John Calvin's
views about predestination
By John H.
Adams
The Layman
Online
Friday,
October 3, 2003
Presbyterians
– even the Presbyterian Church (USA) – have clung to a
doctrine of predestination/election even though most American
evangelicals probably don't believe in it and sometimes scoff at those
who do.
But it wasn't popular either in the 16th century to hold a belief that
God, before the "foundation of the world," elected some to
salvation – and predestined who they would be. The Anabaptists
stridently opposed the doctrine, and later the Wesleyans concluded that
God didn't really orchestrate the election of believers, but that He
peered through the corridors of time and "foresaw" those who
would respond willingly on their own.
John Calvin, though, stood with Luther (who wrote more about
predestination than Calvin), St. Augustine and – he declared –
Scripture. His most complete commentary on predestination/election is in
chapters 21-24 in The Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Here are some excerpts:
Predestination to life is the eternal purpose of God, whereby (before
the foundations of the world were laid) he has consistently decreed by
his counsel which is hidden from us to deliver from curse and damnation
those whom he has chosen in Christ out of mankind and to bring them
through Christ to eternal salvation as vessels made for honor.
***
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.
*** [B]efore I enter on the subject, I have some
remarks to address to two classes of men. The subject of predestination,
which in itself is attended with considerable difficulty is rendered
very perplexed and hence perilous by human curiosity, which cannot be
restrained from wandering into forbidden paths and climbing to the
clouds determined if it can that none of the secret things of God shall
remain unexplored. When we see many, some of them in other respects not
bad men, every where rushing into this audacity and wickedness, it is
necessary to remind them of the course of duty in this matter. First,
then, when they inquire into predestination, let then remember that they
are penetrating into the recesses of the divine wisdom, where he who
rushes forward securely and confidently, instead of satisfying his
curiosity will enter in inextricable labyrinth.
*** Let it, therefore, be our first principle that to
desire any other knowledge of predestination than that which is
expounded by the word of God, is no less infatuated than to walk where
there is no path, or to seek light in darkness. Let us not be ashamed to
be ignorant in a matter in which ignorance is learning. Rather let us
willingly abstain from the search after knowledge, to which it is both
foolish as well as perilous, and even fatal to aspire.
*** [I]n order to keep the legitimate course in this
matter, we must return to the word of God, in which we are furnished
with the right rule of understanding. For Scripture is the school of the
Holy Spirit, in which as nothing useful and necessary to be known has
been omitted, so nothing is taught but what it is of importance to know.
*** I admit that profane men lay hold of the subject
of predestination to carp, or cavil, or snarl, or scoff. But if their
petulance frightens us, it will be necessary to conceal all the
principal articles of faith, because they and their fellows leave
scarcely one of them unassailed with blasphemy.
*** The predestination by which God adopts some to
the hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no man who would
be thought pious ventures simply to deny; but it is greatly caviled at,
especially by those who make prescience its cause. We, indeed, ascribe
both prescience and predestination to God; but we say, that it is absurd
to make the latter subordinate to the former.
*** When we attribute prescience to God, we mean that
all things always were, and ever continue, under his eye; that to his
knowledge there is no past or future, but all things are present, and
indeed so present, that it is not merely the idea of them that is before
him (as those objects are which we retain in our memory), but that he
truly sees and contemplates them as actually under his immediate
inspection. This prescience extends to the whole circuit of the world,
and to all creatures. 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.
*** We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this
much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for
all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and
those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to
destruction. We maintain that this counsel, as regards the elect, is
founded on his free mercy, without any respect to human worth, while
those whom he dooms to destruction are excluded from access to life by a
just and blameless, but at the same time incomprehensible judgment. In
regard to the elect, we regard calling as the evidence of election, and
justification as another symbol of its manifestation, until it is fully
accomplished by the attainment of glory.
*** I will here omit many of the fictions which
foolish men have devised to overthrow predestination. There is no need
of refuting objections which the moment they are produced abundantly
betray their hollowness.
*** When Paul declares that we were chosen in Christ
before the foundation of the world, he certainly shows that no regard is
had to our own worth; for it is just as if he had said, Since in the
whole seed of Adam our heavenly Father found nothing worthy of his
election, he turned his eye upon his own Anointed, that he might select
as members of his body those whom he was to assume into the fellowship
of life.
*** The question considered is the origin and cause of
election. The advocates of foreknowledge insist that it is to be found
in the virtues and vices of men. For they take the short and easy method
of asserting, that God showed in the person of Jacob, that he elects
those who are worthy of his grace; and in the person of Esau, that he
rejects those whom he foresees to be unworthy. Such is their confident
assertion; but what does Paul say? "For the children being not yet
born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God
according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that
calleth; it was said unto her, [Rebecca,] The elder shall serve the
younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."
If foreknowledge had anything to do with this distinction of the
brothers, the mention of time would have been out of place. Granting
that Jacob was elected for a worth to be obtained by future virtues, to
what end did Paul say that he was not yet born?
*** Why should men attempt to darken these statements
by assigning some place in election to past or future works? This is
altogether to evade what the Apostle contends for-viz. that the
distinction between the brothers is not founded on any ground of works,
but on the mere calling of God, inasmuch as it was fixed before the
children were born.
*** Now, let the supreme Judge and Master decide on
the whole case. Seeing such obduracy in his hearers, that his words fell
upon the multitude almost without fruit, he to remove this
stumbling-block exclaims, "All that the Father giveth me shall come
to me." "And this is the Father's will which has sent me, that
of all which he has given me I should lose nothing."
*** Observe that the donation of the Father is the
first step in our delivery into the charge and protection of Christ.
Some one, perhaps, will here turn round and object, that those only
peculiarly belong to the Father who make a voluntary surrender by faith.
But the only thing which Christ maintains is that though the defections
of vast multitudes should shake the world, yet the counsel of God would
stand firm, more stable than heaven itself, that his election would
never fail.
*** [P]aul says, that the Father "has blessed us
with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as
he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world," that
these riches are not common to all, because God has chosen only whom he
would. And the reason why in another passage he commends the faith of
the elect is, to prevent any one from supposing that he acquires faith
of his own nature; since to God alone belongs the glory of freely
illuminating those whom he had previously chosen.
*** We come now to the reprobate, to whom the Apostle
at the same time refers. For as Jacob, who as yet had merited nothing by
good works, is assumed into favor; so Esau, while as yet unpolluted by
any crime, is hated. If we turn our view to works, we do injustice to
the Apostle, as if he had failed to see the very thing which is clear to
us. Moreover, there is complete proof of his not having seen it, since
he expressly insists that when as yet they had done neither good nor
evil, the one was elected, the other rejected, in order to prove that
the foundation of divine predestination is not in works.
*** The human mind, when it hears this doctrine,
cannot restrain its petulance, but boils and rages as if aroused by the
sound of a trumpet. Many professing a desire to defend the Deity from an
invidious charge admit the doctrine of election, but deny that any one
is reprobated. This they do ignorantly and childishly since there could
be no election without its opposite reprobation.
*** Foolish men raise many grounds of quarrel with
God, as if they held him subject to their accusations. First, they ask
why God is offended with his creatures who have not provoked him by any
previous offense; for to devote to destruction whomsoever he pleases,
more resembles the caprice of a tyrant than the legal sentence of a
judge; and, therefore, there is reason to expostulate with God, if at
his mere pleasure men are, without any desert of their own,
predestinated to eternal death. If at any time thoughts of this kind
come into the minds of the pious, they will be sufficiently armed to
repress them, by considering how sinful it is to insist on knowing the
causes of the divine will, since it is itself, and justly ought to be,
the cause of all that exists.
*** Let human temerity then be quiet, and cease to
inquire after what exists not, lest perhaps it fails to find what does
exist. This, I say, will be sufficient to restrain any one who would
reverently contemplate the secret things of God. Against the audacity of
the wicked, who hesitate not openly to blaspheme, God will sufficiently
defend himself by his own righteousness, without our assistance, when
depriving their consciences of all means of evasion, he shall hold them
under conviction, and make them feel their guilt.
*** Let human temerity then be quiet, and cease to
inquire after what exists not, lest perhaps it fails to find what does
exist. This, I say, will be sufficient to restrain any one who would
reverently contemplate the secret things of God. Against the audacity of
the wicked, who hesitate not openly to blaspheme, God will sufficiently
defend himself by his own righteousness, without our assistance, when
depriving their consciences of all means of evasion, he shall hold them
under conviction, and make them feel their guilt.
*** I say with Augustine, that the Lord has created
those who, as he certainly foreknow, were to go to destruction, and he
did so because he so willed. Why he willed it is not ours to ask, as we
cannot comprehend, nor can it become us even to raise a controversy as
to the justice of the divine will.
*** Another argument which they employ to overthrow
predestination is that if it stand, all care and study of well doing
must cease. For what man can hear (say they) that life and death are
fixed by an eternal and immutable decree of God, without immediately
concluding that it is of no consequence how he acts, since no work of
his can either hinder or further the predestination of God? Thus all
will rush on, and like desperate men plunge headlong wherever lust
inclines.
*** But Scripture, while it enjoins us to think of
this high mystery with much greater reverence and religion, gives very
different instruction to the pious, and justly condemns the accursed
license of the ungodly. For it does not remind us of predestination to
increase our audacity, and tempt us to pry with impious presumption into
the inscrutable counsels of God, but rather to humble and abase us, that
we may tremble at his judgment, and learn to look up to his mercy. This
is the mark at which believers will aim.
*** If the end of election is holiness of life, it
ought to arouse and stimulate us strenuously to aspire to it, instead of
serving as a pretext for sloth. How wide the difference between the two
things, between ceasing from well-doing because election is sufficient
for salvation, and its being the very end of election, that we should
devote ourselves to the study of good works. Have done, then, with
blasphemies which wickedly invert the whole order of election.
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