Chapter 7

I. Election.Election is that eternal act of God, by which in his sovereign pleasure, and on account of no foreseen merit in them, he chooses certain out of the number of sinful men to be the recipients of the special grace of his Spirit, and so to be made voluntary partakers of Christ's salvation.1. Proof of the Doctrine of Election.A. From Scripture.We here adopt the words of Dr. Hovey:“The Scriptures forbid us to find the reasons for election in the moral action of man before the new birth, and refer us merely to the sovereign will and mercy of God; that is, they teach the doctrine of personal election.”Before advancing to the proof of the doctrine itself, we may claim Scriptural warrant for three preliminary statements (which we also quote from Dr. Hovey), namely:First, that“God has a sovereign right to bestow more grace upon one subject than upon another,—grace being unmerited favor to sinners.”Mat. 20:12-15—“These last have spent but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us.... Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”Rom. 9:20, 21—“Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why didst thou make me thus? Or hath not the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?”Secondly, that“God has been pleased to exercise this right in dealing with men.”Ps. 147:20—“He hath not dealt so with any nation; And as for his ordinances, they have not known them”.Rom. 3:1, 2—“What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way: first of all, that they were intrusted with the oracles of God”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit”;Acts 9:15—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel.”Thirdly, that“God has some other reason than that of saving as many as possible for the way in which he distributes his grace.”[pg 780]nMat. 11:21—Tyre and Sidon“would have repented,”if they had had the grace bestowed upon Chorazin and Bethsaida;Rom. 9:22-25—“What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory?”The Scripture passages which directly or indirectly support the doctrine of a particular election of individual men to salvation may be arranged as follows:(a) Direct statements of God's purpose to save certain individuals:Jesus speaks of God's elect, as for example inMark 13:27—“then shall he send forth the angels, and shall gather together his elect”;Luke 18:7—“shall not God avenge his elect, that cry to him day and night?”Acts 13:48—“as many as were ordained(τεταγμένοι)to eternal life believed”—here Whedon translates:“disposed unto eternal life,”referring to κατηρτισμένα inverse 23, where“fitted”=“fitted themselves.”The only instance, however, where τάσσω is used in a middle sense is in1 Cor. 16:15—“set themselves”; but there the object, ἑαυτούς, is expressed. Here we must compareRom. 13:1—“the powers that be are ordained(τεταγμέναι)of God”; see alsoActs 10:42—“this is he who is ordained(ὡρισμένος)of God to be the Judge of the living and the dead.”Rom. 9:11-16—“for the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.... I will have mercy upon whom I have mercy.... So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy”;Eph. 1:4, 5, 9, 11—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world,[notbecausewe were, or were to be, holy, but]that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will ... the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure ... in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will”;Col. 3:12—“God's elect”;2 Thess. 2:13—“God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.”(b) In connection with the declaration of God's foreknowledge of these persons, or choice to make them objects of his special attention and care;Rom. 8:27-30—“called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son”;1 Pet. 1:1, 2—“elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”On the passage in Romans, Shedd, in his Commentary, remarks that“foreknew,”in the Hebraistic use,“is more than simple prescience, and something more also than simply‘to fix the eye upon,’or to‘select.’It is this latter, but with the additional notion of a benignant and kindly feeling toward the object.”InRom. 8:27-30, Paul is emphasizing the divine sovereignty. The Christian life is considered from the side of the divine care and ordering, and not from the side of human choice and volition. Alexander, Theories of the Will, 87, 88—“If Paul is here advocating indeterminism, it is strange that inchapter 9he should be at pains to answer objections to determinism. The apostle's protest inchapter 9is not against predestination and determination, but against the man who regards such a theory as impugning the righteousness of God.”That the word“know,”in Scripture, frequently means not merely to“apprehend intellectually,”but to“regard with favor,”to“make an object of care,”is evident fromGen. 18:19—“I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice”;Ex. 2:25—“And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them”;cf.verse 24—“God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob”;Ps. 1:6—“For Jehovah knoweth the way of the righteous; But the way of the wicked shall perish”;101:4,marg.—“I will know no evil person”;Hosea 13:5—“I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According to their pasture, so were they filled”;Nahum 1:7—“he knoweth them that take refuge in him”;Amos 3:2—“You only have I known of all the families of the earth”;Mat. 7:23—“then will I profess unto them, I never knew you”;Rom. 7:15—“For that which I do I know not”;1 Cor. 8:3—“if any man loveth God, the same is known by him”;Gal. 4:9—“now that ye have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God”;1 Thess. 5:12, 13—“we beseech you, brethren, to know them that labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them exceeding highly in love for their work's sake.”So the word“foreknow”:Rom. 11:2—“God did not cast off his people whom he foreknew”;1 Pet. 1:20—Christ,“who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world.”Broadus onMat. 7:23—“I never knew you”—says;“Not in all the passages quoted above, nor elsewhere, is there occasion for the oft-repeated arbitrary notion, derived from the Fathers, that‘know’conveys the additional idea of approve or regard. It denotes acquaintance, with all its pleasures and advantages;‘knew,’i. e., as mine, as my people.”[pg 781]But this last admission seems to grant what Broadus had before denied. See Thayer, Lex. N. T., on γινώσκω:“With acc. of person, to recognize as worthy of intimacy and love; so those whom God has judged worthy of the blessings of the gospel are said ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ γινώσκεσθαι (1 Cor. 8:3; Gal. 4:9); negatively in the sentence of Christ: οὐδἐποτε ἔγνων ὑμᾶς,‘I never knew you,’never had any acquaintance with you.”On προγινώσκω,Rom. 8:29—οὒς προέγνω,“whom he foreknew,”see Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“Those whom he foreknew—in what sense? as persons who would answer his love with love? This is at least irrelevant, and alien to Paul's general method of thought. That salvation begins with God, and begins in eternity, are fundamental ideas with him, which he here applies to Christians, without raising any of the problems involved in the relation of the human will to the divine. Yet we may be sure that προέγνω has the pregnant sense that γινώσκω often has in Scripture,e. g., inPs. 1:6; Amos 3:2;hence we may render:‘those of whom God took knowledge from eternity’(Eph. 1:4).”InRom. 8:28-30, quoted above,“foreknew”= elected—that is, made certain individuals, in the future, the objects of his love and care;“foreordained”describes God's designation of these same individuals to receive the special gift of salvation. In other words,“foreknowledge”is of persons:“foreordination”is of blessings to be bestowed upon them. Hooker, Eccl. Pol., appendix to book v. (vol. 2:751)—“‘whom he did foreknow’(know before as his own, with determination to be forever merciful to them)‘he also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son’—predestinated, not to opportunity of conformation, but to conformation itself.”So, for substance, Calvin, Rückert, DeWette, Stuart, Jowett, Vaughan. On1 Pet. 1:1, 2,see Com. of Plumptre. The Arminian interpretation of“whom he foreknew”(Rom. 8:29) would require the phrase“as conformed to the image of his Son”to be conjoined with it. Paul, however, makes conformity to Christ to be the result, not the foreseen condition, of God's foreordination; see Commentaries of Hodge and Lange.(c) With assertions that this choice is matter of grace, or unmerited favor, bestowed in eternity past:Eph. 1:5-8—“foreordained ... according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved ... according to the riches of his grace”;2:8—“by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God”—here“and that”(neuter τοῦτο,verse 8) refers, not to“faith”but to“salvation.”But faith is elsewhere represented as having its source in God,—see page782, (k).2 Tim. 1:9—“his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal.”Election is not because of our merit. McLaren:“God's own mercy, spontaneous, undeserved, condescending, moved him. God is his own motive. His love is not drawn out by our loveableness, but wells up, like an artesian spring, from the depths of his nature.”(d) That the Father has given certain persons to the Son, to be his peculiar possession:John 6:37—“All that which the Father giveth me shall come unto me”;17:2—“that whatsoever thou hast given him, to them he should give eternal life”;6—“I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me”;9—“I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me”;Eph. 1:14—“unto the redemption of God's own possession”;1 Pet. 2:9—“a people for God's own possession.”(e) That the fact of believers being united thus to Christ is due wholly to God:John 6:44—“No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him”;10:26—“ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep”;1 Cor. 1:30—“of him[God]are ye in Christ Jesus”= your being, as Christians, in union with Christ, is due wholly to God.(f) That those who are written in the Lamb's book of life, and they only, shall be saved:Phil. 4:3—“the rest of my fellow-workers, whose names are in the book of life”;Rev. 20:15—“And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire”;21:27—“there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean ... but only they that are written in the Lamb's book of life”= God's decrees of electing grace in Christ.[pg 782](g) That these are allotted, as disciples, to certain of God's servants:Acts 17:4—(literally)—“some of them were persuaded, and were allotted[by God]to Paul and Silas”—as disciples (so Meyer and Grimm);18:9, 10—“Be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to harm thee: for I have much people in this city.”(h) Are made the recipients of a special call of God:Rom. 8:28, 30—“called according to his purpose ... whom he foreordained, them he also called”;9:23, 24—“vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles”;11:29—“for the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of”;1 Cor. 1:24-29—“unto them that are called ... Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.... For behold your calling, brethren, ... the things that are despised, did God choose, yea and the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are: that no flesh should glory before God”;Gal. 1:15, 16—“when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me”;cf.James 2:23—“and he[Abraham]was called[to be]the friend of God.”(i) Are born into God's kingdom, not by virtue of man's will, but of God's will:John 1:13—“born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”;James 1:18—“Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth”;1 John 4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us.”S. S. Times, Oct. 14, 1899—“The law of love is the expression of God's loving nature, and it is only by our participation of the divine nature that we are enabled to render it obedience.‘Loving God,’says Bushnell,‘is but letting God love us.’So John's great saying may be rendered in the present tense:‘not that we love God, but that he loves us.’Or, as Madame Guyon sings:‘I love my God, but with no love of mine, For I have none to give; I love thee, Lord, but all the love is thine, For by thy life I live’.”(j) Receiving repentance, as the gift of God:Acts 5:31—“Him did God exalt with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins”;11:18—“Then to the Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life”;2 Tim. 2:25—“correcting them that oppose themselves; if peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth.”Of course it is true that God might give repentance simply by inducing man to repent by the agency of his word, his providence and his Spirit. But more than this seems to be meant when the Psalmist prays:“Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit within me”(Ps. 51:10).(k) Faith, as the gift of God:John 6:65—“no man can come unto me, except it be given unto him of the Father”;Acts 15:8, 9—“God ... giving them the Holy Spirit ... cleansing their hearts by faith”;Rom. 12:3—“according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith”;1 Cor. 12:9—“to another faith, in the same Spirit”;Gal. 5:22—“the fruit of the Spirit is ... faith”(A. V.);Phil. 2:13—In all faith,“it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure”;Eph. 6:23—“Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;John 3:8—“The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou[as a consequence]hearest his voice”(so Bengel); see A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 166;1 Cor. 12:3—“No man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit”—but calling Jesus“Lord”is an essential part of faith,—faith therefore is the work of the Holy Spirit;Tit. 1:1—“the faith of God's elect”—election is not in consequence of faith, but faith is in consequence of election (Ellicott). If they get their faith of themselves, then salvation is not due to grace. If God gave the faith, then it was in his purpose, and this is election.(l) Holiness and good works, as the gift of God.Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy”;2:9, 10—“not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;1 Pet. 1:2—elect“unto obedience.”On Scripture testimony, see Hovey, Manual of Theol. and Ethics, 258-261; also art. on Predestination, by Warfield, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible.These passages furnish an abundant and conclusive refutation, on the one hand, of the Lutheran view that election is simply God's determination from eternity to provide an objective salvation for universal humanity;[pg 783]and, on the other hand, of the Arminian view that election is God's determination from eternity to save certain individuals upon the ground of their foreseen faith.Roughly stated, we may say that Schleiermacher elects all men subjectively; Lutherans all men objectively; Arminians all believers; Augustinians all foreknown as God's own. Schleiermacher held that decree logically precedes foreknowledge, and that election is individual, not national. But he made election to include all men, the only difference between them being that of earlier or of later conversion. Thus in his system Calvinism and Restorationism go hand in hand. Murray, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, seems to take this view.Lutheranism is the assertion that original grace preceded original sin, and that theQuia Voluitof Tertullian and of Calvin was based on wisdom, in Christ. The Lutheran holds that the believer is simply the non-resistant subject of common grace; while the Arminian holds that the believer is the coöperant subject of common grace. Lutheranism enters more fully than Calvinism into the nature of faith. It thinks more of the human agency, while Calvinism thinks more of the divine purpose. It thinks more of the church, while Calvinism thinks more of Scripture. The Arminian conception is that God has appointed men to salvation, just as he has appointed them to condemnation, in view of their dispositions and acts. As Justification is in view ofpresentfaith, so the Arminian regards Election as taking place in view offuturefaith. Arminianism must reject the doctrine of regeneration as well as that of election, and must in both cases make the act of man precede the act of God.All varieties of view may be found upon this subject among theologians. John Milton, in his Christian Doctrine, holds that“there is no particular predestination or election, but only general.... There can be no reprobation of individuals from all eternity.”Archbishop Sumner:“Election is predestination of communities and nations to external knowledge and to the privileges of the gospel.”Archbishop Whately:“Election is the choice of individual men to membership in the external church and the means of grace.”Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“The elect represent not the special purpose of God for a few, but the universal purpose which under the circumstances can only be realized through a few.”R. V. Foster, a Cumberland Presbyterian, opposed to absolute predestination, says in his Systematic Theology that the divine decree“is unconditional in its origin and conditional in its application.”B. From Reason.(a) What God does, he has eternally purposed to do. Since he bestows special regenerating grace on some, he must have eternally purposed to bestow it,—in other words, must have chosen them to eternal life. Thus the doctrine of election is only a special application of the doctrine of decrees.The New Haven views are essentially Arminian. See Fitch, on Predestination and Election, in Christian Spectator, 3:622—“God's foreknowledge of what would be the results of his present works of graceprecededin the order of nature the purpose to pursue those works, and presented thegroundsof that purpose. Whom he foreknew—as the people who would be guided to his kingdom by his present works of grace, in which result lay the whole objective motive for undertaking those works—he did also, by resolving on those works, predestinate.”Here God is very erroneously said toforeknowwhat is as yet included in a merelypossibleplan. As we have seen in our discussion of Decrees, there can be no foreknowledge, unless there is something fixed, in the future, to be foreknown; and this fixity can be due only to God's predetermination. So, in the present case, election must precede prescience.The New Haven views are also given in N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 373-444; for criticism upon them, see Tyler, Letters on New Haven Theology, 172-180. If God desired the salvation of Judas as much as of Peter, how was Peter elected in distinction from Judas? To the question,“Who made thee to differ?”the answer must be,“Not God, but my own will.”See Finney, in Bib. Sac., 1877:711—“God must have foreknown whom hecouldwisely save, prior in the order of nature to his determining to save them. But his knowing whowouldbe saved, must have been, in the order of nature, subsequent to his election or determination to save them, and dependent upon[pg 784]that determination.”Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 70—“The doctrine of election is the consistent formulation,sub specie eternitatis, of prevenient grace.... 86—With the doctrine of prevenient grace, the evangelical doctrine stands or falls.”(b) This purpose cannot be conditioned upon any merit or faith of those who are chosen, since there is no such merit,—faith itself being God's gift and foreordained by him. Since man's faith is foreseen only as the result of God's work of grace, election proceeds rather upon foreseen unbelief. Faith, as the effect of election, cannot at the same time be the cause of election.There is an analogy between prayer and its answer, on the one hand, and faith and salvation on the other. God has decreed answer in connection with prayer, and salvation in connection with faith. But he does not change his mind when men pray, or when they believe. As he fulfils his purpose by inspiring true prayer, so he fulfils his purpose by giving faith. Augustine:“He chooses us, not because we believe, but that we may believe: lest we should say that we first chose him.”(John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;Rom. 9:21—“from the same lump”;16—“not of him that willeth”.)Here see the valuable discussion of Wardlaw, Systematic Theol., 2:485-549—“Election and salvation on the ground of works foreseen are not different in principle from election and salvation on the ground of works performed.”Cf.Prov. 21:1—“The king's heart is in the hand of Jehovah as the watercourses; He turneth it whithersoever he will”—as easily as the rivulets of the eastern fields are turned by the slightest motion of the hand or the foot of the husbandman;Ps. 110:3—“Thy people offer themselves willingly In the day of thy power.”(c) The depravity of the human will is such that, without this decree to bestow special divine influences upon some, all, without exception, would have rejected Christ's salvation after it was offered to them; and so all, without exception, must have perished. Election, therefore, may be viewed as a necessary consequence of God's decree to provide an objective redemption, if that redemption is to have any subjective result in human salvation.Before the prodigal son seeks the father, the father must first seek him,—a truth brought out in the preceding parables of the lost money and the lost sheep (Luke 15). Without election, all are lost. Newman Smyth, Orthodox Theology of To-day, 56—“The worst doctrine of election, to-day, is taught by our natural science. The scientific doctrine of natural selection is the doctrine of election, robbed of all hope, and without a single touch of human pity in it.”Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:335—“Suppose the deistic view be true: God created men and left them; surely no man could complain of the results. But now suppose God, foreseeing these very results of creation, should create. Would it make any difference, if God's purpose, as to the futurition of such a world, should precede it? Augustine supposes that God did purpose such a world as the deist supposes, with two exceptions: (1) he interposes to restrain evil; (2) he intervenes, by providence, by Christ, and by the Holy Spirit, to save some from destruction.”Election is simply God's determination that the sufferings of Christ shall not be in vain; that all men shall not be lost; that some shall be led to accept Christ; that to this end special influences of his Spirit shall be given.At first sight it might appear that God's appointing men to salvation was simply permissive, as was his appointment to condemnation (1 Pet. 2:8), and that this appointment was merely indirect by creating them with foresight of their faith or their disobedience. But the decree of salvation is not simply permissive,—it is efficient also. It is a decree to use special means for the salvation of some. A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 143—“The dead man cannot spontaneously originate his own quickening, nor the creature his own creating, nor the infant his own begetting. Whatever man may do after regeneration, the first quickening of the dead must originate with God.”Hovey, Manual of Theology, 287—“Calvinism, reduced to its lowest terms, is election of believers, not on account of any foreseen conduct of theirs, either before or in the act of conversion, which would be spiritually better than that of others influenced by the same grace, but on account of their foreseen greater usefulness in manifesting the glory of God to moral beings and of their foreseen non-commission of the sin[pg 785]against the Holy Spirit.”But even here we must attribute the greater usefulness and the abstention from fatal sin, not to man's unaided powers but to the divine decree: seeEph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.”(d) The doctrine of election becomes more acceptable to reason when we remember: first, that God's decree is eternal, and in a certain sense is contemporaneous with man's belief in Christ; secondly, that God's decree to create involves the decree of all that in the exercise of man's freedom will follow; thirdly, that God's decree is the decree of him who is all in all, so that our willing and doing is at the same time the working of him who decrees our willing and doing. The whole question turns upon the initiative in human salvation: if this belongs to God, then in spite of difficulties we must accept the doctrine of election.The timeless existence of God may be the source of many of our difficulties with regard to election, and with a proper view of God's eternity these difficulties might be removed. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 349-351—“Eternity is commonly thought of as if it were a state or series anterior to time and to be resumed again when time comes to an end. This, however, only reduces eternity to time again, and puts the life of God in the same line with our own, only coming from further back.... At present we do not see how time and eternity meet.”Royce, World and Individual, 2:374—“God does not temporally foreknow anything, except so far as he is expressed in us finite beings. The knowledge that exists in time is the knowledge that finite beings possess, in so far as they are finite. And no such foreknowledge can predict the special features of individual deeds precisely so far as they are unique. Foreknowledge in time is possible only of the general, and of the causally predetermined, and not of the unique and free. Hence neither God nor man can foreknow perfectly, at any temporal moment, what a free will agent is yet to do. On the other hand, the Absolute possesses a perfect knowledge at one glance of the whole of the temporal order, past, present and future. This knowledge is ill called foreknowledge. It is eternal knowledge. And as there is an eternal knowledge of all individuality and of all freedom, free acts are known as occurring, like the chords in the musical succession, precisely when and how they actually occur.”While we see much truth in the preceding statement, we find in it no bar to our faith that God can translate his eternal knowledge into finite knowledge and can thus put it for special purposes in possession of his creatures.E. H. Johnson, Theology, 2d ed., 250—“Foreknowing what his creatures would do, God decreed their destiny when he decreed their creation; and this would still be the case, although every man had the partial control over his destiny that Arminians aver, or even the complete control that Pelagians claim. The decree is as absolute as if there were no freedom, but it leaves them as free as if there were no decree.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 40, 42—“As the Logos or divine Reason, Christ dwells in humanity everywhere and constitutes the principle of its being. Humanity shares with Christ in the image of God. That image is never wholly lost. It is completely restored in sinners when the Spirit of Christ secures control of their wills and leads them to merge their life in his.... If Christ be the principle and life of all things, then divine sovereignty and human freedom, if they are not absolutely reconciled, at least lose their ancient antagonism, and we can rationally‘work out our own salvation,’for the very reason that‘it is God that worketh in us, both to will and to work, for his good pleasure’(Phil. 2:12, 13).”

Election is that eternal act of God, by which in his sovereign pleasure, and on account of no foreseen merit in them, he chooses certain out of the number of sinful men to be the recipients of the special grace of his Spirit, and so to be made voluntary partakers of Christ's salvation.

1. Proof of the Doctrine of Election.A. From Scripture.We here adopt the words of Dr. Hovey:“The Scriptures forbid us to find the reasons for election in the moral action of man before the new birth, and refer us merely to the sovereign will and mercy of God; that is, they teach the doctrine of personal election.”Before advancing to the proof of the doctrine itself, we may claim Scriptural warrant for three preliminary statements (which we also quote from Dr. Hovey), namely:First, that“God has a sovereign right to bestow more grace upon one subject than upon another,—grace being unmerited favor to sinners.”Mat. 20:12-15—“These last have spent but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us.... Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”Rom. 9:20, 21—“Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why didst thou make me thus? Or hath not the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?”Secondly, that“God has been pleased to exercise this right in dealing with men.”Ps. 147:20—“He hath not dealt so with any nation; And as for his ordinances, they have not known them”.Rom. 3:1, 2—“What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way: first of all, that they were intrusted with the oracles of God”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit”;Acts 9:15—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel.”Thirdly, that“God has some other reason than that of saving as many as possible for the way in which he distributes his grace.”[pg 780]nMat. 11:21—Tyre and Sidon“would have repented,”if they had had the grace bestowed upon Chorazin and Bethsaida;Rom. 9:22-25—“What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory?”The Scripture passages which directly or indirectly support the doctrine of a particular election of individual men to salvation may be arranged as follows:(a) Direct statements of God's purpose to save certain individuals:Jesus speaks of God's elect, as for example inMark 13:27—“then shall he send forth the angels, and shall gather together his elect”;Luke 18:7—“shall not God avenge his elect, that cry to him day and night?”Acts 13:48—“as many as were ordained(τεταγμένοι)to eternal life believed”—here Whedon translates:“disposed unto eternal life,”referring to κατηρτισμένα inverse 23, where“fitted”=“fitted themselves.”The only instance, however, where τάσσω is used in a middle sense is in1 Cor. 16:15—“set themselves”; but there the object, ἑαυτούς, is expressed. Here we must compareRom. 13:1—“the powers that be are ordained(τεταγμέναι)of God”; see alsoActs 10:42—“this is he who is ordained(ὡρισμένος)of God to be the Judge of the living and the dead.”Rom. 9:11-16—“for the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.... I will have mercy upon whom I have mercy.... So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy”;Eph. 1:4, 5, 9, 11—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world,[notbecausewe were, or were to be, holy, but]that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will ... the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure ... in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will”;Col. 3:12—“God's elect”;2 Thess. 2:13—“God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.”(b) In connection with the declaration of God's foreknowledge of these persons, or choice to make them objects of his special attention and care;Rom. 8:27-30—“called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son”;1 Pet. 1:1, 2—“elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”On the passage in Romans, Shedd, in his Commentary, remarks that“foreknew,”in the Hebraistic use,“is more than simple prescience, and something more also than simply‘to fix the eye upon,’or to‘select.’It is this latter, but with the additional notion of a benignant and kindly feeling toward the object.”InRom. 8:27-30, Paul is emphasizing the divine sovereignty. The Christian life is considered from the side of the divine care and ordering, and not from the side of human choice and volition. Alexander, Theories of the Will, 87, 88—“If Paul is here advocating indeterminism, it is strange that inchapter 9he should be at pains to answer objections to determinism. The apostle's protest inchapter 9is not against predestination and determination, but against the man who regards such a theory as impugning the righteousness of God.”That the word“know,”in Scripture, frequently means not merely to“apprehend intellectually,”but to“regard with favor,”to“make an object of care,”is evident fromGen. 18:19—“I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice”;Ex. 2:25—“And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them”;cf.verse 24—“God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob”;Ps. 1:6—“For Jehovah knoweth the way of the righteous; But the way of the wicked shall perish”;101:4,marg.—“I will know no evil person”;Hosea 13:5—“I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According to their pasture, so were they filled”;Nahum 1:7—“he knoweth them that take refuge in him”;Amos 3:2—“You only have I known of all the families of the earth”;Mat. 7:23—“then will I profess unto them, I never knew you”;Rom. 7:15—“For that which I do I know not”;1 Cor. 8:3—“if any man loveth God, the same is known by him”;Gal. 4:9—“now that ye have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God”;1 Thess. 5:12, 13—“we beseech you, brethren, to know them that labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them exceeding highly in love for their work's sake.”So the word“foreknow”:Rom. 11:2—“God did not cast off his people whom he foreknew”;1 Pet. 1:20—Christ,“who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world.”Broadus onMat. 7:23—“I never knew you”—says;“Not in all the passages quoted above, nor elsewhere, is there occasion for the oft-repeated arbitrary notion, derived from the Fathers, that‘know’conveys the additional idea of approve or regard. It denotes acquaintance, with all its pleasures and advantages;‘knew,’i. e., as mine, as my people.”[pg 781]But this last admission seems to grant what Broadus had before denied. See Thayer, Lex. N. T., on γινώσκω:“With acc. of person, to recognize as worthy of intimacy and love; so those whom God has judged worthy of the blessings of the gospel are said ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ γινώσκεσθαι (1 Cor. 8:3; Gal. 4:9); negatively in the sentence of Christ: οὐδἐποτε ἔγνων ὑμᾶς,‘I never knew you,’never had any acquaintance with you.”On προγινώσκω,Rom. 8:29—οὒς προέγνω,“whom he foreknew,”see Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“Those whom he foreknew—in what sense? as persons who would answer his love with love? This is at least irrelevant, and alien to Paul's general method of thought. That salvation begins with God, and begins in eternity, are fundamental ideas with him, which he here applies to Christians, without raising any of the problems involved in the relation of the human will to the divine. Yet we may be sure that προέγνω has the pregnant sense that γινώσκω often has in Scripture,e. g., inPs. 1:6; Amos 3:2;hence we may render:‘those of whom God took knowledge from eternity’(Eph. 1:4).”InRom. 8:28-30, quoted above,“foreknew”= elected—that is, made certain individuals, in the future, the objects of his love and care;“foreordained”describes God's designation of these same individuals to receive the special gift of salvation. In other words,“foreknowledge”is of persons:“foreordination”is of blessings to be bestowed upon them. Hooker, Eccl. Pol., appendix to book v. (vol. 2:751)—“‘whom he did foreknow’(know before as his own, with determination to be forever merciful to them)‘he also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son’—predestinated, not to opportunity of conformation, but to conformation itself.”So, for substance, Calvin, Rückert, DeWette, Stuart, Jowett, Vaughan. On1 Pet. 1:1, 2,see Com. of Plumptre. The Arminian interpretation of“whom he foreknew”(Rom. 8:29) would require the phrase“as conformed to the image of his Son”to be conjoined with it. Paul, however, makes conformity to Christ to be the result, not the foreseen condition, of God's foreordination; see Commentaries of Hodge and Lange.(c) With assertions that this choice is matter of grace, or unmerited favor, bestowed in eternity past:Eph. 1:5-8—“foreordained ... according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved ... according to the riches of his grace”;2:8—“by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God”—here“and that”(neuter τοῦτο,verse 8) refers, not to“faith”but to“salvation.”But faith is elsewhere represented as having its source in God,—see page782, (k).2 Tim. 1:9—“his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal.”Election is not because of our merit. McLaren:“God's own mercy, spontaneous, undeserved, condescending, moved him. God is his own motive. His love is not drawn out by our loveableness, but wells up, like an artesian spring, from the depths of his nature.”(d) That the Father has given certain persons to the Son, to be his peculiar possession:John 6:37—“All that which the Father giveth me shall come unto me”;17:2—“that whatsoever thou hast given him, to them he should give eternal life”;6—“I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me”;9—“I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me”;Eph. 1:14—“unto the redemption of God's own possession”;1 Pet. 2:9—“a people for God's own possession.”(e) That the fact of believers being united thus to Christ is due wholly to God:John 6:44—“No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him”;10:26—“ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep”;1 Cor. 1:30—“of him[God]are ye in Christ Jesus”= your being, as Christians, in union with Christ, is due wholly to God.(f) That those who are written in the Lamb's book of life, and they only, shall be saved:Phil. 4:3—“the rest of my fellow-workers, whose names are in the book of life”;Rev. 20:15—“And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire”;21:27—“there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean ... but only they that are written in the Lamb's book of life”= God's decrees of electing grace in Christ.[pg 782](g) That these are allotted, as disciples, to certain of God's servants:Acts 17:4—(literally)—“some of them were persuaded, and were allotted[by God]to Paul and Silas”—as disciples (so Meyer and Grimm);18:9, 10—“Be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to harm thee: for I have much people in this city.”(h) Are made the recipients of a special call of God:Rom. 8:28, 30—“called according to his purpose ... whom he foreordained, them he also called”;9:23, 24—“vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles”;11:29—“for the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of”;1 Cor. 1:24-29—“unto them that are called ... Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.... For behold your calling, brethren, ... the things that are despised, did God choose, yea and the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are: that no flesh should glory before God”;Gal. 1:15, 16—“when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me”;cf.James 2:23—“and he[Abraham]was called[to be]the friend of God.”(i) Are born into God's kingdom, not by virtue of man's will, but of God's will:John 1:13—“born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”;James 1:18—“Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth”;1 John 4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us.”S. S. Times, Oct. 14, 1899—“The law of love is the expression of God's loving nature, and it is only by our participation of the divine nature that we are enabled to render it obedience.‘Loving God,’says Bushnell,‘is but letting God love us.’So John's great saying may be rendered in the present tense:‘not that we love God, but that he loves us.’Or, as Madame Guyon sings:‘I love my God, but with no love of mine, For I have none to give; I love thee, Lord, but all the love is thine, For by thy life I live’.”(j) Receiving repentance, as the gift of God:Acts 5:31—“Him did God exalt with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins”;11:18—“Then to the Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life”;2 Tim. 2:25—“correcting them that oppose themselves; if peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth.”Of course it is true that God might give repentance simply by inducing man to repent by the agency of his word, his providence and his Spirit. But more than this seems to be meant when the Psalmist prays:“Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit within me”(Ps. 51:10).(k) Faith, as the gift of God:John 6:65—“no man can come unto me, except it be given unto him of the Father”;Acts 15:8, 9—“God ... giving them the Holy Spirit ... cleansing their hearts by faith”;Rom. 12:3—“according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith”;1 Cor. 12:9—“to another faith, in the same Spirit”;Gal. 5:22—“the fruit of the Spirit is ... faith”(A. V.);Phil. 2:13—In all faith,“it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure”;Eph. 6:23—“Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;John 3:8—“The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou[as a consequence]hearest his voice”(so Bengel); see A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 166;1 Cor. 12:3—“No man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit”—but calling Jesus“Lord”is an essential part of faith,—faith therefore is the work of the Holy Spirit;Tit. 1:1—“the faith of God's elect”—election is not in consequence of faith, but faith is in consequence of election (Ellicott). If they get their faith of themselves, then salvation is not due to grace. If God gave the faith, then it was in his purpose, and this is election.(l) Holiness and good works, as the gift of God.Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy”;2:9, 10—“not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;1 Pet. 1:2—elect“unto obedience.”On Scripture testimony, see Hovey, Manual of Theol. and Ethics, 258-261; also art. on Predestination, by Warfield, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible.These passages furnish an abundant and conclusive refutation, on the one hand, of the Lutheran view that election is simply God's determination from eternity to provide an objective salvation for universal humanity;[pg 783]and, on the other hand, of the Arminian view that election is God's determination from eternity to save certain individuals upon the ground of their foreseen faith.Roughly stated, we may say that Schleiermacher elects all men subjectively; Lutherans all men objectively; Arminians all believers; Augustinians all foreknown as God's own. Schleiermacher held that decree logically precedes foreknowledge, and that election is individual, not national. But he made election to include all men, the only difference between them being that of earlier or of later conversion. Thus in his system Calvinism and Restorationism go hand in hand. Murray, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, seems to take this view.Lutheranism is the assertion that original grace preceded original sin, and that theQuia Voluitof Tertullian and of Calvin was based on wisdom, in Christ. The Lutheran holds that the believer is simply the non-resistant subject of common grace; while the Arminian holds that the believer is the coöperant subject of common grace. Lutheranism enters more fully than Calvinism into the nature of faith. It thinks more of the human agency, while Calvinism thinks more of the divine purpose. It thinks more of the church, while Calvinism thinks more of Scripture. The Arminian conception is that God has appointed men to salvation, just as he has appointed them to condemnation, in view of their dispositions and acts. As Justification is in view ofpresentfaith, so the Arminian regards Election as taking place in view offuturefaith. Arminianism must reject the doctrine of regeneration as well as that of election, and must in both cases make the act of man precede the act of God.All varieties of view may be found upon this subject among theologians. John Milton, in his Christian Doctrine, holds that“there is no particular predestination or election, but only general.... There can be no reprobation of individuals from all eternity.”Archbishop Sumner:“Election is predestination of communities and nations to external knowledge and to the privileges of the gospel.”Archbishop Whately:“Election is the choice of individual men to membership in the external church and the means of grace.”Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“The elect represent not the special purpose of God for a few, but the universal purpose which under the circumstances can only be realized through a few.”R. V. Foster, a Cumberland Presbyterian, opposed to absolute predestination, says in his Systematic Theology that the divine decree“is unconditional in its origin and conditional in its application.”B. From Reason.(a) What God does, he has eternally purposed to do. Since he bestows special regenerating grace on some, he must have eternally purposed to bestow it,—in other words, must have chosen them to eternal life. Thus the doctrine of election is only a special application of the doctrine of decrees.The New Haven views are essentially Arminian. See Fitch, on Predestination and Election, in Christian Spectator, 3:622—“God's foreknowledge of what would be the results of his present works of graceprecededin the order of nature the purpose to pursue those works, and presented thegroundsof that purpose. Whom he foreknew—as the people who would be guided to his kingdom by his present works of grace, in which result lay the whole objective motive for undertaking those works—he did also, by resolving on those works, predestinate.”Here God is very erroneously said toforeknowwhat is as yet included in a merelypossibleplan. As we have seen in our discussion of Decrees, there can be no foreknowledge, unless there is something fixed, in the future, to be foreknown; and this fixity can be due only to God's predetermination. So, in the present case, election must precede prescience.The New Haven views are also given in N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 373-444; for criticism upon them, see Tyler, Letters on New Haven Theology, 172-180. If God desired the salvation of Judas as much as of Peter, how was Peter elected in distinction from Judas? To the question,“Who made thee to differ?”the answer must be,“Not God, but my own will.”See Finney, in Bib. Sac., 1877:711—“God must have foreknown whom hecouldwisely save, prior in the order of nature to his determining to save them. But his knowing whowouldbe saved, must have been, in the order of nature, subsequent to his election or determination to save them, and dependent upon[pg 784]that determination.”Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 70—“The doctrine of election is the consistent formulation,sub specie eternitatis, of prevenient grace.... 86—With the doctrine of prevenient grace, the evangelical doctrine stands or falls.”(b) This purpose cannot be conditioned upon any merit or faith of those who are chosen, since there is no such merit,—faith itself being God's gift and foreordained by him. Since man's faith is foreseen only as the result of God's work of grace, election proceeds rather upon foreseen unbelief. Faith, as the effect of election, cannot at the same time be the cause of election.There is an analogy between prayer and its answer, on the one hand, and faith and salvation on the other. God has decreed answer in connection with prayer, and salvation in connection with faith. But he does not change his mind when men pray, or when they believe. As he fulfils his purpose by inspiring true prayer, so he fulfils his purpose by giving faith. Augustine:“He chooses us, not because we believe, but that we may believe: lest we should say that we first chose him.”(John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;Rom. 9:21—“from the same lump”;16—“not of him that willeth”.)Here see the valuable discussion of Wardlaw, Systematic Theol., 2:485-549—“Election and salvation on the ground of works foreseen are not different in principle from election and salvation on the ground of works performed.”Cf.Prov. 21:1—“The king's heart is in the hand of Jehovah as the watercourses; He turneth it whithersoever he will”—as easily as the rivulets of the eastern fields are turned by the slightest motion of the hand or the foot of the husbandman;Ps. 110:3—“Thy people offer themselves willingly In the day of thy power.”(c) The depravity of the human will is such that, without this decree to bestow special divine influences upon some, all, without exception, would have rejected Christ's salvation after it was offered to them; and so all, without exception, must have perished. Election, therefore, may be viewed as a necessary consequence of God's decree to provide an objective redemption, if that redemption is to have any subjective result in human salvation.Before the prodigal son seeks the father, the father must first seek him,—a truth brought out in the preceding parables of the lost money and the lost sheep (Luke 15). Without election, all are lost. Newman Smyth, Orthodox Theology of To-day, 56—“The worst doctrine of election, to-day, is taught by our natural science. The scientific doctrine of natural selection is the doctrine of election, robbed of all hope, and without a single touch of human pity in it.”Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:335—“Suppose the deistic view be true: God created men and left them; surely no man could complain of the results. But now suppose God, foreseeing these very results of creation, should create. Would it make any difference, if God's purpose, as to the futurition of such a world, should precede it? Augustine supposes that God did purpose such a world as the deist supposes, with two exceptions: (1) he interposes to restrain evil; (2) he intervenes, by providence, by Christ, and by the Holy Spirit, to save some from destruction.”Election is simply God's determination that the sufferings of Christ shall not be in vain; that all men shall not be lost; that some shall be led to accept Christ; that to this end special influences of his Spirit shall be given.At first sight it might appear that God's appointing men to salvation was simply permissive, as was his appointment to condemnation (1 Pet. 2:8), and that this appointment was merely indirect by creating them with foresight of their faith or their disobedience. But the decree of salvation is not simply permissive,—it is efficient also. It is a decree to use special means for the salvation of some. A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 143—“The dead man cannot spontaneously originate his own quickening, nor the creature his own creating, nor the infant his own begetting. Whatever man may do after regeneration, the first quickening of the dead must originate with God.”Hovey, Manual of Theology, 287—“Calvinism, reduced to its lowest terms, is election of believers, not on account of any foreseen conduct of theirs, either before or in the act of conversion, which would be spiritually better than that of others influenced by the same grace, but on account of their foreseen greater usefulness in manifesting the glory of God to moral beings and of their foreseen non-commission of the sin[pg 785]against the Holy Spirit.”But even here we must attribute the greater usefulness and the abstention from fatal sin, not to man's unaided powers but to the divine decree: seeEph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.”(d) The doctrine of election becomes more acceptable to reason when we remember: first, that God's decree is eternal, and in a certain sense is contemporaneous with man's belief in Christ; secondly, that God's decree to create involves the decree of all that in the exercise of man's freedom will follow; thirdly, that God's decree is the decree of him who is all in all, so that our willing and doing is at the same time the working of him who decrees our willing and doing. The whole question turns upon the initiative in human salvation: if this belongs to God, then in spite of difficulties we must accept the doctrine of election.The timeless existence of God may be the source of many of our difficulties with regard to election, and with a proper view of God's eternity these difficulties might be removed. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 349-351—“Eternity is commonly thought of as if it were a state or series anterior to time and to be resumed again when time comes to an end. This, however, only reduces eternity to time again, and puts the life of God in the same line with our own, only coming from further back.... At present we do not see how time and eternity meet.”Royce, World and Individual, 2:374—“God does not temporally foreknow anything, except so far as he is expressed in us finite beings. The knowledge that exists in time is the knowledge that finite beings possess, in so far as they are finite. And no such foreknowledge can predict the special features of individual deeds precisely so far as they are unique. Foreknowledge in time is possible only of the general, and of the causally predetermined, and not of the unique and free. Hence neither God nor man can foreknow perfectly, at any temporal moment, what a free will agent is yet to do. On the other hand, the Absolute possesses a perfect knowledge at one glance of the whole of the temporal order, past, present and future. This knowledge is ill called foreknowledge. It is eternal knowledge. And as there is an eternal knowledge of all individuality and of all freedom, free acts are known as occurring, like the chords in the musical succession, precisely when and how they actually occur.”While we see much truth in the preceding statement, we find in it no bar to our faith that God can translate his eternal knowledge into finite knowledge and can thus put it for special purposes in possession of his creatures.E. H. Johnson, Theology, 2d ed., 250—“Foreknowing what his creatures would do, God decreed their destiny when he decreed their creation; and this would still be the case, although every man had the partial control over his destiny that Arminians aver, or even the complete control that Pelagians claim. The decree is as absolute as if there were no freedom, but it leaves them as free as if there were no decree.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 40, 42—“As the Logos or divine Reason, Christ dwells in humanity everywhere and constitutes the principle of its being. Humanity shares with Christ in the image of God. That image is never wholly lost. It is completely restored in sinners when the Spirit of Christ secures control of their wills and leads them to merge their life in his.... If Christ be the principle and life of all things, then divine sovereignty and human freedom, if they are not absolutely reconciled, at least lose their ancient antagonism, and we can rationally‘work out our own salvation,’for the very reason that‘it is God that worketh in us, both to will and to work, for his good pleasure’(Phil. 2:12, 13).”

A. From Scripture.

We here adopt the words of Dr. Hovey:“The Scriptures forbid us to find the reasons for election in the moral action of man before the new birth, and refer us merely to the sovereign will and mercy of God; that is, they teach the doctrine of personal election.”Before advancing to the proof of the doctrine itself, we may claim Scriptural warrant for three preliminary statements (which we also quote from Dr. Hovey), namely:

First, that“God has a sovereign right to bestow more grace upon one subject than upon another,—grace being unmerited favor to sinners.”

Mat. 20:12-15—“These last have spent but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us.... Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”Rom. 9:20, 21—“Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why didst thou make me thus? Or hath not the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?”

Secondly, that“God has been pleased to exercise this right in dealing with men.”

Ps. 147:20—“He hath not dealt so with any nation; And as for his ordinances, they have not known them”.Rom. 3:1, 2—“What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way: first of all, that they were intrusted with the oracles of God”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit”;Acts 9:15—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel.”

Thirdly, that“God has some other reason than that of saving as many as possible for the way in which he distributes his grace.”

nMat. 11:21—Tyre and Sidon“would have repented,”if they had had the grace bestowed upon Chorazin and Bethsaida;Rom. 9:22-25—“What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory?”

Mat. 11:21—Tyre and Sidon“would have repented,”if they had had the grace bestowed upon Chorazin and Bethsaida;Rom. 9:22-25—“What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory?”

The Scripture passages which directly or indirectly support the doctrine of a particular election of individual men to salvation may be arranged as follows:

(a) Direct statements of God's purpose to save certain individuals:

Jesus speaks of God's elect, as for example inMark 13:27—“then shall he send forth the angels, and shall gather together his elect”;Luke 18:7—“shall not God avenge his elect, that cry to him day and night?”Acts 13:48—“as many as were ordained(τεταγμένοι)to eternal life believed”—here Whedon translates:“disposed unto eternal life,”referring to κατηρτισμένα inverse 23, where“fitted”=“fitted themselves.”The only instance, however, where τάσσω is used in a middle sense is in1 Cor. 16:15—“set themselves”; but there the object, ἑαυτούς, is expressed. Here we must compareRom. 13:1—“the powers that be are ordained(τεταγμέναι)of God”; see alsoActs 10:42—“this is he who is ordained(ὡρισμένος)of God to be the Judge of the living and the dead.”Rom. 9:11-16—“for the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.... I will have mercy upon whom I have mercy.... So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy”;Eph. 1:4, 5, 9, 11—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world,[notbecausewe were, or were to be, holy, but]that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will ... the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure ... in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will”;Col. 3:12—“God's elect”;2 Thess. 2:13—“God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.”

Acts 13:48—“as many as were ordained(τεταγμένοι)to eternal life believed”—here Whedon translates:“disposed unto eternal life,”referring to κατηρτισμένα inverse 23, where“fitted”=“fitted themselves.”The only instance, however, where τάσσω is used in a middle sense is in1 Cor. 16:15—“set themselves”; but there the object, ἑαυτούς, is expressed. Here we must compareRom. 13:1—“the powers that be are ordained(τεταγμέναι)of God”; see alsoActs 10:42—“this is he who is ordained(ὡρισμένος)of God to be the Judge of the living and the dead.”

Rom. 9:11-16—“for the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.... I will have mercy upon whom I have mercy.... So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy”;Eph. 1:4, 5, 9, 11—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world,[notbecausewe were, or were to be, holy, but]that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will ... the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure ... in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will”;Col. 3:12—“God's elect”;2 Thess. 2:13—“God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.”

(b) In connection with the declaration of God's foreknowledge of these persons, or choice to make them objects of his special attention and care;

Rom. 8:27-30—“called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son”;1 Pet. 1:1, 2—“elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”On the passage in Romans, Shedd, in his Commentary, remarks that“foreknew,”in the Hebraistic use,“is more than simple prescience, and something more also than simply‘to fix the eye upon,’or to‘select.’It is this latter, but with the additional notion of a benignant and kindly feeling toward the object.”InRom. 8:27-30, Paul is emphasizing the divine sovereignty. The Christian life is considered from the side of the divine care and ordering, and not from the side of human choice and volition. Alexander, Theories of the Will, 87, 88—“If Paul is here advocating indeterminism, it is strange that inchapter 9he should be at pains to answer objections to determinism. The apostle's protest inchapter 9is not against predestination and determination, but against the man who regards such a theory as impugning the righteousness of God.”That the word“know,”in Scripture, frequently means not merely to“apprehend intellectually,”but to“regard with favor,”to“make an object of care,”is evident fromGen. 18:19—“I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice”;Ex. 2:25—“And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them”;cf.verse 24—“God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob”;Ps. 1:6—“For Jehovah knoweth the way of the righteous; But the way of the wicked shall perish”;101:4,marg.—“I will know no evil person”;Hosea 13:5—“I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According to their pasture, so were they filled”;Nahum 1:7—“he knoweth them that take refuge in him”;Amos 3:2—“You only have I known of all the families of the earth”;Mat. 7:23—“then will I profess unto them, I never knew you”;Rom. 7:15—“For that which I do I know not”;1 Cor. 8:3—“if any man loveth God, the same is known by him”;Gal. 4:9—“now that ye have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God”;1 Thess. 5:12, 13—“we beseech you, brethren, to know them that labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them exceeding highly in love for their work's sake.”So the word“foreknow”:Rom. 11:2—“God did not cast off his people whom he foreknew”;1 Pet. 1:20—Christ,“who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world.”Broadus onMat. 7:23—“I never knew you”—says;“Not in all the passages quoted above, nor elsewhere, is there occasion for the oft-repeated arbitrary notion, derived from the Fathers, that‘know’conveys the additional idea of approve or regard. It denotes acquaintance, with all its pleasures and advantages;‘knew,’i. e., as mine, as my people.”[pg 781]But this last admission seems to grant what Broadus had before denied. See Thayer, Lex. N. T., on γινώσκω:“With acc. of person, to recognize as worthy of intimacy and love; so those whom God has judged worthy of the blessings of the gospel are said ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ γινώσκεσθαι (1 Cor. 8:3; Gal. 4:9); negatively in the sentence of Christ: οὐδἐποτε ἔγνων ὑμᾶς,‘I never knew you,’never had any acquaintance with you.”On προγινώσκω,Rom. 8:29—οὒς προέγνω,“whom he foreknew,”see Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“Those whom he foreknew—in what sense? as persons who would answer his love with love? This is at least irrelevant, and alien to Paul's general method of thought. That salvation begins with God, and begins in eternity, are fundamental ideas with him, which he here applies to Christians, without raising any of the problems involved in the relation of the human will to the divine. Yet we may be sure that προέγνω has the pregnant sense that γινώσκω often has in Scripture,e. g., inPs. 1:6; Amos 3:2;hence we may render:‘those of whom God took knowledge from eternity’(Eph. 1:4).”InRom. 8:28-30, quoted above,“foreknew”= elected—that is, made certain individuals, in the future, the objects of his love and care;“foreordained”describes God's designation of these same individuals to receive the special gift of salvation. In other words,“foreknowledge”is of persons:“foreordination”is of blessings to be bestowed upon them. Hooker, Eccl. Pol., appendix to book v. (vol. 2:751)—“‘whom he did foreknow’(know before as his own, with determination to be forever merciful to them)‘he also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son’—predestinated, not to opportunity of conformation, but to conformation itself.”So, for substance, Calvin, Rückert, DeWette, Stuart, Jowett, Vaughan. On1 Pet. 1:1, 2,see Com. of Plumptre. The Arminian interpretation of“whom he foreknew”(Rom. 8:29) would require the phrase“as conformed to the image of his Son”to be conjoined with it. Paul, however, makes conformity to Christ to be the result, not the foreseen condition, of God's foreordination; see Commentaries of Hodge and Lange.

That the word“know,”in Scripture, frequently means not merely to“apprehend intellectually,”but to“regard with favor,”to“make an object of care,”is evident fromGen. 18:19—“I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice”;Ex. 2:25—“And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them”;cf.verse 24—“God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob”;Ps. 1:6—“For Jehovah knoweth the way of the righteous; But the way of the wicked shall perish”;101:4,marg.—“I will know no evil person”;Hosea 13:5—“I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According to their pasture, so were they filled”;Nahum 1:7—“he knoweth them that take refuge in him”;Amos 3:2—“You only have I known of all the families of the earth”;Mat. 7:23—“then will I profess unto them, I never knew you”;Rom. 7:15—“For that which I do I know not”;1 Cor. 8:3—“if any man loveth God, the same is known by him”;Gal. 4:9—“now that ye have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God”;1 Thess. 5:12, 13—“we beseech you, brethren, to know them that labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them exceeding highly in love for their work's sake.”So the word“foreknow”:Rom. 11:2—“God did not cast off his people whom he foreknew”;1 Pet. 1:20—Christ,“who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world.”

Broadus onMat. 7:23—“I never knew you”—says;“Not in all the passages quoted above, nor elsewhere, is there occasion for the oft-repeated arbitrary notion, derived from the Fathers, that‘know’conveys the additional idea of approve or regard. It denotes acquaintance, with all its pleasures and advantages;‘knew,’i. e., as mine, as my people.”

But this last admission seems to grant what Broadus had before denied. See Thayer, Lex. N. T., on γινώσκω:“With acc. of person, to recognize as worthy of intimacy and love; so those whom God has judged worthy of the blessings of the gospel are said ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ γινώσκεσθαι (1 Cor. 8:3; Gal. 4:9); negatively in the sentence of Christ: οὐδἐποτε ἔγνων ὑμᾶς,‘I never knew you,’never had any acquaintance with you.”On προγινώσκω,Rom. 8:29—οὒς προέγνω,“whom he foreknew,”see Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament,in loco:“Those whom he foreknew—in what sense? as persons who would answer his love with love? This is at least irrelevant, and alien to Paul's general method of thought. That salvation begins with God, and begins in eternity, are fundamental ideas with him, which he here applies to Christians, without raising any of the problems involved in the relation of the human will to the divine. Yet we may be sure that προέγνω has the pregnant sense that γινώσκω often has in Scripture,e. g., inPs. 1:6; Amos 3:2;hence we may render:‘those of whom God took knowledge from eternity’(Eph. 1:4).”

InRom. 8:28-30, quoted above,“foreknew”= elected—that is, made certain individuals, in the future, the objects of his love and care;“foreordained”describes God's designation of these same individuals to receive the special gift of salvation. In other words,“foreknowledge”is of persons:“foreordination”is of blessings to be bestowed upon them. Hooker, Eccl. Pol., appendix to book v. (vol. 2:751)—“‘whom he did foreknow’(know before as his own, with determination to be forever merciful to them)‘he also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son’—predestinated, not to opportunity of conformation, but to conformation itself.”So, for substance, Calvin, Rückert, DeWette, Stuart, Jowett, Vaughan. On1 Pet. 1:1, 2,see Com. of Plumptre. The Arminian interpretation of“whom he foreknew”(Rom. 8:29) would require the phrase“as conformed to the image of his Son”to be conjoined with it. Paul, however, makes conformity to Christ to be the result, not the foreseen condition, of God's foreordination; see Commentaries of Hodge and Lange.

Eph. 1:5-8—“foreordained ... according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved ... according to the riches of his grace”;2:8—“by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God”—here“and that”(neuter τοῦτο,verse 8) refers, not to“faith”but to“salvation.”But faith is elsewhere represented as having its source in God,—see page782, (k).2 Tim. 1:9—“his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal.”Election is not because of our merit. McLaren:“God's own mercy, spontaneous, undeserved, condescending, moved him. God is his own motive. His love is not drawn out by our loveableness, but wells up, like an artesian spring, from the depths of his nature.”

(d) That the Father has given certain persons to the Son, to be his peculiar possession:

John 6:37—“All that which the Father giveth me shall come unto me”;17:2—“that whatsoever thou hast given him, to them he should give eternal life”;6—“I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me”;9—“I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me”;Eph. 1:14—“unto the redemption of God's own possession”;1 Pet. 2:9—“a people for God's own possession.”

(e) That the fact of believers being united thus to Christ is due wholly to God:

John 6:44—“No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him”;10:26—“ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep”;1 Cor. 1:30—“of him[God]are ye in Christ Jesus”= your being, as Christians, in union with Christ, is due wholly to God.

(f) That those who are written in the Lamb's book of life, and they only, shall be saved:

Phil. 4:3—“the rest of my fellow-workers, whose names are in the book of life”;Rev. 20:15—“And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire”;21:27—“there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean ... but only they that are written in the Lamb's book of life”= God's decrees of electing grace in Christ.

(g) That these are allotted, as disciples, to certain of God's servants:

Acts 17:4—(literally)—“some of them were persuaded, and were allotted[by God]to Paul and Silas”—as disciples (so Meyer and Grimm);18:9, 10—“Be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to harm thee: for I have much people in this city.”

(h) Are made the recipients of a special call of God:

Rom. 8:28, 30—“called according to his purpose ... whom he foreordained, them he also called”;9:23, 24—“vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles”;11:29—“for the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of”;1 Cor. 1:24-29—“unto them that are called ... Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.... For behold your calling, brethren, ... the things that are despised, did God choose, yea and the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are: that no flesh should glory before God”;Gal. 1:15, 16—“when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me”;cf.James 2:23—“and he[Abraham]was called[to be]the friend of God.”

(i) Are born into God's kingdom, not by virtue of man's will, but of God's will:

John 1:13—“born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”;James 1:18—“Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth”;1 John 4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us.”S. S. Times, Oct. 14, 1899—“The law of love is the expression of God's loving nature, and it is only by our participation of the divine nature that we are enabled to render it obedience.‘Loving God,’says Bushnell,‘is but letting God love us.’So John's great saying may be rendered in the present tense:‘not that we love God, but that he loves us.’Or, as Madame Guyon sings:‘I love my God, but with no love of mine, For I have none to give; I love thee, Lord, but all the love is thine, For by thy life I live’.”

(j) Receiving repentance, as the gift of God:

Acts 5:31—“Him did God exalt with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins”;11:18—“Then to the Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life”;2 Tim. 2:25—“correcting them that oppose themselves; if peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth.”Of course it is true that God might give repentance simply by inducing man to repent by the agency of his word, his providence and his Spirit. But more than this seems to be meant when the Psalmist prays:“Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit within me”(Ps. 51:10).

(k) Faith, as the gift of God:

John 6:65—“no man can come unto me, except it be given unto him of the Father”;Acts 15:8, 9—“God ... giving them the Holy Spirit ... cleansing their hearts by faith”;Rom. 12:3—“according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith”;1 Cor. 12:9—“to another faith, in the same Spirit”;Gal. 5:22—“the fruit of the Spirit is ... faith”(A. V.);Phil. 2:13—In all faith,“it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure”;Eph. 6:23—“Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”;John 3:8—“The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou[as a consequence]hearest his voice”(so Bengel); see A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 166;1 Cor. 12:3—“No man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit”—but calling Jesus“Lord”is an essential part of faith,—faith therefore is the work of the Holy Spirit;Tit. 1:1—“the faith of God's elect”—election is not in consequence of faith, but faith is in consequence of election (Ellicott). If they get their faith of themselves, then salvation is not due to grace. If God gave the faith, then it was in his purpose, and this is election.

(l) Holiness and good works, as the gift of God.

Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy”;2:9, 10—“not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;1 Pet. 1:2—elect“unto obedience.”On Scripture testimony, see Hovey, Manual of Theol. and Ethics, 258-261; also art. on Predestination, by Warfield, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible.

These passages furnish an abundant and conclusive refutation, on the one hand, of the Lutheran view that election is simply God's determination from eternity to provide an objective salvation for universal humanity;[pg 783]and, on the other hand, of the Arminian view that election is God's determination from eternity to save certain individuals upon the ground of their foreseen faith.

Roughly stated, we may say that Schleiermacher elects all men subjectively; Lutherans all men objectively; Arminians all believers; Augustinians all foreknown as God's own. Schleiermacher held that decree logically precedes foreknowledge, and that election is individual, not national. But he made election to include all men, the only difference between them being that of earlier or of later conversion. Thus in his system Calvinism and Restorationism go hand in hand. Murray, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, seems to take this view.Lutheranism is the assertion that original grace preceded original sin, and that theQuia Voluitof Tertullian and of Calvin was based on wisdom, in Christ. The Lutheran holds that the believer is simply the non-resistant subject of common grace; while the Arminian holds that the believer is the coöperant subject of common grace. Lutheranism enters more fully than Calvinism into the nature of faith. It thinks more of the human agency, while Calvinism thinks more of the divine purpose. It thinks more of the church, while Calvinism thinks more of Scripture. The Arminian conception is that God has appointed men to salvation, just as he has appointed them to condemnation, in view of their dispositions and acts. As Justification is in view ofpresentfaith, so the Arminian regards Election as taking place in view offuturefaith. Arminianism must reject the doctrine of regeneration as well as that of election, and must in both cases make the act of man precede the act of God.All varieties of view may be found upon this subject among theologians. John Milton, in his Christian Doctrine, holds that“there is no particular predestination or election, but only general.... There can be no reprobation of individuals from all eternity.”Archbishop Sumner:“Election is predestination of communities and nations to external knowledge and to the privileges of the gospel.”Archbishop Whately:“Election is the choice of individual men to membership in the external church and the means of grace.”Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“The elect represent not the special purpose of God for a few, but the universal purpose which under the circumstances can only be realized through a few.”R. V. Foster, a Cumberland Presbyterian, opposed to absolute predestination, says in his Systematic Theology that the divine decree“is unconditional in its origin and conditional in its application.”

Lutheranism is the assertion that original grace preceded original sin, and that theQuia Voluitof Tertullian and of Calvin was based on wisdom, in Christ. The Lutheran holds that the believer is simply the non-resistant subject of common grace; while the Arminian holds that the believer is the coöperant subject of common grace. Lutheranism enters more fully than Calvinism into the nature of faith. It thinks more of the human agency, while Calvinism thinks more of the divine purpose. It thinks more of the church, while Calvinism thinks more of Scripture. The Arminian conception is that God has appointed men to salvation, just as he has appointed them to condemnation, in view of their dispositions and acts. As Justification is in view ofpresentfaith, so the Arminian regards Election as taking place in view offuturefaith. Arminianism must reject the doctrine of regeneration as well as that of election, and must in both cases make the act of man precede the act of God.

All varieties of view may be found upon this subject among theologians. John Milton, in his Christian Doctrine, holds that“there is no particular predestination or election, but only general.... There can be no reprobation of individuals from all eternity.”Archbishop Sumner:“Election is predestination of communities and nations to external knowledge and to the privileges of the gospel.”Archbishop Whately:“Election is the choice of individual men to membership in the external church and the means of grace.”Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“The elect represent not the special purpose of God for a few, but the universal purpose which under the circumstances can only be realized through a few.”R. V. Foster, a Cumberland Presbyterian, opposed to absolute predestination, says in his Systematic Theology that the divine decree“is unconditional in its origin and conditional in its application.”

B. From Reason.

(a) What God does, he has eternally purposed to do. Since he bestows special regenerating grace on some, he must have eternally purposed to bestow it,—in other words, must have chosen them to eternal life. Thus the doctrine of election is only a special application of the doctrine of decrees.

The New Haven views are essentially Arminian. See Fitch, on Predestination and Election, in Christian Spectator, 3:622—“God's foreknowledge of what would be the results of his present works of graceprecededin the order of nature the purpose to pursue those works, and presented thegroundsof that purpose. Whom he foreknew—as the people who would be guided to his kingdom by his present works of grace, in which result lay the whole objective motive for undertaking those works—he did also, by resolving on those works, predestinate.”Here God is very erroneously said toforeknowwhat is as yet included in a merelypossibleplan. As we have seen in our discussion of Decrees, there can be no foreknowledge, unless there is something fixed, in the future, to be foreknown; and this fixity can be due only to God's predetermination. So, in the present case, election must precede prescience.The New Haven views are also given in N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 373-444; for criticism upon them, see Tyler, Letters on New Haven Theology, 172-180. If God desired the salvation of Judas as much as of Peter, how was Peter elected in distinction from Judas? To the question,“Who made thee to differ?”the answer must be,“Not God, but my own will.”See Finney, in Bib. Sac., 1877:711—“God must have foreknown whom hecouldwisely save, prior in the order of nature to his determining to save them. But his knowing whowouldbe saved, must have been, in the order of nature, subsequent to his election or determination to save them, and dependent upon[pg 784]that determination.”Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 70—“The doctrine of election is the consistent formulation,sub specie eternitatis, of prevenient grace.... 86—With the doctrine of prevenient grace, the evangelical doctrine stands or falls.”

The New Haven views are also given in N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 373-444; for criticism upon them, see Tyler, Letters on New Haven Theology, 172-180. If God desired the salvation of Judas as much as of Peter, how was Peter elected in distinction from Judas? To the question,“Who made thee to differ?”the answer must be,“Not God, but my own will.”See Finney, in Bib. Sac., 1877:711—“God must have foreknown whom hecouldwisely save, prior in the order of nature to his determining to save them. But his knowing whowouldbe saved, must have been, in the order of nature, subsequent to his election or determination to save them, and dependent upon[pg 784]that determination.”Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 70—“The doctrine of election is the consistent formulation,sub specie eternitatis, of prevenient grace.... 86—With the doctrine of prevenient grace, the evangelical doctrine stands or falls.”

(b) This purpose cannot be conditioned upon any merit or faith of those who are chosen, since there is no such merit,—faith itself being God's gift and foreordained by him. Since man's faith is foreseen only as the result of God's work of grace, election proceeds rather upon foreseen unbelief. Faith, as the effect of election, cannot at the same time be the cause of election.

There is an analogy between prayer and its answer, on the one hand, and faith and salvation on the other. God has decreed answer in connection with prayer, and salvation in connection with faith. But he does not change his mind when men pray, or when they believe. As he fulfils his purpose by inspiring true prayer, so he fulfils his purpose by giving faith. Augustine:“He chooses us, not because we believe, but that we may believe: lest we should say that we first chose him.”(John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;Rom. 9:21—“from the same lump”;16—“not of him that willeth”.)Here see the valuable discussion of Wardlaw, Systematic Theol., 2:485-549—“Election and salvation on the ground of works foreseen are not different in principle from election and salvation on the ground of works performed.”Cf.Prov. 21:1—“The king's heart is in the hand of Jehovah as the watercourses; He turneth it whithersoever he will”—as easily as the rivulets of the eastern fields are turned by the slightest motion of the hand or the foot of the husbandman;Ps. 110:3—“Thy people offer themselves willingly In the day of thy power.”

Here see the valuable discussion of Wardlaw, Systematic Theol., 2:485-549—“Election and salvation on the ground of works foreseen are not different in principle from election and salvation on the ground of works performed.”Cf.Prov. 21:1—“The king's heart is in the hand of Jehovah as the watercourses; He turneth it whithersoever he will”—as easily as the rivulets of the eastern fields are turned by the slightest motion of the hand or the foot of the husbandman;Ps. 110:3—“Thy people offer themselves willingly In the day of thy power.”

(c) The depravity of the human will is such that, without this decree to bestow special divine influences upon some, all, without exception, would have rejected Christ's salvation after it was offered to them; and so all, without exception, must have perished. Election, therefore, may be viewed as a necessary consequence of God's decree to provide an objective redemption, if that redemption is to have any subjective result in human salvation.

Before the prodigal son seeks the father, the father must first seek him,—a truth brought out in the preceding parables of the lost money and the lost sheep (Luke 15). Without election, all are lost. Newman Smyth, Orthodox Theology of To-day, 56—“The worst doctrine of election, to-day, is taught by our natural science. The scientific doctrine of natural selection is the doctrine of election, robbed of all hope, and without a single touch of human pity in it.”Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:335—“Suppose the deistic view be true: God created men and left them; surely no man could complain of the results. But now suppose God, foreseeing these very results of creation, should create. Would it make any difference, if God's purpose, as to the futurition of such a world, should precede it? Augustine supposes that God did purpose such a world as the deist supposes, with two exceptions: (1) he interposes to restrain evil; (2) he intervenes, by providence, by Christ, and by the Holy Spirit, to save some from destruction.”Election is simply God's determination that the sufferings of Christ shall not be in vain; that all men shall not be lost; that some shall be led to accept Christ; that to this end special influences of his Spirit shall be given.At first sight it might appear that God's appointing men to salvation was simply permissive, as was his appointment to condemnation (1 Pet. 2:8), and that this appointment was merely indirect by creating them with foresight of their faith or their disobedience. But the decree of salvation is not simply permissive,—it is efficient also. It is a decree to use special means for the salvation of some. A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 143—“The dead man cannot spontaneously originate his own quickening, nor the creature his own creating, nor the infant his own begetting. Whatever man may do after regeneration, the first quickening of the dead must originate with God.”Hovey, Manual of Theology, 287—“Calvinism, reduced to its lowest terms, is election of believers, not on account of any foreseen conduct of theirs, either before or in the act of conversion, which would be spiritually better than that of others influenced by the same grace, but on account of their foreseen greater usefulness in manifesting the glory of God to moral beings and of their foreseen non-commission of the sin[pg 785]against the Holy Spirit.”But even here we must attribute the greater usefulness and the abstention from fatal sin, not to man's unaided powers but to the divine decree: seeEph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.”

Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:335—“Suppose the deistic view be true: God created men and left them; surely no man could complain of the results. But now suppose God, foreseeing these very results of creation, should create. Would it make any difference, if God's purpose, as to the futurition of such a world, should precede it? Augustine supposes that God did purpose such a world as the deist supposes, with two exceptions: (1) he interposes to restrain evil; (2) he intervenes, by providence, by Christ, and by the Holy Spirit, to save some from destruction.”Election is simply God's determination that the sufferings of Christ shall not be in vain; that all men shall not be lost; that some shall be led to accept Christ; that to this end special influences of his Spirit shall be given.

At first sight it might appear that God's appointing men to salvation was simply permissive, as was his appointment to condemnation (1 Pet. 2:8), and that this appointment was merely indirect by creating them with foresight of their faith or their disobedience. But the decree of salvation is not simply permissive,—it is efficient also. It is a decree to use special means for the salvation of some. A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 143—“The dead man cannot spontaneously originate his own quickening, nor the creature his own creating, nor the infant his own begetting. Whatever man may do after regeneration, the first quickening of the dead must originate with God.”

Hovey, Manual of Theology, 287—“Calvinism, reduced to its lowest terms, is election of believers, not on account of any foreseen conduct of theirs, either before or in the act of conversion, which would be spiritually better than that of others influenced by the same grace, but on account of their foreseen greater usefulness in manifesting the glory of God to moral beings and of their foreseen non-commission of the sin[pg 785]against the Holy Spirit.”But even here we must attribute the greater usefulness and the abstention from fatal sin, not to man's unaided powers but to the divine decree: seeEph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.”

(d) The doctrine of election becomes more acceptable to reason when we remember: first, that God's decree is eternal, and in a certain sense is contemporaneous with man's belief in Christ; secondly, that God's decree to create involves the decree of all that in the exercise of man's freedom will follow; thirdly, that God's decree is the decree of him who is all in all, so that our willing and doing is at the same time the working of him who decrees our willing and doing. The whole question turns upon the initiative in human salvation: if this belongs to God, then in spite of difficulties we must accept the doctrine of election.

The timeless existence of God may be the source of many of our difficulties with regard to election, and with a proper view of God's eternity these difficulties might be removed. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 349-351—“Eternity is commonly thought of as if it were a state or series anterior to time and to be resumed again when time comes to an end. This, however, only reduces eternity to time again, and puts the life of God in the same line with our own, only coming from further back.... At present we do not see how time and eternity meet.”Royce, World and Individual, 2:374—“God does not temporally foreknow anything, except so far as he is expressed in us finite beings. The knowledge that exists in time is the knowledge that finite beings possess, in so far as they are finite. And no such foreknowledge can predict the special features of individual deeds precisely so far as they are unique. Foreknowledge in time is possible only of the general, and of the causally predetermined, and not of the unique and free. Hence neither God nor man can foreknow perfectly, at any temporal moment, what a free will agent is yet to do. On the other hand, the Absolute possesses a perfect knowledge at one glance of the whole of the temporal order, past, present and future. This knowledge is ill called foreknowledge. It is eternal knowledge. And as there is an eternal knowledge of all individuality and of all freedom, free acts are known as occurring, like the chords in the musical succession, precisely when and how they actually occur.”While we see much truth in the preceding statement, we find in it no bar to our faith that God can translate his eternal knowledge into finite knowledge and can thus put it for special purposes in possession of his creatures.E. H. Johnson, Theology, 2d ed., 250—“Foreknowing what his creatures would do, God decreed their destiny when he decreed their creation; and this would still be the case, although every man had the partial control over his destiny that Arminians aver, or even the complete control that Pelagians claim. The decree is as absolute as if there were no freedom, but it leaves them as free as if there were no decree.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 40, 42—“As the Logos or divine Reason, Christ dwells in humanity everywhere and constitutes the principle of its being. Humanity shares with Christ in the image of God. That image is never wholly lost. It is completely restored in sinners when the Spirit of Christ secures control of their wills and leads them to merge their life in his.... If Christ be the principle and life of all things, then divine sovereignty and human freedom, if they are not absolutely reconciled, at least lose their ancient antagonism, and we can rationally‘work out our own salvation,’for the very reason that‘it is God that worketh in us, both to will and to work, for his good pleasure’(Phil. 2:12, 13).”

Royce, World and Individual, 2:374—“God does not temporally foreknow anything, except so far as he is expressed in us finite beings. The knowledge that exists in time is the knowledge that finite beings possess, in so far as they are finite. And no such foreknowledge can predict the special features of individual deeds precisely so far as they are unique. Foreknowledge in time is possible only of the general, and of the causally predetermined, and not of the unique and free. Hence neither God nor man can foreknow perfectly, at any temporal moment, what a free will agent is yet to do. On the other hand, the Absolute possesses a perfect knowledge at one glance of the whole of the temporal order, past, present and future. This knowledge is ill called foreknowledge. It is eternal knowledge. And as there is an eternal knowledge of all individuality and of all freedom, free acts are known as occurring, like the chords in the musical succession, precisely when and how they actually occur.”While we see much truth in the preceding statement, we find in it no bar to our faith that God can translate his eternal knowledge into finite knowledge and can thus put it for special purposes in possession of his creatures.

E. H. Johnson, Theology, 2d ed., 250—“Foreknowing what his creatures would do, God decreed their destiny when he decreed their creation; and this would still be the case, although every man had the partial control over his destiny that Arminians aver, or even the complete control that Pelagians claim. The decree is as absolute as if there were no freedom, but it leaves them as free as if there were no decree.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 40, 42—“As the Logos or divine Reason, Christ dwells in humanity everywhere and constitutes the principle of its being. Humanity shares with Christ in the image of God. That image is never wholly lost. It is completely restored in sinners when the Spirit of Christ secures control of their wills and leads them to merge their life in his.... If Christ be the principle and life of all things, then divine sovereignty and human freedom, if they are not absolutely reconciled, at least lose their ancient antagonism, and we can rationally‘work out our own salvation,’for the very reason that‘it is God that worketh in us, both to will and to work, for his good pleasure’(Phil. 2:12, 13).”

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