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Course 10 · Lesson 4.2

Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin on predestination

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 10 outline

Module 1: Sin and Human Nature

  1. Human beings in the image of God
  2. The fall in Scripture: Genesis 3 and Romans 5
  3. Original sin in Augustine and the Western tradition
  4. Ancestral sin and mortality in the Eastern tradition

Module 2: Grace and Free Will

  1. Pelagius and Augustine
  2. The church responds: semi-Pelagianism and the Council of Orange
  3. Luther and Erasmus on the bondage of the will
  4. Monergism and synergism across the traditions

Module 3: Justification and Sanctification

  1. Justification in Paul and James
  2. Justification by faith alone in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions
  3. The Catholic teaching and the Council of Trent
  4. Sanctification, holiness and theosis
  5. Recent ecumenical discussion of justification

Module 4: Predestination and Election

  1. Election and predestination in Scripture
  2. Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin on predestination
  3. Arminius, Wesley and conditional election
  4. Eastern and Catholic views on election and foreknowledge

Module 5: Atonement, Redemption and Adoption

  1. Atonement and its extent: for whom did Christ die?
  2. Redemption: the images of ransom, freedom and return
  3. Adoption: sons and daughters of God
  4. The order of salvation across the traditions

Module 6: Death, Resurrection and Judgment

  1. Death and the intermediate state
  2. The resurrection of the dead in Scripture and the creeds
  3. The final judgment: Christ the judge
  4. Purgatory, the Orthodox practice of praying for the dead, and the Protestant objection

Module 7: Heaven, Hell and the New Creation

  1. Heaven and the vision of God
  2. Hell: eternal torment, annihilationism and universal hope
  3. The fate of those who have not heard the gospel
  4. The new heavens and the new earth

Module 8: The Millennium and Christian Eschatological Traditions

  1. Revelation and apocalyptic literature
  2. Premillennial views, historic and dispensational
  3. Amillennial and postmillennial views
  4. Preterist, historicist and futurist approaches
  5. What the traditions hold in common about the end

All courses

Program / Course 10: Salvation and Eschatology / Lesson 4.2

What you will learn

  • State Augustine’s mature doctrine of predestination and the gift of perseverance.
  • Explain how Aquinas fitted predestination into his account of providence and why he did not teach that God causes sin.
  • Describe Calvin’s doctrine, including double predestination, and the Reformed confessions that followed.
  • Explain what the Synod of Dort (1618 to 1619) decided and what the ‘five points’ mean.

The big idea

Augustine taught that God, before the world was made, chose those who would be saved and gives them faith and perseverance as free gifts. Aquinas took over the doctrine, placing it in God’s providence, and held that God wills the salvation of the elect and permits the failure of the rest without causing their sin. Calvin held that God’s eternal decree includes both the election of some and the reprobation of others. The Reformed churches, at the Synod of Dort, confirmed unconditional election as a defense of grace.

Key terms

Predestination (Augustine)
God’s foreknowledge and preparation of the gifts by which those who are saved are saved.
Gift of perseverance
Augustine’s teaching that continuing in faith until death is not a human achievement but a gift given to the elect.
Reprobation
The condition of those not chosen to salvation. Traditions differ on whether God actively decrees it or permits it.
Double predestination
The teaching that God decrees both the salvation of the elect and the damnation of the reprobate. Calvin taught it. Many in the Reformed tradition prefer to say the two are not symmetrical.
Supralapsarian and infralapsarian
Two Reformed views on the logical order of God’s decrees. Supralapsarians place the decree of election before the decree to permit the fall. Infralapsarians place it after.
Canons of Dort
The decisions of the Reformed Synod of Dort (1618 to 1619) responding to the Arminian Remonstrants, in five main heads of doctrine.
Secondary causes
Aquinas’s idea that God works through created causes, including human choices, without taking away their reality.

Background

Augustine’s mature teaching on predestination came in the last years of his life, in works such as On the Predestination of the Saints and On the Gift of Perseverance, written around 428 to 429 in response to monks in Gaul who feared that his earlier teaching undermined moral effort. It is the line of teaching that Orange (529) accepted in part and left open in part. Medieval and Reformation thinkers continued to read these works carefully.

This lesson sets three major voices in order. Each is a fairly consistent teacher in his own terms, and each has been claimed by later parties. A reader should read them as they presented themselves, and should keep in mind that each intended to preserve the glory of grace and the justice of God.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Augustine

Augustine’s central claim is that faith and perseverance are God’s gifts, and that God knows beforehand whom he will give them to. Predestination, he wrote, is the foreknowledge and preparation of God’s benefits by which those who are saved are most certainly saved. The number of the elect is fixed. The others are passed by and receive what their sins deserve.

Augustine held that all humanity, fallen in Adam, deserves condemnation, so that to save any is mercy and to leave others is not injustice. He admitted the mystery. Why one is chosen and another not, he said, depends on the unsearchable judgments of God (Romans 11:33). He also urged pastors to preach to all, since they do not know who is elect, and to speak of predestination with care so as not to cause despair.

Step 2: Aquinas

In the Summa Theologiae (Part I, question 23), Aquinas defines predestination as the part of God’s providence by which he directs rational creatures to eternal life. God wills the salvation of the elect and the cause of their election is not their foreseen merits, since their merits are themselves caused by grace. Reprobation, however, is not the cause of sin. God permits some to fall away and punishes them for their sin, which they commit freely.

Aquinas also taught that God wills the salvation of all in one sense, as an antecedent will, but that in his consequent will he wills what he has decided, as the best outcome. These distinctions were meant to protect both God’s justice and human responsibility, and they show that medieval Catholic thought accepted a form of unconditional predestination. Later Catholic schools disagreed about how to read him: Dominicans stressed God’s prior decree, and Jesuits (following Molina) stressed God’s knowledge of what free creatures would do. The church has allowed both.

Step 3: Calvin

Calvin, in the Institutes (Book 3, chapters 21 to 24), defines predestination as the eternal decree by which God determined what he wished to become of each person. All are not created in equal condition. Eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. He believed this to be the plain teaching of Romans 9 and Ephesians 1, and a comfort, since it places the salvation of believers on God’s unchanging will.

Calvin admitted that the teaching about reprobation is terrible and said that he spoke of it with fear. He argued that the cause of damnation is the sin of the person, while the cause of salvation is God’s mercy alone, so that the two are not parallel. He insisted that election must be known in Christ, who is the mirror of election. A person who wonders whether he is chosen should look at Christ.

Step 4: The Reformed confessions and Dort

The Westminster Confession (Chapter 3) states that God from all eternity did freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, yet so that he is not the author of sin and the liberty of creatures is not taken away. Those predestined to life are chosen in Christ, without foresight of faith or good works. The rest are passed by and ordained to dishonor and wrath for their sin.

At the Synod of Dort the Reformed churches of the Netherlands, with delegates from other countries, responded to the Remonstrants, the followers of Arminius, who had presented five articles in 1610. Dort answered with five heads of doctrine: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. The acronym TULIP, often used to summarize them, came later and does not appear in the Canons. Dort’s wording on reprobation is cautious: it says God passes by the non-elect and condemns them for their sin.

Step 5: Pastoral intent

All three teachers insisted that the doctrine has a pastoral purpose. It is meant to humble the proud, to console the afraid and to show that salvation comes from God’s love. Critics have replied that it can have the opposite effect, leading some to fear that they are not chosen. The teachers’ answer is that Christ is the place to look for assurance.

  1. How does Augustine try to reconcile unconditional election with the duty to preach to all?
  2. What is the difference between God causing salvation and God permitting damnation?
  3. Why does Calvin say that election should be known ‘in Christ’?
  4. Does the Reformed distinction between the causes of salvation and damnation remove the difficulty?
  5. Why might the Dominican and Jesuit schools both be allowed in the Catholic Church?
  6. Which part of these teachers’ account would you want to ask them to explain further?

Examples

The pastoral use of predestination

A Reformed minister visits a woman in despair, who fears she is not elect. He does not ask her to search the hidden decrees. He points her to Christ’s promise, ‘him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out’ (John 6:37), and says that her longing for Christ is itself a sign of grace. The case shows how the doctrine is meant to be used. (A constructed example.)

Reading Dort fairly

A student reads the Canons of Dort expecting a harsh decree and finds a long statement of God’s mercy, the free offer of the gospel to all and the warning that those who do not believe are to blame. She finds the doctrine of reprobation brief and cautious. She concludes that the acronym TULIP gives a poor impression of the document. (A constructed example.)

Different perspectives

Catholic

The Catholic Church holds that predestination to glory is a free act of God, and that no one is predestined to hell. It honors Augustine and Aquinas as teachers. The Council of Trent condemned the view that the justified is bound to be saved without possibility of falling, and also the view that God predestines to evil.

Orthodox

Orthodox theology teaches that God foreknows all things and wills the salvation of all, and does not decree a division of the saved and the lost. Augustine’s late doctrine is regarded as a one-sided development. Orthodox writers stress that God’s foreknowledge does not cause human choices.

Lutheran

The Formula of Concord teaches election for all who are saved, in Christ, and refuses to teach reprobation as a decree. It holds that the loss of anyone is due to his own resistance. Lutherans are cautious about reasoning beyond the revealed promise.

Reformed

The Reformed churches teach that God has chosen a definite number to eternal life, unconditionally, and leaves the rest in their sin. They hold that the doctrine is taught plainly in Romans 9 and Ephesians 1 and that it protects salvation by grace alone. They affirm that God is not the author of sin.

Arminian and Wesleyan

Arminians and Wesleyans reply that this doctrine makes God unjust and the offer of the gospel insincere. They hold that Augustine’s early teaching is more faithful, and that the late works go beyond Scripture. They teach conditional election on the basis of God’s foreknowledge of faith.

Why it matters

These three teachers set the terms for most later debate in the West. Their teaching is often described by opponents in harsher terms than they used themselves. Reading them carefully, and noting what they refused to say, is the best protection against caricature. It also shows that the doctrine of unconditional election has a long history, though not a consensus, in the Western church.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Calvin invented predestination.

Correction: Augustine taught unconditional predestination a thousand years earlier, and Aquinas included it in his theology. Calvin’s distinctive contribution was in how he arranged and stressed it.

Misunderstanding: Calvinism teaches that God makes people sin.

Correction: The Reformed confessions explicitly deny that God is the author of sin. They teach that sin comes from the creature’s will, within God’s sovereign permission.

Misunderstanding: TULIP is the Canons of Dort.

Correction: The acronym is a later summary. The Canons are longer and more pastoral, and their order differs.

Misunderstanding: Catholic teaching rejects Augustine on predestination.

Correction: The Catholic Church honors Augustine, and teaches predestination to glory. It has not adopted his strictest statements and has held that no one is predestined to damnation.

Knowledge check

What was Augustine’s teaching on perseverance?

Augustine taught that continuing in faith to the end is itself a gift of God, given to the elect, not an achievement of the will. Those who fall away were never truly given this gift. He urged that the doctrine be preached with care and that all be exhorted, since no one knows who is chosen.

How did Aquinas treat reprobation?

Aquinas held that God’s providence includes predestination to life, with grace as the cause of merit. Reprobation is God’s permission of failure and his just punishment of sin, but God is not the cause of the sin. The sin comes from the creature’s will acting freely, within God’s providence.

What is double predestination in Calvin?

Calvin taught that God’s eternal decree appointed some to eternal life and others to eternal damnation. He distinguished the causes: salvation arises from God’s mercy alone, while damnation is due to the person’s sin. He called the decree terrible, and urged that election be seen in Christ and not by searching God’s secrets.

What did the Synod of Dort decide?

Meeting in 1618 and 1619, it rejected the five articles of the Remonstrants and set out five heads of doctrine on depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance. The Canons teach that God passes by the non-elect and condemns them for their sin, while the gospel is to be offered to all.

Think it through

  1. Why might a doctrine meant to comfort cause fear in some? How did these teachers respond to that?
  2. Is it fair to call God just in leaving some in sin if all deserve it? What would an objector reply?
  3. What do you think the pastoral risks are in teaching double predestination, and how might they be reduced?

Independent assignment

Three definitions

In your notebook, write 400 to 600 words. Copy one definition of predestination from each of Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin, or from the Westminster Confession, keeping each under 25 words. Explain each in your own words. Then write a paragraph identifying one thing the three share and one thing on which Calvin goes further than the other two.

Further study