Because there has been a considerable amount of controversy over predestination
, and because the different formulations of the doctrine are related to other developments within both theology and culture in general, it will be helpful to introduce the doctrine with a survey of its elaboration through the centuries of the church to the point where the classic formulations were enunciated. As so often is the case with theological matters, the doctrine of predestination was held in somewhat undeveloped form until serious disagreement arose regarding it. In the early years of the church, no exact formulation was devised.
There was, particularly in the West, a growing conviction of the sinfulness of humans and of the consequent need for divine transforming grace [1]. In general, however, the logical implications of this conviction were not worked out until Augustine. His personal experience of God's grace enabled him to see more clearly than did others the teaching of the Scripture on these matters. We must not think that his experience determined what he found in Scripture. Rather, his experience sensitized him, enabling him to identify with what he found there, and thus to understand it better.
Even before encountering the thought of Pelagius, Augustine had to a considerable extent developed his view of the human situation. He stressed that Adam had begun life truly free [2]. The only limitations upon his will and actions were the inherent limitations imposed by the very nature of humanity. Thus there was, for example, the possibility of change, which included the possibility of turning away from the good [3]. When Adam sinned, he became tainted in nature. Now inclined toward doing evil, he transmitted this propensity for sin to his descendants. As a result, the freedom to abstain from evil and do good has been lost. This is not to say that freedom of will in general is gone, but rather that we now invariably use that freedom in ways contrary to God's intention for us [4]. Without divine assistance we are unable to choose and do the good.
The views of Pelagius sharpened Augustine's thinking, forcing him to extend it beyond its previous bounds. Pelagius, a British monk, had relocated to Rome and had become a fashionable teacher there [5]. He was primarily a moralist rather than a theologian per se. Concerned that people live as virtuously as possible, he considered Augustine's emphasis upon the extreme corruption of human nature and its corollary, human inability, to be both demoralizing to any genuine effort at righteous living and insulting to God as well [6]. God made humans different from all of the rest of creation. Man has freedom of choice. This gift of God ought to be used to fulfill God's purposes [7].
From the basic principle Pelagius developed his system. The first of its tenets is that each person enters the world with a will that has no bias in favor of evil. The fall of Adam has no direct effect upon each human's ability to do the right and the good, for every individual is directly created by God, and therefore does not inherit from Adam either evil or a tendency to evil [8]. Surely the God who forgives each person his or her own sin would not hold any of us responsible for the act of someone else. The only effect of Adam's sin upon his descendants, then, is that of a bad example. We do not inherit his corruption and guilt. There is no inherent spiritual and moral flaw in us from birth [9].
Further, Pelagius held that God does not exert any special force upon anyone to choose the good. Such influence as he exerts is through external aids. There is no internal work of God upon the soul [10]. In particular, he makes no special choice of certain persons to holiness. Grace is available equally to all persons. It consists of free will, apprehension of God through reason, and the law of Moses and the example of Christ. Each person has equal opportunity to benefit from there tokens of grace. God is impartial. Progress in holiness is made by merit alone, and God's predestinating of persons is based entirely upon his foreseeing the quality of their lives [11]. One might conclude that it is possible to live without sinning. And Pelagius did indeed draw that conclusion. Would God have commanded, "You shall be holy; for I the LORD your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2), and "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). if sinlessness were not a possibilitu for human beings [12]?
In response to this position, Augustine developed his view of predestination. He emphasized the seriousness of Adam's sin and pinned the blame solely on Adam's own act of will. But that sin was not merely Adam's. All of us were one with him and thus participated in his sin. Since the human soul is derived from one's parents through generative process, we were present in Adam and sinned in and with him [13]. This means that all human beings begin life in a seriously marred condition. Augustine does not hold that the image of God has been completely destroyed, but he does maintain that we have lost the ability not to sin, a liberty which Adam had [14]. Without God's grace, we are unable to avoid sin, and to do the good requires an even greater grace. This is not to say that man is not free. Man has options, but those options are all sinful in nature. He is free to choose, but merely to engage in one sin rather than another [15]. God's grace restores complete freedom; it returns to us the option of not sinning and of ding good. This grace, while irresistible, does not work against, but in concert with our wills. God so works in relationship to our wills that we freely choose good. God, being omniscient, knows precisely under what conditions we will freely choose what he wills, and works in such a way as to bring about those conditions. Without this special working of God, man cannot choose or do good. While man always has free will, he is free to choose and do good only if and when God grants him that freedom [16].
This line of arguments brings Augustine to predestination. For if we do good only if God chooses to so work in relationship to our will, and if we will infallibly do good if God so wills, our choosing or doing good seems to be entirely a consequence of what God has already willed to do. It is a matter, then, of God's choosing to give to some and not to others. God has made this choice from all eternity, and has chosen exactly the number needed to replace the fallen angels [17]. This choice of certain people in no way depends upon his advance awareness of what they will do, for any good deeds of theirs depends instead upon his giving his grace to them [18]. There really is no answer to the question of how God decides who will receive his grace and who will be left in their sinful condition. He simply chooses as he pleases. There is, however, no injustice in this, for justice would result in God's condemning of all ("for all have sinned" Rom. 3:23). It is only by an act of great compassion that he saves anyone. The condemned receive just what they deserve. The elect receive more than they deserve.
The outspoken attacks of Augustine led to the condemnation of Pelagianism by the Council of Ephesus in 431, one year after Augustine's death. What prevailed afterwards, however, was not really a pure Augustinanism, but semi-Pelagianism. Despite the acceptance of many of Augustine's terms, the doctrine of synergism, which holds that God and man together accomplish what must be done in order for man to be saved, tended to predominate. This position was considered and condemned by the Synod of Orange in 529. The synod spoke in strong terms of the inability of man and the necessity of divine grace, but did not insist on the absolute predestination (i.e., the doctrine that God by an unalterable eternal decree has determined who is to be saved; being totally of God's grace, salvation in no way depends upon man or what he does) and irresistible grace [19].
This milder form of Augustinianism prevailed for several centuries. In the 9th-century, Gottschalk defended the doctrine of double predestination--predestination applies equally to the elect and the lost. Gottschalk's view were condemned in the synod of bishops at Mainz 848. Controversy ensued. One of the most interesting positions was that taken by Johannes Scotus Erigena. While charging Gottschalk with heresy, Erigena agreed with him in rejecting the idea that God's predestination is based upon his foreknowledge of what men will do. That had been a rather common way of dealing with the apparent inconsistency between divine predestination and human freedom. It had been advanced particularly by Origen as a solution to the problem. Now, however, Erigena contended that since God is eternal, he sees things as neither past nor future. He sees all of us and sees us all at once [20]. Because God stands outside time, the concept of
foreknowledge is alien to him.
In the 11th-century through the 13th-centuries, several outstanding theologians advocated the Augustinian position. Anselm reconciled this position with freedom of the will by insisting that the person who can do only right is freer than one who can do wrong [21]. The latter is actually a slave to sin. Peter Lombard held a similar view. Thomas Aquinas followed the Augustinian position on these matters, maintaining that God wills that some men be saved and others not. He drew a distinction between God's general (passive) will that all be saved and his special (decreed) will in electing some and rejecting others: "God wills all men to be saved by His antecedent will, which is to apply not simply but relatively; and not by His consequent will, which is to will simply." [22]
From this time until the Reformation, the predominant trend within Catholic theology was a drift toward Pelegianism. There were some notable exceptions, such as John Wycliffe and Thomas Bradwardine, but for the most part Duns Scotus's emphasis upon God's foreknowledge of individual worthiness reflected the position of the church. When Martin Luther made his conspicuous appearance, this was one of the major points against which he contended.
So much emphasis has been given in the popular mind to John Calvin's view of predestination that it is scarcely realized how strongly Luther held and taught a similar view. His "spiritual father," Johann von Staupitz was an Augustinian monk who promoted Augustine's ideas, so much so that the University of Wittenberg, where Staupitz was dean of the theology faculty, became decidedly Augustinian in orientation. When Luther began wrestling with the subject of predestination, he followed the approach of the Ockhamists: predestination is based upon God's foreknowledge of what men will do. As he studied the Scriptures and also the writings of Augustine, however, his views began to change. His
Commentary on Romans, which consists of notes for lectures given between November 3, 1515, and September 7, 1615, indicates a form commitment to the Augustinian position. In connection with Romans 8:28, for example, Luther points to God's absolute sovereignty with respect to humans in the Old Testament, particularly his election of Issac and rejection of Ishmael, and his election of Jacob and rejection of Esau (see Rom. 9:6-18). Luther insists that all objections to the Augustinian position derive from the wisdom of the flesh, which is human reason. His comments on Romans 9 underscore his firm commitment to Augustinianism. Erasmus was urged by the pope to use his rhetorical powers to refute Luther. The result was
The Freedom of The Will, published in 1524. Luther replied in the following year with
The Bondage of the Will, a lengthy treatise on the subject.
John Calvin (1509-64),
An influential French theologian and pastor
during the Protestant Reformation.It was John Calvin, however, who made the definite statement on the subject. Indeed, the doctrine of predestination is closely associated with his name to this day. Calvin makes clear that the study of predestination is not merely an academic exercise, but has practical significance as well. He warns against delving to deeply into the subject [23]. While disagreeing with Ulrich Zwingli's contention that sin was necessary in order that the glory of God might be properly set forth, Calvin does not insist that God has sovereignly and freely chosen to save some and reject others. God is wholly just and blameless in all of this [24].
Calvin insists that the doctrine of predestination does not lead to carelessness in morality, to a cavalier attitude that we can continue in sin since our election is sure. Rather, knowledge of our election leads us to pursue a holy life. The way in which a believer can be sure of election is to see the Word of God transforming his or her life [25].
Calvin established a university in Geneva to which candidates for the ministry came to study. He himself occupied the chair in theology. An especially large number came from the Low Countries; as a result, Calvinism became particularly strong there. His successor, Theodore Beza, not only maintained Calvin's teaching of double predestination, but extended it at some points. Not only did he hold that God has decided to send some to hell, he did not hesitate to say that God
causes men to sin. Further, he believed that, despite the absence of any specific biblical statements, the logical order of God's decrees can be determined [26]. He believed that the decree to save some and damn others is logically prior to the decision to create. The conlusion is that God creates some persons
in order to damn them. This belief--supralapsarianism--in time came to be widely regarded as the official position of Calvinism.
There were at various times disagreements with and departures from this interpretation of the decrees. Probably the mos serious occurred in the Netherlands in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. An educated layman named Theodor Koornhert, objecting to Beza's supralapsarianism, observed that if God causes men to sin, then he is actually the author of sin. The Bible, argued Koornher, does not teach such a monstrous thing. Because no one came forward to refute Koornhert's teachings, James Arminius, a popular pastor in Armsterdam and a brilliant expository preacher, was commissioned to do so.
Arminius began his task with zeal, concentrating upon Romans 9. The more he studied the Bible and the history of the church, however, the less certain he became of double predestination and particularly of Beza's supralapsarianism. Installed as a professor of theology at the university of Leyden, he was accused of being a semi-Pelagian and even a Catholic! the dissension at the university became so severe that the government stepped in. Attempts to reconciliation were ended with the death of Arminius in 1609.
The views of Arminius are quite clear and can be readily summarized. God's first absolute decree regarding salvation was not the assignment of certain individuals to eternal life and others to damnation, but the appointment of his Son, Jesus Christ, to be the Savior of the human race. Second, God decreed that all who repent and believe shall be saved. In addition, God has granted to all persons sufficient grace to enable them to believe. They freely believe or disbelieve on their own. God does not believe for us or compel us to believe. Finally, God predestines those who he foreknows will believe [27].
In the 18th-century, John Wesley popularized Arminanism. In fact, for many years he edited a magazine called
The Arminian. While holding to the freedom of the will, Wesley went beyond Arminius by emphasizing the idea of prevenient or universal grace. This grace, which God grants to all men, is the basis of any human good which is found in the world. This prevenient grace also makes possible for any person to accept the offer of salvation in Jesus Christ [28].
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[1] E.g., Tertullian On the Soul 39.
[2] Augustine On the Rebuke and Grace 33.
[3] Augustine The City of God 14. 12.
[4] Augustine On Man's Perfection in Righteousness 9.
[5] Altough there is some question as to whether Pelagius was actually a monk, he was referred to as a monachus. See J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), p. 357.
[6] Pelagius Letter to Demetrias 16-17
[7] Ibid., 16.
[8] Pelagius Exposition of Romans 5:15
[9] Pelagius Demetrias 8 17.
[10] Augustine On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin 1. 2, 8, 36
[11] Pelagius Exposition of Romans 9-10; see also 8:29-30
[12] Pelagius On the Possibility of Not Sinning 2.
[13] Augustine On the Marriage and Concupiscence 2. 15.
[14] Augustine City of God 22. 24. 2; 13. 3, 14.
[15] Augustine Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1. 5; 3. 24.
[16] Augustine To Simplician--On Various Questions 1. 2. 13.
[17] Augustine City of God 22. 1. 2.
[18] Augustine On the Gift of Perseverance 35, 47-48; On the Predestination of the Saints 19.
[19] Harry Buis, Historic Protestantism and Predestination (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1958), p. 15.
[20] Ibid., p. 17.
[21] Anselm On Freedom of Choice 1.
[22] Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, part I, question 23, article 4.
[23] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 3, chapter 21, section 1.
[24] John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of paul the Apostle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), pp. 364-66 (Rom 9:20-21)
[25] Calvin, Institutes, book III, chapter 23, section 12.
[26] Theodore Beza, Tractationes, 1. 171-77.
[27] James Arminius, The Writings of James Arminius, trans. James Nichols and W. R. Bagnall (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977 reprint), vol. 1, pp. 247-48
[28] John Wesley, "On Working Out Our Own Salvation," in The Works of John Wesley, 3rd ed. (Kamsas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill, 1979).
en, understand the calling whereby they become elected,— not those who are elected because they have believed, but who are elected that they may believe. For the Lord Himself also sufficiently explains this calling when He says, "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you" (John 15:16). For if they had been elected because they had believed, they themselves would certainly have first chosen Him by believing in Him, so that they should deserve to be elected. But He takes away this supposition altogether when He says, "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." And yet they themselves, beyond a doubt, chose Him when they believed on Him. Whence it is not for any other reason that He says, "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," than because they did not choose Him that He should choose them, but He chose them that they might choose Him; because His mercy preceded them according to grace, not according to debt.
