Calvin On Sovereignty, Providence, And Predestination

By Joel R. Beeke [1]

Understanding Calvin’s teachings on sovereignty and predestination is very important for several reasons. Let me mention three of them.

First, Calvin’s teachings on sovereignty and predestination offer us unveiling comfort. Imagine for a moment that God is not sovereign. If God is not sovereign and in control of all things, then the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City on 9/11 was a freak accident beyond God’s control. If God is not sovereign, the powers of evil are stronger than the power of God. If God is not sovereign, all things will not work together for good to those that love God, contrary to what Romans 8:28 tells us. Do you find that comforting? I sure don’t.

For another thing, imagine for a moment that God does not elect sinners to salvation from the masses of mankind. If Romans 3 is right in claiming that man is not basically good but is thoroughly depraved so that he cannot choose good without the grace of God, then no one would ever be saved if God did not elect or choose sinners to salvation. So, election is a friend of sinners—not an enemy!

Second, understanding God’s sovereignty and predestination helps unravel confusion. Calvin’s understanding of these doctrines helps us better understand what life is all about. It unriddles our riddles. It addresses life’s major questions, such as “Is God sovereign over the evil that sometimes befalls me?” or “Do my wrong choices in life override God’s sovereignty?” or “How could God have allowed sin to enter into this world in the first place?”

Third, understanding Calvin on sovereignty and predestination undoes caricatures. Many people who know anything at all about Calvin realize that he believed in sovereign predestination. In our world today that tends to be a rather unpopular doctrine. So, as we turn to Calvin and the doctrine of predestination, we need to see things in proper perspective. We need to orient ourselves to the development and historical context of the theology of election and predestination to discover exactly how valuable Calvin’s contribution is to our understanding of this timeless biblical doctrine.

As we go forward, we should bear in mind that the doctrine of election did not originate with Calvin but was regarded by him as a part of the Christian tradition that he received, not only from Paul and other biblical writers, but also from Augustine and many theologians after him. [2] Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, clearly taught both election and reprobation, [3] and nearly every medieval theologian after him discussed predestination to some degree. [4] So Calvin did not regard his own doctrine of predestination as a novelty, nor was his view unusual among his contemporaries. All the major Reformers believed in predestination. [5]

Then, too, we should recognize that the doctrine of predestination is not the central doctrine for Calvin, as some have claimed. [6] For example, in his 1536 Institutes, Calvin makes only a few passing references to predestination. In his Catechism prepared in 1545 to instruct the youth in Geneva, not one of the 374 questions deals specifically with predestination. Nonetheless, Calvin did believe that predestination was an important doctrine, especially in the area of soteriology, [7] and it needed to be expounded with much care and wisdom from the Scriptures while interacting with the church’s tradition that preceded him.

Let us now consider, first, Calvin’s teaching on sovereignty and providence; second, his doctrine of election; and third, his understanding of reprobation. I will conclude with some practical ways in which these doctrines ought to influence us.

God’s Sovereignty: Fatherly Rule

God’s sovereignty was one of the dominant principles of John Calvin’s life as well as of his biblical exposition and theology. It permeated all that he did and thought.

What did Calvin mean by God’s sovereignty? The word sovereignty means “rule”; hence, God’s sovereignty means that God rules. God’s sovereignty implies His supremacy, His kingship, and His deity. His sovereignty declares Him to be God, the incomprehensible Trinity who is nevertheless knowable insofar as He chooses to reveal Himself. God’s sovereignty is exercised in all of His attributes, declaring Him to be perfect in all respects and possessor of all righteousness and holiness. He is the gracious and omnipotent Jehovah, the Most High who does His will in the army of heaven and among all the inhabitants of the earth (Dan. 4:35). God cannot be reduced to special or temporal categories for human understanding and analysis.

Calvin believed God is the Lord of life and Sovereign of the universe, whose will is the key to history. Calvin taught that God is free and independent of any force outside Himself to accomplish His purposes; He knows the end from the beginning; He creates, sustains, governs, and directs all things; and His marvelous design will be fully and perfectly manifest at the end of the ages. [8] “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever” (Rom. 11:36).

For Calvin, God’s sovereignty is the heart of biblical doctrine, provided we understand that this sovereignty is not arbitrary and capricious. It is the sovereignty of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Calvin would have fully agreed with what the Scottish theologian John Duncan wrote, “It is a holy will that rules the universe—a will in which loving-kindness is locked up, to be in due time displayed. It is a solemn thing that we and all creatures are at the disposal of pure will; but it is not merely free will, it is the free will of the sovereign Lord Jehovah, and therein it is distinguished from the abstractness and apparent arbitrariness of mere will.” [9]

According to Calvin, God’s sovereignty is personal, warm, and fatherly. As Isaiah 9:6 says, the government, or sovereignty, of this world and each of our lives is upon the shoulders of Him whose names are “Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Personal sovereignty, like the Incarnation itself, is in perfect harmony with all of God’s attributes. Calvin found peace in the conviction that behind the Father and Son’s sovereign providence is the full acquiescence of the triune God. The sovereign grace and love that went to Calvary, representing the Trinity, has the whole world in its hands.

God’s fatherly sovereignty in Christ is the essence of who God is. If we had to reduce Calvin’s theology to one concept, we might echo B. B. Warfield, who said that to be Calvinistic means to be theocentric. The primary interest of Calvin and Reformed theology is the triune God, for the transcendent-immanent, fatherly God in Jesus Christ is God Himself. The theology of Calvin and Calvinists is dominated by the God of the Scriptures. As Mason Pressly says, “Just as the Methodist places in the foreground the idea of the salvation of sinners; the Baptist, the mystery of regeneration; the Lutheran, justification by faith; the Moravian, the wounds of Christ; the Greek Catholic, the mysticism of the Holy Spirit; and the Romanist, the catholicity of the church, so the Calvinist is always placing in the foreground the thought of God.” [10]

To be Reformed is to stress the comprehensive, sovereign, fatherly lordship of God over everything: every area of creation, every creature’s endeavor, and every aspect of the believer’s life. The ruling motif in Calvin and Calvinism is “in the beginning God...” (Gen. 1:1).

Calvin taught that God in His relation to us has only rights and powers, but He binds Himself to duties sovereignly and graciously by way of covenant. In covenant, He assumes duties and responsibilities to be a God unto us, but that does not detract from His being the first cause and the last end of all things. The universe is ruled not by chance or fate but by the complete, sovereign rule of God. We exist for one purpose: to give God glory. We have no rights before God but only duties, for God’s rights are absolute. Any attempt to challenge this is doomed, for as Romans 9:20 says, “Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?” God enacts His laws for every part of our lives and demands unconditional obedience. We are called to serve Him with body and soul, in worship and daily work, every second of every day.

To be Calvinistic, then, is to be impressed with the complete character of the Creator-creature relationship. It is to view all of life coram Deo, that is, lived before the face of God. As B. B. Warfield wrote:

The Calvinist is the man who sees God: God in nature, God in history, God in grace. Everywhere he sees God in His mighty stepping, everywhere he feels the working of His mighty arm, the throbbing of His mighty heart. The Calvinist is the man who sees God behind all phenomena and in all that occurs recognizes the hand of God, working out His will. [The Calvinist] makes the attitude of the soul to God in prayer its permanent attitude in all its life activities; [he] casts himself on the grace of God alone, excluding every trace of dependence on self from the whole work of his salvation. [11]

The doctrine of God—a fatherly, sovereign God in Christ Jesus—is central to Calvin’s theology. Roger Nicole said that everywhere in Calvin’s theology, sovereignty is his underpinning. God’s sovereignty means that Scripture must be recognized as God’s inspired Book which must be interpreted faithfully at all times. God’s sovereignty means that His standards must prevail rather than man’s desired or devised code of ethics. Our only hope is in God’s sovereignty, for sinful creatures cannot exercise any faith in God without the aid of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God opens our eyes to the sovereign remedy of salvation that God has provided in His God-man Son, Jesus Christ, and His substitutionary work of atonement on behalf of sinners. The entire order of salvation, as well as the predestination behind that salvation, is rooted in God’s sovereignty.

Calvin’s doctrine of the church is also steeped in sovereignty. The church’s divine origin, her reality as an invisible body, her dependence on Christ, the Word of God that she brings, and the sacraments that she administers all rely on her fatherly, sovereign God. This sovereignty culminates in Calvin’s view of the last things, when God will have the last word over men and angels, and will manifest His sovereign grace and justice forever in heaven and hell. [12]

Do you agree with Calvin that God is sovereign over all things? Are you, too, enamored with God? Do you know what it means to be overwhelmed by His majesty, His beauty, His holiness, His grace, His fatherliness—and to bow under His sovereignty? Do you desire His presence, seek His glory, and strive to model your life after Him?

God’s Providence: But What About...?

Perhaps you still have questions about God’s sovereignty. You understand Calvin’s teaching that God exercises His sovereignty and rules His world by means of His providence and that God “sustains, nourishes, and cares for, everything he has made, even to the least sparrow.” [13] You see how Calvin interwove providence through nearly every chapter of The Institutes, viewing providence as “God’s governance extended to all his works,” which is “not the empty idle sort...but a watchful, effective active sort, engaged in ceaseless activity.” [14] You recognize Calvin’s belief that God’s sovereign providence embraces everything—all thoughts, words, desires, actions, and events of all creatures, past, present, and future—and that it comprehends both good and evil. Perhaps you even know that Calvin confirmed this doctrine of providence by appealing to Ephesians 1:11 which says that God works “all things after the counsel of his own will.”

But the working out of this doctrine of “an ever-present and ever-active will of God in every particular movement [which] obviously rules out the notion of bare permission” [15] leaves you with numerous questions. Let me respond to some of the most important questions people have about God’s providence.

Are Trivial Things, Accidents, Coincidences, Or Things We Commonly Call Chance Also Included In God’s Providence?

Calvin stresses that even those things that seem insignificant to us are directed by God’s unerring providence. Jesus said in Matthew 10:29-30, “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” Since God is involved even in the smallest details of our lives, Scripture advises us: “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Prov. 3:6).

Chance, blind fate, bad luck, and coincidences are pagan notions, Calvin says. [16] What can be thought to be more chance than the casting of a lot? Yet, the result is certainly of God, for “the lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD” (Prov. 16:33). As John Murray concluded, “Chance and fortune do not belong to a Christian man’s vocabulary.” [17]

Is God Sovereign Over Evil Things That Sometimes Happen To Me?

Calvin says texts such as Isaiah 45:7 make it plain that God is sovereign over all evil: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” Let’s reverse this question for a moment: What comfort would you have if God were not sovereign over your trials? Would Job have been comforted by believing that the suffering he underwent was beyond God’s control? Denying God’s sovereignty over our sufferings makes God impotent and robs us of the comfort that our heavenly Father knows how to discipline us far better than our earthly fathers, for His own glory and our profit, as Hebrews 12:5-11 affirms.

Do My Wrong Choices In Life Override God’s Sovereignty? Or, Would Calvin Say That The Influence Of God’s Governing Providence Even Extends To Sin?

Calvin would say no to the first question and yes to the second, though he kept his words within the parameters of Scripture. Calvin writes, “Whatever we conceive of in our minds is directed to [God’s] own end by God’s secret inspiration.” [18] Ultimately, Calvin said, God has sovereignly decreed sin, providentially directs sin, and justly allows sin. He so directs sin that it glorifies Himself and even works for the welfare of His people (Rom. 8:28). Thus, our wrong choices do not override God’s sovereignty but are included in His sovereignty.

Doesn’t That Make God The Author Of Sin?

No. God Himself never sins but hates and punishes all sin. He can prevent sin and can both direct and decree sin (cf. Prov. 16:4; 2 Sam. 16:10; Rom. 9; Isa, 63:17; Amos 1:6)—and thus, absolutely controls all the sinful deeds of men—but that in no respect makes Him the Author of sin (cf. Ps. 81:12; Acts 14:16), Calvin says. The wicked only carry out what God decrees. [19]

Here is the mystery, Calvin says, for though God is never the author of sin, He does perform the counsels of His own will through sin. The holy will of God and the unholy will of wicked sinners are both operative in the same events, so that when the sinner sins, those very sins concur with the secret will of God’s decree. Those events, however, have very different motivations behind them. God’s motivation is to fulfill His holy designs, so He is in no way defiled by those sins, whereas the sinner is not motivated by love of God above all and his neighbor as himself. His motivations are sinful and therefore his sins defile him. So, though God’s providence extends over sin, He remains sinless, spotless, holy, and undefiled. [20]

How Can God Will Sin And Not Will Sin?

Calvin says there is a twofold aspect to the will of God. In His secret or decretive will, God determines that certain sinful events will come to pass. God’s decretive will always comes to pass, for it is comprehensive. History is the unfolding of God’s decretive will. In His revealed or preceptive will, which demands perfect obedience to His law, God wills that certain sinful events should not come to pass. These sinful acts come to pass because of man’s opposition to the will of God and refusal to do what God has commanded. Here, then, is such a holy, mysterious disparity between the two aspects of God’s will that it causes John Murray to write: “It cannot be gainsaid that God decretively wills what he preceptively forbids and decretively forbids what he preceptively commands.” [21]

Calvin agrees with Augustine in saying that sin is contrary to the revealed will of God yet is not outside of the secret will of God. Nevertheless, Calvin insists that God has one simple will, thus refuting Sebastian Castellio’s charge that Calvin taught God has two wills. Calvin writes: “God’s will is not therefore at war with itself, nor does it pretend not to will what he wills. But even though his will is one and simple in him, it appears manifold to us because, on account of our mental incapacity, we do not grasp how in divers ways it wills and does not will something to take place.” [22]

Calvin says that even as believers our finite minds begin to reel at this disparity. All we can do then is to bow in faith and reverence before God Almighty, trusting that this disparity is resolvable in the mind of God and in His determinate counsel and foreknowledge. Though we cannot resolve this disparity, for that would take us both beyond the boundaries of Scripture and the boundaries of our own minds, we do know that God has not left us in the dark as to how we are to respond. We are to respond in obedience to God’s preceptive will, since we are made in His image as His creatures and are to obey His sovereign command. That is to say, God’s law is the rule for our faith and practice, not God’s decree. We are to operate on the basis of His revealed will, not His secret will, as Deuteronomy 29:29 makes plain: “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

If God Sovereignly Decrees Sin, Doesn’t That Diminish Our Human Responsibility? How Then Can We Be Held Morally Accountable For Our Actions?

Calvin acknowledges that these are not easy questions to answer. Since we are finite and God is infinite, an element of mystery will surround such questions until our dying breath. Nevertheless, here are three truths that help us approach a satisfactory answer:

First, though the providence of God gives us sinners the power, the consideration, and the choice to act against the commandments of God, yet when we sin, we do so voluntarily without being persuaded whatsoever by God’s sovereign providence. Consequently, we remain wholly responsible for our thoughts, words, and actions, and will one day be judged accordingly.

Second, let us never forget that God created us in Adam prone not to sin and fully qualified to gain eternal life. The blame for our sinning, therefore, is not on God and His providence but on us for our disobedience in Adam and our daily living out of that disobedience by nature. How can God take away our responsibility or lower His demands of perfection because of our open rebellion performed without the least compulsion on His part?

Third, God’s providence innumerably admonishes us of our responsibility, not only through His goodness in the many blessings we receive daily from His hand but also through His judgments such as wars, famines, and sicknesses, which call us to repentance.

What Effect Does Calvin’s Doctrine Have On Morality? Doesn’t The Sovereign Providence Of God Stifle Morality And Lead To Careless Sinning?

Generally speaking, history shows just the opposite. When believers, such as the Reformers, strongly believe both in God’s sovereignty and their own responsibility, godly living flourishes. Roger Nicole writes:

History shows that in an atmosphere filled with immorality and in a time when the Church itself had been invaded by infection to an almost incredible degree, there arose [in the Reformers] a renewal of honesty, of purity, of truthfulness, of eagerness to serve, of humility, and of selflessness. The morality of the early Reformers was noteworthy. In many cases, it was because they were outraged by the prevalent immorality that they sensed so deeply the need of reforming the Church. Had they been grievously lax, their opponents would have ruthlessly used any flaw of failing against the movement. Far from debasing morality, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God restored morality and led men to new heights of courage and dedication. [23]

If God Controls Everything, Aren’t We Just Puppets Or Robots?

Prior to the Fall, we in Adam had the free will to serve God. After the Fall, our will became corrupt; our will is thus not free to serve God in the sense that it would not, by nature, choose God. The Bible teaches us that no man seeks after God. Nevertheless, we are not robots. We still make free choices every day with our will. Our will in this regard is free, even though it is bound by sin. That’s why Spurgeon titled his sermon on this subject, “Free Will Yet Bound.”

Picture a chalkboard. Draw a line from top to bottom down the middle. Label the left half “Good” and the right half “Evil.” By nature, if we are not born again, we can never cross the line in the center of the board and choose what is good because our minds are fundamentally carnal and at enmity with God (Rom. 8:5-8). But that doesn’t mean that we are not free to choose various options on the evil half of the board. By nature, we are always making natural decisions, such as when to get up in the morning, and moral decisions, such as how to treat my neighbor today. The tragedy is that by nature we are always freely moving about only on the right half of the board because our unregenerate wills are free to do evil but not to do good. That is to say, we don’t have a free will to choose the good, but we do have a free will to continue to choose various patterns of sin within the realm of evil.

For believers, the good news is that we find liberty to choose good when we embrace the doctrine of God’s fatherly sovereignty in Christ. Precisely because they believed in God’s sovereignty, many Reformers were willing to suffer and be martyred. So Nicole writes:

[The Reformers] sensed so deeply their answerableness to God that they were willing to endure anything in order to discharge their duty. And this has become the foundation for all types of human liberties. In serving God, man was emancipated from the yoke of tyrants. Wherever Calvinism penetrated, people could not be satisfied in submitting to unjust oppression. The Huguenots in France, the Gueux in the Netherlands, the Puritans in Scotland, England, and America, were profoundly mindful of their right to be free and were willing to shed their blood in order to safeguard that right. Calvinism meant a new birth of liberty in the world. In fact, it may be averred that every liberty we enjoy in these United States has, in some sense at least, its foundation in the Reformed thought initiated by Calvin. [24]

If God Has Sovereignly Determined All Things, Won’t That Lead To Human Passivity In Missionary Endeavors? Won’t Evangelistic And Missionary Work Suffer?

Actually, history has shown just the opposite. Acts 13:48 teaches us that those Gentiles “as were ordained to eternal life believed.” Immediately after that, verse 49 tells us without sensing the smallest degree of tension, “And the word of the Lord was published throughout all the region.”

God encouraged Paul to proceed to evangelize in Corinth when he was afraid to do so by declaring in His sovereign, electing love that He had “much people in this city” (Acts 18:10). We do not know how many people God has elected in our cities. We trust there are many. But many or few, they are the Lord’s, and He has given us the means to find them. So we must faithfully pray and speak and visit people, abounding in Christ’s work and always ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us to anyone who asks (1 Pet. 3:15).

Likewise, Calvin was motivated by God’s sovereignty to be a strong evangelist, both in his teaching and in his practice. [25] So were many Reformers and Puritans, and men like John Elias, David Brainerd, George Whitefield, William Carey, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton. Their willingness to tirelessly evangelize was rooted in their belief that a sovereign, electing God would fulfill His decree and His promise that His Word would not return to Him void (Isa. 55:11). They believed, as John Blanchard says, that “in the Bible, election and evangelism meet with joined hands, not clenched fists” (Acts 13:44-49). [26] Isn’t it remarkable that from the time of the Reformation until the 1830s, nearly all the great evangelists were strong Calvinists?

Election still brings courage to evangelism today. It makes us bold for Christ, removing our fears, our shyness, and our indifference because we know that God has chosen people wherever we go who must be saved. It drives us to prayer, confident that the elect are in God’s hands, and He will use evangelism to draw them in.

There are no hopeless cases for the Holy Spirit. And it makes us patient, reminding us that evangelism is an urgent work because sinners are dying and going to hell every day. Evangelism is not a desperate work, for God, in His way and in His time, will ultimately gather in all of His elect.

Why Didn’t God Create Us So We Could Not Possibly Sin? Couldn’t He Have Done That?

Of course He could have done so. But it obviously didn’t please Him to do so. Here, too, we enter the realm of mystery. Like a puzzle-maker, we can only see a few pieces at a time. God sees the entire puzzle. He no doubt has many reasons for doing all that He does that we cannot yet grasp. He is God and we are mortal.

Yet, there are two pieces of this puzzle that Calvin affirms. First, as G. H. Kersten says, “In His incomprehensible counsel and will God left room for sin to reveal itself, so that, by this abomination, He would be everlastingly glorified, in righteousness as well as in mercy.” [27] God is glorified in His righteousness through the reprobate; in His mercy, through the elect.

Second, God left man the possibility of sinning to show the glory of man’s creation by allowing man the freedom to choose serving the Lord out of desire rather than compulsion. [28] Man’s voluntary love and obedience to God was more honoring than compulsory obedience to both God and man. What is more deeply satisfying to you—the response of a pet dog who habitually obeys you, or the loving response of your spouse or child who obeys you from the heart?

Did Calvin Show Us Ways In Which The Doctrine Of Sovereign Providence Benefits And Encourages Us?

Calvin says a great deal about this, most of which can be summarized as three benefits: patience in adversity, gratitude of mind, and remarkable freedom from worry about the future. [29] These benefits are summarized by the Calvinistic Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 28) as patience, thankfulness, and trust. By nature, we are impatient and rebellious when things do not go as we want, proud when things go well, and anxious and fearful when considering an unknown future. This is natural because we consider ourselves as the center of all things—as if we were God. We tend to be upset by things that do not go according to our desires, we consider most important what serves our honor and glory, and we fear what will happen in the future as a result of our own weak efforts or because of more powerful people or forces. Only the Holy Spirit can provide us with these three precious jewels:

First, patience in adversity. Calvin says that in times of adversity, providence teaches us to raise our minds to God, wait patiently on Him, and look for His good purposes rather than to lash out against the ungodly who abuse us or murmur at our own circumstances. By the Spirit’s grace, adversity produces in us true humility, submission, and patience. When we observe God’s providential hand, trusting His good purpose in Christ for every trial He sends our way, and knowing that, as sinners, we do not deserve anything but the results of sin, we can truly experience peace and submission in times of affliction. [30]

Second, thankfulness in prosperity. Only the Spirit can grace us with true thankfulness in prosperity. By grace we know that any abilities we have are God-given and the health, capabilities, and opportunities to exercise these gifts are from God, who also blesses our efforts. By grace we honor God and thank Him for all those who have been His instruments to bring us blessing. [31]

Third, a firm trust in God for the unknown future. Since providence determines all things, [32] the believer may have security and confidence in the immutable character and decree of God, Calvin says. [33] True faith in God also produces calm trust for the future, for believers may trust the Almighty, who holds the future in His hands. [34] The future is unknown, but if we know the God of the future, we have everything.

In summary, God’s sovereign providence is wonderfully encouraging. It moves me to patience in adversity, thankfulness in prosperity, and firm trust in God for the future. At the same time, it motivates me to exercise my responsibility to live fully to God’s glory.

That’s what it did for the Reformers, too. As Nicole writes:

Fearing God, [the Reformers] did not fear the face of any man! The sovereign God was with them and in them. They were sure of their Bible, the sovereign Book; sure of their salvation, effected by the sovereign God himself. Permeated with a sense of the divine sovereignty, they were stronger than the strongest rulers, stronger than death itself. Their stand is well symbolized in the granite of the Geneva monument of the Reformation, where they are portrayed as unmovable because they rest in God.

• Radically corrupted, but sovereignly purified;
• Radically enslaved, but sovereignly emancipated;
• Radically impotent, but sovereignly empowered.

This is the fruit of the sovereignty of God in the lives of men who said, as did Calvin, “My heart I give to Thee, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.” [35]

Let us turn now to Calvin’s thoughts about God’s sovereign and gracious election.

Predestination In A Nutshell

Since providence presupposes that God eternally foreordains all that comes to pass, the ordaining of people to their eternal destinies—which is called predestination—plays a significant role, Calvin says. He defines predestination as “God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others.” [36]

Calvin’s summary of the doctrine of predestination includes the two branches of election and reprobation. According to God’s eternal and immutable counsel, Calvin says:

Scripture, then, clearly shows, we say that God once established by his eternal and unchangeable plan those whom he long before determined once for all to receive into salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, he would devote to destruction. We assert that, with respect to the elect, this plan was founded upon his freely given mercy, without regard to human worth; but by his just and irreprehensible but incomprehensible judgment he has barred the door of life to those whom he has given over to damnation.... As the Lord seals his elect by call and justification, so by shutting off the reprobate from knowledge of his name or from the sanctification of his Spirit, he, as it were, reveals by these marks what sort of judgment awaits them. [37]

Predestination from eternity has two parts: first, election, by which God chooses whom He will save. Election is always sovereign and always gracious. No one who makes it to heaven will ever be able to say, “I deserve to be here.” I repeat: Election, then, is always sovereign and gracious. Second, reprobation is always sovereign and always just. No one who enters hell will ever be able to say, “I don’t deserve to be here.” I repeat: Reprobation, then, is always sovereign and just. Once you grasp this basic, biblical teaching of Calvin, you will stop taking election for granted and stop grumbling about reprobation.

Recently, I met a friend whom I hadn’t seen for nearly forty years. She wanted to thank me for opening her eyes to the reasonableness of reprobation. Upon further probing, she told me that many years ago, when we had been in youth group together, she had raised the question: “How could a just God ever reprobate anyone to hell?” She added: “I just can’t understand how this could be possible.”

She said my response to her was: “Isn’t that strange? I have just the opposite problem. I can easily understand how God can reprobate someone, because I am nothing but a sinner who deserves reprobation. I think everyone else is in the same boat as me on that. But how can God save sinners when He is so holy that He even charges the sinless angels in heaven with folly in His sight? I know He does so through the gospel, and that is all grace, but the wonder of it all just keeps overwhelming me.”

She concluded, “That was the first time in my life I really saw that the amazing wonder of God and His Word is not the revelation of reprobation but the revelation of election.”

I hope that thought is as helpful to you today as it was for that young woman forty years ago. If you forget everything else you hear today, take this one thought home with you: “If I’m truly a believer, my salvation is an amazing wonder of sovereignty and grace, for I have certainly never deserved it. To God be all the glory.”

B. B. Warfield summarizes everything I’ve said so far in this essay on predestination with these two sentences: “The Biblical writers [and by extension, every true Christian] find their comfort continually in the assurance that it is the righteous, holy, faithful, loving God in whose hands rests the determination of the sequence of events and all their issues.... The roots of the divine election are planted in His unsearchable love, by which it appears as the supreme act of grace.” [38]

Now, let us take a more detailed look at election, then reprobation.

Sovereign And Gracious Election: The Friend Of Sinners

Dear believer, simply stated, Calvin teaches that God took the initiative and chose us from eternity for no reasons in us. He summarizes election by saying “that God once established by his eternal and unchangeable plan those whom he long before determined once for all to receive into salvation.” [39] The great difficulty of election is not how to understand it as much as how to accept its rich truth that we who, by grace, have been made believers are accepted of God in Christ. Our idea of picking and choosing is very different from God’s. The words “best and brightest,” “most handsome,” and “most rich and glamorous” usually describes how we make our choices. Not so with God. God did not choose us because we were brilliant or beautiful, or because of our righteousness or moral standing. In all these examples is something that can change, or be lost, or be ruined and ultimately rejected. By contrast, Paul says that God chose us before we were born, before we had done right or wrong, before anything existed except God Himself. He chose us when we were ungodly and unlovable so that we should become holy and blameless in God’s sight. He chose us in Christ, as Calvin repeatedly stresses, for God gave the best He had for the worst He could find—even sinners such as us. “We love him because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19) is therefore our response to God’s work in electing us and accepting us in the body of Christ out of pure love and one-sided grace.

A Surprising Approach: Using Common Grace To Get To Special Grace

Calvin approaches the doctrine of election, first, by affirming that the Spirit grants us faith. As Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” Salvation is the gracious gift of God that comes by the faith that God grants us by the Spirit.

When the apostle Paul says that grace is a free gift, we, like Calvin, may ask, in what sense is it free? Why is the gift given to some and not to others? In the second book of the Institutes, Calvin says some men behave just like “brute beasts” while others excel in genius and special talents. The whole spectrum of humanity from top to bottom is nature’s proof of God’s common grace, Calvin says. Some may be given special gifts while others are passed by to prove that God’s grace is not bound to anyone or anything. [40] Take note that Calvin is not talking here about the grace leading to eternal salvation but ascribes everything in the world to God’s governing influence.

Let us look more closely at what Calvin is saying. So far, he is saying that God may (or may not) choose to elect some in the world who have great natural talent while rejecting others, to prove that God gives gifts as he sees fit. One of the central concerns for saying this is to give God the glory for His grace by having a gracious attitude toward our heavenly Father. If a strong person thinks himself strong, or if a wise person thinks herself wise without acknowledging God, each robs Him of His glory; they are as blind as a mole in this regard, Calvin says. [41]

This undermining of pride and self-sufficiency is exactly what Paul was attempting to teach the Corinthians concerning spiritual gifts. In 1 Corinthians 12 he uses the profound illustration of a human body arguing with itself about which part is more important. The foot cannot say, “I am not the hand” and the ear can’t complain and say, “I am not the eye, therefore I am not part of the body” (vv. 15-16). We are all members of the body, and we each serve a different purpose. What’s more, the attitude that one part of the body is more important than another leads to sinful discontentment and complaining. It also fosters pride in those who are elevated above their position. God is very concerned with our knowledge of Him and ourselves, says Calvin, and God denies spiritual understanding to those who are prideful of their gifts and natural grace. [42]

Calvin sees the natural order of the world as governed by God’s common grace, which extends to all, however unequal it appears to the human eye. Yet common grace helps to illustrate God’s electing grace in the most challenging area of all: election and reprobation, eternal life and eternal condemnation. As we move forward from what the Reformed call common grace to electing or special grace and reprobation, we must be careful with our perspective. Our forbearers in the faith all agree that it is truly impossible for us to know the mind of God in His eternal decrees. Calvin said the study of election is a “learned ignorance,” [43] in that we cannot speculate beyond what Scripture has spoken in the matter. [44] But we can and we must glorify God in what He has revealed to us for our comfort, our consolation, and our assurance of faith.

A Polemical Approach: Battling Against Pighius, Pelagianism, And Arminianism

Before further discussing election, let us clarify what Calvin says by answering a few objections that spring to mind. Throughout the centuries, the two foremost opponents against Calvinism have been the Pelagian and Arminian views of divine sovereignty and human freewill.

Albert Pighius (c. 1490-1542), a Dutch humanist and Roman Catholic theologian, was a papal privy councilor under Clement VII from 1525 to 1531. Pighius reacted to Calvin’s 1539 Institutes with a book titled, De libero hominis arbitrio et devina gratia libri decem (1542; The Free Will of Man and Divine Grace). Calvin responded to that book with his works titled The Bondage and Liberation of the Will: A Defense of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice against Pighius (1543) [45] and Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God (1552). [46] The debates with Pighius were complex and bitter, but in them we see one of Calvin’s greatest qualities as a theologian: he was not baited into rational speculation and did not swerve from the plain meaning of Scripture.

Pighius attacked the doctrine of predestination, asserting “that it imposes necessity on man’s conduct and thereby destroys the notion of responsibility and guilt, and that it virtually denies the goodness of God since the possibility of salvation is open only to a few men.” [47] His solution to the problem of election and reprobation is that God created all men to salvation by an immutable counsel. God foresaw that Adam would “defect” from the life of God, but nevertheless, “applied a remedy which should be common to all,” that is, Christ. Those who despise the grace of Christ are reprobated unless they repent, Pighius says. In other words, the ultimate source of reprobation is not God and His immutable will but the wicked who deprive themselves of the benefits of salvation.48

The problem with Pighius’s view of God’s immutable counsel and reprobation is that God’s immutable counsel to save changes from one minute to the next. One minute God is determined to save the whole human race, but the next minute He deems them reprobate unless they change their minds. In the end, Pighius confused God’s judgments and placed the ultimate cause of sin, salvation, and reprobation outside of God’s will, or perhaps, God’s “thinking” on the matter. [49] Pighius suggested that God concluded His immutable counsel by saying, “Whatever they want to decide, that’s fine with me.”

God does not play games with our eternal salvation. Calvin warns us that if we deny particular election, we obliterate the most solid defense of utterly gratuitous redemption, and the doctrines of grace are then abandoned for the leaven of human merit. If reprobation were a conditional state that could change according to human will, then the guilty could pronounce themselves innocent and walk away from all the debt of their crimes and moral unrighteousness. This false, imaginary salvation refuses to reckon with the seriousness of sin, the depth of the Fall, and, above all, the bondage of the will.

Pelagianism, which also opposes Calvinism, teaches that God elects those who are good. According to Pelagius (c. 350–c. 425), election is more of a debt that God owes to good people than a gift that He graciously bestows on them. God elects people on the basis of personal righteousness. The Arminian doctrine of conditional election, which was first introduced by James Arminius (1560-1609), a professor at the University of Leiden, did not come to a full flowering until two generations after Calvin. Arminianism teaches that God elects those who are depraved but whom God foresees will believe in Christ for salvation. Though people are sinful, they can meet God’s condition to believe in Jesus Christ by exercising their free will to receive faith. [50]

For the sake of brevity, put Pelagianism and Arminianism together and what do you have? The emphasis of salvation is no longer on the heart of God’s electing grace, or God’s electing love, or God’s eternal wisdom. Instead, much as in Pighius’s theology, salvation is placed in the power of human decision, or the piety of human morals—and a fallen human at that! Both of these systems make two serious errors:

First, they fail to recognize the primacy of God’s election in His purposes of salvation. According to the Bible, the verb elect means “to select, or choose out.” As Calvin repeatedly stresses, the biblical doctrine of election is that long before the foundations of the world were laid, God freely chose to save a number of individuals in Christ (Rev. 7:9-17). God determined to redeem, bring to faith and repentance, justify, sanctify, preserve, and glorify the elect in and through Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:28-39; 2 Thess. 2:13-14; 2 Tim. 1:9-10), while determining to leave others who persisted in unbelief to perish in their sin (Rom. 9). Election is unconditional since God did not choose the elect because of any intrinsic goodness in them (Rom. 8:29) or because He knew that they would one day believe.

Second, Pelagianism and Arminianism fail to recognize the extent of our depravity and the extent of God’s sovereignty and grace. They essentially rob God of His absolute sovereignty and glory. Unconditional election is a necessary corollary of the doctrines of human total depravity and of God’s sovereignty and grace. If we are as depraved as the Bible says we are, then our salvation cannot originate with us, for we are by nature “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1). Who can fathom the mystery that God elects sinners like us, not because of our virtues, but in spite of our vices? As J.C. Ryle says, “The believer who knows his own heart will ever bless God for election.” [51]

Critics of Calvin have sometimes called unconditional election “God’s lottery,” in which He arbitrarily picks and chooses who “wins” and who “loses.” On the contrary; the Calvinist’s only hope is in a sovereign, loving, fatherly God, who gave His own Son to suffer and die for the elect. What is more foolish: ascribing to God the things that are God’s, or winning a lottery and believing you deserved it?

In sum, Pighius, Pelagianism, and Arminianism all place the ultimate cause of predestination in the choices that people make for themselves, which people cannot actually do because they are totally depraved and blinded by sin. Calvin and the Reformed understand God’s predestination as the ultimate cause of election and reprobation. Both election and reprobation proceed from a God of justice as well as love and mercy. Love and mercy come to the foreground in predestination, since, as we have seen, the wonder is not that sinners who are steeped in willful sin reap death as its just wages, but that God shows love and mercy to hell-deserving sinners at all. B.B. Warfield well said that election is “the first moving of God’s grace looking to our salvation.... It is the first step of God’s love as He prepares to save us by His grace.” [52]

A Practical Approach: Election Is The Friend Of Sinners

Election, then, is not an enemy but a friend of sinners. Without election, no one would be saved. By election, all who are elect shall be saved. Paul says in Ephesians 1:4-5 that God “hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.”

What a glorious statement this is! Why would a sinner argue against election? But how is such a beautiful election possible, you might ask. The foundation of God’s election is God’s love, Paul says. If we should then ask, “But why did God love us?” the answer is simply, “Because He loved us.” There is nothing beyond God’s love. His love, exercised for His own glory, is the headwater of election. His love is ultimate reality. In Christ, love sits on the throne of God and is the controlling center of heaven and earth from where God works all things after the counsel of His own will. Love, the very love of God in Christ, is the heart of divine omnipotence. There is nothing more powerful than the sovereign, providential, gracious, one-sided, ever-flowing, over-flowing love of God. All the rivers of life flow out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. They all derive from sovereign love that reflects the heart of God Himself in His interpersonal relationship with Himself as Three Persons and in His interpersonal relationship with every one of the millions of His elected, adopted family—a multitude that no man can number.

God’s love is the alpha and the omega of our salvation. “God is love” (1 John 4:8). I cannot imagine God not being eternal. I cannot think of God as not being Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit. Nor can I fathom God not being in love with His people. Of course, this electing love is voluntary and gracious, but it is still an eternal love, an eternal act. God has always been in love with His people, always preparing a bride to present to His Son, always passionate for their salvation. In this love our election is rooted. God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world because He loved us.

But election doesn’t leave us simply in adoration of God’s love. It puts us to work. God elects people, but He also elects the means by which they will be saved and be brought to holiness. First Peter 1:2 reminds us that we believers are “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”

The elect are called to holiness through the Spirit’s sanctifying work. Peter says that sinful, depraved people cannot enter into the presence of a holy God and live a holy life unless God, through His Spirit, sanctifies them. The Spirit does this work of sanctification or holiness in those whom the Father has elected. In the original Greek, 1 Peter 1:2 indicates that holiness is an ongoing process rather than a completed act. That means the elect are called to pursue holiness in dependence on the Spirit. So Peter says to believers later in this chapter, “As he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation” (1 Peter 1:15).

When contemplating the great work of the Holy Spirit in our redemption, one of the great Puritans, Thomas Goodwin, exclaimed, “What a special purpose! To be conformed to the image of His Son!” The Holy Spirit ministers to us in all our circumstances—grace, suffering, and glory—as we become more like Christ in every way; a pattern of His life to glorify God and encourage others to do so.53

God wants to make His elect holy, for He has elected us to be conformed to the image of His Son. No one can then say, “I am elect; therefore, I do not need to be Christlike.” Rather, as Peter implies, a believer should say, “Because I am elect, I cannot avoid being Christlike.” God’s elect cannot be at peace living in sin; they cannot live under sin’s domination (Rom. 6:11-14). They cannot live contrary to Christ and His will because God has made it impossible for them to live like that. If we are elect, God has committed to us all the fullness and glory of His resources to make us like His Son. As surely as God has determined to save the elect from eternity past and provided the cross of Calvary as the means of that salvation, so He has determined that the effects of salvation will be holiness into eternity.

God’s choosing the elect to be holy refutes the accusation that election damages incentives to godly living.54 Calvin reminds his opponents that election has as its goal holiness of life; “therefore, it ought to arouse us to eagerly set our mind upon it than to serve as a pretext for doing nothing.” [55]

Election, then, is the friend of sinners, not only because it guarantees our salvation, but also because it guarantees our conformity to Christ and His holiness. Thank God for His electing grace!

Has God taught you these precious truths? Have you been so embraced by an electing God that you learned to embrace election as your friend? Your part in salvation has been backing away from God, finding excuses why you didn’t want to be converted, and looking for a hiding place where you could escape from the Word of God. What could you bring to God but your sin and need? You brought nothing. But God brought you His forgiveness and salvation in Jesus Christ. That teaches us that God (and God alone) saves sinners, even the most undeserving and helpless of people. Election means God saves sinners. Election is the sinner’s friend.

A Christian who came from China was asked to give his testimony. “How did you come to know the Lord?” he was asked. He spoke modestly of how God had sought him, then how the Lord had opened his heart to receive the truth, then how the Holy Spirit had given him a new birth and made him a new creation. When he finished, the chairman smiled and said, “That was wonderful, but you left out what you did.” The man from China said, “I don’t know what you mean. There was nothing I did.” The chairman said, “God did his part, then you must have done something. What was your part?” The Chinese brother’s face finally broke into smile, “Oh, yes, my part! I ran and ran as far from God as I could. I tried to get away from Him, but His part was to run faster, tackle me, and totally overcome me by His mercy and love.”

Sometimes we are amazed at the erratic behavior of teenage children, which can seem completely random, but then some action will reveal the powers that control their actions. Two women were sharing a pot of tea. One watched her son walk out of the door with his shoes shined and his hair neatly combed. She commented, “That’s the most frustrating thing in the world.”

Her friend responded, “I don’t know what you’re so uptight about. I wish my son would shine his shoes and comb his hair. He dresses like a slob.”

The mother replied, “Oh, that’s not what’s frustrating. What bugs me is that a pair of blue eyes and blonde hair did in ten minutes what I couldn’t do in eighteen years.”

The woman had nagged her son for years to clean up his life, but all those efforts had failed. Then the boy fell in love, and it was the expulsive power of that new affection that drove away his dirty habits! That is the way it is with God’s sovereign election, for it is by His effectual grace that God creates in us a new will that makes us desire Christ and want to please Him. Christ’s salvation becomes the thing we long for most in life. The fellowship of Christ is something we can’t do without.

Sovereign And Just Reprobation: For God’s Glory And Our Humility

Reprobation refers to God’s choice from eternity to pass by some people without electing them and to justly condemn them. Calvin writes: “By his just and irreprehensible but incomprehensible judgment he has barred the door of life to whose whom he has given over to damnation.” [56] It is the reverse side of election. Calvin admits that “this decree ought to appall us,” when considered by human reason alone. [57[ Nonetheless, he says, election would be inconsistent and incomplete “if it were not placed in opposition to reprobation.” [58] While fully maintaining the incomprehensibility of the decree, Calvin affirms that reprobation occurs “for no other reason than that he [God] wills to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his own children.” [59] Knowing that no doctrine of Scripture is more misunderstood and hated than reprobation, Calvin anticipates those who would object to God choosing some and passing over others by asking them to answer why they are men rather than “oxen or asses.” He concludes, “Although it was in God’s power to make them dogs, he formed them in his own image.” [60]

Today, reprobation is often mentioned in conjunction with the term double predestination. The problem with this juxtaposition is the ambiguity of “double predestination.” Some use it to imply that Calvin and others who believe in reprobation are going beyond Scripture—hence, double predestination. Others use it to accuse Calvin of holding the equal ultimacy view between the elect and the reprobate, meaning that just as God intervenes in the lives of the elect to create faith in their hearts, so God equally intervenes in the lives of the reprobate to work unbelief in their hearts. [61]

According to Calvin, God’s sovereignty by its very definition does demand equal ultimacy in the sense that the will of God is just as much the ultimate cause of reprobation as it is of election. [62] Calvin, however, goes on to distinguish between the decree of reprobation in eternity from the act of damnation, which involves just judgment and punishment in time and eternity. The act of damnation necessarily involves sin. Here the equal ultimacy between election and reprobation breaks down, for sin is always the proximate cause of reprobation. [63]

When Calvin speaks of the reprobate being left or abandoned by God to their own destruction, he almost always refers to what God does in time with the ungodly. [64] Warfield illustrates this point by talking about Lazarus in the tomb. There were many more people besides Lazarus who were buried in their tombs the day Christ came to raise his friend from the dead. But Christ raised Lazarus to show that election has nothing to do with the death of the sinner, but only with the raising of the sinner who is called again unto life. Election is the work of God’s grace and reprobation is the work of God’s justice. Together they bring glory to God in the highest by magnifying His free, unmerited, eternal mercy in Christ, and His righteous justice.

For Calvin, in addition to serving the major purpose of promoting God’s glory, reprobation also serves the important purpose of promoting our sanctification as believers. Reprobation ought to keep us humble and teach us to ever look to the mercy of God while continually exalting the glory of God. Reprobation teaches us that there is nothing that we can boast about that distinguishes us from unbelievers. Our favor in God’s sight is due solely to God’s sovereign election of us in Christ. We must rest all our confidence on the promise of mercy in Jesus Christ and none whatsoever upon ourselves. [65]

Calvin teaches that God knows the elect from the reprobate, but we cannot always clearly distinguish between them. Consequently, we should exercise a “judgment of charity,” regarding as elect all those who by their words and conduct “profess one and the same God and Christ with us” in a way that is consistent with the teachings of Scripture. [66]

How God’s Sovereign Election Impacts Us

The doctrine of election affects our hearts towards God, towards ourselves, and towards each other in several ways. Let’s conclude by considering two of them.

Election Personalizes Us.

The personal nature of God’s election is warm, paternal, and relational. God treats His millions of children as if each were His only child. The minuteness of His loving, fatherly concern is staggering. Our names are engraved on the palms of Jehovah’s hands. Our names are carried in the heart of the Savior, the Lord Jesus, who whispers our blood-bought names into the ears of His Father in heaven.

Personal election is an incredible comfort today in an impersonal, computerized society, in which so many people feel alone. They feel like insignificant creatures clinging desperately to a little planet in a vast universe. But the Calvinist believer finds his identity in the infinite God of this vast universe. He confesses with the psalmist, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Ps. 23:1). He who has chosen us graciously will never abandon us. All things will work out for our good (Rom. 8:28-39).

No one who has a personal relationship with the God of unconditional election ever need say, “No one cares; I do not matter.” Rather, God grants him to say: “God cares for me so much that He has given me His own Son. He loves me and gave Himself for me” (cf. Gal. 2:20). How wondrous it is to confess, “Christ gave Himself for me, meeting all the conditions of God’s justice for me. He obeyed the law perfectly on my behalf, loving God above all and His neighbor as Himself for thirty-three years in this world. For me Christ became incarnate; for me He walked perfectly in this world; for me He suffered immense agony and cruel rejection; for me He did not come down from the cruel tree because I was on His heart as He hung under the curse of God. He fully paid the penalty of my sin, even to death. For me He declared that salvation is complete (John 19:30). Now He who rose for me, lives to make intercession for me” (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25).

Election Assures Us.

We know we are God’s elect by faith and by having a vital relationship with Jesus Christ. In Christ and His promises in His Word, we find assurance of our election. As 1 John repeatedly tells us, when we possess Christ in His Word, desire Him for His own sake, know Him in our souls, yearn for Him in our walk of life, and love those who love Him, we know that we have passed from death to life as God’s elect. Ultimately, then, Christ is our assurance of election. As Calvin writes: “If we have been chosen in Christ, we shall not find assurance of our election in ourselves; and not even in God the Father, if we conceive of him as severed from his Son. Christ, then, is the mirror wherein we must, and without self-deception may, contemplate our own election.” [67]

Notes

1. This is an extended version of an address given at the Skogheim Conference in South Africa on June 28, 2009. Thanks to Derek Naves for assisting me on several sections in this address.
2. Augustine, “De praedestinatione sanctorum,” in Patrologia Latina (Paris: Garner Brothers, 1944), 44:955-92.
3. Thomas Gilby, ed., Summa Theologiae (London: Blackfriars, 1963), 1a 23, 83.1.
4. R. Scott Clark, “Election and Predestination: The Sovereign Expressions of God,” in A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes: Essays and Analysis, ed. David W. Hall and Peter A. Lillback (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R, 2008), 91-93.
5. B. B. Warfield, “Calvinism,” in Calvin and Calvinism (Oxford: University Press, 1931), 357-58.
6. E. g., I. A. Dorner, History of Protestant Theology, trans. George Robson and Sophia Taylor (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1871), 1:415-17. But, according to Richard Gamble, “this outdated view of Calvin has been rejected.... Most leading scholars today maintain that there is no one single key to unlock the door of Calvin’s theology” (“Current Trends in Calvin Research, 1982-90,” in Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor, ed. William H. Neuser [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994], 106).
7. While denying that predestination is Calvin’s central dogma, David Wiley maintains that predestination was Calvin’s primary soteriological doctrine (“Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination: His Principal Soteriological and Polemical Doctrine” [Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1971], 171).
8. G.C. Berkouwer, The Providence of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 7ff.
9. John Duncan, Colloquia Peripatetica (Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1870), 89.
10. Mason Pressly, “Calvinism and Science,” in Evangelica Repertoire (1891), 662.
11. B.B. Warfield, Calvin as a Theologian and Calvinism Today (London: Evangelical Press, 1969), 23-24.
12. Roger Nicole, “Divine Sovereignty: Cornerstone of the Reformation,” Christianity Today, 9, 2 (Oct. 23, 1964):18.
13. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 1.16.1 [Hereafter Inst. 1.16.1.]
14. Inst. 1.16.3.
15. John Murray, Calvin on Scripture and Divine Sovereignty (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1960), 66.
16. Inst. 1.16.2, 8.
17. Murray, Calvin on Scripture and Divine Sovereignty, 66.
18. Inst. 1.18.2.
19. Inst. 1.18.4.
20. Inst. 1.18.3.
21. Murray, Calvin on Scripture and Divine Sovereignty, 68.
22. Inst. 1.18.3.
23. Nicole, “Divine Sovereignty: Cornerstone of the Reformation,” 18.
24. Ibid.
25. See Joel R. Beeke, “John Calvin: Teacher and Practitioner of Evangelism,” in Puritan Reformed Spirituality (Darlington, U.K.: Evangelical Press, 2006), 54-72.
26. Blanchard, The Complete Gathered Gold, 177.
27. G. H. Kersten, A Treatise of the Compendium Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Inheritance Publishing, 1956), 27 (emphasis mine).
28. Ibid., 33.
29. Inst. 1.17.7.
30. Inst. 1.17.8.
31. Inst. 1.17.8.
32. Inst. 1.17.2,4,7,9.
33. Inst. 1.18.6.
34. Inst. 1.17.9.
35. Nicole, “Divine Sovereignty: Cornerstone of the Reformation,” 19.
36. Inst. 3.21.5.
37. Inst. 3.21.7.
38. B.B. Warfield, Biblical and Theological Studies (Philadelphia: P & R, 1952), 301, 323-24.
39. Inst. 3.21.7.
40. Inst. 2.2.17.
41. Inst. 2.2.18.
42. Inst. 2.2.17-19.
43. John Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, trans. J. K. S. Reid (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1961), 122.
44. Inst. 3.21.3; Commentary on Romans 9:14.
45. Ed. A. N. S. Lane; trans. G. I. Davies (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996). The original Latin work was Defensio doctrinae de servitute arbitrii contra Pighium, and can be found in Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. G. Baum, E. Cunitz, and E. Reuss, vols. 29-87 in Corpus Reformatorum (Brunsvigae: Schwetschke, 1863-1900). Hereafter, CR, 34:225-404.
46. Trans. J. K. S. Reid (London: James Clarke, 1961). For an older translation, see “The Eternal Predestination of God,” in Calvin’s Calvinism, trans. Henry Cole (London: Sovereign Grace Union, 1927). The original Latin work was De aeterna Dei praedestinatione (CR, 36:249-366).
47. John Patrick Donnelly, Calvinism and Scholasticism in Vermigli’s Doctrine of Man and Grace (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), 137. For Calvin’s direct refutation of Pighius on reprobation, see CR, 36:313-18 (Reid, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, 120-25). For a summary of Pighius’s thought on free will, foreknowledge, and predestination, see A. P. Linsenmann, “Albertus Pighius und sein theologischer Standpunkt,” Theologische QuartaIschrifit 48 (1866):629-44.
48. Reid, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, 55. Here Pighius’s view is summarized by Calvin.
49. Ibid., 100.
50. Joel R. Beeke, Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism (Orlando: Reformation Trust, 2008), 60-61.
51. J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Luke (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1998), 254 (on Luke 18:1-8).
52. B. B. Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings, ed. John Meeter (Philipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 2001), 1:289.
53. Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2005), 6:218.
54. Inst. 3.23.13.
55. Inst. 3.23.12.
56. Inst. 3.21.7.
57. François Wendel, Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, trans. Philip Mairet (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 281.
58. Inst. 3.23.1.
59. Ibid.
60. Inst. 3.22.1.
61. R.C. Sproul, Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 142.
62. Calvin writes, “If, then, we cannot determine a reason why he vouchsafes mercy to his own, except that it so pleases him, neither shall we have any reason for rejecting others, other than his will” (cf. Reid, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, 68, 76ff., 155ff., and introductory comments, 15-19, 35). Calvin is irrefutably plain that neither sin nor foreknowledge is the ultimate cause of either election or reprobation; all ultimate causation must be the divine will (3.22.11; 3.23.1, 2, 5, 8, 13-14, etc.; Romans 9:14, 18, 22; cf. Klooster, Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination, 60ff., for an excellent summary).
63. See Joel R. Beeke, “Election and Reprobation: Calvin on Equal Ultimacy,” Banner of Truth, no. 489 (June 2004):8-19.
64. Inst. 3.22.7; 3.23.3, 8; 3.24.12; CR, 36:266, 270, 298, 313-14.
65. Inst. 3.21.1; William H. Chalker, “Calvin and Some Seventeenth Century English Calvinists” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1961), 81-82.
66. Wendel, Calvin, 261.
67. Inst., 3.24.4.