Calvin Defines His Protestant Vision

JOHN CALVIN, The Institutes of Christian Religion (1559)

Martin Luther may have initiated the Protestant Reformation, but once it began it quickly moved beyond his control. Over the course of the sixteenth century, Protestantism splintered into numerous sects, some largely conforming to Luther’s views, others deviating from them in important ways. The most important alternative to Lutheranism was developed by the French theologian John Calvin (1509–1564). At the core of Calvin’s theology was a belief in the omnipotence of God and the utter powerlessness of human beings. It was on this foundation that he built the principle of predestination, the idea that the salvation or damnation of every person is foreordained by God and there is nothing any individual can do to alter his or her ultimate fate. In this excerpt from The Institutes of Christian Religion, Calvin defined predestination and offered the history of the Jews as evidence of its veracity.

When we attribute foreknowledge to God, we mean that all things always were, and perpetually remain, under His eyes, so that to His knowledge there is nothing future or past, but all things are present. And they are present in such a way that He not only conceives them through ideas, as we have before us those things which our minds remember, but He truly looks upon them and discerns them as things placed before Him. And this foreknowledge is extended throughout the universe to every creature. We call predestination God’s eternal decree, by which He determined with Himself what He willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death.

God has attested this not only in individual persons but has given us an example of it in the whole offspring of Abraham, to make it clear that in His choice rests the future condition of each nation. “When the Most High divided the nations, and separated the sons of Adam . . . the people of Israel were His portion, . . . the cord of His inheritance” [Deut. 32:8–9]. The separation is apparent to all men: in the person of Abraham, as in a dry tree trunk, one people is peculiarly chosen, while the others are rejected; but the cause does not appear except that Moses, to cut off from posterity any occasion to boast, teaches that they excel solely by God’s freely given love. For he declares this the cause of their deliverance: that God loved the patriarchs, “and chose their seed after them” [Deut. 4:37].

More explicitly, in another chapter: “Not because you surpassed all other peoples in number did He take pleasure in you to choose you, . . . but because He loved you” [Deut. 7:7–8]. . . . Believers also proclaim this with one voice: “He chooses our heritage for us, the glory of Jacob, whom He has loved” [Psalms 47:4]. For all who have been adorned with gifts by God credit them to His freely given love because they knew not only that they had not merited them but that even the holy patriarch himself was not endowed with such virtue as to acquire such a high honor for himself and his descendants. And in order more effectively to crush all pride, he reproaches them as deserving no such thing, since they were a stubborn and stiff-necked people [Ex. 32:9; cf. Deut. 9:6]. Also, the prophets often confront the Jews with this election, to the latters’ displeasure and by way of reproach, since they had samefully fallen away from it [cf. Amos 3:2].

Be this as it may, let those now come forward who would bind God’s election either to the worthiness of men or to the merit of works. Since they see one nation preferred above all others, and hear that God was not for any reason moved to be more favorably inclined to a few, ignoble — indeed, even wicked and stubborn — men, will they quarrel with Him because He chose to give such evidence of His mercy? But they shall neither hinder His work with their clamorous voices nor strike and hurt His righteousness by hurling the stones of their insults toward heaven. Rather, these will fall back on their own heads!

From Hans J. Hillerbrand, The Protestant Reformation (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 184–185.