Chapter
XXVIII ( 01 of 11 )
Calvinism In History
Appendix Index of Subjects Index of Authors Bibliography
BEFORE THE REFORMATION
It may occasion some surprise to
discover that the doctrine of Predestination was not made a matter of
special study until near the end of the fourth century. The earlier
church fathers placed chief emphasis on good works such as faith,
repentance, almsgiving, prayers, submission to baptism, etc., as the
basis of salvation. They of course taught that salvation was through
Christ; yet they assumed that man had full power to accept or reject the
gospel. Some of their writings contain passages in which the sovereignty
of God is recognized; yet along side of those are others which teach the
absolute freedom of the human will. Since they could not reconcile the
two they would have denied the doctrine of Predestination and perhaps
also that of God's absolute Foreknowledge. They taught a kind of
synergism in which there was a co-operation between grace and free will.
It was hard for man to give up the idea that he could work out his own
salvation. But at last, as a result of a long, slow process, he came to
the great truth that salvation is a sovereign gift which has been
bestowed irrespective of merit; that it was fixed in eternity; and that
God is the author in all of its stages. This cardinal truth of
Christianity was first clearly seen by Augustine, the great
Spirit-filled theologian of the West. In his doctrines of sin and grace,
he went far beyond the earlier theologians, taught an unconditional
election of grace, and restricted the purposes of redemption to the
definite circle of the elect. It will not be denied by anyone acquainted
with Church History that Augustine was an eminently great and good man,
and that his labors and writings contributed more to the promotion of
sound doctrine and the revival of true religion than did those of any
other man between Paul and Luther.
Prior to Augustine's day the time had
been largely taken up in correcting heresies within the Church and in
refuting attacks from the pagan world in which it found itself.
Consequently but little emphasis had been placed on the systematic
development of doctrine. And that the doctrine of Predestination
received such little attention in this age was no doubt partly due to
the tendency to confuse it with the Pagan doctrine of Fatalism which was
so prevalent throughout the Roman Empire. But in the fourth century a
more settled time had been reached, a new era in theology had dawned,
and the theologians came to place more emphasis on the doctrinal content
of their message. Augustine was led to develop his doctrines of sin and
grace partly through his own personal experience in being converted to
Christianity from a worldly life, and partly through the necessity of
refuting the teaching of Pelagius, who taught that man in his natural
state had full ability to work out his own salvation, that Adam's fall
had but little effect on the race except that it set a bad example which
is perpetuated, that Christ's life is of value to men mainly by way of
example, that in His death Christ was little more than the first
Christian martyr, and that we are not under any special providence of
God. Against these views Augustine developed the very opposite. He
taught that the whole race fell in Adam, that all men by nature are
depraved and spiritually dead, that the will is free to sin but not free
to do good toward God, that Christ suffered vicariously for His people,
that God elects whom He will irrespective of their merits, and that
saving grace is efficaciously applied to the elect by the Holy Spirit.
He thus became the first true interpreter of Paul and was successful in
securing the acceptance of his doctrine by the Church.
Following Augustine there was
retrogression rather than progress. Clouds of ignorance blinded the
people. The Church became more and more ritualistic and salvation was
thought to be through the external Church. The system of merit grew
until it reached its climax in the "indulgences." The papacy came to
exert great power, political as well as ecclesiastical, and throughout
Catholic Europe the state of morals came to be almost intolerable. Even
the priesthood became desperately corrupt and in the whole catalogue of
human sins and vices none are more corrupt or more offensive than those
which soiled the lives of such popes as John XXIII and Alexander VI.
From the time of Augustine until the
time of the Reformation very little emphasis was placed on the doctrine
of Predestination. We shall mention only two names from this period:
Gottschalk, who was imprisoned and condemned for teaching
Predestination; and Wycliffe, "The Morning Star of the Reformation," who
lived in England. Wycliffe was a reformer of the Calvinistic type,
proclaiming the absolute sovereignty of God and the Foreordination of
all things. His system of belief was very similar to that which was
later taught by Luther and Calvin. The Waldensians also might be
mentioned for they were in a sense "Calvinists" before the Reformation,
one of their tenets being that of Predestination.
