Reformation
France / Geneva, Switzerland
Reformed
Also: John Calvin
⭐ The most important popular mistake about him that this thread should correct: double predestination was not his invention. Olson cites a scholar: on closer examination, we are deeply struck by how unoriginal Calvin's doctrine of election is — all his main teaching on the subject is exactly what we find in the thought of Luther and Zwingli. ⚠ We do not use this to belittle Calvin, nor to clear him of responsibility — we simply give the credit for invention back to the sources: what he did was to systematize, not to originate.
Below: first his own position, then the church’s verdict — kept separate. A rejected opinion keeps equal weight here.
His own position
Nothing happens, or can happen, apart from what God has predestined by his decree, as Olson sums up his view. He denied that chance events are real; God does not merely foresee, but, in Olson's wording, by the cords and bridle of divine providence makes every event run in the way his will has ordained. ⚠ He expressly refused to make any distinction between God's will and God's permission (this is where he parted from some scholastic theologians): “The first man fell because the Lord deemed it meet that he should: why he deemed it meet, we know not.” A double will: God's revealed will offers mercy to all who repent and believe, while his hidden will, as Olson puts it, predestines some to eternal punishment and makes certain that they will sin and never repent. ⭐ He himself admitted, Olson notes, that this teaching is in obvious conflict with 1 Timothy 2:3–4 and 2 Peter 3:9 — we record this as it stands; there is no reason to hide it for him. To the objection this is unfair, his reply was: “Truly does Augustine maintain that it is perverse to measure divine by the standard of human justice.”
⭐Justification — what he said on this thread. Like Luther, he held, as González puts it, that when God justifies a person this does not mainly mean that the sinner is made objectively righteous, but that God declares the sinner righteous. His famous image, in González's account: the righteousness of Christ is like a robe that the sinner puts on by faith, and wearing this robe the sinner is declared righteous. His own definition: “we simply interpret justification, as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as if we were righteous; and we say that this justification consists in the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.”
⚠ The blow most often aimed at the doctrine of imputation is so once justified, may I go on sinning? He answered it directly. As González sums up his answer: justification by faith does not mean that Christians should be content with having righteousness imputed to them while they go on wallowing in sin. It is true that the justified Christian is still a sinner, and will remain one throughout this earthly life; but it is just as true that the justified Christian seeks to show the fruits of justification. ⭐ González points out that the part of the Institutes on the Christian life was again and again extracted from the larger work and published on its own, and that it stamped its mark on later Calvinism, above all on the Puritan tradition — that is, the strict Puritan pattern of life has its source in this section.
⚠ But keep in mind, too, a structural difference Olson points out: for Luther, justification was the center that holds up everything else; for Zwingli, Calvin and their Reformed colleagues, Olson says, that place was taken by God's supreme sovereignty and power in determining all things. Both sides believed in justification by faith, but it stands in a different place in each one's theology.
The church’s verdict
The founder of the Reformed tradition. ⚠ His opponents' challenge must be recorded with this: if God predestines and brings about the fall and the ruin of individuals, why are the fallen still responsible? Olson records a satirical rhyme of the time aimed at the Dutch Calvinist Franciscus Gomarus (a supralapsarian). In English it runs roughly: Gomarus, master of the supralapsarian creed, / gives Adam all the excuse he could need: / God decreed it beforehand, Adam only obeyed — / if he was a duck on the plate from the start, why blame the duck for its brains? Calvin called objections of this kind evil excuses, and his reply in the Institutes is: “though, by the eternal providence of God, man was formed for the calamity under which he lies, he took the matter of it from himself, not from God, since the only cause of his destruction was his degenerating from the purity of his creation into a state of vice and impurity.” ⚠ Olson's verdict (attributed to him): since Calvin clearly refused to make any distinction between the divine will and divine permission, this answer, he says, seems bound to contain a logical contradiction.
What was at stake for salvation
What he was guarding is the same as what Luther and Augustine guarded: if any part of salvation depends on human beings, that much of God's glory is taken away. For him, everything that happens serves God's glory, as Olson puts it, even when human beings cannot see why.
Principal works
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Institutes of the Christian Religion
Institutes of the Christian Religion; his doctrine of predestination and his reply to the evil excuses are found here
Threads he belongs to
Grace and Free Will
Round 2 · The Reformation Claim ⚠ What he did was to systematize, not to originate — Olson cites a scholar who judges his doctrine of election to lack originality.
Justification
Dispute Counterclaim His image, in González's account: the righteousness of Christ is like a robe that the sinner puts on by faith. ⚠ But in his theology justification is not the center — that place belongs to the sovereignty of God.