The Questions, What Was the Opinion of Calvin as to the Design of the Atonement? What Is the Standard of Calvinism? And What Is the Doctrine on This Subject of the Westminster Confession and Catechism? Considered and Answered
We come now to consider the questions, What was the opinion of Calvin as to the design of Christ in dying? — What is the standard of that system of faith held, by common consent, by the Reformed Churches? — and especially, What doctrine on this subject is solemnly professed by all those who adopt the Westminster Confession as the confession of their faith?
Many, in our day, who hold very imperfect views as to the nature of the Atonement, and as to the design of God in it, fall back upon some of the vague statements as to the latter point which they are able to glean out of Calvin’s voluminous works, and under cover of his great name claim that their various specialties come legitimately under the category of genuine Calvinism. Jenkyn, in words borrowed from Bishop Horsley, challenges the advocates of definite and personal redemption to remember that “those who boast in the name, of CALVIN should know what CALVINISM is.” What I have to say as to Calvin and the standard of Calvinism wil be presented under the following heads.
1. It has been a very old, and is still a very comuon trick of errorists to seek to cover themselves with the authority of the general and unscientific statements of eminent theologians, written before any particular doctrine in question has been consciously considered and clearly discriminated and defined by the responsible representatives and organs of the Church. Thus Arians, Socinians and Pelagians have of old, for their own justification, paraded fragments torn out of the unsystematic writings of the Fathers, who wrote before the times of the Council of Nice or of the controversies of Augustine with Pelagius. Papists find a large measure of material apparently justifying their distinguishing positions in the writings of the best theologians preceding the era of the Reformation, even in the writings of Augustine himself. Arminians quote much that they find to their mind in the books of all the Fathers, especially those of the early Church. In like manner the advocates of self-styled “improvements in theology,” on occasion, find it to their interest to quote the general and indefinite language of Reformers, who wrote without ever consciously entertaining the precise points in question, such as those developed by means of the “Novelties” subsequently introduced by the school of Saumur — special questions, for instance, involved in the nature of justification, the method and grounds of imputation, and the design of the Atonement. Let the fact be well noted, Iherefore, that Calvin does not appear to have given the question we are at present discussing a deliberate consi U ration, and has certainly not left behind him a clear an 1 consistent statement of his views.
2. I have already sufficiently proved that Calvin held the Satisfaction Theory of the Atonement in its strictest sense, and all the world knows that as a predestinarian he went to the length of Supralapsarianisna, from which such theologians as Turretin, Witsius and Owen, and the Synod of Dort, and the Assembly of Westminster, recoiled. When the advocates of a general atonement claim to stand by Calvin, they ought to be well prepared for the arduous undertaking. The entire analogy and spirit of Calvin’s system was as a whole broadly characterized by the subjection of Redemption to Election as a means to an end. The able, learned and impartial F. Christian Baur, in his History of the Atonement (A. D. 1838), says: “Zwingle and Calvin did indeed adhere to the dogma of Satisfaction in its traditional form; but from their point of view the Satisfaction itself was sub sumed under the idea of the absolute decree, in relation to which the satisfaction of Christ was not the causa meritoria of salvation, but only the causa instrumentalis carrying out the purpose of redemption.” That this is true, so far as it represents Calvin subordinating the purpose of redemption to the purpose of election, every student of hi? Institutes and of his Consensus Genevensis knows, and that this conclusively settles the present debate every competent theologian will confess. He declares the gift of Christ is the result of his infinite love to the persons for whom he is given;* that Christ really merits eternal life and all spiritual graces for those for whom he died ;f that Christ is to us 1 loth the clear mirror and the pledge and security of the eternal and
* Institutes, book ii., chap. xvi.
f Ibid., book ii., chap. xvii.
secret election of God,* that God, eternally anterior to their creation and irrespective of their character, loved the elect, and hated the non-elect, predestinating the first to holiness and happiness, and )he other to sin and misery for ever.f It is true thai at times Calvin uses general terms with respect to the design of Christ’s death in a more unguarded manner than would now be done by one of his consistent disciples. See Rom. v. 18. But at other times he explicitly denies that he believes in an indiscriminate Atonement in the sense of Barnes and the great majority of the modern advocates of General Redemption. And let it be remembered that one deliberate statement limiting the design of Christ’s death is sufficient to define the sense of any finite number of vague and indefinite expressions, such as that referred to above in his comment on Rom. v. 18. Thus in his comment on 1 John ii. 2, he declared his adhesion to the Scholastic formula that “Christ died sufficiently for all, but efficiently only for the elect,” which is very different from the opinion of those who hold that Christ died for the purpose of removing legal obstacles out of the way of all men indifferently. And at the same time he denies utterly that the apostle, in saying that Christ is the “propitiation for the sins of the whole world” (totins mundi) could have meant to include the reprobate. “Such a monstrous thing deserves no refutation. The design of John was no other than to make this benefit common to the whole Church. Then under the word all or whohj he does not include the reprobate, but designates those who should believe, as well as those
* Consensus Genevensis, Nieineyer, p. 27(1.
f Institutes, book Hi., chan xxiii.
who were then scattered through various parts of the world.” Commentaries 1 John ii. 2.*
3. But whatever the personal opinions of Calvin may have been, the second question as to what is Calvinism? is entirely independent of them. The title Calvinism has — whether with propriety or not, nevertheless as a fixed fact — been given to a definite system, which possesses an identity of character and of history independent of any single man that ever lived. It is doubtless convenient, but it is eminently unscholarly, to attempt to settle the theology of the Reformed Churches by reference to the writings of a single man. There are two ways of determining what several elements legitimately belong to this system: (1.) By an analysis and comparison of all the elements of the system, trying each proposed element by the fundamental principles, the general spirit, logical relations and analogy of the whole. This has been, I suppose, sufficiently done in the preceding analysis and statement of the question. (2.) The second method is an historical appeal to the common consent of that great family of Churches who agree in professing the fundamental principles of that system, as this consen* s expressed by their great representative Confessions and classical theological writings, prepared after the topics in question have been consciously and specifically discussed and defined.
*In his treatise, De Vera Participatione Christi in Coena, in reply to Heshusius, a violent Lutheran defender of the corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist, this passage occurs:” I would desire to know how the impious, for whom he was not crucified, could eat the flesh of Christ, and how they can drink his blood for the expiation of whose sins it was not shed;’ C-nninglnm’s Theology of the Reformation, p, 396.
DESIGN OF I’llE ATONEMENT.
All the world knows that the seventeenth century, including the latter part of the sixteenth, was the era when all the elements of all the great systems of theology were subjected, by means of controversies, to a thorough analysis and adjustment, when each system was elaborated with a distinctness, and defined with an accuracy, and discussed with a power, and received each by its entire circle of adherents with a unanimity which surpasses all the subsequent as much as all the precedent achievements of the Church. This was the age which, taken in its wide limits, produced the Roman Catholic, Robert Bellarmine; the Unitarian, Crellius, and the other authors of the BibliotJieea Fratrum Polonorum; the Lutheran, Gerhard, Calovius, Quenstedt; the Arminian, Arminius, Episcopius Limborch and Grotius; the Calvinistic Universalists, Cameron, Placseus, Amyraldus, Daille’; the Reformed Synods of Dort, Alez and Charenton, the Westminster Assembly, the Formula Consensus Helvetica, the Savoy Confession, &c., &e., <&c. We lay it down, therefore, as a canon, which no student of historical theology will care to deny, that the COMMON CONSENT OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES, DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, AS WITNESSED IN THEIR CREEDS AND IN THE WRITINGS OF THEIR REPRESENTATIVE THEOLOGIANS, IS THE STANDARD OF CALVINISM.
The only other point which our argument requires us to establish is that the decisions of the Reformed Churches, during the seventeenth century, were universally and explicitly in confirmation of our view of the Atonement as definite and personal. Both of the learned and impartial critics, Wener and FNgenbach, agree that the deliverances of the Belgic* and Gallicf Confessions (A. D. 1571), and of the Synod of Dort (A. D. 1619), expressly teach a definite Atonement. “For this was the most free council, and gracious will and intention of God the Father, that the life-giving and saving efficacy of the most precious death of his own Son, should exert itself in all the elect, in order to give them alone justifying faith, and thereby to lead them to eternal life; that is, that God willed that Christ, through the blood of the cross (by which he confirmeth the new covenant), should out of every people, tribe, nation and language, efficaciously redeem all those, and those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation, and given to him by the Father. J” Under the head of the rejec-
* Conf. Belg., Art. 16. — Credimus, Deum, posteaquam tota Adamiprogenies sic in perditionem et exitium primi hominis culpa prtecipitata fuit, Deum se talem demonstrate, qualis est, nimirum misericordem et justum, misericordem quidem, eos ab hsec perditioneliberando et servando, quos seterno et immutabili suo consilio pro gratuita sua bonitate in Jesu Christo elegit et selegit, absque ullooperurn ipsorum respectu; justum vero, reliquos in lapsu et perditione, in quam sese ipsi prsecipitaverant, relinquendo.
f Conf. Gall., Art. 12. — Credimus ex corruptions et damnatione universali, in qua omnes homines natura sunt submersi, Deum alios quidem eripere, quos videlicet aeterno et immutabili suo consilio, sola sua bonitate et miseracordia nulloque operum ipsorum respectu in Jesu Christo elegit; alios vero in ea corruptione et damnatione relinquere, in quibus nimirum juste suo temporedamnandis justitiam suam demonstret, sicut in aliis divitias misericordise suse declarat. Nee enim alii aliis sunt meliores, donee illos Deus discernat ex immutabili illo consilio, quod ante seculorum creationem in Jesu Christi determinavit: neque posset quisquam sua vi sibi ad bonumjllud aditum patefacere, quum ex natura nostra ne unum quidem rectum motum vel affectum seu cogitationem habere possimus, donee nos Deus gratis praeveniat et ad rectitudinem format.
I Articles of the Synod of Port, chapter ii., 8.
tion of eirors concerning redemption, “The Synod rejects the errors of those who teach ‘that God the Father destined his own Son unto the death of the cross, without a certain and definite counsel of saving any one
by name.7 For this assertion is contumelious to
the wisdom of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, and is contrary to Scripture, as the Saviour says, ‘I lay down my life for the sheep, and I know them.’ John x. 15, 27.“* “Who teach that ‘Christ, by his satisfaction, did not with certainty merit that very salvation and faith by which this satisfaction of Christ may be effectually applied unto salvati3n.’”t Here the doctrine of definite Atonement is taught with singular fulness and variety of statement. Thus (a) it is stated that Christ died to secure the salvation of the elect, and the elect only. (6.) That Christ died in pursuance of a definite covenant arrangement between the Father and the Son. (c.) That Christ, by his death, actually merited and secured faith and spiritual grace for those for whom he died. Hence. tLose who never received the gift of faith are proved not to be those for whom he died.
The Westminster Confession was prepared in 1648. There has been in this generation a very uncandid attempt made by some who profess to receive this Confession, ex animOj as the fit expression of their faith, to show that it does not explicitly affirm a specific and personal redemption of the elect to the exclusion of a general redemption of all. These parties admit that the Confession may be chargeable with the sin of omission in respect to the failure to affirm that redemption is general and indefinite. But they deny that it affirms * Articles of the Syi )d of Dort, 1. f Ibid., 3.
the contrary. It is said that the Confession is very careful to trace out the relation of Christ’s work to the elect, while it leaves the way open to all to indulge what opinions they please as to its relations to the non-elect. This is obviously a mistake. Our Confession explicitly — and precisely in those forms of statement most significan* and emphatic, when viewed in connection with the state of the controversy on this question at that time — affirms, that the redemptive work of Christ was personal and definite, and therefore not impersonal and indefinite. “They who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified and saved, but the elect only.”* Here it is explicitly declared that the elect are redeemed, and that only the elect are redeemed by Christ. “The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he, through the eternal Spirit once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of the Father; and purchased not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given him.”f Here it is explicitly said that the atoning work of Christ secures for those in whose behalf it was offered reconciliation — not reconciliability — and that it purchases for them an everlasting inheritance in heaven. They, therefore, who never receive the reconciliation nor the inheritance cannot be
* Westminster Confession, chapter iii., $ 6.
f Ibid., chapter viii., $ 5.
those for whom they were purchased. “To ALL FOR WHOM Christ hath purchased redemption he doth certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same, making intercession for them, and revealing unto them, in and by the word, the mysteries of salvation, effectually persuading them by his Spirit to believe and obey.”H Here it is expressly said that Christ actually saves all those for whom he died, and it follows, of course, that he shed his blood for none whom he does not actually save. “This statement contains, and was intended to contain, the true status quceslionis in the controversy about the extent of the Atonement. It is to be explained by a reference to the mode of conducting this controversy, between the Calvinists and the Arminians about the time of the Synod of Dort, and also to the mode of conducting the controversy excited in France by Cameron, and afterwards carried on by Amyraldus in France and Holland, and by Baxter in England.”f
The Formula Consensus Helvetica was prepared in 1675 by Heidegger and Turretin for the express purpose of opposing the “Novelties” of the school of Saumur, and it received the suffrages of all the Swiss Churches of that age. “Accordingly in the death of Christ, only the elect, who in time are made new creatures (2 Cor. v. 17), and for whom Christ in his death was substituted as an expiatory sacrifice, are regarded as having died with him and as being justified from sin; and thus, with the counsel of the Father, who gave to Christ none but the elect to be redeemed, and also with the working of the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies and seals unto a living
* Westminster Confession, chapter viii., $ 8.
f Cunningham’s History of Theology, vol. ii., p. 328.
hope of eternal life none but the elect, the will of Christ who died so agrees and amicably conspires in perfect harmony, that the sphere of the Father’s election, the Son’s redemption, and the Spirit’s sanctification is one and the same.”*
The decrees of the Synod of Dort were accepted with unparalelled unanimity by all the Reformed Churches. They were adopted again and again by the National Synod of the Reformed Church of France, at Alez, in 1620; at Charenton, in 1623; and at every subsequent session until they ceased to meet. Again and again the French Synod examined this very question, and decided, as I showed above from the minutes of the Synod of Alengon (A. D. 1637), that Christ died with the intention of saving only the elect, while his work is freely offered to all. The theological faculty of Geneva, the successors of Calvin, only eighty years after his death, unite with the theological faculties of Leyden, Sedan, Franeker and Gronegen, in writing earnestly to the Synod, protesting against the doctrines of Amyraldus, calling them “novelties,” “upstarted opinions,” “new doctrines,” &c., and recommending the work written to refute them by that “famous divine Andrew Rivet,” pastor and professor at Leyden.
The Savoy Confession (A. D. 1658) adopted by the English Independents agrees with the Westminster as to the design of redemption. The Boston Confession (A. D. 1680) explicitly teaches the same doctrine. The Cambridge Synod (A. D. 1648), when they formed the Cambridge Platform, solemnly adopted the Westminster Confession as their doctrinal symbol. The Synod of the
* Formula Consensus Helvetica, canon 13.
Connecticut Churches, which formed the Saybrook Platform in 1703, adopted the Boston Confession of 1680 for their doctrinal symbol. The Westminster Confession has been subsequently adopted as the doctrinal Confession of all the Presbyterians and Independents of British descent in the world. This much, at least in common honesty, ought to be held as settled, that whatever may be the case as to the teachings of Scripture, it is not an open question what is the doctrine of the Reformed Churches as to the design of the Atonement. There is no question whether the International Synod of Dort; the National Synods of France and Westminster; the Formula Consensus Helvetica; the theological schools of Geneva, Sedan, Ley den, Franeker and Gronegen; the theologians Beza, Voetius, Diodati, Gomarus, Rivet, Du Moulin, Spanheim, Heidegger, Turretin, Cocceius, Witsius, Vitringa, Van Maastricht, Marckius, De Moor, Pictet and Owen, — there is no question whether these represent truly and fully the theology of the Reformed Churches. The coiisens s of these is the standard of Calvinism.