RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Predestination
his Catechism (ii. 3) and the Augsburg Confession (arts, v., xix.); but the Confessio variola of 1540 effaced these traces, and after 1532 Melanchthon taught a synergistic and universalistic system, with special endeavor to save the seriousness of preaching unto salvation. Of the more important theologians of the century, however, he was followed only by the Reformed Johannes a Lasco (q.v.), who, however, adopted Zwingli's views on the salvation of unbaptized children. Meanwhile the man had appeared who was to make predestination the necessary basis of belief for those who should follow him. The teachings of John Calvin (q.v.) on election are only what may be found scattered in Martin Butzer's commentaries, but his systematic ability enabled him to weave these elements into a doctrine, and to connect them indissolubly with the foundations of Protestantism. His very avoidance of paradoxical speculation and his rigid determination to adhere strictly to the Bible made his doctrine an immovable pillar of the system. Presented skilfully as a support of the doctrine of justification, yet it rests securely in his fundamental premise of the divine glory. Calvin is far removed from Zwingli who, somewhat close to the pantheists, postulates an a priori necessity to sin for the glory of God; but he finds that to set forth God's glory rejection must follow no less than election. Though nearer to Augustine than Luther on the original state, yet he maintains supralapsarianism {Institutes, I., xv. 8, III., xxiii. 8). The absolute decree, irresistible grace, and the gift of perseverance are prominent (III., xxi. 5). He shares with Zwingli the need of the certainty of salvation in the personal life which dispenses with an objectivity of the means of grace in the Lutheran sense of the term. God operates through them "in an orderly way," their efficacy being due to the working of the divine spirit, with the resulting formula that the means of salvation are efficacious only to the elect. The Christian who would be assured of his salvation must, therefore, test the operation of the Word in himself (III., xxiv. 4), so that both practically and theoretically belief in election serves to awaken living faith and to elevate the moral nature (III., xxiii. 12, xxiv. 5) The actual members of the Church are, of course, only the elect.
In the Reformed confessions of the sixteenth century the doctrine of election was set forth both in harsh {Confession de foi, 1559) and in mild form (H. Bullinger's Confessio Helvetica posterior, art. x., 1562), or presupposed in their practical consequences (Heidelberg Catechism, 53-54, 86). For several decades there were no con-
8. Post- troversies with the Lutherans, nor Reforma- was it until the struggle between tion History. Johann Marbach and Hieronymus Zanchi (qq.v.) at Strasburg in 1561 that the Gnesio-Lutherans were found to have deviated from Luther. Two years later the Formula of Concord (q.v.) was drawn up, positing the universality of the divine promises, the necessity of moral endeavor, and election as the foundation of faith, betraying only by a single word that the doctrine of the perseverance of the elect had been abandoned. On these affirmations is constructed
the eleventh article of the Formula of Concord, which, aiming to set limits to various tendencies, declares that election is not based on the foreknowledge of faith, and, on the other side, that the earnestness of the " universal promise " admits of no hidden will of God at variance with his revealed will. At the same time no universal purpose of salvation to include every individual is implied; the heathen are doomed to just judgment, and only where God causes his Word to be preached is it intended for all. The elect are all those placed by baptism in the state of grace, though it is possible afterward to lapse. Real predestination doctrine vanishes and the objectivity of the means of grace only serves to cloak a refined synergism. In the Reformed Church, the synergism of the Arminians (q.v.) led to a reaffirmation of the doctrine at the Synod of Dort (q.v.), where it also became evident how indissolubly the historical Reformed mode of faith had become one with this fundamental element. The harshness of its deductions, however, called for modifications, not only in Germany, but also on genuinely Calvinistic soil. While Theodore Beza (q.v.) had far overleaped Calvin by declaring {Qxicestiones theologicce, i. 108, 1580) that " predestination is an eternal and immutable decree whereby he [God] determined to be glorified by saving some in Christ by mere grace, and by damning others in Adam and by his own just judgment," the school of Saumur, on the other hand, began to develop the ethical side of Calvinism, the " hypothetical universalism " of Moise Amyraut (q.v.; see also Pajon, Claude), which had absolutely no connection with the theory of foreknowledge, at least leaving the foundations of religious experience entirely unassailed. The harsh antithesis of the Helvetic Consensus Formula (q.v.) in 1675 was shortlived. In England the Thirty-Nine Articles (q.v.) set forth the doctrine of election clearly and mildly, without allusion to reprobation; nor was the attempt to give official sanction to the harsh Calvinism of the Lambeth Articles (q.v.) of 1595 successful. The latter, however, were practically incorporated in the Westminster Confession of 1647; but even in Calvinistic circles the logical deductions of the system have been felt oppressive, so that in 1903 the Presbyterians of the United States introduced certain modifications of statement into the Westminster Confession, which left that document essentially unaltered, yet declared the faith of the Church in the all-embracing love of God, the election of children dying in infancy, and the duty of missionary activity (cf. Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., 1903, pp. 124 sqq., where the changes and additions are given in official form). See Calvinism. (E. F. Karl Muller.)
Bibliography: Material on the Biblical side of the subject is to be sought in the commentaries on the passages cited, especially that of Meyer, and in the works named in and under Biblical Theology, particularly those of Dillmann, Schultz, Bennett, Smend, and Davidson on the O. T., and Beyschlag, Weiss, Adeney, Stevens, and Gould on the N. T. Consult further: B. Weiss, in Jahrbticher fiXr deutsche Theologie, 1857; O. Pfleiderer, Der Paulinismus, Leipsic, 1873, Eng. transl., London, 1877; E. Menegoz, La Predestination dans la thiologie paulinienne, Paris, 1884; V. Weber, Kritische Geschichte der Exegese des . Romerbriefes, Wurzburg, 1888; K. Muller, Die gottliche
Predestination Premonstratensians