The connection with the preceding commonplace.
The connection with the preceding commonplace.
§ 1. We have said that in time God performed two chief and great works (to which all the rest can be related in a certain way and order), namely, the creation of the whole universe and the restoration of the human race. God made a decree about both of those from eternity. From the execution of His plan in time, we have learned what sort of a decree about His plan God made from eternity. The second decree of God, regarding the restoration of the human race through His Son, follows it. It, too, is eternal, made before the foundations of the world were laid. Therefore it follows the first [decree], not in timebut in order.
The decree of restoration.
§ 2. From its execution we shall also learn what kind of a decree of restoration it was, as we remember the rules set out earlier [On Creation and Angels (Commonplace VIII), §§ 4–5]: that a decree of God and the execution of that decree are in complete accord. The reason for this depends on the immutability of the will of God.
§ 3. If we follow this road, we shall be following the command of Scripture which teaches that “the mystery of our salvation, which was kept secret for long ages, is now disclosed in the preaching of the Gospel” (Rom. 16:25[–26]; Eph. 3:8–9). 2 Tim. 1:9–10: “The purpose of God and grace which He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began and now has manifested through the appearing of Christ our Savior.” John 1:18: “No one has ever seen God; but the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known.”
An investigation of the order between the decree of creation and that of the restoration.
§ 4. Since the decrees of creation and restoration accompany each other, for our purpose here let that which is last in creation be first. Man is the last creation of God, and for this reason he is called the epitome of the whole world and the complement of the rest of creation. When God approached man’s creation, He held something like a deliberation, saying, “Let Us make man in Our image and likeness” (Gen. 1:26).
§ 5. This decree of God reveals to us His first and oldest decree about man, namely, that God has decreed from eternity to create man after His own image and likeness.
Part of the image of God is immortality.
§ 6. We shall have more to say about the image of God in man in its own place [On the Image of God in Man before the Fall (Commonplace XI)]. It is enough for our purpose here that part of the image of God was immortality. Wisdom 2:23: “God created man for incorruption and made him after the image of His own likeness.” You see, though there are three causes of death and destruction, God had strengthened man against them all. The first cause of death is that bodies consist of things which are contrary to each other and which fight against each other. Against this, man had been given a consistent and exact balance of temperament, for in Adam there were integrity and uprightness to his entire nature (Eccl. 7:30). The second cause is that his natural heat continuously consumes root moisture, and the heat in turn suffers by acting.1 Against this, man had been given the tree of life, whose fruit preserved the original purity in his natural fluid and invigorated his heat. The third cause of death depends on those things which happen to a human externally, such as pestilential air, drowning in water, burning in fire, and venomous animals. However, in part these were absent from that most blessed state, and in part man was protected from them by his inborn prudence, by the protection of the angels, and by the special care of God.
§ 7. Furthermore, because the image of God according to which man was created would also have been extended to his descendants, it is clear that in Adam God created all human beings for eternal life.
The primeval law which was given to man.
§ 8. To this man whom He had created God gave a law about not eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, because He wanted man by his compliance and obedience to show that he was thankful to his Creator. To this law He added the warning that he would die the day he might eat of that tree [cf. Gen. 2:16–17]. Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 13, ch. 12): “This means not only the first part of the first death, wherein the soul is deprived of God; nor only the latter part, wherein the body is deprived of the soul; nor only the entire first death itself, wherein the soul is punished by being separated from God and the body. Rather, it includes all death, even unto that final death which is called the second death and which no death follows.”
The two levels of immortality.
§ 9. This threat fits well with the gift of immortality that was granted to man “because it is one thing to be able not to die and another thing to be unable to die.” According to the former manner, the first man was created immortal. (See Augustine, De Gen. ad lit., bk. 6, ch. 25.)
The origin of human wretchedness.
§ 10. However, because man was misled by the devil while having the great ability not to sin, he willingly turned away from God by breaking the divine command, and therefore he delivered himself and his posterity up to eternal death by his own fault and robbed himself and his posterity of those concreated gifts.
§ 11. The first man was not driven to this fall by an efficacious and invariable decree of God, because before man fell God had given him the perfect ability not to fall and the intact will to be able to refuse to fall. Furthermore, to make sure that he would not fall, He employed the severest threat of death, and in this way He had strengthened man without and within. However, man voluntarily opened the gate of carelessness to the devil’s knocking, and through that gate he let death in upon himself.
§ 12. Nonetheless God foresaw this fall from eternity, for what could escape His foreknowledge? He foresaw it, and out of His boundless love and mercy for man, He made a decree concerning the provision of a remedy for this fall of man. You see, just as He foresaw what evil they were going to do, so also He foresaw and decreed what good He would bring out of their evil deeds. Augustine (De Gen. ad lit., bk. 11, ch. 9): “For He made them in such a way that He left to them the means by which they themselves would do something, so that whatever choice they made, even reprehensible, they would find Him working it to His own praise.”
The decree of restoration.
§ 13. Only then was there this decree of restoration, and what kind of decree it was is shown by its execution in time. For after Adam along with all his descendants had been ensnared in the nets of eternal death through the fall and was unable to find any remedy for this evil through the wisdom of men or angels, God came forth from the sacred throne of His majesty and revealed the venerable mystery of the restoration of the human race through His Son with these words: “The woman’s Seed will crush the serpent’s head” (Gen. 3:15).
The incarnation of the Word.
§ 14. Therefore, because God fulfilled this first promise and “in the fullness of time sent His Son, born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4), “who appeared for this reason: to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8), from this we conclude that from eternity God resolved to send His Son into flesh to heal by His obedient satisfaction the wounds which the infernal serpent had inflicted on man, and to restore those good things that were lost through the fall.
The preaching of the Word.
§ 15. God offers these benefits, which the Son gained, to the entire human race through the preaching of His Word, confirmed with the seal of the Sacraments. Through His Holy Spirit, God wants to kindle faith in people’s hearts, and through faith they are made partakers of those good things. Therefore whenever someone receives this Word of God and embraces the offered goods in true faith kindled by the Holy Spirit, he is freed from the bonds of eternal death that were introduced by the fall of our first parents, for “he that believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark 16:16). “But he who thrusts the Word away and judges himself unworthy of eternal life” (Acts 13:46), “who does not believe the Son, the wrath of God rests upon him” (John [3]:36). Eternal damnation accompanies this wrath of God.
The decree of election.
§ 16. Therefore, because those things which God does in time are the manifestation of those things which He has decreed to do in time, we conclude that His eternal decree concerning the salvation of men was made in the same way that God justifies and saves them in time, and this we call “election.” Likewise, we conclude that God has determined from eternity that some will be excluded from the possession of the heavenly kingdom due to the same reasons for which they are excluded in time, and this we call “reprobation.” Christ says, John 6:40: “This is the will of Him who sent Me, of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life.” This certainly has been the will of God from eternity. On the other hand, John 3:18: “He who does not believe in the Son has already been judged.” This, too, has been the will of God from eternity. In sum, the decree and the execution of the decree correspond precisely.
§ 17. From these it is clear that we should not hold that His decree of election or reprobation is absolute, or that it depends on the absolute will of God. Rather, the decree of election was made in view of Christ, who is to be apprehended through faith [intuitu Christi per fidem apprehendendi]. Therefore the elect of God are all of them, and they alone, who God foresaw were going to believe perseveringly in Christ, the restorer of the human race, by the efficacy of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word. On the other hand, it is clear that His decree of reprobation was made in view of ultimate impenitence and unbelief. Therefore the reprobate of God are all of them, and they alone, who He likewise foresaw from eternity were going to persist in impenitence and unbelief by their own fault until the end of their life.
§ 18. This is a brief outline of the entire doctrine of election and reprobation which we shall explain more clearly and in greater detail in the following chapters. However, before we move on to a more elaborate treatment of this argument and descend into the arena with the architects of the absolute decree, we shall treat this question as an introduction: Should we discuss this doctrine, and how? To this we shall also add an explanation of the terms which occur in this subject matter.
1 In medieval and early modern physiology, “root moisture” [humidum radicale] was the human body’s basic fluids begotten together with the body’s natural heat. This was considered as distinct from the “inflowing moisture” [humidum influens] which the body receives through eating and drinking. Medieval scholars explained that mortality results when the body’s natural heat dries up its root moisture, which cannot be replaced simply by nourishment; as the natural heat does this, it in turn is diminished. See Micraelius, Lexicon philosophicum, s.v.“Humiditas”; see also Philip Lyndon Reynolds, Food and the Body: Some Peculiar Questions in High Medieval Theology (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 105–19, especially 114–15.