01 February 2024
I've run into this too many times: Radix Fidem is not Calvinist. Most assuredly not, because Calvinism rests on western reasoning, and we reject that a priori.
The first solid inkling of predestination was a part of the Augustinian academic traditions, and they hit the Christian religion hard with Martin Luther before he even broke with Rome, if I remember correctly. He wrote Bondage of the Will and I've read it. He claimed late in life that it was by far his best book. (We wonder why Lutherans reject predestination.)
Just a short time after Luther maneuvered a break from Rome in the Germanic countries, John Calvin rose to begin formulating his own approach to predestination via the same Augustinian traditions. Calvin wrote his Institutes of Christian Religion through several editions, and I've read most of that, as well.
Because Calvin did missionary work in France, his theology found a home in the French speaking regions of the Netherlands, and then was embraced by one of the Electors of the Empire, which in turn produced the Heidelberg Catechism. A few more documents were built on Calvin's teaching until we get the first synod of the Dutch Reformed Church. From Luther's book to that synod was just about 50 years.
It spread to the UK, took root in Scotland, and spread all over Europe. Shortly after came the Westminster Confession (I've read that, too) and not long after the Belgic Confession. But the momentum of theological development never ended with these clear definitive statements still in use today. Before Luther's book was even 100 years old, there arose a controversy in the Netherlands and Belgium.
While the counter to Calvinism is credited to Jacob Arminius, he still officially clung to the classical confessions to his death. Nonetheless, his name is attached to a five pointed argument against Calvinism. The response to these five declarations was TULIP. You can look up that acronym for yourself if you don't know about it. It's the outline for "Five Points Calvinism".
Scholars will tell you that TULIP isn't actually consistent with what Calvin taught, but it's rare you'll find today a Calvinist that doesn't use the TULIP acronym. But you see, Calvin was full of crap in the first place. Indeed, I didn't care for some of Luther's more primitive arguments in Bondage of the Will.
But the critique of all this is has been clearly stated often enough here: It's all a pile of human reasoning, human logic, taking something in Scripture way too far. The Bible says just enough about Election to establish a meaning for it, and Paul's teaching on predestination actually covers more territory than simple eternal election. The two terms -- election and predestination -- are not tightly locked. That's typical of how a Hebrew mind works.
Paul's use of the term "predestination" in Romans 8 & 9 includes God selectively controlling some people's response to His Word here in this life. Thus, he talks about Pharaoh rejecting God's demand relayed through Moses, which has nothing to do with whether Pharaoh went to Heaven. He also uses the example of Jacob and Esau and their choices under the Covenant of Abraham. God made Esau for destruction in the first place, decreeing that he would forfeit his firstborn rights and never demonstrate faith before he was born.
That word "predestination" is not precisely about election alone, but covers the entire existence of humans. Some are cursed in this life before they are born, and by extension, we should know that some are eternally damned, as well.
But none of this warrants the tight logical extensions of either Luther or Calvin, nor any of the succeeding thinkers of the Reformation. TULIP is particularly egregious about inserting human logic into the rather simple teaching in Scripture. Those logical extensions assert things that we cannot know. It's part of the goofball controversies of the Early Church Fathers, and all their insistence that theology must answer every little question and chase down all the possible variations in thought to the nth degree about the divinity of Christ.
Calling Jesus "the Son of God" is more about our duty to Him than some kind of precise statement for human knowledge. The terms "predestination" and "election" are not meant to carry rational academic meaning. They are functional labels on something only God can understand fully. The most important thing you can do with the terminology of Scripture is establish what it demands of you. That the writers sometimes give us a clue about the wider story is just a bonus.
The whole point of the doctrine of Election and the related concept of predestination is that you as an individual believer embrace the role God designed you for. If you resist, your life will be far more hellish than it has to be.
Again: Radix Fidem is not Calvinist, but it is predestinarian.
Comments
Jay DiNitto
I've heard that, too, about Calvinists not really being so TULIP-like. I don't know... it's complicated, really an academic study in itself, not anything to do with the genuine belief God requires.
Robust1
If it isn't obvious to me after years of reading the word of God, I don't pay much attention to the subject. If the doctrine requires something like the conspiracy guy meme ie a white board filled with lines, arrows and sticky notes etc. then it's low priority to me. I'm trying to get to the heart of the matter. Other folks have other priorities.
Dan D.
This is really timely, we're working through Romans in our Wed. night study and a few days ago I piped up with "The real problem is that in our post-Enlightenment, Western minds we feel entitled to understand everything. Hebrew thinking at the time was nothing like that. You gotta let it go." This blog and the one before it on Substack helped me develop that understanding of God through the Bible. Thanks a ton!
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