Prof. Herman C. Hanko
[Source: Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, November 1988]
In
our last article, we described the problem which this series addresses: Were
Calvin’s views of predestination significantly altered by Beza and subsequent
Reformed and Presbyterian theologians? This point is often argued by many
students of Calvin. We examined the question from the point of view of some who
argue that not Beza, but Calvin himself altered his views on predestination in
the course of his life. Some argued this from an analysis of the different
places Calvin treats the doctrine of predestination in various editions of his
Institutes. Others argue this position from a comparison of Calvin’s Institutes
and his polemical writings, particularly the writings which emerged from his
controversy with Bolsec, a bitter opponent of predestination. We showed in our
last article that these arguments are without foundation. Now, in this present
article, we turn to the real question at stage: Did Beza modify or change
Calvin’s views on predestination? In this article we simply give the arguments
which have been raised. In a subsequent article, we will examine this question
in detail.
We
are convinced that Calvin himself did not alter his views; but we are equally
convinced that Beza made no substantive changes in Calvin’s position. It is
clear from the evidence that those who argue for such changes are really
enemies of Calvin’s views on predestination and are attempting to bolster their
attack against the doctrine by appealing (though without justification) to
Calvin himself.
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Whatever for the moment may be the
changes in the doctrine of predestination which are found in Calvin’s own
writings, the main issue of the controversy revolves around the question of
whether Beza significantly altered Calvin’s views. That both taught the
doctrine of predestination is agreed upon by all. That both incorporated into
their writings a double predestination, election and reprobation, can hardly be
denied. But at issue is another question: Did Beza make such alterations in
Calvin’s views that the doctrine which Calvin taught is really lost? To this
many would answer with an emphatic affirmative. And it is to a statement of this
question that we turn in this chapter.
Again, agreement among those who take
this position is impossible to find. Among those who agree that Beza made
important changes in Calvin’s doctrine some say these changes are to be found
in one area of Calvin’s thought; others look to another area; and still others
to a third.35
Here too many do not find any
significant differences between what Calvin taught and what Beza said concerning
predestination. Moore,36 e.g., goes so far as to state that no one
after Calvin went as far as Calvin himself. An Anglican, he says, in a chapter
entitled, “The Influence of Calvinism on Modern Unbelief”:
We often hear
it said the Calvinists went far beyond Calvin. My own study of the question
leads to a diametrically opposite conclusion. I doubt whether any of Calvin’s
followers went as far as Calvin himself. The most profoundly immoral and revolting
tenets of Calvinism are to be found in the "Institutes," and Calvin
himself never receded from, but advanced upon the position he originally took
up.
Nevertheless, a bit further (p. 512)
he admits that perhaps Beza went a bit further.
Among those who find significant changes
between the views of Calvin and Beza, three areas especially are pinpointed as
areas in which Beza altered the system of the Reformer of Geneva.
Some are content merely to argue that
Beza altered the emphasis of Calvin’s thought. Carl Bangs37 enters into
this matter rather thoroughly. Calling Beza an “epigone” of Calvin, he says:
[Beza] tries
to be faithful to his teacher by imposing a strict internal coherence on what
had been a free and creative theology ... Perhaps everything that Beza says can
be found in Calvin, but the emphasis is different … Beza lifts the doctrine of
predestination to a prominence which it did not have for Calvin.38
Bangs claims that Beza made
predestination an end in itself.
Gonzales39 says of Beza:
Claiming to be
no more than an exponent and continuation of Calvin’s views, he distorted those
views in subtle yet decisive ways. For instance, he too (with Zanchi, H.H.)
placed the doctrine of predestination under the heading of the divine
knowledge, will, and power, and thus tended to confuse it with predeterminism.
Steinmetz,40 commenting on
the treatment of predestination in the locus of soteriology in the Institutes, claims that election and
reprobation are not of the same weight in Calvin, while in Beza they were. He
goes on to say that Beza is the father of hyper-Calvinism!
Seeburg,41 also speaking of
the place which predestination occupies in Calvin’s thought and comparing that
with the views of Beza, writes:
In harmony
with his fundamental religious temper, and in opposition to foolish opposers,
Calvin developed the doctrine of predestination with constantly increasing
clearness and distinctness.
He goes on to say that the next
generation of reformers (Beza, Zanchi, Musculus) gave to the doctrine a
position of greater prominence and developed an extreme form in their
supralapsarian views. This extreme form was adopted by the Synod of Dort.42
It is in this question of supra- vs.
infralapsarianism that some find the difference between Calvin and Beza. Hunter43
says that
Calvin
himself, ever imbued with practical religious aims and dogmatic only when
authorized by Scripture, seems to have given the question little definite thought.
His position is certainly sufficiently undefined to allow of both parties claiming
him as sponsor for their view. He professed to have a hearty dislike for
subtleties, as he once told Beza, and this was essentially the kind of matter
over which he would be indisposed to waste time. Logical he was, but logic
became an irrelevancy and irreverence when it attempted to penetrate audiciously
into the realm of ultimate divine mysteries. So little importance did he appear
to attach to the question that he subscribed to and indeed inspired two
Confessions whose terms might bear a contrary significance in regard to this
point. The Consensus Genevensis (1552)
assumes the supralapsarian view, while the French
Confession, of which Calvin was practically the author, is infralapsarian
in affirming that God chose out of the universal corruption and damnation in
which all men were submerged some to eternal life.
Cunningham,44 while finding
no essential and important differences between the theologies of Calvin and
Beza, nevertheless considers this matter of supra- vs. infralapsarianism a
possibility. He writes:
The chief
points, as we have mentioned, on which it has been alleged, that Calvin and
Beza differed in their theological sentiments, and that Beza was more
Calvinistic than Calvin, are the order of the divine decrees in their bearing
upon the fall as controverted between the Sublapsarians and the Supralapsarians
...
We do not
intend to dwell at length upon the topics usually introduced into this
controversy, because they scarcely lie within the line of legitimate discussion,
and because, to give them much prominence, is really to countenance the unfair
use which the Arminians have commonly made of this subject …45
After a rather lengthy discussion of
the issues involved, Cunningham goes on to say:46
On this
unnecessary, and now obsolete subject of controversy, it has been alleged that
Calvin and Beza took opposite sides, that the former was a Sublapsarian, and
the latter a Supralapsarian. There is no doubt that Beza, in defending the
doctrine of predestination, was led to assert Supralapsarian views; though he
was not, as has been sometimes alleged, the first who broached them, for they
had been held by some of the more orthodox schoolmen, as has been shown by
Twisse and Davenant. But, while Beza’s opinion is clear enough, it is not by
any means certain on which side Calvin is to be ranked, and this question—viz., whether
Calvin is to be regarded as a Sublapsarian or a Supralapsarian—has been made
the subject of formal and elaborate controversy. The Sublapsarians have
endeavoured to show that they are entitled to claim Calvin’s authority in support
of their views, while Supralapsarians and Arminians have generally denied this,—the former of
these two classes, that they might claim his testimony in their own favour; and
the latter, that they might excite odium against him, by giving prominence to
all the strongest and harshest statements that ever dropped from him on the
subject of predestination ...
All this, of
course, implies that there is real ground for doubt and for difference of
opinion, as to what Calvin’s sentiments upon this subject were; and the cause
of this is, that the question was not discussed in his time, that it does not
seem to have been ever distinctly present to his thoughts as a point to be
investigated,—and that, in consequence, he has not been led to give a formal and
explicit deliverance regarding it.
After a discussion of the pertinent
material in Calvin, Cunningham concludes:
Beza, then, in
his explicit advocacy of Supralapsarianism, went beyond his master. We do not regard
this among the services which he rendered to scriptural truth; especially as we
are bound in candour to admit that there is some ground to believe that his
high views upon this subject exerted a repelling influence upon the mind of
Arminius, who studied under him for a time in Geneva.
However these alleged differences
between Calvin and Beza are analyzed, one greater difference between the two
reformers is seen by several scholars to be of crucial importance. This
difference has to do with what is said to be a scholasticizing of Calvin’s
thought in the hands of his friend and successor. It is alleged that Beza
altered Calvin’s views on predestination (and really the whole of Calvin’s
theology) most significantly when he applied scholastic categories to it. It
was this alteration more than any other which spoiled the genius of what Calvin
taught, unmistakably altered its whole structure, and gave to subsequent
continental and Presbyterian thought an emphasis and direction which was at
odds with Calvin. It is in this area more than anywhere else that we must look for
the shift which for subsequent times made the true Calvin almost unknown within
Protestant circles.
Basil Hall,47 in an essay
entitled, “The Calvin Legend,” writes:
A change of
emphasis came with Beza, his successor there, who altered the balance of
Calvin’s theology, saw, and in part approved, that successful repristination of
Aristotle among Protestants which led to the Reformed scholasticism that
distorted the Calvinist synthesis and used his contacts with Protestant leaders
elsewhere in Europe and in Britain for ends more politically sophisticated than
Calvin would have conceived or desired.
In another essay, entitled, “Calvin
Against the Calvinists,”48 Hall writes:
Calvin’s successors
nevertheless distorted the balance of doctrines which he had tried to maintain.
His successor at Geneva, Beza, together with the Heidelberg theologian
Zanchius, the English Puritan Perkins, and their associates and followers, bear
much of the blame for this, even if we allow that theological change had to
come in order to meet changing situations, yet it is not necessary to assume
that only those changes that these men made were necessarily the right ones …49
The way in
which the balance of Calvin’s work was altered can be seen in the writings of
Beza, and in those of the English Puritan William Perkins … Without intending
it Beza shifted the balance in Calvin’s work … He hardened the earlier method
of scriptural exegesis, and made scripture itself into a corpus of revelation
in almost propositional form with every part equal to the other parts in inspiration,
thereby developing or encouraging a literalism, in the doctrine of the
inspiration of Scripture, which encouraged Reformed theologians to go beyond
the more guarded statements of Calvin. Something of scholastic formalism can be
seen in Beza’s work when it is compared with the more dynamic method and vivid
style of Calvin. It was Beza who reverted to the medieval scholastic device of
placing predestination under the doctrines of God and providence—the position
in which St. Thomas Aquinas discussed it—whereas Calvin had placed it
eventually and deliberately under the doctrine of salvation. By doing so,
although he was not alone in this, Beza re-opened the road to speculative
determinism which Calvin had attempted to close. Beza’s writings were largely
polemic in origin and contained much less creative theology than Calvin’s; it
may have been the continuous polemic effort against Catholics and Lutherans
that led Beza into exaggeration and distortion in doctrine. Beza taught
Supralapsarianism (that is, the view that God decreed from before creation
everything relating to man’s future, including his fall and total depravity,
which comes near to being thoroughgoing determinism) whereas Calvin is not
explicit on this point—he would have regarded discussion of it as being impertinently
precise in setting out God’s purposes …
After a discussion of other
differences (including the question of the extent of the atonement) and the
affect these differences had on subsequent theology, Hall says,
In fairness to
Beza it should be added that his treatment of these matters, while it does not
show Calvin’s careful avoiding of extreme statements, is not so pronounced as
that of those seventeenth century writers who supported wholeheartedly the
decrees of the Synod of Dordt, for example, the Dutchman Bogerman or the
Englishman William Twisse.
In an article entitled, “Election, the
Humanity of Jesus, and Possible Worlds,” Robert R. Hann50 writes:
Especially as
the doctrine (of election) came to be elaborated, by successive generations of
theologians, election came increasingly to be discussed in terms of God’s
decrees before creation, and the fates of both the saved and the lost were
thought to be equally the direct outcome of the will of God. As a result, the
doctrine that Charles Williams called “comprehensible in Calvin” became, in his
words, “tiresome in English Puritans, and quite horrible” in later Presbyterians.
It is little wonder that for many even of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches
the doctrine of election seemed more and more to be an exercise in theological
abstraction and less and less an expression of grace.
While Hann does not specifically
mention Beza as the culprit in this connection, he clearly states that Calvin’s
views were subjected to important modification by subsequent theologians with
the result that the true meaning of Calvin was lost. He argues that “later
scholasticism” so modified the doctrine of election that no longer was election
considered to be “in Christ.”
Proceeding from this assumption he, by
means of specious argumentation and doubtful interpretation of the history of
doctrine, argues: 1) That we are elect in Christ. 2) That this refers to Christ
in His humanity. 3) That because this election stands connected with Christ’s
humanity, it stands connected with Christ’s temptations in which it was
possible for Christ, by virtue of His humanity, to sin. Hence election is based
on foreknowledge. 4) By an appeal to A. Plantinga’s conception of all possible
worlds51 he proceeds to argue that man possesses freedom of action, freedom
being interpreted as freedom of choice; i.e., no providential determination of
man’s deeds. 5) And from this he argues that this conception allows for both
predestination and freedom of choice (although here the concept “freedom of
choice” is used in the sense of moral choice). His contention is, finally, that
this view does not conflict with the declarations of the Synod of Dordt.52
In an article entitled, “Was Calvin a
Calvinist or was/is Calvinism Calvinistic?” Prof. B.J. van der Walt53
writes: “Calvinism after Calvin’s time was either Scholastic Calvinism or
Reformed Scholasticism—a clear deviation from the thought of the Reformer of Geneva.”54
In quoting from Brian Armstrong’s book, “Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy,” he
lists six characteristics of “Protestant/Reformed/Calvinistic” Scholasticism. 1)
It stresses the necessity of a logical or doctrinal system. Predestination is
then regarded as the point of departure. 2) It has a strong dependence on the
philosophy of Aristotle. 3) It lays great stress on reason and reason is given
almost the same status as revelation. 4) The Bible is considered to be a set of
propositions so that a theology may be constructed on its basis. 5) Faith is
not as important and is “misshapen to the status of intellectual submission to
the truth of Scripture.”55 6) It “does not only imply a different
method of thinking or a different mentality. It also leads to the achievement
of different results of thought from
those of the Reformation.”56
Muller57 is much more
careful in his analysis of the problem. He first of all gives a thorough
definition of what he means by scholasticism and orthodoxy because,
Two terms that
appear most frequently in the evaluation of theology after Calvin are
“scholasticism” and “orthodoxy.” From the first we need to be clear that these
terms are neither laudatory nor pejorative; they are only descriptive of the
method and the intention of theologians in the century and a half following the
demise of Calvin, Vermigli, and Musculus. In other words, characterization of
post-Reformation Protestantism as “scholastic orthodoxy” denotes the historical
form of that theology and in no way implies that the theology of the
seventeenth century can provide either the right method or the right teaching
for the present.
After discussing Brian Armstrong’s
definition of scholasticism58 and dissenting in some particulars
from it, at least as far as its relevance to the question at hand is concerned,
he defines scholasticism as
a methodological
approach to theological system which achieves precision of definition through
the analysis of doctrinal loci in
terms of scripture, previous definition (the tradition), and contemporary
debate.59
“Orthodoxy” means, according to
Muller, the following:
As applied to
the theologians of the Reformed (and Lutheran) branches of the Protestant
Reformation, specifically in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth century, it
indicates several things: first, and perhaps foremost, it indicates the desire
to set forth the true faith as over against the teaching of the several
adversaries confronted in polemic. Right teaching is for the edification of the
church on both the positive and the polemical levels. Second, “orthodoxy” indicates
also a sense of catholicity, of continuity both with the revelation contained
in the scriptural deposit and with the valid teaching of the church in past
centuries. Orthodox theologians of the seventeenth century felt quite at ease
in their use not only of the fathers but also of medieval thinkers. Third, the
term implies a strong relationship between systematic theology and church confessions.
The confessions acting as a subsidiary norm in the development and exposition
of doctrinal systems: even at its most rigid and extreme form, orthodoxy is
theology in and for the church. Fourth, and finally, the production of an
orthodoxy, so-called, relates to the conviction that true doctrine can be stated
fully and finally in a series of strict doctrinal determinations. In this
sense, orthodoxy involves an approach to scripture as the deposit of truth out
of which correct definitions may be drawn. This assumption in itself entailed
the development of a theological method more logical, more rigorous, and more
rationalistic than that of the Reformation, though no less committed to the
principle of sola scriptura.60
From this analysis he concludes
that the
question of continuity or discontinuity of Protestant scholastic theology with
the western theological tradition is highly complex and not at all to be reduced
to the relationship of the doctrine of predestination developed by Beza or Zanchi
to that of Calvin.61
Before we proceed to an analysis and
evaluation of these various issues in the next chapter, we ought briefly to sum
up what we have discovered to this point.
The basic question before us is
whether the doctrine of predestination as developed subsequent to Calvin is
faithful to the teachings of Calvin, or whether his views have been modified by
late sixteenth and seventeenth century theologians under the influence of Beza,
Calvin’s successor in Geneva.
We face a number of questions in that
connection. The first group of questions concentrates on the problem of whether
Calvin himself later in life and especially in his polemical writings altered
his conception of predestination as found in his Institutes. And, in connection with that, can any changes in
Calvin’s view be deduced from the change in the place in his Institutes where he treated this
doctrine.
The second group of questions has to
do with the problem of whether Beza significantly altered Calvin’s view. And
this question, if answered in the affirmative, must include a discussion of the
problem of the precise nature of that alteration. Was it a mere difference in
emphasis? Was it a difference over the question of infra- and supralapsarianism?
If this latter, is this difference significant? Or was the difference one of a
“scholasticizing” of the doctrine? And if so, was such a scholasticizing of the
doctrine a fundamental change in Calvin’s perspective and teaching?
----------------
FOOTNOTES
35. These differences of opinion, mentioned also
in our discussion in the last chapter, provide some kind of prima facie proof that the contentions
are at least suspect. If students of Calvin and Beza cannot even agree on how
the two differ in their treatment of this doctrine, one has reason to suspect
that the differences are questionable, to say the least. But we shall discuss
this more in detail in a later chapter.
36. Aubrey Lackington Moore, Lectures and Papers on the History of the Reformation in England and on
the Continent (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1890), p.
506.
37. Carl Bangs, Arminius (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971).
38. Ibid.,
p. 66.
39. Justo L. Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, Vol. III (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980)
p. 246.
40. David C. Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1971), pp.
167-170.
41. Reinhold Seeburg, The History of Doctrines (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978),
pp. 420-422.
42. It is not clear from what Seeburg writes
whether he is of the opinion that Dordt adopted a supralapsarian view of
predestination. We can hardly imagine that he takes such a patently false
position.
43. A. Mitchell Hunter. The Teaching of Calvin, a Modern Interpretation (Glasgow: Macklehose,
Jackson & Co., 1920), p. 122.
44. William Cunningham. The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation (Edinburgh:
Banner of Truth Trust, 1979). pp. 358ff.
45. It is interesting to note here that Cunningham
is of the opinion that emphasis on differences between Calvin and Beza,
especially on this point, are due to Arminian influence. With this we are
inclined to agree.
46. Cunningham, op. cit., pp. 363, 364.
47. G.E. Duffield, ed., John Calvin, A Collection of Essays (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 1966), p. 2.
48. Ibid.,
p. 26-28.
49. Although this is the way the sentence reads in
the book cited, apparently the author intended a full punctuation stop after
the word “this.” Then the words, “Even if we allow that …” would begin a new
sentence.
50. Journal
of the Evangelical Society, Vol. 29, No. 3, Sept., 1986, pp. 295-305.
51. A. Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Claredon, 1974), esp. chaps. 4-8.
52. But rather obvious sophistry is used to
maintain this contention. We mention this position in some detail because it is
evidence of how the argument that Calvin’s views underwent change becomes the
occasion for an attack against sovereign predestination itself.
53. Our
Reformation Tradition (Potchefstroom: Institute for Reformation Studies, 1984),
pp. 369-377.
54. Ibid.,
p. 369.
55. Ibid.,
p. 370.
56. Ibid.
57. Richard A. Mullcr, Christ and the Decree (Durham: Labyrinth Press, 1986), p. 6.
58. See earlier for a reference to his book, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy.
59.
Muller, op. cit., p. 11.
60. Ibid., p. 12.
61. Ibid.,
p. 13.
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