Posted on 05/29/2010 3:42:23 AM PDT by GonzoII
We come on these lines to the famous distinction which separates the true Church that of the predestined, from the seeming or visible, where all baptized persons meet. This falls in with Calvin's whole theory, 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 predestinarian finds among Christians, all of whom have heard the Gospel and received the sacraments, only a few entitled to life everlasting. These obtain the grace which is in words offered to every one; the rest fill up the measure of their condemnation. To the reprobate, Gospel ordinances serve as a means to compass the ruin intended for them. Hereby, also, an answer is made possible when Catholics demand where the Reformed Church was prior to the Reformation. Calvin replies that in every age the elect constituted the flock of Christ, and all besides were strangers, though invested with dignity and offices in the visible communion. The reprobate have only apparent faith. Yet they may feel as do the elect, experience similar fervours, and to the best of their judgment be accounted saints. All that is mere delusion; they are hypocrites "into whose minds God insinuates Himself, so that, not having the adoption of sons, they may yet taste the goodness of the Spirit." Thus Calvin explained how in the Gospel many are called believers who did not persevere; and so the visible Church is made up of saints that can never lose their crown, and sinners that by no effort could attain to salvation.
Faith, which means assurance of election, grace, and glory, is then the heritage of none but the predestined. But, since no real secondary cause exists man remains passive throughout the temporal series of events by which he is shown to be an adopted son of God. He neither acts nor, in the Catholic sense co-operates with his Redeemer. A difference in the method of conversion between Luther and Calvin may here be noted. The German mystic begins, as his own experience taught him, with the terrors of the law. The French divine who had never gone through that stage, gives the first place to the Gospel; and repentance, instead of preceding faith, comes after it. He argued that by so disposing of the process, faith appeared manifestly alone, unaccompanied by repentance, which, otherwise, might claim some share of merit. The Lutherans, moreover, did not allow absolute predestination. And their confidence in being themselves justified, i.e. saved, was unequal to Calvin's requirements. For he made assurance inevitable as was its object to the chosen soul. Nevertheless, he fancied that between himself and the sounder medieval scholastics no quarrel need arise touching the principle of justification -- namely, that "the sinner being delivered gratuitously from his doom becomes righteous." Calvin overlooked in these statements the vital difference which accounts for his aberration from the ancient system. Catholics held that fallen man kept in some degree his moral and religious faculties, though much impaired, and did not lose his free will. But the newer doctrine affirmed man's total incompetence, he could neither freely consent nor ever resist, when grace was given, if he happened to be predestinate. If not, justification lay beyond his grasp. However, the language of the "Institutes" is not so uncompromising as Luther's had been. God first heals the corrupt will, and the will follows His guidance; or, we may say, cooperates.
The one final position of Calvin is that omnipotent grace of itself substitutes a good for an evil will in the elect, who do nothing towards their own conversion but when converted are accounted just. In all the original theology of the Reformation righteousness is something imputed, not indwelling in the soul. It is a legal fiction when compared with what the Catholic Church believes, namely, that justice or sanctification involves a real gift, a quality bestowed on the spirit and inherent, whereby it becomes the thing it is called. Hence the Council of Trent declares (Sess. VI) that Christ died for all men, it condemns (Canon XVII) the main propositions of Geneva, that "the grace of justification comes only to the predestinate," and that "the others who are called receive an invitation but no grace, being doomed by the Divine power to evil." So Innocent X proscribed in Jansenius the statement: "It is Semipelagian to affirm that Christ died for all men, or shed His blood in their behalf." In like manner Trent rejected the definition of faith as "confidence in being justified without merit"; grace was not "the feeling of love," nor was justification the "forgiveness of sin," and apart from a special revelation no man could be infallibly sure that he was saved. According to Calvin the saint was made such by his faith, and the sinner by want of it stood condemned, but the Fathers of Trent distinguished a dead faith, which could never justify, from faith animated by charity -- and they attributed merit to all good works done through Divine inspiration. But in the Genevese doctrine faith itself is not holy. This appears very singular; and no explanation has ever been vouchsafed of the power ascribed to an act or mean, itself destitute of intrinsic qualities, neither morally good nor in any way meritorious, the presence or absence of which nevertheless fixes our eternal destiny
But since Christ alone is our righteousness, Luther concluded that the just man is never just in himself; that concupiscence, though resisted, makes him sin damnably in all he does, and that he remains a sinner until his last breath. Thus even the "Solid Declaration" teaches, though in many respects toning down the Reformer's truculence. Such guilt, however, God overlooks where faith is found -- the one unpardonable sin is want of faith. "Pecca fortiter sed crede fortius" -- this Lutheran epigram, "Sin as you like provided you believe," expresses in a paradox the contrast between corrupt human nature, filthy still in the very highest saints, and the shadow of Christ, as, falling upon them, it hides their shame before God. Here again the Catholic refuses to consider man responsible except where his will consents; the Protestant regards impulse and enticement as constituting all the will that we have. These observations apply to Calvin -- but he avoids extravagant speech while not differing from Luther in fact. He grants that St. Augustine would not term involuntary desires sin; then he adds, "We, on the contrary, deem it to be sin whenever a man feels any desires forbidden by Divine law -- and we assert the depravity to be sin which produces them" (Institutes, III, 2, 10). On the hypothesis of determinism, held by every school of the Reformers, this logic is unimpeachable. But it leads to strange consequences. The sinner commits actions which the saint may also indulge in; but one is saved the other is lost; and so the entire moral contents of Christianity are emptied out. Luther denominated the saint's liberty freedom from the law. And Calvin, "The question is not how we can be righteous, but how, though unworthy and unrighteous, we may be considered righteous." The law may instruct and exhort, but "it has no place in the conscience before God's tribunal." And if Christians advert to the law, "they see that every work they attempt or meditate is accursed" (Institutes, III, 19, 2, 4). Leo X had condemned Luther's thesis, "In every good work the just man sins." Baius fell under censure for asserting (Props. 74, 75) that "concupiscence in the baptized is a sin, though not imputed." And, viewing the whole theory, Catholics have asked whether a sinfulness which exists quite independent of the will is not something substantial, like the darkness of the Manichaeans, or essential to us who are finite beings.
At all events Calvin seems entangled in perplexities on the subject, for he declares expressly that the regenerate are "liable every moment at God's judgment-seat to sentence of death" (Instit., III, 2, 11); yet elsewhere he tempers his language with a "so to speak," and explains it as meaning that all human virtue is imperfect. He would certainly have subscribed to the "Solid Declaration," that the good works of the pious are not necessary to salvation. With Luther, he affirms the least transgression to be a mortal sin, even involuntary concupiscence -- and as this abides in every man while he lives, all that we do is worthy of punishment (Instit., II, 8, 68, 59). And again, "There never yet was any work of a religious man which, examined by God's severe standard would not be condemnable" (Ibid., III, 14,11). The Council of Trent had already censured these axioms by asserting that God does not command impossibilities, and that His children keep His word. Innocent X did the like when he proscribed as heretical the fifth proposition of Jansenius, "Some commandments of God are impossible to the just who will and endeavour; nor is the grace by which they should become possible given to them." [..To be continued..]
Thus we see the lack of understanding between temptation and sin.
Did God arbitrarily decide who to save and who to condemn?
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/nowhim.html
Does God’s judgment in time unfairly compromise someone’s ‘free will’?
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/stealtime.html
The Five Points of TULIP: An Evaluation
http://www.tektonics.org/tulip/tulipsum.html
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