The Will of God Is the Supreme Cause of All the Hardness of Heart in Men

Part VIII: The Hardening of Pharaoh ... Was the Work of God

ARTICLE VIII.

(THAT IS, CALUMNY VIII.)

THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH, AND SO HIS OBSTINACY OF MIND AND REBELLION, WAS THE WORK OF GOD, EVEN ON THE TESTIMONY OF MOSES HIMSELF, WHO ASCRIBES ALL THE REBELLION OF PHARAOH TO GOD.

ARTICLE IX.

(THAT IS, CALUMNY IX.)

THE WILL OF GOD IS THE SUPREME CAUSE OF ALL THE

HARDNESS OF HEART IN MEN.

CALUMNIATOR'S STATEMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS.

Under the EIGHTH and NINTH ARTICLES your adversaries ask this question: What, then, does Moses mean when he writes, "And Pharaoh hardened his heart"? Are we to interpret the words, "And Pharaoh hardened his heart," thus; that is, "And God hardened the heart of Pharaoh"? Now surely this must be a far more violent manner of speaking than to say, "God hardened the heart of Pharaoh;" that is, God knew Pharaoh as to the natural hardness of his heart, because Pharaoh had refused to obey Him. Another like question they ask concerning the words, "To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." Now, if you should interpret this passage by rendering it, "God would not have you harden your hearts," such explanation would involve the greatest absurdity, for it would be making God command men to do that which is the prerogative of Himself alone. For if the hardening of hearts is the work of God, it is absurd to command men to harden their own hearts or not to harden their own hearts; for they could no more do it than they could add one cubit to their stature, or take one cubit from it.

REPLY OF JOHN CALVIN TO ARTICLES VIII. AND IX

Here again do I beg of my readers, thou unholy calumniator of the Truth, to give me their confidence, and to compare my writings and my whole "line" of teaching with your perverted and mutilated articles. If they will kindly do this, your slanders will at once be detected, and all the flame of animosity which you thus light up against me will soon go out of itself. Meanwhile, I deny not that I have taught, as Moses and Paul teach, that the heart of Pharaoh "was hardened" of God. Hereupon, however, despising both Moses and Paul, and considering all that is read in them as nought, you take upon yourself to expostulate with me, and to ask me whether, since we read in one place that "Pharaoh hardened his heart," there is any necessity for giving a more violent interpretation of the passage, and to say that "God hardened the heart of Pharaoh"? Now I need no farther reply to this your question than that which you furnish in the words of this lying article yourself, which you pretending to quote from my writings, or corrupting, or not comprehending them, make to say that, as the will of God is the supreme or remote cause of the induration, man himself, who hardens his own heart, is, and must be, the proximate cause of the hardening. Now, I have everywhere most distinctly shown the difference between the supreme or remote cause, and all mediate and proximate causes. For while a sinner can find the root of every evil affection in himself, what ground can there be for charging God with any fault of such sinner's transgressions? Such an accuser of God acts, as I have elsewhere said, just like the nurse of Medea, as represented by the ancient poet, who preposterously exclaims, "O that the planks that formed the ship Argo had never been cut down by the axe on Mount Pelion!" For, all the while the impure princess, her mistress, was burning with her own depraved lust, and felt herself driven headlong by its force to betray and ruin her father's kingdom, this foolish nurse blames neither her mistress's corrupt passion, nor the deep enticements of Jason, nor sees those immediate causes at all; but goes on complaining of the ship that brought Jason to Colchis, and laments that such a ship was ever built in Greece. Exactly in the same manner does the man who, being conscious of his own sin and fault, fetches a remote cause of his iniquity from afar, even from God Himself; utterly and ridiculously forget what he himself is.

Surely, then, you must now see that although God does, in His own secret and sovereign way, harden men's hearts, yet that no fault can possibly be imputed to Him, because every man hardens his own heart by the essential evil and wickedness of his own nature.

But when God turns the hearts of men to the obedience and worship of Himself, that is another form of His working altogether. For as we are all, by nature, bent on obstinacy and resistance no man will desire to do good unless he be acted upon of God and led so to do. And though the Scripture saith that "the preparations of the heart in man are from the Lord," and that the faithful prepare their hearts to seek God, and to render Him a voluntary worship, the Scripture by no means contradicts itself herein, but it distinctly shows that all the true worshippers of God render Him their service willingly and from an affection and holy freedom of soul. And yet, again, this by no means stands in contradiction, or in the way, of the fact that God all the while performs His part by the operations and influences of His secret Spirit.

But with reference to His hardening men's hearts, that is a different way of God's working, as I have just observed. Because God does not govern the reprobate by His regenerating Spirit; but He gives them over to the devil, and leaves them to be his slaves; and He so overrules their depraved wills by His secret judgment and counsel, that they can do nothing but that which He has decreed. Hence, such is the Divine harmony and marvellous consistency of these things, that though God hardens whomsoever He will, yet everyone so hardened is the cause and. author of his own induration. But that I may not extend my observations to too great a length in replying to this article, let me be permitted to impress on the minds and memories of godly and upright readers the following admonition of Augustine: "When the apostle says that God 'gave' certain characters 'over to vile affections,' it is preposterous ignorance to refer this to the longsuffering of God. For the same apostle elsewhere connects the longsuffering of God with His power, as where he says, 'What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction?' (Rom. ix. 22)," etc. Indeed, even if this learned and pious father and teacher had never written or spoken on this great matter, the authority of God alone ought to be enough, and more than sufficient, for our understanding and faith. It is not I that said that "God taketh away the hearts of princes, and causeth them to err," or "that God held the heart of Pharaoh, that he might not incline to humanity and mercy." It is not I that said "that God turned the hearts of the nations, and hardened them to hate His people;" or, "that He hissed for the Egyptians, and used them as His servants" It was not I that said "that Sennacherib was God's rod in His hand, to punish His people." I did not say all these things. They are all the declarations of the Spirit of God Himself.

What! when the Scripture itself affirms that Saul was carried away by an evil spirit from God, will you ascribe this to the sole patience or mere permission of God? How much nearer the truth is Augustine in his admonitory instruction, when he observes: "The sins which Satan and the wicked commit are their own; but that which is accomplished by their sins is effected by the power of God, who divides the darkness from the light as He will." Now you charge me with saying that which God Himself asserts all the while in His own words. In this matter, let the same Augustine reply to you in my stead, where he says: "If the Scripture be carefully examined, it shows that God not only directs those good wills of men (which wills He has made good out of evil wills) unto good actions and unto eternal life, but that those wills also which remain in their natural corruption are so under the power of God, that He turns and inclines them whensoever and whithersoever He will, either to confer blessings, or to inflict punishments; and that He does this by judgments the most secret, but at the same time most just."