CALVINISM
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CALVINISM
which discriminates between the elect and the lost.
A genuine Calvinist ought to be a supralapsarian ; in
other terms, the Fall was decreed as means to an end;
it did not first appear in God's sight to be the suffi-
cient cause why, if He chose, He might select some
from the " massa damnata", leaving others to their
decreed doom. To this subject St. Augustine fre-
quently returns in his anti-Pelagian treatises; and he
lays great emphasis on the consequences to mankind,
as regards their final state, of God's dealing with
them in fallen Adam. But his language, unlike that,
of Calvin, never implies absolute rejection divorced
from foreknowledge of man's guilt. Thus even to the
African Father, whose views in his latter works be-
came increasingly severe (see "On the Predestination
of the Saints" and "On Correction and Grace"),
there was always an element of scientia media, i. e.
prevision in the relation of God with His creatures.
But, to the Reformer who explained Redemption and
its opposite by sheer omnipotence doing as it would,
the idea that man could, even as a term of knowledge,
by his free acts be considered in the Everlasting Will,
was not conceivable. As the Arian said, "How can
the Eternal be begotten?" and straightway denied
the generation of the Word, in like manner Calvin,
"How can the contingent affect the First Cause on
which it utterly depends?" In the old dilemma,
"either God is not omnipotent or man is not self-
determined", the "Institutes" accept the conclusion
adverse to liberty. But it was, said Catholics, equally
adverse to morals; and the system has always been
criticised on that ground. In a word, it seemed to be
antinomian.
With Augustine the Geneva author professed to be at one. " If they have all been taken from a corrupt mass", he argued, "no marvel that they are subject- to condemnation". But, his critics replied, "were they not antecedently predestined to that corrup- tion?" And "is not. God unjust in treating His creat- ures with such cruel mystery?" To this Calvin an- swers, " I confess that all descendants of Adam fell by the Divine will", and that "we must return at last to God's sovereign determination, the cause of which is hidden" (Institutes, III, 23, 4). "Therefore," he concludes, "some men are born devoted from the womb to certain death, that His name may be glori- fied in their destruction". And the reason why such necessity is laid upon them? — "Because", says Cal- vin, "life and death are acts of God's will rather than of his foreknowledge", and "He foresees further events only in consequence of his decree that they shall happen". Finally, "it is an awful decree, I confess [Imrriliilr rfecretum, fateor], but none can deny that God foreknew the future final fate of man before He created him; and that He did foreknow it be- cause it was appointed by His own ordinance". Cal- vin, then, is a supralapsarian; the Fall was necessary; and our first parents like ourselves could not have avoided sinning.
So far, the scheme presents a cast-iron logic at whatever expense to justice and morality. When it comes to consider human nature, its terms sound more uncertain, it veers to each extreme in succession of Pelagius and Luther. In St. Augustine, that nat- ure is almost always viewed historically, not in the abstract; hence, as possessed bj unfallen Adam it was endowed with supernatural gifts, while in his fallen children it Sears t he burden of concupiscence and sin. But the French Reformer, not conceding a possible state of pure nature, attributes to the first with Luther (in Gen., iii),such perfection as
would render God's actual grace unnecessary, thus
tending to make Adam self-sufficient , as the Pelagians held all men to be. On the other hand, when original sin took i linn unci- captive the image of God was en- tirely blotted out. This article of '"total depravity"
also came from Luther, who expressed it in language
of appalling power. And so the "Institutes" an-
nounce that "in man all which bears reference to the
blessed life of the soul is extinct". And if it was
"natural" in Adam to love God and do justice, or a
part of his very essence, then by lapsing from grace
he would have been plunged into an abyss below nat-
ure, where his true moral an 1 religious being was al-
together dissolved. So, at any rate, the German
Protestants believed in thei • earlier period, nor was
Calvin reluctant to echo then.
Catholics distinguish two kinds of beatitude: one corresponding to our nature as a rational species and to be acquired by virtuous arts; the other beyond all that man may do or seek « hen left- to his own fac- ulties, and in such wise God's free gift that- it is due only to acts performed under the influence of a strictly supernatural movement. The confusion of grace with nature in Adam's essence was common to all the Reformed schools; it- is peculiarly manifest in Jan- senius, who strove to deduce it from St. Augustine. And, granting the Fall, it leads by direct inference to man's utter corruption as the unregenerate child of Adam. He is evil in all that he thinks, or wills, or does. Yet Calvin allows him reason and choice, though not true liberty. The heart was poisoned by sin; but something remained of grace to hinder its worst excesses, or to justify God's vengeance on the reprobate (over and above their original fault inher- ited). On the whole, it must be said that the "In- stitutes" which now and then allow that God's image was not quite effaced in us, deny to mankind, so far as redemption has not touched them, any moral and religious powers whatsoever. With Calvin as with his predecessor of Wittenberg, heathen virtue is but apparent, and that of the non-Christian merely "po- litical", or secular. Civilisation, founded on our common nature, is in such a view external only, and its justice or benevolence may claim no intrinsic value. That it has no supernatural value Catholics have always asserted; but the Church condemns those who say, with Baius, "All the works of unbe- lievers are sinful and the virtues of the pliilosophers are vices". Propositions equivalent to these are as follows: "Free Will not aided by God's grace, avails only to commit sin", and "God could not have cre- ated man at the beginning such as he is now born" (Props. 25, 27, 55, censured by St. Pius V, Oct., 1567, and by Urban VIII, March, 1641). Catholic theology admits a twofold goodness and righteousness, the one natural, as Aristotle defines it- in his "Ethics", the other supernatural inspired by the Holy Ghost. Cal- vin throws aside every middle term between justify- ing faith and corrupt desire. The integrity of Adam's nature once violated, he falls under the dominion of lust, which reigns in him without hindrance, save by t lie external grace now and again preventing a deeper degradation. But whatever he is or does savours of the Evil One. Accordingly the system maintained that faith (which here signifies trust in the Lutheran sense) was the first interior grace given and source of all others, as likewise that outside the Church no grace is ever bestowed.
We come on these lines to the famous distinction which separates the true Church, that of the predes- tined, from the seeming or visible, where all baptized persons meet. This falls in with Calvin's whole the- ory, but is never to be mistaken for the view held by Roman authorities, that some may pertain to the soul of the Church who are not members of its body. Always pursuing his idea, the absolute predest inarian finds among Christians, all of whom have heard the Gospel and received the sacraments, only a few en- titled to life everlasting. These obtain the grace winch is in words offered to every one; the rest till up the measure of their condemnation. To the repro- bate. Gospel ordinances serve as a means to compass the ruin intended for them. Hereby, also, an answer
