THE SOTERIOLOGICAL
IMPACT OF AUGUSTINE’S CHANGE FROM PREMILLENNIALISM TO AMILLENNIALISM
PART TWO
David
R. Anderson
Pastor
Faith
Community Church
The
Woodlands, Texas
I. INTRODUCTION
A
significant change in one area of systematic theology can cause significant
changes in another area. By definition a system is coherent and consistent.
Changes in one area of the system will most likely cause changes in other areas
of that same system, which is why we have likened systematic theology to a
spreadsheet. In the first installment of this study we chose Augustine as a
case in point. His change in eschatology from premillennialism to
amillennialism caused significant changes in his soteriology, especially in the
area of perseverance of the saints. Specifically, his reinterpretation of Matt
24:13 (“he who endures to the end will be saved”) as a spiritual salvation
instead of a physical salvation (to enter and populate the Millennium) caused
drastic changes in his soteriology. Perseverance of the saints (faithfulness
until the end of one’s physical life) became the sine qua non of
his soteriology. One could believe in Christ, have the fruit of the elect, but
prove he was not elect if he should not persevere in faithfulness until the end
of his physical life. In this second installment of our study we would like to
see how this change in Augustine’s eschatology affected the soteriology of John
Calvin and that of modern Christianity.
II. THE SOTERIOLOGY OF JOHN CALVIN
As we have already noted, the concept of simul iustus et
peccator (that one could be declared righteous by God in his position, yet
still
23 24 Journal
of the Grace Evangelical Society Autumn 2002
retain sin in his condition) was
passed on to Martin Luther by Philip Melancthon, and John Calvin hitch-hiked
with Martin Luther. When John Calvin first published his Institutes in 1536 there
were only six chapters. He defended forensic justification by faith alone from
Romans 4. He understood that one could be declared righteous at a moment in
time when a sinner’s faith intersected with God’s offer of the free gift of
eternal life through His Son Jesus Christ. As such, no sins past, present, or
future could bar the sinner-turned-saint from entrance to God’s Kingdom.
So
much for iustus
(being
just). But what about peccator
(being
sinful)? How can the sinner-turned-saint be declared just by God when in his
character he still falls so far short of God’s holiness; that is, still sinful?
Initially, the Reformers saw a divorce between what they called justification
and what many theologians today call progressive sanc-tification. Justification
took place at a moment in time in heaven’s courtroom; sanctification was the
transformation of one’s character and walk to conform to that of Christ. But
justification did not guarantee sanctification.
However, the
Council of Trent formed in 1545 as the rebuttal to the doctrine of the
Reformers. This Council continued to meet until 1563. They attacked the
Reformers’ doctrine of justification as preaching license. To tell people their
future sins are already forgiven in Christ is to tell them they can live any
way they want and still go to heaven when they die. This kind of preaching will
promote loose living, the Council accused. These attacks needed answers. So
John Calvin continued to write. When he finished his Institutes in 1559, there
were eighty chapters. And under pressure from the Council of Trent, Calvin
remarried justification and sanctification. “You cannot possess Christ without
being made partaker in his sanctification…in our sharing in Christ, which
justifies us, sanctification is just as much included as righteousness.”1 What was
Calvin’s basis for this remarriage? The influence of Augustine.
Yes, the long
arms of Augustine reached right across the “Dark Ages”2 (411–1000) into the Medieval
Period of church history in the West (1054–1500). After the Dark Ages, the
medieval scholars went
1 John Calvin, Institutes, III.16.1; 11.1.
2 The
“Dark Ages” are thought to be the period between the defeat of Rome (A.D. 410)
by Alaric up to A.D. 1000. The Soteriological Impact Part II 25
back to the
Fathers. In the West it was natural to go to the Latin writers. Hence, the
starting point for most medieval thinkers was to ponder the writings of Augustine.
The “Great Schism” (1378−1418) was a time of competition between Rome and
Avignon in France for the seat of the papacy, and during this time Augustine
and Ambrose became a focus of study in the universities in and surrounding
Paris.
Much of this was
due to the fact that Peter Lombard produced the Four Books of Sentences for his
students in Paris in 1140. It was a topical listing of verses and patristic
quotes. His assignment to solve the apparent inconsistencies in the Bible and
the Fathers with plausible answers caused his students to wrestle with the
thinking of Augustine. Lombard’s book was the most important publication of his
age. Every theologian was required to comment on it. And in time the University
of Paris became the most important center for learning in Europe. College de la
Sorbonne became known as “the Sorbonne” and synonymous with the University of
Paris. This college produced Erasmus and John Calvin.
By 1500
Augustinian thinking was pervasive in European scholastic. Erasmus helped facilitate
this with his editorial work on the writings of Augustine. But even before
Erasmus the “Augustinian School” had developed in Great Britain as well as
Paris. Thomas Bradwardine reacted to the Pelagian approach to justification at
Oxford, retreatintg to the teachings of Augustine for support. There was not
much cross current between England and the Continent because of the Hundred
Years War. But Gregory of Rimini at the University of Paris was Bradwardine’s
counterpart in Europe. He was a member of the Augustinian order, which claimed
Martin Luther some years later. Thus when John Calvin developed his Institutes he could claim
that his theology was thoroughly Augustinian.
Calvin’s
theology was thoroughly Augustinian, including, of course, his soteriology.
Calvin’s understanding of forensic justification might appear to be a major
departure from the life-long process of justification advocated by Augustine.
But it was not. Unfortunately, under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church
(RCC), via the Council of Trent, John Calvin felt forced to come up with an
answer to the accusation of license stemming from his “moment in time”
justification.
The RCC had
adopted Augustine’s doctrine of life-long justification wholesale. At the
Council of Trent the RCC defined justification as the process of becoming
righteous, but even justification had to be 26 Journal of the Grace Evangelical
Society Autumn 2002
The best one
can attain to in this life is hope mixed with “fear and apprehension.” God
rewards the good works of His saints even though He is the power source behind
these works, and these rewards help pry open the gates of heaven.augmented if
one wanted to get to heaven.3 A mortal sin could cancel out any accrued
justification, but through penance one could be restored. And the RCC continued
in Augustine’s belief that it is not possible to know if one is going to heaven
before death: “No one can know with the certitude of faith, which cannot admit
of any error, that he has obtained God’s grace.”4 5
The Council of
Trent put a curse on anyone saying justification is not increased by good
works.6 A
further curse was put on anyone who believed good works were not meritorious
for entrance to heaven.7 The concept of “imputed” righteousness was believed to be a serious
threat to moral effort. Bruce Demarest sums up the RCC approach when he says:
Traditional
Roman Catholics, in other words, trust in God’s infusion of a new nature and
plead the worth of their God-enabled works. Justification in Catholic theology
is a comprehensive term that includes, among other things, what Protestants
understand by regeneration and sanctification. For Rome, justification is not
divine-wise an objective pro-nouncement
of
righteousness but is human-wise a lifelong process of becoming righteous.8
With this kind
of pressure Calvin needed plausible answers to the accusers of antinomianism.
His defense was to claim that one who was truly justified in God’s court room
at a moment in time would most certainly go on to maturity in Christ (progressive
sanctification), given sufficient time in this world before physical death to
do so. In other words, justification guaranteed sanctification—or, Matt 24:13.
Only those who persevere in the faith to the end of their physical lives will
be eternally saved. Once again, Augustine’s understanding of Matt 24:13
3 Council of Trent, X.
4 Ibid., IX.
5 Ibid., XVI.
6 Ibid., Canon 24.
7 Ibid., Canon 32.
8 Bruce
A. Demarest, The Cross and Salvation (Wheaton: Crossway
Books, 1997), 350. The
Soteriological Impact Part II 27
became the
benchmark of the elect. If one was truly elect, he would persevere; if he did
not persevere, he was not elect.
Of course, this
drove Calvin into the same kind of contradictory casuistry Augustine developed.
What are we to say of those believers who have all the characteristics of
genuine Christianity, but they fall away from the faith before they die? Many
Evangelicals today would simply use the “professing but not possessing”
retreat. They profess to be believers, but, indeed, their faith is not saving
faith because it is only intellectual assent. Thus these professing believers
are not genuine believers at all. They profess faith but do not possess faith.
But this is not what Augustine did. Nor Calvin.
Augustine said
the non-elect can have genuine faith. Augustine said the non-elect can be
legitimately regenerated by the Holy Spirit. But because they have not received
that most necessary of all gifts, the gift of perseverance, these regenerated
believers are non-elect. Forget the fact that the Scriptures never suppose that
one who is regenerated is not also elect (cf. 1 Pet 1:1, 3 and Titus 1:1; 3:5).
When pressed on this matter, as previously stated, Augustine explained this
contradiction as “a mystery.”
Calvin fell
into a similar trap. Pressed into a remarriage9 of justification and sanctification,
he had to have a way of explaining how some can bear all the good fruit of the
elect yet prove they were not elect because they did not persevere to the end
of their lives on earth. His answer was “temporary faith.” He based his
understanding of temporary faith on his interpretations of the parable of the
sower, the warning of Hebrews 6, and the warning to the people saying, “Lord,
Lord…” in Matthew 7.10 Here, for example, is what Calvin said concerning Heb 6:4-5:
I know that to
attribute faith to the reprobate seems hard to some when Paul declares it
(faith) to be the result of election. This difficulty is easily solved.
For…experience shows that the reprobate are sometimes affected by almost the
same
9 We call this a
remarriage because the original marriage took place in the theology of
Augustine with his view of life-long justification, a justification which would
obviously subsume sanctification.
10 Jody
Dillow, The Reign of the Servant Kings: A Study of Eternal Security and
the Final Significance of Man (Hayesville, NC:
Schoettle Publishing Co., 1992), 254. 28 Journal of the Grace Evangelical
Society Autumn 2002
feeling
as the elect, so that even in their own judgment they do not in any way differ
from the elect.11
Hence, the people in Hebrews 6 could
have been enlightened, have tasted the Word of God, the heavenly gift and the
power of the age to come, but still fall away and prove they were never elect.
Calvin called this operation of the Spirit an “ineffectual” calling, “an
inferior operation of the Spirit.”12
Calvin seemed
to think that allowing the reprobate such full experiences of God justified His
rejection of them for eternity. Dillow explains:
The central
claim of this teaching is that God imparts supernatural influences to the
reprobate which approximate, but do not equal, the influences of effectual
calling. He is illuminated, he tastes, he grows, and he has similar feelings as
the elect. However, it seems God is deceiving this man into believing he is
elect so that God can be more than just in condemning him when he finally falls
away. After all, the man had these “tastes.”13
Apparently, such deep experiences
with God make the reprobate all that much more inexcusable when they do not really believe. At
least this theodicy goes a step beyond Augustine’s standard cop-out for an
inexplicable contradiction: “mystery.”
But imagine the
implications of a statement like this for assurance: “Experience shows that the
reprobate are sometimes affected in a way so similar to the elect, that even in
their own judgment there is no difference between them.” So, here we have two
groups of people who look like the elect, and both groups “in their own
judgment” are elect. However, according to Calvin, some of those who look like
the elect (meaning they have the same fruit as the elect) and think they are
elect, are not in fact elect and will prove this fact by falling away some time
before they die. This poor class of people is self-deceived. Can it be more
transparent? With such a teaching no one could know he was one of the elect
until he dies. Of course, that is precisely what Augustine taught, and Calvin
would have admitted the same had he been consistent within his own system. Alas,
he was not.
11 Calvin, Institutes, 3.2.11.
12 Calvin, Commentary, Luke 17:13; Institutes, 3.2.12; 3.2.11.
13 Dillow,
254. The
Soteriological Impact Part II 29
Because of the
terrible possibility that one might actually be one of the reprobates when he
thought he was one of the elect, Calvin says, “Meanwhile, believers are taught
to examine themselves carefully and humbly, lest carnal security creep in and
take the place of assurance of faith.”14 So now we have a distinction between
“carnal security” and “assurance of faith.” Calvin is now stretching as far as
he can to maintain the Reformed doctrine of instantaneous justification in an
amillennial system of theology, which says the just must persevere until the
end or they were never just in the first place. “In the elect alone He implants
the living root of faith, so that they persevere even to the end.”15
Apparently,
Calvin even thought some of those in the parable of the sower who produced
fruit were not elect: “…just as a tree not planted deep enough may take root
but will in the process of time wither away, though it may for several years
not only put forth leaves and flowers, but produce fruit.”16 He must
have realized the implications of some of his teachings because he sprinkles
his writings with answers to supposed objections which only confuse the issue
more. Take this one, for example:
Should it be
objected that believers have no stronger testimony to assure them of their
adoption, I answer that there is a great resemblance and affinity between the
elect of God and those who are impressed for a time with fading faith, yet the
elect alone have that full assurance which is extolled by Paul, and by which
they are enabled to cry, Abba, Father.17
That
really helped. How is the believer (whether real or imaginary) to know if he
has full
assurance?
Maybe his assurance is only part assurance, but how is he to know? R. T.
Kendall recognizes the problem here when he writes:
And if the
reprobate may experience “almost the same feeling as the elect,” there is no
way to know finally what the reprobate experiences. Furthermore, if the
reprobate may believe that God is merciful towards them, how can we be sure our
believing the same thing is any different from theirs? How can we be so sure
that our “beginning of faith” is saving
14 Ibid., 255.
15 Ibid., 256.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.,
255. 30
Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society Autumn 2002
and
is not the “beginning of faith” which the reprobate seem to have?18
Calvin
digs an even deeper hole by speaking of an inner assurance given by the Spirit
to the elect, and then says the reprobate can have a similar sensation. With
this kind of teaching one could never have assurance of his salvation. He could
only know he is elect when he dies. The pressure from the RCC trapped Calvin
into the very same fear of the eternal future inherent in the Catholic system
that he was trying to escape. Dillow hits the nail on the head when he
observes:
In the final
analysis Calvin has thrown away the possibility of assurance, at least until
the final hour. When he grants that the only certain difference between the
faith of the elect and the faith of the reprobate is that the faith of the
former perseveres to the end, he makes assurance now virtually impossible.19
To
summarize, we are trying to demonstrate Spread Sheet Theology. To change one
ingressed doctrine in a system will most likely change other ingressed
doctrines in that very system. When Augustine changed his eschatology, it
affected his soteriology—drastically. Matthew 24:13 (perseverance in the faith
to the end of one’s physical life as a requirement for eternal salvation)
became the cornerstone of his salvation system. Purgatory developed as a
figment of his logic based on Matt 24:13 (what to do if one does persevere to
the end of his life in the faith but still has vestiges of sin in his
character—voila, Purgatory).
The RCC bought into Augustine’s theology, both in terms of eschatology and
soteriology.
The Reformers
like Calvin retained the eschatology of Augustine (amillennial), but tried to
change the soteriology (forensic justification). But that was like pouring new
wine into old wineskins. “Declared righteousness” could not dance with
Augustine’s understanding of Matt 24:13. The latter won out. The remarriage between
justification and sanctification, which Luther and Zwingli had fought hard to
resist, took place in Geneva. And with the Geneva Academy, which trained
pastors in the Reformed tradition, the errors of Augustine and Calvin have been
perpetuated until today. Augustine’s amillennial understanding of Matt
18 R. T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1979), 24.
19 Dillow,
258. The
Soteriological Impact Part II 31
24:13 continues
to be a fly in the ointment of modern soteriology, which undermines one’s
assurance of salvation at the least and teaches a works-oriented salvation at
the most.
III. THE SOTERIOLOGY OF WESTERN CHRISTIANITY TODAY
The
soteriology of Western Christianity today falls into two main categories: Roman
Catholic soteriology and Protestant soteriology. The former has completely
absorbed Augustine’s approach to justification, leaving the election of a
professing believer in question until his death. The “making righteous” of the
elect person continues through his life and even in Purgatory after death, if
necessary. As discussed under “Augustine’s Soteriology,” persevering in the
faith until the end of one’s life based on an amillennial understanding of Matt
24:13 was the basis for this approach to soteriology in general and
justification in particular.
In
Protestant circles John Calvin set the tone with the Geneva Academy, which did
more to disseminate doctrine into the West than any other influence. With its
amillennial stance and spiritual understanding of Matt 24:13, the modern
industry of spiritual fruit inspecting flourished. The fruit inspecting of
Theodore Beza, William Perkins, and the English Calvinists has been well
documented by R. T. Kendall.20 All of these adopted the “temporary faith”
solution to the warning passages in Hebrews suggested by Calvin, when
interpreted according to their understanding of Matt 24:13. If one has the
fruit of the elect and the faith of the elect but does not persevere in the
faith until the end of his physical life, then God must have given the believer
only “temporary faith.” It must be noted that this is neither fake faith nor
spurious faith. It is genuine faith, but alas, it is temporary. As such, the
one who possesses genuine, but temporary, faith is non-elect.
Such
reliance on Matt 24:13 as the sine qua non of eternal
salvation closes the gap between the Arminians and the Calvinists as it relates
to the bottom line for getting into heaven. As J. Lanier Burns, who chairs the
Systematic Theology Department at Dallas Theological Seminary, has told this
author, “The most Arminian theologians in the world are Five Point Calvinists.”21 R. T.
Kendall echoes this sentiment when he
20 Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism.
21 Private
interview. 32
Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society Autumn 2002
says that when it comes to
perseverance, the Calvinists of the Puritan persuasion and Arminians have the
same position:22
If Perkins
holds that the recipient of the first grace must obtain the second
(perseverance) or the first [initial faith] is rendered invalid, there is no
practical difference whatever in the two positions. If the believer does not
persevere (whether Arminius or Perkins says it), such a person proves to be
non-elect.23
As
the fruit inspecting industry crossed the ocean to America, there is a familiar
ring. Charles Hodge typifies this group:
Election,
calling, justification, and salvation are indissolubly united; and, therefore,
he who has clear evidence of his being called has the same evidence of his
election and final salvation…The only evidence of election is
effectual calling, that is, the production of holiness. And the only
evidence of
the genuineness of this call and the certainty of our perseverance, is a
patient continuance in well doing (emphasis mine).24
Or,
as John Murray put it, “The perseverance of the saints reminds us very
forcefully that only those who persevere to the end are truly saints.”25
And
how does this understanding of perseverance differ from “the churches of
Christ”? Robert Shank, one of their chief spokesmen writes: “Obviously, it can
be known only as one finally perseveres (or fails to persevere) in faith. There
is no
valid assurance of
election and final salvation for any man, apart from deliberate perseverance
in faith”
(emphasis mine).26
But Shank is a pure Arminian, who left the Southern Baptist Convention
over the issue of eternal security. It is strange how aspects of these two
systems (Calvinism and Arminianism) become alike, when one studies their
doctrines of perseverance based on an amillennial interpretation of Matt 24:13.
22 Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism, 143.
23 Ibid., 144.
24 Charles Hodge, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (1860; reprint ed.,
Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1950), 212.
25 Quoted by Dillow, 259.
26 Robert
Shank, Life in the Son: A Study of the Doctrine of Perseverance (Springfield,
MO: Westcott, 1961), 293. The Soteriological Impact Part II 33
Yet surely the modern advances of
exegesis under the scrutiny of the grammatico-historical method have cleared
away the brush hiding the inconsistency of interpreting “the end” of Matt 24:13
differently from “the end” of Matt 24:3, 6, and 14. Surely. So let us take a
contemporary NT scholar who teaches at a respected, conservative seminary as a
case in point: Scot McKnight.
In
a 1992 article McKnight addressed the warning passages of Hebrews.27 The first
question he had to settle was whether the recipients of the epistle were
believers or unbelievers. Like a prospector panning for gold, he sifted through
the evidence very carefully. Page after page of research amassed the evidence
and concluded the obvious—these are actual believers, not fake believers or
professors/not possessors. He does not like the implications connected with
Calvin’s solution of “temporary faith,” so he searches for another explanation
for his conclusion as to how actual believers can wind up in hell.
McKnight
is to be commended for not allowing his Reformed approach to perseverance to
cause him to declare these recipients unbelievers. However, because he is
convinced that only believers who persevere to the end of their lives are
elect, he must make categories among those who have actually believed. So he
distinguishes between “genuine, true, real, or saving” faith and what he calls phenomenological
faith.28 Those who
are phenomenological
believers
are those who, from the human perspective, have been observed to have all the
fruits of genuine faith, but from an ontological standpoint may have fallen short
of the same.29 Because
these believers have genuinely experienced the Holy Spirit, the powers of the
age to come, the taste of God’s Word, and so on, they have enjoyed spiritual phenomena which are
genuine spiritual experiences shared by the elect.30 But, alas, they are not elect. How
do we know? Because they do not persevere in the faith until the end of their
lives, and Matt 24:13 tells us that people who do not persevere until
27 Scot McKnight, “The Warning Passages of Hebrews: A Formal Analysis
and Theological Conclusions” Trinity Journal (Spring 1992): 22−59.
28 Ibid., 24, n. 12.
29 Ibid., n. 10.
30 McKnight
recognizes these believers as regenerate, but for him regeneration does not
necessitate perseverance and is, by his definition, a life-long process. So,
much like Augustine, these believers can be regenerated but fall away from the
faith and be eternally damned. 34 Journal of the Grace Evangelical
Society Autumn 2002
the end cannot be saved. (Notice
that Hebrews never uses such terminology.)
McKnight’s
entire article is a classic study in circular reasoning. He assumes what he is
trying to prove. He assumes, from Matt 24:13, that anyone who does not
persevere in the faith until the end of his life cannot go to heaven. But the
evidence he amasses from Hebrews demonstrates the readers to be believers. Now
the only way to keep these believers out of heaven is to say they either lose
their salvation (an Arminian option), they go to purgatory for further
cleansing (a Roman Catholic option), or there must be different categories of
believers (his final option). On this basis, he understands only Joshua and
Caleb from the redeemed “Egyptian” generation of Israelites to be with the Lord
today (see below). How Moses appeared with the Lord at the transfiguration he
does not explain. Why Michael the archangel contended with the devil over the
body of Moses (Jude 9) remains a mystery.
Yes,
McKnight recognizes the recipients of Hebrews as believers, but they may be
only phenomenological
believers
who wind up in hell because of apostasy. He uses the severe language in the
warning of Heb 10:26ff. to determine (by analogy of faith) that all the warning
passages in Hebrews are alluding to the danger of hell-fire if one does not
persevere:
The following
logic is at the heart of the author’s exhortations: if willful disobedience and
apostasy in the Mosaic era brought discipline and prohibited entrance into the
Land (a type of the eternal rest), then surely willful disobedience and
apostasy in the new era will bring eternal exclusion from the eternal rest.
In light of the
final sense of several of these expressions (cf. especially the harsh realities
of 10:30–31, 39) and the use of imagery in Hebrews that elsewhere is used
predominantly of eternal damnation, it becomes quite clear that the author has
in mind an eternal sense of destruction. The author of Hebrews makes it
unambiguously clear that those who do not persevere until the end will suffer
eternal punishment at the expense of the wrath of God. There is no escape; like
the children of Israel who disobeyed, those who shrink back will be destroyed.
The consequences for those who apostasize [sic] The Soteriological Impact Part II 35
are
eternal damnation and judgment; therefore, the author has exhorted his readers
to persevere until the end.31
Never
mind the fact that the words “hell,” “lake of fire,” “eternal,” “everlasting,”
“forever,” “damnation,” and the like never occur in any of these warning
passages. He is convinced the language of 10:26–39 is so severe it must refer
to eternal damnation. Does he conclude the same for Deut 4:24 where apo„leia apoleisthe (utterly
destroy) and ektribe„
ektribe„sesthe (utterly
destroy) are even more emphatic than the apo„leian (destruction) of Heb 10:39?32 Not likely.
The curses in Deuteronomy are temporal curses. God’s covenants with Abraham and
David ensure an eternal relationship with Israel. The issue in Deuteronomy 4
and 30 is fellowship, not relationship. Then could the same not be said of the
Hebrew Christians of Hebrews, especially when drawing on the warnings of
temporal judgment given in Deuteronomy 32 (32:35 and 36 are quoted in Heb
10:30), the language of which is even more graphic than that of Heb 10:26ff.?
McKnight
concludes that those who do not persevere until the end cannot go to heaven,
since that is the “single condition”33 for final salvation (whatever happened to
believing in Jesus?). With the circle complete he warns his own readers that we
should not be hasty in giving assurance of salvation to people who look like
genuine believers. Why? Because they may only be phenomenological believers.
How
can one know if he is a phenomenological believer instead of a genuine
believer, since the observable fruit for each category is the same
31 Ibid., 35-36. His view of “fire” and “burning” is limited to
hell-fire. But note Deut 4:24 and the consuming fire, the jealous God, and the
utter destruction (the LXX uses apo„leia apoleisthe to emphasize the utter destruction to come upon Israel if she is unfaithful, and this is
the same term used in Heb 10:39). Malachi 4:1 also points to the fire, which
will destroy the Jews in the land. They will not prolong their days in the
land.
Interpreters who object to the warning in Hebrews 10 as being a
temporal judgment instead of eternal, speak of the much worse judgment to come
upon believers in Christ who apostatize as opposed to the judgment which came
upon the unfaithful Israelites at Kadesh-Barnea. However, they overlook the
fact that a judgment which affects one’s rest in the Millennium (1,000 years)
is much worse than a judgment which affects one’s rest in the land for forty
years.
32 When a verb in Hebrew or Greek is preceded by a noun with the same
root as the verb, the action of the verb is being emphasized.
33 Ibid.,
59. 36
Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society Autumn 2002
until the former falls away
somewhere before the end of his life? Obviously, one cannot know which category
he belongs to until the end of his life. Again, McKnight is to be credited for
some consistency. That is, he warns us that no one can have assurance of his
salvation in this life.
But
is this not the very conclusion of Augustine and Calvin? Augustine never
espoused assurance of salvation before death. Calvin did, but only initially.
Assurance was of the essence of faith in his early writings, but not after his
interaction with the Council of Trent. It would seem the apple does not fall
very far from the tree.
IV. CONCLUSION
Once
again, this has been a study in Spread Sheet Theology. By this nomenclature we
refer to a system which has a high level of consistency, comprehensiveness,
congruity, and coherence. Changing one doctrine ingressive to the system will
most likely cause changes in other parts of the system as well. We have chosen
the theology of Augustine as a case in point.
Though
Augustine was a pretribulational, premillennial, dispen-sationalist in his
early theology, a change in his eschatology resulted in a change in his
soteriology. When he reacted to the eschatological feasting of the Donatists
and their obsessive preoccupation with the dating of Christ’s return to set up
His kingdom on earth, Augustine used the hermeneutics of Tyconius to eliminate
any future, physical, kingdom of Christ on earth. In this sense he became amillennial
(though he did see a thousand year reign of Christ in heaven).
This
change in his systematic theology caused a reinterpretation of some of
Augustine’s biblical theology. He no longer interpreted Matt 24:13 as a promise
of physical salvation leading into the Millennium (since there was not going to
be a physical Millennium in his new approach to eschatology). Now he saw Matt
24:13 as a promise of spiritual salvation. In his mind a new test for
soteriology was born: one must endure in his Christian faithfulness until the
end of his life. This verse became the driving force and final arbiter in
Augustine’s soteriology.
When
the Reformers came along over a thousand years later, a revival in the study of
Augustine’s writings had been in vogue for over a hundred years. His
amillennial eschatology still held. But the Reformers sought to make a change
in soteriology. Justification could be declared in the court room of heaven at
an instant in time. One could be declared The Soteriological Impact Part II 37
righteous by God in his position,
yet still retain sin in his condition: simul iustus et peccator. This was a
monumental change in soteriology, enough to effect the Reformation. If they had
followed through on a good system of theology, the Reformers would have
examined their eschatology to see how their new approach to soteriology might
cause changes in their understanding of the future. But they did not develop a
good system. Instead they tried to amalgamate Augustine’s theology with their
own. The result was an alloy of contradictions.
John
Calvin, who began teaching assurance is of the essence of faith, wound up
teaching that no man could tell if he were elect or reprobate until he died.
Matthew 24:13 remained a cornerstone of the soteriology of the Reformers. Fruit
inspecting flourished among the followers of Calvin and came to America through
the Puritans. Writers like John Owen wrote tomes on how to know if one was
among the elect.34
All of this was driven by an amillennial interpretation of Matt 24:13.
It
might be argued that there were certainly other passages than Matt 24:13
marshaled to support the doctrine that one must persevere to the end in order
to be saved. True. But Matt 24:13 remained the cornerstone on which the other
passages were built because it is the only verse which includes both the word
“saved” and the word “end.”
Scot
McKnight’s article on the warning passages in Hebrews was offered as a case
study in the affect a “spiritual salvation” understanding of Matt 24:13 can
have on interpreting an entire book. His understanding of Matt 24:13 (endure
until the end of one’s life in order to go to heaven) as the single (and surely
he must mean the single most important) spiritual condition which must be met
in order to separate the sheep from the goats guides him throughout the maze of
twists and turns in Hebrews.
Rather
than allowing his interpretation to emerge from the words of the text, McKnight
uses a point of reference (Matt 24:13) outside the text of Hebrews to determine
his understanding of Hebrews itself. His “phenomenological believer”
concoction, in which the epistle is addressed to actual but not genuine,
observable but not ontological believers, must stand as one of the all-time
examples of creatively
34 John
Owen, The Works of John Owen, 16 vols., vol. 3: A
Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit (1677; reprint,
Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 45-47, 226-28. This particular volume
is over 650 pages and was dedicated, according to Owen, to helping professors
of Christ determine if they were possessors of Christ. 38 Journal of
the Grace Evangelical Society Autumn 2002
“forcing” the text when one comes to
the end of an exegetical cul
de sac.
How much simpler to change one’s eschatology back to the pre-Augustinian days
of premillennialism when Matt 24:13 could have a physical reference and the
“rest” in Hebrews could refer to the Millennium (as the early Fathers taught)
rather than the eternal state.
The
appeal of this study is really a warning. It is dangerous to mix theological
systems. By definition, mixing systems will create contradictions. We must be
careful when we pick and choose that which seems appealing from one system and
try to fit it into the constructs of another system. Those who claim to be
Dispensationalists should be careful not to introduce ingressive doctrines from
Reformed theologians into their system and vice-versa. These are two mutually
exclusive systems. This author agrees with R. C. Sproul when he claims there is
no such thing as a “four point” Calvinist, when the points are defined by
classic Dortian Calvinism.35 One is either a “five point” Calvinist or none (although being
a “no point” Calvinist does not make one an Arminian). Dortian Calvinism is a
system. To pull just one point out of the system destroys the entire system.
On
the other hand, to incorporate one point from Dortian Calvinism into
Dispensationalism can also destroy the entire system.36 If the Dortian view of
perseverance of the saints is correct (the view taught by Augustine), then the
spiritual view of Matt 24:13 is also correct. If the spiritual view of Matt
24:13 is correct, then amillennialism is true. If amillennialism is true, then
there is no distinction between Israel and the Church. If there is no
distinction between Israel and the Church, then Dispensationalism is false.
We
applaud the emphasis on Biblical Theology in recent decades, since it
accentuates the strength of grammatico-historical exegesis. However, let us not
lose sight of the fact that Biblical Theology stops with what the text said to
its original recipients, as opposed to Systematic Theology, which starts with
the original audience but does not stop there.
35 R. C. Sproul, Willing to Believe (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997), 193.
36 It
must be pointed out that dispensationalists like Lewis Sperry Chafer redefined
the “points” of Dortian Calvinism to fit their system. Chafer, for example,
limited the perseverance of the saints to eternal security in his Systematic
Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1976), 267−354. For
the sake of clear communication, it might be better to stay consistent in our
definitions. The
Soteriological Impact Part II 39
A good systematic theologian must
not only contextualize; he must also decontextualize and recontextualize. That
is, he must find out what the text said to its original recipients, look for
the timeless truths which transcend cultures and centuries, and transfer those
timeless truths into the respective contexts of differing modern societies.
Systematic Theology speaks to us today.
Furthermore,
Systematic Theology incorporates Historical Theology in its quest to understand
how the theology of today developed. Both Biblical and Historical Theology feed
like tributaries into the river of Systematic Theology. When we focus on one of
the tributaries to the neglect of the other or of the main river itself, we get
stuck in St. Louis when we are trying to go down the Mississippi to the Gulf of
Mexico.
Finally,
let us remember, Systematic Theology is like a spread sheet. Changes in one of
the major points of the system will most likely cause changes in other points
of the system as well. This could be good. It could lead to a new system with a
greater degree of consistency, coherence, congruity, and comprehensiveness. But
if it leads to increased contradictions or fails to incorporate all the
evidence, perhaps the proposed change is invalid. We believe that Augustine’s
eschatological change from premillennialism to amillennialism led him and his
followers into a theological labyrinth of contradictions in soteriology which
persists until today.
ANOTHER
TALE OF TWO CITIES
DAVID R. ANDERSON
Pastor
Faith Community Church
The Woodlands, Texas
I. INTRODUCTION
It was the best of times. It
was the worst of times. The best of times
in Athens, but the worst of
times in Jerusalem. Alexander the Great
found no more worlds to
conquer, but when his four generals split up his
kingdom, the Seleucids in
Syria and the Ptolemys in Egypt used Palestine
as their football field in their
effort to control the Mediterranean
world. The Golden Age of
philosophy had flourished in Athens for over
two hundred years when (167
BC) Antiochus Epiphanes stormed into
Jerusalem and committed the
original abomination of desolation spoken
of by Daniel the prophet (Dan
8:11-14). Even in the Babylonian deportations
Nebuchadnezzar had not so
desecrated the holy temple of the Jews.
Yes, it was the best of times
in Athens, but the worst of times in Jerusalem.
The dream of Alexander the
Great, who had studied at the foot of
Aristotle for three years,
was to “hellenize” the known world. He was so
convinced of the superiority
of Greek philosophical thinking that he carried
copies of The Odyssey and
The Iliad with him as he swept over the
Medo-Persian Empire faster
than a hawk dive-bombing a field mouse.
He wanted each of his
conquered countries to experience the wisdom of
Athens. Greek became the lingua
franca of his realm. East met West,
and the resulting union was a
marriage that has had more impact on
Western Civilization than
Newton’s discovery of the laws of motion.
What we are talking about is
the ripple effect of two thinkers from Athens
as their philosophies landed
in the sea of Judaeo-Christian thought
like two meteors into the
Mediterranean. Those thinkers were Plato and
Aristotle.
Ralph Stob, a Christian
philosopher, has observed: “This element of
the Greek spirit had great
influence on . . . the Christian movement in the
first three centuries. At the
same time it was the factor which was
52 Journal of the Grace
Evangelical Society Autumn 2005
operative at the bottom of
some of the heresies which arose.”1 Or as
Marvin Wilson puts it,
“Westerners have often found themselves in the
confusing situation of trying
to understand a Jewish Book through the
eyes of Greek culture.”2 Dom Gregory Dix goes so far
as to say that the
miscegenation of early
Christianity with Greek philosophy has led to a
“spiritual schizophrenia in
the process.”3
What we would like to do in
this study is to focus on a few salient
points of the philosophies of
Plato and Aristotle which have impacted
Western Christianity. Special
emphasis will be placed on the search for
“the elect” and the doctrine
of Double Predestination.
II. PLATO (D. 347 BC)
Plato bought into the
dualistic philosophy of the Persians (Zoroaster),
which recognized the ongoing
struggle between the impersonal
forces of good and evil.
However, Plato’s twist was to relegate everything
good to the spiritual world.
Everything evil was in the material
world. Only in the spiritual
world could we find the perfect ideals of
which their inferior,
material replicas are made. And in this spiritual
world we also find immortal
souls, which pre-exist their union with material
bodies.
When an immortal soul does
enter a material body, good mixes with
evil, and suffering begins
for the immortal soul. The goal of human life
becomes the release of this
entrapped soul to reenter the world of ideals,
the perfect and good
spiritual world. So, just as his dualism (good versus
evil) is a way to explain the
nature and function of the entire universe, so
it is for man. Man’s body is
a prison for his soul. This immortal soul is
incarcerated in a defective,
crumbling pot of clay. “Salvation” is not
something one attains until
death, when the soul is freed and able to float
upwards into that celestial
realm of goodness and perfection. This dualistic
view of man is at the very
root of salvific doctrine in Western Christianity.
Werner Jaeger goes so far as
to say that “the most important fact in
the history of Christian
doctrine was that the father of Christian theology,
1 Ralph Stob, Christianity
and Classical Civilization (Grand Rapids: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,
1950), 49.
2 Marvin Wilson, Our Father
Abraham (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 1989), 167.
3 Dom Gregory Dix, Jew and
Greek (London: Dacre Press, 1953), 14.
Another Tale of Two Cities 53
Origen, was a Platonic
philosopher at the school of Alexandria. He built
into Christian doctrine the
whole cosmic drama of the soul, which he
took from Plato, and although
later Christian fathers decided that he took
over too much, that which
they kept was still the essence of Plato’s philosophy
of the soul.”4
Plato’s soteriology was far
from that taught in the OT. Most OT
readers have to work hard to
think of an OT promise of salvation in
heaven for man’s soul after
death (it is in there, but most folks do not
know where). The salvation
emphasis in the OT was longevity in the
land. God’s fellowship and
blessings were something to be savored and
enjoyed in the historical
context of this world. As Wilson points out,
Certainly, the godly of the
Old Testament could never have
brought themselves to sing
such patently foreign and heterodox
words as the following, which
may be heard in certain
churches today: “This world
is not my home, I’m just apassin’
through,” or “Some glad
morning when this life is
o’er, I’ll fly away,” or
“When all my labors and trials are o’er,
and I am safe on the
beautiful shore.” To any Hebrew of Bible
times this kind of language
would be unrealistic and irresponsible,
a cop-out—seeking to abandon
the present, material
world, while focusing on the
joys of the “truly” spiritual world
to come.5
Now despite the claims of
Jaeger that Origen of Alexandria was most
responsible for inculcating
Platonism into Christianity, this author believes
the Bishop of Hippo had far
more influence than Origen. And
Augustine did not get his
Platonism from Origen. It came from the influence
of Plotinus and
Neo-Platonism. Therefore, in order to trace the influence
of Athens on Jerusalem, the
next link in the chain is Plotinus.
III. PLOTINUS (D. AD 270)
This man of brilliance and
mysticism is considered by some to have
been the most influential man
since the Apostles on Western
4 Werner Jaeger, “The Greek
Ideas of Immortality,” Harvard Theological
Review 52 (July 1959): 146.
5 Wilson, 168-69. It must be
observed that Wilson is referring to OT believers.
Obviously, there is some NT
emphasis on the temporary trials of this world
as opposed to the glory that
shall be revealed in the sons of God when Christ
returns.
54 Journal of the Grace
Evangelical Society Autumn 2005
Christianity. He is known as
the Father of Neo-Platonism. After growing
up and studying philosophy in
Alexandria and Persia, he settled in Rome,
where he began a school. He
was said to have been a man without enemies,
greatly beloved for his
divine wisdom. He himself made no attempt
to perpetuate his wisdom, but
Porphyry, his disciple and biographer,
edited and organized his
scattered lectures. These became known as The
Enneads, which were translated by
Marius Victorinus and studied diligently
by Augustine. Augustine
actually credits Plotinus for getting him
on the road to truth and,
eventually, of his conversion to the Orthodox
Church.6 Says Michael Azkoul:
In the case of
Augustine...his attraction to Platonism—
specifically Plotinus of
Lycopolis (204-270) and his school
(Neo-Platonism)—was very
serious, perhaps fatal. He did
more than accessorize his
theology with it. From this Greek
philosopher and his Enneads,
more than any other, Augustine
borrowed the principles to
develop his Christian version of
Greek philosophy.7
It has been said that
Augustine was Christianity’s first writer of introspection,
as witnessed by his Confessions.
Perhaps, but it was the
mysticism of Plotinus and his
elevation of contemplation to the status of
a productive principle which
was Augustine’s inspiration for his Confessions.
Augustine even compared the
writings of Plotinus with the Holy
Scriptures.8 He both paraphrased and
quoted freely from Plotinus. So
influential was Plotinus that
W. R. Inge claims:
Plotinus gave an impetus to
this fusion [the coalescence of
Greek philosophy into a
theocentric system of religious discipline],
for the victory of his philosophy
was so rapid and
overwhelming that it absorbed
the other schools, and when
Neoplatonism captured the
Platonic academy at Athens, ...it
reigned almost without a
rival until Justinian closed the Athenian
schools in 529.
6 In the Confessions,
VII, Augustine makes clear his dependence on Plotinus
and The Enneads.
7 Michael Azkoul, Texts and
Studies in Religion 56 (Lewiston, New York:
The Edwin Mellen Press,
1990), 129.
8 Apud Platonicos me interim, quod sacris nostris non
repugnet, reperturnm
esse confideo (Conta Acad. III, xx,
43 PL 32, 957).
Another Tale of Two Cities 55
...Even Augustine recognized
that the differences between Platonists
and Christians were slight,
and the church gradually
absorbed Neoplatonism almost
entire [sic]…It is no paradox
to say with Eucken that the
pagan Plotinus has left a deeper
mark upon Christian thought
than any other single man.9
While Inge no doubt
overstates his case, we cannot be hasty in dismissing
his claims. For many would
ascribe such sweeping influence to
Augustine, and if Augustine’s
primary source was Plotinus, then the
implication is obvious.
According to Plotinus, the
Supreme Being is the source of all life,
and is therefore absolute
causality. This Supreme Being is moreover, the
Good, in so far as all finite
things have their purpose in it, and ought to
flow back to it. The human
souls which have descended into corporeality
are those which have allowed
themselves to be ensnared by sensuality
and overpowered by lust. They
must turn back from this; and since they
have not lost their freedom,
a conversion is still possible.
Here, then, we enter upon the
practical aspect of his philosophy.
Along the same road by which
it descended, the soul must retrace its
steps back to the Supreme
Good. It must first of all return to itself. This
is accomplished by the
practice of virtue, which aims at likeness to God,
and leads up to God. In the
ethics of Plotinus all the older schemes of
virtue are taken over and
arranged in a graduated series. The lowest stage
is that of the civil virtues;
then follow the purifying; and last of all the
divine virtues. The civil
virtues merely adorn the life, without elevating
the soul. This is the purpose
of the purifying virtues, by which the soul is
freed from sensuality and led
back to itself, and thence to the Supreme
Being. By means of ascetic
observances the man becomes once more a
spiritual and enduring being,
free from all sin.
But there is still a higher
attainment; it is not enough to be sinless,
one must become “God.” This
is reached through contemplation of the
Supreme Being, the One—in
other words, through an ecstatic approach,
the soul may become one with
God, the fountain of life, the source of
being, the origin of all
good, the root of the soul. In that moment, it enjoys
the highest indescribable
bliss; it is as if it were swallowed up by
divinity, bathed in the light
of eternity. Porphyry tells us that on four
9 W. R. Inge, “Plotinus,” Encyclopedia
Britannica 18 (Chicago: Encyclopedia
Britannica, Inc., 1955), 81.
56 Journal of the Grace
Evangelical Society Autumn 2005
occasions during the six
years of their correspondence Plotinus attained
this ecstatic union with God.
As Porphyry set out to
popularize the teachings of Plotinus, he emphasized
the religious side of
Neo-Platonism. The object of philosophy,
according to Porphyry, is the
“salvation” of the soul. The origin and the
cause of evil are not in the
body, but in the desires of the soul. Hence, the
strictest asceticism
(abstinence from meat, wine, and sexual relations) is
demanded, as well as the
knowledge of God. He became an enemy of
Christianity in his writing Against
the Christians. Here he does not attack
Christ, but he does denounce
the practice of Christianity current in his
day. By 448 his works were
condemned.
IV. AUGUSTINE (D. 430)
A. THE PLATONISTS
When Augustine began reading The
Enneads in the late fourth century,
they opened his eyes to the
“invisible things” (Confessions, VII,
20). When it comes to the
Platonic principles, it must be stated that
Augustine held the Christian
philosophy to be the highest of the philosophies,
since it rested on faith,
while the Greek philosophies relied upon
reason. But he also saw them
as preparatory for the coming of Christianity.
Once here, the Christian
philosopher could “spoil the Egyptians” just
as Moses did when he left
bondage in Egypt.
Rational inquiry was to be
pursued in order to grasp by reason what
was already held by faith.
Platonism was “the handmaiden to faith.”
Therefore, Augustine did not
seek to know in order to believe, but rather
he believed in order that he
might know (faith seeking reason).10 There
were certain matters in which
reason could precede faith (ipsa
ratio antecedit
fidem), such as in physics or mathematics.
For Augustine, God was the
Platonic Good. Augustine thought of the
material world as a hazy copy
of the World of Ideals, the spiritual world.
Indeed, all phenomena are but
contingent ektypes (ek meaning “out of ”
or “from” in Greek) of the
eternal Ideals. Again, since there are some
created and material things
superior to others and some things below
10 Augustine anticipated the
Anselmian “fides quaerens
intellectum,”
and he
quoted Isaiah on behalf of
this proposition—“fides quaerit,
intellectus invenit;
propter quod aut propheta: Nisi
credideritis non intelligentis” (Isa 7:9).
Another Tale of Two Cities 57
which more greatly resemble
things above, Augustine’s universe is a
hierarchy or ladder of beings
leading to Him who is the Supreme Being.
The ascent to God begins with
a turning to Him, a turning which necessarily
involves divine illumination.
Of course, the limitation of our ascent
is not merely the limitation
of our created nature, but also the result of
our moral and spiritual
condition.
At this point, Augustine
introduces his version of the Platonic memory.
Memory according to him is
the soul’s ability to recall the past, the
bringing forward what has
been stored within our being. Memory is the
storehouse of knowledge
which, with the intellect’s a
priori categories,
brings the truth of the world
external to it. Memory is the sine
qua non
of all knowledge, whether
intellectual or sensory.
The intellect, unlike the
sense, is fed by two streams: from the soul
and, indirectly, from the
world of phenomena. The intellect, stamped or
“impressed” with the divine
Ideals, beckons us to contemplate the soul
and the heavenly realm to
which it is akin. When the intellect or reason
concerns itself with the
physical world, it produces “science” (scientia);
but when it searches the
realm of the spirit, it uncovers “wisdom” (sapientia).
Inasmuch as both scientia and sapientia comprehend
some aspect
of the truth, they both, to
some degree, require illumination. The higher
we ascend on the scale of
being, the greater the “light” given to the soul.
Now where, we must ask ourselves,
do these concepts appear in
Scripture? Alas, they do not.
But the long arms of Plato have reached
forward through the centuries
and through his resurgent disciples like
Plotinus to embrace the
Bishop of Hippo. In fact, this new strain of Platonism
in the church was so evident
in Augustine that Michael Azkoul
claims,
[Augustine’s] philosophical
religion is a perversion of the
Christian revelation. He is
also responsible, in large measure,
for the division between East
and West; and, indeed, even for
the Occident’s loss of the
patristic spirit...There is good reason
that Orthodoxy has never
recognized him as a Father of the
church—his latter-day
champions notwithstanding; and, certainly
not a “super-Father,” as he
has been known in the West
since the Carolignian period.
He is surely not the apex of the
58 Journal of the Grace
Evangelical Society Autumn 2005
patristic tradition; in fact,
he was the beginning of something
new.11
Augustine’s life quest was to
experience the mystical union resulting
from a beatific vision of the
Good, just as Plotinus claimed to have done.
Plotinus was convinced that
during this mystical state we actually have
an experience of formless
intuition. This mystical ascent seems to those
who pass through it to be a
progressive stripping off of everything that is
alien to the purest nature of
the soul, which cannot enter in to the Holy of
Holies while any trace of
earthliness still clings to it. He describes this
holy ascent as “a flight of
the alone to the Alone.”
Plotinus acknowledged that
such an ascent was a rare experience indeed.
It is the consummation of a
life-long quest of the highest, to be
earned only by intense
contemplation and unceasing self-discipline.
Hence, asceticism was seen as
the means by which one could experience
this mystical union.
Augustine, as Bishop of
Hippo, set up a school for young aspirants,
who were willing to mortify
their bodies for the prize of the goal of holy
ascent. Augustine himself
never experienced the mystical union described
by Plotinus, though he
yearned for it his entire life.
In order to be fair, we must
not credit Augustine with imbibing all of
Plato’s philosophy. E.
Portalié enumerates the Platonic theories which
the Bishop of Hippo rejected:
eternity of the world, emanationism, pantheism,
autosoterism, the
pre-existence and the transmigration of the
soul, and polytheism.12 But he also lists those
doctrines of Plato which
Augustine always approved and
appropriated: philosophy as amor
sapientiae,
with God and the soul as its
object; the idea of the Good, the doctrine
of “illumination” and the
distinction between “intellection”
(knowledge of eternal things)
and “science” (knowledge of temporal
things), corresponding to
Plato’s double-tiered reality; and, of course, the
theory of eternal ideas or
Forms which Augustine placed in the Essence
of God.
A. H. Armstrong called
Augustine “the first Christian thinker whom
we can place among the great
philosophers.”13 Augustine the philosopher
11 Azkoul, ii-iii.
12 E. Portalié, “Augustine” Dictionnaire
de Théologie Catholique I (Paris:
n.p., 1909): 2268-2472.
13 A. H. Armstrong, “St.
Augustine and the Eastern Tradition,” Eastern
Churches Quarterly V, 7-8 (1963): 161.
Another Tale of Two Cities 59
believed truth came by
rational inquiry, but Augustine the theologian
also believed that faith
certifies reason’s discoveries. Another way of
putting this is that faith
leads to understanding, or, Christianity supplies
the “faith” and Platonism
satisfies the reason. The confidence he placed
in Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus,
Porphyry, and the like was not shared by the
earlier Fathers. They may
have taken elements, but never principles from
the Greeks. At best certain
elements from the philosophers could decorate
the temple of truth, but
never form its foundation.
Augustine’s dependence on
reason explains why his writings chase
rabbit trails of the mind far
from the halls of revelation. It seems strange
that one who believed so
thoroughly in the depravity of man and the
corruption of human reason
would, at the same time, depend so completely
upon his own reason to ratify
truth. It was centuries after his
death before Augustine became
the theological master of the West.14 But
he has had such an impact on
Western Christianity that, as Hermann
Reuter observed, “Augustinianism
prepared the West for division with
the East.”15 B. B. Warfield agreed,
saying, “But it was Augustine who
imprinted upon the Western
section of the Church a character so specific
as naturally to bring the
separation of the Church in its train.”16 And, as
Armstrong remarks, “The sine
qua non of Augustinianism is Neo-
Platonism.”17
To trace all or even the
majority of Augustine’s influence on the
West would span far beyond
the scope of this study, but one of his salient
doctrines will be examined:
Double Predestination. We will see that
behind this difficult
doctrine, to put it mildly, lies an elitism implicit
within Augustine’s theology,
an elitism which finds its identity in the
elect.
B. DOUBLE PREDESTINATION
In Augustine’s mind, his
doctrines of “original sin,” “irresistible
grace,” and “double
predestination” were organically linked. We have
14 See H. Leibscheutz,
“Development of Thought in the Carolingian Empire,”
The Cambridge History of
Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy,
ed. A. H. Armstrong
(Cambridge: n.p., 1967), 571-86.
15 Hermann Reuter states: “Augustin hat die Trennung des Occidents
und
des Orients verbereits, eine
bahnbrechende Wirkung und den ersteren ausgeuebt”
in Augustinische Studien (Gotha: n.p., 1887), 229.
16 B. B. Warfield, Calvin and
Augustine (Philadelphia: n.p., 1956), 307.
17 Armstrong, 161, 167.
60 Journal of the Grace
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written on his doctrine of
“irresistible grace” in a previous article.18 The
grace referenced in Augustine
which is irresistible is not the grace of
regeneration, which he
believed was bestowed at water baptism, nor the
grace of an efficacious call,
but rather the grace (gift) of perseverance. It
was this grace that God
irresistibly foisted on the elect so that, for them,
apostasy was impossible. Of
course it was impossible, since Augustine
defined the elect as those who
persevere in their loyalty to Christ until
the end of their lives (Matt
24:13).
Because the Scriptures were
refracted by Augustine through the
prism of the Platonists,
God’s light was bent toward the elite. And because
of their emphasis on the
contemplative life (mysticism) and selfdenial
(asceticism) as twin engines
which power the flight of the soul out
of its corporeal prison into
the presence of the Supreme Good, “heaven”
was inaccessible to the
masses. After all, how could illiterate people (the
masses) ever hope to enjoy a
life of study and contemplation (reason plus
revelation)? And among the
contemplative still fewer could qualify for
heaven based on the austere
requirements of asceticism (all sex is sin,
either venial or mortal).
Augustine did allow for
sexual relations between a husband and wife
as a necessary evil for the
propagation of the race, but his Manichaean
background never left him in
this area. For the Manichaeans, sex was
always evil. So it was also
for Augustine. Plotinus himself so abhorred
his body that he never bathed
so as to not give any honor or attention to
the body, while at the same
time making it all the more repugnant (not to
mention pungent). The point
here is that Neo-Platonism fostered an elitism
which manifested itself in
Augustine through his understanding of
the elect.
While all baptized were
regenerated by the Holy Spirit, only those
who persevere until the end
of their lives will prove to be the elect, the
few. In other words,
Augustine believed that everlasting life could be
lost, but only by the
non-elect. Perseverance proved whether one was
elect, and hence whether he
would keep his everlasting life or not. Again
we quote from Azkoul, a
former student at Calvin College, until he began
his study of Augustinianism:
18 David R. Anderson, “The
Soteriological Impact of Augustine’s Change
from Premillennialism to
Amillennialism,” Journal of the Grace Evangelical
Society 15 (Spring/Autumn 2002).
Another Tale of Two Cities 61
Also, predestination is
inseparable from Augustine’s doctrine
of irresistible grace. Grace
for him is a divine but created
force, whereby God compels
the will of man from evil to good
and negates the consequences
of “original sin” in those who
are baptized. The grace of
the Sacrament of Baptism is given
to “many” while on the “few”
is imposed irresistibly “the
grace of perseverance” which
denies apostasy to the elect.
Saving grace is compulsory,
because, if freely given, the
wicked nature of man would
reject it. The Reformation will
adopt Augustine charitology
as its own.19
The “elect” become the focal
point of Augustinian theology. To understand
this it may help to remember
the passage of Augustine from the
Manicheans to the Academics
to the Platonists to Christianity. He spent
nine years as a “hearer” (auditor) in the Manichaean philosophy, a
combination
of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism,
and Christianity. The
Manichaeans distinguish
between the “sons of mystery” and “the sons of
darkness,” with the latter
obviously being outside the realm of
Manichaean enlightenment. But
within the ranks of their own members,
the “sons of mystery” were
divided between the “elect” and the “hearers.”
Mani proclaimed salvation
through knowledge (gno„sis), which itself
was achieved through ascetic
practices. The elect were sealed with a
threefold preservative: 1)
Purity of the mouth—abstinence from meat
and alcohol; 2) Purity of
life—renouncing physical property and physical
labor; and 3) Purity of
heart—forsaking sexual activity.
Few of us are able to cast
away the baggage of our past. These
Manichaean distinctions are
easily transferred to the world of Christianity,
especially since the word
“elect” is a biblical term. But the distinction
between the regenerate (the
baptized) and the elect (those who are
compelled by the gift of
perseverance) is the creation of Augustine. No
doubt his ascetic background
originated with Manichaeism and was perpetuated
by Plotinus and Porphyry.
This is a salvation for only the “few,”
the “elect,” the “sons of
God,” who slowly but surely distance themselves
from material things. By
grace, the grace/gift of perseverance, the
elect escape the bondage of
the flesh.
Tied in closely with election
and perseverance is predestination.
Ferdnan Prat claims that
Augustine changed his exegesis of Romans 9 in
397. He began to see Jacob
and Esau as types of two different sets of
19 Azkoul, 181.
62 Journal of the Grace
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people, the elect and the reprobate.
By adopting the hermeneutics of
Tyconious,20 which utilized typology
extensively instead of allegory,
Augustine began finding types
all over the Bible. Regardless of the fact
that Romans 9 never mentions
hell, Hades, heaven, eternal, judgment,
condemnation, or the like,
Augustine reads eternal bliss and eternal condemnation
right into the passage.
And within Romans 8 Augustine
equated God’s knowledge with
God’s will, that is, God’s
foreknowledge is tantamount to predetermination.
Like the propagators of Open
Theism today, Augustine failed to see
that foreknowledge is but a
subset of the all-inclusive omniscience of
God, which includes both the
actual and the possible. Hence, it is predetermined
before the foundation of the
world that those whom God chose
(the elect) would spend
eternity with Him and those He passed over (the
Reprobate) would spend
eternity without Him. Of course, Augustine is
left with the same dilemma
that the Reformers who copy his system will
inherit—how does Augustine’s
idea of Double Predestination exonerate
God from evil? All
Augustine’s sophistry could not answer this dilemma,
nor could that of the
Reformers. Alas, the omnibenevolence of God becomes
the foil in the double
predestinarian shield. As we shall see, Theodore
Beza simply punted on the
idea of omnibenevolence. He elevated
the hatred of God to the same
level as the love of God, calling both virtues
and evoking equal glory to
God from each.
C. HIS INFLUENCE IN THE WEST
Although Augustine was
praised by Pope Celestine as a man of great
learning and a doctor of the
Faith, Augustine still lived in the shadow of
the Fathers. St. Jerome did
not mention him in De viris
illustribus. St.
Gennadius of Marseilles shows
little knowledge of what Augustine had
written. Sulpicius Severus
ignored Augustine altogether in his biography
of St. Martin of Tours, but
in the same work he showed great appreciation
for the works of Sts.
Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, Paulinus and John
Cassian. Nor did Sts. Nicetas
of Remesiana, Valerian of Cimiez, Peter
Chrysologus of Ravenna reveal
any hint of Augustinian influence in their
writings.
Those who opposed the
teachings of Augustine were formidable,
among which were St. John
Cassian, Sts. Vincent of Lerins, Hilary of
Arles, Honratus and Gennadius
of Marseilles, Faustus of Riez, and Ar-
20 Anderson, 4.
Another Tale of Two Cities 63
nobius the Younger. Cassian
was his most powerful contemporary, who
claimed that Augustine’s new
and dangerous opinions were unknown to
the Fathers and at variance
with accepted interpretation of the Scriptures.
In reaction to Augustine’s
doctrines on irresistible grace and double predestination,
Cassian accused him of
transposing grace and liberty, realities
of the spiritual order, to
the rational plane, where grace and liberty
are transformed into two
mutually exclusive concepts. Cassian’s voice
was drowned out by the din of
the Pelagian/Augustinian controversy, but
that of St. Faustus of Riez
(d. 485) was not.
Faustus opposed both the
autosoterism (you can save yourself) of
Pelagius and the double
predestination of Augustine. He preached the
doctrine of meritum de congruo et condigno, that is, grace is commonly
imparted but not imposed. He
also took predestination to be a parody of
the pagan notion of fate.
Under his leadership the Council of Arles condemned
predestinationism. And in 530
the Council of Valence rejected
double predestination.
However, during the so-called
“Carolingian Renaissance” the star of
Augustine began to rise.
Among the Frankish intellectuals, Augustine
became the greatest of the
Fathers (doctor super
omnes).
Charlemagne
slept with a copy of The
City of God under his pillow. At the Benedictine
Monastery of Corbie (near
Amiens), Ratramnus affirmed double predestination
and also concluded that the
Eucharist was simply a memorial
(based on the metaphysics of
Augustine, which separated material and
immaterial entities). One of
his disciples, Gottschalk of Mainz (d. 869)
claimed to be the true heir
of Augustine. He defended double predestination,
was condemned at the Council
of Mainz (848), was vindicated at
Valence (855), and finally
opposed again in 856 until an “exhausting
compromise” was reached at
the Council of Douzy.
From this point on, there
were disagreements on what Augustine
meant, but no disagreement in
the West that he was the greatest of the
Fathers. Anselm, Aquinas,
Bonaventure, and the Reformers would drape
themselves in the mantle of
Augustine. And, as we have seen, Augustine
was heavily influenced by
Plato. But before we jump from the double
predestination of Augustine
to that of the Reformers, we need to stop
long enough to take a glimpse
at the influence of Aristotle on the historical
theology of Western
Christianity. Aristotle entered the church
through Thomas Aquinas, and
it was the principles of logic taught by
Aristotle which the Reformers
used to justify double predestination.
64 Journal of the Grace
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V. ARISTOTLE (D. 322 BC)
Aristotle was the son of the
court physician to the king of Macedon.
At the age of seventeen he
went to Plato’s Academy in Athens, where he
remained for twenty years as
a student and then a teacher. After the death
of Plato he spent the next
twelve years away from Athens, serving for
three of these years as the
tutor to the son of Philip II of Macedon, Alexander
the Great. In 335 he returned
to Athens to open a new school
called the Lyceum, where he
taught for the next twelve years. Upon the
death of Alexander,
anti-Macedonian feelings threatened the school,
forcing Aristotle to flee to
Euboea, where soon afterward he died.21
Though he was a student of
Plato, Aristotle reacted to the concept of
the unseen world of ideas
being more real than the world of the five
senses. Reality for him was
what he could observe right in front of him.
The unseen world would
require revelation for validation. Not so with
the empirical world of
nature. Reason and logic alone could mine the
diamond fields of nature. He
is sometimes called the Father of the Scientific
Method, and was the first to
classify the physical world into specific
fields of biology, zoology,
and physics. He is also known as the founder
of logic, and his syllogistic
reasoning and “four causes” were utilized
heavily by the Reformers to
buttress their approach to predestination.
A syllogism contained a Major
Premise, a Minor Premise, and a
Conclusion. Knowledge can be deduced
by syllogistic reasoning as described
in Prior Analytics.
The Reformers relied heavily on this type of
reasoning in order to give
assurance of election to church members: Major
Premise—Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and you will be saved;
Minor Premise—I have believed
on the Lord Jesus Christ; Conclusion—
I am saved.
The “four causes” of
Aristotle were used by him to explain change in
nature: 1) Material Cause—the
matter from which something has
evolved; 2) Formal Cause—that
which gives shape and structure to that
which is changing; 3)
Efficient Cause—that which imposed the form on
the matter; and 4) Final
Cause—the end to which that substance emerges
and which requires the efficient
cause to act in a determinate way. These
will be honed and applied by
Theodore Beza to theology in order to under
gird his supralapsarianism
(God decreed to elect some and reprobate
21 Paul D. Feinberg,
“Aristotle,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed.
Walter A. Elwell (Grand
Rapids: Baker Books, 1984), 75-78.
Another Tale of Two Cities 65
all others before the
creation and fall of man) and double predestination
to the glory of God. In doing
so he used both the inductive and deductive
logic of Aristotle.
The writings of Aristotle
were lost to western thinkers for centuries
after the Fall of Rome. But
during the twelfth century, scholars discovered
a mother lode in Spain. Here
in the libraries of Toledo, Lisbon, Segovia,
and Cordoba Arabic translations
of books that Europeans had long
talked about but never read
were found: Ptolemy’s Almagest, the lost key
to astronomy and astrology;
Galen’s On the Art of Healing and On Anatomical
Procedures, the first scientific
medical textbooks; Euclid’s Elements
of Geometry; Archimedes’ treatises on
mathematical engineering;
and, best of all, the vast
corpus of Aristotle’s works—Metaphysics, Physics,
On the Heavens, History of
Animals, On Generation and Corruption,
De Anima (Aristotle’s famous treatment
of the soul), Nicomachean Ethics,
and Politics.
Two more works attributed to
Aristotle were also found, although it
was discovered at a later
date that these belonged to Neo-Platonists: Theology
of Aristotle and the Book of Causes. Taken
together, these books
were the greatest discovery
in Western intellectual history. It became the
joint task of scholars from
Europe and Africa (Christian, Jewish, and
Muslim) to translate these
books into Latin. Here is an excerpt of what
they read after translation
into English:
The evidence of the senses
further corroborates [the sphericity
of the earth]. How else would
eclipses of the moon show segments
shaped as we see them? As it
is, the shapes which the
moon itself each month shows
are of every kind...but in
eclipses the outline is
always curved; and, since it is the interposition
of the earth that makes the
eclipse, the form of this
line will be caused by the
form of the earth’s surface, which is
therefore spherical....Hence
one should not be too sure of the
incredibility of the view of
those who conceive that there is
continuity between the parts
about the pillar of Hercules [the
Straits of Gibraltar] and the
parts about India, and that in this
way the ocean is one.22
No wonder these men were
bug-eyed over this treasure trove of
knowledge. The church was in
shock. Ever since the start of European
22 Aristotle, On the Heavens (De
Caelo), J. L. Stocks, trans., in Works, 1
(Chicago: Encyclopedia
Britannica, 1952), 2.14, 297b.24-298a.20.
66 Journal of the Grace
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universities, the Queen of
the Sciences had been theology. But with
Aristotle’s redivivus, there
emerged a new interest in the physical world.
Along with this information
came the realization that Aristotle accumulated
his wealth of knowledge apart
from any assistance from the church
or the Bible, using human
logic, reason, and observation as his guide.
Here the church was not an
authority. This was no minor matter, for at
this time the church enjoyed
a position of unchallenged power and authority,
dominating European thought
and culture.
Some welcomed this new fount
of wisdom. Peter Abelard (d. 1142)
went so far as to imply that
whatever could not be proven true though
logic was considered false.
Unfortunately, when one leans upon reason
solely and independently of
revelation, and makes reason the final arbiter
of truth, a very strange
thing begins to happen: reason reasons out revelation
altogether. This is what
slowly took place on the European stage
between the 1200s and the
1700s.
VI. THOMAS AQUINAS (D. 1274)
In the 1200s Thomas Aquinas
sought to accommodate the work of
Aristotle with the church and
make room for both to coexist under the
blessing of church authority.
His work, known as Thomistic Scholasticism,
brought resistance from the
church initially because of its dependence
on Aristotle. In 1277 several
of his propositions were condemned in
Paris and Oxford, but in 1323
he was canonized. In the sixteenth century
Thomism was the leading light
of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC).
He was made a Doctor of the
Church in 1567, and in 1879 Pope Leo XIII
commended his work for study.
It is because of his influence on the Reformers
and in particular their
adoption of Aristotle’s syllogistic reasoning
and his “four causes” that
Thomas Aquinas is included in our
discussion.
Aquinas sought to unite
reason-based and revelation-based thinking
into a new and acceptable
whole. He did this by dividing life into two
distinct realms: the realm of
Nature and the realm of Grace. In the lower
realm of Nature (which
included science, logic, and things having to do
with the natural, temporal
world) man’s intellect and independent reason
operated quite well on its
own. Reason was seen as a reliable guide to
truth in this realm.
Revelation, on the other hand, was necessary for understanding
the upper realm of Grace,
which included such things as
theology, prayer, worship,
God, angels, and things pertaining to the eternal
supernatural world.
Another Tale of Two Cities 67
Aquinas did not think of the
realm of Nature and the realm of Grace
as oppositional. He believed
the realm of Nature should be subjected to
the authority of the church.
But by simply placing the material world in a
category of its own, even
though initially connected to the realm of
Grace, over time the distinction
became so great in people’s minds that
the connection disappeared
altogether.
The “Enlightenment” was a
celebration of human reason, and it rose
like a beast out of the sea
of the “Dark Ages,” an age when revelation
reigned supreme. The celebration
of human reason is the corner stone of
modernism, where there is a
blatant disregard for revelation and a high
regard for reason; where
Nature is the sole, impersonal, guiding intelligence
of the universe; where the
Word of God is considered as relevant
as the proclamations of Zeus;
where human reason is the sole measurement
of ethics, morality, and
freedom. Despite the protestations of postmodernism
against the omnipotence of
human reason, the stronghold of
reason over divine revelation
remains as powerful as ever.23
We are now ready to jump
forward to the Reformers in order to see
how the influence of Plato
and Aristotle converged at the Geneva Academy
through their dependence on
Augustine and Aristotelian logic.
VII. THE REFORMERS
A. JOHN CALVIN (D. 1564)
Although John Calvin is often
thought of as Augustine’s alter-ego,
most of the Reformers were
Augustinian in background. Martin Luther,
for example, was an
Augustinian monk. John Calvin followed Augustine
almost exclusively in his
typological dependence on Romans 9 to support
his double predestination.
But as Sanday and Headlam point out, the
loving of Jacob and the
hating of Esau “has reference simply to the election
of one to higher privileges
as head of the chosen race, than the other.
It has nothing to do with
their eternal salvation.”24 And again, “The
Apostle says nothing about
eternal life or death. He says nothing about
the principles upon which God
does act…He never says or implies that
23 See Christian Overman, Assumptions
That Affect our Lives (Louisiana,
Missouri: Micah Publishing,
1996), 106-107.
24 William Sanday and Arthur
Headlam, The Epistle to the Romans (Edinburgh:
T. & T. Clark, 1968),
245.
68 Journal of the Grace
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God has created man for the
purpose of his damnation.”25 Calvin and his
followers never consider that
the initial use of “wrath” in Romans occurs
in Rom 1:18 and deals with
God’s anger against man’s sin in time instead
of eternity. This may well be
its use throughout Romans, including
Rom 9:22 (“vessels of
wrath”).
It should be apparent that
this hermeneutical approach to Romans
came directly from Augustine.
Like so many others of his time Calvin
had been studying Augustine
for quite some time before dedicating his
talents to Christian theology.
He had only been a believer for four years
when he published the first
edition of his Institutes (1536). He claimed
that his theology was
thoroughly Augustinian. Of course, he differed
from Augustine in his
understanding of justification and the sacraments,
but with regard to
predestination and his preoccupation with the elect and
getting one’s soul to heaven,
he adopted Augustine almost wholesale. He
taught a clear double
predestination and supralapsarianism.26 He said
God caused the Fall of Adam
and so “arranged” it in His decree of predestination
“for His own pleasure.”27 So did his successor at the
Geneva
Academy.
B. THEODORE BEZA (D.
1605)
Beza succeeded Calvin in
Geneva. His supralapsarianism emphasized
that Christ died only for the
elect. Although Calvin certainly subscribed
to the double predestination
of Augustine, Beza brought it to the
forefront of his theology. He
even developed a chart (see appendix)
which elevated the hatred to
God to the same level as the love of God,
making them both equal attributes
of God which brought equal glory to
God. As we shall see, he
utilized the “four causes” of Aristotle to arrive
at his conclusion, but the
roots of his double predestination went back to
Augustine and Neo-Platonism.
So through Beza, Plato and his student
Aristotle met once again at
the Geneva Academy.
By the time of Beza, the
preoccupation of the Reformed church was
to find out whether or not
one was a member of the elite group, the elect.
Assurance was separated from
faith so that one could no longer find
25 Ibid., 258.
26 John Calvin, Institutes,
III, 21, 5.
27 Ibid., III, 23, 7. Notice his
appeal to Augustine for support. Compare
Opuscules, Sp. 2054: “Cependant
je recognoy ceste doctrine pour mienne,
qu’Adam est tomblé non
seulement par la permission de Dieu, mais aussi par le
secret conseil d’iceluy.”
Another Tale of Two Cities 69
assurance of his salvation by
looking to Christ, since Christ only died for
the elect, and the person in
question might very well be one of the reprobate.
This began the great
fruit-inspecting industry of the Reformed
Church.
From the chart in the
Appendix we can see that the just and merciful
God decrees to elect some and
reprobate others before the creation and
fall of man. This is called
supralapsarianism. Limited atonement is a
corollary of
supralapsarianism deduced from the decree of election and
reprobation before the
creation of man. If, it is reasoned, that God’s first
decree was election and
reprobation, then the death of Christ could only
have been for the elect. That
is called limited atonement. It does not
come from Scripture; it comes
from reason and logic. Moses Amyraut,
who studied at the Geneva
Academie under Beza, spent his career trying
to convince Dortian
Calvinists that Calvin did not teach Limited Atonement.
28
Beza, in fact, seems to have
gotten lost in the maze of human logic
and reasoning. Building from
a Platonic a là Augustinian base in order to
determine who the elect might
be, he incorporates the logic of Aristotle
to help make this
determination. He employs syllogistic and dialectical
reasoning, as well as
inductive and deductive logic. He takes Aristotle’s
“four causes” (material,
formal, efficient, and final) and creates subcauses
to keep God from being the
author of evil.29
Beza realizes he not only is
in danger of making God the author of
evil, but his supralapsarian
approach (people are damned before they are
created) presents a
potentially repugnant concept of the Creator. So he
works hard to make man the
efficient cause of sin, while God is the deficient
cause (permissive will). He
works deductively, starting with the
attributes of God (He is
merciful and just) and extrapolates from there,
all leading to the ultimate
glory of God. The glory of God means the
28 Brian Armstrong, Calvinism
and the Amyraut Heresy (Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin,
1969), 210-14.
29 See Walter Kickel, Vernunft
und Offenbarung bei Theodor Beza, Beiträge
zur Geschichte und Lehre der
Reformierten Kirche 25 (Lemgo, Germany:
Neukirchener Verlag des
Erziehungsvereins GmbH Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1967),
for a full discussion of Beza
dependency on Aristotelian logic along with his
own developments in addition
to the “four causes”: 61-68, 159-66. There were
causa prima and causa secunda;
direct causes and indirect (three types) causes;
causa efficiens and causa deficiens (permissio
volens, permissive will) and
causa finalis.
70 Journal of the Grace
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open, public, manifestation
of His attributes. If His justice is going to be
manifested, God must do
something just which can be observed. So He
chooses to justly condemn the
reprobate.30
No question that God’s
justice demands judgment of sin and condemnation
of unbelievers. The rub comes
in His decree to condemn the
reprobate before He creates
them. Beza realizes this decree before creation
presents an image-of-God
problem, but it is a dilemma from which
he could not extricate
himself. Nor could his followers, like William
Perkins. Arminius would try,
but he simply swung the pendulum to the
opposite extreme.
C. WILLIAM PERKINS
Perkins defended his theology
in a book called A Golden Chain.
Since he was trained at the
Geneva Academy under Beza, the subtitle of
his book should come as no
surprise: “A GOLDEN CHAIN: or, THE
DESCRIPTION OF THEOLOGIE:
Damnation, according to Gods word.
A view whereof is to be seene
in the Table annexed Hereunto is adioyned
the order which M. Theodore
Beza used in comforting afflicted consciences.”
Like the theology of his
predecessor, the most obvious feature
of A Golden Chain is
the centrality of the doctrine of double predestination.
31
Perkins defines
predestination as “that by the which he hath ordained
all men to a certaine and
everlasting estate: that is, either to salvation or
condemnation, for his owne
glory.”32 Perkins quotes Augustine no
less
than 588 times with
Chrysostom coming in second with 129 references.33
He completely mistranslates
Rom 9:22 when he says, “Moreover, every
man (as Paul avereth) is unto God, as a lumpe of clauy in the
potters
hand: and therefore God
according to his supreme authoritie ‘doth make
vessels of wrath....”34
30 Kickel rightly observes, “dass das ganze System Bezas hinfällig ware,
wenn zugegegen werden müsste, dass Gott seine Vorsätze ändern kann,” 166.
He argues that the
immutability of God precludes His changing what He has
decreed.
31 R. T. Kendall, Calvin and
English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1979), 55.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 54.
34 Works, 11. 694.
Another Tale of Two Cities 71
Perkins writes about four
degrees of God’s love: effectual calling,
justification,
sanctification, and glorification.35 Notice how conveniently
he slips “sanctification”
into the mix, when Rom 8:30 quite obviously
omits sanctification in its
“golden chain.” It is, in fact, conspicuous by its
absence. Perhaps God does not
guarantee progressive sanctification as
the champions of an
amilliennial interpretation of Matt 24:13 presume.
As Kendall observes, “The
horror of horrors for a disciple of Perkins is
the thought that he could be
a reprobate.”36
The reprobate man is doomed
to eternal condemnation before he is
even born, no matter what he
does in his lifetime. It does him no good to
make his calling and election
sure; his lot is unalterably fixed and decreed
by God, whose right it is to
take the lump of clay from which man
is to be created and “make
him a vessel of dishonor.” All such interpretations
of Rom 9:22 fail to observe
that the verb they keep translating as
active (kate„rtismena) is not active at all, but
rather a middle/passive participle.
God does not act upon these
vessels in any way, shape, or form.
By contrast God does act upon
the vessels of mercy in the very next
verse; He prepares these for
glory.
D. JACOB ARMINIUS (D.
1609)
Although Arminius studied
under Theodore Beza and was an admirer
of William Perkins, it is
surmised that he never agreed with their
understanding of the decrees
of God or their resulting double predestination.
Arminius’s contention was
that God only predestines believers.
Arminius saw four decrees:
1) God appointed Jesus Christ
to be our Mediator and Redeemer;
2) God decreed to receive
into favor those who repent and believe
and leave in sin all
unbelievers;
3) God decreed to administer
in a sufficient and efficacious manner
all means which were
necessary for repentance and faith;
4) God decreed to save those
who He knew from all eternity would
believe and persevere and to
damn those He likewise knew who
would not believe and
persevere.37
35 Ibid., 78.
36 Kendal, 67.
37 Jacobus Arminius, Works of
Arminius, I:589f.
72 Journal of the Grace
Evangelical Society Autumn 2005
Arminius remains consistent
in his thesis that “election of grace is
only of believers,”38 for predestination “is the
decree of the good pleasure
of God in Christ, by which He
determined within Himself from all
eternity to justify
believers.”39 If a person believed, he was
elect; if he
did not believe, he was not
elect. From the above it can be seen that both
the mainline Reformers and
Arminius made perseverance a requirement
for election. The difference
was that the Calvinists said lack of perseverance
proved the professing
Christian never truly had everlasting life in
the first place, even if he
did have temporary faith. Arminius said that a
lack of perseverance could
cause one to lose everlasting life. In either
case, the one who did not
persevere until the end (Matt 24:13) was not
elect.
The position taken by
Arminius might be argued to be more biblical
in that one cannot find any
biblical support for the use of the word “predestination”
in connection with
unbelievers. However, his understanding
of faith differs very little
from that of the Calvinists.40
E. THE SYNOD OF DORT (1618-1619)
The year after Arminius died
his followers preserved his teachings in
the Remonstrance of 1610. His
five points were:
1) God has decreed Jesus
Christ as the Redeemer of men and
decreed to save all who
believe on Him;
2) Christ died for all but
only believers enjoy forgiveness of
sins;
3) Man must be regenerated by
the Spirit;
4) Grace is not irresistible;
5) Perseverance is granted
through the assistance of the grace
of the Holy Spirit, but
whether one can fall away from life in
Christ is left open.41
38 Ibid., III:583.
39 Ibid., II:392.
40 See Kendal, 141-150, for a
lengthy discussion of this claim.
41 The full text of the Five
Articles of the Remonstrants (also the Canons of
Dort) are given in Peter Y.
DeJong (ed.), Crisis in the Reformed Churches:
Essays in commencement of the
great Synod of Dort, 1618-19 (Grand Rapids:
Reformed Fellowship, 1968),
207ff.
Another Tale of Two Cities 73
In November of 1618 the Synod
of Dort began the first of 163 sessions,
which resulted in what is
known as the Five Points of Calvinism.
Though not in the order
popularly referenced under the acronym TULIP,
here is the Synod’s response
to the Remonstrance:
1) God’s eternal decree of
predestination is the cause of election
and reprobation, and that
this decree is not based upon
foreseen faith;
2) Christ died for the elect
only;
3) Men by nature are unable
to seek God apart from the Spirit;
4) Grace is irresistible;42
5) The elect will surely
persevere in faith to the end.43
Though the discussion between
the Arminians and the Calvinists will
probably continue unabated
until Jesus comes, the point at issue here is
double predestination and its
perseverance in the annals of church history,
especially in Western
Christianity. The supralapsarian position of
Beza (God decreed double
predestination before the creation and fall of
man) certainly was maintained
by the Synod of Dort.
F. THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLIES (1643-49)
The primary focus here was
not soteriological but ecclesiastical.
Nevertheless, there was quite
a discussion over the order of the decrees
and universal versus limited
atonement. Limited atonement won the day,
and the wording regarding the
decrees was such that either a supra- or
infralapsarian could agree.44
Regarding double
predestination, their Confession of Faith (III. iii, 9)
says some are “predestinated
unto everlasting life, and others foreordained
to everlasting death.” Those
who are not elected to eternal life
42 It is interesting that modern
day exponents of these five points explain irresistible
grace as an extension of the
efficacious call of God: “In addition to the
outward general call to
salvation which is made to everyone who hears the gospel,
the Holy Spirit extends to
the elect a special inward call that inevitably
brings them to salvation
[David N. Steele and Curtis C. Thomas, The Five
Points of Calvinism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian
and Reformed Publishing Co.,
1975), 18]. This was not at
all the meaning Augustine meant for the phrase. It
referred to the gift of
perseverance.
43 DeJong, 229-62.
44 B. B. Warfield, The
Westminster Assembly and its Work (1931), 56.
74 Journal of the Grace
Evangelical Society Autumn 2005
were passed by and ordained
to dishonor and wrath to the praise of
God’s glorious justice. The
number of both the elect and the reprobate
“is so certain, and definite,
that it cannot be either increased, or diminished.”
G. SUMMARY
From the foregoing we can see
that the Reformers capitalized on
both revelation and reason.
Following the lead of Augustine, they combined
the revelation of Scripture
with the reason of the Greek philosophers,
namely Plato and Aristotle.
As Alister McGrath notes, “Theology
was understood to be grounded
upon Aristotelian philosophy, and particularly
Aristotelian insights into
the nature of method; later Reformed
writers are better described
as philosophical, rather than biblical, theologians.”
45 In search of Augustine’s
elect, the Reformers refined the doctrine
of double predestination with
the syllogistic reasoning and causality
of Aristotle. In this quest
they have obviated any possibility of assurance
of salvation before physical
death, since one must persevere in the faith
until the end of his life to
either find out (Calvinism) or determine
(Arminianism) whether he is
elect or not. But what are some of the other
effects of Athens on Western
Christianity?
VIII. SUMMARY
The purpose of this study has
been to demonstrate some of the influence
of the Greek philosophers
Plato and Aristotle on the landscape of
Western Christianity. The
influence of Plato came into the church primarily
through Augustine. As he was
deemed to be the greatest of the
church fathers from the
Carolignian Renaissance onward, the Reformers
and their disciples leaned
heavily upon him and his theology of the elect.
Augustine’s theology of the
elect was an amalgam of his background in
Manichaeism and Neo-Platonism
with Christianity.
Augustine’s theology of the
elect was traced under the subject of
Double Predestination through
the teachings of Calvin, Beza, Perkins,
and the Westminster divines.
Some attention to Aristotle and his principles
of logic was given as his
philosophy was imbibed by Thomas Aquinas
and Theodore Beza. The
resulting introspection (contemplation) to
determine if one were elect
or not helped foster the detachment of prac-
45 Alister E. McGrath, Christian
Theology: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc,
1997), 74.
Another Tale of Two Cities 75
ticing Christians from
involvement in helping to cure the ills of this
world. The unbiblical
emphasis in the West on getting souls to heaven as
the end-all of life has
caused a de-emphasis on discipleship and any concern
for the underprivileged of
this world.
Of course, the Bible does
speak of the “salvation of the soul” (1 Pet
1:9) as the end (goal) of our
faith. But this salvation is not the return of
the soul to heaven in the
sense that Plato, Mani, Plotinus, and Porphyry
espoused. That “salvation of
the soul” (1 Pet 1:9) would be more properly
identified with the salvation
set forth by Jesus in Matt 16:24-27, a
salvation of one’s life (=
time on earth—a common use of psyche
in
the
NT, the word translated
“soul” in 1 Pet 1:9) for both time and eternity (as
revealed by the rewards
rendered by the Lord when He returns in Matt
16:27). But that is another
study.
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