Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God, be called according to God’s purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God’s mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.
As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet,
pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wrethchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.
Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the word of God.
by the Rev. K.D. Joyce
A tremendous amount of ink has been spilled concerning the topic of predestination over the last half-millennium, a reality which I believe owes to two facts. First, while there are some who have sought to dismiss the question of election as ultimately unimportant, for many Christians the question of whether and how God has predestined humans for salvation [and perhaps also for damnation] directly touches on questions of God’s goodness and power. What we believe about predestination also has implications for our understandings of human nature, free will broadly speaking, and the ethical obligations of the Christian, especially concerning evangelism.
The second reason that predestination inspires such extensive discussion and debate is that it is a doctrine that is tremendously difficult to articulate with clarity and concision. Article XVII is the longest article of religion, by a significant margin, and with good reason. There is a great deal of apparent tension within the Bible itself on the question of what election means and how and when it occurs, and the doctrine has been the point of significant confusion and distress for many, as the text of Article XVII itself indicates.
The position that Article XVII articulates is, in true Anglican fashion, not one that lies at either of the extremes, though it is certainly more Calvinist than Arminian, to use anachronistic terms. The article is entirely silent on the question that so often vexes contemporary Christians – does God elect some subset of humanity to be damned, placing them outside the reach of salvation? While the article references Romans 9 and its language of “vessels made to honor,” it entirely avoids Paul’s simultaneous discussion of the possibility of “vessels of wrath.” While I don’t claim to know the thought process behind this, I wonder if it is because Paul’s own words later in the same Epistle don’t lend themselves well to making a decisive claim in favor of double predestination (the doctrine that God has proactively destined some for salvation, and has with equal proactivity destined others for eternal damnation). His discussion of vessels for honor and for destruction concludes with the assertion that the Jewish people who have “stumbled” in refusing Christ have done so because God willed it. But in chapter 11 he returns to the question of those whom God has caused to stumble, saying “Have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means! …Now if their stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean! …if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead! …as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” And indeed, even if chapter 9 were to be read on its own without the context of the surrounding chapters, Paul only suggests that God might well have prepared vessels for destruction, without directly stating that it is certainly so. In any case, Article XVII makes no claims concerning the idea of election to damnation.
The apparent concern of this article, then, is not to declare that the whole world has been demarcated by God into two exhaustive and mutually-exclusive groups – those chosen to be saved and those chosen to be doomed – but to emphasize that salvation comes to people not as a result of their ethical merit, or because they independently choose to turn to God, but because God freely willed their salvation from before the beginning of time – or, in the words of the author of 1 John, “We love God because he first loved us.” Those who obey the calling of the Spirit do so only through God’s grace.
While this concept may produce rather less anxiety in the contemporary soul than the claim that God desires and glories in the utter damnation of many, it is by no means a universally-held position within the global Church or within Anglicanism itself. (If this is not immediately evident, the very fact that this article was included, and at such length, suggests that the topic was contested at the time.) This article is, then, the logical continuation of another controversial article – Article IX. “The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.” Our salvation depends on God’s sovereign choice to save us, not because we are somehow prohibited from wanting what is good, but because unless we are aided by God’s favor and power, we lack the *capacity* to will what is right and good for us and the world. Put another way, the problem is not that we aren’t able to *wish* we could lift a car overhead with our bare hands, it’s that whatever we might wish, we fundamentally lack the strength. It isn’t a particular individual moral failing of specific humans, it’s simply the reality of our very nature apart from grace.
The second paragraph of the article reflects on the effects of our consideration of the truth of the doctrine of election. Such consideration is “full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons,” but “for curious and carnal persons” it “is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.” (Note that the word “wretchlessness” here means “recklessness,” and is etymologically unrelated to the noun “wretch.”) Many have interpreted the “godly persons” of this paragraph to be the elect, and the “curious and carnal persons” to be the reprobate, but this is far from clear on a plain reading of the text. Instead, I understand this passage to be primarily descriptive, and intended as a warning – a warning which would be unnecessary and ineffectual if the “curious and carnal persons” in question were already eternally condemned by God’s incontrovertible will.
If we read this section of the article as being about two different sub-categories within the broader category of “those God has predestined for salvation,” its meaning shifts. For those who rightly understand the doctrine of election and its implications for them, it is a source of joy and relief, because it means that our eternal salvation doesn’t depend on anything we do. If God has willed to save us totally apart from an examination of our merits, then we need not live in fear that by our transgressions we will somehow snatch ourselves from the hand of Christ. Such people will walk in good works not as a means by which to earn their salvation, but out of gratitude for what has already been accomplished for them, and because the process of becoming holy is itself a part of the salvation which they have been freely given.
By contrast, those who seek to understand predestination from an earthly perspective, and who are overly curious about the mechanics of election, will find despair in it. John Calvin warned Christians strongly against attempts to articulate the mechanics of the doctrine of election in too much detail, saying that “the subject of predestination, which in itself is attended with considerable difficulty, is rendered very perplexed and hence perilous by human curiosity, which cannot be restrained from wandering into forbidden paths and climbing to the clouds, determined, if it can, that none of the secret things of God shall remain unexplored.” It obviously follows, by the logic of this article and the articles as a whole, that those who approach predestination not as an article of faith to be accepted as a revealed truth about a good and loving God, but as a puzzle or a death sentence, will find anxiety in it rather than comfort. Misapprehension of the doctrine can lead to despair, or to wanton and wicked living. While sanctification should be, and ultimately will be, the path walked by the elect, the articles are clear that those who are being saved can, will, and do in fact sin, and not in merely trivial ways. In the article immediately previous, it is made clear that when we are not living and walking in the spirit of Christ, “we may depart from grace given, and fall into sin, and by the grace of God we may arise again, and amend our lives.” Despair and unclean living are not the will of God – they are states into which “the Devil doth thrust them.”
The article concludes somewhat ambiguously, but here is my best interpretation. Even those who believe in predestination by faith and experience it as a “sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort,” there may yet be a temptation hidden in the application of the doctrine. Upon learning that salvation comes to humanity by the sovereign and incontestable will of God, one might mistake the accurate statement, “Our salvation does not depend on keeping the commands of God as revealed in scripture,” and proceed to the inaccurate conclusion that it does not *matter* whether or not we live our lives in accordance to the will of God as revealed in scripture. Election is a doctrine that derives from scripture, not a trump card to exempt the elect from following the teachings found in scripture.
How, with all this said, is the contemporary Anglican to understand predestination generally, and the version of it put forth in Article XVII specifically? One thing, first and foremost, should guide our interpretation: “Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God.” When a passage of scripture is unclear to us, it should be read in light of passages that are more clear. No interpretation of a passage or a doctrine can be defended if it contradicts the consistent, clear, core teachings of the whole of scripture taken together. As Augustine says, “anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbour, has not yet succeeded in understanding them. Anyone who derives from them an idea which is useful for supporting this love but fails to say what the writer demonstrably meant in the passage has not made a fatal error, and is certainly not a liar.” And so it’s to our benefit to avoid endlessly dissecting every possible theology of election, either out of curiosity or fear, and to rest instead in what is certain – the God revealed to us in Christ, who judges justly, whose property is always to have mercy, and who hates nothing that he has made, will be the one to decide the question of salvation. We don’t determine our own salvation, or that of others, and whatever happens in the end of all things will by caused by and in accordance with God’s love and grace which pass all human understanding, to whom be honor and glory, dominion and blessing and praise, now and forever. Amen.
The Rev. K.D. Joyce is a priest serving at Saint Philip’s in the Hills in Tucson, Arizona. She lives with her wife, Bailey, who is a Presbyterian minister, and their dog, Amos.