Posted on 05/22/2010 3:53:48 AM PDT by GonzoII
Another way to define the Reformed theology would be to contrast its view of God's eternal decrees with that taken in the Catholic Church, notably by Jesuit authors such as Molina. To Calvin the ordinances of Deity seemed absolute, i.e. not in any way regardful of the creature's acts, which they predetermined either right or wrong; and thus reprobation -- the supreme issue between all parties -- followed upon God's unconditioned fiat, no account being had in the decree itself of man's merits or demerits. For God chose some to glory and others to shame everlasting as He willed, not upon foreknowledge how they would act. The Jesuit school made foreknowledge of "future contingencies" or of what creatures would do in any possible juncture, the term of Divine vision "scientia media" which was logically antecedent (as a condition not a cause) to the scheme of salvation. Grace, said Catholic dogma, was offered to all men; none were excluded from it. Adam need not have transgressed, neither was his fall pre-ordained. Christ died for the whole human race; and every one had such help from on high that the reprobate could never charge their ruin upon their Maker, since he permitted it only, without an absolute decree. Grace, then, was given freely; but eternal life came to the saints by merit, founded on correspondence to the Holy Spirit's impulse. All these statements Calvin rejected as Pelagian, except that he would maintain, though unable to justify, the- imputation of the sinner's lapse to human nature by itself.
To be consistent, this doctrine requires that no prevision of Adam's Fall should affect the eternal choice which discriminates between the elect and the lost. A genuine Calvinist ought to be a supralapsarian ; in other terms, the Fall was decreed as means to an end; it did not first appear in God's sight to be the sufficient cause why, if He chose, He might select some from the "massa damnata," leaving others to their decreed doom. To this subject St. Augustine frequently returns in his anti-Pelagian treatises, and he lays great emphasis on the consequences to mankind as regards their final state, of God's dealing with them in fallen Adam. But his language, unlike that of Calvin, never implies absolute rejection divorced from foreknowledge of man's guilt. Thus even to the African Father, whose views in his latter works became increasingly severe (see "On the Predestination of the Saints" and "On Correction and Grace") there was always an element of scientia media, i.e. prevision in the relation of God with His creatures. But, to the Reformer who explained Redemption and its opposite by sheer omnipotence doing as it would, the idea that man could, even as a term of knowledge, by his free acts be considered in the Everlasting Will was not conceivable. As the Arian said, "How can the Eternal be begotten?" and straightway denied the generation of the Word, in like manner Calvin, "How can the contingent affect the First Cause on which it utterly depends?" In the old dilemma, "either God is not omnipotent or man is not self determined," the "Institutes" accept the conclusion adverse to liberty. But it was, said Catholics, equally adverse to morals; and the system has always been criticised on that ground. In a word, it seemed to be antinomian.
With Augustine the Geneva author professed to be at one. "If they have all been taken from a corrupt mass," he argued, "no marvel that they are subject to condemnation." But, his critics replied, "were they not antecedently predestined to that corruption?" And "is not God unjust in treating His creatures with such cruel mystery?" To this Calvin answers, "I confess that all descendants of Adam fell by the Divine will," and that "we must return at last to God's sovereign determination, the cause of which is hidden" (Institutes, III, 23, 4). "Therefore," he concludes, "some men are born devoted from the womb to certain death, that His name may be glorified in their destruction." And the reason why such necessity is laid upon them? "Because," says Calvin "life and death are acts of God's will rather than of his foreknowledge," and "He foresees further events only in consequence of his decree that they shall happen." Finally, "it is an awful decree, I confess [horribile decretum, fateor], but none can deny that God foreknew the future final fate of man before He created him -- and that He did foreknow it because it was appointed by His own ordinance." Calvin, then, is a supralapsarian; the Fall was necessary; and our first parents, like ourselves, could not have avoided sinning.
So far, the scheme presents a cast-iron logic at whatever expense to justice and morality. When it comes to consider human nature, its terms sound more uncertain, it veers to each extreme in succession of Pelagius and Luther. In St. Augustine, that nature is almost always viewed historically, not in the abstract hence as possessed by unfallen Adam it was endowed with supernatural gifts, while in his fallen children it bears the burden of concupiscence and sin. But the French Reformer, not conceding a possible state of pure nature, attributes to the first man, with Luther (in Gen., iii), such perfection as would render God's actual grace unnecessary, thus tending to make Adam self-sufficient, as the Pelagians held all men to be. On the other hand, when original sin took them once captive the image of God was entirety blotted out. This article of "total depravity" also came from Luther, who expressed it in language of appalling power. And so the "Institutes" announce that "in man all which bears reference to the blessed life of the soul is extinct." And if it was "natural" in Adam to love God and do justice, or a part of his very essence, then by lapsing from grace he would have been plunged into an abyss below nature, where his true moral and religious being was altogether dissolved. So, at any rate, the German Protestants believed in their earlier period, nor was Calvin reluctant to echo them.
Catholics distinguish two kinds of beatitude: one corresponding to our nature as a rational species and to be acquired by virtuous acts; the other beyond all that man may do or seek when left to his own faculties, and in such wise God's free gift that it is due only to acts performed under the influence of a strictly supernatural movement. The confusion of grace with nature in Adam's essence was common to all the Reformed schools; it is Peculiarly manifest in Jansenius, who strove to deduce it from St. Augustine. And, granting the Fall, it leads by direct inference to man's utter corruption as the unregenerate child of Adam. He is evil in all that he thinks, or wills, or does. Yet Calvin allows him reason and choice, though not true liberty. The heart was poisoned by sin, but something remained of grace to hinder its worst excesses, or to justify God's vengeance on the reprobate (over and above their original fault inherited). On the whole, it must be said that the "Institutes" which now and then allow that God's image was not quite effaced in us, deny to mankind, so far as redemption has not touched them, any moral and religious powers whatsoever. With Calvin as with his predecessor of Wittenberg, heathen virtue is but apparent, and that of the non-Christian merely "political," or secular. Civilization, founded on our common nature, is in such a view external only, and its justice or benevolence may claim no intrinsic value. That it has no supernatural value Catholics have always asserted; but the Church condemns those who say, with Baius, "All the works of unbelievers are sinful and the virtues of the philosophers are vices." Propositions equivalent to these are as follows: "Free Will not aided by God's grace, avails only to commit sin," and "God could not have created man at the beginning such as he is now born" (Props. 25, 27, 55, censured by St. Pius V, Oct., 1567, and by Urban VIII, March, 1641). Catholic theology admits a twofold goodness and righteousness -- the one natural, as Aristotle defines it in his "Ethics," the other supernatural inspired by the Holy Ghost. Calvin throws aside every middle term between justifying faith and corrupt desire. The integrity of Adam's nature once violated, he falls under the dominion of lust, which reigns in him without hindrance, save by the external grace now and again preventing a deeper degradation. But whatever he is or does savours of the Evil One. Accordingly the system maintained that faith (which here signifies trust in the Lutheran sense) was the first interior grace given and source of all others, as likewise that outside the Church no grace is ever bestowed. [.. To be continued..]
"If they have all been taken from a corrupt mass," he argued, "no marvel that they are subject to condemnation." But, his critics replied, "were they not antecedently predestined to that corruption?" And "is not God unjust in treating His creatures with such cruel mystery?" To this Calvin answers, "I confess that all descendants of Adam fell by the Divine will," and that "we must return at last to God's sovereign determination, the cause of which is hidden"
Here I see a contradiction.
On the one hand it is the corrupt mass and on the other the Divine will that makes them subject to condemnation...? He may be implying that because God created the corrupt mass therefore the condemnation, but the article claims only the reply he gave.
IBTOPC!!!
IBTOPC!!!
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What?
In Before The Orthodox Presbyterian Church!!!
(alluding to the fact that this will be a true popcorn thread that will likely achieve undead thread status)
The ol' "Threadum Infinitum"...
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