§ 118. While Christian sympathy is not disquieted by the earlier and later adoption of one and another individual into the fellowship of redemption, yet on the other hand there does remain an insoluble discord if, on the assumption of survival after death, we are to think of a part of the human race as entirely excluded from this fellowship.⁵

1. Regarding ourselves as members of the Church over against the world, with these two elements in our self-consciousness, the consciousness of sin and the consciousness of grace, we find that in virtue of the latter, in which we are given perfect certainty of the divine decree for our blessedness, we stand opposed to all those in whom this consciousness has not yet developed. On the other hand, in virtue of the consciousness of sin we are on exactly the same footing as they; for the consciousness of forgiveness belongs to the other element, and yet keeps ever present to our minds that original something which belongs to the consciousness of a nature in which all share. If therefore that equal natural incapacity out of which, in everyone, the consciousness of the need for redemption may spring, is in one case reinforced, but in another left to itself, in one case absorbed into the revelation of the divine decree of pardon, but in another not so absorbed—this non-uniformity within the same human race (no section of which is definitely distinguished from any other in respect of the divine activity of Christ) is of such a kind that to accept it we must either again reduce our God-consciousness to a mere idiosyncrasy, or else attach much less value to the difference between those blessed by grace and others, almost making it a merely accidental more or less. Otherwise the blessedness springing from the consciousness of grace would of necessity be swallowed up in the sympathetic feeling of unblessedness that accompanies humiliation.

All this takes on a quite different aspect as soon as we venture to hold that at each particular point this antithesis is merely a vanishing one, so that everyone still outside this fellowship will some time or another be laid hold of by the divine operations of grace and brought within it. In that case there is no longer a cleavage in our race-consciousness; the merely gradual passage of individuals into the full enjoyment of redemption is for our race-consciousness just what the gradual progress of sanctification is for our personal self-consciousness, namely, the natural form necessarily taken by the divine activity as it works itself out historically and, as we have seen, the inevitable condition of all activity in time of the Word made flesh.

Any possible objection to this is met by the two following considerations. The first is an application we make of the proposition stated above, namely, that the incarnation of Christ is analogous to the regeneration of the whole race considered as a unity. No one can say that it would have been better for the whole race if Christ had been born sooner, and the new spiritual common life sooner begun. It would certainly have been better had it been possible for this new life to emerge in the same purity and power at an earlier date. But when we read that ‘when the fulness of the time was come’ Christ was born,⁶ this means that the divine fore-ordination concerning the whole human race and the special determination of the point in time when the Redeemer should be manifested are so much a single indivisible revelation of divine omnipotence that the spiritual life conditioned by this determination of time is certainly also the absolutely greatest, and gives expression to the entire idea of the essential nature of humanity. Now the same thing can be said of the individual. Each man, when his time is fully come, is regenerated; and then his new life. conditioned by this fixation of time, is, however late its appearance, an absolute maximum, and fully expresses the entire idea of his personality, dependent as this is on its position within the race as a whole. In harmony with this belief, therefore, we cannot imagine, even of an individual, that it would have been better for him to have been regenerated earlier. Nor is there any reason to fear that this will lead to slackness in witnessing to Christ, or undermine training and teaching, on the ground that it is useless to press the gospel on people before their time is come. This has been clearly shown by Augustine,⁷ and no such application of the doctrine will readily be made seriously by anyone who is truly being sanctified, that is to say, it will not be entertained by anyone who is capable of bearing witness or taking part in teaching and training. For one thing, such a person is moved by an inner impulse⁸ irrespectively of any distinct result he may anticipate; and for another, he is well aware that the gracious operations of the Spirit that issue from every regenerate person are a sine qua non of the regeneration of each when his time is fully come.

The second consideration is an application of the truth that in regeneration each person becomes a new creature. If that is so, sympathetic concern about a regeneration that occurred too late is meaningless, for there is nothing originally present to think about; just as it would be a waste of pity, on the assumption of a creation of the world in time, to sigh that it was not created sooner. And even if someone inclined to say that for him the earlier period is not a void but a horror, yet this horror vanishes in the certainty of the forgiveness of sins just as completely whether that period was long or short. And although such a regret may occasionally be felt on the ground that the new life cannot now endure so long as if it had developed sooner, this too is a mere delusion, revealing a lack of acquaintance with the nature of the new life. For that life is in itself eternal, and gains no increment by the duration of time. No one who is maturely sanctified has such feelings; they belong to a morbid condition. Only beginners can be troubled by such after-pains, and when peace comes they die away of themselves; so that there is no reason why we should take account of them in the sphere of doctrine. Rather must the earliest to be regenerated and the latest each count himself of the same worth as the other, even though in the one case it happened in the morning of childhood, and in the other only after a long course of experience. For while the one represents a more exact model of the original union of the Divine with human personality, the other gives a better picture of the ultimate penetration of the entire human nature by the redeeming power of Christ, involving as that power does the total effective influence of all those previously regenerated. Every appearance of difference must more and more vanish as a common feeling and common spirit gets the upper hand in both, leaving each to appropriate all that is the other’s. There is no ground to fear that this will occasion any indifference towards the operations of preparatory grace, or lead men to put off repentance and conversion to the indefinite future. Anyone desiring to take this course is not putting off conversion because of anything in Christian doctrine, but because even yet he wants to have a share in the common life of sin more than in the Kingdom of God. To withhold this doctrine from such a man is no help to him; we must find what will awaken his longing for the Kingdom of God.

Summing up, we may conclude that if only everyone who has lagged behind us is some time or another taken up into living fellowship with Christ, our sympathetic concern can accept the fact with perfect satisfaction without any contradiction arising between it and our God-consciousness.

2. It is self-evident, however, that these considerations are no longer applicable, once we come to think of a portion of our race as destined to be entirely shut out from this fellowship and the higher state dependent thereon. Nor can the idea be admitted (here we are strictly in accord with all that we have just been saying) that we may make a distinction according as we do or do not assume a future life. For if this life as such is eternal, the possession and the deprivation of it cannot be thrown into greater contrast by raising the question of its endless or insignificant duration, if it be the case that one does attain the blessedness in which alone life’s value lies, and another does not. Assuming this for the moment, the discord can be resolved only in one of the two following ways. We may justify the concurrent existence of such equality and inequality between ourselves and others and try to trace it back to a law; and this would show the opposition indicated to be an illusion. Or we may explain as an illusion one of the two—either the original equality, or the inequality due to the divine assignment.

As regards the first point, two arguments may be tried. To begin with, if equality is the original appointed plan for human nature, but inequality of the kind noted just as much results from the plan, contradiction between the two can only be stated in the form of some censure of the appointed plan; which is meaningless, for unless we were men we should not be at all. But the inequality that first arises through the intervention of Christ cannot have its seat in the human nature underlying the common life of sinfulness, unless, contrary to our assumptions, we go back to Pelagian principles, and admit either powers of attraction in one class of people or powers of repulsion in the other. And apart from this, we should still be thrown back upon an inequality in the distribution of endowments that can have its basis only in the divine good-pleasure. Conversely, if the equality is held to have the same basis as the inequality, namely, the divine plan of salvation, this means that in respect of redemption God has put all men under sin, although only for some does redemption accrue. In that case, the reception of the one and the exclusion of the other has its ground in such divine arbitrariness, that we must rightly describe the ordinance as sheer caprice. And even if the concurrent existence of the equality and inequality can be thus made conceivable, yet those who, to our advantage, are rejected, are and inevitably remain objects of sympathy; and the more our race-consciousness equals our personal consciousness, this sympathy extinguishes the blessedness belonging to the latter, for it is a fellow-feeling with misery. An escape from this difficulty and a faultless solution of it have been thought to lie in the hypothesis that the plan of salvation, which is the ground both of the equality of incapacity and the inequality of help received, is intended to bring home to one class the divine mercy and to the other the divine justice,⁹ so that within the human race there might be given a complete divine manifestation in both respects: justice toward the lost and mercy toward the saved. Against this, however, it may be pointed out that the solution does not cover the special case in which divine justice also would be completely manifested if all that is possible through redemption were actually realized; for then it would show itself compensatory toward Christ, but punitive toward all as long as they belonged to the common life of sinfulness. We cannot, however, concede in general that the revelation of divine attributes is pieced-out or partial; for then they would be limited, and God would be an unlimited Being with limited attributes. Justice and mercy must not exclude one another. Mercy in the case of the same people must show itself as justice. And in thought this is incompatible with the permanent exclusion of some from the communicated blessedness of Christ.

Thus all that remains is the second line of thought, namely, that one of the two, either the equality or the inequality of the two sections of mankind, should be explained as an illusion. But the inequality between those taken up into living fellowship with Christ and those excluded from it cannot possibly be regarded as an illusion without sacrificing the essential content of our Christian consciousness. It is otherwise with regard to the equality which we find in the consciousness of sin. This would be an illusion if there were really an original inequalityin men, that is, if from the very beginning there were a cleavage in humanity. For once we realize this, the contradiction vanishes, those originally not on the same footing as ourselves not being possible objects of our sympathy, and the unity of human nature as hitherto understood being a delusion. But if it is then supposed that only in the one class and not in the other is there a sensitiveness and susceptibility for divine grace, or that only in the one class and not in the other is there an invincible opposition to divine grace, we land in assumptions leading to Manicheanism which are just as much opposed to our interpretation as the Pelagian assumptions above referred to. Indeed, redemption itself then takes on a quite different form. For Christ would then really have come only to develop and bring to light an already existing disparity; His real function becomes that of judge, and what may be called redemption is merely the form of one side of this function. There is thus no way of resolving this discord if on the ground of our Christian consciousness we must accept the fact that part of our race is utterly excluded. If our proposition indicates that the discord would be greater on the assumption prevailing throughout the Christian Church of personal survival after death than if we could adopt the opposite view, the reason is simply this. In the present life, while we do recognize the state of grace as a communication of the perfection and blessedness of Christ, it is this merely in innermost principle: for if, in anyone under grace, his total self-consciousness in time be considered, it is always found to include also a consciousness of sin. The inequality is therefore not present for others, because in the only thing that is open to their observation, namely, the temporal consciousness, they recognize merely a distinction of less and more, and of this they think less, the less they have been captured by the operations of preparatory grace. On the other hand, when we take the life beyond into account, we have then to conceive of a complete development of blessedness and woe, which means that the antithesis is stretched to its utmost; and the more even now we are preoccupied with the anticipation of the future life the deeper must our sympathy be with a future of woe, and therefore the harsher the discord.

3. There is a certain affinity between the thought of this last paragraph and two other attempts to solve the problem. One, while admitting the survival of those who attain to the communication of Christ’s blessedness, holds that the excluded perish utterly at death, so that they are only to be considered as physically like children who die ere it is theirs to enjoy the light of day. This indeed lessens the inequality, for a brief unhappiness offers a smaller contrast than an endless woe. But apart from the point that this makes redemption primarily the cause of immortality, thus attributing to it a physical effect foreign to its nature and definition (since otherwise here too we should have a fundamental cleavage in human nature), still there remains the particularizing character of a redemption which can only secure for some both blessedness and immortality, but not for all. The other attempt seeks to lessen the inequality on a different side, conceding that after the present life even the unregenerate may attain, by a faithful use of the natural light that was given them, to a certain perfection and happiness, if only a subordinate degree. They would only be excluded from a higher stage.¹⁰ But in that case one cannot see why they should not stay, or receive a place, within the sphere of preparatory grace, and why this grace should not sooner or later reach its goal. Otherwise redemption remains particularized in this case also, and we are once more confronted (in a new form) by a divine caprice that makes perfect harmony impossible.

In the light of these explanations, the following theorems of Church doctrine have now to be more closely defined and reviewed.

FIRST THEOREM: PREDESTINATION

§ 119. The election of those who are justified is a divine predestination to salvation in Christ.

Conf. Saxon., Twest., p. 157: Utrumque certissimum sit agentem poenitentiam propter filium Dei gratis fide accipere remissionem peccatorum et iustificationem et hunc esse haeredem vitae aeternae.—Ibid., p. 162: Vult deus intelligi, genus humanum a deo conditum esse … non ad aeternum exitium, sed ut colligat sibi in genere humano ecclesiam, cui in omni aeternitate communicet suam sapientiam bonitatem et laetitiam. —Expos. simpl. x.: Deus ab aeterno praedestinavit vel elegit libere … sanctos quos vult salvos facere in Christo … Ergo non sine medio, sed in Christo … nos elegit deus, ut qui jam sunt in Christo insiti per fidem, illi ipsi etiam sint electi, reprobi vero qui sunt extra Christum. —Conf. Angl. xvii.: Praedestinatio ad vitam est aeternum dei propositum, quo … constanter decrevit, eos quos in Christo elegit … per Christum ad aeternam salutem adducere. —Sol. decl. xi.: Praedestinatio pertinet tantum ad filios dei, qui ad aeternam vitam consequendam electi et ordinati sunt.—Conf. March.: ‘… that God the Almighty … has chosen and ordained to eternal life all who thus steadfastly believe on Christ… . Thus too has God according to His strict justice from eternity passed over all who do not believe in Christ, and prepared for them the eternal fire of hell.’

1. Let us consider the self-consciousness we possess as regenerate persons in this aspect. From the very beginning of our progress in sanctification, it is one with our feeling of absolute dependence, and is bound up with that feeling not only in so far as we are conscious of our activity in the Kingdom of God as an activity divinely produced by means of Christ’s mission, but also in so far as the course of each man’s progress is one with the position assigned him in the general context of human relationships. The natural expression for this fact is to say that the ordinance according to which redemption realizes itself in each life is one and the same thing with the carrying out of the divine government of the world in respect of that person. This holds not only for the period subsequent to regeneration, but also for the previous period spent under the influences of preparatory grace (which equally belongs to the realization of his redemption), and therefore also to the moment of regeneration which binds these two periods together. The self-consciousness that thus expresses itself is, however, not a personal and merely individual consciousness, but the common feeling of all who find themselves within the circle of Christ’s influence. It is therefore correctly extended to all who may be approaching the point of being drawn into this circle. If then the very same thing holds good of them at the moment of their regeneration, it follows that the individual’s being drawn, each in his turn, into the fellowship of Christ is simply the result of the fact that the justifying divine activity is in manifestation determined by, and forms part of, the general government of the world. It would be contrary to this if anyone were to assert that his conversion and sanctification would have taken place in the same way and at the same time, even if his course in life had lain in a quite different environment. How our proposition is in harmony with the consciousness of freedom has already been shown,¹¹ and in that inference it might also have been stated thus: that the manner and the time of each individual’s regeneration is determined by what is peculiar to his own inner life, that is, his freedom, and by his relations to the natural and historical development of justifying divine grace, that is, his place in the world. Primarily, then, the kingdom of grace or of the Son is absolutely one in origin with the kingdom of omniscient omnipotence, or of the Father:¹² and since the whole government of the world is, like the world itself, eternal in God, nothing happens in the kingdom of grace without divine fore-ordination. This therefore is given from the start in and through the self-consciousness of those under grace: and whether they choose to say that their state is a work of divine grace in Christ, or that it is a consequence of divine fore-ordination, the one statement in thought implies the other.

2. But as regards those we find outside the fellowship of Christ—they cannot so affect us as to give us reasonable cause to make any statement about them in this connexion. We are indeed aware that the preaching of Christ which continually sounds forth from the Church is a living and not unfruitful influence: we see the operations of preparatory grace thus beginning in individuals: we see these individuals going on to become members of the Church whose advancing sanctification leaves no doubt as to their justification; thus in their case also the divine fore-ordination is revealed. But about those in whom these operations have not appeared we have no ground for anything more than this negative statement, describing simply their relations, up to that point, to the Kingdom of God and the operations of grace issuing therefrom.¹³ As regards divine fore-ordination, this involves only what has been already explained,¹⁴ namely, that there are always some in whom as yet it has not attained its aim—that is, the initiation of blessedness in Christ. But by this path we can never arrive at the idea that for them, or some of them, there is a fore-ordination of an opposite kind. That ‘many are called and few are chosen’¹⁵ holds true at every particular turn in the preaching of the Kingdom of God, and at every time, which means at the present time; and so one has always a right to say that the majority are not yet to be regarded as chosen—not, that is to say, at the present time. For naturally at any particular moment the majority are being held in reserve for some later moment; this is in accordance with the order of the divine decree, since in every process of development in time there is necessarily a successiveness even of what is originally simultaneous. Only in this limited sense, therefore—that is, only at each point where we can make a comparison between those laid hold of by sanctification and those not yet laid hold of—ought we to say that God omits or passes over some, and that He rejects those He passes over, and hence that election always and only appears with reprobation as its foil.¹⁶ From the position we take, the term ‘pass over’ is the most fitting; it merely negatives a definite act, not as if those passed over were outside all divine activity and all divine decree, but this activity (by reason of the total divine order) takes shape so entirely in remote inner and outer preparations that they appear to us to be passed over. Those not yet included are for us just this undefined element. Not possessing spiritual personality, they are sunk in the mass of the sinful common life, and as long as in their case the divine fore-ordination does not come to light, they are just where the whole Church was to begin with. On this account we can never cease to regard them as objects of the same divine activity that gathered the Church together, and as embraced along with us all under the same divine fore-ordination. And since we have denied the possibility of any relapse from fellowship with Christ into the common life of sin, whereby that fellowship were wholly abjured, and have declared this an illusion, it follows that no divine fore-ordination can be admitted as a result of which the individual would be lost to fellowship with Christ. Thus we may reasonably persist in holding this single divine fore-ordination to blessedness, by which the origin of the Church is ordered.

3. It is therefore only as it were in an appendix, not here strictly relevant, that we can deal with the other idea of there being a two-fold fore-ordination—on the one hand to blessedness, on the other to damnation.¹⁷ The only point of attachment for it in the foregoing discussion is the possibility of death intervening in some individual case before fore-ordination has fulfilled itself. Suppose an individual in whom noteworthy influences of preparatory grace are to be seen, but about whom it may be equally certain that he is not yet in the state of sanctification; then it is very natural to think that it is in virtue of a divine ordinance that he did not attain to fellowship with Christ and the enjoyment of blessedness. If, however, we proceed on the definite assumption that all belonging to the human race are eventually taken up into living fellowship with Christ, there is nothing for it but this single divine fore-ordination. We infer from it that for such an one this fore-ordination has not been fulfilled during his lifetime, but not by any means that a different fore-ordination is being fulfilled by his death; rather, the state in which he dies is only an intermediate state. Such is the faith in Christ which ascribes to Him a claim and power over the whole human race, without at the same time needing to admit any blind divine preference, and in which there is encountered no contradiction between the end in view in the divine plan of salvation and the result accomplished by the divine government of the world. But as soon as people proceed on the opposite assumption (as is obviously done in our Confessions),¹⁸ namely, that death is the end of the divine gracious working, the proposition given above ceases to be a fitting statement; and, if everything is to be neat and logical, we must admit a fore-ordination by which some are predestined to damnation, as others to blessedness. If, however, even on this assumption, it is still urged that the fore-ordination only holds of those who are saved, the others being simply passed over or left where they are, we must reply that, if the only conceivable meaning of fore-ordination is a divine decree that conducts man to his very end,¹⁹ this is an impossible view at least without forced artificiality. Similarly when, identifying fore-ordination with election, some deny that there is any fore-ordination in respect of the wicked, but merely foreknowledge²⁰—as if a foreknown passing-over were not also a fore-ordination. For if it be asserted that the individual persons elected are fore-ordained,²¹ it follows, if the rest are merely covered by foreknowledge, that in respect of them there is no divine will at all. And even if it be ever so strongly argued that electing fore-ordination is not to be considered as something wholly abstract, but as taking place in Christ, it none the less follows, if in Christ some cannot be elect but merely passed over, that the universality of redemption must be limited in proportion. To sum up, the only possible conclusion is that if—on the presupposition that for those who die outside fellowship with Christ there is no further possibility of entrance into it—it is yet desired to assert that the excluded are simply passed over, they must then be regarded as not having any existence at all. Now this is quite right if the whole proposition be taken as dealing with the sphere of the new creation, for in that sphere the excluded persons are not to be found. But then on that view even the elect are not there to begin with, but only after each comes to be in his own time and according to his own fore-ordination; and the expression ‘fore-ordination’ cannot then be applied to real individuals. Indeed, the proposition would have to run as follows. There is a single divine fore-ordination, according to which the totality of the new creation is called into being out of the general mass of the human race.²² In itself this formula is equally adapted to all assumptions—to that according to which the non-elect perish at death, to our own, and to that with which we are now dealing. All that our assumption adds to it is this, that the totality of the new creation is equal to the general mass; what the first adds is that the general mass eventually becomes equal to the totality of the new creation; the last, on the other hand, lets the general mass remain the more extensive. But in harmony with this one must also say of the redeeming power of Christ that it suffices to save from common ruin the totality of the new creation contained in the human race. And a composite formula is always unsound which gives foreknowledge a wider compass than fore-ordination, for no such disparity can exist. God always predetermines the condition just as He foresees that which is conditioned; and it follows that if He foresees what is conditioned, namely, the lostness of men, and (speaking very humanly) does not alter what conditions it, namely, the particular constitution of the individual in its relation to his position in the course of the spread of the gospel, then He has also fore-ordained what is conditioned. If the one conception be applied to individuals of both sections of mankind, so must the other. In one section individuals are both foreknown and fore-ordained as elements of the mass out of which the children of the Kingdom are to be formed. In the other they are foreknown and fore-ordained as the new creatures that are to be formed out of the mass. Hence the formula suggested as a way out of the difficulty would still deviate from the Confessions of both divisions of the Protestant Church. For, as both definitely agree in excluding one section of the human race, so they agree also in referring the expression ‘fore-ordination’ to the individual in his whole actuality; and if the matter is to end there, the logicality of Calvin’s formula incontestably ought to be preferred. The assumption on which it rests has certainly become more and more generally accepted in the Church, but whether it is a necessary or optional assumption is a point to be discussed only when we come to treat of the consummation of the Church, and not here, where we are dealing with its origin.

SECOND THEOREM: THE GROUNDS OF ELECTION

§ 120. Election, viewed as influencing the divine government of the world, is grounded in the faith of the elect, foreseen by God: viewed as rooted in the divine government of the world, it is solely determined by the divine good-pleasure.

Canon. Dordr., Art. ix.: Eadem haec electio facta est non ex praevisa fide.—Art. x.: Causa vero huius gratuitae electionis est solum Dei beneplacitum.—Conf. March.: ‘That God … purely of grace … has ordained to eternal life and elected all who thus steadfastly believe in Christ, His own know and understand right well.’ Note that (thanks to Prince Sigismund) it is repudiated as Pelagian that God has elected some, simply on account of the faith He foresaw.—Colloq. Lips., p. 404 (Brandb. and Hess.): ‘That God … in Jesus Christ … has elected some whom He … leads to faith in Christ and renews and preserves in the same to the end.’ —(Kursax): ‘That God had chosen from eternity those whom He saw … would believe in Christ and continue in faith to their end … and that He found no cause or occasion for this choice in the elect themselves.’

1. The antithesis set up here relatively to election applies quite generally to all free actions. Every such action contributes something to the further course of the divine government of the world; for everything within range of it would be more or less different if it were different. At the same time every act is also in its determined place in time and space the result of the divine government of the world in its course up to that point. The consideration of election from this point of view, however, rests on the fact that the Kingdom of God and the divine procedure in its harvesting and propagation is represented as a special divine activity by itself, apart from the divine government of the world in general, and that then (all men on account of sin being originally equal in respect of redemption) the question arises why one is chosen and not another. We have the same title and reason to raise this question, whether the view that all are elect is adopted or not; though in the first case a more exact expression would be: ‘Why is one already, and another not yet regenerated?’ Now looking back upon what was formerly said about the supernatural becoming natural, this can only be decided in the light of nature; and all we can say is that if any one is regenerated, it can be then inferred that in his case the preaching of the gospel at its maximum of power and the maximum of his susceptibility must have coincided in time. But the answer gives no satisfaction, for this again depends on conditions that are under divine control. And if at this point the question is again raised why circumstances were so controlled that one was regenerated and another not, we must either seek the ground for the determination absolutely at the beginning, before there was anything at all, which means holding firmly to belief in a divine good-pleasure; or else we must seek it at the end, in the final result, which means that we hold firmly to a divine foreknowledge. Obviously, however, these two are not separable. For there is no foreknowledge in God that is not connected with a divine good-pleasure;²³ and just as little is there a good-pleasure in any particular thing apart from its entire context, which in the case of everything temporal necessarily includes foreknowledge. In the credal passages quoted, however, and in other similar passages, there is on this point a remarkable hesitation. Good-pleasure and foreknowledge are contrasted; yet what has been excluded is almost always brought in again by way of some cautious formula. The form of our proposition is meant to do away with this uncertainty and confusion.

2. If the moments of regeneration are chiefly to be regarded as extending the union of the divine with the human nature, and the justifying divine activity as the temporal and particularized continuation of the general act of union begun in the incarnation of Christ, we must admit that the divine procedure will follow the same rule in the one case as in the other. Therefore if the question be ventured, why then for this union with human nature there was chosen precisely Jesus of Nazareth, or rather (since it was only through this union that He became what He was) why exactly this and no other person-creating act of human nature was chosen, at exactly this time—the question must be capable of being answered in a quite analogous way. If we recall that this act was itself a becoming natural of the supernatural, and if we remember the kind of effects that were to proceed from it, we cannot answer in any other way than this: that time and place were chosen as the absolutely best, that is as yielding the maximum operative effect. Now to answer the question thus is obviously to postulate foreseen faith as the ground of individual election. For by the same rule they must be chosen, and the time of their conversion determined, so as to make their share in the furtherance of the work of redemption the greatest possible. In the same way, if we take a large view of election not merely as the determination of the order in which individuals are regenerated, but as the election of nations to have the gospel firmly rooted in their midst, this too will be determined in just such a way as to attain the extensive and intensive maximum for the whole course of the historical development. But everything that the individual or a community can do by word or deed for the extension of the Kingdom of God, being a continuation of, and therefore included in, the prophetic activity of Christ, may be summed up in the terms ‘proclamation’ or ‘preaching.’ And preaching, in this meaning and compass, springs from,²⁴ and is the natural utterance of, faith. It is thus quite the same thing whether we say that the divine election is determined through the foreseen efficaciousness of preaching, or through the foreseen occurrence of the maximum power of faith.

It is true all the same that in the common use of the formula this moment of regeneration is what is least prominent, and what is stressed is the permanence and steadiness of faith rather than its active power. But the inadequacy of the formula taken in this restricted sense must strike everyone. On this reading it does not get right back to the idea of the Kingdom of God, or to the origin of the Church, which, according to the Scripture passage²⁵ that forms the basis of most discussions of the subject, is the natural point at which the question arises. In fact, an entirely atomistic view of the work of redemption underlies the whole position, if it is always and only the individual as such that is spoken of; and no such limitation can possibly yield a right view. This becomes very clear if along with this formula we take two others which are supposed to explain and support it. First, it follows from the formula that if some are not elected at all, they are those in whom effectual grace would not in any case have had firm root. But it is also said of them that God has determined to harden and reject those who persist in repelling His word.²⁶ If the combination of these formulæ is to lead anywhere, it must be possible to prove a difference between the natural aversion which is the ground of non-election and the antipathy caused by God which is its result. The impossibility of this makes the formula useless, whether as a canon for the investigation of Christian history, or for conducting fruitful self-examination. On the other hand, if, after stating that God elects those whom He sees to be such as will continue in faith, it be also said that He has determined to strengthen and confirm those whom He elects, it is equally impossible to define a difference and boundary line between the former merely foreseen steadfastness, and the latter, which is imparted by God Himself. If, however, it is the intention of the formula to avoid every imputation of Pelagianism, and therefore to reckon the former too as divinely effected (there being no foreknowledge in God that is not operative), the final conclusion is that God has elected only those whom He has also determined to strengthen in faith. Now this is an altogether empty formula, unless one is conceiving faith as also including its operative effect. The same holds good of the more modest formula that regard to faith cannot be excluded from the divine decree of election.²⁷

No one, however, will desire to stretch the application of our first formula so far as to insist on our proving that the maximum fruit of redemption could have been secured only by just exactly the course of election which as a matter of fact has gone to edify the Church. No proof is possible, for there is no alternative with which the comparison can be made. Hence what we have in this formula is faith speaking about what is fundamental to the conception of history and to true self-scrutiny.

3. The answer, however, which has just been given in reference to what can be regarded as divine election in the incarnation of Christ may also be traced back to the second formula of our proposition. For if we say that that point was chosen from which the maximum of efficacy could develop, it may also be said that that point only had this peculiarity because the general situation had become just what it was. But this situation divine guidance might have made different, and then a different point would have had this peculiarity. Christ therefore was determined as He was, only because, and in so far as, everything as a whole was determined in a certain way; and conversely, everything as a whole was only so determined, because, and in so far as, Christ was determined in a certain way. To say this is obviously to take our stand upon the divine good-pleasure, and to say that the determination in both cases is what it is simply through the divine good-pleasure. Indeed, whenever we form an inclusive idea of natural causality as a self-enclosed whole and go back to its basis in the divine causality, we can reach no ground of determination for the latter except the divine good-pleasure. Just as the whole world was so ordered by God that He could say it was all very good, that is, in accordance with His good-pleasure, and as the individual is in this regard not separable from his connexion with the rest of being—so, viewing the Kingdom of God as a self-enclosed whole, we can only say that, as it is, it is simply determined through the divine good-pleasure, and everything appertaining to it is so determined—Christ as He actually is, and the whole actual inward manifold of the human race in space and time, out of which through Christ the Kingdom of God is formed. There is, of course, nothing to hinder it being also said that the order in which the relationship to Christ comes to be realized in each individual case conforms to that manifold, and is determined by it; but in that case it must also be possible to say, conversely, that the manifold of the human race conforms to that order, and is determined with relation to it so that, within it, redemption through Christ develops on precisely this scale and in this order. Both statements are equally true, and at the same time, because standing in contrast, they are equally false. Summing up everything, therefore, all that can rightly be said is that both, in their relation to one another, and also each by itself, are in the above sense ordered according to the divine good-pleasure. It has been well-pleasing to God that human nature should show itself in this determined multiplicity of thus determined individual beings; and no other ground for it can be given. For every other explanation would involve conditioning assumptions; and these in turn would always themselves be conditioned by the all-embracing divine good-pleasure. Similarly it has been His good-pleasure to make the dispensation of human affairs perfect through Christ. He might from the very beginning have arranged the whole march of the human race differently; only it would then have been a different human race, for when once one thing is fixed, everything else is fixed along with it in just one way. Every attempted logical proof of the necessity of redemption in this form assumes something the necessity of which itself requires similar proof. For the religious there is no path of escape from this circle of necessities, each leading back to and conditioned by the others, except by way of this one all-inclusive divine good-pleasure. Accordingly, all that remains to us is the task of linking up at every point this divine good-pleasure (which is necessarily implicit in our God-consciousness) with what we perceive of the actual course of the work of redemption, and of resting trustfully upon it, however we may be moved by what happens. Indeed, faith in Christ is itself nothing else than sharing in this divine good-pleasure which abides on Christ and the salvation grounded in Him; and the consciousness of divine grace, or the peace of God in the redeemed heart, is nothing else than just this quiet acceptance of the divine good-pleasure in respect of the arrangement of events which led to oneself being taken up into the sphere of redemption. Just as in the world in general we meet with the most manifold gradation of life, from the lowest and most imperfect forms up to the highest and most perfect, and cannot doubt but that this very multiplicity is the richest fulfilment, in time and space, of the divine goodpleasure; and as such gradations also occur within the sphere of human nature: so within the sphere of spiritual life resulting from redemption we shall readily expect all that lies between the greatest and the least, and find peace in regarding all this abundance, linked up in living fellowship, as the object of the divine good-pleasure.

4. We have already seen how these grounds of election are arrived at, and how they seem to be in opposition to one another because they have opposite points of departure. The previous exposition will have removed this apparent contradiction, as our proposition requires, by exhibiting it in formulæ which have an equivalent content, but merely are construed from different angles, so that in accepting the one there is no necessity to reject the other. But it is only possible to show them thus to be in agreement, if both are freed from untenable elements attracted in large measure by their very opposition. What has to be detached from the first is any appearance of the divine decree being dependent on what would obviously be a human kind of foreknowledge on the part of God, the object of which would then be independent of the divine decree, whereas in fact that decree must be guided by His foreknowledge. For if a determination of the divine decree by faith foreseen be opposed to a determination by the free divine good-pleasure, the inference is hardly to be avoided that faith is grounded, independently of the divine influence, in the free will of man; and this semblance of Pelagianism cannot be removed by any kind of artificial qualifications, so as to leave the formula any definite content at all. As against this, what we say is that faith foreseen determines the divine decree in so far as it has been the divine good-pleasure to allow to issue from this point such an activity in behalf of the Kingdom of God as is conditioned by precisely this strength and timeousness of faith. The other formula, to the effect that the divine good-pleasure draws on one person and leaves another behind, if set up in contrast to the first, seems only too easily to imply favouritism to the one and repression of the other; and this in such wise that on such a beginning the end must follow, no matter what may happen in between. There is thus an appearance of divine caprice in an unconditioned divine decree concerning individuals, as though it meant an urgent support of the one person with irresistible aid and a predetermined abandonment of the other; and this is so difficult to guard against without the whole formula falling to pieces, that the simplest plan is just to accept it. As against this, our exposition knows of no unconditioned divine decree regarding the individual, for all individuals are mutually conditioned; it knows only a single unconditioned decree by which the whole, as an undivided system, is what it is in virtue of the divine good-pleasure. Not at all as if the individual has somehow some kind of existence apart from this divine decree, which then simply does or does not save him. On the contrary, each individual comes into existence only because and in so far as an element of just such a kind, and of such active powers, is given a place in the whole, in accordance with the divine good-pleasure. Each, therefore, is fashioned in readiness to become a member of the Christian fellowship, because he is foreseen as a believer. If now we view our two formulas in combination, they contain two rules by which these disadvantageous inferences are made impossible. The first is that no individual becomes anything whatever for himself, alone and apart from his place in the whole, in consequence of a special divine decree relating to him. In the second place, viewed as part of the general context of things, everything, and in particular the way in which redemption is realized, is the perfect manifestation at once of the divine good-pleasure and of the divine omnipotence.

Postscript to this Doctrine.—From the point at which we have arrived let us return once more to the assumption that a section of the human race remains shut out for ever from the sphere of redemption, or (to express it as it touches most closely the proper content of our doctrines) that the Christian Church only arises out of the human race in such wise that a section of mankind is for ever lost to it. On the one hand, it cannot be denied that at this point a perfect acquiescence in the divine good-pleasure is hard to attain, for racial and personal consciousness are here affected by contrary emotions, and the resulting inevitable and ever-renewed sadness is such as to prevent an unalloyed communication of the blessedness of Christ. And another problem arises, namely, how so to conceive the matter that human nature shall still remain identical in all. Of course if in Manichæan fashion we are prepared to make a cleavage in human nature, that sadness must die out, since the others are no longer our fellows in the old sense. On the other hand, unless our Christian self-consciousness is to be essentially modified, the almost equally insoluble problem arises how so to conceive this as that nevertheless Christ is still sent not only to, but also for, the whole human race. This is only the case if it be admitted that at some time or another some trace of His activity actually makes itself felt in everyone. But it is easy to see that the difficulty is of a very different sort according as we are dealing with those who have already experienced the influences of the Christian Church, or with those who have remained outside all connexion with it. It may therefore be advisable to make a corresponding distinction within the assumption itself. As regards the former class no incapacity for redemption must in any sense be ascribed to them; rather, as often as some operation of preparatory grace has been vouchsafed to them up to the point of communication, they have already and by that very fact become instruments for spreading the Kingdom of God; for every such communication bears witness to the grace of God in Christ. But the less we are in a position instantly to mark a man’s transition to the state of sanctification, and must be careful to recognize the possibility of an imperceptible occurrence of regeneration no less than of a sudden one, the more we are compelled to recognize, with regard to all who already belong outwardly to the Christian fellowship, the wisdom of the caution that we should not lightly reckon anyone among the rejected;²⁸ so that there is no conceivable case to which the assumption we are discussing can be confidently applied. As regards those outside the Church, it is an essential of our faith that every nation will sooner or later become Christian, as indeed this was Paul’s hope for his own people, which had so often obstinately refused the divine grace. In so far therefore as we view the individual in his national idiosyncrasy, reckoning the spirit he thus shares an essential element in his personality, to that extent we may say that he bears within himself this predetermination to blessedness. This holds good the more as he himself possesses more of those qualities of the common spirit to which, in his race, the acceptance of faith can attach itself, and the less as he possesses more of those qualities on which the race’s procrastinating resistance depends. This more and less, obviously corresponding to the faith foreseen, means for us of course simply this: that the same people, if alive at the time when the gospel first appeared among their nation, would have been laid hold of by it, one man at the very outset, another at some later stage. None the less, from the fact that out of these circumstances we can only construct a formula which expresses nothing real, it does not follow that it could have no other significance in the divine fore-ordination (even without our having on this account to take refuge in the scientia media of God): for in those individuals these qualities are real. Rather, if all in this fashion are included in the divine fore-ordination to blessedness, then the high-priestly dignity of Christ for the first time comes out in its whole efficacy—an efficacy which implies that God regards all men only in Christ. This very point can be applied also to the previously considered case. So that at least this result clearly emerges, that if we take the universality of redemption in its whole range (which cannot really be conceived without this high-priestly dignity of Christ and all its consequences), then we must also take fore-ordination to blessedness quite universally; and that limits can be imposed on neither without curtailing the other.

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Footnotes

1. Matt. 15²⁴. ↩

2. Matt. 8³⁴. ↩

3. Acts 16⁶⁻¹⁰. ↩

4. Rom. 10 and 11. ↩

5. Once for all in connexion with this doctrine I refer the reader to my treatise on ‘Election.’ ↩

6. Gal. 4⁴. ↩

7. Throughout in his De correptione et gratia. ↩

8. 2 Cor. 5¹⁴. ²⁰. ↩

9. Conf. Gallic. xii.: Credimus ex hac corruptione … deum alios quidem eripere, quos … in Jesu Christo elegit: alios vero in ea corruptione et damnatione relinquere, in quibus iustitiam suam demonstret, sicut in aliis divitias misericordiae suae declaret.—Conf. Belg. xvi.: Credimus … deum se … demonstrasse … misericordem et iustum. Misericordem quidem eos … servando, quos … elegit … iustum vero reliquos in … perditione … relinquendo. ↩

10. Cf. Reinhard, Dogmatik, § 116, 3. ↩

11. 4, § 46, § 49. ↩

12. Sol. decl. xi.: Pater enim trahit hominem virtute spiritus sui juxta ordinem a se decretum et institutum. ↩

13. So in Acts 2⁴¹ and 13¹⁸ it is certainly not meant that of those who did not then believe, none could possibly become believers at some later time. ↩

14. Cf. § 117. ↩

15. Matt. 22¹⁴. ↩

16. … quando ipsa electio, nisi reprobationi opposita, non staret (Calv., Instit. iii. xxiii. 1). Only he does not take it in our limited sense, but rather says roundly that this limitation, for which the reason is given above, is brought in inscite nimis et pueriliter. ↩

17. Calv., Instit. iii. xxi. 5: Praedestinationem qua deus alios in spem vitae adoptat, alios adiudicat aeternae morti, nemo … simpliciter negare audet.—Non enim pari conditione creantur omnes, sed aliis vita aeterna aliis damnatio aeterna praeordinatur. Itaque prout in alterutrum finem quisque conditus est, ita vel ad vitam vel ad mortem praedestinatum dicimus. ↩

18. So, too, Melanchthon, loc. d. praed., when he says: Deus volens non perire totum genus humanum semper propter filium … vocat … et recipit assentientes, means by this only the time ante novissimum diem. ↩

19. Praedestinationem vocamus aeternum dei decretum, quo apud se constitutum habuit quid de unoquoque homine fieri vellet (Calv., Institt. III. xxiii. 5. ↩

20. Sol. decl. xi.: Aeterna vero electio seu praedestinatio dei ad salutem non simul ad bonos et ad malos pertinet,—and all that follows. ↩

21. Sol. decl. xi.: Et quidem deus illo suo consilio non tantum in genere salutem suorum procuravit, verum etiam omnes et singulas personas electorum … ad salutem elegit. ↩

22. At this point the Augustinian formula already cited is entirely apposite: Sola gratia redemtos discernit a perditis, quos in unam perditionis concreverat massam ab origine ducta causa communis (Enchir. xxix.). To suit our purpose, we have to alter this only slightly, as follows: Praedestinatio discernit redemtos a communi perditionis massa. ↩

23. Cf. § 55, I. ↩

24. Rom. io¹⁷, 2 Cor. 4¹³. ↩

25. Rom. 10 and 11. ↩

26. Sol. decl. xi.: In eodem suo consilio decrevit, quod eos qui per verbum vocati illud repudiant … et obstinati in illa contumacia perseverant, indurare reprobare et aeternae damnatione devovere velit. ↩

27. Dicimus fidei intuitum decreto electionis esse includendum (Gerh., iv. p. 207). ↩

28. Expos. simpl. x.: Bene sperandum tamen est de omnibus, neque temere probis quisquam est adnumerandus, ↩