-America Journal of Theology (2010): 139. He cites Francis Turretin, Sermons sur divers passages de l’Ecriture Sainte (Geneva, 1676), 435–94. 50 Beach, “Preaching Predestination,” 140. 51 Beach, “Preaching Predestination,” 141–42. 52 Quoted in Beach, “Preaching Predestination,” 145. 53 James T. Dennison, Jr., “The Twilight of Scholasticism: Francis Turretin at the Dawn of the Enlightenment,” in Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment, ed. Carl R. Trueman and R. S. Clark (Carlisle, Cumbria, U.K.: Paternoster, 1999), 253.

Chapter 17: The Decline under Francis Turretin’s Successors

For the century after Beza taught in the academy, Genevan theologians continued zealously to defend the doctrine of God’s sovereign predestination. Though they did not accept every aspect of Beza’s teaching, most notably his supralapsarian view of the inner logic of God’s decree, they did maintain the essence of the Reformed perspective on election and reprobation, a perspective that Calvin and Beza had shared. However, despite Francis Turretin’s temporary victory over Amyraldianism through the requirement of subscription to the Genevan Formula Consensus, the theological faculty at Geneva would soon be overwhelmed by a new perspective that led to the progressive abandonment of confessional fidelity and of scholastic precision in theology.

Conflicting Approaches in the Reformed Citadel When Francis Turretin visited Holland on Geneva’s behalf, Theodore Tronchin’s liberal son, Louis Tronchin (1629–1705), was voted as Geneva’s new professor of theology (1661). The younger Tronchin was educated under Amyraut at the Saumur academy. Though he believed in the inerrancy of Holy Scripture, he held a high view of the powers of human reason to investigate and evaluate truth. He replaced scholastic methodology in the theological curriculum with Cartesian philosophy, and encouraged criticism of tradition. He trained the notable Enlightenment figure, Pierre Bayle, who greatly admired him. He also promoted Amyraldianism and sought union between the Reformed, Lutherans, and Anglicans based on common belief in fundamental articles of the faith. He even dialogued sympathetically with Arminians, finding their viewpoint not far from his own Amyraldianism.1 However, his advocacy of this perspective was temporarily restrained by the Formula Consensus. 1 Martin I. Klauber, “Reason, Revelation, and Cartesianism: Louis Tronchin and Enlightened

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Reformed orthodoxy found an advocate in Benedict Pictet (1655–1724), a nephew of Francis Turretin who was appointed professor of theology in Geneva in 1686, serving until his death.2 Though the translator of his Theologia Christiana3 admits to purposely omitting parts of his chapter on reprobation “as being too artificial in statement to be scriptural,”4 sufficient material is included in his chapters on election to prove that Pictet’s classic Reformed infralapsarianism5 stood in stark contrast to Louis Tronchin’s liberalism. Pictet writes, “Further, let it be observed that God has decreed to save some men lying in the same abyss of misery as the rest, of his mere grace and favour, lest any one should imagine, that God hath chosen those only who he foresaw would be better and more deserving than others, and would believe, and perform good works.”6 He sought to magnify both God’s mercy and sovereignty in election, writing, “If then it be asked, why God has elected some men? The reply is, it is the effect of the divine mercy towards the human race, whereby God would not have all to perish, though all had deserved to perish. But if it be further asked, why Peter was chosen rather than Judas? The reply is, that such was the pleasure of God.”7 When the

2

3 4 5 6

7

Orthodoxy in Late Seventeenth-Century Geneva,” Church History 59, no. 3 (Sept. 1990): 326– 39; Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan-Protestantism: Jean-Alphonse Turretin (1671– 1737) and Enlightened Orthodoxy at the Academy of Geneva (London: Associated University Presses, 1994), 46–58; David J. Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 71–72. On Pictet’s life, see Eugène de Budé, Vie de Bénédict Pictet, Théologien genevois (1655–1724) (Lausanne: Georges Bridel, 1874). Klauber notes that Pictet was very close to his uncle: it was he whom Francis Turretin called to his bedside when dying, not his son, and Pictet delivered the elder Turretin’s eulogy. Martin I. Klauber, “Family Loyalty and Theological Transition in PostReformation Geneva: The Case of Benedict Pictet (1655–1724),” Fides et Historia 24, no. 1 (1992): 60. See also Martin I. Klauber, “Reformed Orthodoxy in Transition: Bénédict Pictet (1655–1724) and Enlightened Orthodoxy in Post-Reformation Geneva,” Later Calvinism, 93– 113. Klauber, Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan-Protestantism, 57. Benedict Pictet, Theologia Christiana (Genevae: Cramer et Perachon, 1696); Christian Theology, trans. Frederick Reyroux (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publications, [1845]). Editorial note in Pictet, Christian Theology, 212. For the full statement of Pictet on reprobation, see Theologia Christiana, 465–69. It appears that Reyroux did not translate points III–V, the first sentence of VIII, and XI of Pictet’s twelve points in this chapter. Pictet, Theologia Christiana, 247–48; Christian Theology, 117–18. Pictet, Christian Theology, 204. Chapter six (217–18) deals with “the right use” of election and reprobation. The Latin is as follows: “Observandum Deum decrevisse dare salutem quibusdam hominibus in eadem miseriae massa[e] jacentibus ex mera[e] gratia[e]: Ne quis credat Deum elegisse tantum eos quos praevidit esse aliis vel meliores, vel digniores, credituros, et bona opera praestituros.” Pictet, Theologia Christiana, 448. Pictet, Christian Theology, 205. “Itaque si a me petatur, Cur Deus quosdam homines elegerit? Respondebo hanc Electionem esse effectum misericordiae Dei erga genus humanum, qua misericordia Deus noluit perire omnes, qui perire meruerant. Si vero ulterius a me quaeratur, Cur Petius (sic) potius quam Judas eligatur? id ita factum reponam, quia ita placuit rerum omnium Domino.” Pictet, Theologia Christiana, 450. Although not reflected in Reyroux’s translation, Pictet ultimately places the reason for election in the good pleasure of the “Lord of

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Genevan Formula Consensus came under attack at the start of the eighteenth century, Pictet defended it stoutly, fearing that without the Formula the Reformed churches would experience not only a drift into Amyraldianism, but a shift from Dordtian orthodoxy to Arminianism.8 Though Pictet strongly defended the predestinarian doctrine of Reformed orthodoxy that he inherited from Turretin, he did not employ as much of the scholastic methods as his predecessor. Klauber notes that Pictet’s Theologia Christiana does not bear the marks of a scholastic treatise, and argues that this is “an important evidence that indicates his movement away from a scholastic methodology” back to “the model of Calvin and the early Reformers.”9 However, it should be noted that Pictet did not write this book as an academic treatise to replace previous dogmatics, but as a popular book to serve godly laymen, as well as theological students who had already read Turretin’s Institutes and desired a book to supplement it in a simpler, less polemical form.10 Pictet’s book still uses such scholastic distinctions as the concurrence between the divine “first cause” and “second causes” in providence, by which he maintains God’s sovereignty and the utility and responsibility of human activity.11 While Pictet’s book is certainly less scholastic than his uncle Turretin’s magnum opus, this is not sufficient evidence to prove a decisive shift away from scholasticism on the part of Pictet, for varying degrees of scholastic methodology can be found throughout Reformed orthodoxy, sometimes in the works of a single author, as we can see in Beza’s Confessio. Whatever Pictet’s approach to methodology may have been, he was recognized as a sound, orthodox theologian by those desiring to retain the Reformed heritage, as we see by the translation and use of his books in Scotland and England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As one translator remarked, Pictet “may in some measure be regarded as the last of those illustrious and orthodox divines who presided over the church of Geneva…. For shortly after his death…that highly favoured church commenced her grievous declension.”12

8 9 10 11 12

all things.” With this title Pictet references his earlier description of the two ways that God must be viewed in election: as “a merciful Father (Patris misericordis)” and “independent Lord (liberrimi Domini).” Klauber, “Family Loyalty and Theological Transition,” 58. Klauber, “Family Loyalty and Theological Transition,” 61. Pictet, author’s preface to Christian Theology, vii. Pictet, Christian Theology, 151; Theologia Christiana, 410. It should also be noted that the English translation omits the many numbered headings in the original, smoothing out the text into paragraphs, and obscuring the highly structured nature of the original document. Reyroux, “Translator’s Preface,” in Pictet, Christian Theology, iv.

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The End of Reformed Orthodoxy in Geneva Pictet’s major theological opponent at Geneva was his colleague, Jean-Alphonse Turretin (1671–1737), who gained the upper hand over Pictet, and effectively stamped out any vestiges of conservative Reformed theology at the Academy. He had been so effectively trained by Louis Tronchin that the younger Turretin stood against his own father in important theological issues.13 Taking Louis Tronchin’s chair in theology in 1705, he has been described as “the liberator of Calvin’s church from the tyranny of Calvinistic scholasticism.”14 As an advocate of natural theology,15 J. A. Turretin had no interest in the decrees of God. He taught that the doctrine of predestination had only led to “wild excess” in Protestant circles. Consequently, he felt free to caricature and condemn supralapsarianism: When theologians appear who teach that God created the greater part of mankind for no other purpose than to show forth his glory in their eternal misery, and therefore formed them in a state of absolute necessity of sinning, these theologians, who are called supralapsarians, can be completely refuted by the natural ideas concerning the divine perfections, such as goodness, justice, and wisdom.16

For J. A. Turretin, the notion of sin and man’s unworthiness of salvation did not bear any implications for the divine decree. His Fundamentals in Religion17 reveal how completely he had departed from his father’s theology in many cardinal doctrines of Reformed orthodoxy. His fight to abrogate the Formula Consensus of 1675, which he accomplished by 1706, spelled the final defeat for Reformed orthodoxy at the Genevan Academy. For the sake of unity and simplicity, he was quite ready to drop such “non-essential” doctrines as predestination, imputation of original sin, the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, and Christ’s effectual satisfaction for the sins of the elect alone. He said, “Those who believe will be saved and those who do not will be condemned. To know this is to know enough concerning the decrees of God.”18 Indeed, the minimal content of saving faith in J. 13 Klauber, Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan-Protestantism, 57. 14 Gamble, “Switzerland,” 70. For J. A. Turretin’s life, see Alexander, “Turretin,” 458–61; Beardslee, “Turretin,” 6–12, 414–16; Klauber, Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan-Protestantism, 9, 36–37, 58–62. 15 Joh. Alphonsi Turretin, Theses de theologia naturali, in Dilucidationes philosophico-theologico-dogmatico-morales (Basel, 1748), v. 1; rendered into English as J. A. Turretin, Dissertations on Natural Theology, trans. William Crawford (Belfast: James Magee, 1777). 16 Beardslee, “Turretin,” 404–405. 17 J. A. Turretin, Nubes Testium (Geneva: Fabri et Burrillo, 1719), rendered into English as J. A. Turretin, A Discourse Concerning Fundamental Articles in Religion. In which a Method is Laid Down for the More Effectual Uniting of Protestants, and Promoting a More General Toleration amongst Them (London: by J. Darby, for A. Bell, et al., 1720). 18 Quote in Klauber, Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan-Protestantism, 180.

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A. Turretin’s view evaporates into a sincere desire to know the truth, even without a knowledge of the gospel.19 Mildly, Philip Schaff referred to J. A. Turretin as one who “was inclined to Arminianism, and favored toleration.”20 Alexander is more forthright: “His whole theological tendency was marked by a fascinating liberalism, verging on what was latitudinarian.”21 Under Turretin’s guidance, the Council of Geneva tellingly ruled that candidates for ordination need not subscribe to the Formula or even to the Canons of Dordt, but only to the Bible and Calvin’s Catechism, in order to facilitate union among the Reformed, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. Later in 1725, the only required subscription was to the Bible itself.22 Though the younger Turretin aimed at an enlightened, moderate orthodoxy that would defeat philosophical challenges to Christianity and unite Protestantism, his efforts actually opened the gates for heterodoxy to enter into the citadel of Calvinism.23 If J. A. Turretin opened the gates of Geneva to heresy, then Jacob Vernet (1698– 1789) granted it citizenship in the city.24 Vernet served as a pastor (1737), academic rector (1737), professor of literature (1739), and professor of theology (1756) in Geneva. Closely connected to J. A. Turretin and his family,25 he was a dominant figure in Genevan theology for five decades. He sought a middle way between deism on the one hand (he was critical of D’Alembert and Voltaire) and Reformed scholasticism on the other.26 The result was a liberalism that straddled a double foundation in rationalism and Scripture, embraced the basic tenets of Arminian soteriology, and made morality and moderation the core of Christianity. In his five volumes of Christian Instructions, Vernet repeatedly emphasized that the church should only cling to the bare essentials of traditional doctrine. And for him, bare meant bare: the Trinity was denied, election is no more than

19 Klauber, Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan-Protestantism, 176–77; cf. Martin I. Klauber, “The Uniqueness of Christ in Post-Reformation Reformed Theology: From Francis Turretin to Jean-Alphonse Turretin,” in Church and School, 699–710. 20 Schaff, Creeds, 1: 478. 21 Alexander, “Turretin,” 459. 22 Klauber, “Family Loyalty and Theological Transition,” 58. 23 Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1:190. 24 N. Charles Falletti said, “Turrretin discretely opened the gates of Geneva to [Arminianism], Vernet conferred citizenship upon it.” Quoted in David Sorkin, “Geneva’s ‘Enlightened Orthodoxy’: The Middle Way of Jacob Vernet (1698–1789),” Church History 74, no. 2 (June 2005): 289. On Vernet, see Graham Gargett, Jacob Vernet, Geneva, and the Philosophes (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1994). 25 Martin I. Klauber, “Theological Transition in Geneva: From Jean-Alphonse Turretin to Jacob Vernet,” in Protestant Scholasticism, 258. 26 Sorkin, “Geneva’s ‘Enlightened Orthodoxy,’” 287, 290–93, 301–303.

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God’s foreknowledge of who would believe, and the decrees of God can scarcely be profitably discussed at all.27 Though Vernet’s imprecision makes it hard to pin him down (as it did in his own time), it is clear that he deviated significantly from the Reformed orthodoxy of a century earlier, not so much in what he affirmed as in what he refused to affirm, including the classic Augustinian views of the sovereignty of God, human depravity, the person of Christ, and final judgment. David Sorkin writes, “Here, then, was the core of Vernet’s Arminian theology. Man’s faculty of reason is intact and he is free to be moral, yet because of his corruption he needs faith in Jesus for expiation and grace.”28 Klauber observes that Vernet, in order to make Christianity more acceptable to Enlightenment rationalists, “removed theological mysteries such as predestination, the Trinity, and the existence of a literal hell.”29 Vernet also set aside the classic formulation of the person of Christ, and taught that Christ was inferior to the Father, a divine messenger of God, and that the Holy Spirit is not a person.30 Thus he made himself vulnerable to the charge of Socinianism, a term used in this context as a general reference to Christological and anti-trinitarian heresy.31

Conclusion Though J. A. Turretin had banned the signing of the Helvetic Consensus under his rectorship, he never intended an entirely confessionless Geneva as it soon became in the hands of Vernet. Good’s words regarding the state of Geneva at the beginning of the nineteenth century form an apt summary: How great was the descent from Calvin to this. Geneva, the city that, under Calvin, had been a city set on a hill, whose light could not be hid—the model city, the wonder of its day—had fallen into an abyss. The church which so successfully had resisted all the plots of Romanism for centuries was finally captured by its opposite, rationalism. For 27 Good, Swiss Reformed, 282–85. 28 Sorkin, “Geneva’s ‘Enlightened Orthodoxy,’” 293. 29 Martin I. Klauber, “Between Calvinist and Philosophe: Jacob Vernet’s Theological Dilemma,” Westminster Theological Journal 63 (2001): 380. The full article runs from pp. 377–92. 30 Klauber, “Between Calvinist and Philosophe,” 387; “Theological Transition in Geneva,” 266– 69. 31 For an English translation of d’Alembert’s article where he commended the Genevan clergy for embracing “a perfect Socinianism,” see Jean Le Rond D’Alembert, “Geneva,” The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, trans. Nelly S. Hoyt and Thomas Cassirer (Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2003), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.150 (accessed November 6, 2015). Originally published as “Genève,” Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 7:578–578D (Paris, 1757).

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two centuries and more, Geneva had held to its Calvinism; but half a century had undone it all.32

The city that once echoed with the preaching of Calvin and Beza had become “a little Paris.” Pictet proved to be prophetic when he said in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, “I fear for the establishment of Arminianism and I dread even worse things; the minds of the century are extremely predisposed to innovation.”33 Though Louis Tronchin, J. A. Turretin, and Jacob Vernet may have sincerely sought to defend Reformed Christianity by adapting its message and methods to answer the rational objections of their adversaries, the actual result of their apologetic efforts was a significant shift of doctrine away from a theology that exalted God and humbled man, to a theology that increasingly neglected the knowledge of God and exalted human reason and moral effort. The theme of salvation by sovereign grace was increasingly muted by a chorus of voices proclaiming the powers of the human soul. Yet this change, for all its pious intention, did not create a godlier Geneva, but instead cut the heart out of Calvin’s vision for vital holiness—a vision grounded in the glory of the grace of God. We have observed that when the Genevan theologians of the eighteenth century modified Reformed orthodoxy to embrace Amyraldianism, it led them by progressive steps into a liberalism that mixed Arminian and Socinian doctrines. This observation tends to confirm B. B. Warfield’s observation that “post-redemptionism” is “a logically inconsistent form of Calvinism and therefore an unstable form of Calvinism.”34 At the same time, we recognize another factor at work: the rising tide of confidence in human reason that flooded the churches and swept away the old confessions and forms that had posited reason as the mere servant of divine revelation.

32 Good, Swiss Reformed, 292. Cf. Michael Heyd, “Cartesianism, Secularization and Academic Reform: Jean-Robert Chouet and the Academy of Geneva, 1669–1704” (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1974); Charles Borgeaud, Histoire de l’Université de Genève: L’Academie de Calvin 1559–1798 (Geneva: Georg, 1900). 33 Quoted in Klauber, “Reformed Orthodoxy in Transition,” in Later Calvinism, 98. 34 Benjamin B. Warfield, The Plan of Salvation (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1915), 119.

Chapter 18: Conclusions on Sovereign Predestination

This study has traced the doctrine of double predestination in sixteenth-century German Lutheranism and Genevan Reformed theology in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. In this closing chapter, I will summarize the findings of this study, and draw out some implications.

Predestination in Early German Lutheranism Martin Luther taught the absolute sovereignty of God as a correlative of His omnipotence. He affirmed God’s predestination of the elect to salvation and His reprobation of other sinners to perish in their sins. However, Luther also denied that God was the author of sin and stressed that we can only know the “hidden God” through the “revealed God” in Jesus Christ. Luther’s constraint of human reasoning about predestination to the Word of God both fenced off the mysteries that God has not revealed and focused the proclamation of the Word upon God’s saving purpose in Jesus Christ. Thus he stressed that predestination serves for the consolation of God’s people, for it magnifies the unmerited character and freedom of divine grace. Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s colleague at Wittenberg, labored to defend the German evangelicals against the charge that their theology made God the author of sin. His emphatic defense of human responsibility provoked another charge against him: synergism in conversion. He stressed that man must not resist God’s grace, and that man’s will is a co–cause with divine grace of his conversion. However, a study of Melanchthon’s doctrine and his use of Aristotelian categories of causation has shown that he considered God’s grace to be the efficient cause of all good in man, including man’s voluntary acceptance of the gospel. Melanchthon taught that God elects sinners to salvation based on nothing that they will or do, but only on His mercy. The God of election, however, must be viewed through the universal call of the gospel, and Melanchthon flatly rejected the idea of God issuing an eternal decree for the damnation of certain sinners.

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Therefore, Melanchthon maintained divine sovereignty in salvation and human responsibility for obedience, and yet his ambiguous language of causality and avoidance of any implication that God reprobated some individuals apart from foreknowledge that they would persist in unbelief left Melanchthon’s doctrine open to misunderstanding as synergistic. The distinctly Lutheran perspective on predestination came into sharper focus with the debate between Johann Marbach and Jerome Zanchi. Marbach used his ecclesiastical influence to impose his particular version of Lutheranism upon Strasbourg. He attacked Zanchi for his teachings on predestination, perseverance, and the Lord’s Supper at the Strasbourg Academy. Zanchi taught double predestination, though he was careful to state that the reprobate act voluntarily in their corruption and are damned for their sins. Marbach insisted that questions of the causes of why only some find salvation are beyond us. He limited the preaching of election to the assurance of believers and flatly rejected reprobation except as divine reaction to man’s foreknown rejection of God’s grace. After years of wrangling, the city of Strasbourg adopted a statement that reflected Marbach’s views and soon led to Zanchi’s resignation. Present at these meetings was Jakob Andreae, a Lutheran theologian who would play a key role with Martin Chemnitz in drafting the Formula of Concord’s statement on predestination. The Formula of Concord sought to solve the sovereignty-responsibility problem by distinguishing between God’s foreknowledge of all events and His predestination of the elect to salvation. It then collapses election into the historical outworking of salvation through Jesus Christ, which is not synergistic but salvation by God’s grace alone. The decree of the hidden God disappears from view and is replaced by God’s universal grace offered to all in the gospel. Predestinarian reprobation has no place in Christian teaching, the concordists stated, because predestination can only be considered in Christ for the comfort of believers, whereas man’s sin falls under the purview of God’s foreknowledge. The single predestination of the Formula of Concord stands in sharp contrast to the Canons of Dordt, which afffirmed that sovereign reprobation is taught by Scripture, logically implied by election, glorifies God in His sovereignty, and humbles the elect by displaying election’s eternal and unmerited character. Earlier historiography presented the Formula of Concord as taking the middle ground between the double predestination of Luther and the synergism of Melanchthon. Recent studies have found the situation to be more complex. While Luther did occasionally assert reprobation, in accordance with his law/gospel hermeneutic he tended to focus on the grace of the “revealed God” of the gospel to the neglect of the “hidden God” of reprobation. Despite accusations against him, Melanchthon did affirm monergism in salvation, but wrote in sufficiently ambiguous terms that some of his students moved on into overt synergism. The two Wittenberg professors stood closer to each other than scholars have some-

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times recognized, and together prepared the way for the concordists to paradoxically affirm both God’s universal saving will and salvation by grace alone from a state of spiritual bondage. This formulation further divided the Lutheran churches from the Reformed, and its inherent tensions proved unstable, for later Lutheran theologians asserted that election is based on mere foreknowledge of faith (intuitu fidei). In its rejection of predestinarian reprobation, the Formula of Concord opened the door for God’s election of men to be replaced by man’s election of God.

Predestination in Calvin’s Theology John Calvin regarded election and reprobation as inseparable, though he followed the scriptural balance by giving greater emphasis to election. Though Calvin was influenced by Augustine and Luther in his doctrine of sola gratia, the Genevan Reformer ultimately formed his own views based on his interpretation of Scripture. Therefore, he did not shun the teaching of reprobation, though the doctrine and its consequences filled him with stupendous awe. As early as his 1536 Institutes, Calvin wrote of God’s choice of some persons and rejection of others in His eternal plan, while simultaneously affirming that God does all things justly, and the wicked have the root of their sins in themselves. The doctrine of double predestination received treatment in a full article in the 1537 Instruction (published in Latin in 1538), serving as an explanation of why some believe and others do not. Calvin taught in his commentary on Romans (1539) that God’s choice to save some and reject others was not based on anything in them, but only on His sovereign will (Rom. 9:18); though those rejected will be damned for their sins—not arbitrarily, but as an act of divine justice. Since predestination is grounded upon no other cause than God’s will, we must respect its mystery (Rom. 9:19–21; 11:33). When Calvin substantially expanded his Institutes in its 1539/1541 edition, he developed his teaching and defense of double predestination in a more systematic fashion. Controversy with Albert Pighius, Jerome Bolsec, and Sebastian Castellio in the 1540s and 1550s drew out polemical responses from Calvin. He defended the Reformed doctrine of predestination against charges that it made God the author of sin and encouraged men to commit sin. In response, Calvin insisted that the Scriptures taught that man’s will is the proximate cause of sin and God’s will is the remote and ultimate cause of a sinner’s damnation. If we cannot understand how they fit together, Calvin said that we must embrace a “biblically instructed ignorance” which bows before God. The 1559 edition of Calvin’s Institutes brought no major new insight or defense of this doctrine, only an increased theological precision. Calvin’s emphasis

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remained practical even in this systematic presentation: the doctrine of predestination serves to glorify God and to humble man. In 1562, Calvin published his sermons on Jacob and Esau (Gen. 25:12–27:38), including portions that deal with election and reprobation. Though some men respond to this doctrine as dogs that attack the Scriptures, and others as hogs that abuse the doctrine in order to wallow in sin, Calvin preached predestination to motivate believers to pursue holiness by grace. Through his writings, Calvin’s doctrine of predestination remained Christcentered by attributing to God the Son His role in the eternal counsels of the Trinity and ascribing to the Mediator His central place in executing God’s plan of salvation for the elect. Even with regard to the execution of reprobation, we find suggestions in Calvin’s theology that Christ executes God’s wrath against the reprobate, for the Father has entrusted all judgment to the Son.

Predestination After Calvin in Reformed and Post-Reformed Geneva Though mid-twentieth century scholarship often pitted Calvin against his Calvinist successors, a growing body of research has demonstrated the significant continuity between the Genevan Reformer and those who came after him, even while acknowledging variety within the Reformed tradition. This shift of historiography is nowhere more pronounced than in the modern assessment of Theodore Beza, who followed Calvin at the Academy of Geneva. Beza was once disdained as the man who ruined Calvin’s theology by distorting it into a deductive system of Aristotelian scholasticism, in which all doctrine is derived from the principle of predestination. He is now recognized as more of a conservator than innovator. Beza’s Table of Predestination, a visual aid to explain the doctrine with an accompanying theological treatise, presents God’s eternal decree of double predestination and traces its working out in human history. Some scholars have taken it to represent a philosophical scheme that controls all of theology, but in fact it is a treatise specifically written about predestination, and that with abundant scriptural proofs, for the purpose of edification in godliness. Beza’s Tabula does present an idea not explicitly found in Calvin: a supralapsarian order in the divine decree. Supralapsarianism is a logical analysis of God’s plan that posits God’s viewing the objects of predestination not as guilty and corrupted by man’s fall (lapsus), but as entirely undefined except by whatever God willed (Rom. 9:20–21). God’s intent to glorify Himself through election and reprobation in this scheme is logically prior to all other aspects of His decree, including His decree to create man and for man to fall.

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The charge that Beza transformed Calvin’s theology of Christ-centered piety into a rigid structure of predestinarian logic falls apart upon consideration of the broader corpus of Beza’s writings. He ordered his Confession of the Christian Faith (1559/1560) by the trinitarian pattern of the Apostles’ Creed, not by the socalled central dogma of the divine decree. His other, short confession of faith does not mention predestination, but focuses on Christ’s incarnation, His death to satisfy divine justice, and the application of His work by the Spirit. Beza’s various published works do speak of predestination as one topic among many found in the Scriptures, and present predestination in a supralapsarian manner. They do not sacrifice the centrality of Christ’s mediatorial work, nor do they neglect practical application. On the contrary, Beza’s writings breathe a warm, evangelical spirit of faith in Christ and gratitude for God’s eternal compassion. Beza’s immediate successors in Geneva do not appear to have followed his supralapsarianism, but they did continue to teach and defend the Reformed doctrine of double predestination. Giovanni Diodati’s famous Annotations upon Scripture state that God eternally elected whom He would save based on His will and not any foreknown goodness in the elect. God implements His election through union with Christ, by the instruments of secondary causes, and with the results of faith, love, and good works. Like Calvin and Beza, Diodati ascribed the cause of reprobation to the inscrutable will of God, but the immediate cause of damnation to human sin. Unlike Beza, Diodati said that God viewed man as fallen and corrupt when making His decree of predestination. When Diodati and his Genevan colleague, Theodore Tronchin, served as the Genevan delegates at the Synod of Dordt, they did not publicly defend Beza’s supralapsarianism, but submitted theses to the synod with a distinctly infralapsarian flavor. As the seventeenth century progressed, other Genevan professors such as Benedict Turretin and Friedrich Spanheim stood by the Canons of Dordt. Spanheim quipped that he was a supralapsarian in the classroom but an infralapsarian in the pulpit. Benedict Turretin’s son, Francis Turretin, polemically asserted infralapsarian predestination against supralapsarianism, Amyraldianism, and Arminianism in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Turretin sought to safeguard Reformed orthodoxy against Amyraldianism by the Genevan Formula Consensus (1675). Turretin also preached predestination to the church as a medicine that destroys self-righteousness and an incentive to pursue holiness in order to confirm one’s calling and election with personal assurance. The doctrines of Amyraut had already penetrated Geneva in the latter half of the seventeenth century through Francis Turretin’s fellow professor, Louis Tronchin (son of Theodore). The younger Tronchin was somewhat restrained by the Formula Consensus, but his presence leavened the lump at the Academy and won over Turretin’s son, Jean-Alphonse Turretin. Though opposed by his cousin,

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Benedict Pictet, who was also a professor of theology and quite loyal to the orthodoxy of the elder Turretin, J. A. Turretin led Geneva into the eighteenth century and successfully abolished the requirement for candidates for the ministry to subscribe to the Formula Consensus and the Canons of Dordt. As to his own views, he went even further than the Amyraldianism of Louis Tronchin, for he advocated agnosticism with regard to God’s decrees and promoted a natural theology more congenial to the philosophy of his day. His doctrinal minimalism aimed at union among Reformed, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. Jacob Vernet took Geneva to the next step by building a theology that was intended as a middle path between Enlightenment philosophy and Reformed orthodoxy. In order to straddle rationalism and Scripture, Vernet cast off the doctrines of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the personality of the Spirit, the predestination of men to salvation and damnation, and the punishment of the wicked in hell. The agnostic scientist and philosopher Jean Le Rond D’Alembert wittily commended the Genevan divines for embracing “a perfect Socinianism.” By the end of the eighteenth century, the citadel of Reformed theology had fallen into not just Arminianism, but a denial of the core of historic Christian orthodoxy.

Implications and Concluding Remarks Although this book is a work of historical theology and not biblical exegesis or systematic theology, I will close with the following theological observations based on the research presented above. Each observation will be framed as a brief thesis, with a few explanatory comments. 1. Reformation teachers of double predestination did not teach that God is the author of sin. Although this charge has been repeatedly thrown at Christians who stand in the Augustinian tradition, they have rejected it and sought to refute its arguments by distinguishing between God’s decree and the execution of that decree through real though secondary causes. Luther, Calvin, and Calvin’s successors at Geneva were united in this distinction, and we should not ascribe to them a view of God that they did not teach. 2. An over-reaction against the charge of making God the author of sin can make a theologian swerve towards soteriological synergism. Whereas Luther and Calvin stood firm in their assertions of God’s sovereignty, Melanchthon responded to this charge with ambiguity and an imbalanced emphasis upon human responsibility. Though recent studies have vindicated Melanchthon from the accusation of synergism, his statements are often confusing and seem to have led some of his students towards semi-Pelagianism.

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3. Despite significant differences in formulation, there was a substantial measure of unity between Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin in affirming the monergistic principle of salvation by grace alone and respecting the mystery of God’s predestination. Insofar as scholars have labeled Melanchthon a synergist, the mutal respect between him and Calvin and the collegial unity between Luther and Melanchthon becomes an inexplicable riddle. However, it appears that the two Wittenbergers and the Genevan Reformer did share a basic commitment to the principle that all good in man, even his acceptance of God’s grace, comes from God’s grace. These three Reformers also recognized that much about God’s eternal purposes remains hidden from man, and we must confine ourselves to what Scripture reveals about them. However, they balanced and deployed these two principles in distinct ways that took them on different trajectories. 4. The attempt to affirm the Augustinian doctrines of total depravity and salvation by grace alone, but to reject Augustinian double predestination, results in a system that is incoherent and unstable. Articles 2 and 11 in the Formula of Concord clash with each other. Unable to maintain the resulting theological tension, Lutheran orthodoxy moved from Luther’s robust Augustinianism towards an election based on foreseen faith. The challenge to concordist Lutheranism is either to abandon the spiritual deadness of fallen man, or to embrace sovereign election with its plain implications. Diverse answers to that challenge have split Lutheranism into various camps. 5. The classic Reformed formulation of double predestination asserts eternal divine reprobation based on God’s will alone, but historical damnation is based on the sins of man. Neither Calvin nor subsequent Reformed theologians that this book reviews placed God’s decree in immediate causal relation to the sins and damnation of the wicked. Calvin attributed the proximate cause of damnation to the voluntary sins of Adam and his offspring. They also attributed the ultimate cause of an individual’s damnation to God’s will, because God chose not to bring them to glory by the grace of His Son. This distinction was a key part of the Reformed apologetic for its view of predestination, for it placed the blame for sin and damnation on sinners, but glorified God as the sovereign Lord and Savior. 6. Reformed orthodoxy did not distort Calvin’s Christ-centered theology into a rigid, barren system where all doctrines are logically deduced from the principle of sovereign divine predestination. Whether one reads the writings of Beza, Francis Turretin, or other writers, one finds that predestination functions as one topic among many. Orthodox Reformed writers based their doctrine on Scripture, structured their systems in a variety of ways, often around the Trinity, and aimed their teaching at the goals of promoting faith, love, humility, and holiness. 7. Supralapsarianism is a minority stream within the Reformed tradition, and coexisted fraternally with the larger infralapsarian stream in Reformed orthodoxy. Though some prominent theologians such as Beza taught supra-

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lapsarianism, even in Geneva most divines appear to have found the infralapsarian view to be more satisfying. The supras and infras certainly crossed swords in theological discourse, but neither side defined orthodoxy by its own position, and each co–labored with the other as brothers in the Reformed church. 8. Amyraldianism was not regarded as a heresy by the Reformed orthodox writers, but did introduce dangerous instability into the system of Reformed theology. Though Francis Turretin counted divines of the school of Amyraut as Reformed, he also noted that they posit two contradictory decrees coexisting in the eternal mind of God, the will to save all through Christ’s redemption and the will to save only some through the application of Christ’s redemption. When embraced in Geneva, Amyraldianism rapidly degenerated into Arminianism and Socinianism, and Reformed orthodoxy was swept away by a flood of mancentered theology. 9. The abolition of requirements for subscription to confessional statements in the name of toleration opened the door for apostasy from essential Reformed doctrines. A watershed moment took place in Genevan theology when J. A. Turretin successfully abolished the requirement that candidates for the ministry subscribe to confessional standards; they needed merely to pledge fidelity to the Bible. Such vague commitments could not wall out heresy, heterodoxy, and apostasy. 10. A theological synthesis that seeks to satisfy both the minds of unbelievers and honor the teachings of Scripture fails to do either, but results in theological liberalism that has lost the core of Christianity. Vernet may have considered himself an apologist for the Reformed faith in the modern world, but he defended the faith by jettisoning its most fundamental doctrines. The policy of intellectual appeasement produces a liberalism that is no Christianity at all.

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II.

Predestination in Early Lutheranism

A.

Primary Sources on Early Lutheranism

Andreae, Jakob. Acta Colloquii Montis Belligartensis… 1586. Tubingae: Georgium Guppenbachium, 1587. The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000. Gerhard, Johann. Theological Commonplaces: On Creation and Angels, On Providence, On Election and Reprobation, On the Image of God in Man before the Fall. Translated by Richard J. Dinda. Edited by Benjamin T. G. Mayes and Joshua J Hayes. St. Louis: Concordia, 2013. Luther, Martin. Dr. Martin Luthers Werke. Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–1993. —.Luther’s Works. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan. Saint Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1958–1986. —.Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings. Edited by John Dillenberger. New York: Doubleday, 1961. Melanchthon, Philip. Christian Doctrine: Loci communes 1555. Translated and edited by Clyde L. Manschreck. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1982. —.Commentarii in Epistolam ad Romanos. Wittenberg: Joseph Klug, 1540.

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B.

Secondary Sources on Early Lutheranism

Arand, Charles P., Robert Kolb, and James A. Nestingen. The Lutheran Confessions: History and Theology of the Book of Concord. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012. Althaus, Paul. The Theology of Martin Luther. Translated by Robert C. Schultz. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966. Bente, F. Historical Introductions to the Book of Concord. St. Louis: Concordia, 1965. Berkouwer, Gerrit C. Divine Election. Translated by Hugo Bakker. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960. —.Faith and Perseverance. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958. Busch, Edward. “The Predestinarian Controversy 100 Years Later.” Currents in Theology and Mission 9, no. 3 (June 1982): 132–48. Chung-Kim, Esther. Inventing Authority: The Use of the Church Fathers in Reformation Debates over the Eucharist. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2011. Cunningham, William. Reformers and Theology of the Reformation. London: Banner of Truth, 1967. Dingel, Irene. Concordia Controversa, Die öffentlichen Diskussionen um das lutherische Konkordienwerk am Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1996. Elert, Werner. The Structure of Lutheranism, Volume 1. Translated by Walter A. Hansen. St. Louis: Concordia, 1962. Forde, Gerhard O. On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. —.The Captivation of the Will. Edited by Steven Paulson. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. Graham, M. Patrick and Timothy J. Wengert. Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and the Commentary. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997. Green, Lowell C. “The Three Causes of Conversion in Philip Melanchthon, Martin Chemnitz, David Chytraeus, and the ‘Formula of Concord.’” Lutherjahrbuch 47 (1980): 89–114. Gritsch, Eric W. and Robert W. Jensen. Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976. Grunberg, Paul. “Johann Marbach.” In The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 7:166–67. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977. Haendler, K. Wort und Glaube bei Melanchthon. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1968. Haug, Hans R. “The Predestinarian Controversy in the Lutheran Church in North America.” PhD dissertation, Temple University, 1968.

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Kittelson, James M. “Marbach vs. Zanchi: The Resolution of Controversy in Late Reformation Strasbourg,” Sixteenth Century Journal 8, no. 3 (1977): 31–44. Kolb, Robert. Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method, Lutheran Quarterly Books. Edited by Paul Rorem. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. —.“Nikolaus von Amsdorf on Vessels of Wrath and Vessels of Mercy: A Lutheran’s Doctrine of Double Predestination.” Harvard Theological Review 69, no. 3–4 (July– October 1976): 325–43. —.“The Plan behind the Promise: Luther’s Proclamation of Predestination,” Reformation and Revival Journal 12, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 41–52. Krauth, Charles. The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology. Philadelphia: General Council Publication Board, 1899. Maag, Karin, editor. Melanchthon in Europe: His Work and Influence beyond Wittenberg, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999. McGoldrick, James E. “Luther’s Doctrine of Predestination,” Reformation and Revival Journal 8, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 81–103. Meijering, E. P. Melanchthon and Patristic Thought: The Doctrines of Christ and Grace, the Trinity and the Creation. Leiden: Brill, 1983. Moltmann, Jurgen. Prädestination und Perseveranz; Geschichte und Bedeutung der reformierten Lehre “de perseverantia sanctorum.” Neukirchen: Nieukirchner Verlag, 1961. Müller, Gerhard. “Alliance and Confession,” Sixteenth Century Journal 8, no. 4 (1977): 123– 40. Neve, J. L. Introduction to Lutheran Symbolics. Columbus: F. Heer, 1917. Niesel, Wilhelm. Reformed Symbolics: A Comparison of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism. Translated by David Lewis. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1962. Oberman, Heiko. Luther: Man Between God and the Devil. Translated by Eileen WalliserSchwarzbart. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Preus, Robert D. and Wilbert H. Rosin, editors. A Contemporary Look at the Formula of Concord. St. Louis: Concordia, 1978. Raitt, Jill. The Colloquy of Montbéliard: Religion and Politics in the Sixteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Schaff, Philip. The Creeds of Christendom. New York: Harper and Bros., 1877. —.The Harmony of the Reformed Confessions. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1877. Söderlund, Rune. Ex praevisa Fide. Zum Verständnis der Prädestinationslehre in der lutherischen Orthodoxie. Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1983. Spitz, Lewis W. and Wenzel Lohff, editors. Discord, Dialogue and Concord. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977. Steinmetz, David C. Luther in Context. Second Edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002. Walther, C. F. W. The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel. St. Louis: Concordia, n. d. Wengert, Timothy J. A Formula for Parish Practice: Using the Formula of Concord in Congregations, edited by Paul Rorem. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. —.Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philip Melanchthon’s Exegetical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. Edited by David Steinmetz. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

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III.

Predestination in Early Reformed Theology

A.

Primary Sources on Reformed Theology from Calvin to Vernet

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—.“God’s Eternal Decree and Its Temporal Execution: The Role of this Distinction in Theodore Beza’s Theology.” In Adaptations of Calvinism in Reformation Europe: Essays in Honour of Brian G. Armstrong. Edited by Mack P. Holt. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007. —.“The Issue of Reprobation at the Synod of Dort (1618–19) in Light of the History of the Doctrine.” PhD dissertation, University of St. Michael’s College, 1985. Sorkin, David J. “Geneva’s ‘Enlightened Orthodoxy’: The Middle Way of Jacob Vernet (1698–1789),” Church History 74, no. 2 (June 2005): 286–305. —.The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Spanheim, Friedrich. Disputatio de gratia universali. 3 volumes. Leyden, 1644–1648. Stark, Carl Herman. “Predestination.” PhD dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, 1950. Steinmetz, David C. Reformers in the Wings. Reprinted, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981. Revised edition, 2001. Stephens, W. P. The Holy Spirit in the Theology of Martin Bucer. Cambridge: University Press, 1970. Steinmetz, David C. Misericordia Dei: The Theology of Johannes von Staupitz in Its Late Medieval Setting. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought IV. Leiden: Brill, 1968. Stuckelberger, H. M. “Calvin und Castellio.” Zwingliana 7 (1939): 91–128. Thornwell, James Henley. Collected Writings, vol. 2 Reprinted, Banner of Truth Trust, 1874. Tigchelaar, J. J. “Defunctie van de praedestinatie in de theologie van Calvijn en Brakel.” Theologia Reformata 1 (1958): 171–88. Toft, Daniel John. “Zacharias Ursinus: A Study in the Development of Calvinism.” Master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1962. Torrance, T. F. Kingdom and Church. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1956. Trueman, Carl R. and R. S. Clark, editors. Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment. Carlisle, Cumbria, U.K.: Paternoster, 1999 Tylenda, Joseph N. “Girolamo Zanchi and John Calvin: A Study in Discipleship as Seen through Their Correspondence,” Calvin Theological Journal 10, no. 2 (Nov. 1975): 101– 141. Van Asselt, Willem J., et al. Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism. Translated by Albert Gootjes. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011. Van Asselt, Willem, J. J. Martin Bac, and Roelf T. te Velde, editors. Reformed Thought on Freedom: The Concept of Free Choice in Early Modern Reformed Theology. Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010. VanBuren, Paul. Christ in Our Place: The Substitutionary Character of Calvin’s Doctrine of Reconciliation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957. VandenBosch, Johannes W. “De ontwikkeling van Bucers praedestinatiegedachten voor het optreden van Calvijn.” PhD dissertation, Amsterdam, 1922. Van Til, Cornelius. Christianity and Barthianism. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962. —.The Defense of the Faith. Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1955. —.The Sovereignty of Grace. Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1969. —.The Theology of James Daane. Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1959.

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von Mosheim, John L. Institutes of Ecclesiastical History: Ancient and Modern. Translated by James Murdoch. New Haven: A. H. Maltby, 1832. Walker, Williston. John Calvin: The Organizer of Reformed Protestantism. Reprinted, New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1969. Wallace, D. D., Jr. Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology, 1525– 1695. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Warfield, B. B. Calvin and Augustine. Edited by Samuel G. Craig. Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1956. —.The Plan of Salvation. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1915. —.“Predestination in the Reformed Confessions.” The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 12 (1901): 49–128. Weber, Hans. Reformation, Orthodoxie und Rationalismus. Dormstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1966. Weber, Hermann. Die Theologie Calvins: Ihre inner Systematik im Lichte Structurpsychologiescher Forschungsmethode. Berlin: Elsner, 1930. Weber, Otto. “Calvin.” In Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 3rd edition. 7 volumes. Tubingen: Mohr, 1957–1965, vol. 1, cols. 1593–99. Weeks, John S. “A Comparison of Calvin and Edwards on the Doctrine of Election.” PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1963. Wells, David F. “Decretum dei special: An Analysis of the Content and Significance of Calvin’s Doctrine of Soteriological Predestination.” ThM thesis, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1967. Wendel, Francois. Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought. Translated by Philip Mairet. New York: Harper and Row, 1963. Wernle, Paul. Calvin. Tubingen: Mohr, 1919. White, Peter. Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War. Cambridge: University Press, 1992. Wiley, David N. “Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination: His Principal Soteriological and Polemical Doctrine.” PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1971. Willis, E. David. Calvin’s Catholic Christology. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, vol. 2. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966. Woolsey, Andrew A. Unity and Continuity in Covenantal Thought: A Study in the Reformed Tradition to the Westminster Assembly. Reformed Historical-Theological Studies. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012. Wright, Shawn D. Our Sovereign Refuge: The Pastoral Theology of Theodore Beza. Studies in Christian History and Thought. Carlisle, Cumbria, U.K.: Paternoster, 2004. —.Theodore Beza: The Man and the Myth. Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2015. Zanden, L. Van der. Praedestinatie: Onze verkiezing in Christus. Kampen: Kok, 1949.

Subject Index

“accidental result”, 158 active reprobation, 79 active will, 168 Adam, 90, 139, 142, 151, 200 Ad Sebastian Castellionis Calumnias (Beza), 186 agency, of God, 148 agnosticism, 220 agnostic neutrality, 91 A Golden Chaine (Perkins), 75 Albertini, Idmund, 201 Allbeck, Willard Dow, 79–80 Altera Brevis Fidei Confessio (Beza), 189 Althaus, Paul, 24 ambiguity, 32, 47, 78, 158, 216 Amsdorf, Nikolaus von, 47 Amyraldianism, 172, 203, 204, 207, 213, 219, 222 Amyraut, Moise, 172, 201, 222 anachronism, 18, 107, 149n65, 156, 169 Andreae, Jakob, 45, 48, 75–76 angels, 202 anthropocentrism, 188, 206 apologetics, 128 a posteriori, 33, 39, 119, 160, 205 Apostles’ Creed, 113, 184 a priori, 39 Arand, Charles P., 51 Aristotelianism, 26, 29n32, 31, 39, 40, 43, 101–3, 158, 165 Arminianism, 9, 25, 42, 55, 58, 65, 79, 88n27, 203–4, 207, 211, 212, 213, 220 Arminius, Jacob, 171–72 Armstrong, Brian, 43, 88n26, 165, 167, 177

assurance, 15, 23, 39, 51, 58, 130, 161, 180, 186 Augsburg Confession, 55 Augustine, 17, 96–97, 168, 179 Augustinianism, 14, 19, 32, 79, 178, 199 authorship of sin, 67, 136–37, 142, 146–47, 171, 198, 220 Baker, Alvin, 107 balance, 109 Bangs, Carl, 192 Barthianism, 94, 182 Barth, Karl, 64, 99, 107, 119 Barth, Peter, 113n10 Bavinck, Herman, 63, 78, 94, 146–47, 168, 200–201 Bayle, Pierre, 207 Belgic Confession, 48 beneplacitum Dei, 64 Berkhof, Louis, 61 Berkouwer, G. C., 14, 16, 25, 39, 52, 64, 66, 67, 68n46, 72n4, 91, 107 Berne, 137 Beza, Theodore, 9 – vs. Andreae, 75–76 – and Calvin, 109, 137, 165–68, 176, 192– 93, 218–19 – on predestination, 43, 183–95 – scholasticism of, 209 – successors of, 197–201 – supralapsarianism of, 7, 48, 175–82, 221–22 Bierma, Lyle, 56, 57

244 Bizer, Ernst, 165 Blondel, David, 201 Boer, Harry, 64, 88, 91, 95n15 Boettner, Loraine, 69 Bogerman, Johannes, 88n28, 198 Bolsec, Jerome, 135, 136–37, 139, 140, 178, 179, 217 bondage of the will, 47, 97, 144 Book of Concord (1580), 71 boundary, 22 Bray, John, 43, 87n23, 107, 177, 184–85, 187–88, 187n19 Brenz, Johannes, 48 Bucer, Martin, 38, 98 Bullinger, Heinrich, 56, 97, 168 Burchill, Christopher, 43 calling, 130 Calvinism, 47–48, 52, 57, 80 “Calvinistic Thomism”, 43 Calvin, John, 17, 220 – on active will of God, 168 – vs. Beza, 176, 192–83 – on experience, 99–101 – influence of, 26, 38, 56, 96–99 – on necessity, 29 – polemical writings of, 135–49 – on predestination, 7, 34, 217–18 – on reprobation, 60, 83–110, 111–21 – on Scripture, 94–96 Calvin’s Catechism, 56–57 “Calvin versus the Calvinists”, 43, 87–88, 165–67 Canons of Dordt, 15, 55–69, 211, 216 Carleton, George, 76 Cartesian philosophy, 207 Castellio, Sebastian, 135, 138, 140, 143, 186, 217 Catechismus Compendarius (Beza), 190 causae efficientes, 31 causa instrumentalis, 31 causa materialis, 31 causam finalem, 34 causam reprobationis, 34 cause

Subject Index

– meaning of, 31 – remote vs. proximate, 143–48 – of reprobation, 125–26, 216 certainty, 51, 121 Chalker, William H., 154 charity, 114–15 Chemnitz, Martin, 31, 37n2, 48, 216 Christian life, 182 Christian Meditations (Beza), 191 Christian Reformed Church, 95n15 Christocentrism, 22, 40, 66, 103, 104, 105, 160 Christology, 40, 72n4, 86, 90, 118–19, 184, 194 chronological ordering, 170 Chung-Kim, Esther, 76 church, 188 church history, 167 church unity, 117 Chytraeus, David, 31 Clark, R. Scott, 128, 151 Cocceianism, 173, 201 Cochlaeus, Johannes, 26 Codex Bezae, 176 Colloquy of Bern (1587), 176 Colloquy of Mu¨ mpelgart or Montbe´liard (1586), 75, 176, 190 Colloquy of Poissy (1561–1562), 176 Colloquy of Worms, 38 comfort, 23, 51, 56, 57, 62, 185, 202 commentaries, 138 Commentary on Romans (Calvin), 123–28 Commentary on Romans (Melanchthon), 27 Company of Pastors, 176 Concordia Discors (Hospinian), 76 Conference of The Hague (1611), 60 Confessio Christianae Fidei (Beza), 183–86, 209 Confessio Gallicana (Beza), 195 confessional statements, 138, 183, 222 Confession of Faith (1536–1537), 116–17 Confession of the Christian Faith (Beza), 219 confidence, 185

245

Subject Index

Consensus Genevensis (1552), 48 Consensus Helvetica (1675), 204 consistency, 109, 116 consolation, 15, 180 contradiction, 21 controversy, 7, 31 conversion, 30–31, 32 Counter-Remonstrants, 42 covenant, 127–28, 173 covenant theology, 127, 201 creation, 170 Cunningham, William, 26, 194–95 curiosity, 106, 108, 205 Daane, James, 64, 67, 91 Daille, John, 201 D’Alembert, Jean Le Rond, 211, 220 damnation, 33, 52, 79 Daneau, Lambert, 197 Dantine, Johannes, 105, 165, 177, 184 David, 30 Davis, D. Clair, 57 death, 132 decree, of reprobation, 155 decretal ordering, 168–73, 180 decretum absolutum, 64–65 decretum horribile, 87, 89–90 deduction, 61, 179, 183 deism, 211 DeKoster, Lester, 93n1 demerit, 131, 144 Dennison, James, 206 De Praedestinationis Doctrina (Beza), 188 De servo arbitrio (Luther), 14, 17–18, 24, 43, 78 d’Etaples, Jacques LeFevre, 96 determinism, 27, 35, 53, 102, 181, 191 Dijk, Klaas, 203 Dilleberger, John, 23 Diodati, Giovanni, 197–99, 201, 219 distinctives, 59 divine love, 206 doctrine of God, 63, 130n32, 185 Donnelly, John Patrick, 42, 43, 106n69 double predestination, 7, 91, 154

– Calvin on, 85, 113 – denial of, 45 – Luther on, 23–24, 78 – Melanchthon on, 34–35 – in Zanchi, 41 double will, 149 doubt, 52, 186 Dowey, Edward, 87, 107, 154 Drelincourt, Charles, 201 dualism, 21 Du Moulin, Pierre, 76, 199–200 duplex cognito dei, 129n28 ecclesiology, 90, 130n33, 161n34 Edmundson, Stephen, 155 election, 33, 39, 206 – cause of, 73 – of Christ, 64–66, 171, 190 – foundation of, 65–66 – vs. reprobation, 83–86, 132 Elert, Werner, 20, 53, 66–67 Elizabethan Puritanism, 42 encouragement, 51 Engelland, Hans, 25 Engelsma, David J., 95n15 England, 192 Enlightenment, 207, 212, 220 Enthusiasm, 80 epistemology, 167 equal ultimacy, 68, 149 Erasmus, 26, 27, 32, 97 Esau, 133, 135, 151 escapism, 21 eternity, 18, 60, 64, 170 evangelism, 190 Eve, 30 evident causes, 147 evil, 16, 115, 139, 146–47 execution, of reprobation, 155 experience, 22, 99–101, 160 faith, 51, 130, 221 – as cause of election, 73 – and conversion, 30 – discouragement of, 50

246

Subject Index

– as evidence of election, 33 – and humility, 24 – vs. unbelief, 63, 118, 119–20 fall, 90, 141–49, 168, 169 Farel, Guillaume, 116, 137 Farthing, John, 43 fatalism, 27, 35, 75 Faye, Antoine de la, 191, 197 fear of God, 180 Flacius, Matthias, 22, 38, 47 foreknowledge, 14, 50, 53, 72, 79, 144, 168 Formula Consensus (1675), 207, 209, 210, 219 Formula of Concord, 37, 216, 221 – doctrinal position of, 47–54 – vs. Canons of Dordt, 55–69 – on grace, 32 – on predestination, 13–16 – prefiguring of, 39, 41, 45 – response to, 74–80, 190 Fornerod, Nicolas, 199 forseen faith, 221 Frederick III of the Palatinate, 38 freedom of God, 34, 187 free offer of grace, 154n6 free will, 26, 29, 41, 74 French Confession, 118 Fuhrmann, Paul T., 120n36 Fulcar, Michael, 201 fundamentum salutis, 65

– – – – – – – – – –

Gallic Confession, 48 Garrigou-Lagrange, R., 101n44 Gassendi, Pierre, 201 Geisendorf, Paul F., 175 general election, 127 Geneva Council, 137 Genevan Academy, 176, 197, 199, 210 Georgius, 136, 138 Gerhard, Johann, 73 Gernler, Lucas, 204 glory of God, 66–67, 69, 120–21, 125, 139– 40, 161, 170 Gnesio-Lutherans, 37, 47 God

Haendler, K., 32 Hales, Alexander de, 169 Hall, Basil, 88n26, 165 “hand of brotherhood”, 76 Hanko, Herman, 18n20, 161 hardening, 17, 18, 30, 34, 68, 75, 133, 157, 161, 189 Hargrave, O. T., 192 Heidegger, Johann, 204 Heidelberg Catechism, 56–57 Heinsius, Daniel, 201 Helvetic Consensus, 212 Henry, Paul, 109 Heppe, Heinrich, 88n26

active will of, 168 agency of, 148 doctrine of, 63, 185 freedom of, 34, 187 hiddenness of, 79 honor of, 63 majesty of, 89–90 pleasure of, 8, 59, 64, 148, 170, 181, 193 revealed will of, 23, 53 sovereignty of, 16, 63, 67, 77, 120, 142, 144, 171, 185 – two wills of, 86 – will of, 20, 30, 48, 49, 124–25, 141, 143, 148 Godfrey, William Robert, 76–77 godliness, 188 Golius, Jacobus, 201 Gomarus, Francis, 42, 66, 102n52, 199 “good and necessary consequence”, 60, 61, 107–8 Good, James I., 173 goodness, 19, 125, 131, 203 good works, 30, 42, 58, 101 gospel, 17, 28, 33, 49, 50, 51, 58 grace, 24, 30, 32, 33, 78, 154, 191, 221 gratitude, 58 Greek New Testament, 176 Green, Lowell C., 31 Grundler, Otto, 40, 41–42 guilt, 133, 139, 145, 146, 147

247

Subject Index

heresy, 106, 143–44, 222 hermeneutics, 61 Hesshus, Tilemann, 31, 38 heterodoxy, 211, 222 hidden causes, 147 hidden decree, 60 hidden God, 20–21, 24, 50–51, 78, 79, 216 hidden knowledge, 53 hidden will, 79, 134, 139 historical theology, 220 Hoek, J., 145 Hoeksema, Homer, 63, 88 holiness, 206, 221 Holtrop, Philip, 67, 165 Holy Spirit, 32 homo renatus, 32 Hoornbeeck, Johannes, 201 hope, 17, 185 Hopfl, Harro, 100, 107 “horrible decree”, 87, 89–90 Hospinian, Rudolph, 76 Huber, Samuel, 72 human curiosity, 108 human decisions, 168 humanism, 102, 175, 193 human reason, 194, 207, 213 human responsibility, 33, 34–35, 78, 115– 16, 132, 133, 139, 142 human will, 73, 78 humility, 24, 68, 108, 151, 161, 221 Hunnnius, Aegidius, 72 Hunt, S. Leigh, 94, 101n44 “hypothetical Christ”, 171

– vs. supralapsarianism, 7, 107, 156, 167– 73, 221–22 – of Turretin, 201–6 injustice, 67, 68, 86–87, 115, 132, 133 Institutes of the Christian Religion (Calvin), 93, 94, 98, 111–16, 128–34, 185, 217–18 Institutes of Enlectic Theology (Turretin), 201, 219 “instructed ignorance”, 141 Instruction and Confession of Faith (1537), 117–21 introspection, 40 intuitu fidei, 72, 78, 217 “in view of faith”, 72, 78

ignorance, 141 illegitimate penetration, 62 illegitimate presentation, 62 illumination, 194 immutability, 198 impious curiosity, 106 inconsistency, 21 infralapsarianism – Beza on, 180 – of Daneau, 197 – of Diodati, 199, 219

Kendall, Robert, 165, 192 Kickel, Walter, 165, 166–67, 177, 178n15, 179 Kittelson, James M., 37–39 Klauber, Martin I., 209, 212 Klooster, Fred H., 56, 145, 146, 153, 155 Kolb, Robert, 18n22, 20, 26, 31–32, 34, 35, 45, 50–51, 62

Jacob, 133, 135, 151 Jacobs, Paul, 119, 130n33 Jesus Christ – centrality of, 40 – election of, 64–66, 171, 190 – as heart of predestination, 22 – as mediator, 155–59, 190 – merit of, 54 – person and work of, 51–52 – as seal of certainty, 121 – self-revelation of, 20 – union with, 186, 187 John Chrysostom, 28 Judas, 208 judgment, 157–58 Junias, Franciscus, 197 justice, 68, 120–21, 125–26, 133, 149n64, 180 justification, 51, 54, 61

Larger Catechism (Ursinus), 57 Lausanne Academy, 176

248 law/gospel distinction, 16, 34, 78 laymen, 129 Le´ger, Antoine, 200 liberalism, 208, 211, 222 life, 132 Lillback, Peter, 128 loci, 62, 93, 106, 117, 161 Loci communes (Melanchthon), 26 logic, 61, 167, 179 Lord’s Supper, 38–39, 44, 54, 72n4 love, 180, 206, 221 Lutheran orthodoxy, 15, 25, 37, 42, 54, 58, 62, 71–74, 221 Luther, Martin, 215, 220 – on active will of God, 168 – double predestination of, 78 – vs. Erasmus, 26 – followers of, 38, 41 – influence on Calvin, 97–98 – on necessity, 29 – pastoral concern of, 62 – on predestination, 17–24 – on synergism, 32, 74 majesty, of God, 89–90 Mallinson, Jeffrey, 193 Manichaeism, 26 Manschreck, Clyde, 26–27 Marbach, Johann, 15, 37–45, 216 Marbach-Zanchi controversy, 37–45 Margburg, 76 Maruyama, Tadataka, 184, 188 McGoldrick, James, 18 McLelland, J. C., 106n69 McNeill, John T., 128–29 means of grace, 52 Meijering, E. P., 31 Melanchthon, Philip, 15, 215–16 – vs. Calvin, 95, 118, 153 – followers of, 48, 56, 136, 165 – germination in, 25–35 – on human will, 78 – vs. Stoicism, 53 mercy, 17, 19, 33, 68, 125–26, 133, 144, 171 merit, 28, 32, 131, 144, 145, 168

Subject Index

metaphor, 158 metaphysics, 102, 104, 105, 107, 184 miracles, 27 Miskin, Arthur, 145 Moltmann, Jurgen, 38 monergism, 21, 26, 52, 74, 178, 221 moral zeal, 132 Morus, Alexandre, 200 motivation, 23 Mozley, J. B., 101n44 Muller, Pieter, 116 Muller, Richard, 40, 88n26, 102–3, 104, 105– 6n67, 106, 107, 130n32, 166, 177–78, 180, 181, 185, 191, 197 Murray, John, 69 Musculus, Wolfgang, 193 mystery, 108, 126–27, 148, 187, 217, 221 natural order, 146 natural theology, 210, 220 necessitas consequentiae, 29 necessitas consequentis, 29 negative reprobation, 146n52 Nestingen, James A., 51 neutrality, 91 Niesel, Wilhelm, 18, 64, 107, 112n4 nominalism, 100 non-parallelism, 146 non posse non peccare, 42 obedience, 33 omnipotence, 19, 112, 171, 198, 215 omniscience, 171 ordo salutis, 23, 105–6n67, 114, 179 original sin, 47, 54, 58, 97 orthodoxy, 197, 198, 206 Otten, Heinz, 99, 100 Packer, J. I., 89, 110, 162 paradox, 21, 53, 73, 78, 79, 80 parallelism, 21, 146 partiality, 132 particularism, 14 particularity, 35 particular reprobation, 141–49

249

Subject Index

passing over, 124–25, 146n52 passive reprobation, 79 pastoral concern, 62, 103, 120, 180, 188 Paul, 17, 24, 33, 64, 94, 108–9, 124–28, 127, 180, 187 Pelagianism, 101n43, 136, 204 Perkins, William, 42, 62, 75, 159 permission, 85 permissive will, 143 perseverance, 23, 44, 51, 130 personal experience, 22 Peter, 208 Pfeffinger, John, 47 Philippists, 37, 47 philogy, 194 philosophy, 101–3, 158, 207, 220 Pictet, Benedict, 208–9, 213, 220 Pietersma, H., 64 piety, 152, 160, 180, 182, 185, 198 Pighius, Albert, 85, 97, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 169, 217 Pious and Learned Annotations Upon the Holy Bible (Diodati), 198 polemical writings, 135–49 Polman, Andries D., 64, 101n44 Polyander, Johannes, 201 Pomponazzi, Pietro, 166, 167 positive reprobation, 146n52, 150–51, 157 postredemptionism, 172, 204, 213 practical experience, 100 Praeceptor Germinaiae, 25 pragmatism, 21 prayer, 50 preaching, 152, 154 predestination, 170 – after Calvin, 218–20 – Beza on, 177, 183–95 – Calvin on, 217–18 – in early German Lutheranism, 215–17 – vs. foreknowledge, 50, 53 – Luther on, 17–24 – as man’s election of God, 73 – vs. reprobation, 14 prescience, 14, 67, 71, 74, 109, 204 preterition, 124–25, 146n52, 172

Preus, J. A. O., 72, 80 pride, 24 primary causes, 29n32 privatio gratiae electionis, 41 problem of evil, 16 proof-texts, 60 Prosper of Aquitaine, 50 Protestantism, 175 providence, 29, 97, 130, 131, 177, 184 proximate cause, 143–48, 158 prudence, 205 Puritans, 42, 168 Quaestionum et Responsionum Christianarum Libellus (Beza), 187 rationalism, 188, 191, 193, 206, 211, 220 rational speculation, 103–10 reason, 167, 193, 207, 213 reconciliation, 43–45, 51 Reformed orthodoxy, 16, 37, 42, 55, 58, 62, 74–77, 172, 197, 209, 221 Reformed scholasticism, 165, 179, 201, 211 regeneration, 30–31 Reid, J. K. S., 116n21, 146, 149n65 rejection, 42, 85 Remonstrants, 56, 59, 73, 77 remote cause, 143–48 Renaissance, 102 repentance, 30, 50, 54, 58, 157 reprobation, 7 – in Canons of Dordt, 59, 61, 67–69 – cause of, 125–26 – “certain signs” of, 114–15 – and covenant, 127–28 – decree of, 181 – defense of, 132–34 – definition of, 131–32 – divine activity in, 113–14 – vs. election, 83–86, 132 – execution vs. decree, 155 – in Formula of Concord, 52–53, 67–69 – glory in, 120–21 – ground of, 145 – in Heidelberg Catechism, 56–57

250 – as “horrible decree”, 87 – as human act, 79 – and human responsibility, 115–16 – in Lutheranism, 23–24 – Melanchthon on, 33–35 – mystery of, 126–27 – as particular, 141–49 – “passing by” in, 124–25 – placement of, 118–19 – as positive, 68–69, 150–51, 157 – vs. predestination, 14 – and soteriology, 149 – starting point of, 119–20 – systemization of, 130–31 – Zanchi on, 41 responsibility, 139 revealed God, 20–21, 78, 216 revealed will, 53 reverence, 154 Revised Geneva Catechism (1542), 118 righteousness, 115, 125–26, 133, 147 Rilliet, Jean, 113n10 Rivet, André, 201 Roman Catholicism, 114, 176, 183, 184, 186, 204 Rouseel, Gerard, 96 Runia, K., 64, 65 sacraments, 114 Salmasius, Claudius, 201 salvation, 33, 58, 140, 191 sanctification, 51, 54, 153, 161, 186 Saul, 30 Saumur academy, 172, 201, 204, 207 saving faith, 148, 211 Schaff, Philip, 14, 25, 44, 58, 79, 211 Schlink, Edmund, 74 scholarship, 123 scholasticism, 40, 43, 100, 165, 188, 192, 206, 209 Schurman, Anna Marie van, 201 Schweizer, Alexander, 167 scientia media, 73 Scotus, Duns, 168–69 Scripture

Subject Index

– Beza on, 194 – as boundary of speculation, 21 – Calvin on, 93–96, 99, 100, 110 – and metaphysical structures, 104 – Turretin on, 205 secondary causes, 29–30, 75, 181, 182, 209 secret will, 24, 48, 49 Selderhuis, Herman J., 147 self-exaltation, 68 semi-Arminianism, 172 semi-Pelagianism, 25, 220 sermons, 191, 194 Shepherd, Norman, 40, 67–68, 146n50 sin, 140, 203 – authorship of, 67, 136–37, 142, 146–47, 171, 198, 220 – cause of, 28, 29, 42 – as ground of reprobation, 145 Sinnema, Donald, 68, 181–82 Small Catechism (Luther), 97 Smaller Catechism (Ursinus), 57 sobriety, 109, 205 Socinianism, 9, 213, 220 So¨ derlund, Rune, 78 sola gratia, 80, 217 sola Scriptura, 84, 93, 95n15 soli Deo gloria, 89 Sorkin, David, 212 soteriology – in Beza, 194 – in Calvin, 86, 90, 104, 118–19, 130n33, 131, 161 – in Formula of Concord, 61 – in Luther, 14, 15, 20, 78 – and reprobation, 149 sovereignty of God, 16, 63, 67, 77, 120, 142, 144, 171, 185 Spangenberg, Cyriakus, 37n2 Spanheim, Friedrich, 200–201, 219 special election, 127 speculation, 21, 40, 48, 49, 102, 103–10 Staupitz, Johannes von, 22 Steinmetz, David C., 179n19 Stoicism, 26, 53, 75 Strasbourg, 37, 43, 44

Subject Index

Strasbourg Academy, 216 Strigel, Victorinus, 47 stubbornness, 34 submission, 30, 33, 108 subscription, 222 supernatural order, 146 supralapsarianism – of Beza, 48, 180, 181, 192, 197, 218, 221–22 – of Gomarus, 66 – vs. infralapsarianism, 7, 103n56, 107, 156, 167–73 – in Luther, 18 – objections to, 203, 210 – of Tronchin, 199–200 syllogism, 39–40, 95 synergism, 25, 30, 31, 32, 47, 58, 73, 74, 78, 79, 91, 178, 216, 220 Synod of Dordt, 198 Synod of La Rochelle (1571), 195 systematics, 160, 162, 179, 183 Tabula praedestinationis (Beza), 178–82, 193 temporal, 108 tendencies, 59 theocentrism, 63, 105, 160, 179 Theologia Christiana (Pictet), 208, 209 theological system, 182 theology of glory, 22, 98 theology of the cross, 22, 98 theology proper, 161n34, 167, 194 Theses Theologicae in Schola Genevensi (Beza), 191 Thomas Aquinas, 29n32, 101, 165, 168–69 Thomism, 40, 43, 100, 188 Toplady, Augustus, 42 total depravity, 191, 221 translation, 198 Trigland, Jacobus, 201 Trinity, 64, 66, 155–56, 159, 184, 212 Trolliet, Jean, 135, 137–38, 139, 140 Tronchin, Louis, 207, 210, 213, 219, 220 Tronchin, Theodore, 199–200, 207 truth, 62, 96, 194

251 Turretin, Benedict, 200, 201, 219 Turretin, Francis, 8, 167, 201–6, 208, 219, 222 Turretin, J. A., 200, 210–11, 212, 213, 219– 20, 222 tyranny, 139 unbelief, 51, 61, 63, 68, 118, 119–20, 140 uncertainty, 52 union with Christ, 186, 187 unity, 69, 76–77, 117, 221 universal atonement, 172 universal call of the gospel, 34, 215 universal guilt, 58 universalis gratia, 79–80 universalism, 14 unrepentance, 157 Ursinus, Zacharias, 57, 75 Van Til, Cornelius, 64–65 Vermigli, Peter Martyr, 38, 43, 48, 106n69, 165, 178, 193 Vernet, Jacob, 9, 173, 211–12, 213, 220 Villiers, Pierre Loyseleur de, 74–75 Viret, Pierre, 176 visible church, 100, 114, 119 Voetius, Gisbertus, 200n16, 201 volition, 85 Voltaire, 211 Walker, Williston, 112 Wallace, Dewey, 87 Walther, C. F. W., 32 Warfield, B. B., 86n18, 105n66, 213 Weber, Hans Emil, 88n26 Weeks, John, 97n20, 101–2, 103n56 Wendel, Francois, 102n48, 112 Wengert, Timothy, 25–26, 27, 35 Wernle, Paul, 112n8 Wesley, John, 42 Westminster Confession of Faith, 29n32, 107 Wiley, David, 85, 104–5, 109, 113–14, 116– 17, 125, 127–28, 131, 139, 140, 149n64, 150, 156, 161

252 will of God, 20, 30, 48, 49, 124–25, 141, 143, 148 wisdom, 154 Witsius, Herman, 42 Wolmar, Melchoir, 175 Woolsey, Andrew, 190 Word of God, 21, 31 worship, 151

Subject Index

Wright, Shawn, 185 Zanchius, Jerome, 15, 37–45, 48, 166, 193, 216 Zurich, 137 Zwingli, 38, 43, 106, 168