1 changed from the time of his conversion to his death." Dr. Howard Crosby, an eminent Presbyterian divine, said: 2 "Calvin adopted the extreme views of Augustine, and pressed them, as did Augustine, under the plea of logic, but it is just here, where these good men left God's word for their logical inferences, that they go astray. The semi-Pelagians were a rebuke to Augustine, and justly so. The Arminians were still more justly a rebuke to the Calvinism of the Reformation. The Heidelberg and Westminster Confessions, with all their excellence (and no symbols can compare with them for clear statement of Scripture truth), have the philosophic defects to which we refer, and which are the dead flies in the apothecary's ointment." Dr. Schaff says: * "Calvin was, first of all, a theologian. He 'Fisher's History of the Reformation, p. 199. 2 Cumberland Presbyterian Review, Vol. I., p. 415. 3 History of the Christian Church, Vol. VII., p. 260. easily takes the lead among the systematic expounders of the Reformed system of Christian doctrine. He is scarcely inferior to Augustine among the Fathers, or Thomas Aquinas among the Schoolmen, and more methodical and symmetrical than either." Again he writes: "The Calvinistic system is popularly (though not quite correctly) identified with the Augustinian system, and shares its merits as a profound exposition of the Pauline doctrines of sin and grace, but also its fundamental defect of confining the saving grace of God and the atoning work of Christ to a small circle of the elect, and ignoring the general love of God to all mankind." Calvin differs from Augustine on the doctrine of ecclesiasticism, holding that in the case of the non-elect, baptismi is an unmeaning ceremony. Dr. L. F. Stearns says: 2 "The earlier Protestants consented to the doctrine of in 'History of the Christian Church, Vol. VII., p. 261. 2 Present Day Theology, p. 416. fant damnation, the Lutherans, like the Roman Catholics, consigning unbaptized infants to perdition, and the Calvinists taking the same ground with respect to non-elect infants." Dr. Charles W. Shields, a Professor in Princeton Theological Seminary, writes: 1 "Romanists had their limbus infantum, where the hapless little souls of the unbaptized were left to pine for the beautiful vision. Protestants soon began to reconstruct the doctrine with morbid distinctions, consigned them to a negative he!! of mere loss, or to a more positive hell of mild suffering, or to the lowest hell of the reprobate." Indeed it may be affirmed that from the days of Augustine until after he time John Calvin lived, "all Christians, exccpt a few heretics, believed in infant damnation." I 1 Presbyterian and Reformed Review, Vol. I., p. 638. IV. Was Calvin a Supralapsarian or an Infralapsarian? The words supralapsarian and infralapsarian do not occur prior to the meeting of the Synod of Dort (1618-19), hence the terms were not used or known in the days of Calvin; yet supralapsarianism and infraor sublapsarianism represent certain ideas. in reference to the order of the divine decrees, which Calvin diligently considered, and one of which he must have adopted in preference to the other; hence it is perfectly legitimate to inquire as to his theory of the order of the divine decrees. Dr. W. G. T. Shedd defines these two doctrines as follows: "The supralapsarian theory places, in the order of decrees, the decree of election and preterition before the fall, instead of after it. It supposes that God begins by 1 1 Dogmatic Theology, Vol. I., pp. 442, 441. decreeing that a certain number of men shall be elected, and reprobated. This decree is prior even to that of creation, in the logical order. The supralapsarian order of decrees is as follows: 1. The decree to elect some men to salvation, and to leave some to perdition, for the divine glory. 2. The decree to create the men thus elected, and reprobated. 3. The decree to permit them to fall. 4. The decree to justify the elect, and to condemn the non-elect." The infraor sublapsarian "order of the divine decrees is this: 1. The Decree to create man in holiress and blessedness. 2. The decree to permit man to fall by the self-determination of his own will. 3. The decree to save a definite number out of this guilty aggregate. 4. The decree to leave the remainder to their self-determination in sin, and to the righteous punishment which sin deserves." 1 Dr. Charles Hodge says that according to the supralapsarian view 1 "God creates some to be saved, and others to be lost." Again Systematic Theology, Vol. II., pp. 316, 321. |