2. Objections to the Doctrine of Election.(a) It is unjust to those who are not included in this purpose of salvation.—Answer: Election deals, not simply with creatures, but with sinful, guilty, and condemned creatures. That any should be saved, is matter of pure grace, and those who are not included in this purpose of salvation suffer only the due reward of their deeds. There is, therefore, no injustice in God's election. We may better praise God that he saves any, than charge him with injustice because he saves so few.[pg 786]God can say to all men, saved or unsaved,“Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”(Mat. 20:13, 15). The question is not whether a father will treat his children alike, but whether a sovereign must treat condemned rebels alike. It is not true that, because the Governor pardons one convict from the penitentiary, he must therefore pardon all. When he pardons one, no injury is done to those who are left. But, in God's government, there is still less reason for objection; for God offers pardon to all. Nothing prevents men from being pardoned but their unwillingness to accept his pardon. Election is simply God's determination to make certain persons willing to accept it. Because justice cannot save all, shall it therefore save none?Augustine, De Predest. Sanct., 8—“Why does not God teach all? Because it is in mercy that he teaches all whom he does teach, while it is in judgment that he does not teach those whom he does not teach.”In his Manual of Theology and Ethics, 260, Hovey remarks thatRom. 9:20—“who art thou that repliest against God?”—teaches, not that might makes right, but that God is morally entitled to glorify either his righteousness or his mercy in disposing of a guilty race. It is not that he chooses to save only a few ship-wrecked and drowning creatures, but that he chooses to save only a part of a great company who are bent on committing suicide.Prov. 8:36—“he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: All they that hate me love death.”It is best for the universe at large that some should be permitted to have their own way and show how dreadful a thing is opposition to God. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:455.(b) It represents God as partial in his dealings and a respecter of persons.—Answer: Since there is nothing in men that determines God's choice of one rather than another, the objection is invalid. It would equally apply to God's selection of certain nations, as Israel, and certain individuals, as Cyrus, to be recipients of special temporal gifts. If God is not to be regarded as partial in not providing a salvation for fallen angels, he cannot be regarded as partial in not providing regenerating influences of his Spirit for the whole race of fallen men.Ps. 44:3—“For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them; But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, Because thou wast favorable unto them”;Is. 45:1, 4, 5—“Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.... For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me”;Luke 4:25-27—“There were many widows in Israel ... and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel ... and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian”;1 Cor. 4:7—“For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”2 Pet. 2:4—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell”;Heb. 2:16—“For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth help to the seed of Abraham.”Is God partial, in choosing Israel, Cyrus, Naaman? Is God partial, in bestowing upon some of his servants special ministerial gifts? Is God partial, in not providing a salvation for fallen angels? In God's providence, one man is born in a Christian land, the son of a noble family, is endowed with beauty of person, splendid talents, exalted opportunities, immense wealth. Another is born at the Five Points, or among the Hottentots, amid the degradation and depravity of actual, or practical, heathenism. We feel that it is irreverent to complain of God's dealings in providence. What right have sinners to complain of God's dealings in the distribution of his grace? Hovey:“We have no reason to think that God treats all moral beings alike. We should be glad to hear that other races are treated better than we.”Divine election is only the ethical side and interpretation of natural selection. In the latter God chooses certain forms of the vegetable and animal kingdom without merit of theirs. They are preserved while others die. In the matter of individual health, talent, property, one is taken and the other left. If we call all this the result of system, the reply is that God chose the system, knowing precisely what would come of it. Bruce, Apologetics, 201—“Election to distinction in philosophy or art is not incomprehensible, for these are not matters of vital concern; but election to holiness on the part of some, and to unholiness on the part of others, would be inconsistent with God's own holiness.”But there is no such election to unholiness except on the part of man himself. God's election secures only the good. See (c) below.J. J. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 73—“The world is ordered on a basis of inequality; in the organic world, as Darwin has shown, it is of inequality—of[pg 787]favored races—that all progress comes; history shows the same to be true of the human and spiritual world. All human progress is due to elect human individuals, elect not only to be a blessing to themselves, but still more to be a blessing to multitudes of others. Any superiority, whether in the natural or in the mental and spiritual world, becomes a vantage-ground for gaining a greater superiority.... It is the method of the divine government, acting in the provinces both of nature and of grace, that all benefit should come to the many through the elect few.”(c) It represents God as arbitrary.—Answer: It represents God, not as arbitrary, but as exercising the free choice of a wise and sovereign will, in ways and for reasons which are inscrutable to us. To deny the possibility of such a choice is to deny God's personality. To deny that God has reasons for his choice is to deny his wisdom. The doctrine of election finds these reasons, not in men, but in God.When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men. In one case, the reason for God's choice seems revealed:1 Tim. 1:16—“howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life”—here Paul indicates that the reason why God chose him was that he was so great a sinner:verse 15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”Hovey remarks that“the uses to which God can put men, as vessels of grace, may determine his selection of them.”But since the naturally weak are saved, as well as the naturally strong, we cannot draw any general conclusion, or discern any general rule, in God's dealings, unless it be this, that in election God seeks to illustrate the greatness and the variety of his grace,—the reasons lying, therefore, not in men, but in God. We must remember that God'ssovereigntyis the sovereignty ofGod—the infinitely wise, holy and loving God, in whose hands the destinies of men can be left more safely than in the hands of the wisest, most just, and most kind of his creatures.We must believe in the grace of sovereignty as well as in the sovereignty of grace. Election and reprobation are not matters of arbitrary will. God saves all whom he can wisely save. He will show benevolence in the salvation of mankind just so far as he can without prejudice to holiness. No man can be saved without God, but it is also true that there is no man whom God is not willing to save. H. B. Smith, System, 511—“It may be that many of the finally impenitent resist more light than many of the saved.”Harris, Moral Evolution, 401 (for substance)—“Sovereignty is not lost in Fatherhood, but is recovered as the divine law of righteous love. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Augustine be ignorant of us, and Calvin acknowledge us not.”Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:2—“They err who think that of God's will there is no reason except his will.”T. Erskine, The Brazen Serpent, 259—Sovereignty is“just a name for what isunrevealedof God.”We do not knowallof God's reasons for saving particular men, but we do knowsomeof the reasons, for he has revealed them to us. These reasons are not men's merits or works. We have mentioned the first of these reasons: (1) Men's greater sin and need;1 Tim. 1:16—“that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering.”We may add to this: (2) The fact that men have not sinned against the Holy Spirit and made themselves unreceptive to Christ's salvation;1 Tim. 1:13—“I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief”—the fact that Paul had not sinned with full knowledge of what he did was a reason why God could choose him. (3) Men's ability by the help of Christ to be witnesses and martyrs for their Lord;Acts 9:15, 16—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake.”As Paul's mission to the Gentiles may have determined God's choice, so Augustine's mission to the sensual and abandoned may have had the same influence. But if Paul's sins, as foreseen, constituted one reason why God chose to save him, why might not his ability to serve the kingdom have constituted another reason? We add therefore: (4) Men's foreseen ability to serve Christ's kingdom in bringing others to the knowledge of the truth;John 15:16—“I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit.”Notice however that this is choicetoservice, and not simply choiceon account of service. In all these cases the reasons do not lie in the men themselves, for what these men are and what they possess is due to God's providence and grace.(d) It tends to immorality, by representing men's salvation as independent of their own obedience.—Answer: The objection ignores the fact[pg 788]that the salvation of believers is ordained only in connection with their regeneration and sanctification, as means; and that the certainty of final triumph is the strongest incentive to strenuous conflict with sin.Plutarch:“God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.”The purposes of God are an anchor to the storm-tossed spirit. But a ship needs engine, as well as anchor. God does not elect to save any without repentance and faith. Some hold the doctrine of election, but the doctrine of election does not hold them. Such should ponder1 Pet. 1:2, in which Christians are said to be elect,“in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”Augustine:“He loved her [the church] foul, that he might make her fair.”Dr. John Watson (Ian McLaren):“The greatest reinforcement religion could have in our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God.”This is because there is lack of a strong conviction of sin, guilt, and helplessness, still remaining pride and unwillingness to submit to God, imperfect faith in God's trustworthiness and goodness. We must not exclude Arminians from our fellowship—there are too many good Methodists for that. But we may maintain that they hold but half the truth, and that absence of the doctrine of election from their creed makes preaching less serious and character less secure.(e) It inspires pride in those who think themselves elect.—Answer: This is possible only in the case of those who pervert the doctrine. On the contrary, its proper influence is to humble men. Those who exalt themselves above others, upon the ground that they are special favorites of God, have reason to question their election.In the novel, there was great effectiveness in the lover's plea to the object of his affection, that he had loved since he had first set his eyes upon her in her childhood. But God's love for us is of longer standing than that. It dates back to a time before we were born,—aye, even to eternity past. It is a love which was fastened upon us, although God knew the worst of us. It is unchanging, because founded upon his infinite and eternal love to Christ.Jer. 31:3—“Jehovah appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee”;Rom. 8:31-39—“If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”And the answer is, that nothing“shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”This eternal love subdues and humbles:Ps. 115:1—“Not unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory For thy lovingkindness, and for thy truth's sake.”Of the effect of the doctrine of election, Calvin, in his Institutes, 3:22:1, remarks that“when the human mind hears of it, its irritation breaks all restraint, and it discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet.”The cause of this agitation is the apprehension of the fact that one is an enemy of God and yet absolutely dependent upon his mercy. This apprehension leads normally to submission. But the conquered rebel can give no thanks to himself,—all thanks are due to God who has chosen and renewed him. The affections elicited are not those of pride and self-complacency, but of gratitude and love.Christian hymnology witnesses to these effects. Isaac Watts († 1748):“Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there's room, When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come. 'T was the same love that spread the feast That sweetly forced me in; Else I had still refused to taste, And perished in my sin. Pity the nations, O our God! Constrain the earth to come; Send thy victorious word abroad, And bring the wanderers home.”Josiah Conder († 1855):“'Tis not that I did choose thee, For, Lord, that could not be; This heart would still refuse thee; But thou hast chosen me;—Hast, from the sin that stained me, Washed me and set me free, And to this end ordained me That I should live to thee. 'T was sovereign mercy called me, And taught my opening mind; The world had else enthralled me, To heavenly glories blind. My heart owns none above thee: For thy rich grace I thirst; This knowing,—if I love thee, Thou must have loved me first.”(f) It discourages effort for the salvation of the impenitent, whether on their own part or on the part of others.—Answer: Since it is a secret decree, it cannot hinder or discourage such effort. On the other hand, it is a ground of encouragement, and so a stimulus to effort; for, without[pg 789]election, it is certain that all would be lost (cf.Acts 18:10). While it humbles the sinner, so that he is willing to err for mercy, it encourages him also by showing him that some will be saved, and (since election and faith are inseparably connected) that he will be saved, if he will only believe. While it makes the Christian feel entirely dependent on God's power, in his efforts for the impenitent, it leads him to say with Paul that he“endures all things for the elects' sake, that they also may attain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory”(2 Tim. 2:10).God's decree that Paul's ship's company should be saved (Acts 27:24) did not obviate the necessity of their abiding in the ship (verse 31). In marriage, man's election does not exclude woman's; so God's election does not exclude man's. There is just as much need of effort as if there were no election. Hence the question for the sinner is not,“Am I one of the elect?”but rather,“What shall I do to be saved?”Milton represents the spirits of hell as debating foreknowledge and free will, in wandering mazes lost.No man is saved until he ceases to debate, and begins to act. And yet no man will thus begin to act, unless God's Spirit moves him. The Lord encouraged Paul by saying to him:“I have much people in this city”(Acts 18:10)—people whom I will bring in through thy word.“Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.”If God does not regenerate, there is no hope of success in preaching:“God stands powerless before the majesty of man's lordly will. Sinners have the glory of their own salvation. To pray God to convert a man is absurd. God elects the man, because he foresees that the man will elect himself”(see S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 298-307). The doctrine of election does indeed cut off the hopes of those who place confidence in themselves; but it is best that such hopes should be destroyed, and that in place of them should be put a hope in the sovereign grace of God. The doctrine of election does teach man's absolute dependence upon God, and the impossibility of any disappointment or disarrangement of the divine plans arising from the disobedience of the sinner, and it humbles human pride until it is willing to take the place of a suppliant for mercy.Rowland Hill was criticized for preaching election and yet exhorting sinners to repent, and was told that he should preach only to the elect. He replied that, if his critic would put a chalk-mark on all the elect, he would preach only to them. But this is not the whole truth. We are not only ignorant who God's elect are, but we are set to preach to both elect and non-elect (Ez. 2:7—“thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear”), with the certainty that to the former our preaching will make a higher heaven, to the latter a deeper hell (2 Cor. 2:15, 16—“For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life”;cf.Luke 2:34—“this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”—for the falling of some, and for the rising up of others).Jesus' own thanksgiving inMat. 11:25, 26—“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight”—is immediately followed by his invitation inverse 28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”There is no contradiction in his mind between sovereign grace and the free invitations of the gospel.G. W. Northrup, in The Standard, Sept. 19, 1889—“1. God will save every one of the human race whom he can save and remain God; 2. Every member of the race has a full and fair probation, so that all might be saved and would be saved were they to use aright the light which they already have.”... (Private letter):“Limitations of God in the bestowment of salvation: 1. In the power of God in relation to free will; 2. In the benevolence of God which requires the greatest good of creation, or the greatest aggregate good of the greatest number; 3. In the purpose of God to make the most perfect self-limitation; 4. In the sovereignty of God, as a prerogative absolutely optional in its exercise; 5. In the holiness of God, which involves immutable limitations on his part in dealing with moral agents. Nothing but some absolute impossibility, metaphysical or moral, could have prevented him 'whose nature and whose name is love' from decreeing and securing the confirmation of all moral agents in holiness and blessedness forever.”(g) The decree of election implies a decree of reprobation.—Answer: The decree of reprobation is not a positive decree, like that of election,[pg 790]but a permissive decree to leave the sinner to his self-chosen rebellion and its natural consequences of punishment.Election and sovereignty are only sources of good. Election is not a decree to destroy,—it is a decree only to save. When we elect a President, we do not need to hold a second election to determine that the remaining millions shall be non-Presidents. It is needless to apply contrivance or force. Sinners, like water, if simply let alone, will run down hill to ruin. The decree of reprobation is simply a decree to do nothing—a decree to leave the sinner to himself. The natural result of this judicial forsaking, on the part of God, is the hardening and destruction of the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that this hardening and destruction are not due to any positive efficiency of God,—they are a self-hardening and a self-destruction,—and God's judicial forsaking is only the just penalty of the sinner's guilty rejection of offered mercy.SeeHosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together”;4:17—“Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone”;Rom. 9:22, 23—“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”—here notice that“which he afore prepared”declares a positive divine efficiency, in the case of the vessels of mercy, while“fitted unto destruction”intimates no such positive agency of God,—the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction;2 Tim. 2:20—“vessels ... some unto honor, and some unto dishonor”;1 Pet. 2:8—“they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”;Jude 4—“who were of old set forth[‘written of beforehand’—Am. Rev.]unto this condemnation”;Mat. 25:34, 41—“the kingdom prepared for you ... the eternal fire which is prepared[not for you, nor for men, but]for the devil and his angels”= there is an election to life, but no reprobation to death; a“book of life”(Rev. 21:27), but no book of death.E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.”Men are not“appointed”to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are“appointed”to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher:“The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won't.”George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel's mistake.”The Westminster Confession reads:“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”This reads as if both the saved and the lost were made originally for their respective final estates without respect to character. It is supralapsarianism. It is certain that the supralapsarians were in the majority in the Westminster Assembly, and that they determined the form of the statement, although there were many sublapsarians who objected that it was only on account of their foreseen wickedness that any were reprobated. In its later short statement of doctrine the Presbyterian body in America has made it plain that God's decree of reprobation is a permissive decree, and that it places no barrier in the way of any man's salvation.On the general subject of Election, see Mozley, Predestination; Payne, Divine Sovereignty; Ridgeley, Works, 1:261-324, esp. 322; Edwards, Works, 2:527sq.; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 446-458; Martensen, Dogmatics, 362-382; and especially Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 485-549; H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christian Theology, 502-514; Maule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 36-56; Peck, in Bapt. Quar. Rev., Oct. 1891:689-706. On objections to election, and Spurgeon's answers to them, see Williams, Reminiscences of Spurgeon, 189. On the homiletical uses of the doctrine of election, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1893:79-92.
2. Objections to the Doctrine of Election.(a) It is unjust to those who are not included in this purpose of salvation.—Answer: Election deals, not simply with creatures, but with sinful, guilty, and condemned creatures. That any should be saved, is matter of pure grace, and those who are not included in this purpose of salvation suffer only the due reward of their deeds. There is, therefore, no injustice in God's election. We may better praise God that he saves any, than charge him with injustice because he saves so few.[pg 786]God can say to all men, saved or unsaved,“Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”(Mat. 20:13, 15). The question is not whether a father will treat his children alike, but whether a sovereign must treat condemned rebels alike. It is not true that, because the Governor pardons one convict from the penitentiary, he must therefore pardon all. When he pardons one, no injury is done to those who are left. But, in God's government, there is still less reason for objection; for God offers pardon to all. Nothing prevents men from being pardoned but their unwillingness to accept his pardon. Election is simply God's determination to make certain persons willing to accept it. Because justice cannot save all, shall it therefore save none?Augustine, De Predest. Sanct., 8—“Why does not God teach all? Because it is in mercy that he teaches all whom he does teach, while it is in judgment that he does not teach those whom he does not teach.”In his Manual of Theology and Ethics, 260, Hovey remarks thatRom. 9:20—“who art thou that repliest against God?”—teaches, not that might makes right, but that God is morally entitled to glorify either his righteousness or his mercy in disposing of a guilty race. It is not that he chooses to save only a few ship-wrecked and drowning creatures, but that he chooses to save only a part of a great company who are bent on committing suicide.Prov. 8:36—“he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: All they that hate me love death.”It is best for the universe at large that some should be permitted to have their own way and show how dreadful a thing is opposition to God. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:455.(b) It represents God as partial in his dealings and a respecter of persons.—Answer: Since there is nothing in men that determines God's choice of one rather than another, the objection is invalid. It would equally apply to God's selection of certain nations, as Israel, and certain individuals, as Cyrus, to be recipients of special temporal gifts. If God is not to be regarded as partial in not providing a salvation for fallen angels, he cannot be regarded as partial in not providing regenerating influences of his Spirit for the whole race of fallen men.Ps. 44:3—“For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them; But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, Because thou wast favorable unto them”;Is. 45:1, 4, 5—“Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.... For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me”;Luke 4:25-27—“There were many widows in Israel ... and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel ... and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian”;1 Cor. 4:7—“For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”2 Pet. 2:4—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell”;Heb. 2:16—“For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth help to the seed of Abraham.”Is God partial, in choosing Israel, Cyrus, Naaman? Is God partial, in bestowing upon some of his servants special ministerial gifts? Is God partial, in not providing a salvation for fallen angels? In God's providence, one man is born in a Christian land, the son of a noble family, is endowed with beauty of person, splendid talents, exalted opportunities, immense wealth. Another is born at the Five Points, or among the Hottentots, amid the degradation and depravity of actual, or practical, heathenism. We feel that it is irreverent to complain of God's dealings in providence. What right have sinners to complain of God's dealings in the distribution of his grace? Hovey:“We have no reason to think that God treats all moral beings alike. We should be glad to hear that other races are treated better than we.”Divine election is only the ethical side and interpretation of natural selection. In the latter God chooses certain forms of the vegetable and animal kingdom without merit of theirs. They are preserved while others die. In the matter of individual health, talent, property, one is taken and the other left. If we call all this the result of system, the reply is that God chose the system, knowing precisely what would come of it. Bruce, Apologetics, 201—“Election to distinction in philosophy or art is not incomprehensible, for these are not matters of vital concern; but election to holiness on the part of some, and to unholiness on the part of others, would be inconsistent with God's own holiness.”But there is no such election to unholiness except on the part of man himself. God's election secures only the good. See (c) below.J. J. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 73—“The world is ordered on a basis of inequality; in the organic world, as Darwin has shown, it is of inequality—of[pg 787]favored races—that all progress comes; history shows the same to be true of the human and spiritual world. All human progress is due to elect human individuals, elect not only to be a blessing to themselves, but still more to be a blessing to multitudes of others. Any superiority, whether in the natural or in the mental and spiritual world, becomes a vantage-ground for gaining a greater superiority.... It is the method of the divine government, acting in the provinces both of nature and of grace, that all benefit should come to the many through the elect few.”(c) It represents God as arbitrary.—Answer: It represents God, not as arbitrary, but as exercising the free choice of a wise and sovereign will, in ways and for reasons which are inscrutable to us. To deny the possibility of such a choice is to deny God's personality. To deny that God has reasons for his choice is to deny his wisdom. The doctrine of election finds these reasons, not in men, but in God.When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men. In one case, the reason for God's choice seems revealed:1 Tim. 1:16—“howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life”—here Paul indicates that the reason why God chose him was that he was so great a sinner:verse 15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”Hovey remarks that“the uses to which God can put men, as vessels of grace, may determine his selection of them.”But since the naturally weak are saved, as well as the naturally strong, we cannot draw any general conclusion, or discern any general rule, in God's dealings, unless it be this, that in election God seeks to illustrate the greatness and the variety of his grace,—the reasons lying, therefore, not in men, but in God. We must remember that God'ssovereigntyis the sovereignty ofGod—the infinitely wise, holy and loving God, in whose hands the destinies of men can be left more safely than in the hands of the wisest, most just, and most kind of his creatures.We must believe in the grace of sovereignty as well as in the sovereignty of grace. Election and reprobation are not matters of arbitrary will. God saves all whom he can wisely save. He will show benevolence in the salvation of mankind just so far as he can without prejudice to holiness. No man can be saved without God, but it is also true that there is no man whom God is not willing to save. H. B. Smith, System, 511—“It may be that many of the finally impenitent resist more light than many of the saved.”Harris, Moral Evolution, 401 (for substance)—“Sovereignty is not lost in Fatherhood, but is recovered as the divine law of righteous love. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Augustine be ignorant of us, and Calvin acknowledge us not.”Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:2—“They err who think that of God's will there is no reason except his will.”T. Erskine, The Brazen Serpent, 259—Sovereignty is“just a name for what isunrevealedof God.”We do not knowallof God's reasons for saving particular men, but we do knowsomeof the reasons, for he has revealed them to us. These reasons are not men's merits or works. We have mentioned the first of these reasons: (1) Men's greater sin and need;1 Tim. 1:16—“that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering.”We may add to this: (2) The fact that men have not sinned against the Holy Spirit and made themselves unreceptive to Christ's salvation;1 Tim. 1:13—“I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief”—the fact that Paul had not sinned with full knowledge of what he did was a reason why God could choose him. (3) Men's ability by the help of Christ to be witnesses and martyrs for their Lord;Acts 9:15, 16—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake.”As Paul's mission to the Gentiles may have determined God's choice, so Augustine's mission to the sensual and abandoned may have had the same influence. But if Paul's sins, as foreseen, constituted one reason why God chose to save him, why might not his ability to serve the kingdom have constituted another reason? We add therefore: (4) Men's foreseen ability to serve Christ's kingdom in bringing others to the knowledge of the truth;John 15:16—“I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit.”Notice however that this is choicetoservice, and not simply choiceon account of service. In all these cases the reasons do not lie in the men themselves, for what these men are and what they possess is due to God's providence and grace.(d) It tends to immorality, by representing men's salvation as independent of their own obedience.—Answer: The objection ignores the fact[pg 788]that the salvation of believers is ordained only in connection with their regeneration and sanctification, as means; and that the certainty of final triumph is the strongest incentive to strenuous conflict with sin.Plutarch:“God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.”The purposes of God are an anchor to the storm-tossed spirit. But a ship needs engine, as well as anchor. God does not elect to save any without repentance and faith. Some hold the doctrine of election, but the doctrine of election does not hold them. Such should ponder1 Pet. 1:2, in which Christians are said to be elect,“in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”Augustine:“He loved her [the church] foul, that he might make her fair.”Dr. John Watson (Ian McLaren):“The greatest reinforcement religion could have in our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God.”This is because there is lack of a strong conviction of sin, guilt, and helplessness, still remaining pride and unwillingness to submit to God, imperfect faith in God's trustworthiness and goodness. We must not exclude Arminians from our fellowship—there are too many good Methodists for that. But we may maintain that they hold but half the truth, and that absence of the doctrine of election from their creed makes preaching less serious and character less secure.(e) It inspires pride in those who think themselves elect.—Answer: This is possible only in the case of those who pervert the doctrine. On the contrary, its proper influence is to humble men. Those who exalt themselves above others, upon the ground that they are special favorites of God, have reason to question their election.In the novel, there was great effectiveness in the lover's plea to the object of his affection, that he had loved since he had first set his eyes upon her in her childhood. But God's love for us is of longer standing than that. It dates back to a time before we were born,—aye, even to eternity past. It is a love which was fastened upon us, although God knew the worst of us. It is unchanging, because founded upon his infinite and eternal love to Christ.Jer. 31:3—“Jehovah appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee”;Rom. 8:31-39—“If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”And the answer is, that nothing“shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”This eternal love subdues and humbles:Ps. 115:1—“Not unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory For thy lovingkindness, and for thy truth's sake.”Of the effect of the doctrine of election, Calvin, in his Institutes, 3:22:1, remarks that“when the human mind hears of it, its irritation breaks all restraint, and it discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet.”The cause of this agitation is the apprehension of the fact that one is an enemy of God and yet absolutely dependent upon his mercy. This apprehension leads normally to submission. But the conquered rebel can give no thanks to himself,—all thanks are due to God who has chosen and renewed him. The affections elicited are not those of pride and self-complacency, but of gratitude and love.Christian hymnology witnesses to these effects. Isaac Watts († 1748):“Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there's room, When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come. 'T was the same love that spread the feast That sweetly forced me in; Else I had still refused to taste, And perished in my sin. Pity the nations, O our God! Constrain the earth to come; Send thy victorious word abroad, And bring the wanderers home.”Josiah Conder († 1855):“'Tis not that I did choose thee, For, Lord, that could not be; This heart would still refuse thee; But thou hast chosen me;—Hast, from the sin that stained me, Washed me and set me free, And to this end ordained me That I should live to thee. 'T was sovereign mercy called me, And taught my opening mind; The world had else enthralled me, To heavenly glories blind. My heart owns none above thee: For thy rich grace I thirst; This knowing,—if I love thee, Thou must have loved me first.”(f) It discourages effort for the salvation of the impenitent, whether on their own part or on the part of others.—Answer: Since it is a secret decree, it cannot hinder or discourage such effort. On the other hand, it is a ground of encouragement, and so a stimulus to effort; for, without[pg 789]election, it is certain that all would be lost (cf.Acts 18:10). While it humbles the sinner, so that he is willing to err for mercy, it encourages him also by showing him that some will be saved, and (since election and faith are inseparably connected) that he will be saved, if he will only believe. While it makes the Christian feel entirely dependent on God's power, in his efforts for the impenitent, it leads him to say with Paul that he“endures all things for the elects' sake, that they also may attain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory”(2 Tim. 2:10).God's decree that Paul's ship's company should be saved (Acts 27:24) did not obviate the necessity of their abiding in the ship (verse 31). In marriage, man's election does not exclude woman's; so God's election does not exclude man's. There is just as much need of effort as if there were no election. Hence the question for the sinner is not,“Am I one of the elect?”but rather,“What shall I do to be saved?”Milton represents the spirits of hell as debating foreknowledge and free will, in wandering mazes lost.No man is saved until he ceases to debate, and begins to act. And yet no man will thus begin to act, unless God's Spirit moves him. The Lord encouraged Paul by saying to him:“I have much people in this city”(Acts 18:10)—people whom I will bring in through thy word.“Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.”If God does not regenerate, there is no hope of success in preaching:“God stands powerless before the majesty of man's lordly will. Sinners have the glory of their own salvation. To pray God to convert a man is absurd. God elects the man, because he foresees that the man will elect himself”(see S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 298-307). The doctrine of election does indeed cut off the hopes of those who place confidence in themselves; but it is best that such hopes should be destroyed, and that in place of them should be put a hope in the sovereign grace of God. The doctrine of election does teach man's absolute dependence upon God, and the impossibility of any disappointment or disarrangement of the divine plans arising from the disobedience of the sinner, and it humbles human pride until it is willing to take the place of a suppliant for mercy.Rowland Hill was criticized for preaching election and yet exhorting sinners to repent, and was told that he should preach only to the elect. He replied that, if his critic would put a chalk-mark on all the elect, he would preach only to them. But this is not the whole truth. We are not only ignorant who God's elect are, but we are set to preach to both elect and non-elect (Ez. 2:7—“thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear”), with the certainty that to the former our preaching will make a higher heaven, to the latter a deeper hell (2 Cor. 2:15, 16—“For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life”;cf.Luke 2:34—“this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”—for the falling of some, and for the rising up of others).Jesus' own thanksgiving inMat. 11:25, 26—“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight”—is immediately followed by his invitation inverse 28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”There is no contradiction in his mind between sovereign grace and the free invitations of the gospel.G. W. Northrup, in The Standard, Sept. 19, 1889—“1. God will save every one of the human race whom he can save and remain God; 2. Every member of the race has a full and fair probation, so that all might be saved and would be saved were they to use aright the light which they already have.”... (Private letter):“Limitations of God in the bestowment of salvation: 1. In the power of God in relation to free will; 2. In the benevolence of God which requires the greatest good of creation, or the greatest aggregate good of the greatest number; 3. In the purpose of God to make the most perfect self-limitation; 4. In the sovereignty of God, as a prerogative absolutely optional in its exercise; 5. In the holiness of God, which involves immutable limitations on his part in dealing with moral agents. Nothing but some absolute impossibility, metaphysical or moral, could have prevented him 'whose nature and whose name is love' from decreeing and securing the confirmation of all moral agents in holiness and blessedness forever.”(g) The decree of election implies a decree of reprobation.—Answer: The decree of reprobation is not a positive decree, like that of election,[pg 790]but a permissive decree to leave the sinner to his self-chosen rebellion and its natural consequences of punishment.Election and sovereignty are only sources of good. Election is not a decree to destroy,—it is a decree only to save. When we elect a President, we do not need to hold a second election to determine that the remaining millions shall be non-Presidents. It is needless to apply contrivance or force. Sinners, like water, if simply let alone, will run down hill to ruin. The decree of reprobation is simply a decree to do nothing—a decree to leave the sinner to himself. The natural result of this judicial forsaking, on the part of God, is the hardening and destruction of the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that this hardening and destruction are not due to any positive efficiency of God,—they are a self-hardening and a self-destruction,—and God's judicial forsaking is only the just penalty of the sinner's guilty rejection of offered mercy.SeeHosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together”;4:17—“Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone”;Rom. 9:22, 23—“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”—here notice that“which he afore prepared”declares a positive divine efficiency, in the case of the vessels of mercy, while“fitted unto destruction”intimates no such positive agency of God,—the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction;2 Tim. 2:20—“vessels ... some unto honor, and some unto dishonor”;1 Pet. 2:8—“they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”;Jude 4—“who were of old set forth[‘written of beforehand’—Am. Rev.]unto this condemnation”;Mat. 25:34, 41—“the kingdom prepared for you ... the eternal fire which is prepared[not for you, nor for men, but]for the devil and his angels”= there is an election to life, but no reprobation to death; a“book of life”(Rev. 21:27), but no book of death.E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.”Men are not“appointed”to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are“appointed”to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher:“The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won't.”George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel's mistake.”The Westminster Confession reads:“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”This reads as if both the saved and the lost were made originally for their respective final estates without respect to character. It is supralapsarianism. It is certain that the supralapsarians were in the majority in the Westminster Assembly, and that they determined the form of the statement, although there were many sublapsarians who objected that it was only on account of their foreseen wickedness that any were reprobated. In its later short statement of doctrine the Presbyterian body in America has made it plain that God's decree of reprobation is a permissive decree, and that it places no barrier in the way of any man's salvation.On the general subject of Election, see Mozley, Predestination; Payne, Divine Sovereignty; Ridgeley, Works, 1:261-324, esp. 322; Edwards, Works, 2:527sq.; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 446-458; Martensen, Dogmatics, 362-382; and especially Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 485-549; H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christian Theology, 502-514; Maule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 36-56; Peck, in Bapt. Quar. Rev., Oct. 1891:689-706. On objections to election, and Spurgeon's answers to them, see Williams, Reminiscences of Spurgeon, 189. On the homiletical uses of the doctrine of election, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1893:79-92.
2. Objections to the Doctrine of Election.(a) It is unjust to those who are not included in this purpose of salvation.—Answer: Election deals, not simply with creatures, but with sinful, guilty, and condemned creatures. That any should be saved, is matter of pure grace, and those who are not included in this purpose of salvation suffer only the due reward of their deeds. There is, therefore, no injustice in God's election. We may better praise God that he saves any, than charge him with injustice because he saves so few.[pg 786]God can say to all men, saved or unsaved,“Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”(Mat. 20:13, 15). The question is not whether a father will treat his children alike, but whether a sovereign must treat condemned rebels alike. It is not true that, because the Governor pardons one convict from the penitentiary, he must therefore pardon all. When he pardons one, no injury is done to those who are left. But, in God's government, there is still less reason for objection; for God offers pardon to all. Nothing prevents men from being pardoned but their unwillingness to accept his pardon. Election is simply God's determination to make certain persons willing to accept it. Because justice cannot save all, shall it therefore save none?Augustine, De Predest. Sanct., 8—“Why does not God teach all? Because it is in mercy that he teaches all whom he does teach, while it is in judgment that he does not teach those whom he does not teach.”In his Manual of Theology and Ethics, 260, Hovey remarks thatRom. 9:20—“who art thou that repliest against God?”—teaches, not that might makes right, but that God is morally entitled to glorify either his righteousness or his mercy in disposing of a guilty race. It is not that he chooses to save only a few ship-wrecked and drowning creatures, but that he chooses to save only a part of a great company who are bent on committing suicide.Prov. 8:36—“he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: All they that hate me love death.”It is best for the universe at large that some should be permitted to have their own way and show how dreadful a thing is opposition to God. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:455.(b) It represents God as partial in his dealings and a respecter of persons.—Answer: Since there is nothing in men that determines God's choice of one rather than another, the objection is invalid. It would equally apply to God's selection of certain nations, as Israel, and certain individuals, as Cyrus, to be recipients of special temporal gifts. If God is not to be regarded as partial in not providing a salvation for fallen angels, he cannot be regarded as partial in not providing regenerating influences of his Spirit for the whole race of fallen men.Ps. 44:3—“For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them; But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, Because thou wast favorable unto them”;Is. 45:1, 4, 5—“Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.... For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me”;Luke 4:25-27—“There were many widows in Israel ... and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel ... and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian”;1 Cor. 4:7—“For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”2 Pet. 2:4—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell”;Heb. 2:16—“For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth help to the seed of Abraham.”Is God partial, in choosing Israel, Cyrus, Naaman? Is God partial, in bestowing upon some of his servants special ministerial gifts? Is God partial, in not providing a salvation for fallen angels? In God's providence, one man is born in a Christian land, the son of a noble family, is endowed with beauty of person, splendid talents, exalted opportunities, immense wealth. Another is born at the Five Points, or among the Hottentots, amid the degradation and depravity of actual, or practical, heathenism. We feel that it is irreverent to complain of God's dealings in providence. What right have sinners to complain of God's dealings in the distribution of his grace? Hovey:“We have no reason to think that God treats all moral beings alike. We should be glad to hear that other races are treated better than we.”Divine election is only the ethical side and interpretation of natural selection. In the latter God chooses certain forms of the vegetable and animal kingdom without merit of theirs. They are preserved while others die. In the matter of individual health, talent, property, one is taken and the other left. If we call all this the result of system, the reply is that God chose the system, knowing precisely what would come of it. Bruce, Apologetics, 201—“Election to distinction in philosophy or art is not incomprehensible, for these are not matters of vital concern; but election to holiness on the part of some, and to unholiness on the part of others, would be inconsistent with God's own holiness.”But there is no such election to unholiness except on the part of man himself. God's election secures only the good. See (c) below.J. J. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 73—“The world is ordered on a basis of inequality; in the organic world, as Darwin has shown, it is of inequality—of[pg 787]favored races—that all progress comes; history shows the same to be true of the human and spiritual world. All human progress is due to elect human individuals, elect not only to be a blessing to themselves, but still more to be a blessing to multitudes of others. Any superiority, whether in the natural or in the mental and spiritual world, becomes a vantage-ground for gaining a greater superiority.... It is the method of the divine government, acting in the provinces both of nature and of grace, that all benefit should come to the many through the elect few.”(c) It represents God as arbitrary.—Answer: It represents God, not as arbitrary, but as exercising the free choice of a wise and sovereign will, in ways and for reasons which are inscrutable to us. To deny the possibility of such a choice is to deny God's personality. To deny that God has reasons for his choice is to deny his wisdom. The doctrine of election finds these reasons, not in men, but in God.When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men. In one case, the reason for God's choice seems revealed:1 Tim. 1:16—“howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life”—here Paul indicates that the reason why God chose him was that he was so great a sinner:verse 15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”Hovey remarks that“the uses to which God can put men, as vessels of grace, may determine his selection of them.”But since the naturally weak are saved, as well as the naturally strong, we cannot draw any general conclusion, or discern any general rule, in God's dealings, unless it be this, that in election God seeks to illustrate the greatness and the variety of his grace,—the reasons lying, therefore, not in men, but in God. We must remember that God'ssovereigntyis the sovereignty ofGod—the infinitely wise, holy and loving God, in whose hands the destinies of men can be left more safely than in the hands of the wisest, most just, and most kind of his creatures.We must believe in the grace of sovereignty as well as in the sovereignty of grace. Election and reprobation are not matters of arbitrary will. God saves all whom he can wisely save. He will show benevolence in the salvation of mankind just so far as he can without prejudice to holiness. No man can be saved without God, but it is also true that there is no man whom God is not willing to save. H. B. Smith, System, 511—“It may be that many of the finally impenitent resist more light than many of the saved.”Harris, Moral Evolution, 401 (for substance)—“Sovereignty is not lost in Fatherhood, but is recovered as the divine law of righteous love. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Augustine be ignorant of us, and Calvin acknowledge us not.”Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:2—“They err who think that of God's will there is no reason except his will.”T. Erskine, The Brazen Serpent, 259—Sovereignty is“just a name for what isunrevealedof God.”We do not knowallof God's reasons for saving particular men, but we do knowsomeof the reasons, for he has revealed them to us. These reasons are not men's merits or works. We have mentioned the first of these reasons: (1) Men's greater sin and need;1 Tim. 1:16—“that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering.”We may add to this: (2) The fact that men have not sinned against the Holy Spirit and made themselves unreceptive to Christ's salvation;1 Tim. 1:13—“I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief”—the fact that Paul had not sinned with full knowledge of what he did was a reason why God could choose him. (3) Men's ability by the help of Christ to be witnesses and martyrs for their Lord;Acts 9:15, 16—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake.”As Paul's mission to the Gentiles may have determined God's choice, so Augustine's mission to the sensual and abandoned may have had the same influence. But if Paul's sins, as foreseen, constituted one reason why God chose to save him, why might not his ability to serve the kingdom have constituted another reason? We add therefore: (4) Men's foreseen ability to serve Christ's kingdom in bringing others to the knowledge of the truth;John 15:16—“I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit.”Notice however that this is choicetoservice, and not simply choiceon account of service. In all these cases the reasons do not lie in the men themselves, for what these men are and what they possess is due to God's providence and grace.(d) It tends to immorality, by representing men's salvation as independent of their own obedience.—Answer: The objection ignores the fact[pg 788]that the salvation of believers is ordained only in connection with their regeneration and sanctification, as means; and that the certainty of final triumph is the strongest incentive to strenuous conflict with sin.Plutarch:“God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.”The purposes of God are an anchor to the storm-tossed spirit. But a ship needs engine, as well as anchor. God does not elect to save any without repentance and faith. Some hold the doctrine of election, but the doctrine of election does not hold them. Such should ponder1 Pet. 1:2, in which Christians are said to be elect,“in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”Augustine:“He loved her [the church] foul, that he might make her fair.”Dr. John Watson (Ian McLaren):“The greatest reinforcement religion could have in our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God.”This is because there is lack of a strong conviction of sin, guilt, and helplessness, still remaining pride and unwillingness to submit to God, imperfect faith in God's trustworthiness and goodness. We must not exclude Arminians from our fellowship—there are too many good Methodists for that. But we may maintain that they hold but half the truth, and that absence of the doctrine of election from their creed makes preaching less serious and character less secure.(e) It inspires pride in those who think themselves elect.—Answer: This is possible only in the case of those who pervert the doctrine. On the contrary, its proper influence is to humble men. Those who exalt themselves above others, upon the ground that they are special favorites of God, have reason to question their election.In the novel, there was great effectiveness in the lover's plea to the object of his affection, that he had loved since he had first set his eyes upon her in her childhood. But God's love for us is of longer standing than that. It dates back to a time before we were born,—aye, even to eternity past. It is a love which was fastened upon us, although God knew the worst of us. It is unchanging, because founded upon his infinite and eternal love to Christ.Jer. 31:3—“Jehovah appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee”;Rom. 8:31-39—“If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”And the answer is, that nothing“shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”This eternal love subdues and humbles:Ps. 115:1—“Not unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory For thy lovingkindness, and for thy truth's sake.”Of the effect of the doctrine of election, Calvin, in his Institutes, 3:22:1, remarks that“when the human mind hears of it, its irritation breaks all restraint, and it discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet.”The cause of this agitation is the apprehension of the fact that one is an enemy of God and yet absolutely dependent upon his mercy. This apprehension leads normally to submission. But the conquered rebel can give no thanks to himself,—all thanks are due to God who has chosen and renewed him. The affections elicited are not those of pride and self-complacency, but of gratitude and love.Christian hymnology witnesses to these effects. Isaac Watts († 1748):“Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there's room, When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come. 'T was the same love that spread the feast That sweetly forced me in; Else I had still refused to taste, And perished in my sin. Pity the nations, O our God! Constrain the earth to come; Send thy victorious word abroad, And bring the wanderers home.”Josiah Conder († 1855):“'Tis not that I did choose thee, For, Lord, that could not be; This heart would still refuse thee; But thou hast chosen me;—Hast, from the sin that stained me, Washed me and set me free, And to this end ordained me That I should live to thee. 'T was sovereign mercy called me, And taught my opening mind; The world had else enthralled me, To heavenly glories blind. My heart owns none above thee: For thy rich grace I thirst; This knowing,—if I love thee, Thou must have loved me first.”(f) It discourages effort for the salvation of the impenitent, whether on their own part or on the part of others.—Answer: Since it is a secret decree, it cannot hinder or discourage such effort. On the other hand, it is a ground of encouragement, and so a stimulus to effort; for, without[pg 789]election, it is certain that all would be lost (cf.Acts 18:10). While it humbles the sinner, so that he is willing to err for mercy, it encourages him also by showing him that some will be saved, and (since election and faith are inseparably connected) that he will be saved, if he will only believe. While it makes the Christian feel entirely dependent on God's power, in his efforts for the impenitent, it leads him to say with Paul that he“endures all things for the elects' sake, that they also may attain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory”(2 Tim. 2:10).God's decree that Paul's ship's company should be saved (Acts 27:24) did not obviate the necessity of their abiding in the ship (verse 31). In marriage, man's election does not exclude woman's; so God's election does not exclude man's. There is just as much need of effort as if there were no election. Hence the question for the sinner is not,“Am I one of the elect?”but rather,“What shall I do to be saved?”Milton represents the spirits of hell as debating foreknowledge and free will, in wandering mazes lost.No man is saved until he ceases to debate, and begins to act. And yet no man will thus begin to act, unless God's Spirit moves him. The Lord encouraged Paul by saying to him:“I have much people in this city”(Acts 18:10)—people whom I will bring in through thy word.“Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.”If God does not regenerate, there is no hope of success in preaching:“God stands powerless before the majesty of man's lordly will. Sinners have the glory of their own salvation. To pray God to convert a man is absurd. God elects the man, because he foresees that the man will elect himself”(see S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 298-307). The doctrine of election does indeed cut off the hopes of those who place confidence in themselves; but it is best that such hopes should be destroyed, and that in place of them should be put a hope in the sovereign grace of God. The doctrine of election does teach man's absolute dependence upon God, and the impossibility of any disappointment or disarrangement of the divine plans arising from the disobedience of the sinner, and it humbles human pride until it is willing to take the place of a suppliant for mercy.Rowland Hill was criticized for preaching election and yet exhorting sinners to repent, and was told that he should preach only to the elect. He replied that, if his critic would put a chalk-mark on all the elect, he would preach only to them. But this is not the whole truth. We are not only ignorant who God's elect are, but we are set to preach to both elect and non-elect (Ez. 2:7—“thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear”), with the certainty that to the former our preaching will make a higher heaven, to the latter a deeper hell (2 Cor. 2:15, 16—“For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life”;cf.Luke 2:34—“this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”—for the falling of some, and for the rising up of others).Jesus' own thanksgiving inMat. 11:25, 26—“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight”—is immediately followed by his invitation inverse 28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”There is no contradiction in his mind between sovereign grace and the free invitations of the gospel.G. W. Northrup, in The Standard, Sept. 19, 1889—“1. God will save every one of the human race whom he can save and remain God; 2. Every member of the race has a full and fair probation, so that all might be saved and would be saved were they to use aright the light which they already have.”... (Private letter):“Limitations of God in the bestowment of salvation: 1. In the power of God in relation to free will; 2. In the benevolence of God which requires the greatest good of creation, or the greatest aggregate good of the greatest number; 3. In the purpose of God to make the most perfect self-limitation; 4. In the sovereignty of God, as a prerogative absolutely optional in its exercise; 5. In the holiness of God, which involves immutable limitations on his part in dealing with moral agents. Nothing but some absolute impossibility, metaphysical or moral, could have prevented him 'whose nature and whose name is love' from decreeing and securing the confirmation of all moral agents in holiness and blessedness forever.”(g) The decree of election implies a decree of reprobation.—Answer: The decree of reprobation is not a positive decree, like that of election,[pg 790]but a permissive decree to leave the sinner to his self-chosen rebellion and its natural consequences of punishment.Election and sovereignty are only sources of good. Election is not a decree to destroy,—it is a decree only to save. When we elect a President, we do not need to hold a second election to determine that the remaining millions shall be non-Presidents. It is needless to apply contrivance or force. Sinners, like water, if simply let alone, will run down hill to ruin. The decree of reprobation is simply a decree to do nothing—a decree to leave the sinner to himself. The natural result of this judicial forsaking, on the part of God, is the hardening and destruction of the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that this hardening and destruction are not due to any positive efficiency of God,—they are a self-hardening and a self-destruction,—and God's judicial forsaking is only the just penalty of the sinner's guilty rejection of offered mercy.SeeHosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together”;4:17—“Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone”;Rom. 9:22, 23—“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”—here notice that“which he afore prepared”declares a positive divine efficiency, in the case of the vessels of mercy, while“fitted unto destruction”intimates no such positive agency of God,—the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction;2 Tim. 2:20—“vessels ... some unto honor, and some unto dishonor”;1 Pet. 2:8—“they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”;Jude 4—“who were of old set forth[‘written of beforehand’—Am. Rev.]unto this condemnation”;Mat. 25:34, 41—“the kingdom prepared for you ... the eternal fire which is prepared[not for you, nor for men, but]for the devil and his angels”= there is an election to life, but no reprobation to death; a“book of life”(Rev. 21:27), but no book of death.E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.”Men are not“appointed”to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are“appointed”to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher:“The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won't.”George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel's mistake.”The Westminster Confession reads:“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”This reads as if both the saved and the lost were made originally for their respective final estates without respect to character. It is supralapsarianism. It is certain that the supralapsarians were in the majority in the Westminster Assembly, and that they determined the form of the statement, although there were many sublapsarians who objected that it was only on account of their foreseen wickedness that any were reprobated. In its later short statement of doctrine the Presbyterian body in America has made it plain that God's decree of reprobation is a permissive decree, and that it places no barrier in the way of any man's salvation.On the general subject of Election, see Mozley, Predestination; Payne, Divine Sovereignty; Ridgeley, Works, 1:261-324, esp. 322; Edwards, Works, 2:527sq.; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 446-458; Martensen, Dogmatics, 362-382; and especially Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 485-549; H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christian Theology, 502-514; Maule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 36-56; Peck, in Bapt. Quar. Rev., Oct. 1891:689-706. On objections to election, and Spurgeon's answers to them, see Williams, Reminiscences of Spurgeon, 189. On the homiletical uses of the doctrine of election, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1893:79-92.
2. Objections to the Doctrine of Election.(a) It is unjust to those who are not included in this purpose of salvation.—Answer: Election deals, not simply with creatures, but with sinful, guilty, and condemned creatures. That any should be saved, is matter of pure grace, and those who are not included in this purpose of salvation suffer only the due reward of their deeds. There is, therefore, no injustice in God's election. We may better praise God that he saves any, than charge him with injustice because he saves so few.[pg 786]God can say to all men, saved or unsaved,“Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”(Mat. 20:13, 15). The question is not whether a father will treat his children alike, but whether a sovereign must treat condemned rebels alike. It is not true that, because the Governor pardons one convict from the penitentiary, he must therefore pardon all. When he pardons one, no injury is done to those who are left. But, in God's government, there is still less reason for objection; for God offers pardon to all. Nothing prevents men from being pardoned but their unwillingness to accept his pardon. Election is simply God's determination to make certain persons willing to accept it. Because justice cannot save all, shall it therefore save none?Augustine, De Predest. Sanct., 8—“Why does not God teach all? Because it is in mercy that he teaches all whom he does teach, while it is in judgment that he does not teach those whom he does not teach.”In his Manual of Theology and Ethics, 260, Hovey remarks thatRom. 9:20—“who art thou that repliest against God?”—teaches, not that might makes right, but that God is morally entitled to glorify either his righteousness or his mercy in disposing of a guilty race. It is not that he chooses to save only a few ship-wrecked and drowning creatures, but that he chooses to save only a part of a great company who are bent on committing suicide.Prov. 8:36—“he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: All they that hate me love death.”It is best for the universe at large that some should be permitted to have their own way and show how dreadful a thing is opposition to God. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:455.(b) It represents God as partial in his dealings and a respecter of persons.—Answer: Since there is nothing in men that determines God's choice of one rather than another, the objection is invalid. It would equally apply to God's selection of certain nations, as Israel, and certain individuals, as Cyrus, to be recipients of special temporal gifts. If God is not to be regarded as partial in not providing a salvation for fallen angels, he cannot be regarded as partial in not providing regenerating influences of his Spirit for the whole race of fallen men.Ps. 44:3—“For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them; But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, Because thou wast favorable unto them”;Is. 45:1, 4, 5—“Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.... For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me”;Luke 4:25-27—“There were many widows in Israel ... and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel ... and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian”;1 Cor. 4:7—“For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”2 Pet. 2:4—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell”;Heb. 2:16—“For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth help to the seed of Abraham.”Is God partial, in choosing Israel, Cyrus, Naaman? Is God partial, in bestowing upon some of his servants special ministerial gifts? Is God partial, in not providing a salvation for fallen angels? In God's providence, one man is born in a Christian land, the son of a noble family, is endowed with beauty of person, splendid talents, exalted opportunities, immense wealth. Another is born at the Five Points, or among the Hottentots, amid the degradation and depravity of actual, or practical, heathenism. We feel that it is irreverent to complain of God's dealings in providence. What right have sinners to complain of God's dealings in the distribution of his grace? Hovey:“We have no reason to think that God treats all moral beings alike. We should be glad to hear that other races are treated better than we.”Divine election is only the ethical side and interpretation of natural selection. In the latter God chooses certain forms of the vegetable and animal kingdom without merit of theirs. They are preserved while others die. In the matter of individual health, talent, property, one is taken and the other left. If we call all this the result of system, the reply is that God chose the system, knowing precisely what would come of it. Bruce, Apologetics, 201—“Election to distinction in philosophy or art is not incomprehensible, for these are not matters of vital concern; but election to holiness on the part of some, and to unholiness on the part of others, would be inconsistent with God's own holiness.”But there is no such election to unholiness except on the part of man himself. God's election secures only the good. See (c) below.J. J. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 73—“The world is ordered on a basis of inequality; in the organic world, as Darwin has shown, it is of inequality—of[pg 787]favored races—that all progress comes; history shows the same to be true of the human and spiritual world. All human progress is due to elect human individuals, elect not only to be a blessing to themselves, but still more to be a blessing to multitudes of others. Any superiority, whether in the natural or in the mental and spiritual world, becomes a vantage-ground for gaining a greater superiority.... It is the method of the divine government, acting in the provinces both of nature and of grace, that all benefit should come to the many through the elect few.”(c) It represents God as arbitrary.—Answer: It represents God, not as arbitrary, but as exercising the free choice of a wise and sovereign will, in ways and for reasons which are inscrutable to us. To deny the possibility of such a choice is to deny God's personality. To deny that God has reasons for his choice is to deny his wisdom. The doctrine of election finds these reasons, not in men, but in God.When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men. In one case, the reason for God's choice seems revealed:1 Tim. 1:16—“howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life”—here Paul indicates that the reason why God chose him was that he was so great a sinner:verse 15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”Hovey remarks that“the uses to which God can put men, as vessels of grace, may determine his selection of them.”But since the naturally weak are saved, as well as the naturally strong, we cannot draw any general conclusion, or discern any general rule, in God's dealings, unless it be this, that in election God seeks to illustrate the greatness and the variety of his grace,—the reasons lying, therefore, not in men, but in God. We must remember that God'ssovereigntyis the sovereignty ofGod—the infinitely wise, holy and loving God, in whose hands the destinies of men can be left more safely than in the hands of the wisest, most just, and most kind of his creatures.We must believe in the grace of sovereignty as well as in the sovereignty of grace. Election and reprobation are not matters of arbitrary will. God saves all whom he can wisely save. He will show benevolence in the salvation of mankind just so far as he can without prejudice to holiness. No man can be saved without God, but it is also true that there is no man whom God is not willing to save. H. B. Smith, System, 511—“It may be that many of the finally impenitent resist more light than many of the saved.”Harris, Moral Evolution, 401 (for substance)—“Sovereignty is not lost in Fatherhood, but is recovered as the divine law of righteous love. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Augustine be ignorant of us, and Calvin acknowledge us not.”Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:2—“They err who think that of God's will there is no reason except his will.”T. Erskine, The Brazen Serpent, 259—Sovereignty is“just a name for what isunrevealedof God.”We do not knowallof God's reasons for saving particular men, but we do knowsomeof the reasons, for he has revealed them to us. These reasons are not men's merits or works. We have mentioned the first of these reasons: (1) Men's greater sin and need;1 Tim. 1:16—“that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering.”We may add to this: (2) The fact that men have not sinned against the Holy Spirit and made themselves unreceptive to Christ's salvation;1 Tim. 1:13—“I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief”—the fact that Paul had not sinned with full knowledge of what he did was a reason why God could choose him. (3) Men's ability by the help of Christ to be witnesses and martyrs for their Lord;Acts 9:15, 16—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake.”As Paul's mission to the Gentiles may have determined God's choice, so Augustine's mission to the sensual and abandoned may have had the same influence. But if Paul's sins, as foreseen, constituted one reason why God chose to save him, why might not his ability to serve the kingdom have constituted another reason? We add therefore: (4) Men's foreseen ability to serve Christ's kingdom in bringing others to the knowledge of the truth;John 15:16—“I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit.”Notice however that this is choicetoservice, and not simply choiceon account of service. In all these cases the reasons do not lie in the men themselves, for what these men are and what they possess is due to God's providence and grace.(d) It tends to immorality, by representing men's salvation as independent of their own obedience.—Answer: The objection ignores the fact[pg 788]that the salvation of believers is ordained only in connection with their regeneration and sanctification, as means; and that the certainty of final triumph is the strongest incentive to strenuous conflict with sin.Plutarch:“God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.”The purposes of God are an anchor to the storm-tossed spirit. But a ship needs engine, as well as anchor. God does not elect to save any without repentance and faith. Some hold the doctrine of election, but the doctrine of election does not hold them. Such should ponder1 Pet. 1:2, in which Christians are said to be elect,“in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”Augustine:“He loved her [the church] foul, that he might make her fair.”Dr. John Watson (Ian McLaren):“The greatest reinforcement religion could have in our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God.”This is because there is lack of a strong conviction of sin, guilt, and helplessness, still remaining pride and unwillingness to submit to God, imperfect faith in God's trustworthiness and goodness. We must not exclude Arminians from our fellowship—there are too many good Methodists for that. But we may maintain that they hold but half the truth, and that absence of the doctrine of election from their creed makes preaching less serious and character less secure.(e) It inspires pride in those who think themselves elect.—Answer: This is possible only in the case of those who pervert the doctrine. On the contrary, its proper influence is to humble men. Those who exalt themselves above others, upon the ground that they are special favorites of God, have reason to question their election.In the novel, there was great effectiveness in the lover's plea to the object of his affection, that he had loved since he had first set his eyes upon her in her childhood. But God's love for us is of longer standing than that. It dates back to a time before we were born,—aye, even to eternity past. It is a love which was fastened upon us, although God knew the worst of us. It is unchanging, because founded upon his infinite and eternal love to Christ.Jer. 31:3—“Jehovah appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee”;Rom. 8:31-39—“If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”And the answer is, that nothing“shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”This eternal love subdues and humbles:Ps. 115:1—“Not unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory For thy lovingkindness, and for thy truth's sake.”Of the effect of the doctrine of election, Calvin, in his Institutes, 3:22:1, remarks that“when the human mind hears of it, its irritation breaks all restraint, and it discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet.”The cause of this agitation is the apprehension of the fact that one is an enemy of God and yet absolutely dependent upon his mercy. This apprehension leads normally to submission. But the conquered rebel can give no thanks to himself,—all thanks are due to God who has chosen and renewed him. The affections elicited are not those of pride and self-complacency, but of gratitude and love.Christian hymnology witnesses to these effects. Isaac Watts († 1748):“Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there's room, When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come. 'T was the same love that spread the feast That sweetly forced me in; Else I had still refused to taste, And perished in my sin. Pity the nations, O our God! Constrain the earth to come; Send thy victorious word abroad, And bring the wanderers home.”Josiah Conder († 1855):“'Tis not that I did choose thee, For, Lord, that could not be; This heart would still refuse thee; But thou hast chosen me;—Hast, from the sin that stained me, Washed me and set me free, And to this end ordained me That I should live to thee. 'T was sovereign mercy called me, And taught my opening mind; The world had else enthralled me, To heavenly glories blind. My heart owns none above thee: For thy rich grace I thirst; This knowing,—if I love thee, Thou must have loved me first.”(f) It discourages effort for the salvation of the impenitent, whether on their own part or on the part of others.—Answer: Since it is a secret decree, it cannot hinder or discourage such effort. On the other hand, it is a ground of encouragement, and so a stimulus to effort; for, without[pg 789]election, it is certain that all would be lost (cf.Acts 18:10). While it humbles the sinner, so that he is willing to err for mercy, it encourages him also by showing him that some will be saved, and (since election and faith are inseparably connected) that he will be saved, if he will only believe. While it makes the Christian feel entirely dependent on God's power, in his efforts for the impenitent, it leads him to say with Paul that he“endures all things for the elects' sake, that they also may attain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory”(2 Tim. 2:10).God's decree that Paul's ship's company should be saved (Acts 27:24) did not obviate the necessity of their abiding in the ship (verse 31). In marriage, man's election does not exclude woman's; so God's election does not exclude man's. There is just as much need of effort as if there were no election. Hence the question for the sinner is not,“Am I one of the elect?”but rather,“What shall I do to be saved?”Milton represents the spirits of hell as debating foreknowledge and free will, in wandering mazes lost.No man is saved until he ceases to debate, and begins to act. And yet no man will thus begin to act, unless God's Spirit moves him. The Lord encouraged Paul by saying to him:“I have much people in this city”(Acts 18:10)—people whom I will bring in through thy word.“Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.”If God does not regenerate, there is no hope of success in preaching:“God stands powerless before the majesty of man's lordly will. Sinners have the glory of their own salvation. To pray God to convert a man is absurd. God elects the man, because he foresees that the man will elect himself”(see S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 298-307). The doctrine of election does indeed cut off the hopes of those who place confidence in themselves; but it is best that such hopes should be destroyed, and that in place of them should be put a hope in the sovereign grace of God. The doctrine of election does teach man's absolute dependence upon God, and the impossibility of any disappointment or disarrangement of the divine plans arising from the disobedience of the sinner, and it humbles human pride until it is willing to take the place of a suppliant for mercy.Rowland Hill was criticized for preaching election and yet exhorting sinners to repent, and was told that he should preach only to the elect. He replied that, if his critic would put a chalk-mark on all the elect, he would preach only to them. But this is not the whole truth. We are not only ignorant who God's elect are, but we are set to preach to both elect and non-elect (Ez. 2:7—“thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear”), with the certainty that to the former our preaching will make a higher heaven, to the latter a deeper hell (2 Cor. 2:15, 16—“For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life”;cf.Luke 2:34—“this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”—for the falling of some, and for the rising up of others).Jesus' own thanksgiving inMat. 11:25, 26—“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight”—is immediately followed by his invitation inverse 28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”There is no contradiction in his mind between sovereign grace and the free invitations of the gospel.G. W. Northrup, in The Standard, Sept. 19, 1889—“1. God will save every one of the human race whom he can save and remain God; 2. Every member of the race has a full and fair probation, so that all might be saved and would be saved were they to use aright the light which they already have.”... (Private letter):“Limitations of God in the bestowment of salvation: 1. In the power of God in relation to free will; 2. In the benevolence of God which requires the greatest good of creation, or the greatest aggregate good of the greatest number; 3. In the purpose of God to make the most perfect self-limitation; 4. In the sovereignty of God, as a prerogative absolutely optional in its exercise; 5. In the holiness of God, which involves immutable limitations on his part in dealing with moral agents. Nothing but some absolute impossibility, metaphysical or moral, could have prevented him 'whose nature and whose name is love' from decreeing and securing the confirmation of all moral agents in holiness and blessedness forever.”(g) The decree of election implies a decree of reprobation.—Answer: The decree of reprobation is not a positive decree, like that of election,[pg 790]but a permissive decree to leave the sinner to his self-chosen rebellion and its natural consequences of punishment.Election and sovereignty are only sources of good. Election is not a decree to destroy,—it is a decree only to save. When we elect a President, we do not need to hold a second election to determine that the remaining millions shall be non-Presidents. It is needless to apply contrivance or force. Sinners, like water, if simply let alone, will run down hill to ruin. The decree of reprobation is simply a decree to do nothing—a decree to leave the sinner to himself. The natural result of this judicial forsaking, on the part of God, is the hardening and destruction of the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that this hardening and destruction are not due to any positive efficiency of God,—they are a self-hardening and a self-destruction,—and God's judicial forsaking is only the just penalty of the sinner's guilty rejection of offered mercy.SeeHosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together”;4:17—“Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone”;Rom. 9:22, 23—“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”—here notice that“which he afore prepared”declares a positive divine efficiency, in the case of the vessels of mercy, while“fitted unto destruction”intimates no such positive agency of God,—the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction;2 Tim. 2:20—“vessels ... some unto honor, and some unto dishonor”;1 Pet. 2:8—“they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”;Jude 4—“who were of old set forth[‘written of beforehand’—Am. Rev.]unto this condemnation”;Mat. 25:34, 41—“the kingdom prepared for you ... the eternal fire which is prepared[not for you, nor for men, but]for the devil and his angels”= there is an election to life, but no reprobation to death; a“book of life”(Rev. 21:27), but no book of death.E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.”Men are not“appointed”to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are“appointed”to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher:“The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won't.”George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel's mistake.”The Westminster Confession reads:“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”This reads as if both the saved and the lost were made originally for their respective final estates without respect to character. It is supralapsarianism. It is certain that the supralapsarians were in the majority in the Westminster Assembly, and that they determined the form of the statement, although there were many sublapsarians who objected that it was only on account of their foreseen wickedness that any were reprobated. In its later short statement of doctrine the Presbyterian body in America has made it plain that God's decree of reprobation is a permissive decree, and that it places no barrier in the way of any man's salvation.On the general subject of Election, see Mozley, Predestination; Payne, Divine Sovereignty; Ridgeley, Works, 1:261-324, esp. 322; Edwards, Works, 2:527sq.; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 446-458; Martensen, Dogmatics, 362-382; and especially Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 485-549; H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christian Theology, 502-514; Maule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 36-56; Peck, in Bapt. Quar. Rev., Oct. 1891:689-706. On objections to election, and Spurgeon's answers to them, see Williams, Reminiscences of Spurgeon, 189. On the homiletical uses of the doctrine of election, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1893:79-92.
2. Objections to the Doctrine of Election.(a) It is unjust to those who are not included in this purpose of salvation.—Answer: Election deals, not simply with creatures, but with sinful, guilty, and condemned creatures. That any should be saved, is matter of pure grace, and those who are not included in this purpose of salvation suffer only the due reward of their deeds. There is, therefore, no injustice in God's election. We may better praise God that he saves any, than charge him with injustice because he saves so few.[pg 786]God can say to all men, saved or unsaved,“Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”(Mat. 20:13, 15). The question is not whether a father will treat his children alike, but whether a sovereign must treat condemned rebels alike. It is not true that, because the Governor pardons one convict from the penitentiary, he must therefore pardon all. When he pardons one, no injury is done to those who are left. But, in God's government, there is still less reason for objection; for God offers pardon to all. Nothing prevents men from being pardoned but their unwillingness to accept his pardon. Election is simply God's determination to make certain persons willing to accept it. Because justice cannot save all, shall it therefore save none?Augustine, De Predest. Sanct., 8—“Why does not God teach all? Because it is in mercy that he teaches all whom he does teach, while it is in judgment that he does not teach those whom he does not teach.”In his Manual of Theology and Ethics, 260, Hovey remarks thatRom. 9:20—“who art thou that repliest against God?”—teaches, not that might makes right, but that God is morally entitled to glorify either his righteousness or his mercy in disposing of a guilty race. It is not that he chooses to save only a few ship-wrecked and drowning creatures, but that he chooses to save only a part of a great company who are bent on committing suicide.Prov. 8:36—“he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: All they that hate me love death.”It is best for the universe at large that some should be permitted to have their own way and show how dreadful a thing is opposition to God. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:455.(b) It represents God as partial in his dealings and a respecter of persons.—Answer: Since there is nothing in men that determines God's choice of one rather than another, the objection is invalid. It would equally apply to God's selection of certain nations, as Israel, and certain individuals, as Cyrus, to be recipients of special temporal gifts. If God is not to be regarded as partial in not providing a salvation for fallen angels, he cannot be regarded as partial in not providing regenerating influences of his Spirit for the whole race of fallen men.Ps. 44:3—“For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them; But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, Because thou wast favorable unto them”;Is. 45:1, 4, 5—“Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.... For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me”;Luke 4:25-27—“There were many widows in Israel ... and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel ... and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian”;1 Cor. 4:7—“For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”2 Pet. 2:4—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell”;Heb. 2:16—“For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth help to the seed of Abraham.”Is God partial, in choosing Israel, Cyrus, Naaman? Is God partial, in bestowing upon some of his servants special ministerial gifts? Is God partial, in not providing a salvation for fallen angels? In God's providence, one man is born in a Christian land, the son of a noble family, is endowed with beauty of person, splendid talents, exalted opportunities, immense wealth. Another is born at the Five Points, or among the Hottentots, amid the degradation and depravity of actual, or practical, heathenism. We feel that it is irreverent to complain of God's dealings in providence. What right have sinners to complain of God's dealings in the distribution of his grace? Hovey:“We have no reason to think that God treats all moral beings alike. We should be glad to hear that other races are treated better than we.”Divine election is only the ethical side and interpretation of natural selection. In the latter God chooses certain forms of the vegetable and animal kingdom without merit of theirs. They are preserved while others die. In the matter of individual health, talent, property, one is taken and the other left. If we call all this the result of system, the reply is that God chose the system, knowing precisely what would come of it. Bruce, Apologetics, 201—“Election to distinction in philosophy or art is not incomprehensible, for these are not matters of vital concern; but election to holiness on the part of some, and to unholiness on the part of others, would be inconsistent with God's own holiness.”But there is no such election to unholiness except on the part of man himself. God's election secures only the good. See (c) below.J. J. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 73—“The world is ordered on a basis of inequality; in the organic world, as Darwin has shown, it is of inequality—of[pg 787]favored races—that all progress comes; history shows the same to be true of the human and spiritual world. All human progress is due to elect human individuals, elect not only to be a blessing to themselves, but still more to be a blessing to multitudes of others. Any superiority, whether in the natural or in the mental and spiritual world, becomes a vantage-ground for gaining a greater superiority.... It is the method of the divine government, acting in the provinces both of nature and of grace, that all benefit should come to the many through the elect few.”(c) It represents God as arbitrary.—Answer: It represents God, not as arbitrary, but as exercising the free choice of a wise and sovereign will, in ways and for reasons which are inscrutable to us. To deny the possibility of such a choice is to deny God's personality. To deny that God has reasons for his choice is to deny his wisdom. The doctrine of election finds these reasons, not in men, but in God.When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men. In one case, the reason for God's choice seems revealed:1 Tim. 1:16—“howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life”—here Paul indicates that the reason why God chose him was that he was so great a sinner:verse 15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”Hovey remarks that“the uses to which God can put men, as vessels of grace, may determine his selection of them.”But since the naturally weak are saved, as well as the naturally strong, we cannot draw any general conclusion, or discern any general rule, in God's dealings, unless it be this, that in election God seeks to illustrate the greatness and the variety of his grace,—the reasons lying, therefore, not in men, but in God. We must remember that God'ssovereigntyis the sovereignty ofGod—the infinitely wise, holy and loving God, in whose hands the destinies of men can be left more safely than in the hands of the wisest, most just, and most kind of his creatures.We must believe in the grace of sovereignty as well as in the sovereignty of grace. Election and reprobation are not matters of arbitrary will. God saves all whom he can wisely save. He will show benevolence in the salvation of mankind just so far as he can without prejudice to holiness. No man can be saved without God, but it is also true that there is no man whom God is not willing to save. H. B. Smith, System, 511—“It may be that many of the finally impenitent resist more light than many of the saved.”Harris, Moral Evolution, 401 (for substance)—“Sovereignty is not lost in Fatherhood, but is recovered as the divine law of righteous love. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Augustine be ignorant of us, and Calvin acknowledge us not.”Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:2—“They err who think that of God's will there is no reason except his will.”T. Erskine, The Brazen Serpent, 259—Sovereignty is“just a name for what isunrevealedof God.”We do not knowallof God's reasons for saving particular men, but we do knowsomeof the reasons, for he has revealed them to us. These reasons are not men's merits or works. We have mentioned the first of these reasons: (1) Men's greater sin and need;1 Tim. 1:16—“that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering.”We may add to this: (2) The fact that men have not sinned against the Holy Spirit and made themselves unreceptive to Christ's salvation;1 Tim. 1:13—“I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief”—the fact that Paul had not sinned with full knowledge of what he did was a reason why God could choose him. (3) Men's ability by the help of Christ to be witnesses and martyrs for their Lord;Acts 9:15, 16—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake.”As Paul's mission to the Gentiles may have determined God's choice, so Augustine's mission to the sensual and abandoned may have had the same influence. But if Paul's sins, as foreseen, constituted one reason why God chose to save him, why might not his ability to serve the kingdom have constituted another reason? We add therefore: (4) Men's foreseen ability to serve Christ's kingdom in bringing others to the knowledge of the truth;John 15:16—“I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit.”Notice however that this is choicetoservice, and not simply choiceon account of service. In all these cases the reasons do not lie in the men themselves, for what these men are and what they possess is due to God's providence and grace.(d) It tends to immorality, by representing men's salvation as independent of their own obedience.—Answer: The objection ignores the fact[pg 788]that the salvation of believers is ordained only in connection with their regeneration and sanctification, as means; and that the certainty of final triumph is the strongest incentive to strenuous conflict with sin.Plutarch:“God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.”The purposes of God are an anchor to the storm-tossed spirit. But a ship needs engine, as well as anchor. God does not elect to save any without repentance and faith. Some hold the doctrine of election, but the doctrine of election does not hold them. Such should ponder1 Pet. 1:2, in which Christians are said to be elect,“in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”Augustine:“He loved her [the church] foul, that he might make her fair.”Dr. John Watson (Ian McLaren):“The greatest reinforcement religion could have in our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God.”This is because there is lack of a strong conviction of sin, guilt, and helplessness, still remaining pride and unwillingness to submit to God, imperfect faith in God's trustworthiness and goodness. We must not exclude Arminians from our fellowship—there are too many good Methodists for that. But we may maintain that they hold but half the truth, and that absence of the doctrine of election from their creed makes preaching less serious and character less secure.(e) It inspires pride in those who think themselves elect.—Answer: This is possible only in the case of those who pervert the doctrine. On the contrary, its proper influence is to humble men. Those who exalt themselves above others, upon the ground that they are special favorites of God, have reason to question their election.In the novel, there was great effectiveness in the lover's plea to the object of his affection, that he had loved since he had first set his eyes upon her in her childhood. But God's love for us is of longer standing than that. It dates back to a time before we were born,—aye, even to eternity past. It is a love which was fastened upon us, although God knew the worst of us. It is unchanging, because founded upon his infinite and eternal love to Christ.Jer. 31:3—“Jehovah appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee”;Rom. 8:31-39—“If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”And the answer is, that nothing“shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”This eternal love subdues and humbles:Ps. 115:1—“Not unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory For thy lovingkindness, and for thy truth's sake.”Of the effect of the doctrine of election, Calvin, in his Institutes, 3:22:1, remarks that“when the human mind hears of it, its irritation breaks all restraint, and it discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet.”The cause of this agitation is the apprehension of the fact that one is an enemy of God and yet absolutely dependent upon his mercy. This apprehension leads normally to submission. But the conquered rebel can give no thanks to himself,—all thanks are due to God who has chosen and renewed him. The affections elicited are not those of pride and self-complacency, but of gratitude and love.Christian hymnology witnesses to these effects. Isaac Watts († 1748):“Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there's room, When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come. 'T was the same love that spread the feast That sweetly forced me in; Else I had still refused to taste, And perished in my sin. Pity the nations, O our God! Constrain the earth to come; Send thy victorious word abroad, And bring the wanderers home.”Josiah Conder († 1855):“'Tis not that I did choose thee, For, Lord, that could not be; This heart would still refuse thee; But thou hast chosen me;—Hast, from the sin that stained me, Washed me and set me free, And to this end ordained me That I should live to thee. 'T was sovereign mercy called me, And taught my opening mind; The world had else enthralled me, To heavenly glories blind. My heart owns none above thee: For thy rich grace I thirst; This knowing,—if I love thee, Thou must have loved me first.”(f) It discourages effort for the salvation of the impenitent, whether on their own part or on the part of others.—Answer: Since it is a secret decree, it cannot hinder or discourage such effort. On the other hand, it is a ground of encouragement, and so a stimulus to effort; for, without[pg 789]election, it is certain that all would be lost (cf.Acts 18:10). While it humbles the sinner, so that he is willing to err for mercy, it encourages him also by showing him that some will be saved, and (since election and faith are inseparably connected) that he will be saved, if he will only believe. While it makes the Christian feel entirely dependent on God's power, in his efforts for the impenitent, it leads him to say with Paul that he“endures all things for the elects' sake, that they also may attain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory”(2 Tim. 2:10).God's decree that Paul's ship's company should be saved (Acts 27:24) did not obviate the necessity of their abiding in the ship (verse 31). In marriage, man's election does not exclude woman's; so God's election does not exclude man's. There is just as much need of effort as if there were no election. Hence the question for the sinner is not,“Am I one of the elect?”but rather,“What shall I do to be saved?”Milton represents the spirits of hell as debating foreknowledge and free will, in wandering mazes lost.No man is saved until he ceases to debate, and begins to act. And yet no man will thus begin to act, unless God's Spirit moves him. The Lord encouraged Paul by saying to him:“I have much people in this city”(Acts 18:10)—people whom I will bring in through thy word.“Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.”If God does not regenerate, there is no hope of success in preaching:“God stands powerless before the majesty of man's lordly will. Sinners have the glory of their own salvation. To pray God to convert a man is absurd. God elects the man, because he foresees that the man will elect himself”(see S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 298-307). The doctrine of election does indeed cut off the hopes of those who place confidence in themselves; but it is best that such hopes should be destroyed, and that in place of them should be put a hope in the sovereign grace of God. The doctrine of election does teach man's absolute dependence upon God, and the impossibility of any disappointment or disarrangement of the divine plans arising from the disobedience of the sinner, and it humbles human pride until it is willing to take the place of a suppliant for mercy.Rowland Hill was criticized for preaching election and yet exhorting sinners to repent, and was told that he should preach only to the elect. He replied that, if his critic would put a chalk-mark on all the elect, he would preach only to them. But this is not the whole truth. We are not only ignorant who God's elect are, but we are set to preach to both elect and non-elect (Ez. 2:7—“thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear”), with the certainty that to the former our preaching will make a higher heaven, to the latter a deeper hell (2 Cor. 2:15, 16—“For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life”;cf.Luke 2:34—“this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”—for the falling of some, and for the rising up of others).Jesus' own thanksgiving inMat. 11:25, 26—“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight”—is immediately followed by his invitation inverse 28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”There is no contradiction in his mind between sovereign grace and the free invitations of the gospel.G. W. Northrup, in The Standard, Sept. 19, 1889—“1. God will save every one of the human race whom he can save and remain God; 2. Every member of the race has a full and fair probation, so that all might be saved and would be saved were they to use aright the light which they already have.”... (Private letter):“Limitations of God in the bestowment of salvation: 1. In the power of God in relation to free will; 2. In the benevolence of God which requires the greatest good of creation, or the greatest aggregate good of the greatest number; 3. In the purpose of God to make the most perfect self-limitation; 4. In the sovereignty of God, as a prerogative absolutely optional in its exercise; 5. In the holiness of God, which involves immutable limitations on his part in dealing with moral agents. Nothing but some absolute impossibility, metaphysical or moral, could have prevented him 'whose nature and whose name is love' from decreeing and securing the confirmation of all moral agents in holiness and blessedness forever.”(g) The decree of election implies a decree of reprobation.—Answer: The decree of reprobation is not a positive decree, like that of election,[pg 790]but a permissive decree to leave the sinner to his self-chosen rebellion and its natural consequences of punishment.Election and sovereignty are only sources of good. Election is not a decree to destroy,—it is a decree only to save. When we elect a President, we do not need to hold a second election to determine that the remaining millions shall be non-Presidents. It is needless to apply contrivance or force. Sinners, like water, if simply let alone, will run down hill to ruin. The decree of reprobation is simply a decree to do nothing—a decree to leave the sinner to himself. The natural result of this judicial forsaking, on the part of God, is the hardening and destruction of the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that this hardening and destruction are not due to any positive efficiency of God,—they are a self-hardening and a self-destruction,—and God's judicial forsaking is only the just penalty of the sinner's guilty rejection of offered mercy.SeeHosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together”;4:17—“Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone”;Rom. 9:22, 23—“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”—here notice that“which he afore prepared”declares a positive divine efficiency, in the case of the vessels of mercy, while“fitted unto destruction”intimates no such positive agency of God,—the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction;2 Tim. 2:20—“vessels ... some unto honor, and some unto dishonor”;1 Pet. 2:8—“they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”;Jude 4—“who were of old set forth[‘written of beforehand’—Am. Rev.]unto this condemnation”;Mat. 25:34, 41—“the kingdom prepared for you ... the eternal fire which is prepared[not for you, nor for men, but]for the devil and his angels”= there is an election to life, but no reprobation to death; a“book of life”(Rev. 21:27), but no book of death.E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.”Men are not“appointed”to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are“appointed”to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher:“The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won't.”George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel's mistake.”The Westminster Confession reads:“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”This reads as if both the saved and the lost were made originally for their respective final estates without respect to character. It is supralapsarianism. It is certain that the supralapsarians were in the majority in the Westminster Assembly, and that they determined the form of the statement, although there were many sublapsarians who objected that it was only on account of their foreseen wickedness that any were reprobated. In its later short statement of doctrine the Presbyterian body in America has made it plain that God's decree of reprobation is a permissive decree, and that it places no barrier in the way of any man's salvation.On the general subject of Election, see Mozley, Predestination; Payne, Divine Sovereignty; Ridgeley, Works, 1:261-324, esp. 322; Edwards, Works, 2:527sq.; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 446-458; Martensen, Dogmatics, 362-382; and especially Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 485-549; H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christian Theology, 502-514; Maule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 36-56; Peck, in Bapt. Quar. Rev., Oct. 1891:689-706. On objections to election, and Spurgeon's answers to them, see Williams, Reminiscences of Spurgeon, 189. On the homiletical uses of the doctrine of election, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1893:79-92.
2. Objections to the Doctrine of Election.(a) It is unjust to those who are not included in this purpose of salvation.—Answer: Election deals, not simply with creatures, but with sinful, guilty, and condemned creatures. That any should be saved, is matter of pure grace, and those who are not included in this purpose of salvation suffer only the due reward of their deeds. There is, therefore, no injustice in God's election. We may better praise God that he saves any, than charge him with injustice because he saves so few.[pg 786]God can say to all men, saved or unsaved,“Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”(Mat. 20:13, 15). The question is not whether a father will treat his children alike, but whether a sovereign must treat condemned rebels alike. It is not true that, because the Governor pardons one convict from the penitentiary, he must therefore pardon all. When he pardons one, no injury is done to those who are left. But, in God's government, there is still less reason for objection; for God offers pardon to all. Nothing prevents men from being pardoned but their unwillingness to accept his pardon. Election is simply God's determination to make certain persons willing to accept it. Because justice cannot save all, shall it therefore save none?Augustine, De Predest. Sanct., 8—“Why does not God teach all? Because it is in mercy that he teaches all whom he does teach, while it is in judgment that he does not teach those whom he does not teach.”In his Manual of Theology and Ethics, 260, Hovey remarks thatRom. 9:20—“who art thou that repliest against God?”—teaches, not that might makes right, but that God is morally entitled to glorify either his righteousness or his mercy in disposing of a guilty race. It is not that he chooses to save only a few ship-wrecked and drowning creatures, but that he chooses to save only a part of a great company who are bent on committing suicide.Prov. 8:36—“he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: All they that hate me love death.”It is best for the universe at large that some should be permitted to have their own way and show how dreadful a thing is opposition to God. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:455.(b) It represents God as partial in his dealings and a respecter of persons.—Answer: Since there is nothing in men that determines God's choice of one rather than another, the objection is invalid. It would equally apply to God's selection of certain nations, as Israel, and certain individuals, as Cyrus, to be recipients of special temporal gifts. If God is not to be regarded as partial in not providing a salvation for fallen angels, he cannot be regarded as partial in not providing regenerating influences of his Spirit for the whole race of fallen men.Ps. 44:3—“For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them; But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, Because thou wast favorable unto them”;Is. 45:1, 4, 5—“Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.... For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me”;Luke 4:25-27—“There were many widows in Israel ... and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel ... and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian”;1 Cor. 4:7—“For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”2 Pet. 2:4—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell”;Heb. 2:16—“For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth help to the seed of Abraham.”Is God partial, in choosing Israel, Cyrus, Naaman? Is God partial, in bestowing upon some of his servants special ministerial gifts? Is God partial, in not providing a salvation for fallen angels? In God's providence, one man is born in a Christian land, the son of a noble family, is endowed with beauty of person, splendid talents, exalted opportunities, immense wealth. Another is born at the Five Points, or among the Hottentots, amid the degradation and depravity of actual, or practical, heathenism. We feel that it is irreverent to complain of God's dealings in providence. What right have sinners to complain of God's dealings in the distribution of his grace? Hovey:“We have no reason to think that God treats all moral beings alike. We should be glad to hear that other races are treated better than we.”Divine election is only the ethical side and interpretation of natural selection. In the latter God chooses certain forms of the vegetable and animal kingdom without merit of theirs. They are preserved while others die. In the matter of individual health, talent, property, one is taken and the other left. If we call all this the result of system, the reply is that God chose the system, knowing precisely what would come of it. Bruce, Apologetics, 201—“Election to distinction in philosophy or art is not incomprehensible, for these are not matters of vital concern; but election to holiness on the part of some, and to unholiness on the part of others, would be inconsistent with God's own holiness.”But there is no such election to unholiness except on the part of man himself. God's election secures only the good. See (c) below.J. J. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 73—“The world is ordered on a basis of inequality; in the organic world, as Darwin has shown, it is of inequality—of[pg 787]favored races—that all progress comes; history shows the same to be true of the human and spiritual world. All human progress is due to elect human individuals, elect not only to be a blessing to themselves, but still more to be a blessing to multitudes of others. Any superiority, whether in the natural or in the mental and spiritual world, becomes a vantage-ground for gaining a greater superiority.... It is the method of the divine government, acting in the provinces both of nature and of grace, that all benefit should come to the many through the elect few.”(c) It represents God as arbitrary.—Answer: It represents God, not as arbitrary, but as exercising the free choice of a wise and sovereign will, in ways and for reasons which are inscrutable to us. To deny the possibility of such a choice is to deny God's personality. To deny that God has reasons for his choice is to deny his wisdom. The doctrine of election finds these reasons, not in men, but in God.When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men. In one case, the reason for God's choice seems revealed:1 Tim. 1:16—“howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life”—here Paul indicates that the reason why God chose him was that he was so great a sinner:verse 15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”Hovey remarks that“the uses to which God can put men, as vessels of grace, may determine his selection of them.”But since the naturally weak are saved, as well as the naturally strong, we cannot draw any general conclusion, or discern any general rule, in God's dealings, unless it be this, that in election God seeks to illustrate the greatness and the variety of his grace,—the reasons lying, therefore, not in men, but in God. We must remember that God'ssovereigntyis the sovereignty ofGod—the infinitely wise, holy and loving God, in whose hands the destinies of men can be left more safely than in the hands of the wisest, most just, and most kind of his creatures.We must believe in the grace of sovereignty as well as in the sovereignty of grace. Election and reprobation are not matters of arbitrary will. God saves all whom he can wisely save. He will show benevolence in the salvation of mankind just so far as he can without prejudice to holiness. No man can be saved without God, but it is also true that there is no man whom God is not willing to save. H. B. Smith, System, 511—“It may be that many of the finally impenitent resist more light than many of the saved.”Harris, Moral Evolution, 401 (for substance)—“Sovereignty is not lost in Fatherhood, but is recovered as the divine law of righteous love. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Augustine be ignorant of us, and Calvin acknowledge us not.”Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:2—“They err who think that of God's will there is no reason except his will.”T. Erskine, The Brazen Serpent, 259—Sovereignty is“just a name for what isunrevealedof God.”We do not knowallof God's reasons for saving particular men, but we do knowsomeof the reasons, for he has revealed them to us. These reasons are not men's merits or works. We have mentioned the first of these reasons: (1) Men's greater sin and need;1 Tim. 1:16—“that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering.”We may add to this: (2) The fact that men have not sinned against the Holy Spirit and made themselves unreceptive to Christ's salvation;1 Tim. 1:13—“I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief”—the fact that Paul had not sinned with full knowledge of what he did was a reason why God could choose him. (3) Men's ability by the help of Christ to be witnesses and martyrs for their Lord;Acts 9:15, 16—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake.”As Paul's mission to the Gentiles may have determined God's choice, so Augustine's mission to the sensual and abandoned may have had the same influence. But if Paul's sins, as foreseen, constituted one reason why God chose to save him, why might not his ability to serve the kingdom have constituted another reason? We add therefore: (4) Men's foreseen ability to serve Christ's kingdom in bringing others to the knowledge of the truth;John 15:16—“I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit.”Notice however that this is choicetoservice, and not simply choiceon account of service. In all these cases the reasons do not lie in the men themselves, for what these men are and what they possess is due to God's providence and grace.(d) It tends to immorality, by representing men's salvation as independent of their own obedience.—Answer: The objection ignores the fact[pg 788]that the salvation of believers is ordained only in connection with their regeneration and sanctification, as means; and that the certainty of final triumph is the strongest incentive to strenuous conflict with sin.Plutarch:“God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.”The purposes of God are an anchor to the storm-tossed spirit. But a ship needs engine, as well as anchor. God does not elect to save any without repentance and faith. Some hold the doctrine of election, but the doctrine of election does not hold them. Such should ponder1 Pet. 1:2, in which Christians are said to be elect,“in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”Augustine:“He loved her [the church] foul, that he might make her fair.”Dr. John Watson (Ian McLaren):“The greatest reinforcement religion could have in our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God.”This is because there is lack of a strong conviction of sin, guilt, and helplessness, still remaining pride and unwillingness to submit to God, imperfect faith in God's trustworthiness and goodness. We must not exclude Arminians from our fellowship—there are too many good Methodists for that. But we may maintain that they hold but half the truth, and that absence of the doctrine of election from their creed makes preaching less serious and character less secure.(e) It inspires pride in those who think themselves elect.—Answer: This is possible only in the case of those who pervert the doctrine. On the contrary, its proper influence is to humble men. Those who exalt themselves above others, upon the ground that they are special favorites of God, have reason to question their election.In the novel, there was great effectiveness in the lover's plea to the object of his affection, that he had loved since he had first set his eyes upon her in her childhood. But God's love for us is of longer standing than that. It dates back to a time before we were born,—aye, even to eternity past. It is a love which was fastened upon us, although God knew the worst of us. It is unchanging, because founded upon his infinite and eternal love to Christ.Jer. 31:3—“Jehovah appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee”;Rom. 8:31-39—“If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”And the answer is, that nothing“shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”This eternal love subdues and humbles:Ps. 115:1—“Not unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory For thy lovingkindness, and for thy truth's sake.”Of the effect of the doctrine of election, Calvin, in his Institutes, 3:22:1, remarks that“when the human mind hears of it, its irritation breaks all restraint, and it discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet.”The cause of this agitation is the apprehension of the fact that one is an enemy of God and yet absolutely dependent upon his mercy. This apprehension leads normally to submission. But the conquered rebel can give no thanks to himself,—all thanks are due to God who has chosen and renewed him. The affections elicited are not those of pride and self-complacency, but of gratitude and love.Christian hymnology witnesses to these effects. Isaac Watts († 1748):“Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there's room, When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come. 'T was the same love that spread the feast That sweetly forced me in; Else I had still refused to taste, And perished in my sin. Pity the nations, O our God! Constrain the earth to come; Send thy victorious word abroad, And bring the wanderers home.”Josiah Conder († 1855):“'Tis not that I did choose thee, For, Lord, that could not be; This heart would still refuse thee; But thou hast chosen me;—Hast, from the sin that stained me, Washed me and set me free, And to this end ordained me That I should live to thee. 'T was sovereign mercy called me, And taught my opening mind; The world had else enthralled me, To heavenly glories blind. My heart owns none above thee: For thy rich grace I thirst; This knowing,—if I love thee, Thou must have loved me first.”(f) It discourages effort for the salvation of the impenitent, whether on their own part or on the part of others.—Answer: Since it is a secret decree, it cannot hinder or discourage such effort. On the other hand, it is a ground of encouragement, and so a stimulus to effort; for, without[pg 789]election, it is certain that all would be lost (cf.Acts 18:10). While it humbles the sinner, so that he is willing to err for mercy, it encourages him also by showing him that some will be saved, and (since election and faith are inseparably connected) that he will be saved, if he will only believe. While it makes the Christian feel entirely dependent on God's power, in his efforts for the impenitent, it leads him to say with Paul that he“endures all things for the elects' sake, that they also may attain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory”(2 Tim. 2:10).God's decree that Paul's ship's company should be saved (Acts 27:24) did not obviate the necessity of their abiding in the ship (verse 31). In marriage, man's election does not exclude woman's; so God's election does not exclude man's. There is just as much need of effort as if there were no election. Hence the question for the sinner is not,“Am I one of the elect?”but rather,“What shall I do to be saved?”Milton represents the spirits of hell as debating foreknowledge and free will, in wandering mazes lost.No man is saved until he ceases to debate, and begins to act. And yet no man will thus begin to act, unless God's Spirit moves him. The Lord encouraged Paul by saying to him:“I have much people in this city”(Acts 18:10)—people whom I will bring in through thy word.“Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.”If God does not regenerate, there is no hope of success in preaching:“God stands powerless before the majesty of man's lordly will. Sinners have the glory of their own salvation. To pray God to convert a man is absurd. God elects the man, because he foresees that the man will elect himself”(see S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 298-307). The doctrine of election does indeed cut off the hopes of those who place confidence in themselves; but it is best that such hopes should be destroyed, and that in place of them should be put a hope in the sovereign grace of God. The doctrine of election does teach man's absolute dependence upon God, and the impossibility of any disappointment or disarrangement of the divine plans arising from the disobedience of the sinner, and it humbles human pride until it is willing to take the place of a suppliant for mercy.Rowland Hill was criticized for preaching election and yet exhorting sinners to repent, and was told that he should preach only to the elect. He replied that, if his critic would put a chalk-mark on all the elect, he would preach only to them. But this is not the whole truth. We are not only ignorant who God's elect are, but we are set to preach to both elect and non-elect (Ez. 2:7—“thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear”), with the certainty that to the former our preaching will make a higher heaven, to the latter a deeper hell (2 Cor. 2:15, 16—“For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life”;cf.Luke 2:34—“this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”—for the falling of some, and for the rising up of others).Jesus' own thanksgiving inMat. 11:25, 26—“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight”—is immediately followed by his invitation inverse 28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”There is no contradiction in his mind between sovereign grace and the free invitations of the gospel.G. W. Northrup, in The Standard, Sept. 19, 1889—“1. God will save every one of the human race whom he can save and remain God; 2. Every member of the race has a full and fair probation, so that all might be saved and would be saved were they to use aright the light which they already have.”... (Private letter):“Limitations of God in the bestowment of salvation: 1. In the power of God in relation to free will; 2. In the benevolence of God which requires the greatest good of creation, or the greatest aggregate good of the greatest number; 3. In the purpose of God to make the most perfect self-limitation; 4. In the sovereignty of God, as a prerogative absolutely optional in its exercise; 5. In the holiness of God, which involves immutable limitations on his part in dealing with moral agents. Nothing but some absolute impossibility, metaphysical or moral, could have prevented him 'whose nature and whose name is love' from decreeing and securing the confirmation of all moral agents in holiness and blessedness forever.”(g) The decree of election implies a decree of reprobation.—Answer: The decree of reprobation is not a positive decree, like that of election,[pg 790]but a permissive decree to leave the sinner to his self-chosen rebellion and its natural consequences of punishment.Election and sovereignty are only sources of good. Election is not a decree to destroy,—it is a decree only to save. When we elect a President, we do not need to hold a second election to determine that the remaining millions shall be non-Presidents. It is needless to apply contrivance or force. Sinners, like water, if simply let alone, will run down hill to ruin. The decree of reprobation is simply a decree to do nothing—a decree to leave the sinner to himself. The natural result of this judicial forsaking, on the part of God, is the hardening and destruction of the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that this hardening and destruction are not due to any positive efficiency of God,—they are a self-hardening and a self-destruction,—and God's judicial forsaking is only the just penalty of the sinner's guilty rejection of offered mercy.SeeHosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together”;4:17—“Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone”;Rom. 9:22, 23—“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”—here notice that“which he afore prepared”declares a positive divine efficiency, in the case of the vessels of mercy, while“fitted unto destruction”intimates no such positive agency of God,—the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction;2 Tim. 2:20—“vessels ... some unto honor, and some unto dishonor”;1 Pet. 2:8—“they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”;Jude 4—“who were of old set forth[‘written of beforehand’—Am. Rev.]unto this condemnation”;Mat. 25:34, 41—“the kingdom prepared for you ... the eternal fire which is prepared[not for you, nor for men, but]for the devil and his angels”= there is an election to life, but no reprobation to death; a“book of life”(Rev. 21:27), but no book of death.E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.”Men are not“appointed”to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are“appointed”to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher:“The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won't.”George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel's mistake.”The Westminster Confession reads:“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”This reads as if both the saved and the lost were made originally for their respective final estates without respect to character. It is supralapsarianism. It is certain that the supralapsarians were in the majority in the Westminster Assembly, and that they determined the form of the statement, although there were many sublapsarians who objected that it was only on account of their foreseen wickedness that any were reprobated. In its later short statement of doctrine the Presbyterian body in America has made it plain that God's decree of reprobation is a permissive decree, and that it places no barrier in the way of any man's salvation.On the general subject of Election, see Mozley, Predestination; Payne, Divine Sovereignty; Ridgeley, Works, 1:261-324, esp. 322; Edwards, Works, 2:527sq.; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 446-458; Martensen, Dogmatics, 362-382; and especially Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 485-549; H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christian Theology, 502-514; Maule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 36-56; Peck, in Bapt. Quar. Rev., Oct. 1891:689-706. On objections to election, and Spurgeon's answers to them, see Williams, Reminiscences of Spurgeon, 189. On the homiletical uses of the doctrine of election, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1893:79-92.
2. Objections to the Doctrine of Election.(a) It is unjust to those who are not included in this purpose of salvation.—Answer: Election deals, not simply with creatures, but with sinful, guilty, and condemned creatures. That any should be saved, is matter of pure grace, and those who are not included in this purpose of salvation suffer only the due reward of their deeds. There is, therefore, no injustice in God's election. We may better praise God that he saves any, than charge him with injustice because he saves so few.[pg 786]God can say to all men, saved or unsaved,“Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”(Mat. 20:13, 15). The question is not whether a father will treat his children alike, but whether a sovereign must treat condemned rebels alike. It is not true that, because the Governor pardons one convict from the penitentiary, he must therefore pardon all. When he pardons one, no injury is done to those who are left. But, in God's government, there is still less reason for objection; for God offers pardon to all. Nothing prevents men from being pardoned but their unwillingness to accept his pardon. Election is simply God's determination to make certain persons willing to accept it. Because justice cannot save all, shall it therefore save none?Augustine, De Predest. Sanct., 8—“Why does not God teach all? Because it is in mercy that he teaches all whom he does teach, while it is in judgment that he does not teach those whom he does not teach.”In his Manual of Theology and Ethics, 260, Hovey remarks thatRom. 9:20—“who art thou that repliest against God?”—teaches, not that might makes right, but that God is morally entitled to glorify either his righteousness or his mercy in disposing of a guilty race. It is not that he chooses to save only a few ship-wrecked and drowning creatures, but that he chooses to save only a part of a great company who are bent on committing suicide.Prov. 8:36—“he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: All they that hate me love death.”It is best for the universe at large that some should be permitted to have their own way and show how dreadful a thing is opposition to God. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:455.(b) It represents God as partial in his dealings and a respecter of persons.—Answer: Since there is nothing in men that determines God's choice of one rather than another, the objection is invalid. It would equally apply to God's selection of certain nations, as Israel, and certain individuals, as Cyrus, to be recipients of special temporal gifts. If God is not to be regarded as partial in not providing a salvation for fallen angels, he cannot be regarded as partial in not providing regenerating influences of his Spirit for the whole race of fallen men.Ps. 44:3—“For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them; But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, Because thou wast favorable unto them”;Is. 45:1, 4, 5—“Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.... For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me”;Luke 4:25-27—“There were many widows in Israel ... and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel ... and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian”;1 Cor. 4:7—“For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”2 Pet. 2:4—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell”;Heb. 2:16—“For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth help to the seed of Abraham.”Is God partial, in choosing Israel, Cyrus, Naaman? Is God partial, in bestowing upon some of his servants special ministerial gifts? Is God partial, in not providing a salvation for fallen angels? In God's providence, one man is born in a Christian land, the son of a noble family, is endowed with beauty of person, splendid talents, exalted opportunities, immense wealth. Another is born at the Five Points, or among the Hottentots, amid the degradation and depravity of actual, or practical, heathenism. We feel that it is irreverent to complain of God's dealings in providence. What right have sinners to complain of God's dealings in the distribution of his grace? Hovey:“We have no reason to think that God treats all moral beings alike. We should be glad to hear that other races are treated better than we.”Divine election is only the ethical side and interpretation of natural selection. In the latter God chooses certain forms of the vegetable and animal kingdom without merit of theirs. They are preserved while others die. In the matter of individual health, talent, property, one is taken and the other left. If we call all this the result of system, the reply is that God chose the system, knowing precisely what would come of it. Bruce, Apologetics, 201—“Election to distinction in philosophy or art is not incomprehensible, for these are not matters of vital concern; but election to holiness on the part of some, and to unholiness on the part of others, would be inconsistent with God's own holiness.”But there is no such election to unholiness except on the part of man himself. God's election secures only the good. See (c) below.J. J. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 73—“The world is ordered on a basis of inequality; in the organic world, as Darwin has shown, it is of inequality—of[pg 787]favored races—that all progress comes; history shows the same to be true of the human and spiritual world. All human progress is due to elect human individuals, elect not only to be a blessing to themselves, but still more to be a blessing to multitudes of others. Any superiority, whether in the natural or in the mental and spiritual world, becomes a vantage-ground for gaining a greater superiority.... It is the method of the divine government, acting in the provinces both of nature and of grace, that all benefit should come to the many through the elect few.”(c) It represents God as arbitrary.—Answer: It represents God, not as arbitrary, but as exercising the free choice of a wise and sovereign will, in ways and for reasons which are inscrutable to us. To deny the possibility of such a choice is to deny God's personality. To deny that God has reasons for his choice is to deny his wisdom. The doctrine of election finds these reasons, not in men, but in God.When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men. In one case, the reason for God's choice seems revealed:1 Tim. 1:16—“howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life”—here Paul indicates that the reason why God chose him was that he was so great a sinner:verse 15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”Hovey remarks that“the uses to which God can put men, as vessels of grace, may determine his selection of them.”But since the naturally weak are saved, as well as the naturally strong, we cannot draw any general conclusion, or discern any general rule, in God's dealings, unless it be this, that in election God seeks to illustrate the greatness and the variety of his grace,—the reasons lying, therefore, not in men, but in God. We must remember that God'ssovereigntyis the sovereignty ofGod—the infinitely wise, holy and loving God, in whose hands the destinies of men can be left more safely than in the hands of the wisest, most just, and most kind of his creatures.We must believe in the grace of sovereignty as well as in the sovereignty of grace. Election and reprobation are not matters of arbitrary will. God saves all whom he can wisely save. He will show benevolence in the salvation of mankind just so far as he can without prejudice to holiness. No man can be saved without God, but it is also true that there is no man whom God is not willing to save. H. B. Smith, System, 511—“It may be that many of the finally impenitent resist more light than many of the saved.”Harris, Moral Evolution, 401 (for substance)—“Sovereignty is not lost in Fatherhood, but is recovered as the divine law of righteous love. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Augustine be ignorant of us, and Calvin acknowledge us not.”Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:2—“They err who think that of God's will there is no reason except his will.”T. Erskine, The Brazen Serpent, 259—Sovereignty is“just a name for what isunrevealedof God.”We do not knowallof God's reasons for saving particular men, but we do knowsomeof the reasons, for he has revealed them to us. These reasons are not men's merits or works. We have mentioned the first of these reasons: (1) Men's greater sin and need;1 Tim. 1:16—“that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering.”We may add to this: (2) The fact that men have not sinned against the Holy Spirit and made themselves unreceptive to Christ's salvation;1 Tim. 1:13—“I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief”—the fact that Paul had not sinned with full knowledge of what he did was a reason why God could choose him. (3) Men's ability by the help of Christ to be witnesses and martyrs for their Lord;Acts 9:15, 16—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake.”As Paul's mission to the Gentiles may have determined God's choice, so Augustine's mission to the sensual and abandoned may have had the same influence. But if Paul's sins, as foreseen, constituted one reason why God chose to save him, why might not his ability to serve the kingdom have constituted another reason? We add therefore: (4) Men's foreseen ability to serve Christ's kingdom in bringing others to the knowledge of the truth;John 15:16—“I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit.”Notice however that this is choicetoservice, and not simply choiceon account of service. In all these cases the reasons do not lie in the men themselves, for what these men are and what they possess is due to God's providence and grace.(d) It tends to immorality, by representing men's salvation as independent of their own obedience.—Answer: The objection ignores the fact[pg 788]that the salvation of believers is ordained only in connection with their regeneration and sanctification, as means; and that the certainty of final triumph is the strongest incentive to strenuous conflict with sin.Plutarch:“God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.”The purposes of God are an anchor to the storm-tossed spirit. But a ship needs engine, as well as anchor. God does not elect to save any without repentance and faith. Some hold the doctrine of election, but the doctrine of election does not hold them. Such should ponder1 Pet. 1:2, in which Christians are said to be elect,“in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”Augustine:“He loved her [the church] foul, that he might make her fair.”Dr. John Watson (Ian McLaren):“The greatest reinforcement religion could have in our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God.”This is because there is lack of a strong conviction of sin, guilt, and helplessness, still remaining pride and unwillingness to submit to God, imperfect faith in God's trustworthiness and goodness. We must not exclude Arminians from our fellowship—there are too many good Methodists for that. But we may maintain that they hold but half the truth, and that absence of the doctrine of election from their creed makes preaching less serious and character less secure.(e) It inspires pride in those who think themselves elect.—Answer: This is possible only in the case of those who pervert the doctrine. On the contrary, its proper influence is to humble men. Those who exalt themselves above others, upon the ground that they are special favorites of God, have reason to question their election.In the novel, there was great effectiveness in the lover's plea to the object of his affection, that he had loved since he had first set his eyes upon her in her childhood. But God's love for us is of longer standing than that. It dates back to a time before we were born,—aye, even to eternity past. It is a love which was fastened upon us, although God knew the worst of us. It is unchanging, because founded upon his infinite and eternal love to Christ.Jer. 31:3—“Jehovah appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee”;Rom. 8:31-39—“If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”And the answer is, that nothing“shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”This eternal love subdues and humbles:Ps. 115:1—“Not unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory For thy lovingkindness, and for thy truth's sake.”Of the effect of the doctrine of election, Calvin, in his Institutes, 3:22:1, remarks that“when the human mind hears of it, its irritation breaks all restraint, and it discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet.”The cause of this agitation is the apprehension of the fact that one is an enemy of God and yet absolutely dependent upon his mercy. This apprehension leads normally to submission. But the conquered rebel can give no thanks to himself,—all thanks are due to God who has chosen and renewed him. The affections elicited are not those of pride and self-complacency, but of gratitude and love.Christian hymnology witnesses to these effects. Isaac Watts († 1748):“Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there's room, When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come. 'T was the same love that spread the feast That sweetly forced me in; Else I had still refused to taste, And perished in my sin. Pity the nations, O our God! Constrain the earth to come; Send thy victorious word abroad, And bring the wanderers home.”Josiah Conder († 1855):“'Tis not that I did choose thee, For, Lord, that could not be; This heart would still refuse thee; But thou hast chosen me;—Hast, from the sin that stained me, Washed me and set me free, And to this end ordained me That I should live to thee. 'T was sovereign mercy called me, And taught my opening mind; The world had else enthralled me, To heavenly glories blind. My heart owns none above thee: For thy rich grace I thirst; This knowing,—if I love thee, Thou must have loved me first.”(f) It discourages effort for the salvation of the impenitent, whether on their own part or on the part of others.—Answer: Since it is a secret decree, it cannot hinder or discourage such effort. On the other hand, it is a ground of encouragement, and so a stimulus to effort; for, without[pg 789]election, it is certain that all would be lost (cf.Acts 18:10). While it humbles the sinner, so that he is willing to err for mercy, it encourages him also by showing him that some will be saved, and (since election and faith are inseparably connected) that he will be saved, if he will only believe. While it makes the Christian feel entirely dependent on God's power, in his efforts for the impenitent, it leads him to say with Paul that he“endures all things for the elects' sake, that they also may attain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory”(2 Tim. 2:10).God's decree that Paul's ship's company should be saved (Acts 27:24) did not obviate the necessity of their abiding in the ship (verse 31). In marriage, man's election does not exclude woman's; so God's election does not exclude man's. There is just as much need of effort as if there were no election. Hence the question for the sinner is not,“Am I one of the elect?”but rather,“What shall I do to be saved?”Milton represents the spirits of hell as debating foreknowledge and free will, in wandering mazes lost.No man is saved until he ceases to debate, and begins to act. And yet no man will thus begin to act, unless God's Spirit moves him. The Lord encouraged Paul by saying to him:“I have much people in this city”(Acts 18:10)—people whom I will bring in through thy word.“Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.”If God does not regenerate, there is no hope of success in preaching:“God stands powerless before the majesty of man's lordly will. Sinners have the glory of their own salvation. To pray God to convert a man is absurd. God elects the man, because he foresees that the man will elect himself”(see S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 298-307). The doctrine of election does indeed cut off the hopes of those who place confidence in themselves; but it is best that such hopes should be destroyed, and that in place of them should be put a hope in the sovereign grace of God. The doctrine of election does teach man's absolute dependence upon God, and the impossibility of any disappointment or disarrangement of the divine plans arising from the disobedience of the sinner, and it humbles human pride until it is willing to take the place of a suppliant for mercy.Rowland Hill was criticized for preaching election and yet exhorting sinners to repent, and was told that he should preach only to the elect. He replied that, if his critic would put a chalk-mark on all the elect, he would preach only to them. But this is not the whole truth. We are not only ignorant who God's elect are, but we are set to preach to both elect and non-elect (Ez. 2:7—“thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear”), with the certainty that to the former our preaching will make a higher heaven, to the latter a deeper hell (2 Cor. 2:15, 16—“For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life”;cf.Luke 2:34—“this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”—for the falling of some, and for the rising up of others).Jesus' own thanksgiving inMat. 11:25, 26—“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight”—is immediately followed by his invitation inverse 28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”There is no contradiction in his mind between sovereign grace and the free invitations of the gospel.G. W. Northrup, in The Standard, Sept. 19, 1889—“1. God will save every one of the human race whom he can save and remain God; 2. Every member of the race has a full and fair probation, so that all might be saved and would be saved were they to use aright the light which they already have.”... (Private letter):“Limitations of God in the bestowment of salvation: 1. In the power of God in relation to free will; 2. In the benevolence of God which requires the greatest good of creation, or the greatest aggregate good of the greatest number; 3. In the purpose of God to make the most perfect self-limitation; 4. In the sovereignty of God, as a prerogative absolutely optional in its exercise; 5. In the holiness of God, which involves immutable limitations on his part in dealing with moral agents. Nothing but some absolute impossibility, metaphysical or moral, could have prevented him 'whose nature and whose name is love' from decreeing and securing the confirmation of all moral agents in holiness and blessedness forever.”(g) The decree of election implies a decree of reprobation.—Answer: The decree of reprobation is not a positive decree, like that of election,[pg 790]but a permissive decree to leave the sinner to his self-chosen rebellion and its natural consequences of punishment.Election and sovereignty are only sources of good. Election is not a decree to destroy,—it is a decree only to save. When we elect a President, we do not need to hold a second election to determine that the remaining millions shall be non-Presidents. It is needless to apply contrivance or force. Sinners, like water, if simply let alone, will run down hill to ruin. The decree of reprobation is simply a decree to do nothing—a decree to leave the sinner to himself. The natural result of this judicial forsaking, on the part of God, is the hardening and destruction of the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that this hardening and destruction are not due to any positive efficiency of God,—they are a self-hardening and a self-destruction,—and God's judicial forsaking is only the just penalty of the sinner's guilty rejection of offered mercy.SeeHosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together”;4:17—“Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone”;Rom. 9:22, 23—“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”—here notice that“which he afore prepared”declares a positive divine efficiency, in the case of the vessels of mercy, while“fitted unto destruction”intimates no such positive agency of God,—the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction;2 Tim. 2:20—“vessels ... some unto honor, and some unto dishonor”;1 Pet. 2:8—“they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”;Jude 4—“who were of old set forth[‘written of beforehand’—Am. Rev.]unto this condemnation”;Mat. 25:34, 41—“the kingdom prepared for you ... the eternal fire which is prepared[not for you, nor for men, but]for the devil and his angels”= there is an election to life, but no reprobation to death; a“book of life”(Rev. 21:27), but no book of death.E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.”Men are not“appointed”to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are“appointed”to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher:“The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won't.”George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel's mistake.”The Westminster Confession reads:“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”This reads as if both the saved and the lost were made originally for their respective final estates without respect to character. It is supralapsarianism. It is certain that the supralapsarians were in the majority in the Westminster Assembly, and that they determined the form of the statement, although there were many sublapsarians who objected that it was only on account of their foreseen wickedness that any were reprobated. In its later short statement of doctrine the Presbyterian body in America has made it plain that God's decree of reprobation is a permissive decree, and that it places no barrier in the way of any man's salvation.On the general subject of Election, see Mozley, Predestination; Payne, Divine Sovereignty; Ridgeley, Works, 1:261-324, esp. 322; Edwards, Works, 2:527sq.; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 446-458; Martensen, Dogmatics, 362-382; and especially Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 485-549; H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christian Theology, 502-514; Maule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 36-56; Peck, in Bapt. Quar. Rev., Oct. 1891:689-706. On objections to election, and Spurgeon's answers to them, see Williams, Reminiscences of Spurgeon, 189. On the homiletical uses of the doctrine of election, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1893:79-92.
(a) It is unjust to those who are not included in this purpose of salvation.—Answer: Election deals, not simply with creatures, but with sinful, guilty, and condemned creatures. That any should be saved, is matter of pure grace, and those who are not included in this purpose of salvation suffer only the due reward of their deeds. There is, therefore, no injustice in God's election. We may better praise God that he saves any, than charge him with injustice because he saves so few.
God can say to all men, saved or unsaved,“Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”(Mat. 20:13, 15). The question is not whether a father will treat his children alike, but whether a sovereign must treat condemned rebels alike. It is not true that, because the Governor pardons one convict from the penitentiary, he must therefore pardon all. When he pardons one, no injury is done to those who are left. But, in God's government, there is still less reason for objection; for God offers pardon to all. Nothing prevents men from being pardoned but their unwillingness to accept his pardon. Election is simply God's determination to make certain persons willing to accept it. Because justice cannot save all, shall it therefore save none?Augustine, De Predest. Sanct., 8—“Why does not God teach all? Because it is in mercy that he teaches all whom he does teach, while it is in judgment that he does not teach those whom he does not teach.”In his Manual of Theology and Ethics, 260, Hovey remarks thatRom. 9:20—“who art thou that repliest against God?”—teaches, not that might makes right, but that God is morally entitled to glorify either his righteousness or his mercy in disposing of a guilty race. It is not that he chooses to save only a few ship-wrecked and drowning creatures, but that he chooses to save only a part of a great company who are bent on committing suicide.Prov. 8:36—“he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: All they that hate me love death.”It is best for the universe at large that some should be permitted to have their own way and show how dreadful a thing is opposition to God. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:455.
God can say to all men, saved or unsaved,“Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”(Mat. 20:13, 15). The question is not whether a father will treat his children alike, but whether a sovereign must treat condemned rebels alike. It is not true that, because the Governor pardons one convict from the penitentiary, he must therefore pardon all. When he pardons one, no injury is done to those who are left. But, in God's government, there is still less reason for objection; for God offers pardon to all. Nothing prevents men from being pardoned but their unwillingness to accept his pardon. Election is simply God's determination to make certain persons willing to accept it. Because justice cannot save all, shall it therefore save none?
Augustine, De Predest. Sanct., 8—“Why does not God teach all? Because it is in mercy that he teaches all whom he does teach, while it is in judgment that he does not teach those whom he does not teach.”In his Manual of Theology and Ethics, 260, Hovey remarks thatRom. 9:20—“who art thou that repliest against God?”—teaches, not that might makes right, but that God is morally entitled to glorify either his righteousness or his mercy in disposing of a guilty race. It is not that he chooses to save only a few ship-wrecked and drowning creatures, but that he chooses to save only a part of a great company who are bent on committing suicide.Prov. 8:36—“he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: All they that hate me love death.”It is best for the universe at large that some should be permitted to have their own way and show how dreadful a thing is opposition to God. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:455.
(b) It represents God as partial in his dealings and a respecter of persons.—Answer: Since there is nothing in men that determines God's choice of one rather than another, the objection is invalid. It would equally apply to God's selection of certain nations, as Israel, and certain individuals, as Cyrus, to be recipients of special temporal gifts. If God is not to be regarded as partial in not providing a salvation for fallen angels, he cannot be regarded as partial in not providing regenerating influences of his Spirit for the whole race of fallen men.
Ps. 44:3—“For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them; But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, Because thou wast favorable unto them”;Is. 45:1, 4, 5—“Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.... For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me”;Luke 4:25-27—“There were many widows in Israel ... and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel ... and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian”;1 Cor. 4:7—“For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”2 Pet. 2:4—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell”;Heb. 2:16—“For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth help to the seed of Abraham.”Is God partial, in choosing Israel, Cyrus, Naaman? Is God partial, in bestowing upon some of his servants special ministerial gifts? Is God partial, in not providing a salvation for fallen angels? In God's providence, one man is born in a Christian land, the son of a noble family, is endowed with beauty of person, splendid talents, exalted opportunities, immense wealth. Another is born at the Five Points, or among the Hottentots, amid the degradation and depravity of actual, or practical, heathenism. We feel that it is irreverent to complain of God's dealings in providence. What right have sinners to complain of God's dealings in the distribution of his grace? Hovey:“We have no reason to think that God treats all moral beings alike. We should be glad to hear that other races are treated better than we.”Divine election is only the ethical side and interpretation of natural selection. In the latter God chooses certain forms of the vegetable and animal kingdom without merit of theirs. They are preserved while others die. In the matter of individual health, talent, property, one is taken and the other left. If we call all this the result of system, the reply is that God chose the system, knowing precisely what would come of it. Bruce, Apologetics, 201—“Election to distinction in philosophy or art is not incomprehensible, for these are not matters of vital concern; but election to holiness on the part of some, and to unholiness on the part of others, would be inconsistent with God's own holiness.”But there is no such election to unholiness except on the part of man himself. God's election secures only the good. See (c) below.J. J. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 73—“The world is ordered on a basis of inequality; in the organic world, as Darwin has shown, it is of inequality—of[pg 787]favored races—that all progress comes; history shows the same to be true of the human and spiritual world. All human progress is due to elect human individuals, elect not only to be a blessing to themselves, but still more to be a blessing to multitudes of others. Any superiority, whether in the natural or in the mental and spiritual world, becomes a vantage-ground for gaining a greater superiority.... It is the method of the divine government, acting in the provinces both of nature and of grace, that all benefit should come to the many through the elect few.”
Ps. 44:3—“For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them; But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, Because thou wast favorable unto them”;Is. 45:1, 4, 5—“Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.... For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me”;Luke 4:25-27—“There were many widows in Israel ... and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel ... and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian”;1 Cor. 4:7—“For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”2 Pet. 2:4—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell”;Heb. 2:16—“For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth help to the seed of Abraham.”
Is God partial, in choosing Israel, Cyrus, Naaman? Is God partial, in bestowing upon some of his servants special ministerial gifts? Is God partial, in not providing a salvation for fallen angels? In God's providence, one man is born in a Christian land, the son of a noble family, is endowed with beauty of person, splendid talents, exalted opportunities, immense wealth. Another is born at the Five Points, or among the Hottentots, amid the degradation and depravity of actual, or practical, heathenism. We feel that it is irreverent to complain of God's dealings in providence. What right have sinners to complain of God's dealings in the distribution of his grace? Hovey:“We have no reason to think that God treats all moral beings alike. We should be glad to hear that other races are treated better than we.”
Divine election is only the ethical side and interpretation of natural selection. In the latter God chooses certain forms of the vegetable and animal kingdom without merit of theirs. They are preserved while others die. In the matter of individual health, talent, property, one is taken and the other left. If we call all this the result of system, the reply is that God chose the system, knowing precisely what would come of it. Bruce, Apologetics, 201—“Election to distinction in philosophy or art is not incomprehensible, for these are not matters of vital concern; but election to holiness on the part of some, and to unholiness on the part of others, would be inconsistent with God's own holiness.”But there is no such election to unholiness except on the part of man himself. God's election secures only the good. See (c) below.
J. J. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 73—“The world is ordered on a basis of inequality; in the organic world, as Darwin has shown, it is of inequality—of[pg 787]favored races—that all progress comes; history shows the same to be true of the human and spiritual world. All human progress is due to elect human individuals, elect not only to be a blessing to themselves, but still more to be a blessing to multitudes of others. Any superiority, whether in the natural or in the mental and spiritual world, becomes a vantage-ground for gaining a greater superiority.... It is the method of the divine government, acting in the provinces both of nature and of grace, that all benefit should come to the many through the elect few.”
(c) It represents God as arbitrary.—Answer: It represents God, not as arbitrary, but as exercising the free choice of a wise and sovereign will, in ways and for reasons which are inscrutable to us. To deny the possibility of such a choice is to deny God's personality. To deny that God has reasons for his choice is to deny his wisdom. The doctrine of election finds these reasons, not in men, but in God.
When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men. In one case, the reason for God's choice seems revealed:1 Tim. 1:16—“howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life”—here Paul indicates that the reason why God chose him was that he was so great a sinner:verse 15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”Hovey remarks that“the uses to which God can put men, as vessels of grace, may determine his selection of them.”But since the naturally weak are saved, as well as the naturally strong, we cannot draw any general conclusion, or discern any general rule, in God's dealings, unless it be this, that in election God seeks to illustrate the greatness and the variety of his grace,—the reasons lying, therefore, not in men, but in God. We must remember that God'ssovereigntyis the sovereignty ofGod—the infinitely wise, holy and loving God, in whose hands the destinies of men can be left more safely than in the hands of the wisest, most just, and most kind of his creatures.We must believe in the grace of sovereignty as well as in the sovereignty of grace. Election and reprobation are not matters of arbitrary will. God saves all whom he can wisely save. He will show benevolence in the salvation of mankind just so far as he can without prejudice to holiness. No man can be saved without God, but it is also true that there is no man whom God is not willing to save. H. B. Smith, System, 511—“It may be that many of the finally impenitent resist more light than many of the saved.”Harris, Moral Evolution, 401 (for substance)—“Sovereignty is not lost in Fatherhood, but is recovered as the divine law of righteous love. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Augustine be ignorant of us, and Calvin acknowledge us not.”Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:2—“They err who think that of God's will there is no reason except his will.”T. Erskine, The Brazen Serpent, 259—Sovereignty is“just a name for what isunrevealedof God.”We do not knowallof God's reasons for saving particular men, but we do knowsomeof the reasons, for he has revealed them to us. These reasons are not men's merits or works. We have mentioned the first of these reasons: (1) Men's greater sin and need;1 Tim. 1:16—“that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering.”We may add to this: (2) The fact that men have not sinned against the Holy Spirit and made themselves unreceptive to Christ's salvation;1 Tim. 1:13—“I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief”—the fact that Paul had not sinned with full knowledge of what he did was a reason why God could choose him. (3) Men's ability by the help of Christ to be witnesses and martyrs for their Lord;Acts 9:15, 16—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake.”As Paul's mission to the Gentiles may have determined God's choice, so Augustine's mission to the sensual and abandoned may have had the same influence. But if Paul's sins, as foreseen, constituted one reason why God chose to save him, why might not his ability to serve the kingdom have constituted another reason? We add therefore: (4) Men's foreseen ability to serve Christ's kingdom in bringing others to the knowledge of the truth;John 15:16—“I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit.”Notice however that this is choicetoservice, and not simply choiceon account of service. In all these cases the reasons do not lie in the men themselves, for what these men are and what they possess is due to God's providence and grace.
When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men. In one case, the reason for God's choice seems revealed:1 Tim. 1:16—“howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life”—here Paul indicates that the reason why God chose him was that he was so great a sinner:verse 15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”Hovey remarks that“the uses to which God can put men, as vessels of grace, may determine his selection of them.”But since the naturally weak are saved, as well as the naturally strong, we cannot draw any general conclusion, or discern any general rule, in God's dealings, unless it be this, that in election God seeks to illustrate the greatness and the variety of his grace,—the reasons lying, therefore, not in men, but in God. We must remember that God'ssovereigntyis the sovereignty ofGod—the infinitely wise, holy and loving God, in whose hands the destinies of men can be left more safely than in the hands of the wisest, most just, and most kind of his creatures.
We must believe in the grace of sovereignty as well as in the sovereignty of grace. Election and reprobation are not matters of arbitrary will. God saves all whom he can wisely save. He will show benevolence in the salvation of mankind just so far as he can without prejudice to holiness. No man can be saved without God, but it is also true that there is no man whom God is not willing to save. H. B. Smith, System, 511—“It may be that many of the finally impenitent resist more light than many of the saved.”Harris, Moral Evolution, 401 (for substance)—“Sovereignty is not lost in Fatherhood, but is recovered as the divine law of righteous love. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Augustine be ignorant of us, and Calvin acknowledge us not.”Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:2—“They err who think that of God's will there is no reason except his will.”T. Erskine, The Brazen Serpent, 259—Sovereignty is“just a name for what isunrevealedof God.”
We do not knowallof God's reasons for saving particular men, but we do knowsomeof the reasons, for he has revealed them to us. These reasons are not men's merits or works. We have mentioned the first of these reasons: (1) Men's greater sin and need;1 Tim. 1:16—“that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering.”We may add to this: (2) The fact that men have not sinned against the Holy Spirit and made themselves unreceptive to Christ's salvation;1 Tim. 1:13—“I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief”—the fact that Paul had not sinned with full knowledge of what he did was a reason why God could choose him. (3) Men's ability by the help of Christ to be witnesses and martyrs for their Lord;Acts 9:15, 16—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake.”As Paul's mission to the Gentiles may have determined God's choice, so Augustine's mission to the sensual and abandoned may have had the same influence. But if Paul's sins, as foreseen, constituted one reason why God chose to save him, why might not his ability to serve the kingdom have constituted another reason? We add therefore: (4) Men's foreseen ability to serve Christ's kingdom in bringing others to the knowledge of the truth;John 15:16—“I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit.”Notice however that this is choicetoservice, and not simply choiceon account of service. In all these cases the reasons do not lie in the men themselves, for what these men are and what they possess is due to God's providence and grace.
(d) It tends to immorality, by representing men's salvation as independent of their own obedience.—Answer: The objection ignores the fact[pg 788]that the salvation of believers is ordained only in connection with their regeneration and sanctification, as means; and that the certainty of final triumph is the strongest incentive to strenuous conflict with sin.
Plutarch:“God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.”The purposes of God are an anchor to the storm-tossed spirit. But a ship needs engine, as well as anchor. God does not elect to save any without repentance and faith. Some hold the doctrine of election, but the doctrine of election does not hold them. Such should ponder1 Pet. 1:2, in which Christians are said to be elect,“in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”Augustine:“He loved her [the church] foul, that he might make her fair.”Dr. John Watson (Ian McLaren):“The greatest reinforcement religion could have in our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God.”This is because there is lack of a strong conviction of sin, guilt, and helplessness, still remaining pride and unwillingness to submit to God, imperfect faith in God's trustworthiness and goodness. We must not exclude Arminians from our fellowship—there are too many good Methodists for that. But we may maintain that they hold but half the truth, and that absence of the doctrine of election from their creed makes preaching less serious and character less secure.
Plutarch:“God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.”The purposes of God are an anchor to the storm-tossed spirit. But a ship needs engine, as well as anchor. God does not elect to save any without repentance and faith. Some hold the doctrine of election, but the doctrine of election does not hold them. Such should ponder1 Pet. 1:2, in which Christians are said to be elect,“in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”
Augustine:“He loved her [the church] foul, that he might make her fair.”Dr. John Watson (Ian McLaren):“The greatest reinforcement religion could have in our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God.”This is because there is lack of a strong conviction of sin, guilt, and helplessness, still remaining pride and unwillingness to submit to God, imperfect faith in God's trustworthiness and goodness. We must not exclude Arminians from our fellowship—there are too many good Methodists for that. But we may maintain that they hold but half the truth, and that absence of the doctrine of election from their creed makes preaching less serious and character less secure.
(e) It inspires pride in those who think themselves elect.—Answer: This is possible only in the case of those who pervert the doctrine. On the contrary, its proper influence is to humble men. Those who exalt themselves above others, upon the ground that they are special favorites of God, have reason to question their election.
In the novel, there was great effectiveness in the lover's plea to the object of his affection, that he had loved since he had first set his eyes upon her in her childhood. But God's love for us is of longer standing than that. It dates back to a time before we were born,—aye, even to eternity past. It is a love which was fastened upon us, although God knew the worst of us. It is unchanging, because founded upon his infinite and eternal love to Christ.Jer. 31:3—“Jehovah appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee”;Rom. 8:31-39—“If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”And the answer is, that nothing“shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”This eternal love subdues and humbles:Ps. 115:1—“Not unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory For thy lovingkindness, and for thy truth's sake.”Of the effect of the doctrine of election, Calvin, in his Institutes, 3:22:1, remarks that“when the human mind hears of it, its irritation breaks all restraint, and it discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet.”The cause of this agitation is the apprehension of the fact that one is an enemy of God and yet absolutely dependent upon his mercy. This apprehension leads normally to submission. But the conquered rebel can give no thanks to himself,—all thanks are due to God who has chosen and renewed him. The affections elicited are not those of pride and self-complacency, but of gratitude and love.Christian hymnology witnesses to these effects. Isaac Watts († 1748):“Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there's room, When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come. 'T was the same love that spread the feast That sweetly forced me in; Else I had still refused to taste, And perished in my sin. Pity the nations, O our God! Constrain the earth to come; Send thy victorious word abroad, And bring the wanderers home.”Josiah Conder († 1855):“'Tis not that I did choose thee, For, Lord, that could not be; This heart would still refuse thee; But thou hast chosen me;—Hast, from the sin that stained me, Washed me and set me free, And to this end ordained me That I should live to thee. 'T was sovereign mercy called me, And taught my opening mind; The world had else enthralled me, To heavenly glories blind. My heart owns none above thee: For thy rich grace I thirst; This knowing,—if I love thee, Thou must have loved me first.”
In the novel, there was great effectiveness in the lover's plea to the object of his affection, that he had loved since he had first set his eyes upon her in her childhood. But God's love for us is of longer standing than that. It dates back to a time before we were born,—aye, even to eternity past. It is a love which was fastened upon us, although God knew the worst of us. It is unchanging, because founded upon his infinite and eternal love to Christ.Jer. 31:3—“Jehovah appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee”;Rom. 8:31-39—“If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”And the answer is, that nothing“shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”This eternal love subdues and humbles:Ps. 115:1—“Not unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory For thy lovingkindness, and for thy truth's sake.”
Of the effect of the doctrine of election, Calvin, in his Institutes, 3:22:1, remarks that“when the human mind hears of it, its irritation breaks all restraint, and it discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet.”The cause of this agitation is the apprehension of the fact that one is an enemy of God and yet absolutely dependent upon his mercy. This apprehension leads normally to submission. But the conquered rebel can give no thanks to himself,—all thanks are due to God who has chosen and renewed him. The affections elicited are not those of pride and self-complacency, but of gratitude and love.
Christian hymnology witnesses to these effects. Isaac Watts († 1748):“Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there's room, When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come. 'T was the same love that spread the feast That sweetly forced me in; Else I had still refused to taste, And perished in my sin. Pity the nations, O our God! Constrain the earth to come; Send thy victorious word abroad, And bring the wanderers home.”Josiah Conder († 1855):“'Tis not that I did choose thee, For, Lord, that could not be; This heart would still refuse thee; But thou hast chosen me;—Hast, from the sin that stained me, Washed me and set me free, And to this end ordained me That I should live to thee. 'T was sovereign mercy called me, And taught my opening mind; The world had else enthralled me, To heavenly glories blind. My heart owns none above thee: For thy rich grace I thirst; This knowing,—if I love thee, Thou must have loved me first.”
(f) It discourages effort for the salvation of the impenitent, whether on their own part or on the part of others.—Answer: Since it is a secret decree, it cannot hinder or discourage such effort. On the other hand, it is a ground of encouragement, and so a stimulus to effort; for, without[pg 789]election, it is certain that all would be lost (cf.Acts 18:10). While it humbles the sinner, so that he is willing to err for mercy, it encourages him also by showing him that some will be saved, and (since election and faith are inseparably connected) that he will be saved, if he will only believe. While it makes the Christian feel entirely dependent on God's power, in his efforts for the impenitent, it leads him to say with Paul that he“endures all things for the elects' sake, that they also may attain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory”(2 Tim. 2:10).
God's decree that Paul's ship's company should be saved (Acts 27:24) did not obviate the necessity of their abiding in the ship (verse 31). In marriage, man's election does not exclude woman's; so God's election does not exclude man's. There is just as much need of effort as if there were no election. Hence the question for the sinner is not,“Am I one of the elect?”but rather,“What shall I do to be saved?”Milton represents the spirits of hell as debating foreknowledge and free will, in wandering mazes lost.No man is saved until he ceases to debate, and begins to act. And yet no man will thus begin to act, unless God's Spirit moves him. The Lord encouraged Paul by saying to him:“I have much people in this city”(Acts 18:10)—people whom I will bring in through thy word.“Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.”If God does not regenerate, there is no hope of success in preaching:“God stands powerless before the majesty of man's lordly will. Sinners have the glory of their own salvation. To pray God to convert a man is absurd. God elects the man, because he foresees that the man will elect himself”(see S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 298-307). The doctrine of election does indeed cut off the hopes of those who place confidence in themselves; but it is best that such hopes should be destroyed, and that in place of them should be put a hope in the sovereign grace of God. The doctrine of election does teach man's absolute dependence upon God, and the impossibility of any disappointment or disarrangement of the divine plans arising from the disobedience of the sinner, and it humbles human pride until it is willing to take the place of a suppliant for mercy.Rowland Hill was criticized for preaching election and yet exhorting sinners to repent, and was told that he should preach only to the elect. He replied that, if his critic would put a chalk-mark on all the elect, he would preach only to them. But this is not the whole truth. We are not only ignorant who God's elect are, but we are set to preach to both elect and non-elect (Ez. 2:7—“thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear”), with the certainty that to the former our preaching will make a higher heaven, to the latter a deeper hell (2 Cor. 2:15, 16—“For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life”;cf.Luke 2:34—“this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”—for the falling of some, and for the rising up of others).Jesus' own thanksgiving inMat. 11:25, 26—“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight”—is immediately followed by his invitation inverse 28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”There is no contradiction in his mind between sovereign grace and the free invitations of the gospel.G. W. Northrup, in The Standard, Sept. 19, 1889—“1. God will save every one of the human race whom he can save and remain God; 2. Every member of the race has a full and fair probation, so that all might be saved and would be saved were they to use aright the light which they already have.”... (Private letter):“Limitations of God in the bestowment of salvation: 1. In the power of God in relation to free will; 2. In the benevolence of God which requires the greatest good of creation, or the greatest aggregate good of the greatest number; 3. In the purpose of God to make the most perfect self-limitation; 4. In the sovereignty of God, as a prerogative absolutely optional in its exercise; 5. In the holiness of God, which involves immutable limitations on his part in dealing with moral agents. Nothing but some absolute impossibility, metaphysical or moral, could have prevented him 'whose nature and whose name is love' from decreeing and securing the confirmation of all moral agents in holiness and blessedness forever.”
God's decree that Paul's ship's company should be saved (Acts 27:24) did not obviate the necessity of their abiding in the ship (verse 31). In marriage, man's election does not exclude woman's; so God's election does not exclude man's. There is just as much need of effort as if there were no election. Hence the question for the sinner is not,“Am I one of the elect?”but rather,“What shall I do to be saved?”Milton represents the spirits of hell as debating foreknowledge and free will, in wandering mazes lost.
No man is saved until he ceases to debate, and begins to act. And yet no man will thus begin to act, unless God's Spirit moves him. The Lord encouraged Paul by saying to him:“I have much people in this city”(Acts 18:10)—people whom I will bring in through thy word.“Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.”If God does not regenerate, there is no hope of success in preaching:“God stands powerless before the majesty of man's lordly will. Sinners have the glory of their own salvation. To pray God to convert a man is absurd. God elects the man, because he foresees that the man will elect himself”(see S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 298-307). The doctrine of election does indeed cut off the hopes of those who place confidence in themselves; but it is best that such hopes should be destroyed, and that in place of them should be put a hope in the sovereign grace of God. The doctrine of election does teach man's absolute dependence upon God, and the impossibility of any disappointment or disarrangement of the divine plans arising from the disobedience of the sinner, and it humbles human pride until it is willing to take the place of a suppliant for mercy.
Rowland Hill was criticized for preaching election and yet exhorting sinners to repent, and was told that he should preach only to the elect. He replied that, if his critic would put a chalk-mark on all the elect, he would preach only to them. But this is not the whole truth. We are not only ignorant who God's elect are, but we are set to preach to both elect and non-elect (Ez. 2:7—“thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear”), with the certainty that to the former our preaching will make a higher heaven, to the latter a deeper hell (2 Cor. 2:15, 16—“For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life”;cf.Luke 2:34—“this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”—for the falling of some, and for the rising up of others).
Jesus' own thanksgiving inMat. 11:25, 26—“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight”—is immediately followed by his invitation inverse 28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”There is no contradiction in his mind between sovereign grace and the free invitations of the gospel.
G. W. Northrup, in The Standard, Sept. 19, 1889—“1. God will save every one of the human race whom he can save and remain God; 2. Every member of the race has a full and fair probation, so that all might be saved and would be saved were they to use aright the light which they already have.”... (Private letter):“Limitations of God in the bestowment of salvation: 1. In the power of God in relation to free will; 2. In the benevolence of God which requires the greatest good of creation, or the greatest aggregate good of the greatest number; 3. In the purpose of God to make the most perfect self-limitation; 4. In the sovereignty of God, as a prerogative absolutely optional in its exercise; 5. In the holiness of God, which involves immutable limitations on his part in dealing with moral agents. Nothing but some absolute impossibility, metaphysical or moral, could have prevented him 'whose nature and whose name is love' from decreeing and securing the confirmation of all moral agents in holiness and blessedness forever.”
(g) The decree of election implies a decree of reprobation.—Answer: The decree of reprobation is not a positive decree, like that of election,[pg 790]but a permissive decree to leave the sinner to his self-chosen rebellion and its natural consequences of punishment.
Election and sovereignty are only sources of good. Election is not a decree to destroy,—it is a decree only to save. When we elect a President, we do not need to hold a second election to determine that the remaining millions shall be non-Presidents. It is needless to apply contrivance or force. Sinners, like water, if simply let alone, will run down hill to ruin. The decree of reprobation is simply a decree to do nothing—a decree to leave the sinner to himself. The natural result of this judicial forsaking, on the part of God, is the hardening and destruction of the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that this hardening and destruction are not due to any positive efficiency of God,—they are a self-hardening and a self-destruction,—and God's judicial forsaking is only the just penalty of the sinner's guilty rejection of offered mercy.SeeHosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together”;4:17—“Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone”;Rom. 9:22, 23—“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”—here notice that“which he afore prepared”declares a positive divine efficiency, in the case of the vessels of mercy, while“fitted unto destruction”intimates no such positive agency of God,—the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction;2 Tim. 2:20—“vessels ... some unto honor, and some unto dishonor”;1 Pet. 2:8—“they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”;Jude 4—“who were of old set forth[‘written of beforehand’—Am. Rev.]unto this condemnation”;Mat. 25:34, 41—“the kingdom prepared for you ... the eternal fire which is prepared[not for you, nor for men, but]for the devil and his angels”= there is an election to life, but no reprobation to death; a“book of life”(Rev. 21:27), but no book of death.E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.”Men are not“appointed”to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are“appointed”to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher:“The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won't.”George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel's mistake.”The Westminster Confession reads:“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”This reads as if both the saved and the lost were made originally for their respective final estates without respect to character. It is supralapsarianism. It is certain that the supralapsarians were in the majority in the Westminster Assembly, and that they determined the form of the statement, although there were many sublapsarians who objected that it was only on account of their foreseen wickedness that any were reprobated. In its later short statement of doctrine the Presbyterian body in America has made it plain that God's decree of reprobation is a permissive decree, and that it places no barrier in the way of any man's salvation.On the general subject of Election, see Mozley, Predestination; Payne, Divine Sovereignty; Ridgeley, Works, 1:261-324, esp. 322; Edwards, Works, 2:527sq.; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 446-458; Martensen, Dogmatics, 362-382; and especially Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 485-549; H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christian Theology, 502-514; Maule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 36-56; Peck, in Bapt. Quar. Rev., Oct. 1891:689-706. On objections to election, and Spurgeon's answers to them, see Williams, Reminiscences of Spurgeon, 189. On the homiletical uses of the doctrine of election, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1893:79-92.
Election and sovereignty are only sources of good. Election is not a decree to destroy,—it is a decree only to save. When we elect a President, we do not need to hold a second election to determine that the remaining millions shall be non-Presidents. It is needless to apply contrivance or force. Sinners, like water, if simply let alone, will run down hill to ruin. The decree of reprobation is simply a decree to do nothing—a decree to leave the sinner to himself. The natural result of this judicial forsaking, on the part of God, is the hardening and destruction of the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that this hardening and destruction are not due to any positive efficiency of God,—they are a self-hardening and a self-destruction,—and God's judicial forsaking is only the just penalty of the sinner's guilty rejection of offered mercy.
SeeHosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together”;4:17—“Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone”;Rom. 9:22, 23—“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”—here notice that“which he afore prepared”declares a positive divine efficiency, in the case of the vessels of mercy, while“fitted unto destruction”intimates no such positive agency of God,—the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction;2 Tim. 2:20—“vessels ... some unto honor, and some unto dishonor”;1 Pet. 2:8—“they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”;Jude 4—“who were of old set forth[‘written of beforehand’—Am. Rev.]unto this condemnation”;Mat. 25:34, 41—“the kingdom prepared for you ... the eternal fire which is prepared[not for you, nor for men, but]for the devil and his angels”= there is an election to life, but no reprobation to death; a“book of life”(Rev. 21:27), but no book of death.
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.”Men are not“appointed”to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are“appointed”to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher:“The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won't.”George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel's mistake.”
The Westminster Confession reads:“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”This reads as if both the saved and the lost were made originally for their respective final estates without respect to character. It is supralapsarianism. It is certain that the supralapsarians were in the majority in the Westminster Assembly, and that they determined the form of the statement, although there were many sublapsarians who objected that it was only on account of their foreseen wickedness that any were reprobated. In its later short statement of doctrine the Presbyterian body in America has made it plain that God's decree of reprobation is a permissive decree, and that it places no barrier in the way of any man's salvation.
On the general subject of Election, see Mozley, Predestination; Payne, Divine Sovereignty; Ridgeley, Works, 1:261-324, esp. 322; Edwards, Works, 2:527sq.; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 446-458; Martensen, Dogmatics, 362-382; and especially Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 485-549; H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christian Theology, 502-514; Maule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 36-56; Peck, in Bapt. Quar. Rev., Oct. 1891:689-706. On objections to election, and Spurgeon's answers to them, see Williams, Reminiscences of Spurgeon, 189. On the homiletical uses of the doctrine of election, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1893:79-92.