ПОГЛАВЈЕ IV
Религиски основи на светскиот аскетизам
A. Калвинизам
Now Calvinism was the faith over which the great political and cultural struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were fought in the most highly developed countries, theNetherlands , England ,
and France .
To it we shall hence turn first. At that time, and in general even today, the
doctrine of predestination was considered its most characteristic dogma. It is true
that there has been controversy as to whether it is the most essential dogma of
the Reformed Church or only an appendage. Judgments of the importance of a
historical phenomenon may be judgments of value or faith, namely, when they
refer to what is. alone interesting, or alone in the long run valuable in it.
Or, on the other hand, they may refer to its influence on other historical
processes as a causal factor. Then we are concerned with judgments o historical
imputation. If now we start, as we must do here, from the latter standpoint and
inquire into the significance which is to be attributed to that dogma by virtue
Of its cultural and historical con sequences, it must certainly be rated very
highly. The movement which Oldenbameveld led was shattered by it. The schism in
the English Church became irrevocable under James
I after the Crown and the Puritans came to differ
dogmatically over just this doctrine. Again and again it was looked upon as the
real element of political danger in Calvinism and attacked as such by those in
authority. The great synods of the seventeenth century, above all those of Dordrecht and Westminster , besides numerous smaller ones,
made its elevation to canonical authority the central purpose of their work. It
served as a rallying point to countless heroes of the Church militant, and in
both the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries it caused schisms in the
Church and formed the battle cry of great new awakenings. We cannot pass it by,
and since to-day it can no longer be assumed as known to all educated men, we
can best learn its content from the authoritative words of the Westminster Confession of 1647, which in this regard is simply
repeated by both Independent and Baptist creeds.
"Chapter IX (of Free Will), No. 3- Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation. So that a natural man, being altogether averse from that Good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.
"Chapter III (of God's Eternal Decree), No. 3. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto ever-lasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.
"No. 5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto, and all to the praise of His glorious grace.
"No. 7. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth, or with-holdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.
"Chapter X (of Effectual Calling), No. 1. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased in His appointed and accepted time effectually to call, by His word and spirit (out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature) . . . taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them an heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by His almighty power determining them to that which is good...
"Chapter V (ofProvidence ), No. 6. As for
those wicked and ungodly men, whom God as a righteous judge, for former sins
doth blind and harden, from them He not only with-holdeth His grace, whereby
they might have been enlightened in their understandings and wrought upon in
their hearts, but sometimes also withdraweth the gifts which they had and
exposeth them to such objects as their corruption makes occasion of sin: and
withal, gives them over to their own lusts, the tempta-tions of the world, and
the power of Satan: whereby it comes to pass that they harden themselves, even
under those means, which God useth for the softening of
others."
"Though I may be sent to Hell for it, such a God will never command my respect", wasMilton 's well known
opinion of the doctrine. But we are here concerned not with the evaluation, but
the historical significance of the dogma. We can only briefly sketch the
question of how the doctrine originated and how it fitted into the framework of
Calvinistic theology.
Two paths leading to it were possible. The pheno-menon of the religious sense of grace is combined, in the most active and passionate of those great worshippers which Christianity has produced again and again since Augustine, with the feeling of certainty that that grace is the sole product of an objective power, and not in the least to be attributed to personal worth. The powerful feeling of light-hearted assurance, in which the tremendous pressure of their sense of sin is released, apparently breaks over them with elemental force and destroys every possibility of the belief that this overpowering gift of grace could owe anything to their own cooperation or could be connected with achievements or qualities of their own faith and will. At the time of Luther's greatest religious creativeness, when he was capable of writing his Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, God's secret decree was also to him most definitely the sole and ultimate source of his state of religious grace. Even later he did not formally abandon it. But not only did the idea not assume a central position for him, but it receded more and more into the back-ground, the more his position as responsible head of his Church forced him into practical politics. Melancthon quite deliberately avoided adopting the dark and dangerous teaching in the Augsburg Confession, and for the Church fathers of Lutheranism it was an article of faith that grace was revocable (amissibilis), and could be won again by penitent humility and faithful trust in the word of God and in the sacraments.
With Calvin the process was just the opposite; the significance of the doctrine for him increased, perceptibly in the course of his polemical controversies with theological opponents. It is not fully developed until the third edition of his Institutes, and only gained its position of central prominence after his death in the great struggles which the Synods of Dordrecht andWestminster sought to put an end to. With
Calvin the decretum horribile is derived not, as with Luther, from
religious experience, but from the logical necessity of his thought; -therefore
its importance increases with every increase in the logical consistency of that
religious thought. The interest of it is solely in God, not in man; God
does not exist for men, but men for the sake of God.
All creation, including of course the fact, as it undoubtedly was for Calvin,
that only a small pro-portion of men are
chosen for eternal grace, can have any meaning only as means to the glory and
majesty of God. To apply earthly standards of justice to His sovereign decrees
is meaningless and an insult to His Majesty, since He and He alone is free,
i.e. is subject to no law. His decrees can only be understood by or even known
to us in so far as it has been His pleasure to reveal them. We can only hold to
these fragments of eternal truth. Everything else, including the meaning of our individual destiny,
is hidden in dark mystery which it would be both impossible to pierce and
pre-sumptuous to question.
For the damned to complain of their lot would be much the same as for animals to bemoan the fact they were not born as men. For everything of the flesh is separated from God by an unbridgeable gulf and deserves of Him only eternal death, in so far as He has not decreed otherwise for the glorification of His Majesty. We know only that a part of humanity is saved, the rest damned. To assume that human merit or guilt play a part in determining this destiny would be to think of God's absolutely free decrees, which have been settled from eternity, as subject to change by human influence, an impossible contradiction. The Father in heaven of the New Testament, so human and under-standing, who rejoices over the repentance of a sinner as a woman over the lost piece of silver she has found, is gone. His place has been taken by a transcendental being, beyond the reach of human understanding, who With His quite incomprehensible decrees has decided the fate of every individual and regulated the tiniest details of the cosmos from eternity. God's grace is, since His decrees cannot change, as impossible for those to whom He has granted it to lose as it is unattainable for those to whom He has denied it.
Религиски основи на светскиот аскетизам
A. Калвинизам
Now Calvinism was the faith over which the great political and cultural struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were fought in the most highly developed countries, the
"Chapter IX (of Free Will), No. 3- Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation. So that a natural man, being altogether averse from that Good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.
"Chapter III (of God's Eternal Decree), No. 3. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto ever-lasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.
"No. 5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto, and all to the praise of His glorious grace.
"No. 7. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth, or with-holdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.
"Chapter X (of Effectual Calling), No. 1. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased in His appointed and accepted time effectually to call, by His word and spirit (out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature) . . . taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them an heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by His almighty power determining them to that which is good...
"Chapter V (of
"Though I may be sent to Hell for it, such a God will never command my respect", was
Two paths leading to it were possible. The pheno-menon of the religious sense of grace is combined, in the most active and passionate of those great worshippers which Christianity has produced again and again since Augustine, with the feeling of certainty that that grace is the sole product of an objective power, and not in the least to be attributed to personal worth. The powerful feeling of light-hearted assurance, in which the tremendous pressure of their sense of sin is released, apparently breaks over them with elemental force and destroys every possibility of the belief that this overpowering gift of grace could owe anything to their own cooperation or could be connected with achievements or qualities of their own faith and will. At the time of Luther's greatest religious creativeness, when he was capable of writing his Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, God's secret decree was also to him most definitely the sole and ultimate source of his state of religious grace. Even later he did not formally abandon it. But not only did the idea not assume a central position for him, but it receded more and more into the back-ground, the more his position as responsible head of his Church forced him into practical politics. Melancthon quite deliberately avoided adopting the dark and dangerous teaching in the Augsburg Confession, and for the Church fathers of Lutheranism it was an article of faith that grace was revocable (amissibilis), and could be won again by penitent humility and faithful trust in the word of God and in the sacraments.
With Calvin the process was just the opposite; the significance of the doctrine for him increased, perceptibly in the course of his polemical controversies with theological opponents. It is not fully developed until the third edition of his Institutes, and only gained its position of central prominence after his death in the great struggles which the Synods of Dordrecht and
For the damned to complain of their lot would be much the same as for animals to bemoan the fact they were not born as men. For everything of the flesh is separated from God by an unbridgeable gulf and deserves of Him only eternal death, in so far as He has not decreed otherwise for the glorification of His Majesty. We know only that a part of humanity is saved, the rest damned. To assume that human merit or guilt play a part in determining this destiny would be to think of God's absolutely free decrees, which have been settled from eternity, as subject to change by human influence, an impossible contradiction. The Father in heaven of the New Testament, so human and under-standing, who rejoices over the repentance of a sinner as a woman over the lost piece of silver she has found, is gone. His place has been taken by a transcendental being, beyond the reach of human understanding, who With His quite incomprehensible decrees has decided the fate of every individual and regulated the tiniest details of the cosmos from eternity. God's grace is, since His decrees cannot change, as impossible for those to whom He has granted it to lose as it is unattainable for those to whom He has denied it.