Primary Source Analysis: John Calvin On Predestination

Prerak Sachdev
Western Civilization
Prof. Andrew
4th December 2015
Primary Source Analysis - John Calvin: On Predestination
In 1536, John Calvin was a French lawyer and theologian who lived in Geneva, Switzerland. He published a book titled Institutes of the Christian Religion. Originally he published his work in Latin but subsequently translated into different European languages. The Institutes outlined Calvin’s basic philosophies of “predestination” as a precondition for salvation. Calvin, like many Christian reformers, was most fascinated in discovering the true way to heaven during the Reformation. Calvin came to a logical spat regarding salvation as he fought to comprehend the word of God, According to Calvin’s ideas, God alone

knew, and had always known who was going to heaven at the end of his time, since God was eternal and all knowing. Such thoughts relied on the idea that the Bible was the word of God and therefore must been true.
If God knew everything, then Calvin believed he also knew who would ultimately be saved.

Since God was eternal, He had always known who would be saved. In naive terms (and Calvin himself was never simple), God made a list of those to be saved at the start of time and thus the list itself was eternal. Those not on the list had no hope for eternal salvation because salvation was a gift from God to those who were on the list. So they were only working to stay in God’s grace while they were there on Earth. Subsequently, those not on the list of God (highly unlikely in Calvin’s opinion) still got to heaven, but had to suffer God’s wrath while on Earth. Calvin believed that his name, of course, was on the list, as did everyone who followed his way of thinking. Calvin’s ideas about predestination spread across Europe, to Scottish Presbyterians and the Dutch Reformed Church. His ideas also had a weighty effect on the Puritans who later settled in colonial New England.
John Calvin’s doctrine of predestination was often conflicting on the grounds that it made God as unjust. However, Calvin, clarifying his conception of justice in the process, strongly answered such arguments. One objection to his doctrine was the portrayal God as tyrannical, which condemned people before creation who had done nothing wrong. A second related objection was that if God willed humanity’s fall in Adam—as Calvin maintained —why did he doomed those in the sinful condition he willed? Moreover, were such people

justly condemned for sin they could not avoid? Who can resist the will of God?
Calvin gave a 2-way response to those objections. First, he conserved that God’s will was the “highest rule of righteousness,” and therefore anything that God willed—such as predestination—“must be considered righteous,” irrespective of how it appeared to us. To Calvin, God’s will had “its own equity. Calvin upheld the justice of God but asserted that it was simply “unknown” to us on some level. Thus, God’s justice was eventually hidden and mysterious. With Paul (Rom. 9.20), Calvin affirmed that it was simply not our place to question God. He rejected that God was lawless, and also denied that God must have given us an account of his justice, or that we were fit to “pronounce judgment [on God]…according to their own understanding. It was absurd to accuse God because of their own lack of understanding. Since predestination yielded the glory of God, it must be just: “whatever deserves praise must be just. Calvin’s second response was that since all people, including the sinner, are “vitiated by sin,” and so deserved the punishment of death, God was actually just toward the reprobate in a faultlessly comprehensible way: “of what injustice toward themselves may they complain? Calvin argued that although the hidden cause of God’s predestination was incomprehensible, we should contemplate the evident cause of condemnation, which was human nature was corrupted by sin. Calvin enunciated a more common retributive notion of justice where wrongdoing was remunerated with punishment. So, while aspects of God’s justice were mysterious and hidden, that aspect was clear to humanity. Calvin asserted that the “cause and occasion” of the perdition of the reprobate lies in their own sin.
One more doubt was raised that bears on God’s justice: God was uneven in his judgment. The complainers emphasized that a just God should have treat everyone equally, either punishing all or giving mercy to all. However, Calvin forbidden that notion of justice on the grounds that God was free to distribute mercy as he pleased, and that such mercy need not impede judgment altogether. Calvin pointed out that God “does not bind Himself by a set law to call all men equally. Therefore, if people were all equally deserving of punishment, and if God owed mercy to no one, “He is freed of all accusation” regarding predestination. God chose of his own free will to show mercy to some, and it was just for him to judge the others. Here John Calvin’s concept of justice was again punitive.
John Calvin defended strongly the doctrine of predestination by which God resolute before all creation those who would achieve eternal life, and those who would obtain eternal death.

The key purpose of predestination was satisfied in both salvation and condemnation that the glory of God might be shown. According to Calvin, God’s predestination was exclusively to his will, independent of external reasons, and so was eventually mysterious to humanity. For this reason, Calvin backed the inquiry by saying the predestination confined to scripture. Calvin disagreed to the claims that predestination made God unjust, so he argued that all of sinful humanity deserved punishment—and so none were fated unjustly—and that since God’s mysterious will was righteous, we affirmed that predestination was

just.