Pleased to now have a Tyndale grad,
Axel Kazadi, and also a Kingswood Grad, as you see from his bio, who's gone on to
complete, recently completed his thm degree at Wycliffe College.
And he just told me today he's been
accepted into the PhD program there to start in the fall.
So congratulations, Axel, and it's wonderful.
So he's giving a presentation on Calvin,
but he is a Wesleyan Youth director, so I'll let him get started.
Please welcome Axel.
And I have a handout.
He has a handout.
We're going to start to circulate, okay?
So if you could pass these back.
I would like to begin to thank Dr.
Pedler for inviting me to speak on this topic.
I'm curious, how many of you have read
Calvin or have been introduced to his writings?
Okay, just to know what I'm dealing with.
As you can see on your handouts, there's an abstract.
You can read that on your own after the
event, on your own time, but it's structured according to the paper.
The arrangement of double predestination in Calvin's 1559 Institutes.
That's what I'll be discussing.
Specifically analyzing critically the relationship between double predestination
and the theme of Book Three, in which Calvin discussed the doctrine.
So John Calvin was zealous in honoring God
and advancing the kingdom of God through his ministerial work.
His concern for the public good of the Church was the driving force of his
ministry as a pastor, biblical exigee, and church reformer.
The Institutes of the Christian Religion
was originally published by Calvin in 1536, and it only had six chapters.
The Institutes is an extension of Calvin's
office of teaching, which not only instructed the Church in his time, but
educated many future generations after him.
It was originally structured according to the Apostles Creed, and it served as a
Caracarical book to instruct Caracumans about true piety.
By 1559.
Calvin expanded the institute significantly.
It became a comprehensive theological guidebook whose purpose was to prepare and
instruct candidates in sacred theology for the reading of the Divine Word in order
that they may be able to have easy access to it and not to be lost in it.
Calvin sensed that it was his duty to instruct and guide simple folk to
understand Scripture and not to be lost in the labyrinth of Scripture.
The motivation to write the Institutes expresses Calvin's passion for the Word
and the educational development of ministers.
It was first written to convince King Francis I of France that Protestants were
not seditious and that the Protestant faith, whose doctrines were supported by
Scripture and the Church Fathers, was not a new teaching.
Some have curicured Calvin's Institutes as a theological work whose central
organizing principle is the doctrine of predestination.
But this is far from the truth.
Predestination is just one among many other doctrines Calvin taught.
Francois Wendo noted that predestination
was not treated separately as an independent doctrine in the 1536 edition,
since Calvin never discussed predestination separately in its own
chapter, it is doubtful whether it is a major theme in the 1536 edition.
Calvin, however, dedicated four chapters to his doctrine of double predestination.
In the final 1559 edition of his Institutes, he discussed predestination in
Book Three, whose central theme is union with Christ.
Though predestination is an important item in that final edition, it is still
subordinate to his vision of our union with Christ.
Our union with Christ is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit.
Calvin famously began Book Three with the
statement that if Christ is standing at a distance from us, all he has suffered and
done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.
The salvation which Christ possesses can only become ours in our union with Him.
Through faith, every aspect of our whole salvation has been accomplished in Christ.
Therefore, the benefits of Christ, which are justification, sanctification,
freedom, election and glorification, become ours in Him.
In Book Three, one can perceive how
predestination ultimately answers the question of how one is included in Christ.
However, though election seems to be in
agreement with union with Christ, the logic of the whole doctrine of
predestination is not entirely in harmony with the logic of Book Three.
The reason for this is that election and
reprobation emerge as two decrees from God's sacred council in which the former
envisions Christ as the one who supplies election to the elect and the latter
becomes an expression of the Father's will only.
It seems logical that it is by God's two wills that God ordered who will be the
elect and who will be the reprobate before the creation of the world.
If Calvin perceived a relationship between
predestination and union with Christ, calvin should have grounded the doctrine
of election and reprobation in Christ rather than in the sacred council of God.
It is surprising to discover that the Christocentric emphasis of Book Three in
the Institutes does not entirely extend to the whole doctrine of predestination.
The decree to reprobate, which is grounded in the sacred council of God, eclipses the
decree of election, which Calvin tries to associate with Christ.
Since two eternal decrees are the manifestation of God's desire to order,
creation and humanity, the ordering logic of predestination renders the doctrine
itself as a special application of Providence.
The doctrine of predestination has been associated traditionally with Providence
in the theologies of Augustine and Aquinas.
Despite of their differences, Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin share the providential
framework of the doctrine of predestination.
Unless Calvin implicated Christ in the
Father's decree of reprobation, the paper argues that the doctrine should be
discussed rather in Book One as a subset of Providence.
This paper will be divided in two sections, as your handout indicates.
In section one, I will explore Calvin's
distinctive treatment and arrangement of the doctrine of predestination.
In Book Three, I will critically analyze the relationship of the supralapsarian
logic of predestination with union with Christ.
I will show that the logic of the doctrine is irreconcilable with soteriological
concerns and benefits which are discussed in book three.
In section two, I will present an
alternative treatment of the doctrine, which Karl Bart espoused in an attempt to
correct the seeming inconsistencies in Calvin's understanding of double
predestination and its arrangement in the Dogmatic program.
Though I will argue that Calvin's
understanding of predestination is best characterized as a subset of Providence, I
do not necessarily agree with this arrangement because, as Bart argued in the
Church Dogmatics, predestination should be discussed in the doctrine of God.
Predestination in Calvin's in Calvin and
Its irreconcilability with Book Three, the following section will be addressed will
address Calvin's treatment of predestination.
The section will be structured in the following first, I will address the
historical development of the doctrine in the Institutes.
Then I will explain Calvin's doctrine of predestination briefly, and finally, I'll
share two reasons for its unsustainable relationship with union with Christ.
The Historical Development of the Doctrine in the Institutes calvin never afforded a
single chapter to the doctrine of predestination in the first edition,
despite Amel Dumurk arguing that it appeared accidentally.
It was never a dominant theme.
However, the treatment of the doctrine expanded over several editions until it
finally acquired four chapters in the final edition.
It is the aim of this section to understand the development of the doctrine
in the Institutes from the 1536 edition to that of 1559.
Despite 19th century theologians Alexandra Schreizer and Ferdinand Christian's
insistence that predestination was the central doctrine in Calvin's theology,
wendell argued that predestination was never Calvin's central doctrine, nor did
he intentionally have it as the main foundation of his theology.
Instead of characterizing Calvin's theological body as that whose central
theme is predestination, Wilhelm Niezzle suggested that it should be rather
interpreted as a system of thoughts about God and man, proceeding from the one
thought of the utter dependence of man on God.
For Wendell, predestination gained importance in Calvin's theology under the
sway of ecclesiological and pastoral preoccupations.
Rather than to make it a main foundation
of his theology, wendell elaborated that in the first edition, Calvin mentioned
predestination only in two places in the explanation of the second article of the
Creed and in regard to the definition of the Church.
In the second article of the Creed, Calvin
explained that within the context of Christ's descent into Hell, christ
confirmed the salvation of the ancient faithful men and women.
Nevertheless, it was unfortunate for the
reprobate because it was too late for them.
Later in that first edition, he discussed
election in ecclesiology to emphasize that the Church is the community of the elect
whose fellowship with Christ is the result of the election of grace.
Furthermore, Wendell averred that the
doctrine of election in the first edition resembled the common doctrine of
predestination held by other reformers, and the doctrine of reprobation, as
expressed in the final edition, did not yet develop.
In 1539, calvin explored the doctrine of
predestination in the French Geneva Catechism.
In that account, he associates predestination with ecclesiology.
He noted that the word of God is
efficacious in the elect, but it brings only death to the reprobate.
Thus the Catechism and the Institutes,
argued Wendell, share the same starting point for the doctrine of predestination,
which is a recognition that the Gospel is not indiscriminately preached to all.
The narrative changed, however, when
predestination was treated conjointly with Providence in the 1539 edition.
In a single chapter, Wendell noted that Augustine and many other theologians after
him discussed predestination as a special application of divine Providence.
Predestination was traditionally perceived as that which conditioned Providence.
When Calvin addressed predestination and
Providence together in 1559, he followed that traditional approach.
Predestination and Providence were discussed together as a whole from 1539
until Calvin changed this arrangement in the final 1559 edition.
In that final edition, predestination and Providence were separated from each other.
Calvin placed Providence at the end of
Book One in the doctrine of God and predestination in Book Three.
Wendell insisted that the reason
predestination is discussed in relation to Christ and his redemptive work is to
suggest that our election depends on Christ and Christ seals our election.
One does not need to speculate in the sacred will of God, but they can rest
assured that their eternal predestination is guaranteed in Christ.
However, the placement of predestination after soteriological themes is problematic
because it does not account for the second ford of the doctrine which is reprobation.
What is the relationship between Christ and reprobation?
Calvin never addressed this in his final edition.
Concerning the doctrine itself, 1 may ask
what is Calvin's understanding of double predestination?
To this I turn the overview of the doctrine of predestination.
Though Calvin insisted that the doctrine of predestination should only be sought in
Scripture, his starting point for this treatment did not begin with Scripture.
He began primarily with an empirical problem of how some come to faith through
the preaching of the Gospel and others don't.
This empirical observation became the context in which Calvin addresses the
doctrine of predestination as the answer to the empirical problem.
For Calvin, the Gospel is not preached indiscriminately to all.
His doctrine is not entirely new.
According to Georgia Harkness, Augustine and the Magisterial Reformers had an
understanding of predestination, but she argues that they did not equally draw the
stern conclusion that God predestined others to be damned.
Augustine did not balance his doctrine of
election with reprobation as Calvin did, although he believed that salvation comes
only through the free mercy of God and that God elects some to be saved.
According to Harkness, Augustine avoided the question of the damnation of the
reprobate by stating that God leaves some to their own devices and merely permits
some to be lost without decreeing that they must be.
In pointing out the inconsistencies of
proponents of single predestination, Wesley argued that God's election
inevitably reprobates those who are not elected.
Although Augustine did not espouse a
symmetrical approach to the predestination, reprobation is implicit in
Augustine, and Calvin rendered it explicitly in his 1559 Institutes.
The doctrine of predestination in the
final edition highlights that God, out of his sheer mercy, elected some for
salvation and damned others for destruction.
Providing his definition of
predestination, Calvin wrote we call predestination God's eternal decree, by
which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man.
For all are not created in equal condition.
Rather, eternal life is fordained for some, eternal damnation for others.
Therefore, as any man has been created to one or to the other of these ends, we
speak of him as predestined to life or death.
End quote. The emphasis of the decreedo orientation
of predestination overshadows the Christological determination of election,
which caused me to suspect that the providential framework of predestination
in Calvin is still the same as Augustines and Aquinas's.
Calvin still views predestination
operating as a special application of God's providence.
Providence and predestination are related
to, and they result from the sacred council of God.
The doctrine is not Christologically determined.
Hence the reason I'm averring that Calvin's predestination should rather be
discussed as a subset of and together with Providence in book One because Calvin has
not yet abandoned the AUGUSTINIAN providential framework entirely.
Nevertheless, Calvin maintained that the
election of the elect is gratuitous and yet argued that the reprobate were not
elected because they were unworthy to be predestined.
Surprisingly, according to Calvin, god is still just and righteous in this regard
because he distributes divine justice to the wicked.
Moreover, Calvin viewed God as merciful because he gratuitously elected some from
among the sinners without any regard to their work.
Our elevation for Calvin elevates our election for Calvin elevates.
God's glory and reprobation reviews God's justice.
However, in his sermon Free Grace, wesley
criticized rightly Calvin for rendering God as worse than the devil because God is
depicted as unjust, unrighteous, and as the author of sin.
Commenting on Calvin's doctrine of
predestination, Wesley wrote poignantly it destroys all attributes at once.
It overturns both his justice, mercy and truth.
Ye, it represents the most holy God as
worse than the devil as both more false, more cruel and more unjust.
More false because the devil, liar as he
is, has never willed, he has never said he wills all men to be saved more unjust
because the devil cannot, if he would be guilty of such injustice as you.
Ascribe to God when you say that God
condemned millions of souls to eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels
for continuing in sin which for want of that grace he will not give them, they
cannot avoid more cruel because that unhappy spirit seeks rest and finds none.
So that his own restless misery is a kind of temptation to him to tempt others.
But God rests in his high and holy place so that to suppose him of his own mere
motion, of his pure will and pleasure, happy as he is to doom his creatures,
whether they will or not, to endless misery, is to impute such cruelty to Him
as we cannot even impute to the great enemy of God and men.
It is to represent the Most High God as
more cruel, false and unjust than the devil.
End Quote if Calvin thought that election was in agreement with the union with
Christ, how is the placement of predestination problematic?
The reasons for the irreconcilable
relationship between the doctrine and union with Christ?
Wendell claimed that Calvin related
predestination with Christ's redemptive work in Book Three.
Because election depended on Christ and Christ is the seal of our election, calvin
began Book Three by exploring the theme of union with Christ
we can only be united with Christ through faith, which is given to us as a gift.
Not only does Christ come to us in the power of the Holy Spirit, but the benefits
of Christ's work become ours by faith through the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the only bond with
which Christ effectually unites us to Himself.
Faith as the principal work of the Holy Spirit of the Spirit is given to us
gratuitously so that we can embrace Christ and obtain all that he possesses in this
context of our life in Christ, Calvin addressed his doctrine of predestination.
Even though election relates with the
theme of our union with Christ, I'll give two reasons as to why the whole doctrine
of predestination does not entirely align with union with Christ.
The first reason is that there is a strong
emphasis on the two eternal decrees which God willed before creation.
Though Calvin comprehended Christ as the
definite word of God and as the one in whom God's will to mercy is manifested,
the emphasis on the sheer decrees of God compromises the relationship Calvin
envisioned between union with Christ and election.
The doctrine of the two decrees are heavily stressed.
To the extent that the Christological determination of election is subordinated,
one could also argue whether it's even there.
It is as though the relation drawn between
election and Christ by Calvin by Calvin is an afterthought.
Once God decrees, who will be the elect and who will be the reprobate?
Furthermore, Bart criticized Calvin's
arrangement of predestination in the Institutes because creation and sin are
promulgated prior to election without any presupposition of reconciliation.
For Bart, Calvin's arrangement implies
that sin was unforeseen and reconciliation was an afterthought, despite the
arrangement of predestination in union with Christ.
Calvin paradoxically emphasized that God's decree that God decrees who will be the
elect and who will be the reprobate before creation.
If this is so, then why did Calvin proceeded to discuss predestination in
Book Three after he has treated Providence, creation, sin and Christology?
And soteriology, since election and reprobation are the two eternal decrees
which proceed from creation and other subsequent Christian doctrines,
predestination does not belong in Book Three.
The second reason which complicates the
arrangement of predestination in Book Three is the decree of reprobation.
Reprobation is problematic in Book Three because it does not involve Christ.
In his book The Nature and the Function of Faith Victor Shepherd noted that Calvin
uses different Latin expressions to speak about the will of God.
In regards to the two decrees,
Calvin used volunteers from which we get voluntary to articulate how God's will to
elect involves the Father and the Son but abitrio arbitrary from which the decree of
republican emerges, involves only the Father.
In regards to the use of Valentus god's nature, which is conditioned by his will
to save is involved in the election of the elect.
However, the use of a bitrio suggests that
God in his sovereign and unconditioned power arbitrarily damns others.
The relationship between God's nature and his will to damn others is not explored.
Furthermore, the decree of reprobation does not involve Christ.
The implication of this is significant for
the placement of predestination in Book Three because reprobation undermines the
relationship Calvin perceived between election and union with Christ.
Since the two decrees are made before the creation of the world the whole logic of
predestination compels us to move the doctrine of predestination out of Book
Three to Book One as a subset of Providence.
The reason for this, in view of Calvin's
dogmatic scheme is that God has eternally decided how he will providentially care
for those who are his and punish the wicked which they rightly deserve.
I thus perceive the connection between
predestination and Providence as Augustine and Aquinas did.
However, this connection deteriorates when
one abandons the language of two decrees from which election and reprobation emerge
and substitutes Christ those two decrees for Christ.
This is the alternative approach which
Bart adopted and the paper will sketch his model briefly in the following.
Bart developed the doctrine of
predestination by addressing it in the book in the Doctrine of God.
For Bart, humans are not primarily the objects of predestination.
Predestination is not an arbitrary
election of one person and rejection of the other.
Rather, predestination is primarily the work of God's own self determination.
In other words, the triune God is none other than the one who in His Son or Word
elects Himself primarily and in and with Himself elects his people.
God is primarily the electing God and then the elected God.
After God self determines Himself, God proceeds to elect us in and with Himself.
God predestined Himself to be our God before he elects us as his people.
Furthermore, God damns Himself for us so that no other person can be damned thereby
rescuing us from eternal damnation in Jesus Christ.
For Bart, God is no other than the one who is revealed in Jesus Christ.
Christ is both the electing and elected God man and the election of the man.
Jesus results in his rejection as the reprobate one.
Christ absorbs the rejection and the wrath of humanity on the cross for us.
No one else is rejected or damned.
Christ becomes the reprobate one on the
cross for us, so that we can all be elected in him.
Echoing Bart, Joergen Motmans stated that Christ in his sovereign freedom, chooses
to lose in order that humanity may gain in him.
In this sense, Bart's doctrine of
predestination has the theology of the Cross as its center.
For Bart, this is the proper course upon which one can set the doctrine.
Bart corrected the traditional understanding of the doctrine by replacing
the two absolute decrees with Jesus Christ god does not elect according to his good
pleasure, pleasure which is unknown to humanity.
Instead, he elects his people in and with himself.
In this sense, Bart, within the Reformed
tradition, corrected Calvin and captured the biblical sense of the universal grace
of election which is found in Jesus Christ.
To sum up, though Calvin addressed the
doctrine of predestination in four chapters in the 1559 Institutes, the
doctrine of predestination was never the central doctrine of his theology.
In the 1536 edition, it is not even addressed in a single chapter.
However, as the Institutes grew through a series of additions, calvin continued to
expand the doctrine until it had four chapters.
In the final edition, Calvin discussed predestination and Providence conjointly
from the 1539 edition to that of the 1550 letter letter in the 1559 Institutes, the
final one, which Calvin separated predestination from the doctrine of
Providence and addressed predestination in Book Three because of the connection he
saw between election and union with Christ.
Despite the relationship Calvin may have perceived between the doctrine and union
with Christ, I have shown that the doctrine of predestination is not entirely
in harmony with Book Three because of its strong emphasis on the two absolute
decrees and its second Ford doctrine of reprobation.
Bart's alternative approach to the
doctrine of predestination, which properly grounds election and reprobation in
Christ, corrects Calvin's problematic features of predestination.
Jesus Christ is the object of election and reprobation, and in him we're elected.
In the words of Luther's mentor, Johann vonstopitz he said if you wish to think
about predestination, begin with the wounds of Christ.
If you have any questions thank you.
Thank you.
Axel, is there a question or comment to follow up?
Excellent.
Yeah, go ahead, Gary.