Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/693

Rh PREDESTINATION 669 maintains that God absolutely decrees the salvation of a certain fixed number of definite persons, and in pursuance of this decree infallibly secures their salvation; the Armi- nian maintains that God s decree, so far as it concerns the salvation of individuals, is conditional upon their use of the means of grace. That which constitutes Arminianism is the denial that God absolutely elects individuals to eternal life ; and that which lies at the root of Calvinism, and out of which all that is characteristic of the system springs, is the affirmation that God does absolutely elect certain in dividuals to life eternal, and in pursuance of this decree works in them all that constitutes life eternal. Accord ing to Calvinism, salvation is the work of God. Seeing men to be all alike helplessly involved in sin and misery, God determined to save some, not on account of any good in them but for some inscrutable but necessarily wise and just reasons, and because of this determination He gives to those whom He wills to save, and enables them to receive and retain, all that is involved in salvation, renewal of will, union to Christ, holiness of life, the indwelling Spirit. The doctrine of predestination was first formulated in the church by Augustine. The Pelagian idea that man is competent to determine his own character, conduct, and destiny was repugnant to him, and he strove to show that the initial and determining element in the salvation of the individual is not the human but the divine will. He based his position upon the doctrine of original sin and the consequent depravity of the will. This doctrine represents the whole human race as involved in moral ruin, guilty and sinful, incapable of self-regeneration or of willing what is good. By God alone, therefore, can regeneration and deliverance be accomplished. The salvation designed by God must not be allowed to depend for its efficacy on the depraved and incapable will of man ; it must be an absolute act of power on God s part. Provision must be made not only for the offer but for the acceptance of grace. In a word, grace must be effectual or irresistible. Hence Augustine distinguished between &quot; assistance without which a thing cannot be done &quot; and &quot;assistance by which a thing is done&quot; (the Jansenist adjutorium sine quo non, and adjutorium quo, assisting and efficacious or irresistible grace). By every device of language lie throws the whole work of salvation upon God (&quot;facit credentes,&quot; &quot;data sunt et ipsa merita quibus datur,&quot; &quot;non solum mentes bonas adjuvat, verum etiam bonas eas facit&quot;). This is the distinctive characteristic of the dispensation of redemption, that it depends not on man s will but on God s. &quot;A dispensation which left the salvation of man dependent on his will was highly suitable as a first one, suitable alike to the justice of the Creator and the powers of the untried creature, and such as we should naturally expect at the beginning of things ; but such having been the nature of the first, the second must, for that very reason, be a dispensation of a different kind, effecting its design not by a conditional but by an absolute saving act.&quot; This absolute saving act being an act of God, and it being maintained by all theologians that whatever God Himself does in time He has from eternity decreed to do, we have the doctrine of predestina tion. As Aquinas tersely puts the kernel of the Augus- tinian doctrine : &quot; It is manifest that whatever is of grace is the effect of predestination.&quot; With Augustine grace is nothing else than predestination realized. Grace is irresistible because it is God s instrument in fulfilling His decree. This carries with it a refutation of the three modified forms of predestinarian doctrine which continually seek to make good for themselves a position within the church. It maintains (1) that men are elected not to means of grace only but to grace itself. Salvation is infallibly secured to the elect (De Dono Persev., passim). It maintains (2) that not nations or the church but individuals are the object of predestination, a certain fixed number, &quot; so certain that no one can be added to it or taken from it&quot; (De Corr. et Gratia, 13). And (3) this predestination must be founded, not on foreseen good in man, but on the inscrutable but necessarily just will of God (De Freed. Sand., 17). 1 As Augustine thus constructed the doctrine of pre destination as an integral part of the evangelical system, he necessarily spoke much more of election than of re probation ; but he did not shrink from acknowledging, with all intelligent predestinarians, that the election of some involved the passing by (prseteritio) of the rest : &quot; for the rest, where are they but in that mass of perdition where the Divine justice most justly leaves them 1 &quot; (De Dono Persev., 14). &quot;If God from eternity absolutely elected some unto the infallible attainment of grace and glory, we cannot but grant that those who are not com prised within this absolute decree are as absolutely passed by as the others are chosen &quot; (Bishop Davenant s Animad versions, p. 4). All men being naturally under condem nation, it seemed to Augustine no injustice that in some that condemnation should take effect ; and, if it is sug gested that it would at all events have been better had all been saved, he is content to reply, &quot;Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God 1 &quot; He has no hesita tion, therefore, in using the expressions &quot; prsedestinati ad interitum,&quot; or &quot; ad seternam mortem,&quot; or &quot; damnation! praedestinati&quot;; and in using these expressions he indicates that there are some to whom God has decreed not to give saving grace, and that He foresaw that these persons would sin and be damned. He does not bring the decree of reprobation into direct, and of course not into causal, connexion with the sins of the reprobate, holding that, while the decree of God is the efficient cause of all good in the elect, the cause of sin in the reprobate is the evil will of man. He denies that God s foreknowledge of man s sin makes that sin necessary, but he nowhere ex haustively discusses the distinction between foreknowledge and decree. When pushed to defend God s justice in creat ing those whose damnation He foreknew, he responds to the challenge sometimes by showing that, so far as the Creator s responsibility is concerned, the creature which sins with free will is of a higher kind than that which cannot sin because it has no free will ; sometimes on the ground that it contributes to God s glory that His retributive justice should be manifested ; and sometimes on the ground that in the destruction of sinners the elect will see what God s goodness has saved them from. About the middle of the 9th century Gottschalk attempted to revive Augustinianism (see GOTTSCHALK). His teaching regarding predestination was precisely that of his master, and as such it was maintained by Remigius of Lyons in opposition to the blundering and intolerant Hincmar of Rheims. Hincmar admitted predestination to life and also the consequent abandonment of the rest of men to their sinful state, and yet he mercilessly persecuted Gottschalk for maintaining a predestination to punish ment, and sought to establish a distinction between leaving men in a state which involves punishment and ordaining them to punishment. Remigius exposed the futility of such a distinction, and showed that &quot; the abandonment of a certain portion of mankind to the state of sin in which they are born is predestinarian reprobation, whether we express it as abandonment to sin or as ordaining to punishment.&quot; The discussion, however, extensive and heated as it was, did not go deeply into the substance of the controversy. The incident which gave a distinctive character to this period of the development of the doctrine 1 See Mozley, Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination.