The Logic of Calvinism

By Arthur N. Prior

(Edited by D. Jakobsen. First published Tuesday Oct 18, 2011.)

The Westminster Confession of Faith is not just a collection of offhand pronouncements on various subjects strung together like beads on a rosary, but has a definite inward order and pattern. It is my purpose here to show just what that order and pattern is, and why the various subjects appear just where they do, I shall then briefly mention the history of their order of treatment, and finally suggest some criticisms that may be made of it.

The Pattern of the Westminster Confession

Chapter I, “Of the Holy Scripture”, is an introduction to the whole, it tells us the source from which all the rest is drawn, and the standard by which it is to be criticised. The Confession is a summary of the teachings of Scripture and Chapter I tells us so, and why it should be so, the summary itself begins with Chapter II.

This “summary of the teachings of Scripture” falls first into two main divisions – the Bible’s teaching about God, and its teaching about His works. Ch. II, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity, exhausts the first of these divisions, and is itself sub-divided into two sections about God’s general attributes – what divines of the period called His “essence” – and one about the special fact of His “subsistence” as Three Persons in One God. God’s “works” are the subject of all the rest of the Confessions.

God’s “works” in their turn are divided into His “works” in “eternity”, His eternal purpose or decree, and His “works” in Time”, in which this decree is executed. Ch. III, “Of God’s Eternal Decree”, handles the first of these topics, and sub-divides it into two sections about God’s general foreordaining of whatsoever comes to pass”, and six sections about His more special foreordaining of the eternal destinies of men and angles. The other large division – the execution of God’s decree – is once again the subject of the entire remainder of the Confession.

The activities in time in which God’s eternal decree is executed are creation and providence. Ch. IV, “Of Creation”, has one section on the creation of the world in general, and one on the creation of man. Ch. V “Of Providence”, also contains a division between “general” and “special”, His Special providence being mentioned in Section VII as that by which He cares for the Church. There is, however, a broader division implicit in this chapter too, and underlying the arrangement of the later chapter. The first three sections are about the broad fact of God’s rule over His world, while the last four (including the one about the Church) reaffirms that complete rule of God in a world into which sin has entered. The remaining chapters of the Confession deal with God’s way of ruling a sinful world.

Ch. VI, “Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment thereof”, describes the entry of sin into the world, and Ch. VII, “Of God’s Covenant with Man”, introduces us to a new set of divisions. The history of God’s dealings with man falls into two periods – His dealing with man in his innocence under a “covenant of works”, and the replacement of this, when man was no longer innocent, by a more merciful “covenant of grace”, administered in two “dispensations”, “under the law” before Christ’s coming and “under the gospel” after it. These two dispensations” are not made use of in the arrangement of subsequent chapters, though various chapters contain remainders that such faithful people as God had under the old dispensation were saved through Christ’s work for them just as we are, and were thus also under the “covenant of grace.”

The first division which is made use of in subsequent chapters is that between Christ’s work in “purchasing” God’s mercy for sinful man, and the effective “application” of it to those who are to benefit by it. Ch. VIII, “Of Christ the Mediator”, is about the first of these subjects, with a hint of the second in its last section.

The “application” of Christ’s benefits, i.e. the actual achievement of salvation, is effected by an inward work of grace, with various outward helps. The inward work of grace is described in Chapter IX to XVIII, “Of Free Will”, “Of Effectual Calling”, “Of Justification”, “Of Adoption”, “Of Sanctification”, “Of Saving Faith”, “Of Repentance unto Life”, “Of Good Works”, “Of the Perseverance of the Saints”, “Of Assurance of Grace and Salvation”. Some of these inward workings of God’s grace have an “outward reference”; saving faith, for example, being a “looking unto Jesus” for all mercy; others, such as “good works”, are more centred within ourselves.

Chapters XIX to XXXI deal with the outward helps which God has given to put us on the road to salvation and keep us there. Ch. XIX is about “The Law of God” and Chapters XX to XXII about special aspects of it, “Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience”, Religious Worship, and the Sabbath-day”, and “Lawful Oaths and Vows”. Ch. XXIII is about the State, the “Civil Magistrate”, and Ch. XXIV, “Of Marriage and Divorce”, is a subdivision of this. Chapters XXV to XXXI are about the Church and the Sacraments – “Of the Church”, “Of Communion of Saints”, “Of the Sacraments”, “Of Baptism”, “Of the Lord’s Supper”, “Of Church Censures” , “Of Synods and Councils.”

Chapters XXXII and XXXIII are about the final end of all these processes, just in the individual, and then in the whole world over which God rules “Of the State of Men after Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead”, and “Of the Last Judgment”.

We might bring out all this arrangement by the following system of numbering:

1. The Authority of the Word of God.
2. The Contents of the Word of God. (“God and His Works”).
2.1. Of God.
2.11. Of God’s general attributes.
2.12. Of God as the Holy Trinity.
2.2. Of God’s Works.
2.21. Of God’s Works in Eternity – His Decree.
2.211. Of God’s General Decree.
2.212. Of God’s Special Predestination of Men and Angles.
2.22 Of the Execution of God’s Decree in Time.
2.221 Of Creation.
2.2211. The Creation of the World.
2.2212. The Creation of Man
2.222. Of God’s Providence.
2.2221. God’s General Providence.
2.2222. God’s Providence in Relation to Sin.
2.22221. The Covenant of Works and its Breaking.
2.22222. The Covenant of Grace.
2.222221. The Purchase of the Covenant of Grace.
2.222222. The Application of the Covenant of Grace.
2.2222221. The Inward Work of Grace.
2.2222222. The Outward Means of Grace.
2.22222223. The Fruition of Grace in Glory.
A.N.P.

The Sources of The Pattern

The larger and Shorter Catechisms are arranged very similarly to the Confession, and at some points display the reason for this order more clearly than the Confession itself does. Thus in the Shorter Catechism, Q.7, “What are the decrees of God?”, is followed by “How doth God execute his decrees”, the answer being, “In his works decrees, and providence.” In the Confession the conception of God’s works in time as the execution of His work in eternity is not actually expressed, but silently governs its orders.

The Catechism also make more explicit another distinction which underlies the order of the Confession – the distinction between “what man is to believe concerning God” and “what duty God requires of Man” (Shorter Catechism Q. 3). The Confession up to Ch. XVIII could be regarded as a recital of God’s acts, and from Ch. XIX, “Of the Law of God”, almost to the end – as far as Ch. XXXI, “Of Synods and Councils” as a recital of His Demands. Karl Barth makes use of this distinction in his Gifford Lectures, in which he sums up the teachings of the Scots Confession of 1560 under the heads of “The Knowledge of God and the Service of God”. (1) It was used also by Barth’s predecessor at Basel in the 16th century, Amandus Polanus (2) , in his massive theological text-book of “Syntagma” (3) ; and by a slightly later Basel divine, John Wollebiuss (4) , in his briefer “Compendium” (5) ; from which it passed into John Milton’s (6) summary of his own somewhat unorthodox theology. It is used in the “Medulla Theologiae” (7) of the early 17th century English Presbyterian William Ames (8), a work which particularly influenced the Westminster divines. This distinction between “faith” and “life” seems a very natural one, and has its counterpart in the emphasis of modern logicians on the distinction between “indicative” and “imperative” modes of speech. Indeed Polanus of Basel was probably attracted to it by its affinities with some of the teachings of the contemporary anti- Aristotelian logician, Peter Ramus (9) , in whose work Polanus was very interested. Its value in theology is, however, questionable; our duties to God are very intimately bound up with our debt to Him for what He has done, and are probably best treated in connection with those divide deeds. The Polanus – Wollebiuss – Ames – Milton method of dividing up the subject-matter of theology was, at all events, for from universal among Calvinists of the Westminster period, and is less masked in the arrangement of the Confession than in that of the Catechisms.

The distinction between the covenants of works and grace was also prominent only among a section of 17th century Calvinists, though it goes back at least as far as a treatise published by Bullinger (10) of Zurich two years before the first edition of Calvin’s Institutes (11). It achieved a fairly early popularity among the Calvinists of England and Scotland, and appears to have been introduced into Holland by William Ames. In that country it was eagerly taken up by Cocceius , who saw in it a more “dynamic” way of describing God’s dealings with man than was commonly attained to in Calvinistic orthodoxy. It fitted in rather well with the historical and political bent of the English mind; and it is a little unfair to treat it, as historians sometimes do, as imposing upon us an unnaturally abstract theological strait-jacket. The story of the “covenants” and their various “dispensations” is a kind of constitutional history of the Kingdom of God; and it is more appropriate than not for Englishmen, Calvinists or otherwise, to look at theology in that way.

Apart from the distinction between the “knowledge of God” and the “service of God”, and the doctrine of the “covenants”, the main divisions mentioned above – between God and His works, His decree in eternity and its execution in time, creation and providence, general providence and special, the purchase of redemption and the application of it – already formed the fixed conventional groundplan of Calvinistic orthodoxy by the beginning of the 17th century. The original Reformers were not quite so systematic, though this ground-plan was already present in broad outline in Calvin’s Institutes”, with its first book on God the Creator, its second on the mediation of Christ, its third on the internal work of the Holy Spirit, and its fourth on the external means by which that work is aided. These divisions were in turn derived from the main articles of the Apostle’s Creed – “I believe in God the Father Almighty, ... and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord ..... I believe in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Catholic Church ....” The more systematic distinctions which were introduced by Calvin’s successors seems to be mostly of medieval origin. These men knew their Aquinas, and sharpened their wits in controversy with such contemporary Romanists as Bellarmine , and were not above taking a weapon or two from the enemy’s armoury.

Even the simple division of their subject-matter into “God” and “His works” was more in the spirit of Aquinas than of Calvin, who considered it perilous to speculate on God’s “essence” apart from His activities, in which alone He made His doing known. We may note also that when the Westminster divines ventured into realms which Calvin might have shunned as speculative, it was not to discuss, like the Greek Fathers, the precise nature of the union between the Persons in the Trinity, or that between the divine and the human in Christ, though they did touch incidentally upon the latter subject when debating with the Lutherans about the nature of the union between the body and blood of Christ and the sacramental elements. Their main “speculations” were more like those of the later medieval schoolmen, about such subjects as the power and the immutability of God.
A.N.P.

(4 pages of enclosed manuscripts)

Natural and Revealed Theology

The structure of the Confession reflects another distinction of medieval origin which has not been so far mentioned, that between “natural” and “revealed” theology. Like Calvin’s “Institutes”, it begins by admitting that “the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable”. It is true that it goes on, also like Calvin’s “Institutes”, to insist that this natural light is not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary to salvation”; and the source of all its further affirmations is not reason by Holy Writ. It was however, common doctrine by the time of the Assembly that the Bible contains a “re-publication” of truths which may also be known after a fashion by the light of nature, as well as a revelation of truths not otherwise attainable. The distinction between natural and revealed theology thus re-enters by the back door. There is no simple division of the Confession as a whole into the “natural” and “revealed” parts of theology, like the division of Aquinas’s work into a “Summa Contra Gentiles” (“natural”) and a “Summa Theologiae” (“revealed”), or the later division of Protestant systems into “the Evidences” (rational proofs of the truth of Christianity) and “the Controversies” (the settlement of differences within the body of those who accept the Christian revelation), or as we would not say “apologetics” and “dogmatics” In countless subsidiary ways, however, the distinction between natural and revealed theology does make itself felt. Strict “Barthians” who oppose the revision of the Confession are possibly laying up as much trouble for themselves as for their “liberal” opponents.

It was commonly held by 17th century divines that the light of nature may teach us that God is, and something of what He is, but who He is we can only learn by revelation. This is why it was so natural to them to discuss what God is, listing His various attributes and perfections, before discussion who He is, in terms of the Persons of the Trinity; and this is the order followed in Ch. II of the Confession, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity.”

It was also held that the States authority was evident from the “law of nature”, while that of the Church was a matter of revelation. This partly explains the rather surprising fact that the State is considered in the Confession before the Church; although the doctrine of the Church precedes that of the “civil magistrate in Calvin’s “Institutes” and even in the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. Certain medieval rulers claimed that the King must precede the Bishop because his authority stems directly from the Almighty’s while the latter’s is mediated by the God-man Christ. Kings and Bishops apart, this was the doctrine of the respective ordinations of Church and State held by most of the Westminster divines.

In this last position we may observe a tendency not only to recognise a “natural” alongside a “revealed” knowledge of God, but also to subordinate the objects of the latter to those of the former. This tendency is still more clearly exhibited in the Confession’s failure to consider redemption as a distinct activity of God on level with creation. God’s “work in time” are not divided into those of creation and redemption, or, as in Barth, those of creation, reconciliation and redemption; but into those of creation and providence. The whole plan of redemption is simply God’s “special” providence. The outlines of the Apostle’s Creed, still clear in Calvin, are not invisible in the Westminster Confession either, but they have become somewhat blurred. The “balance” of the Creed has been lost, and all the later sections of it have become appendages to the one article, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.” It is not surprising that Presbyterians in England and America has sometimes slipped in Unitarianism.

A.N.P.

Echo of Islam

This almost Muhammedan one-sidedness is also evident in certain sections of Ch.III, “Of God’s Eternal Decree,” where we read: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and other foreordained to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.” This is as much as to say that men are created saved men or dammed men; and what then becomes of the necessity for a “new creation”? We seem to have moved a long way from the original premise of the doctrine of predestination, which is that men have nothing to hope for in themselves, and everything to hope for in Christ, in whom God has seen them from all eternity.

This chapter does indeed connect our “election” with the work of Christ, but in a way which is not likely to command very widespread assent today. The work of Christ is simply placed alongside such things as our own sanctification as one of the “means” by which the final separation of the elect from corrupt humanity is carried into effect. “As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he .... foreordained all the means thereto”; and this is one of them. There were some in the Assembly – the “Amyraldist” group, notably Edmund Calamy – who felt that this subordination of redemption to creation went too far. They were less ready than their stouter brethren to stomach the consequence that since Christ died to make God’s decree of election effective, He died for the elect only, and not for all mankind.

The doctrine that Christ died for the elect only was not a Calvinist invention. It goes back at least as far as some of the earlier medieval Augustinians, notably Remigius, a Bishop of Lyons in that period; and it was not stressed by Calvin himself, or adhered to by those of his followers who were also Anglicans. The seventeenth century Frenchman from whom Amyraldism takes its name did not regard himself as an opponent of Calvinism or of the doctrine of predestination; but rather as its defender against those who said that it could not be held without denying that Christ died for all mankind. Those of his brethren who accepted and rejoiced in this consequence he regarded as a kind of fifth column who were discrediting Calvinism from within. Though the “fifth column” won the day in the 17th century, most people who still believe in predestination, are probably “Amyraldist.” One suspects, however, that this is more by convention than through having considered an answered the weighty objections made against this position both by “orthodox Calvinists and by those who would have nothing to do with Calvinism in any shape or form.

Both classes of objections could point out that if Christ died for those who were predestined to be left in their sins, His death was a mockery as far as they were concerned, and the force of the word “For” in “died for them” is not easy to understand. The argument seems logically unanswerable; but perhaps the whole conception of God as adapting means to ends (as Chris’s death to the salvation of particular men) is one that cannot be carried through over-logically. Our attempts to describe God’s ways all turn into nonsense if we press them too far, and this is only a case in point.

The “orthodox” also signed that, on the Amyraldist view, since Christ died equally for those who benefited from His death and those who did not, the all-important thing was no longer the death of Christ but our benefiting from it, by faith. Even if the Amyraldists insisted that faith was no human achievement but the gift of God to the elect, this faith was made a greater gift than the Cross itself. But although the orthodox criticised the Amyraldists for this error in proportion, they themselves, as we have seen, subordinated the Cross to the distinction between elect and reprobate. Might not the consequences with which they charged the Amyraldists really spring from some questionable but unquestioned premiss of their own, in the light of which they read all the arguments put before them? The Amyraldists therefore pursued the logic of their opponents to its remotest sources, and carried their debates into realms where their more timid modern sympathisers would hesitate to follow them – into the subject of the order of the divine decrees.

Orthodox Calvinists held that the first end which God proposed to Himself in the creation of the world was the manifestation of His glory. He then chose a body of “elect” in whose salvation the glory of His mercy would by shown, and another body destined to display in their perdition the glory of His justice. Finally He decided to effect His purposes with the elect by means of the death of Christ. This is the order reflected in Ch. III of the Westminster Confession – first, “by the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory”, angles and men are allotted to their various destinies, and then, having “appointed the elect unto glory”, He “foreordains all the means thereto”. The Amyraldists began their reconstruction of the edifice at the foundation and taught that the first end of Gods designs was not a display but an activity, not “the manifestation of His glory” but “the exercise of His goodness”. The order of the subsidiary decrees was reversed and their nature changed in consequence. Perceiving the obstacle set to the exercise of His goodness by the sin of man, God first decreed that all salvation, without distinction of persons was to be sought and found “in Christ” (“election in Christo”) Then, considering man’s helplessness even to lay hold upon this remedy, He elected particular persons “into Christ” by granting them faith, at His good pleasure (“election in Christum”).

The old question of Amyraldis critics inevitably recurs to us – does this rearrangement really make any material difference? Perhaps not; but there is an attraction in its unspoken overtones. At no stage in God’s counsels are “the elect” considered as a distinct body apart from Christ and apart from mankind; “election” in its primary meaning is simply the establishment from all eternity of God’s purpose of salvation in Him. He is “the Chosen One of God”, and the distinctness and unity of His body lies solely in its being His Body, its being united to Him. Also, in the setting here given to it, the election of particular individuals is no longer an ultimate divine capriciousness over which the Gospel only throws a superficial mask. It is rather a hint and a reminder that though we only “know in part” what God has done for us, “the exercise of His goodness” is something to which no limit can be set, even by man’s inability in himself to do anything but reject the salvation that is offered him.

A.N.P.

The Church and the Believers

Both in the Bible and in classical Calvinism, the word “election” walks hand in hand with the word “vocation”. Whom God has chosen in eternity, in time He calls. So in the Westminster Confession Chapter IX, “Of the Free Will”, is followed by a chapter “Of Effectual Calling”. The emphasis is, characteristically, on the word “effectual”. “Effectual calling is not just the proclamation of the Gospel, about which this chapter, and the Confession as a whole, have surprisingly little to say. It is a stirring of the heart, the beginning of the elect man’s separation from the condemned world. The subject of the “inner life” of the Christian is one on which no Confession of faith can afford to be silent, and the Westminster Confessions utterances upon it, from this Chapter X “Of Effectual Calling”, to Chapter XVIII, “Of Assurance of Grace and Salvation”, include much that is true, sober and important, and stated with singular felicity. This is on the whole the most valuable part of the Confession, and fairly plainly the core of it.

After Chapter XVIII, we turn from our faith to our duties, not the least of which is that of “professing the true religion”, thereby constituting the “catholick visible church” (Ch. XXV, Sect. II). This part of the Confession may also be regarded as an account of the outward means by which, under Christ, the graces detailed in the preceding part are awakened and sustained. Among other things we read, again in the chapter “Of the Church”, “Unto this catholick visible Church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints.” (Ch. XXV, Section III). In these chapters also, much that is true, sober and important is felicitously said. But once again we are left with a query as to whether the Confession has put first things first.

On this subject the Amyraldists had an important corollary to their main protest against the conventional logic of Calvinism. Corresponding to their two “elections”, God’s general purpose to place mankind’s salvation in Christ and His decision to give faith in Christ to particular individuals, were two “callings”, the public setting forth of God’s commands and promises in Christ to all mankind, and the bringing of particular individuals to salvation by this road. Between the two callings, as between the two elections, there was, for the Amyraldists, no quite simple relationship of means and end. The public offices of the Church do awaken and sustain the faith and love of individual believers; but the aim of the Church is simply to set forth, in speech and in action, God’s word and God’s will.

Nor is the Church, the bearer of the Gospel, simply the creation of faithful and obedient men “professing the true religion”. Here we need to be careful against criticising the Westminster Confession merely because it appears to put the individual before the group. That in itself is possible even commendable. There is too much rather than too little conformity to “the group mind” today; and too much exaltation of the Church” in ways which suggest that we are only encountering another variant of the prevailing “collectivist” mood. Presbyterianism in its history has unfortunately not been backward in imposing a rather rigid and rather dull uniformity of outlook and manners upon its adherents. Certainly that false collectivism which is only and enlarged egotism, that concealment under the word “we” of the pride of thousand “I”s who will brook no criticism from outside their circle, and within it are too alike for criticism ever to arise, may be found in the Church as much as in the rest of the world.

The Church is not more important than the individual because a thousand is a bigger number than one, but because Christ is in the midst of her. The unity of the Church does not lie in a union of wills binding her members into a body set apart from the rest of men, but in Christ’s being held up in her midst for all mankind to see. Her message is for the world, as Christ’s death was for the world; and it is for the world’s transfiguration that she hopes, and of which she finds a foretaste in the faith and good works of individuals, and not only there either. The State and other “natural” forms of order (even the order which the scientist investigates and by which we tend our gardens), which by God’s mercy hold together the fallen world to which the Gospel is addressed, also speak to the Church and through the Church of the promise of the world’s redemption. Their benefits are these for “the evil and the good, the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45), for the believer and the unbeliever; just as the Gospel is there for the evil and the good, the just and the unjust.

These are things which the structure of the Confession is so ill adapted to saying. Here and there, indeed, despite this structure, it does manage to say things very like them. We must be grateful, for example, for its insistence in Chapter XIX that the Law of God is one and the same for all men – that there is not one law for the unbeliever and another for the believers, as we have heard in our own day from the most surprising sources. But the Westminster divines could not develop the presuppositions and consequences of truths which they only asserted by accident; neither, if we retain that accidental character, can we.

A.N.P.
1. Original 2. Copies

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(1) The Gifford Lectures were held by Barth in 1937-1938, and subsequently published in 1939.

(2) Amandus Polanus (1561 – 1910) His importance for the history of Reformed Theology has been dealt with by Robert Letham in Amandus Polanus: A Neglected Theologian? (1990)

(3) Syntagma (1609)

(4) John Wollebiuss (1589 – 1629)

(5) Compendium Theologiae Christianae (1626)

(6) John Milton (1608 – 1674)

(7) Medulla Theologiae (1629)

(8) William Ames (1576 – 1633)

(9) Peter Ramus (1515 – 1572) Logician whose dichotomous division of topics, known as Ramism, has had a significant influence on the history of Reformed Theology. See Letham 1990.

(10) Heinrich Bullinger (1504 – 1575)

(11) John Calvin (1509 – 1564). His highly influential Institutes of The Christian Religion was first published in 1536.