Theodore Beza’s Supralapsarian Predestination

By Joel R. Beeke

“Calvin versus the Calvinists” is the battle cry in vogue with much of modern Reformation and post-Reformation scholarship. Since the 1960s many scholars have argued that the supposed Calvin-Calvinist cleavage finds its real culprit in Theodore Beza (1519–1605)—Calvin’s hand-picked successor and apparent transformer of his theology. From Ernst Bizer through Johannes Dantine and Walter Kickel to Basil Hall, Brian Armstrong, Robert Kendall, and Philip Holtrop, the thesis is championed that Beza, as the father of Reformed scholasticism, spoiled Calvin’s theology [1] by reading him through Aristotelian spectacles. [2] Beza’s departure from Calvin has been described repeatedly as scholastic, non Christological rigidity—not only in ecclesiastical discipline and doctrinal loci in general, but, more specifically, in the Bezan innovation of supralapsarian predestinarianism. [3]

In this article I aim to show that Beza’s supralapsarian tendencies did not cause him to abandon Christ-centeredness in his theology. To reach this goal, I will first describe the most common Reformed views on the order of God’s decrees in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Protestantism, after which I will focus on Beza’s major treatises on predestination.

Lapsarian Options

Though the “lapsarian question” (lapsus=the fall) has roots prior to the Reformation, [4] it first came into focus during the Reformation. Concerned with the question of the relationship between divine predestination and the fall, first- and second-generation reformers asked: Was the fall of man in Paradise actively willed or only passively foreseen by God in his eternal counsel and decree? Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the majority of the reformers argued for an active willing of God in the lapsarian question. Heinrich Bullinger and a few minor reformers refused to go this far, teaching instead that only God’s foreknowledge could be linked with the fall. Subsequent reformers and Puritans realized that Bullinger’s reasoning could not offer a solution for the relationship between the counsel of God and sin. Eventually a Reformed consensus developed that the fall must not be divorced from the divine decree. [5]

This consensus generated additional questions: Was divine reprobation ultimately based on the mere good pleasure of God or was it an act of divine justice exclusively connected with sin? Were both election and reprobation to be considered equally ultimate as acts of pure sovereignty, or was election to be viewed as an act of divine grace and reprobation as an act of divine justice? In connection with questions such as these (i.e., questions which concerned the moral order of God’s decree related to man’s eternal state), the main difference between what came to be called infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism (often abbreviated as infra and supra) came more sharply into focus.

Infralapsarians maintain that the decree of predestination must morally follow the decree of creation and the fall, believing it to be inconsistent with the nature of God for him to reprobate any man without first contemplating him as created, fallen, and sinful. The infralapsarian proposes that God’s election is in its deepest sense a loving act of grace in which God decreed to save certain individuals whom he already contemplated as created and fallen, while his reprobation is a righteous passing by of others, leaving them to their eternal rejection and condemnation. Thus, the decree of predestination must come after or below the decree of the fall (infra=below).

Supralapsarians believe that the decree of divine predestination must morally precede the decree concerning mankind’s creation and fall. They teach that God’s predestination is in its deepest sense a pure, sovereign act of good pleasure, in which God elected certain individuals and reprobated certain individuals, contemplating them in his decree as “creatible and fallible,” but not as already created and fallen. Supralapsarians stress that everything, including all decrees, flows out of sovereign good pleasure. Thus the decree of predestination must come before or above the decree of the fall (supra=above).

The point at issue in the infra-supra debate is the conceptual and moral order of the decrees of God prior to creation and the fall. Neither infras nor supras support the concept of a chronological ordering of God’s decrees. All God’s decrees are from eternity; thus, it is impossible to posit a chronologically first or last decree. Both infras and supras agreed that predestination was “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4), notwithstanding their different emphases. [6] Though both decretal orders stress God’s sovereign grace in Christ toward his elect, supralapsarianism places its stress on the sovereignty of Cod and decretal theology. Infralapsarianism accents the mercy of Cod and soteriological theology, in conjunction with the responsibility of man.

Theodore Beza

Calvin’s Genevan legatee, Theodore Beza (1519–1605), [7] pursued humanism, classical studies, literature, and law before he converted to Protestantism during “a crisis of mind, heart and body” in the late-1540s. [8] He then taught Greek at the Lausanne Academy for ten years; all the while he retained close ties with Calvin, seldom, if ever, publishing anything that was not first submitted to Calvin for approval. [9]

Beza accepted a call to the new Genevan Academy to serve as its first rector (1559–63) and as professor of theology (1559–99). He moderated Geneva’s venerable Company of Pastors (Compagnie des Pasteurs) from Calvin’s death until 1580, served as chief counselor to the French Reformed churches, and produced a varied literary corpus. When he died at age eighty-six, he had outlived by decades all the reformers who had labored to establish Protestantism throughout Europe. His long life, his position in the Geneva academy, his extensive correspondence and activity on behalf of the Reformed cause throughout Europe, his graceful style and prolific writings assured his transitional role between the turbulent era of Calvin and the new age of Protestant orthodoxy as well as his profound influence on many seventeenthcentury theologians and pastors. In this article I will examine Beza’s doctrinal treatises which deal most explicitly with predestination: Tabula praedestinationis, Confessio christianae fidei, and De praedestinationis doctrina. [10]

Tabula Praedestinationis (1555) [11]

The Tabula praedestinationis, which contains Beza’s influential diagram of the order of predestination, was probably written as a polemical tract to counter the arguments of Jerome Bolsec (c. 1524–1584), a French physician and opponent of Calvin. In his diagram, Beza divides mankind into elect and reprobate, and posits God’s decree as foundational for such cardinal doctrines as divine calling, conversion, grace, faith, justification, sanctification, the glorification of believers and the damnation of sinners, eternal life and eternal death.

From this Tabula modern scholarship gathers most of its ammunition against Beza, labeling him as rigidly theocentric, coldly deterministic, and overwhelmingly scholastic. [12] Beza is judged to be the transformer of Calvinian thought into a Reformed scholasticism that structured all theology under supralapsarian predestination, but most modern scholars have neglected to take into account two important considerations: First, Beza wrote the Tabula in response to severe attacks on Calvin’s doctrine of predestination; consequently, Beza would naturally focus on predestination more in this work than if he had written a non-polemical work of Christian theology. [13] Second, modern scholars have erred in dwelling more on the diagram than on his exposition. Without warrant, Kickel suggests that Beza’s diagram forms the base of a necessitarian system and summarizes his Christian theology. [14]

Beza’s appended commentary, however, reveals that the Tabula praedestinationis was written with a very different emphasis. In chapter one, Beza explains why predestination must be preached: “in order that those who have ears may hear and be assured of God’s eternal gracious purpose.” [15] From the outset, Beza’s concern with predestination is pastoral and consolatory; it centers upon the election of the individual. His stated purpose in preaching the “double decree” is the elect’s assurance. [16]

This strong soteriological note runs throughout the entire work, despite the implicit supralapsarianism that unfolds in chapters two and three. In fairness to Beza, note that he did not intend to set forth an explicit “ordering of decrees” in these chapters nor anywhere else in the Tabula. Full-fledged seventeenth-century supralapsarianism was not yet evident in 1555. Rather, his sense of moral priority in the ordering of the decrees flows out of a recognition of the temporal reality of sin and the fall. He makes no attempt to separate an eternal ordering of God’s decree to permit the fall from the actual human event of the fall. His focus is on salvation and damnation as present, temporal, and individual concerns. [17]

Though chapters two and three do not represent full-fledged supralapsarianism, they anticipate the supra position by their systematic balance between election and reprobation as proceeding from God’s eternal decree. Thus, on the one hand, Beza argues that the secret “first cause of [the reprobate’s] damnation is God’s decree,” while he affirms, on the other hand, that from man’s perspective the reprobate are damned for their own sins and stubborn refusal to break with the yoke of unbelief. [18] He distinguishes the public promulgation of the decree of reprobation from reprobation per se, [19] which, in turn, would lead to his parallel distinction between the divine decree from eternity and its execution in time. [20]

This distinction sets the stage for Beza’s move from eternity to the unfoldings of God’s decree in time. Beza reasons that the eternal decree necessitated the fall of mankind into sin and disobedience. Though the decree of reprobation always leads to just condemnation, and the decree of election always leads to merciful salvation, both the decree of election and of reprobation flow ultimately out of God’s sovereign pleasure. [21]

In chapter four and onward, Beza deals with the execution of the decree. Throughout these chapters, he, like Calvin, emphasizes Christ and the believer’s apprehension of redemption offered in Christ. When he argues that the distinction between the eternal decree and its execution in time raises the issue of mediation between the holy God and unholy sinners, Beza stresses Christ as foundational in election. In chapter five he states forthrightly, “Christ is the second heavenly Adam, the foundation and very substance of the elect’s salvation.” [22] The Christocentric character of Beza’s theology is crystal clear, notwithstanding the refusal of Barthian-inclined scholars to acknowledge it. [23]

Beza also argues for a larger Christological structure, capable of containing the doctrine of predestination. Therefore he denied the charge that his speaking of Christ as election’s executor negated the foundational role of Christ in the decree. He resolved this tension by distinguishing Christ as Mediator on the one hand, and as Son of God on the other. Thus, Christ is both the efficient cause of predestination together with the Father and the Spirit and the first effect of predestination itself on account of those who are mercifully elected in him. As Muller points out, this formulation demonstrates Beza’s soteriological impulse which offsets deterministic implications of some of his other formulations. [24]

Confessio Christianae Fidei (1558) [25]

Beza wrote his Confessio to persuade his father of the reasonableness of his renouncing Romanism and embracing the Reformed faith, as well as a personal statement of faith. Confessio represents Beza’s most comprehensive and systematic theological work. It reveals the stand he took on the interrelationship of various doctrines shortly after he published his now controversial Tabula. In the Confessio, Beza arranges doctrinal heads under seven major divisions: (1) the unity and trinity of God, (2) the Father, (3) the Son, (4) the Holy Ghost, (5) the Church, (6) the last judgment, and (7) the contrast between “the doctrine of the Papists and those of the holy Catholic Church.”

The only reference Beza makes to predestination in his first division of theology in Confessio deals with angels as messengers for the preservation of the elect.” [26] He places the doctrine of providence in conjunction with that of the Trinity but separate from predestination. He places Creation, the Fall, and the decrees of God, including election and reprobation, under the third head of Christology. Though he establishes a relationship between the attributes of God, providence, and predestination under Christology, thereby making his structure somewhat more rationalistic than Calvin’s, he does not draw this line out of metaphysical principles. On the contrary, he makes such connections to provide a foundational ground for the mediatorial ordination of Christ rather than to subsume predestination under providence. [27]

Three important observations may be made at this juncture: First, in Beza’s most comprehensive doctrinal treatise, predestination serves as one basic concept, not as the overarching principle of all theology. Dantine attempts to sidestep this contradiction of his basic view of Beza by noting that Beza’s lack of emphasis upon predestination in Confessio may have risen out of fear of offending his Roman Catholic father. [28] But, as Maruyama pointed out, this theory does not explain why the entire Confessio is so polemically anti-Catholic nor why its Latin edition, designed for the educated, retained a non-predestinarian scheme. [29]

Second, instead of Beza parting roads with Calvin on soteriological predestination, is it possible that Beza himself influenced Calvin in the location of predestination in the last edition of the Institutes (1559)? Not only was Confessio written three years prior to Calvin’s soteriological placement of predestination in the Institutes, but we also know that Beza discussed his work with Calvin prior to publication. [30] Though both sides of this question could be argued, one thing is certain: In the late 1550s Beza himself viewed predestination from a primarily Christological-soteriological context; otherwise he would not have placed predestination between his doctrine of the divinity of Christ and his explanation of the incarnate Lord. [31]

Finally, modern scholarship’s accusations against Beza as being rigid and cold in his doctrine of predestination run contrary to even a cursory reading of Confessio. Throughout this treatise, Beza refuses to divorce predestination from the Christian’s comfort, the walk of godly piety, and the work of redemption as a whole. One quotation will suffice:

Seeing that good works are for us the certain evidences of our faith, they also bring to us afterwards the certainty of our eternal election. For faith necessarily depends on election. Faith lays hold of Christ, by which, being justified and sanctified, we have the enjoyment of the glory to which we have been destined before the foundation of the world (Romans 8:39; Ephesians 1:3–4). This is so much the more important because the world holds it in less esteem, as if the doctrine of particular election were a curious and incomprehensible thing. On the contrary, faith is nothing other than that by which we have the certainty that we possess life eternal; by it we know that before the foundation of the world God has destined that we should possess, through Christ, a very great salvation and a most excellent glory. This is why all that we have said of faith and of its effects would be useless if we would not add this point of eternal election as the sole foundation and support of all the assurance of Christians. [32]

De Praedestinationis Doctrina (1582)

In this last treatise on the doctrine of predestination, Beza appears to have moved in a more supralapsarian direction. On several occasions he asserts that the elect and reprobate are predestined from a mass “yet unshapen” In an exposition of Romans 9, he writes:

Paul ... alludes to the creation of Adam, and rises up to the eternal purpose of God, who, before he created mankind, decreed of his own mere will and pleasure, to manifest his glory, both in saving of some whom he knew, in a way of mercy, and in destroying others, whom he also knew, in righteous judgment. And verily, unless we judge this to be the case, God will be greatly injured; because he will not be sufficiently wise, who first creates men, and looks upon them corrupt, and then appoints to what purpose he has created them: nor sufficiently powerful, if when he has taken up a purpose concerning them, he is hindered by another, so that he obtains not what he willed; nor sufficiently constant, if willingly and freely he takes up a new purpose, after his workmanship is corrupted. [33]

Nevertheless, even this treatise does not prove that the doctrine of predestination was the central dogma of Beza’s thought or theological method. [34] Interestingly, Maruyama attributes an increasing rationalization of predestination in Beza’s writings more to his “traditionalism” than to his “Scholasticism.” [35]

Conclusions

Four major conclusions about Beza’s supralapsarian predestination may be drawn from his writings:

First, Beza’s supralapsarianism can easily be overestimated. Bangs’s charge that Beza went beyond supralapsarian is irresponsible; rather, Kendall’s observation that he showed supralapsarian tendencies which would later emerge into full-fledged supralapsarianism is more accurate. [36] These tendencies are most apparent in his polemical writings in which Beza felt obliged to defend Calvinian predestination in the arena of theological debate, and ultimately moved increasingly into supralapsarian thought. Interestingly, supralapsarian tendencies are wholly absent in his eighty-seven extant sermons, which are consistently Christological, soteriological, and anti-speculative. Beza’s sermons, which emphasize Christology and soteriology significantly more than theology proper, are further evidence that his theology was not subsumed entirely under supralapsarian predestination. Nor did Beza hold supralapsarian views so narrowly that he could not unite with infralapsarians in authentic communion. The infralapsarian Confessio Gallicana was adopted by the Synod of La Rochelle in 1561 without objection from its chairman, Theodore Beza. [37] Cunningham summarizes the issues well:

The fuller discussion which this important subject [of predestination] underwent after Calvin’s death, led, as controversy usually does when conducted by men of ability, to a more minute and precise exposition of some of the topics involved in it. And it has been often alleged that Beza, in his very able discussions of this subject, carried his views upon some points farther than Calvin himself did, so that he has been described as being Calvino Calvinior. We are not prepared to deny altogether the truth of this allegation; but we are persuaded that there is less ground for it than is sometimes supposed, and that the points of alleged difference between them in matters of doctrine, respect chiefly topics on which Calvin was not led to give any very formal or explicit deliverance [such as the supra-infra debate, JRB], because they were not at the time subjects of discussion, or indeed ever present to his thoughts. [38]

Second, Beza’s departure from Calvin can be easily overestimated. Neither Calvin nor Beza had an inkling of any differences between them. Nor did the sixteenth-century reformers. In England, for example, O. T. Hargrave notes:

After those of Calvin, the works of Theodore de Beza were the most important for the Calvinist predestinarian movement in England. As with Calvin, Beza was also widely read by Elizabethan Englishmen, something over forty separate editions of his various works seeing publication during the period. And in a number of those Beza was led to expound upon the doctrine of predestination and related topics, on which points he was one of the ablest defenders of the Calvinist position, going even further if anything than Calvin himself. [39]

Here lies the key to the Calvin-Beza debate: going further than Calvin himself. Beza was prone to lean toward supralapsarianism, scholasticism, and rationalism to a greater extent than Calvin; nevertheless, the times and the defense of the Reformed faith called him to take this route. Increasing pressure was placed on the second- and third-generation reformers to expound questions relative to God’s decrees and will. Beza’s interest in expounding such questions does not apply to his whole thought but only to a few treatises, and even those treatises manifest no greater interest in that subject than shown by other sixteenth-century Calvinist theologians, such as Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563), Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562), and Girolamo Zanchi (1516–1590). [40]

In no case does Beza’s theology differ qualitatively from Calvin’s; in fact, a quantitative distinction is the only cleavage an accurate historian could safely place between them. It is most remarkable that the work from which modern scholarship builds its case against Beza, the Tabula, was not published without Calvin’s approval.

Third, Beza’s attempt to move from a Christological to a trinitarian framework was not mere speculation, but a serious attempt to make an improvement upon, and enlargement of, Calvinian theology in toto. Beza did not forfeit Calvinian Christology by moving to a more thorough trinitarian framework; on the contrary, he always insisted that predestination must be treated in connection with salvation in Christ and with the comfort of the believer. [41] His theocentrism does not deny Christocentrism. Rather, one could argue that Reformed soteriology remained Christocentric as a fruit of insisting on a theocentric causality, in contrast to Arminian soteriology which fails to be Christocentric as a result of insisting on an anthropocentric causality. [42]

Finally, some of the confusion of scholarship’s widely varied interpretations of Beza’s thought must be charged to Beza himself, for, as Muller notes, “Beza is by turns polemical and homiletical, rigid and flexible, speculative and soteriological.” [43] Tension does exist in his theology. For example, on the one hand Beza is prone to start his theology with predestination; on the other hand, he earnestly desires to be scriptural. Rather than being inconsistent in this tension, however, he walks the tightrope of Scripture. He does not start with predestination merely because it is a handy springboard for theology, nor because it provides him with a metaphysical and abstract starting point; rather, when he does begin with predestination he is motivated by his core belief that predestination is foundational in Scripture.

Beza warns against a metaphysical use of predestination. If reason contradicts Scripture, he is adamant that reason must be sacrificed. Like Calvin, he maintains that not only the will but also human reason has been seriously impaired by the Fall—so seriously that even calls reason “blindness.” Consequently, he warns against vain speculation about predestination. “The secrets of God,” he writes, “are to be highly reverenced, rather than to be searched into deeply.” Following Calvin’s hermeneutical principle of interpreting Scripture by Scripture, Beza spells out the limits of theology: “We may go no farther than God’s Word limits us in setting forth a doctrine of Scripture in a spirit of edification.” [44]

Author

Dr. Joel R. Beeke (Ph.D. Westminster Theological Seminary) is president and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, pastor of the Heritage Netherlands Reformed Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and editor of Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth. He has written numerous books, most recently Truth that Frees: A Workbook on Reformed Doctrine for Young Adults; A Reader’s Guide to Reformed Literature; Puritan Evangelism; and The Quest for Full Assurance: The Legacy of Calvin and His Successors. He is frequently called on to teach at seminaries and speak at Reformed conferences. He and his wife Mary have been blessed with three children.

Notes

1. Ernst Bizer, Frühorthodoxie und Rationalismus (Zurich: EVZ-Verlag, 1963), 6–15; Johannes Dantine, “Die Prädestinationslehre bei Calvin und Beza” (Ph.D. dissertation, Göttingen. 1965) and “Les Tabelles sur la Doctrine de la Prédestination par Théodore de Bze,” Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie 16 (1966):365-77; Basil Hall, “Calvin Against the Calvinists,” in John Calvin, edited by G. E. Duffield (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 25–28; Walter Kickel, Vernunft und Offenbarung bei Theodor Beza: Zum Problem des Verhältnisses von Theologie, Philosophie und Staat (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag des Erziehungsvereins, 1967); Brian G. Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), xvi, 38–42, 128–33. 158ff.; R. T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: University Press, 1979), 1–41 and 209ff., and “The Puritan Modification of Calvin’s Theology,” in John Calvin: His Influence in the Western World, edited by W. Stanford Reid (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 199–216; Philip Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy on Predestination, from 1551–1555 (Lampeter: Mellen, 1993).For responses in defense of Beza, see Richard Muller, “Predestination and Christology in Sixteenth Century Reformed Theology” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1976), revised as Christ and the Decrees: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988); Herman Hanko, “Predestination in Calvin, Beza, and Later Reformed Theology,” Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, X/2 (1977): 1-24; Lan McPhee, “Conserver or Transformer of Calvin’s Theology? A Study of the Origins and Development of Theodore Beza’s Thought, 1550–1570” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1979); Paul Helm, Calvin and the Calvinists (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1982); Dewey D. Wallace, Jr., Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Richard Gamble, “Switzerland: Triumph and Decline,” in John Calvin: His Influence in the Western World, 55–73; Joel R. Beeke, Assurance of Faith: Calvin, English Puritanism, and the Dutch Second Reformation (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 78–104; idem, “The Order of the Divine Decrees at the Genevan Academy: From Bezan Supralapsarianism to Turretinian Infralapsarianism,” in The Identity of Geneva: The Christian Commonwealth, 1564–1864, edited by John B. Roney and Martin I. Klauber (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997), 57–75; idem, The Quest for Full Assurance of Faith: The Legacy of Calvin and His Successors (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1999), 72–81. These contemporary responses augment William Cunningham’s careful study of the relationship of Calvin and Beza which has never been answered (The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation [1862; reprint London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1967], 345–412). For a mediating response on the Calvin vs. Beza thesis, see Jill Raitt, The Eucharistic Theology of Theodore Beza: Development of the Reformed Doctrine (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: American Academy of Religion, 1972); John Bray, Theodore Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination (Nieuwkoop: B. DeGraaf, 1975); Tadataka Maruyama, The Ecclesiology of Theodore Beza: The Reform of the True Church (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1978); Peter White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge: University Press, 1992).
2. Kickel, Vernunft und Offenbarung bei Theodor Beza, 46–68. Kickel’s attempt to prove that the influence of Aristotelian philosophy on Beza’s thought was all-pervasive is fraught with problems: (1) his sources are limited and inherently prejudicial in scope, neglecting Beza as preacher and pastor; (2) his zeal to dichotomize Calvin and Beza has led him beyond the historical fact that any substantial deviation from Calvin in Beza must be thought of as a gradual development which went unrecognized in Beza’s lifetime; (3) he fails to integrate theology and history properly in his analysis of Beza’s theology, not recognizing that Beza lived in a different theological and historical milieu than Calvin. (Cf. Lynne Courter Boughton, “Supralapsarianism and the Role of Metaphysics in Sixteenth-Century Reformed Theology,” Westminster Theological Journal 48 [1986]:63-96.)
3. Gamble, “Switzerland,” 66; Hanko, “Predestination,” 3; Maruyama, Ecclesiology of Beza, 139.
4. E.g., Charles Hodge speaks of Augustine’s infralapsarianism. Though the terminology of supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism can only be utilized anachronistically prior to the Synod of Dordt, 1618–1619 (Carl Bangs, Arminius [New York: Abingdon, 1971], 67), the heart of the debate hearkens back to the origins of the Christian Church.
5. Gerrit C. Berkouwer, Divine Election (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960), 254–77.
6. The arguments against supra and infra are well-known (cf. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, translated by George Musgrave Giver, edited by lames T. Dennison, Jr. [Philipsburg, New Jersey: P & R, 1992], 1:418; Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, volume 2 [New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 1877], 318–19; John W. Beardslee, III, “Theological Development at Geneva under Francis and Jean-Alphonse Turretin, 1648–1737” [Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1956], 400ff.; William Hastie, The Theology of the Reformed Church in its Fundamental Principles [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark], 242–52; G. H. Kersten, Reformed Dogmatics, volume 1 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980], 126–30; Berkouwer, Divine Election, 254–77; Joel R. Beeke, Jehovah Shepherding His Sheep [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982], 62–65). Less known are the positive claims of supra and infra, which can be summarized as follows: Supras assert supralapsarianism to be: (1) the position of Scripture (Proverbs 16:4; Isaiah 10:15; Ephesians 3:9–11; Romans 8:29, 9:21); (2) the position that best promotes the absolute sovereignty, omniscience, omnipotence, and glory of God; (3) the position that holds a proper teleological method of God as divine architect who always knows his end from his beginning; and (4) the position that is most consistent with God’s dealings with the angels, i.e., if God dealt with the angels in a supralapsarian manner, why not also with man? Infras assert that their view is: (1) the position of Scripture (Deuteronomy 7:6, 8; Ephesians 1:4–12); (2) the position that best upholds the righteousness and goodness of God; (3) the position that best protects Reformed theology from the charge of divine authorship of sin; and (4) the position that does not artificially separate the election of the elect from the election of Christ, and thereby avoids a “hypothetical Christ.”
7. For Bezan biography, see Friedrich C. Schlosser, Leben des Theodor de Beza (Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer, 1809); Johann Wilhelm Baum, Theodor Beza, 2 volumes (Leipzig: Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung, 1843–1851); Heinrich Heppe, Theodor Beza, Leben und ausgewahlte Schriften (Marburg: R. G. Elwet’scher Druck und Verlag, 1852–61); Henry Martin Baird, Theodore Beza: the Counsellor of the French Reformation, 1519–1605 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899); Paul F. Geisendorf, Théodore de Beze (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1949); Bray, Predestination, 22–44; David C. Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings (reprint Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981).
8. Raitt, Eucharistic Theology, 2; Baird, Beza, 32–33.
9. Correspondence de Théodore de Bze, 1:169–72; 2:72–73.
10. For a bibliography of Beza’s writings, see Maruyama, Ecclesiology, xvi-xix.
11. For a translation of the diagram, see Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, translated by G.T. Thomson (London: Allen and Unwin, 1950), 147–48. The full work was first published in English as A Briefe Declaration of the chiefe points of the Christian religion, Set Forth in a Table, translated by William Whittingham (London: Dauid Moptid and John Mather, 1575), but became better known in a subsequent translation of John Stockwood as The Treasure of Trueth, Touching the grounde works of man his salvation, and Chiefest Points of Christian Religion (London: Thomas Woodcocke, 1576).
12. E.g., Steinmitz epitomizes this view when he writes: “Predestination becomes in the hands of this speculative theologian a form of philosophical determinism scarcely distinguishable from the Stoic doctrine of fate” (Reformers in the Wings, 168–69).
13. Richard Muller, “The Use and Abuse of a Document: Beza’s Tabula Praedestinationis, The Bolsec Controversy, and the Origins of Reformed Orthodoxy,” in Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment, edited by Carl R. Trueman and R. Scott Clark (Carlisle, Cumbria: Patnernoster, 1998), 33–61. Cf. Bray, Predestination, 71.
14. Kickel, Beza, 99; cf. Bray, Predestination, 72.
15. Tabula, i, 1.
16. Tabula, i, 2. This is not to say that Beza was not specific concerning the proper order. In a 1555 letter to Calvin he describes both the infra and supra approach, and opts for the latter (Correspondence, I, 169–72).
17. Muller, “Predestination,” 206.
18. Tabula, ii, 3, 6.
19. Tabula, ii, 2.
20. Bray feels that this distinction became Beza’s “most significant original contribution to the question of predestination” (Predestination, 91). Cf. White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic, 1992), 17–19.
21. Tabula, iii, 1–3.
22. Tabula, v, i.
23. Cf. Hanko, “Predestination,” 21.
24. Muller, “Predestination,” 213.
25. Confessio Chistianae fidei, et eiusdem collation cum Papisticis haeresibus (Genevae: Eustathium Vignon, 1587); translated into English from French by James Clark as The Christian Faith (Lewes, East Sussex: Focus, 1992).
26. Confessio, ii, 3.
27. Muller, “Predestination,” 219–27; Bray, Predestination, 74–75.
28. “Les Tabelles,” 374–75.
29. Maruyama, Ecclesiology, 140n.
30. Muller, “Predestination,” 211. Though Confessio was not published until 1558, it was written at Lausanne in 1556.
31. Confessio, iii.
32. Confessio, iii, 19.
33. Translated by John Gill in his Sermons and Tracts, volume 3 (London: H. Lyon, 1815), 408–09. Cf. De praedestinationis doctrina et vero usu tractatio absolutissima. Excerpta Th. Bezae praelectionibus in nonum epistolae ad romanos caput (Geneva: EvstathivmVignon, 1582).
34. Muller, “Predestination,” 199–200.
35. Maruyama, Ecclesiology, 141.
36. Bangs, Arminius, 67; Kendall, English Calvinism, 30.
37. Dijk, De Strijd over Infra- en Supralapsarianisme, 284.
38. Cunningham, Reformers, 349. Though attempts have been made to classify Calvin as supra (Hastie, Kersten) or infra (Good, Bray), Calvin himself never addressed the lapsarian question (cf. Fred Klooster, Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977], 55–86).
39. “The Doctrine of Predestination in the English Reformation” (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1966), 204.
40.  Muller, “Predestination,” 196.
41. 41 Hanko maintains that all of the Reformed scholastics are free of this non-Christological charge (”Predestination,” 21).
42. Muller comments: “It is no longer possible to view Arminius’ doctrine as a Christological piety opposed to a rationalistic, predestinarian, metaphysic of causality.... Arminianism is a theological structure at least as speculative as any of the Reformed systems” (”Predestination,” 438).
43. “Predestination,” 219.
44. Quoted from Beza on Job and Song of Solomon respectively (Richard Gamble, class notes, Westminster Seminary, 8 March 1983).

Prayer and the Power of Contrary Choice: Who Can and Cannot Pray for God to Save the Lost?

By C. Samuel Storms

I want to introduce this article by taking us back some forty-two years to the initial publication of what soon became an evangelical classic: J. I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (InterVarsity Press, 1961). The book was an expansion of the address Packer delivered to The London Inter-Faculty Christian Union (LIFCU) on October 24, 1959, at Westminster Chapel. [1] What makes Packer’s book so instructive for us today is the utter incredulity on his part, in 1961, regarding a theological perspective that today, in 2003, is widespread and pervasive in its influence.

Packer begins his defense of divine sovereignty in salvation by appealing to what he believes is, or at least should be, an evangelical consensus on the practice of prayer. He appears to assume that no one who embraces a high view of Scripture could possibly think otherwise. It is more than simply that we pray, but also how and what we specifically ask God to do that Packer believes supports his understanding of the activity of God in saving a human soul. Here is what he says:

You pray for the conversion of others. In what terms, now, do you intercede for them? Do you limit yourself to asking that God will bring them to a point where they can save themselves, independently of Him? I do not think you do. I think that what you do is to pray in categorical terms that God will, quite simply and decisively, save them: that He will open the eyes of their understanding, soften their hard hearts, renew their natures, and move their wills to receive the Saviour. You ask God to work in them everything necessary for their salvation. You would not dream of making it a point in your prayer that you are not asking God actually to bring them to faith, because you recognize that that is something He cannot do. Nothing of the sort! When you pray for unconverted people, you do so on the assumption that it is in God’s power to bring them to faith. You entreat Him to do that very thing, and your confidence in asking rests upon the certainty that He is able to do what you ask. And so indeed He is: this conviction, which animates your intercessions, is God’s own truth, written on your heart by the Holy Spirit. In prayer, then (and the Christian is at his sanest and wisest when he prays), you know that it is God who saves men; you know that what makes men turn to God is God’s own gracious work of drawing them to Himself; and the content of your prayers is determined by this knowledge. Thus by your practice of intercession, no less than by giving thanks for your conversion, you acknowledge and confess the sovereignty of God’s grace. And so do all Christian people everywhere. [2]

He also appeals to what he believes is the underlying theological assumption for our gratitude. Why do you “thank” God for your conversion, he asks? It is, he says, “because you know in your heart that God was entirely responsible for it.” [3] You thank God because “you do not attribute your repenting and believing to your own wisdom, or prudence, or sound judgment, or good sense.” [4] Packer believes he is speaking for all Christians when he says,

You have never for one moment supposed that the decisive contribution to your salvation was yours and not God’s. You have never told God that, while you are grateful for the means and opportunities of grace that He gave you, you realize that you have to thank, not Him, but yourself for the fact that you responded to His call. Your heart revolts at the very thought of talking to God in such terms. In fact, you thank Him no less sincerely for the gift of faith and repentance than for the gift of a Christ to trust and turn to. [5]

Of course, today there is an increasing number of professing evangelicals who happily do precisely what Packer contends they “would not dream” of doing. Packer’s incredulous “Nothing of the sort!” is today’s “orthodoxy.” What Packer claims you would never attribute to the human will is the very thing advocates of libertarian freedom insist upon. What Packer says we would never tell God, indeed, that thought at which our hearts would revolt, is being preached and published at a dizzying pace in 2003.

In all fairness to Packer, one must assume that such language is intentional hyperbole, a writer’s way of jolting his readers into thinking through what he believes are the unacceptable implications of the theological system he opposes. But the fact remains that what Packer argues most certainly cannot (or should not) be the conscious intent of any thinking Christian is precisely that for most, if not all, open theists. Given the latter’s insistence on libertarian free will, what Packer contends we would never ask of God is precisely what open theists applaud as the essence of intercessory prayer. [6]

I have yet to read an open theist who does not make much of the argument from prayer. Some would even appear to have embraced this theological model in large part because it alone invests in intercessory prayer a value and efficacy that warrant its practice. One often hears open theists declare that classical theism, in its affirmation of exhaustive divine foreknowledge, destroys the foundations of prayer and transforms otherwise meaningful dialogue with God into a sham. Greg Boyd is typical of most open theists when he says: “My conviction is that many Christians do not pray as passionately as they could because they don’t see how it could make any significant difference.” [7] Again, he writes, “I do not see that any view of God captures the power and urgency of prayer as adequately as the Open view does, and, because the heart is influenced by the mind, I do not see that any view can inspire passionate and urgent prayer as powerfully as the Open view can.” [8] The same sentiment may be found in David Basinger s treatment of prayer as part of a larger concern with the practical implications of the open view of God. [9]

Clearly, open theists are convinced that their system will energize the prayer life of the Christian and help reverse the lethargy and indifference that are so prevalent in the Body of Christ. My focus is one specific element in prayer, namely, intercession for lost souls. Open theists would have us believe that they alone provide a framework within which prayer for the lost is meaningful and effective. My aim is to challenge this notion head on. I do not for a moment suggest that open theists don’t pray for the lost. Many of them (all of them, I should hope) are faithful and fervent intercessors. Neither am I saying they shouldn’t pray for the lost. What I am saying is that they cannot petition God actually to save a human soul and remain consistent with their system. What I am saying is that what open theists affirm about human freedom and the self-determination of the will precludes their asking God to intervene effectually in a human soul and bring a person to saving faith in Jesus Christ. It may well be that open theists would immediately concur. Perhaps some will say, “Yes, you are correct. What you and Packer insist is the focus of our requests on behalf of lost souls, we deny. We do pray for them, but not in the terms you have expressed.” Nevertheless, my suspicion is that open theists do pray as Packer contends all Christians should, but that they do so only at the expense of what is foundational to their theological enterprise: libertarian or self-determining freedom. My purpose is simply to make the latter point clear. Perhaps, at the end of the day, one might conclude that open theists are correct in declining to ask God to save human souls. That is not my concern. I wish to focus solely on the fact that such is precisely what they must do. The reason for this is found in their notion of libertarian freedom, to which we now turn our attention.

Libertarian Freedom: A Definition

Clark Pinnock believes that “Scripture, like human experience itself, assumes libertarian freedom, i.e., the freedom to perform an action or refrain from it.” [10] Libertarian freedom, says Pinnock, is something the biblical story simply “presupposes.” [11] Hasker provides the following definition: “On the libertarian (or ‘incompatibilist’) understanding of free will, an agent is free with respect to a given action at a given time if at that time it is within the agent’s power to perform the action and also in the agent’s power to refrain from the action.” [12] He argues that to say the action

is “within one’s power” means that nothing whatever exists that would make it impossible for the power in question to be exercised. If I am free in this sense, then whether or not the action is performed depends on me; by deciding to perform the action I bring it about that things happen in a certain way, quite different from some other, equally possible, way things might have happened had I refrained from the action. [13]

On this basis John Sanders contends that “a person does not have to act on her strongest desire. It is within the agent’s self-determining ability to change her desires.” [14] Thus a person is free if and only if he or she “could have done otherwise than she did in any given situation.” [15]

According to David Basinger, for a person to be free he must have it within his power “to choose to perform action A or choose not to perform action A. Both A and not A could actually occur; which will actually occur has not yet been determined.” [16] R. K. McGregor Wright, certainly no champion of libertarian freedom, defines it similarly as

the belief that the human will has an inherent power to choose with equal ease between alternatives. This is commonly called “the power of contrary choice: or “the liberty of indifference.” This belief does not claim that there are no influences that might affect the will, but it does insist that normally the will can overcome these factors and choose in spite of them. Ultimately, the will is free from any necessary causation. In other words, it is autonomous from outside determination.” [17]

Frame writes:

On the libertarian view, our character may influence our decisions, as may our immediate desires. But we always have the freedom to choose contrary to our character and our desires, however strong. This position assumes that there is a part of human nature that we might call the will, which is independent of every other aspect of our being, and which can, therefore, make a decision contrary to every motivation. [18]

Pinnock provides this lucid summary:

What I call “real freedom” is also called libertarian or contra-causal freedom. It views a free action as one in which a person is free to perform an action or refrain from performing it and is not completely determined in the matter by prior forces—nature, nurture or even God. Libertarian freedom recognizes the power of contrary choice. One acts freely in a situation if, and only if, one could have done otherwise. Free choices are choices that are not causally determined by conditions preceding them. It is the freedom of self-determination, in which the various motives and influences informing the choice are not the sufficient cause of the choice itself. The person makes the choice in a self-determined way. A person has options and there are different factors influencing us in deciding among them but the decision one takes involves making one of the reasons one’s own, which is anything but random. [19]

Be it noted that libertarians do not argue that there are no causes for human choices, but only that “none of them is sufficient to incline the will decisively in one direction or another.” [20] According to the notion of a “self-determining” being, “the power to decide between alternatives, to turn possible courses of actions into actual courses of action, must ultimately lie within themselves.” [21] Self-determination means that “regarding any genuinely free act, free agents themselves ultimately transition a range of possible acts into one actual act. ... They are the ultimate cause and explanation for the move from ‘possibly this or possibly that’ to ‘certainly this and certainly not that.’“ [22] The most important point, at least in terms of my purpose in this article, is that according to libertarianism “the ultimate source and explanation” [23] for one’s deeds must reside within oneself.

Asking God for “What”? [24]

This brings me to the question: Given the existence of libertarian freedom, precisely what may an open theist ask God to do in and on behalf of an unregenerate person? One thing he may not ask is that God act on the soul with sufficient power and persuasion that the unbelieving heart believes. Why do I say this? Because, as John Piper explains, those who affirm the power of contrary choice

do not believe that God has the right to intrude upon a person’s rebellion, and overcome it, and draw that person effectually to faith and salvation. They do not believe that God has the right to exert himself so powerfully in grace as to overcome all the resistance of a hardened sinner. Instead they believe that man himself has the sole right of final determination in the choices and affections of his heart toward God. Every person, they say, has final self-determination in whether they will overcome the hardness of their hearts and come to Christ. [25]

According to libertarianism, the most that God can do is restore in fallen people a measure of enabling grace (indeed, as I point out below, open theists cannot consistently ask that God even do this). This being the case, the ultimate reason one person repents and another does not is to be found in them, not God. My question is this: Does enabling grace actually and effectually save anyone? The answer is, of course, no. It only makes it possible that each soul might believe. If that is the case, when an open theist prays for the lost he is not really praying for God to act upon their souls or to influence their wills so as to actually and effectually bring them to saving faith and repentance, but only to act so as to make it possible for the soul itself to act in such a way that salvation will be the result. Pinnock’s description of God’s influence on the human soul confirms this point (in all the following statements the emphasis is mine):

• God puts the question and does everything possible to win our consent but ... “the final decision, the final right of refusal, he has vested in us, and we, not God, are answerable for the answer we return.” [26]
• God’s grace is a persuasive not a coercive power. God does not force people to love him, as if that were possible, but pursues personal relations. [27]
• Grace motivates the sinner to come home; it does not compel. [28]
• God reveals his love for us in Christ and inspires us by the Spirit to respond. God enables us to make the choice, but he empowers by motivating inspiration and not through irresistible force. [29]
• The grace of God at work in us is always preparing us to receive more grace. There is a role for human participation in salvation but it is grounded in God’s gracious empowering, not in our inherent abilities. [30]
• Rather than thinking of God as creating a new state in us, we should think of God as motivating us to make a choice. [31]
• Our very desire to respond to God reflects the grace of God at work in us, but its effectiveness depends on our cooperating with it. God does not save us without our participation. [32]

Thus, according to Pinnock, God “does everything possible” to bring someone to faith short of actually bringing someone to faith. God persuades, motivates, inspires by the Spirit, enables, prepares, and graciously empowers. Pinnock rightly envisions the unregenerate soul as “dissenting” from the gospel (if indeed his “consent” must be “won”), as being “unpersuaded” of its truth, lacking motivation to believe and feeling “uninspired” to repent given his “desire” to remain in sin. So what precisely is it that Pinnock is asking God to do? For him to act on such a will in any degree is to move it contrary to present preference. But how can this be done without depriving the will of “ultimate responsibility” for what it prefers? If the “self” must exercise ultimate “determination” for all present preferences, God can’t. And if God can’t, it is futile for us to ask him to. Pinnock contends that we are not asking God to “move” the will at all, but simply to give the will good reasons for choosing to move itself. But if such be true we are then not asking God to exert saving or converting or regenerating influence on the soul, which is precisely my point.

Boyd concurs in the nature of God’s operation on the soul. Libertarian or self-determining freedom would demand that, in the case of any particular act of will, God is not ultimately responsible. Only the individual free moral agent is responsible. One wonders, yet again, if this be the case, what is it that we are petitioning God to do in an unbeliever’s soul when we intercede for their salvation? If God cannot be “ultimately responsible” for the transition of this soul from unbelief to belief, for what should one pray? One cannot pray that God effectually and efficaciously save this soul, for if God were to do so then “ultimate responsibility” would shift from the individual to God, something that is antithetical to the notion of self-determination. Boyd wishes to retain the idea of “causal conditions” which serve to “specify the parameters within which our behavior must operate.” [33] But “these causal conditions (including our reasons and desires) do not meticulously determine our particular actions. Given the exact same set of conditions, we could have done otherwise. It was up to us as free agents to decide.” [34]

One presumes that among these “causal conditions” is the activity of God’s Spirit on the human soul. God may communicate by revelation or illumination reasons why Christianity is true; may orchestrate providentially an encounter or experience or sight that confirms the truth of Christianity. But how much communication is permitted? How clear can it be? How impressive is the evidence? How powerful is the encounter? According to libertarianism, all such inducements or acts of illumination or providential encounters must be ultimately ineffective, must fall short of actually causing the transition from unbelief to belief. Simply put, according to libertarianism, there is a definitive limit beyond which God cannot go in exerting influence on the way people think, feel, and choose.

At no point can God exert such influence on the will of an individual that would invariably result in faith. God must be meticulously and scrupulously careful that his work of illumination is not too clear nor his arguments too convincing nor his reasoning too logical nor his love too appealing nor his conviction too painful nor his providential oversight of external circumstances too stunning.

Open theists, as expected, deny irresistible grace. Boyd argues that “God graciously makes it possible for us to believe. But he does not make it necessary for us to believe.” [35] But how can God make it even “possible” for us to believe without effectually overcoming at some point our volitional resolve to disbelieve, or whatever volitional resolve accounts for the impossibility that God’s grace has now effectually neutralized? If it is said that God restores volitional capacity lost in the fall, that is to be “ultimately responsible” for the capacity to believe, i.e., it is to act in such a way as to overcome the incapacity to believe, an incapacity that is the volitional preference of the unbeliever. If all humanity is in a state where it is “impossible” for them to believe and God exerts an influence so as to effectually cause their transition to a state in which it is now “possible” for them to believe, then God is “ultimately responsible” for a volitional transition which then serves as the foundation and fount for all subsequent volitions. [36] But if so, how can any human volition be morally meaningful in the libertarian scheme?

It would appear that advocates of libertarian freedom have reduced prayer to the following: “Oh God, please do something ineffectual in John’s soul in such a way that you don’t bring him to act contrary to his current convictions.” But couldn’t we pray that God would “plant in the lost soul an inner unrest and longing for Christ?” Let me say two things in response to that question.

First, to say that in response to our prayers God might cause the unregenerate soul to experience “unrest” and “longing” implies that the soul, of its own accord, preference, and choice is, in fact, “at rest” without Christ and “longs” to remain in unbelief. Therefore, any action God might take in answering our prayer for that lost soul would be a violation of the soul’s self-determination to say no to Christ. In other words, you must ask yourself this question: “When I ask God to plant unrest and longing in an unregenerate soul, what exactly am I asking God to do?” It would seem that for God to do anything at all that might to any degree sway or influence the unbelieving heart to believe or the unwanting heart to want, is to violate or infringe upon the soul’s alleged right to determine itself. To influence the will to choose against its present choice is inconsistent with the belief in absolute free will and self-determination.

Second, if one should somehow overcome this first problem and conclude that it is, in fact, legitimate for God to “plant a longing” in an unregenerate person’s heart, another question must be answered: “How strong and powerful and persuasive can that longing be which you are praying that God plant in his heart?” As Piper notes, “there are two kinds of longings God could plant in an unbeliever’s heart. One kind of longing is so strong that it leads the person to pursue and embrace Christ. The other kind of longing is not strong enough to lead a person to embrace Christ. Which should he pray for? If we pray for the strong longing, then we are praying that the Lord would work effectually and get that person saved. If you pray for the weak longing, then we are praying for an ineffectual longing that leaves the person in sin (but preserves his self-determination).” [37]

This would appear to mean that people who really believe that man must have the ultimate power of self-determination can’t consistently pray that God would convert unbelieving sinners. Why? “Because, if they pray for divine influence in a sinner’s life they are either praying for a successful influence (which takes away the sinner’s ultimate self-determination), or they are praying for an unsuccessful influence (which is not praying for God to convert the sinner). So either you give up praying for God to convert sinners or you give up ultimate human self-determination.” [38] It would appear that open theists must opt for the former.

Let’s remember that a person in need of conversion is “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1); he is “enslaved to sin” (Romans 6:17; John 8:34); “the god of this world has blinded his mind that he might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians. 4:4); his heart is hardened against God (Ephesians 4:18) so that he is hostile to God and in rebellion against God’s will (Romans 8:7). If the individual has the ultimate responsibility of self-determination, you cannot petition God to make him alive or release his will from bondage or enlighten his mind or soften his heart, so that hostility is effectually replaced with affection and rebellion is actually turned to submission. But if God cannot do such things in the human soul, in what meaningful sense can it be said that God saves a soul in answer to your prayers for him?

Only the person who rejects human self-determination can consistently pray for God to save the lost. My prayer for unbelievers is that God will do for them what he did for Lydia: he opened her heart (which would have otherwise remained “closed”) so that she gave heed to what Paul said (Acts 16:14). I will pray that God, who once said, “Let there be light!”, will by that same creative power utterly and effectually dispel the darkness of unbelief and “shine in their hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). I will pray that he will “take out their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). I will pray that they be born not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God (John 1:13). And with all my praying I will try to “be kind and to teach and correct with gentleness and patience, if perhaps God may grant them repentance and freedom from Satan’s snare” (2 Timothy 2:24–26). The only alternative, it would appear, is to ask God not to be successful in, as Pinnock says, doing “everything possible” to win the sinner’s consent. We would be left asking God to diminish or moderate the appeal of Christ’s beauty lest he irresistibly overcome the sinner’s self-determination to remain in unbelief. [39]

Conclusion

My purpose in this article was not to offer a critique of libertarian freedom or the power of contrary choice. [40] Neither was it my intent to challenge the theological or biblical foundations of open theism. My principal aim was simply to alert us to the consequences of libertarian freedom for intercessory prayer. Thus I conclude with these words from Bruce Ware with whom I wholeheartedly agree:

If we know God cannot penetrate the stubborn heart of an individual, if we know God cannot soften and move decisively the free will of another person, then are we not asking God to do something he simply cannot do? Or if we believe ... that God loves all perfectly and so would already be working in every way he could for their good, then would we not wonder what is the point of prayer? What are we asking God for that he is not already doing? Do I care about this person more than God does? Of course the answer is no. So, is not God already working in ways far better than anything I can imagine in order to accomplish his purposes? And yet, if God ultimately cannot break through the stubbornness, apathy, and misconceptions of free moral creatures, then all this calls for the question, What really, then, is the point of prayer? [41]

Author

Dr. C. Samuel Storms is professor of theology at Wheaton College. He adapted a paper presented at the Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting in 2002 for this article.

Notes

1. The history and widespread impact of Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God has been chronicled by Alister McGrath in his book, J. I. Packer: A Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997), 89–96.
2. J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1971 [third American printing]), 15–16.
3. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, 12 (emphasis mine).
4. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, 12.
5. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, 13.
6. It must be noted that the point applies no less to anyone, of whatever theological orientation, who advocates libertarian freedom.
7. Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 95.
8. Boyd, God of the Possible, 98.
9. See his chapter, “Practical Implications,” in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1994), especially pages 156–62.
10. Clark Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 41.
11. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 41.
12. William Hasker, “A Philosophical Perspective,” in The Openness of God, 136–37.
13. Hasker, “Philosophical Perspective,” 137.
14. John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1998), 221.
15. Sanders, The God Who Risks, 221.
16. David Basinger, “Middle Knowledge and Classical Christian Thought,” Religious Studies 22 (1986), 416.
17. R. K. McGregor Wright, No Place for Sovereignty [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1996], 43–44.
18. John Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P & R Publishing, 2001, 120–21.
19. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 127.
20. Stephen J. Wellum, “Divine Sovereignty-Omniscience, Inerrancy, and Open Theism: An Evaluation,” in JETS 45 (June 2002):259.
21. Gregory Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 2001), 60.
22. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 375 (emphasis mine).
23. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 60 (emphasis mine). Others would insist that affirming the human will to be the ultimate source, cause, or explanation of the act by which one embraces Jesus Christ does not itself preclude gratitude to God for salvation. See the discussion in Terrance Tiessen, Providence & Prayer: How Does God Work in the World? (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 2000, 91–93.
24. The Bible itself provides little, if any, explicit guidance on what it is that we are to ask God to do when we ask him to save someone. That we are to pray, no one disputes. That we are to pray for the lost to be saved, no one denies. Jesus does not pray for people to believe but for the unity of those who will believe through the evangelistic word of those who already believe (see John 17:20–21). Paul’s grief for lost souls is intensely sincere (Romans 9:1–5), and his “heart’s desire” and “prayer to God for them” is for their “salvation” (Romans 10:1; see also his admonition in 1 Timothy 2:1–2 that “prayers” and “petitions” be offered up on behalf of “all men”). His advice to Timothy that he “with gentleness” correct those in opposition is made on the grounds that “perhaps God may grant them repentance” (2 Timothy 2:25). The problem is that in none of these instances is it specified what we are to ask or petition God to do in the heart of an unbeliever.
25. John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah, 2000), 217.
26. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 163.
27. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 163.
28. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 164.
29. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 164.
30. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 164
31. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 165.
32. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 166.
33. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 72.
34. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 72.
35. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 83.
36. For what is perhaps the best treatment of the notion of prevenient or enabling grace from an Arminian perspective, see H. Orton Wiley in his Christian Theology, 3 volumes (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 1952), 2:344–57.
37. Piper, The Pleasures of God, 219.
38. Piper, The Pleasures of God, 219.
39. This understanding of intercessory prayer finds expression in arenas other than praying for the lost. Tiessen proposes a model in which “we can pray for the victory of God’s gracious persuasion in the minds of those who rule. We can pray for the spread of the gospel in societies and that God will work directly on the hearts and minds of rulers, giving them impulses to do good, a desire for justice and mercy toward those whom they govern. God can send them good advisers and encourage them to take that good advice” (Providence & Prayer, 356). We can pray for effectual divine influence because of his definition of freedom as “the ability to act according to one’s own wishes, without coercion, rather than in terms of the power of contrary choice (libertarian free will),” 338.
40. The most extensive and, to my mind, convincing critique of libertarian freedom is the classic work of Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, edited by Paul Ramsey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973). I find it interesting that, whereas open theists often mention Edwards’ work, none, so far as I can tell, have actually engaged and responded in depth to his arguments. I honestly wonder how many open theists have actually read his treatise. See also my analysis in the article, “Jonathan Edwards on the Freedom of the Will,” Trinity Journal 3 NS (1982):131-69. More recently John Frame has provided a penetrating response to libertarian freedom in his book No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P & R Publishing, 2001).
41. God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2000), 174–75.

The Plan Behind the Promise: Luther’s Proclamation of Predestination

By Robert Kolb

Upon returning from a visitation in Lower Saxony, probably in 1543, Martin Luther’s Wittenberg colleague Caspar Cruciger had reported that he had met a person who was apparently a mutual acquaintance. This man had been “taken captive by strange and peculiar ideas regarding God’s predestination and had become totally confused.” [1] He had wanted to commit suicide because he thought that he could not possibly have been predestined to salvation, and so Luther wrote him a letter to bring him away from the hidden abyss of God’s mysterious will and direct him to the comfort of the gospel of Jesus Christ. [2]

Luther Writing to a Friend

The biblical revelation of God presents him as a choosing God from Abraham’s call in Genesis 12 on. Paul struggled with his own conceptions of God’s plan for the chosen people of Israel, above all in Romans 9, and sought to deal with his own questions regarding the failure of many in Israel, God’s elect nation, to come to faith in Jesus the Messiah. The early Church shied away from the topic of predestination, for the ancient world suffered under a widespread fatalistic resignation. Augustine of Hippo placed predestination once again at the center of the Church’s concern, developing his doctrine of God’s choosing in reaction to the claims of Pelagius that sinners could contribute to their own salvation apart from God’s grace. Augustine confessed that human salvation lies wholly in God’s hands, that his grace alone predestined those whom he had chosen and ensured that the faithful would persevere until the end. Medieval theologians interpreted and applied Augustine’s position in a variety of ways, and by Luther’s time some had defused it by focusing on human contributions to the process of salvation in which grace played a key role but human works were not excluded.

As a young monk suffering from scruples that led him to a morbid introspection and sense of unworthiness before the wrath of the just God, Luther doubted that he was predestined to salvation. Johannes Staupitz, his monastic superior, pointed him to the wounds of Christ and led him to trust in God’s mercy rather than persist in focusing on his own sins. This led Luther to believe that great comfort for uncertain and troubled consciences should flow from God’s choice of human creatures to be his own children in the plan he made for human salvation in Christ before the foundations of the world. The good news of God’s saving sinners through Christ rested upon this decision of God to choose those whom he would bring to faith apart from any contribution or consideration they would render. [3] But the Reformer also recognized that the mystery of God’s plan for salvation brought doubts and despair to some who focused their thoughts about predestination somewhere other than on the promise of salvation in Jesus Christ. His answer to this despairing man demonstrates that his doctrine of predestination was not merely a topic in a theological system but rather a tool in delivering God’s consolation through the gospel of Christ.

The Reformer’s understanding of God’s election of believers cannot be correctly comprehended apart from his distinction of law and gospel. His reading of Paul, particularly of Romans, had led him to interpret all Scripture through the hermeneutical key of discerning whether to apply God’s promise or his commands in a given situation. For he believed that to speak of predestination is to describe one fundamental element of God’s promise of salvation. It had no other purpose. He was convinced that sinners resisting God’s Word could not make any sense out of this promise, and so they must be given the condemning Word of God’s demands for human responsibility. It would be folly, Luther was convinced, to divert them to speculation about God’s eternal plans for them. Only the broken and despairing sinner could properly comprehend that God’s love comes to sinners apart from any human performance, simply because the Lord chose them to be his own. Furthermore, Luther’s presentation of predestination to salvation cannot be comprehended apart from the recognition that God’s Word, in oral, written, and sacramental forms, does not merely describe a heavenly reality. The promise of the gospel of Christ actually delivers the favor of God and the forgiveness of sins as it is spoken and heard, as it is read, as it is received in the sacramental forms of the Word.

These two points are clear from Luther’s rather long letter to this person whom he called a friend in the address of the letter. Luther confirmed the presupposition that he had made crystal clear in his famous Bondage of Human Choice [De servo arbitrio] in 1525. [4] Writing on a field of combat laid out by Erasmus, he had there insisted, as he did some two decades later, that “God the Almighty knows all things and every action and every thought in all his creatures must take place according to his will.” This letter of 1543 reflects the same thought as he proceeded from Ephesians 1:5, “He destined us according to the purpose of his will.” Luther immediately informed his friend to define that will of God according to Ezekiel 18:23 or 32, “It is not God’s will that the sinner die but rather that he be converted and live.” God’s mercy extends from one horizon to the other and rests upon all those who repent and trust in him, Luther assured the receiver of this letter. God comes to those who call upon him with the righteousness that he bestows through faith in Christ (Romans 10:12; 3:22). When the devil introduces godless thoughts that divert us from the comfort of God’s Word, we must flee to Christ. Listen to the beloved Son of the Father (Matthew 3:17), Luther advised.

The Wittenberg professor himself had often struggled with his own doubts regarding God’s disposition toward him. When he wrote to his friend about being “hard and stubborn, completely deaf, refusing to lift your eyes toward heaven, as a despairing, stubborn human creature, with ears that cannot hear, thinking God will not listen to you,” he was reflecting his own struggles with his former image of God as well as Cruciger’s report of his correspondent. He knew whereof he was speaking when he wrote:

[T]hen you should listen to and look to the Son, who stands upon your path, where everyone must go, and hear his call, “Come!” Come away from your worthless ideas that you will not be saved, with such illusions. “Come, all of you who are worn out and are bearing heavy loads, and I will refresh you” (Matthew 11:28).

Luther concluded that Jesus’ “all” excludes no one. All people are called to Christ, who is the only way and path (John 14:6). He calls those who are discouraged and downtrodden, not the arrogant who wish to continue to sin. He calls those who are exhausted and at the end of their own powers. Such people God comforts with the promise of salvation that he planned for them from eternity.

This promise of God is certain, Luther assured his reader, for God chose and created his own people for salvation. He did not choose them to be destroyed but to be saved, according to Ephesians 1. Luther then warned him against trying to use reason or God’s law to argue about God’s choice of the elect. For God has forbidden speculation. Paul had simply extolled the mysteries and wonders of God’s ways as he contemplated God’s way of choosing his own (Romans 11:33–36). The Reformer called for trust in God’s promise, and he did not try to go beyond trust in the promise to explanations that solve the mystery of God’s way of operating in the sinful world. [5]

Luther closed his letter by repeating to his troubled friend that he should not try to figure out God’s ways. The priests and Levites under the cross probably speculated about the propriety of promising a thief the gift of paradise, but reason cannot penetrate God’s plan and purpose. Trust in God’s Word governs all our thoughts, and so we simply cling to the promise of his gospel and claim his assurance, persevering to the end (2 Timothy 2:12–13). For God wants to drive out all the ideas the devil plants in our hearts and comfort us with the forgiveness of sins God promised in Galatians 3:22 and 26. [6]

Luther Lecturing to his Students

Not long before he wrote this letter, probably about the end of 1541, Luther had dealt with predestination in an excursus as he was lecturing on Genesis 26. Isaac’s denial that Rebecca was his wife, an example of believers’ weakness of faith(Genesis 26:7), gave the opportunity to comment on “doubt, God, and God’s will.” The Wittenberg professor felt compelled to warn his students against the argument that had been circulating within some circles: “If I am predestined, I shall be saved, whether I do good or evil. If I am not predestined, I shall be condemned regardless of my good works.” Such statements render all that Christ did for sinners null and void. Such an idea the Reformer rejected out of hand. The first problem that this false view of God’s predestining love caused was immorality. A misunderstanding of God’s choice of his own children could lead to dissolute living. Predestination is not a license to sin, Luther insisted, but God’s plan for giving the life of new obedience to those whom the Holy Spirit has brought to faith. Luther labeled such licentious ideas “devilish and poisoned darts and original sin itself.” For these people were “not satisfied with the divinity that has been revealed and in the knowledge of which they were blessed, but they wanted to penetrate to the depth of the divinity.” He rejected the argument that concerns about religion and salvation were “uncertain and useless” because “what God has determined beforehand must happen” [7] even though he had always maintained that God governs all things and determines them through his eternal will. (He made this clear above all in, On the Bondage of Human Choice. [8]) In the case of his argument before his students in 1541 he was not refuting Erasmus’s views of the freedom of the will but rather was alarmed by antinomianism that sought a license to sin in such deterministic views.

Luther was also moved by the despair that certain people experienced because they believed that God has predestined some, “probably me among them,” to damnation. The Reformer went on to treat that problem as well. God did not send his Son to suffer and be crucified for us and he did not give us the sacraments with their comfort and assurance, Luther announced to his students, to leave us in doubt as to whether we are among the saved or among the damned! Against this kind of “delusions of the devil with which he tries to cause us in order to doubt and disbelieve” Luther asserted that God counters such despair and such contempt for God with the Bible, his baptismal promise, and all the blessings that he uses to strengthen faith against uncertainty and doubt. Luther anchored the relationship between God and his chosen people in God’s Word, which had created faith in Christ in their hearts. This faith produces peace and assurance because it rests upon Christ alone. The basis of his explaining such assurance lies in his distinction between the Hidden God and the Revealed God. God, as he is in his essence, lies beyond human grasp and human imagination. “God has most sternly forbidden investigating this divinity,” Luther told his students. “Let me be hidden where I have not revealed myself to you,” Luther echoed God’s admonition, “or you will be the cause of your own destruction, just as Adam fell in a horrible manner. For whoever investigates my majesty will be overwhelmed by my glory.” [9] God detests reason’s attempts to plumb the depths of his way of working.

God has refused to reveal how his foreknowledge and predestination function “by way of reason and fleshly wisdom,” Luther maintained. Instead, God decided that “from an unrevealed God I will become a revealed God. Nevertheless, I will remain the same God. I will be made flesh, or send my Son. He shall die for your sins and shall rise from the dead. In this way I will fulfill your desire so that you may be able to know whether you are predestined or not.” Again Luther pointed to Christ “as he lies in the manger and on the lap of his mother, as he hangs on the cross.” Luther spoke directly to believers who had come to faith through the Holy Spirit’s use of God’s Word in their lives. “If you listen to him (Matthew 17:5), are baptized in his name, and love his Word, then you are surely predestined and are certain of your salvation.” That was the gospel, Luther knew. “But if you revile or despise the Word, then you are damned.” That was his proclamation of the law. [10]

Luther told his students the story of a woman in Torgau who had come to him with tears in her eyes, claiming she could not believe. He summarized God’s work in Christ on her behalf with the outline of the Apostles’ Creed, and assured her that her doubts were but satanic deceptions. If someone would say, “I do not know whether I am remaining in faith,” Luther counseled accepting the promise and the predestining plan of God that lies behind it, and simply clinging to God as he has revealed himself in Christ, knowing that God will be faithful to those who do so. He recalled his own struggle with overwhelming doubts. He would have died in despair, he claimed, if his monastic superior Johannes Staupitz had not comforted him by directing him away from his speculations about God’s disposition toward him, pointing him instead to “the wounds of Christ and the blood that was shed for you. From these, predestination will shine. ...He says to you: ‘You are my sheep because you hear my voice’ and ‘no one shall snatch you out of my hands’ (John 10:27–28).” Luther noted that “many who did not resist such a trial in this manner were hurled headlong into destruction.” [11]

Luther concluded that believers begin by focusing on God’s manifestation of himself in the flesh to snatch them from death and Satan’s power, and they are moved to their “great joy and delight that God is unchangeable, that he works with unchangeable necessity, and that he cannot deny himself but keeps his promises,” as Paul stated in 2 Timothy 2:13. For ministering to those bending under the weight of their doubts, Luther counseled his students to direct them to the Word of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, where God’s promises become concrete. These future pastors in his lecture hall might indeed expect to have doubts about other people, their professor told them, but “concerning God you must maintain with assurance and without any doubt that he is well disposed toward you on account of Christ and that you have been redeemed and sanctified through the precious blood of the Son of God. And in this way you will be sure of your predestination since all the prying and dangerous questions about God’s secret counsels have been removed—the questions to which Satan tries to drive us, just as he drove our first parents.” [12]

Luther’s Proclamation of Predestination

From these two illustrations of Luther’s treatment and use of the doctrine of predestination, it is clear, first of all, that Luther’s doctrine of predestination is what the Swedish Reformation scholar Rune Söderlund has called a “broken” or asymmetrical doctrine of God’s election of his own people. [13] By that Söderlund means that Luther’s approach to speaking of God’s choosing of his own before the foundations of the world does not fit logically together. The Wittenberg Reformer held God’s sovereignty and human responsibility in tension. He could do so because the distinction of law and gospel governed his use of God’s Word. His distinction of the Hidden God and the Revealed God prevented him from delving into metaphysical speculation that goes beyond the biblical assertions. Thus, he resisted two temptations: first, it refuses to “smooth out” God’s claim that he had chosen believers totally apart from their efforts and performance by assigning to him responsibility for the damnation of others and, second, it rejects the logical conclusion that if human beings are responsible for their own condemnation, they must be at least in some very small way contributing to the ability of God’s grace to work in their lives. Luther’s insistence that all biblical teaching must be delivered to human creatures within the distinction of law and gospel required this “broken” or asymmetrical but biblical presentation of God’s total responsibility for salvation and total human responsibility for sinners’ rebellion against God. That does not make sense from the perspective of human calculations, but it leaves intact both the biblical announcement that God’s will is that sinners find life and that all people be saved (Ezekiel 18:23, 32; 1 Timothy 2:4), and that human beings do die in their sins and enter into eternal condemnation (Matthew 25:41). Therefore, Luther addressed the consolation and assurance of God’s love for individuals through the gospel of election while proclaiming the law that condemns to those who reject the promises of God.

Steeped in Luther’s thought and deeply committed to making the comfort of his understanding of God’s election of his own children dear, the contemporary American theologian Gerhard Forde has defined the task of all Christian thought: “theology,” he writes, “is for proclamation.” He recognizes that there are alternatives for the proclamation of the biblical message regarding God. But only one can be faithful to Scripture: that which acknowledges that the God who reveals himself in its pages is a God who has always made choices. He is an electing God. He chose Abraham from among the countless individuals of his time to be the father of his people. He chose Israel from among the nations to be his special people. He promises that he has chosen the faithful to be his very own family. Forde points out that to eviscerate this confession regarding the very nature of God with a universalistic view transgresses the definitions of the way God is and works found throughout Scripture. To preach to individuals that they will be saved because everybody will be saved opens the door both to licentiousness and to the despair of those who fear that their mistakes and failures have made them the exceptions to that message. It deprives God, Forde argues, of his credibility. A view that suggests that the elect of God are those who have opened their hearts and lives to him apart from the Holy Spirit deprives him of his divine power. For he alone is the re-creator of life, and to insist on human responsibility for response to God’s grace apart from the Spirit’s working is to deliver people into either arrogance or despair. Indeed, God calls upon his people to respond to his promise and to exercise the responsibility that is inherent in the humanity he has created for us. God indeed has chosen those who will trust in him, but their trust in him is a creation of the Holy Spirit, not of their own doing. God’s foreknowledge of his faithful people is a creative foreknowledge. He did not passively peek into the future when he chose his people, checking out whether they would decide to believe in him and obey him. He actively looked into the future and created his faithful flock. [14] When his people are wondering if they truly belong to the elect, only the promise of God that comes from his own heart, unconditioned by their disposition or performance, can comfort them and give them the assurance that nothing can separate them from God’s love.

Second, in both his letter of 1543 and in his lectures some months earlier, the Wittenberg Reformer inseparably joined together God’s plan for salvation and his delivery of salvation through his Word. Luther believed he could not proclaim God’s unconditional love of those the Holy Spirit brings to faith—a love that is grounded in his choice of his own people before the foundations of the cosmos—without linking it inextricably with the instruments of the Spirit, the Word of God in oral, written, and sacramental forms. Luther loathed speculation about God’s hidden will because of the despair he himself had endured when he had not been able to know what a distant and veiled God might have in store for him. He found comfort only in the blood and resurrection of Christ and in the promise of the Word in all its forms. For he trusted that God does actually deliver what he talks about when he speaks from the pages of Scripture, in the proclamation of other believers, in the sacraments that he has appointed to convey his Word of new life. God’s choice stands behind his Word, but his Word alone gives access to that choice. His Word gives accurate access to that choice, and therefore believers can rest assured in the promise of God.

That was Martin Luther’s confidence, and that brought him to sing what he consistently preached,

But God beheld my wretched state before the world’s foundation,
And, mindful of his mercies great, he planned my soul’s salvation.
A father’s heart he turned to me. Sought my redemption fervently:
He gave his dearest treasure. [15]

That treasure is Jesus Christ, whom Luther confessed as Savior. Through him God chose his own—those whom he would grant new life through the promise created by Christ’s death and resurrection.

Author

Robert Kolb is professor of systematic theology and director of The Institute for Mission Studies at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. He is the author of eight books, some of which are Confessing the Faith: Reformers Define the Church, 1530–1580, For All the Saints, and Changing Perceptions of Martyrdom and Sainthood in the Lutheran Reformation. Most recently he was co-editor (with Timothy J. Wengert) of the new English translation of The Book of Concord.

Notes

1. Dr. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–1993 [henceforth WA]), Briefe 10:489.
2. WA, 10:488–496.
3. WA, 10:492.
4. WA, 18:600–787, Luther’s Works (Saint Louis/Philadelphia: Concordia/ Fortress, 1958–1986 [henceforth LW]) 33:15–295.
5. WA Briefe, 10:489–92.
6. WA Briefe, 10:493–94.
7. WA 43:457,32—458,27, LW 5:42–43.
8. WA 18:614–20, 634–39; LW 33:36–44, 64–70.
9. WA 43:458,28—460,2; LW 5:43–44, 45.
10. WA 43:459,21–34, LW 5:44–45.
11. WA 43:460,2—461,16; LW 5:45–47.
12. WA 43:461,16—463,17; LW 5:47–49.
13. Rune Söderlund, Ex praevisa fide. Zum Verständnis der Prädestinationslehre in der lutherischen Orthodoxie (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1983), especially 20–38.
14. Gerhard O. Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 30–37.
15. The fourth of the ten stanzas of Luther’s hymn, “Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice,” in the translation of Richard Massie, The Lutheran Hymnal (St. Louis: Concordia, 1941), hymn 387; cf. Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit bis zu Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts. Edited by Philipp Wackernagel (reprint, Hildesheim: Olds, 1964), 3:5. The translation “he planned my soul’s salvation” is in German literally, “it was his will to help me.” The word “helfen,” help, carries the connotation of salvation in some sixteenth-century texts.

Classical Worship for Today: Roots in the Worship Storms

By Wilbur Ellsworth

Storms uproot trees. Every time a powerful storm sweeps through a region some trees that have stood tall and majestically for decades lie on the ground in defeat. Suddenly the landscape is changed and trees that had adorned the earth, provided shelter, beauty and quiet are no more. When a great tree goes down there is a profound sense of loss, for it will take years for another to take its place. Great trees fall before the power of the storm when their roots no longer can stand against the force the storm exerts on them.

Today the Church is living in a worship storm. Congregations that have stood with their pastors for years in lifting up their hearts to God in worship are lying prostrate with roots ripped from the earth. The tragedy seems to be escaping no one. The success stories of fast-growing young trees to replace the tired old oaks are spawning books and seminars. It is not entirely comforting, however, that the success stories of a few years ago seem to require frequent updating because the worship winds continue to blow and the message is clear: Keep changing or down you go. Sadly, the country is strewn with pastors who once were regarded with appreciation for their leadership in worship but somehow failed to keep up with the changes the worship storm requires.

People are asking if there are any roots to help them stand in this storm. Some leaders are saying there really are no roots. One prominent pastor of a large and growing church told a gathering of pastors that at his church, “We don’t sing hymns because we don’t know any.” Another Christian trendsetter has said that quoting people like Charles Spurgeon is irrelevant because no one knows about him anymore. Another pastor of a growing church said that his seminary education did not include any theological reflection on worship. When pressed further he said he saw no problem with that because he didn’t see any connection between theology and what the Church does in worship.

These spokesmen don’t seem to lament a lack of roots but rather affirm that they have a great set of wheels to keep them moving through the ever-changing fashions and tastes of popular culture. In other words, they are rolling along on evangelical pragmatism. Evangelical pragmatism is not without its redeeming value. It is, after all, sincerely concerned with relating to the culture around the Church and drawing people to face their need of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. While that motivation is commendable, however, it has not and cannot provide roots in the worship storm because it does not adequately ask the hard questions about the culture it is trying to reach. The old debating proverb rings true: “Whoever gets to ask the question wins the debate.” The questions, demands, and tastes of popular culture presuppose a worldview that is radically different from the realm that the Church is called to enter when it gathers to draw near to God. Further, whenever the culture changes its interests, the church that is rooted in evangelical pragmatism will have to change its worship. Evangelical pragmatism so dominates the American evangelical Church that the continual parade of changing worship styles seems not only normal but dynamic and exciting as we “keep on the cutting edge” to reach our world. What we fail to notice, however, is that our “target audience” (a basic component of evangelical pragmatism) essentially sets the shape, tone, and agenda of Christian worship. Even if we can agree that the culture of our target audience is a key component in evangelism, can we really allow those outside the family of faith to determine how God’s family will worship him?

I propose that the roots we need are to be found in the history of the Church’s theological reflection on worship, first as we find it in Scripture and then as we trace the Church’s long history through the centuries with all the changes and pressures that have been hurled against it. Such a search will reveal several strong roots.

1. The sacramental view of worship. The sacramental view of the world contemplates the towering affirmations of Scripture, “The whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3) and “The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord” (Psalm 33:5). A century of a “scientistic” materialism has robbed our prevailing culture of seeing either the glory or the love of God in creation. Our society seems blind to a world brimming over with the beauty and goodness of the Lord. Not even “getting back to nature” will correct the insensitivity to God’s transcendent presence in his creation. Christian pragmatists would do well to reflect on how much they have allowed this rational reductionism to shape their own viewpoint as they choose Scripture texts to justify their worship practices. Sentimentality in music and practicality in sermons will not restore this lost vision. Pragmatism is rooted in naturalism and naturalism places God at the edge of life, if it gives him place at all. The Church needs to regain the root of a sacramental view of worship.

2. The liturgical view of worship. Few evangelicals seem to grasp the profound worship implications of Colossians 3:16–17, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another with all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” This text serves as a theological plumbline by which we can evaluate what we do in worship. There are two central themes in this call to the Church: (1) The word of Christ (or Christ-centered proclamation) must be formative to the entire worship experience, and (2) The people of God are to communicate to God and to each other “in wisdom” and in singing that is marked by profound thankfulness. One of the basic facts of godly worship through the centuries is that God has called his people to participate in worship both actively and corporately. The Church has a word for this (although it has become a forbidden word among many evangelicals). It is liturgy. Before we react to the negative connotations that word evokes, let us remember that liturgy simply means “the work of the people.” It means that the people must speak wisely and sing with specific focus on thanks to God. In order to see what this means we must move beyond the prison of our rather recent commitment to individualism and spontaneity. Throughout the history of the Church people have united their voices in words and song that were wise because they were rooted in great thoughts of God found in Scripture and in the meditations of the Church and in songs to God that profoundly express the deepest, highest and fullest expressions of the redeemed human heart to God. The Christ-saturated Word and the Christ-saturated heart find joy, freedom, and exaltation in serving the Lord in worship through a united liturgy. Liturgical worship does not allow people merely to sit, watch and listen. Liturgical worship means all the people are serving God.

3. The shape of worship. Those of us who have spent most of our Christian lives in freeform worship may be surprised to know that while our experience reflects the American evangelical majority, we are in deep discontinuity with most of church history. Classical Christian writers such as Gregory Dix and more recently Robert Webber show through careful historic investigation that from the earliest days of the Church there has emerged a “shape” or structure in Christian worship. From Hippolytus to Chrysostom to Luther and Calvin, there has been a structure of worship acts and components that remarkably extended across the Church. One of the great issues throughout the history of the Church has been the importance of achieving a vital spiritual balance between feeding on Christ in the preaching of the Word and feeding on Christ at the Lord’s Table. I suggest that one of the reasons so many new “creative” elements have made their way into what we call “contemporary worship” is that much of the historical shape of worship has been lost due to ignorance, neglect, or reaction to excesses and corruption in worship If we are to sing to God in his triune glory, give thanks for his redeeming love in Jesus Christ, confess our sins and sinfulness together, hear extensive readings from Holy Scripture, receive Christ-centered preaching, respond to God’s Word in wholehearted communion with God and his people at the Lord’s Table, and be sent out into the world to love and serve the Lord, our worship will be full and overflowing. There will be neither need nor time for most of these recent innovations.

If we are gently, humbly, and patiently teaching our people the theology of a sacramental view of worship, a liturgical understanding of worship and the historic shape of worship, we may find ourselves and our congregations sheltered from the storms that are troubling so much of the Church today. Worship storms call us to nourish the roots that will keep our churches standing tall and reaching toward heaven to the glory of God.

Author

Wilbur Ellsworth serves as pastor of Christ Church of Glen Ellyn, Illinois. He is author of The Power of Speaking God’s Word (Christian Focus, 2000) and vice-chairman of the board of Reformation and Revival Ministries.