The Doctrine of Predestination
The Doctrine of Predestination
In discussing the nature of grace earlier in this chapter, we noted the close relationship between “grace” and “graciousness.” God is under no obligation to bestow grace upon anyone, as if it were a commodity which functioned as a reward for meritorious actions. Grace is a gift, as Augustine never tired of emphasizing. Yet this emphasis upon the gift-character of grace, as will become clear, leads directly to the doctrine of predestination, often regarded as one of the most enigmatic and puzzling aspects of Christian theology. To explore how this connection developed, we shall consider some aspects of the theology of Augustine, before moving on to deal with later explorations of this theme.
Augustine of Hippo (354–430)
Grace is a gift, not a reward. This insight is fundamental to Augustine (see pp. 330–4). If grace were a reward, humans could purchase their salvation through good works. They could earn their redemption. Yet this, according to Augustine, was totally contrary to the New Testament proclamation of the doctrine of grace. Affirming the gift-character of grace was a bulwark against inadequate theories of salvation. We have already spent much time dealing with Augustine's understanding of grace, so will not develop this point further here.
Augustine's insight had much to commend it. However, on further inspection, it proved to have a darker side. As the Pelagian controversy became increasingly hardened and bitter, the more negative implications of Augustine's doctrine of grace became clearer. In what follows, we shall explore those implications.
If grace is a gift, God must be free to offer it, or not to offer it, without any external consideration. If it is offered on the basis of any such consideration, it is no longer a gift – it is a reward for a specific action or attitude. Grace, according to Augustine, only remains gracious if it is nothing more and nothing less than a gift, reflecting the liberality of the one who gives. But the gift is not given to all. It is particular. Grace is only given to some. Augustine's defense of “the graciousness of God,” which rests on his belief that God must be free to give or withhold grace, thus entails the recognition of the particularity, rather than the universality, of grace.
If this insight is linked with Augustine's doctrine of sin, its full implications become clear. All of humanity is contaminated by sin and unable to break free from its grasp. Only grace can set humanity free. Yet grace is not bestowed universally; it is only granted to some individuals. As a result, only some will be saved – those to whom grace is given. Predestination, for Augustine, involved the recognition that God withholds the means of salvation from those who are not elected:
This is the predestination of the saints, and nothing else: the foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits of God, whereby whoever are set free are most certainly set free. And where are the rest left by the just judgment of God, except in that mass of perdition, in which the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon were left? Now they would have believed, if they had seen the wonderful signs of Christ. However, because it was not given to them to believe, they were not given the means to believe. From this, it seems that certain people have naturally in their minds a divine gift of understanding, by which they may be moved to faith, if they hear the words or see the signs which are adapted to their minds. But if, by virtue of a divine judgment which lies beyond us, these people have not been predestined by grace and separated from the mass of perdition, then they are without contact with either these divine words or deeds which, if heard or seen by them, would have allowed them to believe.
It is important to note that Augustine emphasized that this did not mean that some were predestined to damnation. It meant that God had selected some from the mass of fallen humanity. The chosen few were indeed predestined for salvation. The remainder were not, according to Augustine, actively condemned to damnation; they were merely not elected to salvation.
Augustine tends (although he is not entirely consistent in this respect) to treat predestination as something which is active and positive – a deliberate decision to redeem on God's part. However, as his critics pointed out, this decision to redeem some was equally a decision not to redeem others.
This question surfaced with new force during the great predestinarian controversy of the ninth century, in which the Benedictine monk Godescalc of Orbais (c.808–67, also known as Gottschalk) developed a doctrine of double predestination similar to that later to be associated with Calvin and his followers. Pursuing with relentless logic the implications of his assertion that God has predestined some to eternal damnation, Godescalc pointed out that it was thus quite improper to speak of Christ dying for such individuals; if he had, he would have died in vain, for their fate would be unaffected.
Hesitant over the implications of this assertion, Godescalc proposed that Christ died only for the elect. The scope of his redeeming work was restricted, limited only to those who were predestined to benefit from his death. Most ninth-century writers reacted to this assertion critically. It was, however, to resurface in the later Calvinist doctrine of “limited atonement” or “particular redemption,” as we shall see presently.
Catholic Debates: Thomism, Molinism, and Jansenism
Although Catholic theologians rarely regarded a theology of predestination as being of decisive importance, the matter was debated intensely during the Middle Ages and beyond. These discussions often took the form of attempts to clarify the views of Augustine of Hippo, who was widely regarded as a theological authority throughout the medieval era.
Thomas Aquinas followed Augustine in insisting that predestination was not the result of God's foreknowledge of the human response to grace, or of the moral state of individuals. First and foremost, predestination was grounded in the free choice of God. Aquinas argued that eternal life lies in “the proportion and the capacity of created nature.” Humanity therefore requires direction and assistance if it is to achieve eternal life. So, just as an archer directs an arrow toward its goal, God directs the soul toward salvation. “We give the name of ‘predestination' to the reason why a rational creature is brought to eternal life.” This act of “direction” is not to be seen as whimsical or capricious, but as an expression of God's desire to save humanity.
Some writers of the later Middle Ages took more radical views. For example, Gregory of Rimini (c.1300–58) developed a doctrine of double predestination, arguing that God predetermined the identities of both the elect and reprobates. Nevertheless, most medieval writers took a cautious view on the doctrine, partly because they were sensitive about its pastoral implications. The cautious formulations of the Council of Trent, for example, avoided laying down any precise teaching on the question, even though the matter had been raised by the Protestant reformers of that age.
Fresh debate over the doctrine flared within Catholicism in the seventeenth century. The Molinist school (named after the Spanish Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, 1535–1600) argued that human freedom was not contradicted by divine predestination. God knows how any individual would freely act in any possible situation, when provided with certain resources. Predestination can therefore be thought of as God bringing about a situation in which an individual freely chooses what God wants. For example, consider the case of the apostle Peter. Was he predestined to eternal salvation, and thus denied freedom to respond to God's grace? Most Molinists argued that God chose to create a world in such a way that God foresaw and foreknew how Peter would respond to grace. God is able to create those circumstances under which Peter would respond freely, thus maintaining both divine and human freedom.
Partly in reaction to such ideas, the movement known as Jansenism began to gain ground. This movement was based on the influential interpretation of Augustine of Hippo set out by Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638) in his posthumously published work Augustinus (1640). This work emphasized the notion of efficacious grace, which humanity was unable to resist. Predestination was the outcome of a free decision of God through which only a certain portion of humanity was predestined to be saved. This approach was criticized by the opponents of Jansenism as tantamount to Calvinism and therefore unacceptable to Catholics.
Such debates were never entirely resolved but ceased to play a major divisive role within the Catholic church from about 1700 onward. Within Protestantism, however, the debates proved to be much more serious and important.
Protestant Debates: Calvinism and Arminianism
The Protestant reformer John Calvin is often regarded as making the doctrine of predestination the center of his theological system. A close reading of his Institutes does not, however, bear out this often-repeated judgment. Calvin adopts a distinctly low-key approach to the doctrine, devoting a mere four chapters to its exposition (book III, chapters 21–4). Predestination is defined as “the eternal decree of God, by which he determined what he wished to make of every person. For he does not create everyone in the same condition, but ordains eternal life for some and eternal damnation for others.”
Calvin's analysis of predestination begins from observable facts. Some believe the gospel. Some do not. The primary function of the doctrine of predestination is to explain why some individuals respond to the gospel and others do not. It is an attempt to explain the variety of human responses to grace. Calvin's predestinarianism is to be regarded as reflection upon the data of human experience, interpreted in the light of Scripture, rather than something which is deduced on the basis of preconceived ideas concerning divine omnipotence. Belief in predestination is not an article of faith in its own right but is the final outcome of scripturally informed reflection on the effects of grace upon individuals in the light of the enigmas of experience.
Far from being a central premise of Calvin's thought, predestination seems to be an ancillary doctrine, concerned with explaining a puzzling pastoral aspect of the consequences of the proclamation of the gospel of grace. Yet, as Calvin's followers sought to develop and recast his thinking in the light of new intellectual developments, it was perhaps inevitable that alterations to his structuring of Christian theology might occur. In the remainder of this section, we shall explore the understanding of predestination which gained influence within Calvinism after Calvin's death, often known as the “Five Points of Calvinism.”
“Five Points of Calvinism” is a convenient way of summarizing the five central principles of Reformed soteriology (that is, the understanding of redemption associated with Calvinist writers), as they were laid down definitively by the Synod of Dort (1618–19). The five points are often referred to using the mnemonic TULIP (highly appropriate, one would think, for a synod that took place in Holland, home of that famous bulb):
This position is set in most later Reformed confessions of faith, such as the highly influential Westminster Confession of Faith (1646):
Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving him thereunto and all to the praise of his glorious grace. [...] The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.
An important controversy emerged within Calvinist circles in the early seventeenth century concerning the logical ordering of the “decrees of election.” Within this somewhat abstract debate, which has often become a symbol of theological obscurantism, two classic positions may be discerned:
A third position may also be noted, associated especially with Moses Amyraut (1596–1664) and the Calvinist Academy at Saumur, France. This position, often referred to as “hypothetical universalism,” has had relatively little impact within Calvinism.
One of the most important criticisms of the Five Points of Calvinism was associated with the movement known as Arminianism, which took its name from the Dutch writer Jakob Arminius (1560–1609), who reacted against the Reformed doctrine of particular redemption. For Arminius, Christ had died for all, not merely for the elect. Such views gained influence within Dutch Reformed circles in the aftermath of the Synod of Dort, leading to the publication of a counterproposal, known as the Remonstrance of 1610. This statement affirmed the universal character and scope of Christ's work:
God, by an eternal and unchangeable decree in Christ before the existence of the world, determined to elect from the fallen and sinful human race to everlasting life all those who, through God's grace, believe in Jesus Christ and persevere in faith and obedience. [...] Christ the Savior of the world died for all and every human being, so that he obtained, through his death on the cross, reconciliation and pardon for all, in such a way, however, that only the faithful actually enjoy the same.
The idea of predestination is thus maintained; however, its frame of reference is radically altered. The Synod of Dort understood predestination to be an individual matter, in which God predestined certain specific individuals to salvation and others to damnation. Arminianism understood it corporately, in that God has predestined that a specific group of people will be saved – namely, those who believe in Jesus Christ. By believing, individuals fulfill the predestined condition of salvation, in that they become members of the group which God has determined will be saved.
Arminianism soon achieved a major presence within eighteenth-century evangelicalism. Despite the more Calvinist views of George Whitefield (1714–70), Arminian ideas were forcefully stated within Methodism by Charles Wesley (1707–88). For example, his hymn “Would Jesus Have the Sinner Die?” states the doctrine of the universal redemption of humanity with considerable force (my italics):
- O let thy love my heart constrain,
- Thy love for every sinner free,
- That every fallen soul of man,
- May taste the grace that found out me;
- That all mankind with me may prove
- Thy sovereign, everlasting love.
The position also achieved considerable prominence in North America during the eighteenth century: the writings of Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) make frequent reference to what he regarded as the inconsistencies and shortcomings of his Arminian opponents. It was clearly a popular opinion, despite the misgivings regularly expressed by its critics.
Karl Barth (1886–1968)
One of the most interesting features of Karl Barth's theology is the manner in which it interacts with the theology of the period of Reformed orthodoxy. It was in part the seriousness with which Barth took the writings of this period that gave rise to the term “neo-orthodoxy” to refer to Barth's general approach (pp. 72–4). Barth's treatment of the Reformed doctrine of predestination is especially interesting: it demonstrates the manner in which he took traditional terms and gave them a radically new meaning within the context of his theology. Barth's discussion of predestination in the Church Dogmatics is based upon two central affirmations:
This strongly Christological orientation of predestination is maintained throughout Barth's analysis of the doctrine. “In its simplest and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of predestination consists of the assertion that the divine predestination is the election of Jesus Christ. But the concept of election has a double reference – to the elector and the elected.” So exactly what has God predestined? Barth's answer to this has several components, of which the following are especially important:
The consequences of this approach are clear. Despite all appearances to the contrary, humanity cannot be condemned. In the end, grace will triumph, even over unbelief. Barth's doctrine of predestination eliminates the possibility of the rejection of humanity. In that Christ has borne the penalty and pain of rejection by God, this can never again become the portion of humanity. Taken together with his characteristic emphasis upon the “triumph of grace,” Barth's doctrine of predestination points to the universal restoration and salvation of humanity – a position which has occasioned a degree of criticism from others who would otherwise be sympathetic to his general position. The Swiss Reformed theologian Emil Brunner (1889–1966) illustrates the concerns raised by Barth's approach:
What does this statement, “that Jesus is the only really rejected person,” mean for the situation of humanity? Evidently this: That there is no possibility of condemnation. [...] The decision has already been made in Jesus Christ – for all of humanity. Whether they know it or not, believe it or not, is not so important. They are like people who seem to be perishing in a stormy sea. But in reality they are not in a sea in which one can drown, but in shallow waters, in which it is impossible to drown. Only they do not know it.
Predestination and Economics: The Weber Thesis
One of the most fascinating consequences of the Calvinist emphasis upon predestination is its impact upon the attitudes of those who held the belief. Of especial importance is the question of assurance: how may the believer know that he or she really is among the elect? Although Calvin stressed that works are not the grounds of salvation, he nevertheless allowed it to be understood that they are, in some vague way, the grounds of assurance. Works may be regarded as “the testimonies of God dwelling and ruling within us.” Believers are not saved by works; rather, their salvation is demonstrated by works. “The grace of good works [...] demonstrates that the spirit of adoption has been given to us.” This tendency to regard works as evidence of election may be seen as the first stage in the articulation of a work ethic with significant pastoral overtones: it is by worldly activism that believers can assure their troubled conscience that they are among the elect.
Anxiety over this question of election was subsequently a pervasive feature of Calvinist spirituality, and was generally treated at some length by Calvinist preachers and spiritual writers. The basic answer given, however, remained substantially the same: the believer who performs good works has indeed been chosen. This idea was often stated in terms of the “practical syllogism,” an argument constructed along the following lines:
The grounds of certainty of election are thus based on the presence of “certain signs” in the life of the believer. There was thus a significant psychological pressure to demonstrate one's election to oneself and the world in general by exhibiting its signs – among which was the wholehearted commitment to serve and glorify God by laboring in the world. It is this pressure that, according to the sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), lay behind the emergence of capitalism within Calvinist societies.
The popular version of the Weber thesis declares that capitalism is a direct result of the Protestant Reformation. This is historically untenable and, in any case, is not what Weber actually said. Weber stressed that he had
no intention whatsoever of maintaining such a foolish and doctrinaire thesis as that the spirit of capitalism [...] could only have arisen as a result of certain effects of the Reformation. In itself, the fact that certain important forms of capitalistic business organizations are known to be considerably older than the Reformation is a sufficient refutation of such a claim.
Rather, Weber argued that a new “spirit of capitalism” emerged in the sixteenth century. It is not so much capitalism as a specific form of capitalism which needs to be explained.
Protestantism, Weber argued, generated the psychological preconditions essential to the development of modern capitalism. Indeed, Weber located the fundamental contribution of Calvinism as lying in its generation of psychological impulses on account of its belief systems. Weber laid especial stress upon the notion of “calling,” which he linked with the Calvinist idea of predestination. Calvinists, assured of their personal salvation, were enabled to engage in worldly activity without serious anxiety regarding their salvation as a consequence. The pressure to prove one's election led to the active pursuit of worldly success – a success which, as history indicates, was generally not slow in coming.
It is not our concern here to provide a critique of the Weber thesis. In some circles, it is regarded as utterly discredited; in others, it lives on. Our concern is simply to note that Weber rightly discerned that religious ideas could have a powerful economic and social impact upon early modern Europe. The very fact that Weber suggested that the religious thought of the Reformation was capable of providing the stimulus needed for the development of modern capitalism itself is a powerful testimony to the need to study theology if human history is to be fully understood. It also indicates that apparently abstract ideas – such as predestination – can prove to have a very concrete impact upon history!