THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION.
All the Reformers of the sixteenth century, including even the gentle Melanchthon and the compromising Bucer, under a controlling sense of human depravity and saving grace, in extreme antagonism to Pelagianism and self-righteousness, and, as they sincerely believed, in full harmony not only with the greatest of the fathers, but also with the inspired St. Paul, came to the same doctrine of a double predestination which decides the eternal destiny of all men. Nor is it possible to evade this conclusion on the two acknowledged premises of Protestant orthodoxy--namely, the wholesale condemnation of men in Adam, and the limitation of saving grace to the present world. If the Lutheran theology, after the Formula of Concord (1577), rejected Synergism and Calvinism alike, and yet continued to teach the total depravity of all men and the unconditional election of some, it could only be done at the expense of logical consistency. [861]
Yet there were some characteristic differences among the Reformers. Luther started from the servum arbitrium, Zwingli from the idea of an all-ruling providentia, Calvin from the timeless or eternal decretum absolution. Calvin elaborated the doctrine of predestination with greater care and precision, and avoided 'the paradoxes' of his predecessors. He made it, moreover, the corner-stone of his system, and gave it undue proportion. He set the absolute sovereignty of God over against the mock sovereignty of the Pope. It was for him the 'article of the standing or falling Church;' while Luther always assigned this position to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In this estimate, both were mistaken, for the central place in the Christian system belongs only to the person and work of Christ--the incarnation and the atonement. Finally, the Augustinian and Lutheran predestinarianism is moderated by the sacramentarian principle of baptismal regeneration; while the Calvinistic predestinarianism confines the sacramental efficacy to the elect, and turns the baptism of the non-elect into an empty form.
Predestination, according to Calvin, is the eternal and unchangeable decree of God by which he foreordained, for his own glory and the display of his attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation. The decree is, therefore, twofold--a decree of election to holiness and salvation, and a decree of reprobation on account of sin and guilt. [862] The latter is the negative counterpart, which strict logic seems to demand, but against which our better feelings revolt, especially if it is made to include multitudes of innocent children, for their unconscious connection with Adam's fall. Calvin himself felt this, and characteristically called the decree of reprobation a 'decree horrible, though nevertheless true.' [863] All he could say was that God's will is inscrutable, but always holy and unblamable. It is the ultimate ground of all things, and the highest rule of justice. Foreordination and foreknowledge are inseparable, and the former is not conditioned by the latter, but God foresees what he foreordains. If election were dependent on man's faith and good works, grace would not be free, and in fact would cease to be grace. Man's holiness is not the cause or condition, but the effect of God's election. The unequal distribution of gospel privileges can be traced only to the secret will of God. All men are alike corrupt and lost in Adam; some are saved by free grace, others, who are no worse by nature, reject the gospel. These are undeniable every-day facts, and admit of no other explanation within the limits of the present life; and as to the future world, we know nothing but what God has revealed to us in the Scriptures.
Calvin carried the doctrine of the divine decrees beyond the Augustinian infralapsarianism, which makes the fall of Adam the object of a permissive or passive decree, and teaches the preterition rather than the reprobation of the wicked, to the very verge of supralapsarianism, which traces even the first sin to an efficient or positive decree, analogous to that of election. But while his inexorable logic pointed to this abyss, his moral and religious sense shrunk from the last inference of making God the author of sin, which would be blasphemous, and involve the absurdity that God abhors and justly punishes what he himself decreed. Hence his phrase, which vacillates between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism: 'Adam fell, God' providence having so ordained it; yet he fell by his own guilt.' [864]
Calvin defended this doctrine against all objections with consummate skill, and may be said to have exhausted the subject on his side of the question. His arguments were chiefly drawn from the Scriptures, especially the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans; but he unduly stretched passages which refer to the historical destiny of individuals and nations in this world, into declarations of their eternal fate in the other world; and he escaped the proper force of opposite passages (such as John i. 29; iii. 16; 1 John ii. 2; iv. 14; 1 Tim. ii. 4; 2 Pet. iii. 9) by a distinction between the secret and revealed or declared will of God (voluntas arcani and voluntas beneplaciti), which carries an intolerable dualism into the divine will.
The motive and aim of this doctrine was not speculative, but practical. It served as a bulwark of free grace, an antidote to Pelagianism and human pride, a stimulus to humility and gratitude, a source of comfort and peace in trial and despondency. The charge of favoring license and carnal security was always indignantly repelled by the Pauline 'God forbid!' It is moreover refuted by history, which connects the strictest Calvinism with the strictest morality.
The doctrine of predestination, in its milder, infralapsarian form, was incorporated into the Geneva Consensus, the Second Helvetic, the French, Belgic, and Scotch Confessions, the Lambeth Articles, the Irish Articles, the Canons of Dort, and the Westminster Standards; while the Thirty-nine Articles, [865] the Heidelberg Catechism, and other German Reformed Confessions, indorse merely the positive part of the free election of believers, and are wisely silent concerning the decree of reprobation, leaving it to theological science and private opinion.
Supralapsarianism, which makes unfallen man, or man before his creation (i.e., a non ens, a mere abstraction of thought), the object of God's double foreordination for the manifestation of his mercy in the elect, and his justice in the reprobate, was ably advocated by Beza in Geneva, Gomarus in Holland, Twisse (the Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly) in England, Nathaniel Emmons (1745-1840) in New England, but it never received symbolical authority, and was virtually or expressly excluded (though not exactly condemned) by the Synod of Dort, the Westminster Assembly, and even the 'Formula Consensus Helvetica' (1675). [866] All Calvinistic Confessions, without exception, trace the fall to a permissive decree, make man responsible and justly punishable for sin, and reject, as a blasphemous slander, the charge that God is the author of sin. And this is the case with all the Calvinistic divines of the present day. [867]