§ 113. PREDESTINATION. 551
any one disposed to reason with reverence concerning the secrets of his God." ^ Calvin infers from the passage, " God hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hardeneth" (Rom. 9: 13), that Paul attributes both equally '-'• to the mere will of God. If, therefore, we can assign no reason why God grants mercy to his people but because such is his pleasure, neither shall we find any other cause but his Avill for the reprobation of others. For when God is said to harden or show mercy to whom he pleases, men are taught by this declaration to seek no cause behind his will." ^
Predestination, therefore, implies a twofold decree — a decree of election unto holiness and salvation, and a decree of reprobation unto death on account of sin and guilt. Calvin deems them inseparable. "Many indeed," he says, "as if they wished to avert odium from God, admit election in such a way as to deny that any one is reprobated. But this is puerile and absurd, because election itself could not exist without being opposed to reprobation. . . . Whom God passes by, he reprobates (^Quos Deus prceterit^ rejirohat^)^ and from no other cause than his determination to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his children."'^
1 Inst. III. ch. XXII. § 1.
2 Ibid. III. ch. XXII. 11. Calvin's definition of divine justice is contrary to the general conception of human justice, which must be a reflection of divine justice.
3 Ibid. III. ch. XXIII. § 1. The scholastic Calvinists distinguished in reprobation a negative element, namely, prwteritio or indebiUe gratioe negatio, and a positive element of predamnation, prcedamnatio or debitce pceme destinatio. See the definitions of Wolleb, Keckermann, Heidegger, etc., in Heppe's Dogmatik der evang. reform. Kirche (18G1), p. 132. The Westminster Confession (ch. III. 7) uses the term "passing by," which is equivalent to preterition or omission ; the Galilean Conf. (ch. XII.) and the Belgic Conf. (ch. XVI.) use the milder term laisser, relinquere, to leave, namely, in the natural state of condemnation and ruin. Shedd {Syst. Theol. I. 433) says: "Reprobation comprises preterition and condemnation or damnation," and he makes these distinctions : 1) Preterition is a sovereign act ; condemnation is a judicial act. 2) The reason of preterition is unknown ; the reason of damnation is sin. 3) In preterition God's action is permissive (inaction rather than action) ; in condemnation, God's action is eflBcient and positive. His proof text is Luke 17 : 34 : " The one shall be taken, and the other shall be left."
552 THE llEFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
God bestows upon the reprobate all the common mercies of daily life as freely as upon the elect, but he withholds from them his saving mercy. The gospel also is offered to them, but it will only increase their responsibility and enhance their damnation, like the preaching of Christ to the unbelieving Jews (Isa. 6 : 9, 10 ; Matt. 13 : 13-15). But how shall we reconcile this with the sincerity of such an offer ?
Infralapsarianism and Supralapsariaxism.
Within the Calvinistic system there arose two schools in Holland during the Arminian controversy, the Infralapsarians (also called Sublapsarians) and the Supralapsarians, who held different views on the order of the divine decrees and their relation to the fall Qapsns^. The Infralapsarians adjust, as it were, the eternal counsel of God to the temporal fall of man, and assume that God decreed, first to create man in holiness ; then to permit him to fall by the self-determination of his free will ; next, to save a definite number out of the guilty mass ; and last, to leave the rest in sin, and to ordain them to eternal punishment.^ The Supralapsarians reverse the order, so that the decree of election and reprobation precedes the decree of creation; they make uncreated and unfallen man (that is, a non-ens) the object of God's double decree. The Infralapsarians, moreover, distinguish between an efhcient or active and a permissive or passive decree of God, and exclude the fall of Adam from the efficient decree ; in other words, they maintain that God is not in any sense the author of the fall, but that he simply
1 This is the order given in the Formula Consensus Helvetica, canon IV. (in Niemeyer, p. 731) : " Ita Deus gloriam suam ilhistrare constituit, ut decreverit, prima quidem hominem integrum creare, turn ejusdem lapsum permittere, ac demum ex lapsis quorundam misereri, adeoque eosdem eligere, alios vera in corrupta massa relinquere, ceternoque tandem exitio devovere." This does not go beyond the limits of Augustinianism. Van Oosterzee errs when lie says (Christian Dogmatics, vol. I. p. 4-523 that the Form. Cons. Helv. asserts the supralapsarian view.