The sovereignty of God and the “whosoever will” promise

I’m following up on some of the line of questioning that took place in the wake of my blog post “Double Predestination”?.

Several commenters pointed out, for example, that the WCF says: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestined unto eternal life, and others foreordained to everlasting death” (WCF III.3). And another commenter on the Lutheran thread pointed to a statement that Calvin made in the Institutes:

“By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or death.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3:21:5)

I understand about the decrees of God. And I understand that nothing occurs outside of the purview (and outside of the decree) of the Sovereign Lord.

“Double Predestination” is in quotes, however, because that’s not what the teaching is. That terminology is not precise, and it is not helpful in discussion with Lutherans (for example, much less among the Reformed), which I alluded to. Note that the WCF quote uses two different words: “predestined” and “foreordained”. What’s happening in both cases is similar but not precisely interchangeable.

* * *

We have the means and the ability in our day to avoid the kinds of misunderstandings that the early Reformers succumbed to. We have the benefit of hindsight. In many cases, we know precisely where the misunderstandings occurred, and we have the ability to re-frame them in more precise terms. This may not solve all the problems, but it will help to foster discussions that are based on honest disagreements and to avoid having discussions that are informed by prejudices.

And second, we have the Internet, a means by which correct information can be disseminated all over the world, immediately, rather than, as was the case in the 16th through the 18th centuries, the need to write and publish a pamphlet or book, and the months or years it would take for the knowledge to be disseminated.

I think that’s the case here.


What follows is taken from J.I. Packer’s lecture series, “The English Puritans”, from Lecture 5, “The Bible in Puritan Theology – 1”, beginning at 28:00. I think this is tremendously helpful in understanding “the background of [a] Puritan teaching that needs to be understood” and one that is “rarely understood”.

Theodore Beza, without appreciating quite what he was doing, acted as a revisionist in relation to the doctrine of Calvin’s Institutes, and produced a new way of spelling out Reformed doctrine. A way which involved explicit Supralapsarianism, and an explicit statement of what we call “particular redemption”, and here are two developments, neither of which can be found in Calvin’s Institutes.

This is part of the background of Puritan teaching that needs to be understood, and I find that it is rarely understood.

The fifth edition of Calvin’s Institutes, the 1559 edition, had in its Latin title, a claim that it was now at last “arranged in the fittest order”. That means that Calvin thought that the importance attached in which the order of the doctrines were expounded, and he’s alerting you that there’s something to be learned from the order in which themes are dealt with in the Institutes.

Open the institutes, and you find that he’s divided his materials into four separate books:

Book 1: the Knowledge of God the Creator
Book 2: the Knowledge of God the Redeemer
Book 3: the Knowledge of the Grace of Christ
Book 4: Of the Church

You look again and you realize that what he’s doing in the first three books is following the order of Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapters one through eleven. Of the Knowledge of God the Creator covers all that’s in Romans 1. The Knowledge of God the Redeemer, Book 2, starts with the doctrine of Original Sin, so you might say that also stretches back into Romans 1, and covers the ground that is dealt with from Romans 1 up to really the end of Romans 5. The third book, the Knowledge of the Grace of Christ, stretches back into Romans 3, about what is said about faith, and then picks up all that is subsequently said to the end of Romans 8, about the life of faith. And it includes in itself what is said in Romans 9-11 about the sovereignty of God, the God who chooses in our salvation. Chapter 10, the Gospel promises, or the “whosoever will” promises, but chapters 9 and 11, those who receive and embrace those promises are those whom God has chosen. And the election of God is thus the ultimate source of salvation.

You’ve read the letter to the Romans, and you will recognize, I’m sure, the theology of Romans in what I’ve just said.

Calvin, in book 3 of the Institutes, expounds the matter exactly like that. In his book on God the Creator, there was a chapter on Providence, but in this fifth edition, he has carefully separated the theme of Providence, which belongs with Creation, from the theme of election, which is found at the end of book 3, the Knowledge of the Grace of Christ. Why the separation?

The answer is, because he wants his readers to study God’s election, first in their own character as believers, so he wants to expound faith and the way of salvation before ever he gets to the doctrine of election, and second, he wants them to study the doctrine of election a truth of great comfort and support to their own souls. He wants the doctrine of election, in other words, to be studied not as matter for Christian debate, but as matter for Christian praise, and Christian trust.

He wants Christians to approach it, recognizing in it, the source of their own salvation, and drawing from it, the comfort of election, as it is called in the Heidelberg Catechism, that is, the certainty that the God, who, according to his eternal purpose, has begun a good work of grace in their lives, will continue that work of grace until it’s completed in glory. So the doctrine of election gives assurance and stability for the Christian life.

If you read the opening paragraphs of the first of Calvin’s chapters on election, which is Institutes 3:21, you will see him saying that quite explicitly.

And here is Calvin at this point:

In actual fact, the covenant of life is not preached equally among all men, and among those to whom it is preached, it does not gain the same acceptance either constantly or in equal degree. In this diversity the wonderful depth of God’s judgment is made known. For there is no doubt that this variety also serves the decision of God’s eternal election. If it is plain that it comes to pass by God’s bidding that salvation is freely offered to some while others are barred access to it, at once great and difficult questions spring up, explicable only when reverent minds regard as settled what they may suitably hold concerning election and predestination. A baffling question this may seem to many. For they think nothing more inconsistent than that out of the common multitude some men should be predestined to salvation, others to destruction. But how mistakenly they entangle themselves will become clear in the following discussion. Besides, in the very darkness that frightens them not only is the usefulness of this doctrine made known but also its very sweet fruit. We shall never be clearly persuaded, as we ought to be, that our salvation flows from the wellspring of God’s free mercy until we come to know his eternal election, which illumines God’s grace by this contrast: that he does not indiscriminately adopt all into the hope of salvation but gives to some what he denies to others.

How much the ignorance of this principle detracts from God’s glory, yet how much it takes away from true humility, is well known. Yet Paul denies that this which needs so much to be known can be known unless God, utterly disregarding works, chooses those whom he has decreed within himself. “At the present time,” he says, “a remnant has been saved according to the election of grace. But if it is by grace, it is no more of works; otherwise grace would be no more of grace; otherwise work would not be work.” [Rom 11:5–6]* If—to make it clear that our salvation comes about solely from God’s mere generosity—we must be called back to the course of election, those who wish to get rid of all this are obscuring as maliciously as they can what ought to have been gloriously and vociferously proclaimed, and they tear humility up by the very roots. Paul clearly testifies that, when the salvation of a remnant of the people is ascribed to the election of grace, then only is it acknowledged that God of his mere good pleasure preserves whom he will, and moreover that he pays no reward, since he can owe none (3.21.1, pgs 920–921 McNeill/Battles version).

* Cf. The treatment of this verse in Aquinas, Summa Theol. I. cxi.2; cxiv.5. Calvin, in his approach to the doctrine of predestination, stresses humility, a virtue elsewhere commended in the highest terms. Cf. II ii 11, note 49.

[32:30] What happened during the years in which Calvin’s Institutes was establishing itself as THE supreme textbook of Protestant theology, was that any number of people controverted Calvin on election. There were semi-Pelagians around in those days and they chanced their arm [think “arm wrestling”], and Calvin who had been trained as a lawyer, found it necessary in edition after edition of the Institutes to tackle these objectors and go on arguing and debating until he felt that he’d put them to route. Lawyers are like this, they will talk for days if necessary, in order to win their case. And Calvin in the 1559 Institutes is talking about election for four whole chapters, getting on for a hundred pages in Battles’ translation. That is because he feels that for the honor of God, he mustn’t stop debating election until he’s covered all the points that any objector has ever brought up and vindicated the biblical teaching as he understands it, against their objections.

And that’s why superficial readers of the Institutes have come up with the idea that Calvin was neurotically preoccupied with election and wanted to talk about predestination morning noon and night, and this has given them the idea of Calvin as something of a misanthrope, a hater of the human race, because in these chapters about election, he spends a great deal of time asserting reprobation.

That those who are lost are lost because ultimately, God decreed it should be so. Mediately, they’re lost of course because of their sins, Calvin says that over and over but ultimately they’re lost because of God’s eternal decision that it should be so. And we mustn’t deny that, says Calvin, and he says it in page after page, controverting the people who are denying it. Some people have supposed that he had a special interest in asserting that there were a lot of people who were going to be lost.

This is the danger of controversy. You get into controversy, and however successful you are in the battle, you will be typed forever after as a person whose own central interest is focused in the matter about which you argued at greatest length in the course of the controversy. With Calvin it wasn’t so, and with most other people it isn’t so either. But that’s the way it goes in the world of superficial theological judgments.

Well, that’s the data. Now, the point I want you to get from what I’m saying is this: Calvin deliberately holds back the doctrine of election until it can come in to do the job that it does in the letter to the Romans, namely, to support the faith of those who were believers already, and to give them confidence as they face the pressures and threats of the future.

In other words, Calvin’s Institutes is at this point being arranged according to a principle of Biblical spirituality (I take the word “spirituality” to mean what it means today, one’s understanding of the spiritual life). In Biblical spirituality, each truth must have its proper place in relation to other truths, and be used for the purpose for which it’s used in Scripture, and not for any other purpose. And Calvin is showing his awareness that the doctrine of election, predestination in particular, is to be used for the purpose for which it’s used in Romans, supporting the faith of the saints, and with that, for the purpose for which it’s used in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, that is, as matter for praise, as the saints adore the God who has made their salvation secure.

Predestination is for assurance and doxology.

Beza missed this point entirely, and thought that he was doing Calvin and Calvin’s memory good service by rearranging the doctrine of the Institutes which he received as the sum total of the Christian theology, re-arranging it now, according to a principle of Aristotelian logic, which to him seemed self-evident, commonsensical, undeniable, and very clarifying. The principle is this: that what is first in intention is last in execution. Illustration of principle, what you want to do, maybe, is to travel from Jackson to New Orleans to see your parents. That is first in intention. The last thing you will do is to bounce up the steps in the place where your parents live and bank on their front door. But prior to that, you will have had to move out of this lecture room, rev up the car, drive, maybe fill up with gas, cope with all the hazards of driving from Jackson to New Orleans or do it by bus or however you do it. There’s a lot of intermediate steps, you see, all of which you would explain to anyone who asks you, as means to your end. “My end is to go and visit my parents in New Orleans.” Clear?

What is first in intention, the ultimate goal, the end of the whole line of activity, is last in execution. Everything else is a means to that end, and everything else therefore is done first.

Now, said Beza, I learned from Calvin that the real subject matter of theology is the work of God, quite precisely it’s the work of God getting himself glory through his relation to the created order. He gets himself glory from the salvation of those who are saved, and he gets himself glory from the damnation of those who are damned. The way to say it, said Beza, in order to make it clear to everybody, is that God’s glory is the end in view, and always was. That was first in God’s intention, it was precisely the gaining of his glory, and the way that he actually does gain it is through the salvation of those who are saved, and the damnation of those who are damned, and everything else that he does in relation to his world, from creation onwards, is means to that end.

See how simple Christian doctrine becomes, said Beza, when you state it this way? Yes, but see how threatening the doctrine of predestination becomes, if you introduce it, and get it into people’s minds, before ever you say anything about the grace of Calvary, and the whosoever will promise, and the whole economy of God’s grace meeting sinners where they are and bringing them to faith.

Beza never seems to have woken up to that.

One could say it this way: In Calvin, the proclamation of the Incarnation and the atonement and the mediation of Jesus and the “whosoever will” promise that’s established for all the world by his blood, and then the declaration of the work of the Holy Spirit bringing folk to faith and repentance and regeneration and new life … all of that constitutes the frame within which the doctrine of predestination is set. The doctrine of predestination is presented as subserving and undergirding this good news of grace.

On Beza’s way of putting it, the relationship’s reversed. The doctrine of predestination, whereby God plans out in advance how he’s going to get himself glory through salvation and damnation of those who live on earth and in his world, that becomes the frame of reference within which is set everything that is eventually affirmed about Incarnation, atonement, mediation, the economy of the Holy Spirit graciously bringing folk to faith and keeping them in grace to glory.

And I say again, can you see how threatening the doctrine of predestination becomes? When it is made the frame of reference within which the gospel is asserted? You can see I’m sure that presenting the matter this way, you have to assert, and I don’t say this in a way which implies that this is a bad thing to do, I believe it is a biblical thing to do. But in any case, you have to assert the particularity of redemption, namely that Christ died specifically to save those whom, from all eternity, God had decided to save. So Beza is the person from whom the affirmation of particular redemption derives.

But can you see also that stating the matter this way, you haven’t got an obvious answer to the guy who, when he hears the Gospel, finds himself wondering, “I wonder if this promise is for me? If I’m one of the elect, for sure it is, but how can I know whether I’m one of the elect? If I’m not, if I’m reprobate, then this isn’t for me”. Oh dear.

Beza started, in answer to that objection, a line of thought which the Puritans picked up and developed, it’s a major ingredient in Puritan theology, as you will shortly see, the line of thought is perhaps, in the final analysis, a bit lame, you shall be the judges. The line of thought is this: well, of course you can’t know at the beginning whether you’re one of the elect or not. But if you seek the Lord, if you look to the promises and say, “Lord, I would love to trust myself to these promises”, if you pray to Christ in terms of “Lord have mercy on me the sinner”, if you say “Lord give me your Holy Spirit” to renew your heart, well, perhaps you will find that your inward disposition is so changed as you pray in this way, that you will be able to say, “God has changed me in a way in which only the elect are changed. I find myself believing, I find myself penitent, I find myself desiring God’s glory in all things, I find myself a different man from what I was when I started.” If that happens, said Beza, then rejoice, because there’s the evidence of your election in yourself.

I say this is perhaps lame, because with Beza, there was never any willingness to say straight out that the “whosoever will” promise remains a “whosoever will” promise, and the God of all grace will meet anyone where that person is, if he or she casts himself on the promise.

So it’s over to you. If you seek the Lord, you’ll find him. One or two good Puritans said that, and in them, this teaching about looking for evidence of election in oneself is not lame.

Packer continues with this line of thinking over the next couple of lectures, emphasizing the notion that “the “whosoever will” promise remains a “whosoever will” promise” is truly extended to every person under the “whosoever will” promises. It is the same theme he discusses in his work Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God.

Finally, for anyone who is interested, Philip Johnson provides a helpful discussion on the Supralapsarian/Infralapsarian debate.