Category Archives: Election & Predestination

“Make Your Calling and Election Sure” Predestination and Assurance In Reformation Theology

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hortonArticle by Dr. Michael Horton

According to the most lengthy of the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion:

The godly consideration of Predestination and our Election in Christ is full of sweet, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh in their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God. And yet, the study of the subject has most dangerous effects on the “carnal professor.”1

Speaking of the doctrine of election as “a comforting article when it is correctly treated,” the Formula of Concord (Lutheran) offers a similar caution:

Accordingly we believe and maintain that if anybody teaches the doctrine of the gracious election of God to eternal life in such a way that disconsolate Christians can find no comfort in this doctrine but are driven to doubt and despair, or in such a way that the impenitent are strengthened in their self-will, he is not teaching the doctrine according to the Word and will of God…2

During the magisterial Reformation, the doctrine of election was regarded as a corollary to justification, the nail in the coffin of synergism (justification and regeneration by human cooperation with grace). Pastorally, election was used to drive away despair and anxiety over one’s salvation. John Bradford, an Edwardian divine who was martyred under “bloody Mary,” wrote that this doctrine was a “most principal” tenet since it places our salvation entirely in God’s hands. “This, I say, let us do, and not be too busybodies in searching the majesty and glory of God, or in nourishing doubting of salvation: whereto we all are ready enough.”3 As we will see, all of this is carefully expounded by Calvin as well.

Did Calvin Invent Predestination?
More than anything else, Calvin and Calvinism are known for this doctrine. In one sense, that is quite surprising. First, the doctrine held by Calvin–namely, predestination to both salvation (election) and damnation (reprobation)–was insisted upon by many of the church fathers. Augustine took it for granted as the catholic teaching, in opposition especially to Pelagius. Aquinas wrote,

From all eternity some are preordained and directed to heaven; they are called the predestined ones: “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children according to the good pleasure of his will” [Eph. 1:5]. From all eternity, too, it has been settled that others will not be given grace, and these are called the reprobate or rejected ones: “I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau” [Mal. 1:2-3]. Divine choice is the reason for the distinction: “…according as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.”… God predestines because he loves… The choice is not dictated by any goodness to be discovered in those who are chosen; there is no antecedent prompting of God’s love [Rom. 9:11-13].4

Lodging the cause of election in the foreknowledge of human decision and action, says Aquinas, is the fountainhead of Pelagianism.5 Thomas Bradwardine, the fourteenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury, recalled his discovery of this great truth:

Idle and a fool in God’s wisdom, I was misled by an unorthodox error at a time when I was still pursuing philosophical studies. Sometimes I went to listen to the theologians discussing this matter [of grace and free will], and the school of Pelagius seemed to me nearest the truth… In this philosophical faculty I seldom heard a reference to grace, except for some ambiguous remarks. What I heard day in and day out was that we are masters of our own free acts, that ours is the choice to act well or badly, to have virtues or sins, and much more along this line… But every time I listened to the Epistle reading in church and heard how Paul magnified grace and belittled free will–as in the case in Romans 9, “It is obviously not a question of human will and effort, but of divine mercy,” and its many parallels–grace displeased me, ungrateful as I was… However, even before I transferred to the faculty of theology, the text mentioned came to me as a beam of grace and, captured by a vision of the truth, it seemed I saw from afar how the grace of God precedes all good works… That is why I express my gratitude to Him who has given me this grace as a gift.6 Continue reading →

Chosen Before Time

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but never Christmas.

In C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the land of Narnia was under the cruel reign of the White Witch. But Aslan was on the move. When the witch and lion finally meet, the witch says to Aslan that one of the children, Edmund, has been found to be a traitor. The law of Narnia is that anyone who is a traitor belongs to the White Witch, and will be punished with death.

So Aslan strikes a deal with the witch and agrees to die in Edmund’s place. But then Aslan comes back from the dead. After he returns, the children are confused.

“But what does it all mean?” asked Edmund’s sister, Susan.

“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know: Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

Behind the Curtain of Eternity

In this children’s tale, Lewis masterfully gets to the heart of our redemption. And he helps us see the love of the triune God toward us in “the stillness before time dawned.” There, in eternity past, Father and Son and Spirit conspired to love a people for themselves. They determined both to create us and — knowing that we would bring their good creation to ruin — also decided to set their loving and eternal gaze on us, as particular, chosen, and treasured children.

It’s unfortunate that the biblical teaching of “God’s decree” (as theologians have called it) and his predestinating glory has turned sour among so many Christians. When something so biblically rich and spiritually nourishing becomes so distasteful that we refuse to consume it, we need to reconsider our diet.

In the Stillness Before Time

In the first chapter of Ephesians, the apostle Paul is so overtaken with the majesty of our redemption that he can hardly stop to put a period behind his statements. So, his one long sentence runs from verse 3 through to verse 11. But what infuses every pore of that one, long sentence is its beginning:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. (Ephesians 1:3–5)

God’s servant is inspired by God’s Spirit to show us what God was doing before the world began. In these verses, we have what only God can give: a glimpse into the eternal moment of his glorious plan. The triune God prepared every detail of the blueprint for his eternal kingdom. Not only did he plan it all, but he himself would work the entirety of that blueprint according to the counsel of his own sovereign will (Ephesians 1:11).

Without the solid meat of this biblical truth, our souls eventually will falter. Unless we eavesdrop on eternity, we will develop spiritual cataracts. In order to see clearly, we first need to hear clearly. We must set our minds on the transcendent so that the immanent can take its proper place in our lives.

Not to Us, O Lord

Paul begins by ascribing blessing to God the Father because of what he has accomplished in his Son. But Paul won’t let us focus that accomplishment on us. His immediate interest is not in the benefits we receive from Christ, important as those are. His mind moves immediately from praising God to God’s eternal choice. Paul’s interest is to help us see that what we have from the Father, through the Son, is a result of the Father’s determination “before the foundation of the world” to so love us that he would save us from our sin.

We’ve just finished another Olympic year. American athletes earned a record number of medals. These athletes committed the entirety of their lives to their athletic tasks. It is natural, then, that they take pride in their accomplishments.

But the Christian can never think that the salvation that we have in Christ is anything like the rigors of athletic training. Not only have we earned nothing of what we have in Christ, but what we have is a result of decisions made by the triune God before we, or anything else in creation, even existed.

Who Gets the Glory?

Most Christians recognize that, apart from Christ, there is no salvation. But far fewer recognize that our salvation had its beginning before time began. It was there that the triune God determined to love you for eternity. It was there that the Son did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, being obedient to the point of death on a cross (Philippians 2:6–8).

Until we see this divine determination as the eternal “ground zero” of our salvation, we simply cannot engage in wholehearted worship of God. If God did not unilaterally, from eternity, instigate his sovereign plan of salvation for me, then my salvation must, even if in some small way, be “up to me.” If we contribute anything to our salvation, our songs of praise to the glory of God will always be playing our own tune in a minor key.

Paul will not let us speak into eternity past; we can look, but not touch. Only in that way will the light shine in the proper place, on the stage and not the audience. Only in that way is it possible to say, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” without whispering on the side, “And me, too.”