Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:16
While Luther’s conflict with Erasmus made explicit the Augustinian and predestinarian foundations of the Reformer’s understanding of grace and indeed of justification, this was no monopoly of Luther or Lutheranism but a point which united the magisterial Protestants. It was also something that ultimately precipitated a division in both Lutheran and Reformed ranks. As Calvinists and Arminians were to divide in the early seventeenth century, so in the years immediately after Luther’s death in 1546, the Lutheran church divided between the Gnesio (“real”) Lutherans and the Phillipists (followers of Melanchthon). The former held tightly to Luther’s position on the bondage of the will, but the latter moved along the more Erasmian lines that Melanchthon himself had advocated from the late 1520s onwards.1
In fact, from the middle of the sixteenth century the constructive reflection on grace in terms of predestination really passed rapidly from the Lutheran camp to that of the Reformed, where, in the popular imagination, it became synonymous with John Calvin, the French Reformer of Geneva. Yet it is clear that Calvin was merely one among many in his day who developed the thinking of Paul and Augustine on this matter. Calvin, Bullinger, and others did this in a manner which provided the basic framework for the Reformers’ rejection of the idea of human merits as a basis for salvation before God. In doing so they thus laid the groundwork for the Reformed confessions, which still define the issue of grace for Reformed and Presbyterian churches to the present day.
Predestination in the Reformed Churches
A predestinarian understanding of grace pervaded the Reformed church confessions of the sixteenth century. Protestantism was, after all, an essentially Augustinian movement on the issue of grace and connected doctrines. Thus, article 17 of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (1563) declares:
Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) He hath constantly decreed by His counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom He hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honor.2
The Belgic Confession (1562) speaks similarly in its article 16:
We believe that, all the posterity of Adam being thus fallen into perdition and ruin by the sin of our first parents, God then did manifest Himself such as He is; that is to say, merciful and just: merciful, since He delivers and preserves from this perdition all whom He in His eternal and unchangeable counsel of mere goodness has elected in Christ Jesus our Lord, without any respect to their works; just, in leaving others in the fall and perdition wherein they have involved themselves.3
Given the prevalence of the doctrine, it is thus helpful to allow one theologian in particular to shape our discussion. In this regard, it is perhaps an obvious choice to use John Calvin as the reference point. He is the best-known sixteenth-century Reformed theologian and one whose commentaries, sermons, and Institutes are still widely used today.
Having said that about Calvin, however, we do need to issue one caveat. Even as he was concerned for predestination and regarded it as a vital doctrine, it is important to note that the popular idea of him as the theologian of predestination is a myth. Large as he looms for Reformed theologians today, we must bear in mind that in his own day he was only one theologian among a number of influential thinkers in the Reformed tradition. It is true that his works have withstood the test of theological time better than any of his contemporaries, but in the sixteenth century he was at best merely first among equals.
His lack of basic originality on the matter of predestination is clear from the fact that his formulation of the doctrine occurs within a very conventional and traditional Christian framework. He is not an innovator and never desired to be such. Where he excels, and where he is therefore useful to us, is in the clarity and concise way in which he articulates the doctrine of predestination.
Calvin holds to all the basic elements of an Augustinian anti-Pelagian theology—original sin,4 the power of human depravity over the human will, leading to a total moral inability to move toward God,5 and thus the need for a decisive sovereign intervention on God’s part. His Catechism of 1537, written comparatively early in his career—during his first Geneva period—makes all of these points clear. If God does not intervene in grace, then nobody will turn to him of their own accord. And that grace is rooted in God’s predestining will.6 Predestination is thus part of Calvin’s overall catholic theology, and he would undoubtedly have been mortified to think that he was in any way inventing a doctrine or offering any kind of significant innovation on this, as on any other matter. Predestination for Calvin, as for Paul and Augustine and Luther, is the conceptual framework that guarantees the gratuitous nature of grace.
Calvin’s most well-known work, containing his most famous articulation of grace and predestination, is his Institutes of the Christian Religion, a book he first published in 1536 and then spent the rest of his life revising and expanding. It is often thought of as a systematic theology, but he actually intended it to be a handbook to accompany his commentaries. Thus, he placed in the Institutes detailed discussion of theological topics to which he would frequently refer readers of his commentaries. This allowed him to keep his commentaries free of elaborate doctrinal digressions and thus more concise and readable.
This is an important point, because we need to bear in mind that the topical ordering in the Institutes is not driven by purely systematic concerns. Indeed, a good argument can be made that the ordering of topics is shaped more by the order in which Paul was understood to address them in Romans where they occur in chapters 9–11, after dealing with the more personal, existential aspects of salvation. For this reason, we should not draw too many hard and fast theological conclusions simply from the position of any doctrinal topic in the work because the relative placement of a doctrine may not in itself be doctrinally motivated.
Thus, it is not a particular reflection of the relative importance of the doctrine that Calvin’s treatment of predestination in the 1559 Institutes occurs toward the end of book 3. Prior to that, he has discussed God as creator, God as redeemer, and the basic shape of the Christian life. That second section, Christ as redeemer, provides the clearest discussion of the foundation of grace and includes the background to his discussion of individual salvation. Only then does he address predestination. As noted above, this is arguably the result of the topical ordering that Calvin came to understand as Paul’s in the book of Romans, probably through the influence of his friend Melanchthon’s commentary.7
Nevertheless, predestination and its various corollary doctrines was a point of central concern to him throughout his career. He wrote a reply to Catholic theologian Pighius on the matter of the bondage of the will in 1543 and famously refuted the maverick theologian Jerome Bolsec on the point of election in his 1552 treatise On the Eternal Predestination of God. The latter work even achieved a kind of quasi-confessional status in Geneva when the Genevan authorities recognized it in 1552 as an important element of the city’s reformation. All of this has served to reinforce a popular image of Calvin as the theologian of predestination. Thought it is still a caricature, it does at least reflect the fact that he clearly considered predestination to be an extremely important doctrine in undergirding his understanding of biblical grace.
Where Calvin is particularly helpful is in the close connection he draws between grace and the person of Christ. This is a key Pauline theme but one that can be neglected when our minds go first to the trickier questions about predestination, which, more often than not, cannot be answered anyway. As we noted in the first chapter, even Paul’s answer to the riddles of predestination is ultimately doxological praise rather than theological resolution.
Calvin’s first concern in considering election is not to speculate about the origin of evil or why one is chosen and another reprobated. It is rather to focus on Christ. He sees grace manifested most dramatically in the act and reality of the incarnation, describing the coming of God in the flesh as a mirror of God’s grace, i.e., something in which the free favor of God can be clearly seen.8 God’s grace is shown preeminently by his action in coming in history. Following Augustine, he makes the point that the man Jesus Christ achieved an honor according to his human flesh in the incarnation that no mere human being could attain under their own efforts.9 God’s action in incarnating Christ is sovereign and not a cooperative exercise with human beings, a biblical point we noted in the first chapter. This then lays the foundation for Calvin’s famous statement about Christ: that he is a mirror of God’s free election:
In the very head of the Church we have a bright mirror of free election, lest it should give any trouble to us the members, viz., that he did not become the Son of God by living righteously, but was freely presented with this great honor, that he might afterwards make others partakers of his gifts.10
The election of the incarnate Christ by God demonstrates the freedom of God’s gracious action and reveals his grace in the face of our finite and sinful helplessness. Christ is both the foundation of our free election and the supreme example of free election.
This christological focus on predestination finds its most remarkable statement in the Scots Confession of 1560, the principle author of which was Calvin’s disciple John Knox. Chapter 8 is fascinating in this regard and is worth quoting in full:
For that same eternal God and Father, who of mere grace elected us in Christ Jesus His Son before the foundation of the world was laid (Eph. 1), appointed Him to be our Head, our brother (Heb. 2), our pastor, and great bishop of our souls (John 10). But because the enmity betwixt the justice of God and our sins was such that no flesh by itself could or might have attained unto God, it behooved that the Son of God should descend unto us and take Himself a body of our body, flesh of our flesh, and bones of our bones: and so become the perfect mediator betwixt God and man, giving power to so many as believe in Him to be the sons of God (John 1). As He Himself does witness, “I pass up to my Father and unto your Father, to my God and unto your God” (John 20). By which most holy fraternity, whatsoever we have lost in Adam is restored to us again. And for this cause are we not afraid to call God our Father, not so much that He has created us (which we have common with the reprobate) as for that, that He has given to us His only Son, to be our brother, and given unto us grace to acknowledge and embrace Him for our only mediator, as before was said. It behooved further the Messiah and Redeemer to be very God and very man because He was to undergo the punishment due for our transgressions (Isa. 53), and to present Himself in the presence of His Father’s judgment as in our person to suffer for our transgression and disobedience by death, to overcome him that was author of death. But because the only Godhead could not suffer death, neither yet could the only manhood overcome the same, He joined both together in one person that the weakness of the one should suffer and be subject to death (which we had deserved), and the infinite and invincible power of the other, to wit, of the Godhead, should triumph and purchase to us life, liberty, and perpetual victory. And so we confess and most undoubtedly believe.11
What is so interesting here is that there is no mention of any decree of predestination or election. The focus is entirely on the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s election is first and foremost his choice of Christ as the God-man to be the great mediator between God and sinners. Election needs to be understood as focused on Jesus.
This is useful because it serves to underline the point that grace cannot be conceived of in abstract terms, as if it were a mere sentiment or a whim of God. As we have noted before, in a sentimental age such as ours, there is a temptation to reduce theological terms to superficial emotions. Love becomes a feeling, and grace becomes simply the act of turning a blind eye to sin and wickedness in someone. That is not grace as the Bible teaches it. Yes, there is a superabundance of mercy toward us in God’s grace, but this is rooted in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The point of grace is that it is a divine response to human sin that has a concrete manifestation in God’s actions in history. Certainly it has an individual reference for each and every Christian, but first and foremost it is demonstrated in God acting in Christ in human history. God’s gracious response to our sin cannot be separated from the work of Christ without completely losing its significance. God’s response to my sin is not simply to forget it or act as if it never happened. No, his response is Christ. God’s favor to me is Christ. God’s love for me is Christ. And thus election and predestination cannot be separated from the work of Christ without becoming apparently arbitrary abstractions.
In the Institutes, Calvin introduces the topic of individual election of sinners by observing that not all respond in faith to the preaching of the gospel. When the word is proclaimed, some believe while others are indifferent or hardened by the proclamation. For Calvin, the difference is not an intrinsic one. It is not that some are more naturally inclined to grasp the word by faith than others. All are embraced under the same guilt and under the same moral bondage. It is only an act of the Spirit that brings faith; and the Spirit acts only on those whom the Lord has chosen to bring to Christ.12
This might seem at first glance to be a depressing doctrine for preachers in particular and perhaps Christians in general. But the point is extremely encouraging for both, for it means that the results of preaching are not dependent on the efforts of the preacher or the moral strength of the hearer. Ultimately, the salvation of those to whom a preacher declares the word does not depend on his own eloquence or skills in argument. It depends solely upon the sovereign work of God by his Holy Spirit convicting hearers of the truth of the word to which they are listening. Knowing that fact should strengthen the confidence of any preacher entering the pulpit.
The second introductory point Calvin makes on predestination is that an understanding of predestination and election13 is vital if grace is to be properly understood:
We shall never feel persuaded as we ought that our salvation flows from the free mercy of God as its fountain, until we are made acquainted with his eternal election, the grace of God being illustrated by the contrast, viz., that he does not adopt all promiscuously to the hope of salvation, but gives to some what he denies to others.14
Thus, for Calvin the purpose of explicating the doctrine is not to promote speculation about the matter but to undergird the gracious nature of salvation. Salvation is all of God, and that point is vital. At the time of the Reformation, there were those who, like Melanchthon, argued that the doctrine should be essentially kept out of the pulpit because it would lead to confusion. Calvin was emphatically opposed to such a view and stood in the line of thinking on the matter which stemmed from Paul. Election and predestination, mysterious as they are, are first and foremost there to underline that salvation is in origin a sovereign act of God. Therefore, the doctrine should be preached.
This was Luther’s basic theological point in Bondage of the Will. For grace to be grace, there must be predestination, or else some form of human merit is being smuggled back into the picture. The existence of Augustinian predestinarian theology prior to the Reformation indicates that the Protestant understanding of justification is formally separable from its understanding of predestination. Nevertheless, in the minds of men such as Luther and Calvin, the connection between the two is extremely close. If justification is all of God, then salvation is by grace and predestination must be true and proclaimed to be so.
Indeed, as Calvin broaches the topic of predestination in the Institutes, he moves immediately to warn the reader about making two errors: too confidently probing into the mysteries of God and indulging in unwarranted speculation, or being too shy and reticent to do justice to what the Bible actually says. The Christian is to plot a course between these two extremes, cleaving closely to Scripture so as to be neither too speculative nor too coy. Calvin was scarcely unique on this point. This was typical of the Reformers, who were aware that the doctrine could be used either to foster despair or, more importantly, presumption, a point made with some force in chapter 11 of the Second Helvetic Confession.15
Nevertheless, Calvin does not regard this caution against speculation as preventing him from defining predestination in a manner that clearly includes reprobation:
By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.16
Yet even when Calvin states such a dramatic doctrine, it is important to remember that he is not an innovator on this point. In fact, what is remarkable about this definition, given Calvin’s reputation, is that it is really very conventional. Yes, it is true that he explicitly states a doctrine of double predestination in a way that is quite dramatic, but it is in no way an exceptional or original definition. Even that Calvin appears to make predestination a clearly theological doctrine at this point and does not build it on the doctrine of original sin and of humanity’s moral problem is not particularly original. Luther does much the same in On the Bondage of the Will, and we have clear precedents in the Middle Ages among theologians such as Gottschalk, Thomas Bradwardine, John Wycliffe, and Jan Hus.
Double predestination was not a matter of confessional consensus among the Reformed. It is true that the 1552 adoption by the city authorities of Calvin’s work On the Eternal Predestination of God made the doctrine normative for pastors within the Genevan jurisdiction. Yet Bullinger’s Zurich took a softer line, as the rather vague and noncommittal language of chapter 10 of the Second Helvetic Confession shows when it references those who are not elect.17 Here, Bullinger is careful only to speak of predestination to salvation. The question of reprobation is left open. Of course, part of the reason is polemical context. Geneva adopted Calvin’s position in the wake of his conflict with Jerome Bolsec, a theologian who seemed to be equivocating on predestination as a means of smuggling merit back into the salvific equation. In such circumstances, a sharper definition of the matter was inevitably more attractive to those wishing to keep out such deviant thinking. The key thing was always the protection of the gratuitous nature of grace.
Polemical context also worked in the other direction as well. One strange fact is the lack of any reference to predestination in the Heidelberg Catechism, one of the great confessional texts of the Reformation church and one which continues to hold authority in Reformed churches of German and Dutch origin today. The catechism certainly has the basic doctrines that comport with predestination. Human beings are fallen and impotent to effect their own salvation (question 5), and they must be regenerated before they can do any good (question 8), but there is no explicit statement of any eternal foundation for the enacting of individual salvation.
The reason for this is actually less theological and more political. Frederick III, the Elector Palatine in 1563 who commissioned the catechism, was attempting to forge an alliance at Heidelberg University between the Melanchthonians and the Reformed. The former would have objected to a vigorous statement of predestination being included in the document, as they would then have been unable to subscribe to it.
The Heidelberg Catechism is an example, therefore, both of the ecumenical pragmatism that sometimes underlies the formulation of confessional documents and also of the fact that a high view of God’s grace could be articulated in a document that fails to draw out the implications of that view for predestination. Nevertheless, silence on the doctrine is not repudiation of the doctrine, and it is clear that a consistent application of the catechism’s other doctrines requires some kind of predestinarian framework in order to make grace really gracious and salvation actual, even if this is not made explicit in a clear formulation of predestination.
Predestination and Assurance
Discussion of the Heidelberg Catechism leads us to the point in the Reformers’ thinking where they do actually make a significant new pastoral contribution on the matter of grace and predestination.
The major difference between earlier renderings of the doctrine and those in the Reformation really connects to the doctrine of assurance. Assurance is central to Reformation theology, as is so clear from question 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism, which establishes assured comfort as the purpose of the catechism’s teaching.18 Indeed, Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck was correct in identifying this as the single important change in the doctrine that the Reformation introduced.19
In the Middle Ages, assurance was simply not an issue. This is true even for theologians who are often thought of as proto-Protestants or forerunners of the Reformers. For example, Wycliffe and Hus did not consider assurance to be a realistic possibility, or even particularly desirable, for the typical believer. On this point, such otherwise radical theologians remained stubbornly in the Middle Ages. It was at the Reformation, with its remarkable emphasis on justification by grace through faith, that assurance became a central part of Christian expectation and experience.
The significance of this for the treatment of predestination is obvious. If the reasons for God’s election are hidden from human eyes, then does that not undermine the possibility of assurance? Certainly modern theologian Karl Barth thought so. For him, the decree of election as formulated in the Augustinian and especially the Reformed tradition cast a long shadow over God’s revelation in Christ and thereby undercut the possibility of trusting in Christ. For how could one trust Christ until one was sure one was elect and therefore had a warrant to trust him? For Barth, an alleged legalism and mysticism were the inevitable results.20
This is a tough question to answer, for there is a sense in which Barth has a point. One must be careful in the way one articulates predestination lest, in an attempt to underscore the gratuitous nature of grace, one actually ends up eclipsing grace with the shadow of an apparently arbitrary and despotic God. That is arguably where Luther’s thinking tends in some of his more dramatic flourishes in Bondage of the Will. Yet it is clear that all of the great Reformers regarded the Augustinian doctrines of grace and predestination as vital to Christian assurance, not inimical to it. Thus, for example, article 17 of the Thirty-Nine Articles says this:
The godly consideration of predestination and our election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God.21
The key phrase here, of course, is “godly consideration,” which is intended (as the rest of the article makes clear) to point the believer away from the kind of speculative questions that attempt to probe behind that which God has revealed and into the hidden will of God. The Canons of Dordt (1618) express the same idea:
The sense and certainty of this election afford to the children of God additional matter for daily humiliation before Him, for adoring the depth of His mercies, for cleansing themselves, and rendering grateful returns of ardent love to Him who first manifested so great love towards them. The consideration of this doctrine of election is so far from encouraging remissness in the observance of the divine commands or from sinking men in carnal security, that these, in the just judgment of God, are the usual effects of rash presumption or of idle and wanton trifling with the grace of election, in those who refuse to walk in the ways of the elect.22
Thus, far from causing fear, the general Reformed assumption is that election brings comfort when the object of godly consideration. Calvin offers an exposition of what this godly consideration is, for he does not simply want the doctrine of election taught in order to underscore God’s grace. He also considers it to be vital to Christian assurance. As with Luther, he believes that if any aspect of salvation lies decisively in the hands of the creature, then there can be no assurance, for the chain of salvation is only as strong as its weakest link. Yet he also knows that speculation regarding predestination is a dangerous pastime. In fact, Calvin says that those who rush into such speculation will find themselves hopelessly lost in an “inextricable labyrinth.”23
Instead, Calvin argues that election is only to be contemplated in Christ. Picking up on the Pauline identification of Christ with the grace of God, and that election is “in Christ,” he points the Christian toward contemplating election only as it is revealed in the incarnate Son of God. Indeed, in contrast to the labyrinth into which speculation leads, Christ is the “mirror” in which we can contemplate our election:
If we seek for the paternal mercy and favor of God, we must turn our eyes to Christ, in whom alone the Father is well pleased (Mt. 3:17). When we seek for salvation, life, and a blessed immortality, to him also must we retake ourselves, since he alone is the fountain of life and the anchor of salvation, and the heir of the kingdom of heaven. Then what is the end of election, but just that, being adopted as sons by the heavenly Father, we may by his favor obtain salvation and immortality? How much soever you may speculate and discuss you will perceive that in its ultimate object it goes no farther. Hence, those whom God has adopted as sons, he is said to have elected, not in themselves, but in Christ Jesus (Eph. 1:4); because he could love them only in him, and only as being previously made partakers with him, honor them with the inheritance of his kingdom. But if we are elected in him, we cannot find the certainty of our election in ourselves; and not even in God the Father, if we look at him apart from the Son. Christ, then, is the mirror in which we ought, and in which, without deception, we may contemplate our election. For since it is into his body that the Father has decreed to ingraft those whom from eternity he wished to be his, that he may regard as sons all whom he acknowledges to be his members, if we are in communion with Christ, we have proof sufficiently clear and strong that we are written in the Book of Life.24
Calvin’s view here is similar in many ways to Luther’s in Bondage of the Will, where he emphasizes the need to look on God as clothed in the flesh of Christ as the means of beholding the grace and mercy of God, even against the background of predestination. It also comports with statements in confessional documents, such as the Second Helvetic Confession, that emphasized the need for the believer to see Christ as God’s verdict in election and thus their status in him as his verdict on them.25
Some will no doubt object that Barth’s criticism—that the decree of election casts a shadow over Christ—still holds good, and there is a sense in which this is true. We do not know God’s mind, and we do not have direct access to the particulars of the decree of election. Yet there seem to be only three basic ways of handling this. One could argue for universalism: God’s election in Christ is unconditioned by any particularist decree, and thus all are ultimately saved. While Barth himself rejected this, it is arguable that his thought presses heavily in this direction, and it has certainly become the position of many of his followers and interpreters. Yet this view is impossible to square with biblical teaching, where the urgency of turning to God and the possibility of being lost for all eternity are stressed as being very real and very significant (e.g., Luke 16:19–31; Acts 17:30–31; 1 Thess 1:9–10; 2 Pet 3:9–10; Rev 16:8–10).
Second, one can argue that Christ is conditioned not by any prior particularist decree but by human response. In short, Christ’s death makes grace universally available to all, to be freely grasped by the individual by faith. This, of course, requires that one believes that human beings with the help of prevenient grace are able to make such a move but also resist the same if they wish. It also makes personal salvation depend on the personal action of belief. Thus, assurance could well tend toward a more introspective or even legalistic foundation. This is, of course, the line of thinking which broadly characterizes what we call Arminianism.
Third, one can assume that God is a God who, while both just and merciful, yet prefers mercy to justice, as is revealed in his election throughout history, his tender dealings and patience with his people, and his supreme act of grace in Christ. In Christ he sets forth his merciful intentions in such a way that none who come to him by faith will be cast aside. Yes, it is true that the decree of predestination is still there in the background, but the great promises of God’s bounteous grace, linked to his saving action in Christ, give full grounds and confidence for believing that any who look to him for salvation will be saved.
In short, even when viewed in the most negative way, the Reformed position on Christ and the decree would seem to comport better with the biblical material as a whole, and actually provide a better ground for assurance, than either of the other possibilities.
Predestination after Calvin
In the decades after Calvin, debates about predestination became more nuanced. For example, the question of the basis of reprobation came to the fore in discussion between infra- and supralapsarians. The former argued that God reprobated human beings on the assumption of their sinfulness, the latter prior to their sinfulness. To put the question these schemes sought to answer more clearly: When God in eternity chose whom to elect and whom to reprobate, was he looking at the human race logically before it had fallen or after it had fallen? For example, when God decides in eternity to elect John Smith to eternal life, is he thinking of John Smith as a sinner, or is he thinking simply of John Smith as a human being without regard to his moral state? If God is thinking of him as a sinner, then Smith’s election is a response to his sin. If God is thinking of Smith simply as a human being, then Smith’s election, whatever else it might be, is not a response to his sin.
The distinction might seem somewhat speculative. Indeed, for those unfamiliar with the debates, the terminology in itself is no doubt confusing. But there are important concerns here. Both sides were attempting to preserve something of what they saw as the biblical teaching on grace. Infralapsarianism underscored the point that God’s grace is a response to human sin. It is not just an abstraction or a sentiment; nor is it arbitrary. Rather, it is actually a positive act of God in the light of human rebellion. Supralapasarianism arose out of a desire to rule absolutely out of bounds any notion of foreseen merit playing any part in election. It thus connected to the Reformation emphasis on grace as free and sovereign.
Both views also involved certain difficulties. Infralapsarianism does carry with it the risk that it could be interpreted as allowing for some elective discrimination on the basis of intrinsic merit or demerit in those elected or reprobated. Further, while it attempts to ameliorate the problem of the fall and its place within the plan of God, the fact that all the Reformed regarded God as sovereign over all things really meant that the distinction could be seen as a rather specious one.
Supralapsarianism, however, seems to defend God’s sovereignty by creating a system in which God is very much the author of sin and in which the fall and all the evil it brings in its wake are merely instruments for bringing about God’s glory. Also, the idea that reprobation is necessary in order to bring about a full revelation of God’s righteousness is difficult to justify from Scripture. In fact, the scheme seems to inject a harsh and unknowable arbitrariness into God. Opponents of the Reformed understanding of grace would see this as inevitable, given the Reformed view of God’s sovereignty and, indeed, it was supralapsarian-ism that helped to precipitate the great breach in Reformed theology, between so-called Calvinists and Arminians.26
The anti-Pelagian view of grace that we find in Calvin, Bullinger, and other magisterial Reformers came under increasing pressure in the latter part of the sixteenth century. In Cambridge in the 1590s, Peter Baro was accused of teaching that deviated from the Reformation line and conceded too much to human free will, weakening predestination and compromising on the issue of the saints’ perseverance. The background to this was Archbishop John Whitgift commissioning William Whitaker, then Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, to compose the so-called Lambeth Articles (1595), which elaborated on various issues such as predestination and perseverance. The nine articles asserted double predestination, denied that this was on the basis of foreseen merits, affirmed perseverance, and emphasized the irresistibility of grace. While the articles never achieved official confessional status in Anglicanism, Whitgift regarded them as an explanation of Anglican doctrine. They were also later incorporated as a whole into the Irish Articles of 1615, composed by James Ussher. Yet, as Anglicanism sought to sharpen its confessional position on predestination, almost inevitably it provoked reactions from figures such as Baro.
If Baro represented a growing spirit of the age, then James Arminius and his followers came to embody this in a far more sophisticated way as they launched a theological assault on the position of men such as Calvin and his successor, Theodore Beza. Arminius, a Dutch man, was a student of Beza but came to repudiate the supralapsarian theology of his teacher. Instead, he offered a modified understanding of predestination that, while appearing to rest on only slight theological shifts, effectively overturned the Reformed understanding of grace and predestination.
While much popular Arminian opposition to predestination today is motivated by little more than a heartfelt belief that predestination is somehow unfair, Arminius and his immediate followers were highly sophisticated theologically and philosophically, and recent scholarship has demonstrated that their relationship to Reformed orthodoxy was complicated. At the heart of Arminius’s repudiation of the predestinarianism of his teacher was a reconstruction of the notion of grace. He adopted the basic Augustinian distinction between prevenient and subsequent grace but deviated from the Reformed tradition by arguing that prevenient grace was resistible, not irresistible, as those such as Beza had argued.27 This, of course, also points to Arminius’s synergism: salvation becomes a matter of the individual cooperating with God’s grace in a manner in which the individual always has a decisive role. He also combined this with an understanding of God’s knowledge that drew on the Jesuit notion of middle knowledge. This is the idea that God knows all the possible worlds that could exist, and God merely provides the possibilities for certain actions rather than specifying them by his prior will. God then chose on the basis of this knowledge which world he wished to create, i.e., the one where all of the outcomes he desired became reality.28
In so doing, Arminius and his followers were able to present an apparently vigorous doctrine of grace combined with one of providence: grace is necessary for salvation, and God does decide which world comes into being and thus which people are saved. Yet it is actually those people who freely decide for God.
From a traditional Reformed perspective, there are a number of problems with the views of Arminius and his followers. First, Calvin and others held that the nature of original sin and human depravity is such that it really does not matter how many possible worlds God can envisage. In none of them where the fall has occurred can human beings turn to him without a decisive and irresistible act of grace on God’s part. But there is also a logical problem. If God decides to create the world where, at a certain point in time, I freely cooperate with his grace and grasp Christ by faith, am I free not to do that at the same point in time? Apparently not, as that alternative world has already been excluded by an act of God’s will. This raises the question of whether the Arminian resolution of the problem really does avoid the problems typically associated with theological determinism. It also suggests that open theism, the idea that God does not know some or all of the future, is the only real alternative to an anti-Pelagian approach because only open theism can truly defend the kind of human freedom that Arminianism apparently wishes to preserve (a freedom whereby humanity can always choose otherwise; i.e., libertarian freedom).29
Historically, Arminianism became a rallying point for a theological and political cause in the Netherlands that summarized its position in a manifesto involving five points: conditional election, universal atonement (not that this implied eschatological universalism, merely that Christ died for all), universal human depravity (although not such as prevents cooperation with grace), resistible grace, and perseverance on the basis of cooperation with grace. In opposition to these, the Synod of Dordt affirmed five doctrinal points: election by divine will and not based on foreseen merits, the particular efficacy of Christ’s death, total depravity, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints—the so-called Five Points of Calvinism.
We need to acknowledge that the relationship to Reformed theology and Arminianism as taught by Arminius and his immediate successors is rather complicated. Modern scholarship tends to see classical Arminianism as a modification of Reformed theology, albeit an ultimately dramatic modification, rather than a simple repudiation of the same.30 It is probably also true to say that most modern Arminians are not sophisticated heirs of the kind of classical theistic approach of Jacob Arminius but are typically those who instinctively think that the view of predestination espoused by the magisterial Reformers is somehow unfair. They also differ from Arminius in that they generally do not work out all of the implications for their doctrines of God, creation, fall, and redemption.
Conclusion
It should be evident that the Reformed were in no way innovators when it came to the doctrine of grace and its connection to predestination. They stood as heirs of Augustine, in line with great medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, and alongside Martin Luther. Further, while one can be predestinarian without believing in justification by grace through faith, the consensus of the Reformers and their principal confessional documents seems to indicate that they did not regard it as possible to believe consistently in such justification without being predestinarian. Attempts to argue otherwise, such as those of the Phillipists in Lutheranism and the Arminians in the Reformed world, led to vigorous opposition and, in the case of the Reformed, to increasing exploration and elaboration of the doctrine of predestination.
There is a significant lesson there for us today on two fronts. First, our Protestant heritage is first and foremost a catholic heritage. Our forefathers drew very consciously on the ongoing stream of Augustinian thought that provided a core to the theology of the West. We need gratefully to acknowledge this and to realize that we can indeed learn from those who may stand outside our narrow traditions but who yet stand behind them in a very important way.
Second, we need constantly to reflect on how the doctrines we do believe in connect together. There is a complexity to the Christian faith, and we therefore need to be sensitive to how one doctrine influences—and is influenced by—others. The formal separability of grace, predestination, and justification does not mean that they are really separable, or separable with impunity. If that were so, then the debate between the Reformed and the Arminians would have been a matter of trivial implications. History indicates that this is not the case. Our view of grace and predestination shapes everything. For Protestants, this is especially important at a pastoral level when we realize that our view of grace is vitally connected to our understanding of Christian assurance. That is perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from the Reformers on this matter. It is because salvation is all of God, and is revealed so perfectly in Christ, that we can be assured of our status before God. And on that, the whole of practical Protestant piety depends.
1. That Melanchthon clearly deviated from the strict line laid down in On the Bondage of the Will and yet was never subject to the kind of excoriation at the hands of Luther that Erasmus suffered has been a source of some perplexity for historians since then. Certainly the affinities between Melanchthon and Erasmus are clear. Perhaps the best explanation for Luther’s silence is that of friendship, a matter that often transcends rational historical analysis.
2. James T. Dennison Jr., Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 2:759–60.
3. Ibid., 2:433–34.
4. “At first man was formed in the image and resemblance of God in order that man might admire his Author in the adornments with which he had been nobly vested by God and honor him with proper acknowledgment. But, having trusted such a great excellence of his nature and having forgotten from whom it had come and by whom it subsisted, man strove to raise himself up apart from the Lord. Hence man had to be stripped of all God’s gifts of which he was foolishly proud, so that, denuded and deprived of all glory, he might know God whom man, after having been enriched by his liberalities, had dared to despise. As a result, this resemblance to God having been effaced in us, we all who descend from the seed of Adam are born flesh from flesh” (Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 1:356–57).
5. “The Scripture testifies often that man is a slave of sin. The Scripture means thereby that man’s spirit is so alienated from the justice of God that man conceives, covets, and undertakes nothing that is not evil, perverse, iniquitous, and soiled” (ibid., 1:357).
6. “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” (ibid., 1:366).
7. For a discussion of this, see Richard A. Muller, “Establishing the Ordo Docendi: The Organization of Calvin’s Institutes, 1536–1559,” in The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 118–39.
8. Institutes 2.14.5.
9. Ibid., 2.14.7. Cf. Augustine, The City of God 10.29.1.
10. Institutes 3.22.1 (translation used here and hereafter is John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. Henry Beveridge [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953]).
11. Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 2:191–92.
12. Institutes 3.21.1.
13. I am here using “predestination” to refer to the general category of God’s predetermination of the eternal destiny of human beings and thus as covering both election and reprobation. I use “election” more narrowly, to refer to God’s decision to choose a subset of the human race for eternal life.
14. Institutes 3.21.1 (Beveridge).
15. “Wherefore we do not allow of the wicked speeches of some who say, Few are chosen, and seeing I know not whether I am in the number of those few, I will not defraud my nature of her desires. Others there are which say, If I am predestinated and chosen of God, nothing can hinder me from salvation, which is already certainly appointed for me, whatever I do at any time; but if I am in the number of the reprobate, no faith or repentance will help me, seeing the decree of God cannot be changed: therefore, all teachings and admonitions are to no purpose” (Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 2:826).
16. Institutes 3.21.5 (Beveridge).
17. “Therefore, though not for any merit of ours, yet not without a means, but in Christ, and for Christ, did God choose us; and they who are now engrafted into Christ by faith, the same also were elected. But such as are without Christ were rejected, according to that saying of the apostle, ‘Prove yourselves, whether ye be in the faith. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? (2 Cor. 13:5)’” (Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 2:825).
18. “What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live unto Him” (ibid., 2:771).
19. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003–8), 2:363.
20. See the discussion in Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 2.2 (pp. 112–14).
21. Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 2:760.
22. Ibid., 4:124.
23. Institutes 3.21.1 (Beveridge).
24. Ibid., 3.24.5.
25. “We, therefore, condemn those who seek other than in Christ, whether they are chosen from all eternity, and what God has decreed of them before all beginning. For men must hear the gospel preached and believe it. If you believe and are in Christ, you may undoubtedly reckon that you are elected. For the Father has revealed unto us in Christ His eternal sentence of predestination, as we even now showed out of the apostle in 2 Timothy 1:9–10” (Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 2:826).
26. Not all Reformed theologians conformed to the strictures of the supra-infra debate. John Owen (1616–83) does not appear to have been particularly interested in it, and Herman Bavinck explicitly rejects the distinction, arguing that neither approach does full justice to the range of relevant biblical texts (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:381–92).
27. See The Works of Jacob Arminius, trans. James Nichols and W. R. Bagnall, 3 vols. (Auburn, NY: Derby and Miller, 1853), 3:512. For a critique of Arminius and a variety of Arminianisms, specifically when it comes to prevenient grace, see Matthew Barrett, Salvation by Grace: The Case for Effectual Calling and Regeneration (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2013).
28. See Arminius, Works, 1:448.
29. This is a very important point that was made during the open theism controversy at the start of the twenty-first century. E.g., Bruce A. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000); John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth, eds., Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003).
30. See R ichard A. Muller, God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius: Sources and Directions of Scholastic Protestantism in the Era of Early Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991); also Keith D. Stanglin and Thomas H. McCall, Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).