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Archive for July 29th, 2010

29
Jul

John Overall (1559-1619) on Calvin on the Extent of the Atonement

   Posted by: CalvinandCalvinism    in Pre- and Post-20th Century Historiography on Calvin on the Extent of the Atonement

Overall:

So that out of the side of Christ’s dying upon the Cross, not only the Sacraments of the Church, but likewise all saving Goods and Graces must be understood to flow. And this opinion is so manifest in the Scriptures, that Calvin has every where interpreted them of All. Thus upon Heb. 9.20 he says, that [Many] is taken for [All.] So again upon Rom. 5.18, 19. “It is certain,” says he, “that all men do not receive advantage from the death of Christ, but then this is owing to their own infidelity that hinders them (who was otherwise sufficiently rigid about Predestination) in explaining those very places, which others brought to take away the universality of Christ’s death (as in some it is said that he died for Many). Which words do plainly enough favor the common opinion.

John Overall, “The Opinion of the Church of England Concerning Predestination,” in A Defence of the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England by John Ellis (London: Printed for H. Bonwicke, T. Goodwin, M. Wotton, S. Manship, and B. Tooke, 1700), 133. [Italics original and underlining mine.]

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29
Jul

John Overall (1559-1619) on the Sufficiency and Efficiency of Christ’s Death

   Posted by: CalvinandCalvinism    in Sufficient for All, Efficient for the Elect

Overall:

Therefore it must not be said, that this which is so clear in it self [that Christ died for all] ought to be explained from an extravagant and rigid Conception of Secret Predestination; but we are rather to interpret that Secret by a thing which is plain in itself; that so it may be truly consistent with what was rightly enough delivered in a common Saying of the Schools, That Christ died for All sufficiently; For the Elect and Believers effectually: Had they not corrupted their meaning by the following Hypothesis: The Death of Christ had been sufficient for All, if God and Christ had so intended.”

John Overall, “The Opinion of the Church of England Concerning Predestination,” in A Defence of the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England by John Ellis (London: Printed for H. Bonwicke, T. Goodwin, M. Wotton, S. Manship, and B. Tooke, 1700), 133-134. [Original italics removed; italics mine; and underlining mine.]

[Notes: 1) The subject here is theology behind the classic Lombardian sufficiency-efficiency formula. 2) Overall makes the proper point that for some, the secret will had become the ground and baseline from which our understanding of God’s predestination was mediated and understood. Rather, Overall wants  his readers to locate the grounds of our knowledge of God’s predestination (and plan of salvation by implication) in the revealed will. The revealed should mediate our knowledge of the secret will, and not the other way around. It cannot be denied that all lapsarian speculations thoroughly inverted the natural biblical order and original spirit of the first Reformers on this point.  3) Overall appears to be the earliest, whom we have documented, who rightly spots and condemns the emerging revision of the Lombardian formula. This revision he calls, and accurately so, a corruption. 4) More importantly, Overall correctly notes that the revised formula converts an actual sufficiency into a bare hypothetical sufficiency. Again, this insight from Overall is the earliest example of this critique that we have been able to document so far.]

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