John Calvin-Life,Legacy and Theology

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JOHN CALVIN : LIFE, LEGACY AND THEOLOGY - PROF. M. M. NINAN On Irresistible Grace and Synergy [N]o man is saved mechanically or by force, but through faith, freely, by accepting the gift of God. This implies the contrary power of rejecting the gift. To accept is no merit, to reject is ingratitude and guilt. All Calvinistic preachers appeal to man’s responsibility. They pray as if everything depended on God; and yet they preach and work as if everything depended on man. And the Church is directed to send the gospel to every creature. We pray for the salvation of all men, but not for the loss of a single human being. Christ interceded even for his murderers on the cross. Here, then, is a practical difficulty. The decree of reprobation cannot be made an object of prayer or preaching, and this is an argument against it. Experience confirms election, but repudiates reprobation. There is a logic of ethics as well as of metaphysics. God is holy as well as almighty and omniscient, and therefore cannot be the author of sin. Man is a moral as well as an intellectual being, and the claims of his moral constitution are equal to the claims of his intellectual constitution. Conscience is as powerful a factor as reason. The most rigid believer in divine sovereignty, if he be a Christian, cannot get rid of the sense of personal accountability, though he may be unable to reconcile the two. The harmony lies in God and in the moral constitution of man. They are the two complementary sides of one truth. Paul unites them in one sentence: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). The problem, however, comes within the reach of possible solution, if we distinguish between sovereignty as an inherent power, and the exercise of sovereignty. God may limit the exercise of his sovereignty to make room for the free action of his creatures. It is by his sovereign decree that man is free. Without such self-limitation he could not admonish men to repent and believe. Here, again, the Calvinistic logic must either bend or break. Strictly carried out, it would turn the exhortations of God to the sinner into a solemn mockery and cruel irony. (Philip Schaff -History of the Christian Church VIII The Theology of Calvin § 114. Calvinism examined.) On the Perseverance of the Saints There is a paradox here. Do anyone know who is the elect and who is the non- elect. Because it is determined by God even though it is done before the creation of the world. According to Augustine “it is uncertain whether anyone has received this gift so long as he is still alive.” Augustine held that God’s elect will certainly persevere but that one’s election could not be infallibly known in this life — and that in fact one’s justification and baptismal regeneration could be rejected and lost through sin and unbelief. Thus this understanding does not help us in any way unless we can be sure we are one of the elect. 112
JOHN CALVIN : LIFE, LEGACY AND THEOLOGY - PROF. M. M. NINAN On Predestination As long as God permits freewill to his sons and daughters, what route they will take is totally dependent on them and not to God. This is what free will means. Time does not exist even for God because time is only a measure of the change. Unless the change take place time is does not exist. Predestination makes man a machine and not human nor sons of God. Sonship implies freedom. Even slaves have freedom. Life is Spirit of God. Where there is the Spirit of God there is freedom. It is not a violation of God's sovereignity it is an affirmation of it. "The Greek church ignored Augustin, and still more Gottschalk, and adheres to this day to the anthropology of the Nicene and ante-Nicene fathers, who laid as great stress on the freedom of the will as on divine grace. John of Damascus teaches an absolute foreknowledge, but not an absolute foreordination of God, because God cannot foreordain sin, which He wills not, and which, on the contrary, He condemns and punishes; and He does not force virtue upon the reluctant will. The Latin church retained a traditional reverence for Augustin, as her greatest divine, but never committed herself to his scheme of predestination. (Philip Schaff- History of the Christian Church IV Chap XI § 119. The Predestinarian Controversy) 113
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John Calvin-Life,Legacy and Theology

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