Davenant:

The most learned Belgic Professors, in their judgment exhibited at the Synod of Dort, confess the same thing (Act. Synod. Dordt. p. 88). “We confess, say they, that the merit and value of the death of Christ is not only sufficient to expiate all, evert the greatest sins of men, but also those of the whole posterity of Adam, although there should be many more to be saved, provided they embraced it with a true faith.” But it would not be sufficient to save all, even if all should believe, unless it be true that by the ordination of God this death is an appointed remedy applicable to all. If it be denied that Christ died for some persons. it will immediately follow, that such could not be saved by the death of Christ, even if they should believe. What is usually answered to this argument by some, viz. “That God has not commanded his ministers to announce that Christ died for every individual, whether they believe or not, but only for believing and penitent sinners, and therefore it cannot be demonstrated from the universality of the call, that the death of Christ is. according to the ordination of God, an universal remedy applicable to all” seems to me to be said very inconsiderately. For faith is not previously required in mankind, as a condition, which makes Christ to have died for them, but which makes the death of Christ, which is applicable to all from the Divine loving-kindness to man, actually applied and beneficial to individuals. The death of Christ was a sacrifice established in the Divine mind, and ordained for men from the beginning of the world; nor could it profit any one if he should believe, unless it had been offered for him before he believed. When therefore we announce to any one, that the death of Christ would profit him if he believed, we presume that it was destined for him, as applicable before he believed.

John Davenant, Dissertation on the Death of Christ, 358-359.

Mitchell and Struthers:

Section VII. The latter is quite as guarded as the language used by Ussher in his Method of the Christian Religion;¹ and, as I have already stated, it was drawn up by a committee of which the cautious Reynolds had charge. The former was the least that could be expected in a Synod over which Dr. Twisse presided. But it is remarkable that, though the Assembly met after the Synod of Dort, and had for its president one whose opinions on these mysterious subjects were almost as pronounced as those of Gomarus himself, it fell back not on the decrees of that Synod, but on the Articles of the Irish Church, which had been drawn up before the Synod of Dort was summoned, or the controversies its decrees occasioned had waxed so fierce. The debates of the Assembly clearly show that its members did not wish to determine several particulars decided by the Synod of Dort, far less to determine them more rigidly than it had done. They even intentionally left open one point which the Irish divines thought fit to determine. They spoke indifferently of the “decree” and of the “decrees” of God, while the Irish divines speak of only one and “the same decree”; and from the notes of their debates given below,² it will be seen that this was done because all were not agreed upon the point, and in order that every one might enjoy his own sense! The same care was taken to avoid the insertion of anything which could be regarded as indicating a preference for supralapsarianism;³ and for this purpose, the words, “to bring this to pass, God ordained to permit man to fall,” were changed into “they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ” etc. Did these divines mean to follow an opposite policy in regard to the point on which Calamy, Arrowsmith, Vines, Seaman, and other disciples of Davenant, or according to Baillie of Amyraut, differed from the more exact Calvinists? After repeated perusal of their debates, I cannot take upon myself certainly to affirm that they did, though I admit that this matter is not so clear as the others above referred to. No notes of the debate in its latest stage are given, nor is. any vote or dissent respecting it found in these Minutes. Calamy, who spoke repeatedly in the debate on the Extent of Redemption, avowed that he held, in the same sense as the English divines at the Synod of Dort,⁴ “that Christ by his death did pay a price for all, with absolute intention for the elect, with conditional intention for the reprobate in case they do believe; that all men should be salvabiles non obstante lapsu Adami . . . ; that Jesus Christ did not only die sufficiently for all, but God did intend, in giving of Christ, and Christ in giving himself did intend, to put all men in a state of salvation in case they do believe.” Seaman, Vines, Marshall, and Harris in part at least, agreed with him.⁵ And though I cannot find that Dr. Arrowsmith took part in this debate, yet he was attending the Assembly, was a member of the Committee on the Confession, and in his writings has repeatedly expressed his leaning towards the same opinion.⁶ In the progress of the debate, the proposition that Christ redeemed the elect only, was exchanged for this other, that Christ did intend to redeem the elect only. The final decision of the Assembly, as has just been stated, is not inserted in these Minutes; and though at first sight it may not seem easy to reconcile the opinions of these divines with the language of the sixth section of this chapter of the Confession, it would be rash for me to say it is impossible. They certainly did not succeed in getting any positive approbation of their opinions inserted; but it is just possible that the language of this section may have been so arranged, that they felt warranted in accepting it as not positively condemning them. Those who in modern times have pronounced most confidently that the more restricted view is exclusively intended, seem to me to have unconsciously construed or interpreted the words, “neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only” as if they had run, “neither are any other redeemed by Christ, or effectually called, or justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.” But these two statements do not necessarily bear the same meaning. Calamy, Arrowsmith, and the others who agreed with them, may have felt justified in accepting the former, though they might have scrupled to accept the latter.⁷

It may be argued, however (and it is better to advert to it here), that even if the opinions of these divines were not positively excluded by the language of this section, they must be held to be so by that used in chap. viii. sec. 8: “To all those for whom Christ hath purchased redemption he doth certainly and effectually communicate and apply the same.” It is quite possible that, in the progress of the debate, they may have yielded somewhat, especially after having secured, in chap. vii. sec. 3, words sufficient to guard the truth they were mainly anxious to conserve, that under the covenant of grace, and by the preaching of the gospel, the Lord “freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved.” Besides, they had admitted (p. 159) a distinction between the propositum morientis and the meritum mortis. Still, it is also just possible that they may have accepted the words “purchased redemption,” in the eighth chapter, as Baxter was willing to do, not of every fruit of Christ’s death, but of “that special redemption proper to the elect,” “which was accompanied with an intention of actual application of the saving benefits in time.” Ussher and some of his immediate disciples, of whose own position there seems to be little doubt, appear occasionally to have used the phrase in the same sense,⁸ and speak of the differences between Spanheim and Amyraut, the representatives of the two continental Calvinistic schools, as parerga quædam, which should not alienate those who in common rejected Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism.⁹ Dr. Ames, again, who himself belonged to the stricter school, and who may be regarded as in fact one of the English Puritans, maintains that the chief cardo controversiæ between Remonstrants and Contra- Remonstrants was not an pro omnibus et singulis mortuus sit Christus? sed quis finis et fructus sit Christi in cis pro quibus est mortuus, not whether he died for all in some way, but whether he died for all equally, and whether the end and fruit of his doing so was merely to remove legal obstacles, and render salvation possible; or whether it did not also secure the salvation of a certain definite number, and that not a small, but large, number of our lost race.¹⁰ But at any rate, the adoption of the eighth paragraph in chap. viii. of the Confession did not end the contest between the divines, and set them altogether at one. These Minutes show that, when the Larger Catechism was being prepared, another effort was made by the representatives of the Davenant school to get their opinions distinctly sanctioned and positively expressed in that formulary. A committee, apparently of English members only, prepared and brought up for discussion (p. 369) the following questions and answers:–“Q. Do all men equally partake of the benefits of Christ?–A. Although from Christ some common favours redound to all mankind, and some special privileges to the visible Church, yet none partake of the principal benefits of His mediation but only such as are members of the Church invisible. Q. What common favors redound from Christ to all mankind?–A. Besides much forbearance and many supplies for this life, which all mankind receive from Christ as Lord of all, they by him are made capable of having salvation tendered to them by the gospel, and are under such dispensations of Providence and operations of the Spirit as lead to repentance.”¹¹ These questions and answers were first agreed to be discussed, and then referred back to a Committee with which the Scotch Commissioners were associated. The questions and answers adopted in session 873 (pp. 392, 393) are probably to be regarded as their report; and the answer to the question, Are all they saved by Christ who live within the visible Church and hear the gospel? wears the look of an attempted compromise, admitting on the one side that “the gospel, where it comes, does tender salvation by Christ to all, testifying that whosoever believes in him shall be saved, and excludes none that come unto him;” and affirming on the other, that “none do or can truly come unto Christ, or are saved by him, but only the members of the invisible Church”’ This affirmation is warranted both by the Lambeth and the Irish Articles; but there are few nowadays who will not grant that it was more cautiously expressed in the shape in which it ultimately appeared in the answer to the sixty-eighth question of the Larger Catechism: “All the elect, and they only, are effectually called, although others may be, and often are, outwardly called by the ministry of the Word, and have some common operations of the Spirit, who, for their willful neglect and contempt of the grace offered them, being justly left to their unbelief, do never truly come to Christ.”

Alex Mitchell and John Struthers, Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1874), liii-lxi. [Some reformatting; some spelling modernized; footnote values modernized; footnote content original; italics original (Latin quotations excepted); and underlining mine.]

Read the rest of this entry »

Muller:

1.2 Debate Within the Reformed Tradition

The eras of the Reformation and of Reformed orthodoxy were times of intense polemic and debate, initially over issues of reform and, as the Reformation progressed and the church divided, over issues of confessional identity and confessional boundaries. There were also a large number or debates, varying in intensity, which took place over theological and philosophical issues not immediately related to confessional definition. A tentative distinction of these different types of debate–recognizing that the categories are not rigidly defined and include some overlapping aspects–can serve both to clarify the nature of Reformed orthodoxy and to characterize the direction of investigation undertaken by the present volume. The main point of the categories is to highlight not only the diversity of Reformed theology in the era of orthodoxy but also the diversity of the debates as they played out across a spectrum from major encounters requiring Confessional statement and, indeed, condemnation or disapproval, to often bitter arguments of considerably lesser weight that addressed issues of preference in theological formulation without directly broaching questions of confessionality or leading to new confessional formulae.

Three kinds of kinds of debate have been most frequently referenced in the older scholarship–namely I) the polemical debates with other confessionalities, whether Lutheran, Roman, Socinian, or Anabaptist; 2) debates concerning particular lines of doctrinal argument that transgressed acknowledged confessional boundaries-notably the controversies over Samuel Huber’s universalism and Jacob Arminius’ views on grace and predestination; and 3) debates internal to the Reformed confessional tradition that, in one way or another, pressed questions of the precise meaning of the confessional documents, such as the debates over eschatology or over various elements of Salmurian theology as proposed by Moises Amyraut, Paul Testard, Josue La Place, Samuel Morus, but that did not result in synodical decisions of heresy–although sometimes yielding, as in the case of the Articles of Morus and the Formula Consensus Helvetica, confessional documents of a more limited scope.

There are also several other types of debate characteristic of the era, debates that took place far more frequently, but that have generally been given less attention. Thus there were 4) debates over philosophical issues, often concerned with the impact of the new rationalisms on fundamental understandings in logic, physics, and metaphysics and, by extension, on theological formulation. There were also, 5) debates concerning non- or sub-confessional issues that were nevertheless of a fairly significant theological weight that threatened to rise to the confessional level. Here we count the supralapsarian-infralapsarian debates, debates over what for lack of a better term can be called non-Amyraldian hypothetical universalism, over the imputation mediate or immediate of Adam’s sin to his posterity, over the imputation of Christ’s active obedience to believers, and the debates related to elements of Cocceian theology. Finally, 6) there were a large number of theological topics subject to rather different formulations on the part of the Reformed orthodox that sometimes issued in fairly heated interchanges among theologians but that, arguably, did not rise to the level of the debates just noted in the fifth category. By way of example, there were differences in understanding of divine simplicity in relation to the predication of divine attributes and the problem of divine knowledge of future propositions.

1.3 Debates Concerning Confessional Boundaries–Crossing Over or Pressing the Boundary

Leaving aside the first category, the debates with other confessionalities, as not belonging to the scope of the present study and concentrating specifically on debates within the Reformed tradition, some comment is necessary concerning the difference between the second and third kinds of debate namely those identifying transgressions of confessional boundaries and those remaining within the confessional limits – given the way in which such differences were typically glossed over in the older scholarship, particularly when the debates were analyzed in terms of the “Calvin against the Calvinists” paradigm. The late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century debates over universalistic and synergistic soteriologies, notably those over Huber’s and Arminius’ understandings of grace and predestination arose over the thought of theologians who were Reformed in terms of their ecclesial or confessional location but whose thought contradicted basic statements of the Reformed confessions, rendering these debates rather different from the debates over Amyraut’s theology, given that not only was Amyraut Reformed in ecclesial and confessional location but his theology also arguably fell within the boundaries established by the Gallican Confession and the Canons of Dort. Huber’s and Arminius’ theologies did not fall within the boundaries established by such confessional documents as the Second Helvetic Confession, the Belgic Confession, and the Heidelberg Catechism.¹⁸

Read the rest of this entry »

Moore:

1)

6.4.2 The Westminster Confession

Finding modified or intentionally ambiguous codification in the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) is altogether more difficult, but, just as a significant body of hypothetical universalists successfully influenced the final wording at Dordt, so too at the Westminster Assembly do we meet with a vocal minority who were able to restrain the final codification sufficiently for there to be some significant ambiguity at crucial places. This may come as a surprise to many, because it is quite clear that the Westminster Standards not only do not teach English Hypothetical Universalism or allow it to be deduced or expounded by logical deduction from various propositional statements made, but the whole exegetical approach and systematic structures of the finally codified Westminster theology are inimical to it.¹⁰³ But that should not take away from the fact that the Westminster Assembly was far from unanimous on the issue of the extent of the atonement, and the vocal and influential English Hypothetical Universalist minority pushed hard so as not to be needless ly excluded from orthodoxy at any crucial point.

And neither was the Assembly unwilling to comply. There is no evidence to suggest that the Assembly excluded views unnecessarily just because it could. Indeed, to have done so would have been strategically disastrous for this parliamentary committee, as well as against the stated will of some of its leading divines. For example, on the Fast Day of 8 October, 1645, days before the extent of the atonement was debated at the Westminster Assembly, Edward Reynolds preached a sermon to the Assembly in which he exhorted the divines to self-denial in relation to the Assembly, including in the matter of expressing their “judgments and opinions” when these threatened “to hinder the peace of the church.” Reynolds feared that a “divided ministry” would only serve as “an advantage for the common enemy.¹⁰⁴ By ‘common enemy’ Reynolds would have included Papists, Anabaptists, Arminians and the like, but not– despite his own particular redemptionist convictions–English Hypothetical Universalists. The printed edition of this sermon “Published by Authority” indicates that what Reynolds had in mind by judgments and opinions that needed to be suppressed for the sake of unity were those that were “not in themselves matters of faith and morall duty” but rather “matters meerly problematicall, and of private perswasion, wherein godly men may be differently minded, without breach of love, or hazard of salvation.”¹⁰⁵ Reynolds’ spirit here is not out of keeping with the fact that although the Westminster Confession goes way beyond Dordt’s calculated ambiguity in the direction of a much more defensive particularism, it too also falls short of explicitly proscribing English Hypothetical Universalism where, in theory, it could have done so.

An exhaustive investigation of this complicated matter is beyond the scope of this essay, but one example of this falling short would arguably be Chapter 3 of the Confession concerning “Gods eternall Decree”. This chapter was debated at length during the Assembly in the autumn of 1645, following the report of the first Committee concerning predestination on Friday, 17 October. It is significant, given his irenicism above, that Reynolds himself was in charge of this committee.¹⁰⁶ A surviving comment from Scots Commissioner George Gillespie on the opening session of the debate on the following Monday also gives an indication of the spirit in which its predestinarian statements were drawn up. Gillespie advocated studied ambiguity in the confession at this point “soe every one may injoy his owne sence.”‘¹⁰⁷ Two days later, as the debate continued, the boundaries of Gillespie’s commitment to studied ambiguity were to be put to the test as the debate moved towards the relationship between the decree of election and the redemption of Christ. Gillespie, along with Samuel Rutherford, John Lightfoot, Thomas Goodwin, Anthony Burgess and various other particular redemptionists, locked horns with the English Hypothetical Universalists Edmund Calamy, Lazarus Seaman, Stephen Marshall and Richard Vines for extensive debates on whether “Christ did intend to Redeeme the elect only.”¹⁰⁸ The extent of the atonement was debated at length for the rest of the week and rolled on into a second week of debates, with the “debate about Redemption” still appearing in the Minutes as late as 31 October. By this stage some level of agreement appears to have been reached, for discussion then proceeded to the doctrine of reprobation. But just what was this agreement, and to what extent could ‘everyone enjoy their own sense’?

WCF 3.6 reads:

Wherefore they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ, by his Spirit working in due season, arc justified , adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified and saved, but the Elect only.”¹⁰⁹

Read the rest of this entry »