Calvin, Predestination and Salvation.

Hans Boersma views Calvin’s understanding of God’s work of redemption in Christ as a whole, and sees as proof of this the important place Calvin assigns to predestination.[1]  This raises the question, Why, if Calvin assigns an important place to the doctrine of predestination, is it not dealt with in his Institutes until the fourth book?  Clearly for Calvin there are many more important doctrines about which to be taught and concerned.  Boersma sees predestination as “the demonstration of God’s free mercy” and election is “the source of free mercy.”  Truly, He is “the prima causa of salvation.”[2]  And that is a demonstration of sheer unmerited grace.

How, then, does this salvation become the possession of the sinner?  Francois Wendel answers this by affirming that the locus of Calvin’s thought is to be found in faith,[3] not in either election or predestination. Calvin writes,

Wherefore men are being fantastic or fanatical if they look for their salvation or the salvation of others in the labyrinth of predestination instead of keeping to the way of faith which is offered them ... To each one, his faith is a sufficient witness of the eternal predestination of God...[4]

Iain H Murray criticises DML-J for not directing his hearers "with sufficient clarity to faith in Christ as the God-appointed means of relief." (Biography, Vol.1, p191).

Scripture teaching, then, can be understood as it stands without the necessity of delving into the forbidden fruit of God’s secret counsel, and thus complicating the entire hermeneutical exercise and restricting understanding of Scripture to the theologically trained and initiated.[5]  If Scripture is clear only to theological professionals, then, by definition, it is not clear at all.

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[1]    Boersma, Hans, Evangelical Quarterly 64.4 (1992), 333-355.

[2]    Ibid.

[3]    F. Wendel, Calvin, (1963), 270.

[4]    Ibid.

[5]    Calvin is less than complimentary towards those who “draw the line between speculations arising from 

        an impious curiosity and legitimate knowledge of the doctrine of predestination,” p.270.