The doctrines of the Trinity and predestination (or God’s decree) converge at the point of the eternal covenant of redemption (pactum salutis) between the persons of the Godhead. In that covenant, before the world existed, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit already turn toward us, with a purpose to create, redeem, and gather a church for everlasting fellowship. As in all of God’s external operations, both the eternal decree itself and its execution in history are accomplished from the Father, in the Son, through the Spirit.
Predestination is clearly taught in Scripture, but debates over its interpretation and meaning have occupied the greatest minds in church history. The Old Testament refers to the “counsel” or “purpose” (‘ēsâ) of God (see Job 38:2; Isa 14:26; 46:10). Other expressions include the verb “to purpose” (zāmam; see Pr 30:32; Jer 4:28; 51:12); “will” (hāpēs; see Isa 53:10); “good pleasure” (rāsôn; see Ps 51:18; Isa 49:8). That nothing comes to pass (including the sinful actions of human beings) apart from God’s sovereign governance is attested in many passages, including Genesis 50:20; Daniel 4:34–37; Acts 2:23; and Ephesians 1:11. In fact, an implication of God’s omniscience is that the future is determined. God knows the future exhaustively because he has decreed the future exhaustively.
The close connection of foreknowledge and foreordination is further established by the force of the Hebrew word yāda‘ (and in the NT the Greek ginōskōlproginōskō), which occur frequently in contexts in which more than a bare awareness is in view (see Ge 18:19 ["chosen"]; Am 3:2; Hos 13:5). Adam’s “knowing” Eve or Mary’s conception of Jesus before she “knew” a man clearly intend an intimate knowledge of the person in question. In Romans 8:29, we are told, “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined” rather than that which he foreknew (emphasis added). In other words, Paul’s point is not that God foreknew human choices but that he knew his elect before they came to exist. Similarly, in 1 Peter 1:20, Jesus Christ is said to have been “foreknown before the foundation of the world.” God not only foreknows; he chooses—elects—some for salvation out of a condemned race. The Hebrew word bahar implies choice, along with the Greek equivalents eklegomai and eklogē, as the latter appear in connection with divine election explicitly in Romans 9:11; 11:5; Ephesians 1:4; and 1 Thessalonians 1:4. The Greek verb proorizō (and its cognates) means to “fore-horizon” (i.e., predetermine), and it appears in close connection also with predestination in passages such as Acts 4:28; Romans 8:29–30; 1 Corinthians 2:7; and Ephesians 1:5, 11.
In addition to being stated explicitly, predestination is demonstrated in the biblical narratives, including sinful actions (Ge 50:20). Nebuchadnezzar eventually learned the lesson of God’s sovereignty over all things, including his own kingdom (Da 4:34–37). The times and places of every person’s life are included in God’s decree (Ac 17:26). Even the falling of a bird and the number of hairs on each person’s head are encompassed by God’s sovereign wisdom (Mt 10:29–30). Although humans are held responsible for their wicked acts in Jesus’ crucifixion, he was “delivered up according to the definite plan [boulē] and foreknowledge of God” (Ac 2:23). Using the same term (boule), and adding the phrase proōrisen genesthai (“predestined to take place”), the believers later praised God, saying, “for truly in this city there were gathered together against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever thy hand and thy plan had predestined to take place” (Ac 4:27–28 RSV). Once more, this passage does not tell us how God can decree their sin while holding them responsible; it simply states that this is the case.1
Therefore, not only the free acts of human beings but sinful actions as well are simultaneously said to be included in God’s plan yet freely willed by humans. Hebrews speaks of “the unchangeable character of his purpose” (boulēs) (Heb 6:17). Ephesians 1:11 refers to the “counsel” (boulēn) of God’s “will” (thelēma), according to which God “works all things.” It is the “good pleasure” (eudokia) of God that is the motivating cause of our election in Christ (Eph 1:5, 9 NIV), and eudokia is also employed in Matthew 11:26 and Luke 2:14.
According to Paul’s argument in Romans 9, God’s prerogative to elect whom he will and to leave the rest in their just condemnation has been exercised all along, even within Israel. In this chapter, Paul clearly teaches that election is not based on anything in or foreseen in those who are chosen (vv. 9–13). Yet God is not unfair, since everyone is in a state of condemnation, and God is not bound by any necessity to save anyone (vv. 14–15). “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (v. 16). Out of the same mass of fallen humanity God chooses some and rejects others (vv. 17–24). Nor can the scope of this argument be limited to Israel, since Paul concludes, “—even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (v. 24).
Predestination is typically understood in theology to refer to God’s sovereign determination concerning all events, while election and reprobation refer specifically to God’s decree regarding salvation and condemnation. Insofar as God reveals his eternal purpose, it is through the dramatic narrative of history leading from creation to the fall to the promise of the gospel and its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. From this economy (i.e., the external works of the Trinity) we can draw the following brief conclusions.
First, predestination is an exercise of the divine will, which in turn is the free expression of the divine nature. As God is eternal, unchangeable, and simple, so is his decree. God’s decree is said to be founded on his wisdom (Pss 33:11; 104:24; Pr 3:19; 19:21; Jer 10:12; 51:15; Eph 3:10–11). Because he is loving, righteous, good, and just, God cannot will any ultimate evil. His purposes are to work even human sin and rebellion together for good (Ro 8:28). That is not to say that everything is good or that sinful actions of human beings are beyond his knowledge or permissive decree. Rather, it is to say that it is inconsistent with God’s nature and, in fact, unthinkable that God—who cannot do evil or be tempted by evil (Jas 1:13)—should ever determine that any purpose of his will terminate in evil. Thus, God only permissively decrees evil in such a way that the same decree simultaneously determines the triumph of God’s just and gracious purposes in Jesus Christ.
Second, the above line of exegetical argument has led Reformed theology to distinguish between God’s permission and his positive determination. God does not cause people to sin. “This means,” says Louis Berkhof, “that God does not positively work in man ‘both to will and to do’ when man goes contrary to his revealed will.2”The context of Philippians 2:12–13 is the sanctification of believers, not general providence. As Berkhof observes, “The decree, in so far as it pertains to these acts, is generally called God’s permissive decree. This name does not imply that the futurition of these acts is not certain to God, but simply that he permits them to come to pass by the free agency of his rational creatures.3” Mere foreknowledge without foreordination makes God a spectator to horrendous evils and leaves us wondering whether God is aloof, like the Stoic sage, or perhaps even malicious. In other words, we can trust God not only in those situations where his goodness is obvious, but when sin and evil seem to be gaining the upper hand. While God never causes sin, he is Lord over it, and it can progress no further than his wisdom and goodness will allow.
Third, we must carefully distinguish the decree in eternity from its execution in history. For example, some hyper-Calvinists held the view that the elect are justified from all eternity. Similar to Barth’s view (treated below), this position collapses the execution of the decree (ordo salutis)4 into the decree itself. Scripture teaches that we are justified through faith, yet even this act of faith was graciously determined by the triune God before the creation of the world.
Purposes are different from their fulfillment; determinations are different from their accomplishment. God has determined not only the ends but the means by which he will achieve them. God may have determined our life span and where we would live (Ac 17:26), but these hidden purposes are fulfilled through our planning and investigation, real estate agents, moving companies, employers, and so forth. Even in our salvation, God fulfills his electing decree through myriad means—the prayers of friends and relatives, a neighbor who brings us to church or shares the gospel with us after work, and many other influences and events of which we are not even aware.
As A. A. Hodge points out, human agency is actually included in and therefore made possible by God’s decree that “in the case of every free act of a moral agent … the act shall be perfectly spontaneous and free on the part of the agent.”5 God’s decree not only determines that the act will certainly occur (Ps 33:11; Pr 19:21; Isa 46:10), but that it will be freely done by the agent. Like Mary at the annunciation, we may wonder how this is possible, but we too are simply told, “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Lk 1:37).
Finally, God’s sovereignty is not only demonstrated in narratives and described in doctrines; it is celebrated in praise. For example, in each of the arguments for God’s predestining purposes in Christ, Paul moves from narratively grounded doctrinal arguments to scenic vistas, where he pauses to adore. Immediately after teaching, “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Ro 8:30), he exclaims, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies” (vv. 31, 33). Then in chapter 11, after treating the same topic in the context of Israel’s unfolding narrative, again he is left in wonder at the riches of God’s unfathomable knowledge and grace (Ro 11:33–36). Only when we are led to praise have we truly understood that part of the mystery of God’s decree that he has revealed.
Historically, debates over predestination have revealed massive cleavages between theological systems at their heart, encompassing the God-world relation and the doctrine of salvation. Pelagianism (named after the British monk Pelagius [354—420], an opponent of Augustine) maintains that election is based on God’s foreknowledge of those who would merit their salvation, even apart from gracious assistance. A milder version, known as Semi-Pelagianism, held that although the beginning of salvation was due to human free will, growth and final salvation required divine grace. This view was also condemned at the Second Council of Orange (529).
Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas, and other seminal theologians of the medieval church (in accord with Augustine) affirmed God’s unconditional election and reprobation of people as part of his eternal decree and held that everything that actually happens is included in God’s eternal plan, secret to us. Nevertheless, medieval theologians such as Gregory of Rimini and Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine complained that a robust Augustinianism was being threatened by “a new Pelagianism,” and this was the concern that precipitated the Reformation.6
Arising as a dissenting movement in the Dutch Reformed Church, Arminianism holds that grace is necessary not only for the perfecting of faith and obedience but as a precondition for both.7 Nevertheless, sufficient prevenient grace is given to all people to exercise their free will, and election is based on God’s foreknowledge of those who will in fact cooperate with his grace in faith and good works.8 Socinianism denied not only God’s predestination but also God’s exhaustive foreknowledge of the free actions of creatures, which Arminians and Calvinists both affirmed.9
The Christian East reflects a diversity of views on this subject. First, although some of Pelagius’s followers found safe haven in the East, the Pelagian controversy arose in the West. Second, the debate has been typically understood as a “Western” problem because of a Latin emphasis on legal categories. Death and immortality (rather than original sin and justification) are the dominant categories in Eastern theologies. Nevertheless, the East strongly affirms synergism (i.e., salvation as a process of grace-assisted cooperation with God).
Lutheranism does not fit into any of the preceding categories. Luther’s debate with Erasmus over the freedom of the will and divine election underscored the sovereignty of God’s grace. In fact, Luther affirmed both election and reprobation in the strongest terms.10 The Lutheran confessions, however, affirm God’s unconditional election of those on whom he will have mercy but deny his reprobation of the rest as an actual decree. While confessional Lutheran and Reformed theologies differ with respect to the decree of reprobation, the extent of the atonement, and the resistibility of God’s grace, they are united in their defense of soteriological monergism (i.e., God alone working in salvation), grounded in his unconditional election of sinners in Jesus Christ.11
The idea that predestination is the central dogma in Reformed theology, from which every other belief is logically deduced, has been refuted by recent historical scholarship.12 In neither Calvin’s writings nor the Reformed confessions does predestination occupy a central place, and especially on this topic warnings abound against speculation (Dt 29:29). Consideration of God’s predestination is of inestimable benefit if we find our election in Christ as he is offered to all people in the gospel, but a dangerous labyrinth if we presume to investigate God’s secret counsels.13 See Calvin, Institutes 3.21.2. Francis Turretin spoke for Reformed scholastics generally when he warned against trying to seek out God and his purposes apart from Christ and the gospel.14 “Therefore,” he adds, “it becomes us to dismiss the curious and useless questions of the [medieval] Scholastics, who by a rash presumption undertake to define the incomprehensible secrets of God’s majesty.”15
Given God’s simplicity, eternity, and omniscience, there is no before and after in his decision making, but we sometimes speak of his decrees (plural) and a sequential order simply to refer to a logical rather than temporal succession of decisions. However, did this decree to save come before (at least logically) the decree to create and permit the fall? In other words, does God first of all elect people to be saved and condemned, or does he elect some to be saved from a condemned humanity? The two answers to that question came to be known as supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism. According to the former, God’s decree to save is logically prior to his decree to create and permit the fall. According to the latter, the decree to save follows the decision to create and permit the fall. Here especially we should restrain speculation. Nevertheless, since advocates of both positions have appealed to specific biblical passages—and the implications are more important than they might at first appear—some account should be offered here.
Although the distinct categories of supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism were coined by Reformed orthodoxy, these positions have a long history in Western theology. Augustine and Aquinas represent a more “infralapsarian” view, while the view of Duns Scotus is closer to “supralapsarianism.” Scotus believed that the world was created for the purpose of Christ’s incarnation and that the Son would have become flesh even if there had been no fall. The fall, then, is seen as logically dependent on the incarnation rather than vice versa. With the exception of Zwingli, who was consistently supralapsarian, it is difficult to classify the Reformers on this point, since they did not address this as a distinct topic as their predecessors and successors did in their systems.
Reformed orthodoxy tolerated supralapsarianism but favored infralapsarianism. Infralapsarians worried that supralapsarianism risked making God the author of evil and making reprobation (election to judgment) roughly parallel to God’s activity in his gracious election to salvation in Christ. As Louis Berkhof observes, both parties generally agreed that the fall was included in God’s decree, that this decree in relation to the fall was permissive rather than active, and that reprobation (the rejection of the nonelect) was not capricious or arbitrary but took account of sin.16 However, infralapsarians typically suspect that supralapsarianism cannot consistently affirm the second and third of these points. In strong terms, the canons of the Synod of Dort (1618–1619) declared, “Reformed Churches … detest with their whole soul” the view “that in the same manner in which the election is the fountain and cause of faith and good works, reprobation is the cause of unbelief and impiety.”17
Supralapsarians appeal to Romans 9. Isaac’s wife Rebecca was told with regard to her twins that “though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—… ‘The older will serve the younger.’ As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated’” (vv. 11–13). Paul’s point, supralapsarians argue, is that God’s election of one and reprobation of the other were made without reference to their being fallen. Similarly, Paul’s example of God’s having raised up Pharaoh for his sovereign purposes displays his power to elect and condemn without either decision being made with respect to sin. “So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills” (v. 18). Finally, supralapsarians point to verses 19–24, where Paul says that God as the potter has made “out of the same lump [of clay] one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use” (v. 21).
Infralapsarians also refer to Romans 9 in their defense of unconditional election but do not find there any basis for concluding that the “same lump” is regarded by God as unfallen when he elects and reprobates. In fact, Paul’s citation of Exodus 33:19—“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (emphasis added)—indicates that God’s election is of those whom God in his eternal purpose already knows as sinners. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Eze 18:32) but delights in the salvation of the elect (Eph 1:5–6).
God is not active in hardening hearts in the same way that he is active in softening hearts. Scripture does speak of God hardening hearts, not only in Exodus 7:3 and Romans 9:18 but also in Joshua 11:20; John 12:40; Romans 11:7; 2 Corinthians 3:14. Yet it also speaks of sinners hardening their own hearts (Ex 8:15; Ps 95:8; Isa 63:17; Mt 19:8; Heb 3:8, 13). However, God alone softens and in fact re-creates the hearts of his elect (1Ki 8:58; Ps 51:10; Isa 57:15; Jer 31:31–34; Eze 11:19; 36:26; 2Co 3:3; 4:6; Heb 10:16).
Not too long ago, this was widely considered a parochial debate among scholastic Calvinists. However, all of that has changed since Karl Barth’s reinvigoration of the supralapsarian position, albeit radically revised.18 “The election of grace is the sum of the gospel—we must put it as pointedly as that,” Barth insists. “But more, the election of grace is the whole of the gospel, the gospel in nuce.”19 In fact, Barth complains that predestination was not central enough for the Reformed scholastics.20 The orthodox were right to place election under the doctrine of God, “but we must do so far more radically than was the case in this very important Reformed tradition.”21 The upshot of Barth’s revised supralapsarianism is that “the work of God (the work of all works!) is not creation, but that which precedes creation both eternally and in effect temporally, the incarnate Word of God, Christ.”22 “It is for this reason that we understand the election as ordination, as God’s self-ordaining of himself.”23 Election, says Barth, is the primal decision on the basis of which the triune God moves toward humanity.24 Nevertheless, there is no point in eternity or time where we encounter God apart from the redeeming grace of Jesus Christ.25
Although Barth introduced the novel view that every human being is elect in Christ, he held that God’s decree of election was logically prior to all other decrees.26 In this account, predestination and Christology become “a single event.”27 In this “purified supralapsarianism,” election is God’s choice, “preceding all his other choices,” which is “fulfilled in his eternal willing of the existence of the man Jesus and of the people represented in him.”28 Christ’s election and the election of humanity are one and the same event. “In the beginning with God was this One, Jesus Christ. And that is predestination.”29
Consequently, there is no longer any room for a distinction between elect and reprobate individuals with different ultimate destinies—one under the law and wrath, another under the gospel and grace—or a notion of a covenant of creation that is logically and temporally distinct from the covenant of grace. In fact, there is no “before” or “after” in God’s dealings with humanity. In the light of this history of the elect humanity in Jesus Christ, human resistance, rebellion, and unbelief are not ontologically real; it is the history of Jesus Christ (and therefore of God) that is decisive. Sin is the “impossible possibility,” the shadow of the light cast by Christ. In truth, Jesus Christ is not the last Adam but precedes Adam and in fact reduces “Adam” to non-being.30
One may continue to object, to refuse to be defined by one’s election and reconciliation in Christ, but that rejection is not finally decisive. “God does not permit [the human person] to execute this No of his, this contradiction and opposition.”31 Even God’s No is overtaken by God’s Yes; hence, law must always be finally subsumed under gospel.32 “This No is really Yes. This judgment is grace. This condemnation is forgiveness. This death is life. This hell is heaven.”33 It might be suggested that for Barth human existence under the reign of sin, death, unbelief, and condemnation is finally like the existence of the prisoners in Plato’s cave. It is not the truth of their reality but a terrible dream from which they need to be awakened.
Placing the decree to create and to permit the fall prior to the decree of election, Barth complains, opens up space between creation and redemption, and the distinction between a covenant of creation and a covenant of grace made matters worse—opening the door to natural theology, historicism, and other ills of modern theology.34 Representing “an advance on medieval scholasticism,” federal (covenant) theology “tried to understand the work and Word of God attested in Holy Scripture dynamically and not statically, as an event and not as a system of objective and self-contained truths This theology is concerned with the bold review of a history of God and man which unfolds itself from creation to the day of judgment.” It follows Calvin’s emphasis on the dynamic history of the covenant in the history of redemption. However, he asks, did it not concern itself “with a whole series of events which are purposefully strung out but which belong together? … Can we historicize the activity and revelation of God? The federal theologians were the first really to try to do this in principle.”35 “They say excellently that the Bible tells us about an event,” says Barth, but fail to see that it is “only a single event” dependent on “the single andcomplete decision on the part of God… Because of the difference of the attestation it cannot be broken up into a series of different covenant acts, or acts of redemption, which follow one another step by step, and then reassembled into a single whole” (emphasis added).
A corollary of the monistic tilt in Barth’s concept of the Trinity is the tendency to collapse time into eternity. For Barth, the eternal event of Christ’s election is the real history.37 This “disperses the last appearance of contingency” with respect to Christ’s incarnation. In God’s eternal election, heaven is “worldly” and eternity is “this human history.”38 Although philosophical (especially Platonic) categories are evident, Barth is apparently driven by two converging undercurrents that are doctrinal in character—namely, supralapsarianism and universal election (which is to say, the election of Jesus Christ). These undercurrents converge in the thesis that “nothing can precede his grace, whether in eternity or time.”39
The question that such a thesis provokes, of course, is how the persons of the Trinity—prior to creation, much less the fall—can properly be said to exist in a relationship of fault to which grace and mercy would be an appropriate response. As we have seen, Barth has exactly the right concept of grace. It is more than generosity: “Grace means redemption… Grace, in fact, presupposes the existence of this opposition [i.e., sin].”40 Barth is rigorously consistent: If grace is defined as mercy shown to those at fault—in opposition to God’s freedom and love—and there is no historical creation in integrity or fall into sin that precedes this redemptive grace in time, then there cannot have been any moment when the creation was not inherently opposed to God. However, for Barth it means that the very notion of “prior to the fall” has to be adjusted. “In himself and as such man will always do as Adam did in Genesis 3” (emphasis added).41 “To say man,” Barth writes, “is to say creature and sin, and this means limitation and suffering.”42 “Adam” represents a movement from an original relation of divine grace and human obedience to rebellion, whereas Jesus Christ brings about, as Bruce McCormack puts it, “a return to the ‘Origin’ (reconciliation). These two movements are not to be conceived of as sequential, but rather as parallel and simultaneous.”43
Besides introducing the error of universal election, Barth presses the supralapsarian logic beyond its traditional limits. In the process, his formulations tend to bring us back, ironically, to something like the “overcoming estrangement” paradigm, where time is absorbed into eternity, the diversity of God’s historical acts is assimilated to the eternal decree of election, and human agency is similarly rendered a mere appearance. Berkouwer justifiably concludes that with no real transition from wrath to grace, “Barth’s revised supralapsarianism blocks the way to ascribing decisive significance to history.”44 It may be added that this view blocks the way to affirming the integrity of creation and the reality of the fall as a historical event. Berkouwer points out (via H. van Oyen) that Platonism and mythical conceptions of an uncreated darkness and light creep in. “There is no room in Barth’s thinking for preservation as a sustaining and keeping work of God apart from the idea of redemption. For this reason the distinction between pre-fall and post-fall plays no role in his theology.”45 The real issue is not whether we think of creation christologically, Berkouwer observes, but whether we reject or accept “the ‘step-wise’ character of God’s works.”46 Attempts to “construct a synthesis of these two elements [decree and history or creation and redemption] which will be perspicuous to our understanding” inevitably cause us to “fall into the abyss of either eternalizing God’s works or historicizing them”—either monism or dualism.47 A “transition from wrath to grace in history is excluded,” and “wrath is no more than ‘the form of grace.’”48 Hence, the “impossible possibility” of sin.49 Barth’s supralapsarianism is motivated by this reaction against the “step-wise” character of God’s works.50
Like Berkouwer, Emil Brunner concludes that Barth’s revised (universalistic) supralapsarianism simply resolves history into eternity.51 His “objectivism,” Brunner judges, is an a priori construct that evades clear exegesis.52 “Hence the transition from unbelief to faith is not the transition from ‘being-lost’ to ‘being-saved.’ This turning-point does not exist, since it is no longer possible to be lost. But if we look at this view more closely, we see also that the turning-point in the historical Event is no real turning-point at all; for Election means that everything has already taken place in sphere of pre-existence.”53
The Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar spoke of Barth as evidencing “a dynamic and actualist theopanism, which we define as a monism of beginning and end (protology and eschatology),” drawing on Idealist categories.54 “Too much in Barth gives the impression that nothing much really happens in his theology of event and history, because everything has already happened in eternity.”55
My own analysis leads me to the same conclusions. The “step-wise” character of the divine economy gives to the biblical narrative a genuine movement with genuine twists and turns along the way. Jesus scolds his followers not for failing to recognize the simultaneity of his humiliation and exaltation but for failing to realize that he first had to suffer and then enter into his glory (Lk 9:28–45; 24:26; Php 2:6–11; Heb 1:3–4; 2:9–10; 1Pe 1:11). The transition is historical, not merely noetic or logical.
From these criticisms we can discern at least some of the motives for Barth’s stress on unity that we have already seen in his Trinitarian thinking. In fact, we have discovered that the dominance of the one Lord over the three persons is the principal reason for his objection to the notion of an intratrinitarian covenant of redemption.56 One God, one covenant in which law is subsumed under gospel, one subject of electing grace, one eternal history of God actualized in one event—unity obtains a controlling status in Barth’s dogmatics, which is perhaps one reason why it has been characterized as “Christian monism” and why Barth himself had so little trouble identifying with the “biblical-theocentric monism” of seventeenth-century supralapsarianism.57
George Hunsinger reminds us that Berkouwer criticized Barth for a Platonizing “eternalizing” of time (a separation finally leading to monism), while Robert Jenson draws inspiration from Barth in the direction of a Hegelian “historicizing” of eternity.58 However, I wonder if both moves are entirely possible readings of Barth’s own intentions, just as Berkouwer suggested above. As we have seen, Brunner and Berkouwer recognized early on that Barth’s all-encompassing reformulation of election entailed a radical revision of theology. Barth speaks of “Jesus the eternally Elect Man,” “the pre-existing God-Man, who, as such, is the eternal ground of all election,” but Brunner pointedly asserts, “No special proof is required to show that the Bible contains no such doctrine, nor that no theory of this kind has ever been formulated by any theologian.”59
Finally, although Barth’s “revised supralapsarianism” was motivated in part by his concern to eliminate any ontological gap between God’s hidden decree and his self-revelation in Christ, he stopped short of embracing the doctrine of universal salvation (apokatastasis). Although all of humanity is elect in Christ, it would be an affront to God’s sovereign freedom to assert that each and every person will finally be saved.60 However, this presents a far more ominous threat of a breach between the hidden and revealed God. Barth holds that, despite one’s being chosen, redeemed, called, justified, and sanctified, it is at least possible that one may not at last be glorified but will be reprobate after all.
For Calvin and Reformed orthodoxy, there can be no contradiction between the immanent and economic Trinity (or deus in se est, “God in himself,” and deus pro nos, “God for us”). Calvin sharply rejected the nominalist idea of a God of arbitrary will and power behind or above the God revealed in Jesus Christ.61 The hidden God is not different from the revealed God. All of the elect will be saved, without the possibility of one being lost. At the same time, the well-meant summons of the external Word to repent and believe the gospel is universal. That many do in fact embrace Christ is a miracle of God’s electing grace, realized in history. Thus, there is no place for the ontological or epistemological cleavage that worries Barth, although his own reticence to eliminate any question of whether God’s electing grace perfectly coincides with the outcome of salvation for everyone elected leaves a question mark over that question.
1. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1946), 1:547: “It is vain to argue that a holy and benevolent God cannot permit sin and misery, if sin and misery do in fact exist. It is vain to say that his impartiality forbids that there should be any diversity in the endowments, advantages, or happiness of his rational creatures So it is utterly irrational to contend that God cannot foreordain sin, if he foreordained (as no Christian doubts) the crucifixion of Christ. The occurrence of sin in the plan adopted by God is a palpable fact; the consistency, therefore, of foreordination with the holiness of God cannot rationally be denied.”
2. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 105.
3. Ibid., 103.
4. The Latin phrase ordo salutis means “the order of salvation” and refers to how the Spirit applies the benefits of Christ to individuals. Cf. ch. 16, “IV. The King and His Kingdom,” pp. 535–37.
5. A. A. Hodge, as quoted in Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 104.
6. See Thomas Bradwardine, “The Cause of God against the Pelagians,” in Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought (ed. Heiko Oberman; New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966), 151-64. The strong affirmation of original sin and of the necessity of God’s prevenient grace at the Council of Trent at first challenges the legitimacy of the Reformed and Lutheran charges of Semi-Pelagianism. Nevertheless, prevenient grace appears by itself (sola gratia) only at the beginning of conversion with the infusion of justifying (i.e., regenerating) grace in baptism. From that point on, the increase of justification and final justification depend on meritorious human cooperation. From an Augustinian perspective, this can only constitute a Semi-Pelagian position
7. Named after Jacob Arminius (1560–1609), Arminianism contradicted the Reformed confession and was rejected at the Synod of Dort (1618–1619)
8. Richard Watson, Theological Institutes (New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1887), 2:392-449; Thomas N. Ralston, Elements of Divinity (ed. T. O. Summers; New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1924), 278-327; William B. Pope, A Compendium of Christian Theology (New York: Phillips and Hunt, n.d.), 1:317-19; John Lawson, Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1967, 1980), 206-35. See also Roger Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006)
9. Followers of this movement, named after Laelius Socinus (1525-1562) and his nephew Faustus (1539-1604), were radical Protestants who rejected all dogmas that they thought were inconsistent with reason and practical morality. Forerunners of modern Unitarians, Socinians denied the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and the substitutionary character of Christ’s atonement. They held that in order to affirm free will, God’s foreknowledge must include only necessary truths rather than the contingent decisions and acts of human beings. See the citations from the Racovian Catechism in William Cunningham, Historical Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1996), 2:173
10. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will (trans. J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston; Grand Rapids: Revell, 1990)
11. Despite his friendship with Calvin, Philipp Melanchthon eventually came to question reprobation and eventually taught a form of synergism (conditional election) that (in addition to his more Calvinistic understanding of the Supper) led to a strongreaction against him on the part of Luther’s orthodox followers. The so-called gnesio (original)-Lutherans resolutely defended unconditional election and rejected any form of synergism but also the Calvinist view of reprobation (as well as “Philippist” accommodations with Calvinistic eucharistic views). These views were officially adopted in the Book of Concord. For a summary of the Lutheran confession on this point (especially the Formula of Concord), see Charles Porterfield Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1963), 322–24. However, some Lutherans followed Melanchthon’s view (conditional election, based on foreseen faith); see, e.g., Heinrich Smid, Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (trans. Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1889), 272–73. Although often characterized as Arminian by Reformed Christians because it rejects reprobation, particular redemption, and the indefectibility of regeneration, the Lutheran system cannot be pressed into Calvinist-Arminian categories. Confessional Lutheranism simultaneously affirms unconditional election and God’s universal grace, monergism and the possibility of losing one’s salvation. Krauth summarizes that “on many points in the developed system now known as Arminianism the Lutheran Church has no affinity whatever with it, and on these points would sympathize far more with Calvinism” (Krauth, The Conservative Reformation, 127). Lutheranism is its own system with its own integrity and, from a Reformed perspective, peculiar inconsistencies.
Arminian (Remonstrant) theology, as it evolved into a system, rejected unconditional election and its kindred doctrines (total depravity, particular redemption, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints). The Counter-Reformation offered yet another perspective on the divine decree. In between the classic Thomistic-Augustinian position defended by the Dominicans and the more Semi-Pelagian position adopted by the later Franciscans, the so-called Molinists, after Luis de Molina, who with Francisco Suárez defended a position identified as “middle knowledge” (scientia media). For a contemporary defense of this view, see William Lane Craig, “The Middle Knowledge View,” in Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001).
12. Rooted in the methodological approach of Heiko Oberman, David Steinmetz, and others, Richard Muller is joined by a growing number of historical theologians who have decisively refuted the Torrance school on the relation between Calvin and Calvinism. See, for example, Richard Muller, After Calvin (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), which summarizes much of his research on this relationship; cf. Carl Trueman and R. S. Clark, eds., Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment (Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 1998); Paul Helm, Calvin and the Calvinists (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982); W. J. van Asselt and E. Dekker, eds., Reformation and Scholasticism: An Ecumenical Enterprise (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001); Joel Beeke, Assurance of Faith: Calvin, English Puritanism, and the Dutch Second Reformation (New York: Peter Lang, 1991); L. D. Bierma, “Federal Theology in the Sixteenth Century: Two Traditions?” WTJ 45 (1983): 304–21; “The Role of Covenant Theology in Early Reformed Orthodoxy,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 21 (1990): 453–62.
13. See Calvin, Institutes 3.21.2.
14. Turretin, Elenctic Theology, 1:16. Calvin’s attitude toward speculation is well known, as is his emphasis on God’s condescension and accommodation to us, revealing God not as he is in himself but as he is toward us—not in his being but in his works. “Better to limp along this path,” Calvin cautioned, “than to dash with all speed outside it” (Institutes 1.6.3).
15. Turretin, Elenctic Theology, 1:252.
16. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 119 (cf. p. 120 for an excellent summary of the two views).
17. Canons of Dort, ch. 5, “Conclusion,” in Psalter Hymnal: Doctrinal Standards and Liturgy of the Christian Reformed Church (Grand Rapids: Board of Publications of the Christian Reformed Church, 1976),115.
18. The best engagement with Barth’s views on these matters remains G. C. Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (trans. Harry R. Boer; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956).
19. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2, pt. 2, pp.13-14.
20. Barth rejected the notion that predestination was a central dogma in Reformed orthodoxy, much less that it functioned as “a kind of speculative key-a basic tenet from which they could deduce all other dogmas.” “Not even the famous schemaof T. Beza was intended in such a sense,” Barth notes (Church Dogmatics, vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 77–78). In fact, “If we read their expositions connectedly, we are more likely to get the impression that from the standpoint of its systematic range and importance they gave to the doctrine too little consideration rather than too much” (78). These comments stand in opposition to the school of Calvin interpretation associated with some of Barth’s heirs, especially T. F. Torrance and J. B. Torrance.
21. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2, pt. 2, p.80.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 89.
24. Ibid., vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 90-92.
25. Ibid., vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 92-94.
26. Ibid., vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 319-21; cf. the critique of this position by Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace, 255-58.
27. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 4, pt. 2, pp. 105: “In a basic attachment to the Reformed tradition, but without following it in detail, and transcending it at some points, we have given this a sense and position which it did not have in all earlier Christology. We have ‘actualised’ the doctrine of the incarnation, i.e., we have used the main traditional concepts, unio, communio and communicatio, as concentrically related terms to. describe one and the same ongoing process … a single event.”
28. Ibid., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 25.
29. Ibid., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 145.
30. See especially Karl Barth, Man and Humanity in Romans 5 (trans. T. A. Smail; New York: Collier, 1962).
31. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 4, pt. 3, pp. 1, 3.
32. Ibid., vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 13: “The Yes cannot be heard unless the No is also heard. But the No is said for the sake of the Yes and not for its own sake. In substance, therefore, the first and last word is Yes and not No.”.
33. Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man (trans. Douglas Horton; New York: Harper & Bros., 1957), 120.
34. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 4, pt. 1, pp. 66. Barth is not quite fair in his definition, since these writers believed that there were two historical covenants, not one covenant conceived of in a dualistic fashion.
35. Ibid., vol. 4, pt. 1, p. 55.
36. Ibid., vol. 4, pt. 1, p. 56.
37. Ibid., vol. 4, pt. 2, p. 31: “We have to do with the eternal beginning of all the ways and works of God when we have to do with Jesus Christ—even in his true humanity. This is not a ‘contingent fact of history.’ It is the historical event in which there took place in time that which was the purpose and resolve and will of God from all eternity and therefore before the being of all creation, before all time and history, that which is, there fore, above all time and history, and will be after them, so that the being of all creatures and their whole history in time follow this one resolve and will, and were and are and will be referred and related to them. The true humanity of Jesus Christ, as the humanity of the Son, was and is and will be the primary content of God’s eternal election of grace, i.e., of the divine decision and action which are not preceded by any higher apart from the trinitarian happening of the life of God, but which all other divine decisions and actions follow, and to which they are subordinated…. For God’s eternal election of grace is concretely the election of Jesus Christ” (cf. 33–34).
38. Ibid., vol. 4, pt. 2, p. 35.
39. Ibid., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 79.
40. Ibid., vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 355.
41. Ibid., vol. 4, pt. 2, p. 122.
42. Ibid., vol. 4, pt. 1, p. 131.
43. Bruce McCormack, Karl Earth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 147.
44. 208 Berkouwer, Triumph of Grace, 256-58.
45. Ibid., 247.
46. 210 Ibid., 252.
47. 211 Ibid., 253.
48. 212 Ibid., 253.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 255.
51. Emil Brunner, Dogmatics I: The Christian Doctrine of God (trans. Olive Wyon; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1946), 1:347.
52. Ibid., 1:349-50.
53. Ibid., 1:351.
54. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation (trans. Edward T. Oakes, SJ; San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 94.
55. Ibid., 371.
56. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 4, pt. 1, p. 65. He adds, somewhat cryptically, “The thought of a purely inter-trinitarian [sic] decision as the eternal basis of the covenant of grace may be found both sublime and uplifting. But it is definitely much too uplifting and sublime to be a Christian thought” (66).
57. Ibid., vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 135.
58. George Hunsinger, How To Read Karl Earth: The Shape of His Theology (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 15-16.
59. Brunner, Dogmatics I, 1:347.
60. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 295, 417–18, 475—76.
61. Calvin, Institutes 3.23.2.