Calvinist's believe that those of us who are
saved were selected to be saved from eternity past on the basis
of God's will alone. In saying this, the Calvinist excludes the
possibility that God would be acting on a will to respond to
something in man. They also believe that we cannot look into
this "will" and see any reason why one was selected and not
another.
In the book's Introduction I showed how the
early church writers (AD 150 - 400) tended to teach that God
foreknew from eternity some fact about each, particular human
being upon which He based His decision to, save or not save
them. [1]
In most cases the fact, in the early Fathers'
view, was that these individuals would have or not have faith.
The early church Fathers had read into the Bible texts the
notions of Philo whose philosophy taught that God could foresee
a future thing as though it had some type of virtual existence
(apart from God causing it to exist).
Facts, however, do not have an independent
existence. They are determined by God or by some other free
agent. Before their determination, the facts do not exist. If
this were not true then God and future facts would be dual
ultimates or dual gods, and we know the Bible does not allow
that. We have shown in earlier chapters that God limits His
sovereignty in a way that allows man to freely determine his
response to God's call to faith. In this particular and very
limited way, men bring certain states into existence that have
not been actually predetermined by God.
Augustine, as we saw, attempted to correct
the early Fathers who did not think this way about facts. They
often thought like Philo, that independent facts existed for God
to see. Augustine's correction, as I have observed, was that
God's election is not based on what God foresees from eternity,
but is based on the mystery of His unsearchable will.
I agree with Augustine that God's choice of
particular men is not based on what He foreknows or foresees
about them from eternity. Even though 1 Peter 1:1,2 says that
God's elect are "chosen according to the foreknowledge of God,"
the wording, "according to", does not require the understanding
of, "on the basis of" ("according to" can mean "in a manner
consistent with" or, "in a manner depending on" or both). Nor
does it necessitate an individual's selection from eternity.
Augustine did have warrant for making a correction, but,
whatever the basis of God's choice, Augustine was wrong in
thinking that the Bible teaches that God makes a choice from
eternity of particular ones of us. The proof of this error has
to do with clarity about St. Paul's meaning, first, with regard
to the objects of election; whether he viewed the objects of his
discussion as certain particular persons or as a class of
persons, and second, whether Paul meant "selection" by his use
of words like "elect."
I will deal with this question shortly, but
before doing so it is important to affirm that I do agree with
Augustine's observation that God's choice is based on His will.
The critical distinction being that I don't agree that God's
will is any longer an obscure, inscrutable mystery. God's
choosing is based on what He wants, but what He wants has been
revealed to us in the New Testament. There we see that God's
"choosing", "calling", "naming", or "election" is synonymous
with His purpose towards men; a purpose which He has had from
all eternity ( 2 Tim. 1:9). As I epitomized in chapter Three,
God's purpose of the ages is, through the work of His Son to
have a people for Himself who would be to the praise of His
glory, whom He would possess by means of His grace through
faith.
Such a choice; such a purpose; such a
decision makes our Lord Jesus Christ the Elect One par
excellence. He becomes the Elect One because He is the One whom
the Father loved ( Eph. 1:6). God favored us in this One and in
Him we are also chosen as His inheritance ( Eph. 1:11). We were
not eternally "in Him", but the choice to include, in His
purpose, those who by grace through faith would come to be "in
Him", was an election made from eternity. When people enter into
Christ, His election becomes their election. This result, in
history, was by arrangements established from eternity.
What I have done in these last few sentences
is to make plain that God's choice rests initially upon a
corporate group; that is, the body of those who believe. Paul in
Eph. 1 & 2 is oriented toward thinking in terms of groups (i.e.
believers, unbelievers, Jews, Gentiles, c.f. 2:14). God would
then have His choice rest upon each individual that is joined to
His Son. The only individual who was actually "selected" from
eternity was God's own Son. All other individuals are considered
"elect" when they come to be in unity with the elect One.
Therefore, part of the error of some early
Fathers into which Augustine continued, was the failure to
distinguish the primarily corporate nature of God's election
from a virtual selection of certain ones of us from eternity.
The other part of the early Fathers' error was corrected by
Augustine; that had to do with their belief that "foreknowledge
from eternity" was the basis of God's election of particular
persons. Foreknowledge, however, is the basis for the
predestination of those who do believe, and a "commissioning" of
them, as I will demonstrate in the next chapter.
SUMMARY We are made aware of God's intentions
for us in the New Testament and it is called the mystery
revealed. God's will regarding who should be saved is made
plain. It is not as Saint Augustine said, "inscrutable". There
are three possible views of what it means to be chosen by God
and in conclusion I would like to give Forster and Marston's
analysis of them:
The three views might be summarized thus:
(a) Because of our works and merits we have
earned the right to share the election of Christ (the Pelagian
view).
(b) God chose us individually before the
world began, and because of that choice he gave us faith as an
irresistible gift and put us into Christ (Augustine).
(c) God placed us in Christ not because we
earned it or deserved it, but because in his free grace he
counted our faith as right-standing. Since we are in Christ, and
he is the chosen One, we are chosen in him and share his
election.
Augustine was right to condemn view (a), but
there are serious problems in his own view. What, in his view,
is the significance of the phrase "in him"? In Ephesians the
phrase "in Christ" occurs 14 times, "in whom" occurs 6 times and
"in him" 4 times--always in reference to Christ. Ephesians 1:3
speaks of the blessings we have in Christ, and verse 4 is a
direct continuation to add that we were also chosen in him. If
Augustine were right then Paul surely needed only to say: "even
as he chose us before the foundation of the world..." But Paul
in fact says: "even as he chose us in him before the foundation
of the world ..." Why should Paul have added the phrase "in him"
if it had no function? As it is, its addition seems directly to
contradict Augustine's view. Surely to be, a "believer" in this
context means nothing else than to be "in Christ." Thus
Augustin's words could be rendered as: "He chose them that they
might be in `Christ,' not because they were already so." But
Paul does not say that we were chosen to be put into Christ, but
that we were chosen in Christ. If we were chosen (in Christ),
then surely we were chosen because we were in him (and he has
been chosen) --which is exactly what Augustine denied.
We have already seen (p. 140 in _Strateqy_)
the confusion caused by Augustine's application to the election
of the believers, of Christ's words to the apostles in John
15:16. Yet it is this verse which Augustine used as the main
support for his view! Thus we find him repeating three or four
times an argument like this: "I ask, who can hear the Lord
saying, 'You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,' and can
dare to say that men believe in order to be elected, when they
are rather elected to believe ...". This is the mainstay of his
argument, on the basis of which he effectively ignores the
phrase "in him" in Ephesians 1:4.
These then, are the very serious problems in
Augustine's view of election. But his view became so influential
in western Christianity ... that we might think of the issue as
a choice between views (a) and (b) above, which it certainly is
not. Any true Christian must rule out view (a), as did
Augustine, but whether Augustine's own view or view (c) is the
correct one needs to be given full considerations (note: Roger
T. Forstar and V. Paul Marston, _God's Strategy in Human
History_ (Bethany House Publishers, Minneapolis, 1973)]
I conclude that beginning with men's faith in
Him, God foresees the certain affinity between the elect One and
those who would cleave to Him by faith. In this sense we are
"elect according to the foreknowledge of God."
NOTES
To the extent that some early Fathers may
have taught God's election of individuals as based on His
foreknowledge of them, beginning with their actual show of
faith, to that extent I agree with those early Fathers as I will
show further on. (c.f. Clement of Rome who by using the phrase
"to partake of His election" in his famous first-century
epistle, shows that he thought of "election" of individuals to
have a beginning with the individual's faith. Clement was a very
early Father and may have been untainted by Philo and well
acquainted with St. Paul ( Phil. 4:3).