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'Preforeordestination'

Mark Twain has Huckleberry Finn refer to a perplexing Calvinist sermon he once heard on "preforeordestination." In agreement with Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Luther before him, Calvin did teach that God was sovereign in salvation no less than in creation, and that divine election was entirely gratuitous—ante praevisa merita, as the scholastic tag went, not based on God's foreknowledge of human achievement. Calvin held this view not because he was a mean man or a dour despot, but because he believed to have found it clearly taught in Holy Scripture. For Calvin, however, the doctrine of predestination was not an a priori metaphysical axiom from which everything else was derived. Rather, it had a Christological focus (with Christ as the mirror of election) and a pastoral import.

In discussing predestination, Calvin followed the method of Paul in his Epistle to the Romans. One does not begin with the inscrutable decrees of God, but rather with God's general revelation in creation and the conscience (Rom. 1). This leads to a discussion of human sinfulness (chapters 2-3), God's atoning work in Christ and justification by faith (chapters 4-7), followed by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit and the declaration of God's unfathomable love (chapter 8). Only then is it fitting to consider the theme of God's electing grace in the history of Israel and in our own lives (chapters 9-11). Only then, as we look back on our rescue from sin, can we exclaim with the non-Calvinist Charles Wesley, "Amazing love, how can it be, that thou my God shouldst die for me!"

The elect are not the elite. There is no place in Calvin's thought for the kind of spiritual snobbery reflected in the old camp-meeting ditty, "We are the Lord's elected few, / let all the rest be damned./ There's room enough in hell for you, / we don't want heaven crammed!" The true Calvinist preaches the gospel promiscuously to all persons everywhere, aware that God alone infallibly knows all those who belong to him.