Abstract
This chapter outlines the history of predestination in Christianity prior to the Reformation. Earlier equations of predestination with divine foreknowledge are contrasted to Augustine’s introduction of ‘single predestination’ to election via the mechanism of unmerited ‘prevenient grace.’ In the 1400s, Augustine’s view existed alongside that of the Pactum theologians (shared by Erasmus) in which God assisted anyone who aspired to be good. With Luther, the possibility of ‘double predestination’ thinking, not previously tolerated in Christianity, began to appear. This view meant God did not simply ‘pass over’ the reprobate or damn them as a ‘just’ punishment for sins; instead, God actively created the reprobate in a matter fully analogous to the creation of the elect. This theory was almost impossible for Christians to adopt since it made God ‘the author of sin.’
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Notes
- 1.
For instance, Genesis 15:13: “And he said to Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years.” Unless noted, all Biblical citations are from the Authorized King James Version.
- 2.
Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans , Books 6–10, trans. Thomas P. Scheck (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 90–1 (7.8.5–6). See the discussion in Matthew Levering , Predestination: Biblical and Theological Paths (Oxford University Press, 2011), 42–3.
- 3.
Jerome, “The Dialogue Against the Pelagians” (Dialogus contra Pelagianos PL 23.495–590), in Saint Jerome, Dogmatic and Polemical Works, trans. John Hritzu (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1965), 356.
- 4.
Pelagius , Pelagius’s Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans , trans. Theodore de Bruyn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 116. Similarly, Pelagius interpreted Romans 9:15 (“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I will have mercy”) to mean, “I will have mercy on him whom I have foreknown will be able to deserve compassion, so that already then I have had mercy on him,” 117. Chrysostom helped established the groundwork for a view of divine predestination as restricted to foreknowledge; see Chrysostom , “Homilies on Romans,” trans. J.B. Morris and W.H. Simcox , rev. George B. Stevens, in Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans , in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series. 14 vols. Ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1889), 11:465–6.
- 5.
As Thomas P. Scheck puts it, “For Origen and Pelagius the possession of free choice is a hallmark of the rational creature and the principle of good and evil.” Thomas P. Scheck, “Pelagius’s Interpretation of Romans,” in A Companion to St. Paul in the Middle Ages, ed. Steven Cartwright (Leiden, Netherlands : Koninklijke Brill NV, 2013), 97.
- 6.
Augustine, “The Predestination of the Saints,” trans. Roland J. Teske , in The Works of Saint Augustine, eds. John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1999), I/26:147–87. Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Past Masters Series, Electronic Edition, 1st release, 2001. Augustine, “The Gift of Perseverance,” trans. Roland J. Teske , in The Works of Saint Augustine, eds. John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1999), I/26:191–240. Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Past Masters Series, Electronic Edition, 1st release, 2001. See also the slightly earlier work, “Grace and Free Choice” (De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio ) (426), in “On the Free Choice of the Will, Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings,” ed. and trans. Peter King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 141–84.
- 7.
Augustine, “The Predestination of the Saints,” in Works, I/26:180–1. As the concept was frequently expressed, ‘people are not elected because they believe but in order that they might believe.’
- 8.
Augustine, “Predestination of the Saints,” in Works, I/26:165.
- 9.
Augustine, “ Nature and Grace” (De Natura et Gratia), trans. Roland J. Teske , in The Works of Saint Augustine, eds. John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1999), I/23:242. Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Past Masters Series, Electronic Edition, 1st release, 2001. Thomas Aquinas cites this passage when explaining how prevenient grace is both the necessary and sufficient condition for the future graces that inevitably follow it: “grace, inasmuch as it causes the first effect in us, is called prevenient with respect to the second” and all subsequent effects. Thomas Aquinas , “Of the Division of Grace,” in Summa Theologica. 3 vols. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947 [1911–1925]), 1:1138 (First Part of the Second Part; Q111. A3). The fact that ‘prevenient grace’ is both the necessary and sufficient mechanism for salvation throughout the history of ‘single predestination’ thinking is a fact sometimes overlooked by historians. Adrian Streete, for example, in his study of early modern Protestant theology, distinguishes “prevenient grace” which “may be bestowed upon all sinners” from a superior “irresistible grace” that characterizes the elect . Adrian Streete, Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 41. But this is not correct; prevenient grace is irresistible . Streete cites, as evidence, William Perkins’s comment that “prevenient grace” is “only incident to such as are in Christ,” but Perkins does not mean this grace to be merely incidental, or secondary, but that prevenient grace only applies to true Christians (i.e. the elect ), 41.
- 10.
Augustine, “Predestination of the Saints,” in Works, I/26:168. Augustine also referred to Esau and Jacob in this context, especially in relation to Romans 9:13 (which cites Malachi 1:2–3): “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated”, 153. Sixteenth-century Protestants also used these examples.
- 11.
For instance, the sixteenth-century Italian theologian Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) said that, despite what he considered its weak logic, he too would use ‘predestination’ in this way out of respect for theological tradition and also for the scriptures, which he says use ‘predestination’ likewise, only to mean predestination to election. Peter Martyr (Pietro Martire) Vermigli, Predestination and Justification : Two Theological Loci, trans. and ed. Frank A. James III (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2003), 16.
- 12.
Qtd. in Christopher M. Cullen , Bonaventure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 181. The source is Bonaventure’s Breviloquium (1.9.7). Aquinas wrote similarly: “God wills to manifest His goodness in men; in respect to those whom He predestines, by means of His mercy, as sparing them; and in respect of others, whom he reprobates , by means of His justice, in punishing them.” Thomas Aquinas, “Of Predestination,” in Summa Theologica . 3 vols. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947 [1911–1925]), 1:130 (First Part; Q23. A5. R3). It should be stressed that when historians of the Reformation refer to these single predestination ideas as ‘Calvinist’ they are actually referring to a tradition extending from Augustine through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance . Given the stature of Bonaventure and Aquinas , these views would also presumably be shared by many sixteenth-century Catholics . Double predestination thought, as we shall see, is a different matter.
- 13.
For discussions of Aquinas, Bonaventure , and Duns Scotus as single predestination thinkers, see Russell L. Friedman, “The Sentences Commentary, 1250–1320: General Trends, The Impact of the Religious Orders, and the Test Case of Predestination,” in Mediaeval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Volume 1: Current Research, ed. G.R. Evans (Leiden, Netherlands : Koninklijke Brill NV, 2002), 100–113.
- 14.
The Council of Quiersy (853) asserted single predestination theology in opposition to Gottschalk’s double predestination views. “Council of Quiersy 853,” in Sources of Catholic Dogma (Enchridion Symbolorum), ed. Heinrich Denzinger , trans. Roy Deferrari , 30th edition (St. Louis: Herder, 1957, rpt. Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2002), 126–7. Alister E. McGrath writes that, by the time of the councils of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century, “a theology of justification based jointly upon Augustine and Thomas Aquinas came to be current within Catholic circles.” Iustitia Dei, 319. The Thomist theology McGrath refers to is single predestination theology, the “denial of all merit prior to justification,” 321.
- 15.
“The Forty-Two Articles, 1553; The Thirty-Eight Articles, 1563; The Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571” in Documents of the English Reformation, ed. Gerald Bray (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994) 294. The entire Article is fully Augustinian in its depiction of single predestination thinking; David Neelands notes that the Articles of the Church of England were “the first major Confessional statement of the Reformation to include an Article (Number 17) on Predestination.” “Predestination and the Thirty-Nine Articles,” in A Companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli, eds. Torrance Kirby, Emidio Campi, and Frank James III (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2009), 357.
- 16.
“The Second Helvetic Confession, 1566,” trans. Arthur C. Cochrane, in Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century, ed. Arthur C. Cochrane (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 240.
- 17.
“Formula of Concord,” 517.
- 18.
Arminius, Jacob , Arminius and his Declaration of Sentiments: an Annotated Translation with Introduction and Theological Commentary by W. Stephen Gunter (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012), 112. Also see Baird Tipton who points out that Arminius believed in prevenient grace and was not a pactum theologian. Hartford Puritanism: Thomas Hooker , Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 171.
- 19.
“Council of Trent-1545–1563: Session 6,” trans. Peter McIlhenny , in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner . 2 vols. (London: Sheed and Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:672, 2:679.
- 20.
Arminius, Arminius and his Declaration of Sentiments, 135. Anthony N.S. Lane points out that the relatively liberal Catholic humanists who cooperated with Reformers to create the 1541 Regensburg agreement could readily accept some consequences of single predestination thinking, such as God imputing unmerited grace to sinners. Anthony N.S. Lane , “A Tale of Two Imperial Cities: Justification at Regensburg (1541) and Trent (1546–1547),” in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic; Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 2006), 119–45, esp. 126.
- 21.
“Council of Trent -1545–1563: Session 6,” in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Tanner , 2:672.
- 22.
Arminius, Arminius and his Declaration of Sentiments, 141.
- 23.
Aquinas, “Of Predestination,” in Summa Theologica 1:127 (First Part; Q23. A3. R2). Fulgentius writes similarly: “He predicted and promised the reward which the just would enjoy, but he did not promise but predicted the torments with which the unjust would be punished.” “To Monimus,” trans. Robert B. Eno, in Fathers of the Church. 129 vols. to date (Baltimore: Catholic University of America Press, 1947–) 95:221.
- 24.
Frank A. James III, Peter Martyr Vermigli and Predestination: The Augustinian Inheritance of an Italian Reformer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 28–9. Equally useful is James L. Halverson , who uses the acronym SPE (for Augustinian single-particular election):
According to SPE, God actively wills to save particular individuals and therefore those individuals receive grace. Those for whom God does not will salvation do not receive grace, and thus remain in sin and justly merit damnation. The term ‘predestination’ refers to the divine will to save particular individuals; ‘reprobation’ refers to the foreknowledge of sins in those towards whom God does not have such a will.
James L. Halverson , Peter Aureol on Predestination: A Challenge to Late Medieval Thought (Leiden, Netherlands : Koninklijke Brill NV, 1998), 172. Halverson also uses the acronym DPE to refer to double-particular election, as well as elaborating a third type (GE for general election) which is the focus of his book. It is surprising how infrequently historians of the Reformation utilize Halverson’s helpful distinction between single and double predestination thought.
- 25.
Richard A. Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology From Calvin to Perkins (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 1986, 2008, Ebook edition, 2012), 64. Muller’s presentation of the issue in his Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms is less clear. For example, he defines double predestination as equivalent to supralapsarian thinking (supralapsarianism places the decree to determine the elect and the reprobate logically prior to the decree authorizing the Fall ), but this formulation seems incomplete. For instance, one can be a supralapsarian (i.e. believing God chose the elect before the Fall ) without being a double predestinarian (i.e. one would not believe God chose the reprobate ). Augustine, as we have seen, expresses this position. Likewise, Muller (and others, including Nicholas Tyacke ) says one can be an infralapsarian (infralapsarian [or sublapsarian] thinking sets the decree to authorize the Fall prior to the decree of election) and also a double predestination thinker. But this would not seem to be possible. Double predestination thought requires that God, and not humans, be held responsible for reprobation, whereas infralapsarian thinking sees humans in the mind of God as ‘creatus et lapsus’ (created and fallen) which presumably places the blame on Adam and Eve for the Fall (and the consequence of reprobation), rather than God. In this sense, I argue that infralapsarians are by definition single predestination thinkers (in not blaming God for reprobation), although not all single predestination thinkers are infralapsarian. Augustine was a supralapsarian, single predestination thinker. See “infra lapsum” and especially “supra lapsum,” in Richard A. Muller, A Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic Publishing, 2017; Ebook edition). Nicholas Tyacke , “Anglican Attitudes: Some Recent Writings on English Religious History, from the Reformation to the Civil War.” Journal of British Studies 35 (April 1996), 149. For a clearer discussion, see G. Michael Thomas, “Constructing and Clarifying the Doctrine of Predestination: Theodore Beza’s Letters During, and in the Wake of, the Bolsec Controversy (1551–1555).” Reformation and Renaissance Review 4 (2000), 7–28. Thomas writes that, for Beza at least, “the assumed parallelism between election and reprobation … meant that the only tenable form in which the predestination doctrine could be held was supralapsarianism ,” 15.
- 26.
“Council of Arles 475 (?),” in Sources of Catholic Dogma, ed. Denzinger, trans. Deferrari, 65–6.
- 27.
Isidore of Seville , Sentientiae 2.6.1, qtd. in Jaroslav Pelikan , The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. 5 vols. [Vol. 3, The Growth of Medieval Theology (600–1300)] (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 3:88. Both Pelikan and Alister E. McGrath (Iustitia Dei, 161) consider Isidore a properly double predestination theologian.
- 28.
See Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 3:85–95; as well as Gottschalk (Of Orbais), Gottschalk and a Medieval Predestination Controversy: Texts Translated from the Latin, ed. and trans. Victor Genke and Francis G. Gumerlock (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2010).
- 29.
Qtd. in Gottschalk and a Medieval Predestination Controversy, 29.
- 30.
Gregory of Rimini , Lectura super Primum et Secundum Sententiarum, eds. Damascus Trapp and Venicio Marcolino. 7 vols. (Berlin, 1979), 3:338. Qtd. and trans. James L. Halverson , Peter Aureol on Predestination, 153–4. For the argument that Gregory of Rimini advocated a double predestination theology see Gordon Leff , Gregory of Rimini: Tradition and Innovation in Fourteenth-Century Thought (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1961); to Leff, whereas Rimini’s “contemporaries and forerunners sought to mitigate (reprobation) in attributing some part at least of the sinner’s penalty to his own sins, Gregory in effect denies him any such role. No less than he who is saved, the man in reprobation owes his disability entirely to God,” 197. Halverson concurs with this assessment, adding Pierre D’Ailly (1350–1420) and Marsilius of Inghen (1340–1396) as the only other medieval theologians who endorsed double predestination, 8, 164–6. However, see George Lindbeck, “Nominalism and the Problem of Meaning as Illustrated by Pierre D’Ailly on Predestination and Justification,” Harvard Theological Review 52.1 (1959), 43–60, for a presentation of D’Ailly as a single predestination thinker. As Halverson and Lindbeck both note, D’Ailly’s views of predestination were among the most widely published in the fifteenth century.
- 31.
Alister E. McGrath overstates, or misstates, the case when he implies that double predestination thinking was frequent “in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries” when “the majority opinion recognised that there was no basis whatsoever in humanity for either predestination to glory or reprobation, the difference resting solely in the divine will itself,” Iustitia Dei, 164–5. McGrath refers to both Aquinas and Lombard to prove this point, but neither the quotations referenced nor the general tenor of these theologians’ views suggest they supported a double predestination theology. For instance, Aquinas’s Disputed Questions on Truth, from which McGrath quotes, notes that “evil things are ascribed as proper to foreknowledge, not because they are more proper objects of foreknowledge than good things, but because good things in God imply something more than mere foreknowledge, while evil things have no such added implication” and “reprobation is said to belong to God’s foreknowledge for this reason, that there is nothing positive on the part of His will that has any relation to sin. He does not will sin as He wills grace” (emphasis added). Thomas Aquinas , “Question 6: Predestination,” trans. Robert W. Mulligan, in Disputed Questions on Truth. 3 vols. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co, 1952), 1:259–60. McGrath acknowledges that in Aquinas’s Commentaries on the Sentences of Lombard , predestination to election includes the element of “propositum” or decree which is lacking in reprobation, a mechanism that merely permits humans to fall through their own sin. Justitia Dei, 165.
- 32.
Augustine, “On the Free Choice of the Will” (De Libero Arbitrio Voluntatis), in On the Free Choice of the Will, Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Peter King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 71.
- 33.
Fulgentius, “To Monimus,” 224.
- 34.
“Council of Orange II 529,” in Sources of Catholic Dogma (Enchridion Symbolorum), ed. Heinrich Denzinger, trans. Roy Deferrari, 30th edition (St. Louis: Herder, 1957, rpt. Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2002), 81. Alister E. McGrath points out that the “canons of Orange II appear to have been unknown from the tenth century to the middle of the sixteenth,” Iustitia Dei, 97–8.
- 35.
“Council of Trent-1545–1563: Session 6,” in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Tanner, 2:679.
- 36.
Qtd. in Robert Kolb, Bound Choice 87.
- 37.
“The Augsburg Confession, 1530,” no translator indicated, in Documents of the English Reformation, ed. Gerald Bray (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 614 (Article 19).
- 38.
Heinrich Bullinger, Fiftie Godlie and Learned Sermons Diuided into Fiue Decades (1549–1551), trans. H.I. (London: 1577), 481.
- 39.
John Calvin, “Letter CCCI: To the Seigneurs of Geneva” (6 October 1552), in John Calvin: Works and Correspondence, Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet , trans. David Constable. 4 vols. (Edinburgh: T. Constable; London: Hamilton , Adams, 1855–1857); 2.364. Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Past Masters Series, Electronic Edition, 2002.
- 40.
Theodore Beza, Job Expounded , no translator noted (Cambridge: John Legatt , 1589), sig. G1r. For a discussion, see Donald Sinnema , “God’s Eternal Decree and its Temporal Execution: The Role of this Distinction in Theodore Beza’s Theology,” in Adaptations of Calvinism in Reformation Europe: Essays in Honour of Brian G. Armstrong, ed. Mack P. Holt (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 71–3.
- 41.
William Perkins, “An Exposition of the Symbole, or Creed of the Apostles,” in The Workes of … William Perkins. 3 vols. (London, 1626–1631), 1:141.
- 42.
“The Canons of the Synod of Dort, 1619,” trans. Philip Schaff and Gerald Bray, in Documents of the English Reformation, ed. Gerald Bray (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 460. “The Westminster Confession of Faith, 1647,” a later important Protestant document, likewise explicitly denied that “God is the author of sin,” (3.1); in Documents of the English Reformation, ed. Gerald Bray (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 490.
- 43.
Surprisingly, if not stunningly, no less an authority than Alister E. McGrath (Iustitia Dei, 230) says point blank that “For Luther, it is God who is the author of sin.” Yet, Luther, like all other Protestant theologians, did his best to stress, in the passages McGrath cites and elsewhere, that evil cannot come from God. As Luther said in “On the Bondage of the Will ”: “When God works in and through evil men, evil things are done, and yet God cannot act evilly although he does evil through evil men, because one who is himself good cannot act evilly,” 232. One of Luther’s more imaginative statements on this point in this text was that while, in the elect , God’s grace is operative, “when God operates without regard to the grace of the Spirit, he works all in all, even in the ungodly,” 288.
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Gleckman, J. (2019). Predestination, Single and Double in Christian History. In: Shakespeare and Protestant Poetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9599-5_2
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