About ten years ago, someone asked me about Jean Calvin. They were trying to wrap their heads around the fact that he believed in "double predestination" and simultaneously thought "God is love" (1 John 4:8).
Please let Calvin himself explain:
"I again ask how it is that the fall of Adam involves so many nations with their infant children in eternal death without remedy unless that it so seemed meet to God? Here the most loquacious tongues must be dumb. The decree, I admit, is, dreadful; and yet it is impossible to deny that God foreknow what the end of man was to be before he made him, and foreknew, because he had so ordained by his decree. Should any one here inveigh against the prescience of God, he does it rashly and unadvisedly. For why, pray, should it be made a charge against the heavenly Judge, that he was not ignorant of what was to happen?"
"Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at his own pleasure arranged it. For as it belongs to his wisdom to foreknow all future events, so it belongs to his power to rule and govern them by his hand."
See Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.23.7
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Double Predestination and A Loving God? John (Jean) Calvin
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8 comments:
Calvin was at least consistent, even if his God was, literally, evil, a God whom no one can really love. Barth's "left hand of God" wasn't much better, although it was less direct.
Once one takes an exhaustive foreknowledge view of God, in my view, the only coherent option is universalism, here I think David Bentley Hart is correct, if God created only one person to empty his wrath on, and that this was to the glory of God, then that person would really be our redeemer, who redeemed us from the sadism of God.
Here's an article by David Hart on this issue.
https://journal.radicalorthodoxy.org/index.php/ROTPP/article/view/135/86
John Ch.7:6ESV"Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is ALWAYS here."
John Ch.10:18NIV""No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”"
Life is the property of JEHOVAH, There is nothing sadistic about God setting just terms and conditions for the use of his property. A dead man cannot Father children. If Said man is dead because he chose to take up arms against his creator,then the loss to any potential children he may have had otherwise is owed to his arrogance/egoism not any "Sadism" on JEHOVAH'S part.
The Socinian conception of divine knowledge is completely untenable. No matter the form it is given, it undermines either the infallibility or the absolute self-sufficiency of God's conditional knowledge of the future. Bellarmine, Becanus (and perhaps Molina himself) believed that God sees the future and the potential decisions of free will (conditionate futurum, futuribile) at their root, thoroughly understanding the created will (in supercomprehensione voluntatis creatae). However, it is clear that will, considered in itself, contains only the possibilities and at most inclinations of future free actions, and thus can only provide approximate knowledge, sometimes morally certain, but not infallible. More recent Molinists generally say that since the conditional future free actions are objectively true (obiective et in se), God knows them in their objective truth. But this objective truth either originates from God or it does not. If it does, then we are back to the foundational thought of Thomism; if not, they stand opposed to God, forming a world independent of Him, like the great book of the future, the contents of which God only learns if He reads it. But this contradicts the self-sufficiency of divine knowledge; nothing and no one outside of God can direct or influence His knowledge. This consideration is not altered by the fact that the objective truth of the potential realities is reflected by the divine essence, being eternally present there. For this is exactly the question: why do they owe their eternal presence, why does God’s essence reflect them?
In His decision to create, God could not be led by those who consciously align themselves against Him; He could not reward the wicked by not creating them out of mere undeserved mercy. He created humans and left it to them to decide whether they want to be saved or not. Whoever then chooses damnation, let them blame themselves and not God. If we ask why God wanted such an order of being, where some are saved and others are damned? The Thomists' answer: Because God found this order of being, for reasons inscrutable to us, suitable for proclaiming His glory through its variety, by exercising His grace and at the same time His stern justice.
https://justpaste.it/d5e1e
God's universal salvific will means that He desires the salvation of all people, but this does not mean that all people will be saved. God's predestination means that those who are saved have been willed and known by God from all eternity. However, this does not imply that God also wills the damnation of those who are condemned, although He has known their damnation with certainty from all eternity. The relationship between God's universal salvific will and predestination is an eternal mystery of God, but we can confidently declare that it is grounded in God's goodness and justice.
The universal salvific will of God can only be discussed in relation to predestination. There are many misunderstandings surrounding the concept of divine predestination (prædestinatio) that need to be clarified. The Catholic Church teaches divine predestination, but this is far from the concept of predestination held by certain denominations of the Protestant Reformation, especially Calvinism, which is often associated with the term predestination.
Catholicism teaches that God has predestined every individual to salvation (prædestinatio positiva). This reflects God's universal salvific will. However, this does not mean that every person will be saved. In this case, God's will is a conditional will. God's salvific plan is realized only in those who cooperate with His divine plan. It is similar to a teacher saying to their students, "I want everyone to get the best grade." However, this statement does not mean that every student will indeed receive the highest grade; it only means that the teacher's goodwill and conscientiousness will not be the reason anyone fails to learn the material or receive a fair grade. The analogy falters in that the teacher cannot know for sure in advance who will get the highest grade and who will fail, but God knows from all eternity who will be saved. (A person’s salvation is not determined by what God knows about them. In other words, a person will not be saved or condemned because God knows it beforehand, but God knows the final fate of a person because He also knows how they will freely choose to act regarding their eternal life. This means that a person will not do good or evil because God knows it beforehand, but God knows it beforehand because the person will do good or evil. This knowledge of God is infallible, just as His eternal decision to will the salvation of all people is unchangeable. This will is fulfilled in the saved (prædestinatio perfecta), while it is thwarted in those who are condemned by their own fault (prædestinatio imperfecta).
This understanding of predestination is in direct opposition to the view held by some Reformation denominations, which believe that God has predestined some to salvation and others to damnation, regardless of their merits or efforts. This idea of divine reprobation (reprobatio) is also known as negative predestination, and the doctrine itself is called double predestination (prædestinatio duplicativa). The Holy Catholic Church rejects and condemns this horrendous doctrine, which portrays God as an unjust judge and a cruel tyrant. The greatest sin of this heresy is not even the distorted image of God it creates but rather the denial of human responsibility and the moral corruption that follows. After all, what is the point of striving for goodness if my salvation and the fate of my actions were irrevocably determined before my birth? (This is why, in common usage, predestination has come to be synonymous with belief in an unchangeable fate.) Fortunately, the well-meaning majority of Reformation followers, even if they theoretically uphold it, do not practice Calvin’s rigid error in their daily lives but instinctively try to shape their relationship with God and their personal lives according to Catholic teaching on predestination and grace.
Those who advocate double predestination often refer to Augustine, who indeed believed that few are saved (citing the verse "Many are called, but few are chosen" (Mt 22:14)). However, this was his personal opinion, which is not necessarily linked to predestination, and it may be as accurate as it is an exaggeration. After all, "many" and "few" are very relative terms, especially in the Bible. It is true that Augustine made some statements about predestination that can be misunderstood, but these should be read and evaluated in the context of his opposition to the overly optimistic and exclusively human-centered and freedom-emphasizing Pelagian heresy. Augustine himself never upheld the extreme tenets of Augustinianism that were later attributed to his writings. Augustine wrote no more about predestination than that it is "the foreknowledge and prearrangement of God's gifts, by which those who are saved are saved with absolute certainty" (August. Don. persev. 14,35). Therefore, he understood predestination in the Catholic sense, though he sometimes explored the relationship between divine will and human freedom in the context of anti-heresy debates or in mystical depths. Even in these works (e.g., De dono perseverantiæ, De prædestinatione sanctorum), he primarily sought to emphasize the gratuity and necessity of grace, sometimes with rhetorical exaggeration. However, he did not regard God as an unjust tyrant but acknowledged human responsibility beyond the operation of grace, including the possibility of merit; he also recognized that God knows predestination to life but does not know predestination to death. This is well supported by statements such as, "If there is no merit or demerit, how will God judge the world?" (Confes. IX. 34). "God is good; God is just; He can save some without merit because He is good, but He cannot condemn anyone without wicked deeds because He is just" (Contra Iul. III. 18,35).
It is true that the Bible speaks of election, and indeed there is election and a grace given to some in greater measure, but this is not to the detriment of those who receive less, and the election of some is rather a consequence of the call that is extended to all. In other words, those who are elected are those who have accepted the call. Here lies human responsibility, and here is where God’s universal salvific will can be seen: everyone is called, though not everyone is elected. If we say that rejection and damnation cannot occur without some kind of divine knowledge and will, this is also true: God knows who will be saved and “wills” the damnation of those who choose eternal damnation with their entire lives.
Thus, God does not reject anyone from the outset; at most, He does not elect them from the outset. And this is where Calvin went astray because he interpreted "non-election" as predestination to damnation. And, superficially, this can indeed be understood in that way. After all, if someone is not rescued from the water, one might say they are left to drown. However, even in this very weak example, one can sense that it is different not to rescue someone from drowning than it is to hold them underwater, even if morally and in consequence there is little difference between the two.
But what is true for humans is not true for God. A human being, staying with the example, cannot know in advance who will inevitably drown and does not know who wished to die of their own accord; however, God—moving beyond the example—knows the future human goals, actions, and motives with absolute certainty in advance, as well as the conditionally occurring events and even the possibilities that do not come to pass. Thus, Calvin overlooked the crucial point—and this cannot be emphasized enough—that someone is not damned because God does not elect them from the outset; rather, God does not elect them from the outset because He knows in advance that the person will commit sin, persist in it, and be damned. Therefore, God does not elect them. And this is equally true for the saved, in reverse. In chronological order (according to our understanding of time), election and rejection occur first, but in logical order (considering God’s simultaneous presence in all timeframes), human conversion or hardening occurs first. This is evident in Jesus' words, where He chooses those who do good “from the foundation of the world”: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink” (Mt 25:34).
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