PvFW: Calvanism View

The following paragraphs are taken from The Creeds of Christendom:The History of Creeds, Volume I, by Phillip Schaff. This book was published in 1877. You can find full versions of all three volumes of Schaff's work at Google Books or Archive.org

THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION.

All the Reformers of the sixteenth century, including even the gentle Melanchthon and the compromising Bucer, under a controlling sense of human depravity and saving grace, in extreme antagonism to Pelagianism and self-righteousness, and, as they sincerely believed, in full harmony not only with the greatest of the fathers, but also with the inspired St. Paul, came to the same doctrine of a double predestination which decides the eternal destiny of all men. Nor is it possible to evade this conclusion on the two acknowledged premises of Protestant orthodoxy—namely, the wholesale condemnation of men in Adam, and the limitation of saving grace to the present world. If the Lutheran theology, after the Formula of Concord (1577), rejected Synergism and Calvinism alike, and yet continued to teacli the total depravity of all men and the unconditional election of some, it could only be done at the expense of logical consistency

Yet there were some characteristic differences among the Reformers. Luther started from the servum arbitrium [man's enslaved will], Zwingli from the idea of an all-ruling providentia [the ability to foresee and make provision], Calvin from the timeless or eternal decretum absolutum. [absolute/eternal decree]Calvin elaborated the doctrine of predestination with greater care and precision, and avoided 'the paradoxes' of his predecessors. He made it, moreover, the corner-stone of his system, and gave it undue proportion. He set the absolute sovereignty of God over against the mock sovereignty of the Pope. It was for him the “article of the standing or falling Church ;” while Luther always assigned this position to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In this estimate, both were mistaken, for the central place in the Christian system belongs only to the person and work of Christ — the incarnation and the atonement. Finally, the Augustinian and Lutheran predestinarianism is moderated by the sacramentarian principle of baptismal regeneration ; while the Calvinistic predestinarianism confines the sacramental efficacy to the elect, and turns the baptism of the non-elect into an empty form.

Predestination, according to Calvin, is the eternal and unchangeable decree of God by which he foreordained, for his own glory and the display of his attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation. The decree is, therefore, twofold — a decree of election to holiness and salvation, and a decree of reprobation on account of sin and guilt. The latter is the negative counterpart, which strict logic seems to demand, but against which our better feelings revolt, especially if it is made to include multitudes of innocent children, for their unconscious connection with Adam's fall. Calvin himself felt this, and characteristically called the decree of reprobation a “decree horrible, though nevertheless true.'” All he could say was that God's will is inscrutable, but always holy and unblamable. It is the ultimate ground of all things, and the highest rule of justice. Foreordination and foreknowledge are inseparable, and the former is not conditioned by the latter, but God foresees what he foreordains. If election were dependent on man's faith and good works, grace would not be free, and in fact would cease to be grace. Man's holiness is not the cause or condition, but the effect of God's election. The unequal distribution of gospel privileges can be traced only to the secret will of God. All men are alike corrupt and lost in Adam; some are saved by free grace, others, who are no worse by nature, reject the gospel. These are undeniable every-day facts, and admit of no other explanation within the limits of the present life; and as to the future world, we know nothing but what God has revealed to us in the Scriptures.

Calvin carried the doctrine of the divine decrees beyond the Augustinian infralapsarianism, which makes the fall of Adam the object of a permissive or passive decree, and teaches the pretention rather than the reprobation of the wicked, to the very verge of supralapsarianism, which traces even the first sin to an efficient or positive decree, analogous to that of election. But while his inexorable logic pointed to this abyss, his moral and religious sense shrunk from the last inference of making God the author of sin which would be blasphemous, and involve the absurdity that God abhors and justly punishes what he himself decreed. Hence his phrase, which vacillates between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism : “ Adam fell, God's providence having so ordained it; yet he fell by his own guilt.”