Every other Wednesday some of our congregation's members get together to discuss Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, and lately we've been in Book III, chapters 21-24, in which he discusses the doctrines of election and predestination. As it happens, just last week the Beeson podcast featured John L. Thompson's lecture "Calvin and the Mystery of Believing," itself a defense of the historic doctrine of predestination.
Sometimes the line between predestination and irony is wafer-thin.
At any rate, Thompson's lecture is a remarkably succint and clear presentation of the historic reformed understanding of the relationship between predestination and free will. Calvin deals with free will much earlier in his Institutes under the heading of anthropology in Book II, chapters 1-5; election is reserved for Book III because that section is on how believers receive God's grace in Christ. Nonetheless, the two doctrines are inextricably intertwined, and Thompson introduces them marvelously well. He is a model of Westminster Confession of Faith 3.8: "The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men, attending the will of God revealed in his Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of the effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election."
Despite his Calvinistic emphasis on obtaining assurance, Thompson's lecture has an apologetic note, as he knows his audience will include some Christians hostile to the doctrine of election. To these, Calvin himself says, "Now when human understanding hears these things, its insolence is so irrepressible that it breaks forth into random and immoderate tumult as if at the blast of a battle trumpet."
[Updated on November 19, 2013]
No comments:
Post a Comment