Double Predestination Research Articles

Hell and Hope for Salvation

Abstract This article supplements Ralph Martin's recent book, Will Many Be Saved? Our primary thesis is that those who hold double predestination or universalism cannot, if consistent, hope as Christians should for their own and others’ salvation, and therefore can neither live their own lives with a view to reaching the heavenly kingdom nor promote others’ salvation. We also contend that the same disabilities are likely to subvert those who hold certain views that approximate universalism. We go on to set out some positions regarding damnation and salvation that, we believe, all Christians ought to hold and hand on. God wills everyone to be saved, and those who are saved are saved by God's grace. Entirely through their own fault, more than a few people will end in hell. But no one still alive and able to repent need end in hell. While created persons cannot build God's kingdom, insofar as Christians do the Father's will in this world, they prepare materials, beginning with themselves and their interpersonal relationships, for that kingdom.

Augustine on Election: The Birth of an Article of Faith

The doctrine of divine election is part of the heritage of Western Christianity. Discussions in the reformed tradition point to the older Augustine as the one who developed the doctrine of double predestination in the controversy with the semi-Pelagians. The thesis of this study is that the birth of this doctrine can be found in the writings of the young Augustine in the early years of his episcopacy. Personal explorations into St. Paul’s letter to the Romans and written questions from Simplician of Milan prompted him to write on Chapter 9. Augustine’s reading of Romans 9 is compared with the preceding works of Marius Victorinus and Ambrosiaster. The account of Augustine’s conversion in his Confessiones document indicates his involvement in Romans. Especially his Ad Simplicianum documents “a veritable revolution in his theology” towards a fully developed doctrine of grace. The concept of God’s foreknowledge of human acts no longer sufficed to understand the diverse fates of the twins Esau and Jacob.

Beth Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603. Beth Quitslund. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Pp. x+322.

<i>Beth Quitslund</i>, The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603<i>The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603</i>. Beth Quitslund. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Pp. x+322.

Guyon's Faint and the Elizabethan Soteriological Debate: Double Predestination in "The Faerie Queene", book 2, canto 8

Guyon's Faint and the Elizabethan Soteriological Debate: Double Predestination in "The Faerie Queene", book 2, canto 8

Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250–1750

Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250–1750

Calvin and the Canons of Dordt (1619)

Despite the fact that the so-called “Five Points of Calvinism” are based on the five main points of the Canons of Dordt, it is misleading to assume that these five points are drawn directly from Calvin. The documents of the Synod of Dordt rarely refer to any theological source, including Calvin. However, a comparison of Calvin and the Canons suggests that Calvin was a probable influence on the Canons on the issue of double predestination and a possible influence on the themes of the universal call of the gospel, human depravity, efficacious grace, and perseverance. But Calvin was an unlikely influence on the Canons’ infralapsarian stance and on its formulations regarding negative-positive reprobation, particular grace, and the sufficient-efficient distinction. These latter issues became formulated in a more precise manner after Calvin, so later Reformed theologians were more likely influences. In sum, Calvin’s influence on the Canons could only have been moderate.

Calvin and the Canons of Dordt (1619)

Despite the fact that the so-called “Five Points of Calvinism” are based on the five main points of the Canons of Dordt, it is misleading to assume that these five points are drawn directly from Calvin. The documents of the Synod of Dordt rarely refer to any theological source, including Calvin. However, a comparison of Calvin and the Canons suggests that Calvin was a probable influence on the Canons on the issue of double predestination and a possible influence on the themes of the universal call of the gospel, human depravity, efficacious grace, and perseverance. But Calvin was an unlikely influence on the Canons’ infralapsarian stance and on its formulations regarding negative-positive reprobation, particular grace, and the sufficient-efficient distinction. These latter issues became formulated in a more precise manner after Calvin, so later Reformed theologians were more likely influences. In sum, Calvin’s influence on the Canons could only have been moderate.

Calvin's Theological Legacy

AbstractOften caricatured for its rigidity, harshness and hostility to the arts, Calvinism has suffered from frequent misrepresentation, not least in Scotland. In particular, the identification of Calvin's theology with double predestination and religious intolerance present formidable difficulties for a contemporary appropriation of his work. While adopting a critical approach to key aspects of Calvin's thought, this essay nevertheless seeks to understand and to recover other important features of his life and work including his rhetorical strategy, the concept of divine accommodation, and his approach to church, sacraments and ministry which remains an important ecumenical resource.

Nothing Greater, Nothing Better: Theological Essays on the Love of God. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Pp. vi, 217 , Grand Rapids, MI , Eerdmans , 2001 , £13.99/$23€20 . This book deals with a relatively neglected topic in theology: the love of God, the God who is love, but it is equally related to communion: the communion of love that is Trinity, the communion of love that is the people of Christ, communion that is the invisible and indivisible unity of love from God manifest between believers. The volume contains the papers presented at the sixth Edinburgh Dogmatics Christian conference held at Rutherford House in 1999, with an introduction by Vanhoozer and a postscript on ‘The Love of God: A Sermon on Hosea 11’, by Roy Clements (formerly Pastor, Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge). In the ‘Introduction: The Love of God – Its Place, Meaning, and Function in Systematic Theology’, Vanhoozer sets the scene by explaining the paradigmatic revolution as he sees it in the love of God as the doctrine of God, the question of attributes in a twentieth-century context (including socio-political and feminist considerations and the question of post-modernity, examining various models of love): ‘The purpose of this introductory essay is to explore the larger context and its significance for the properly dogmatic questions to be addressed in the rest of this volume’ (p. 23). Gary Badcock's ‘The Concept of Love: Divine and Human’, reassesses the distinction between agapé and eros as set out in Nygren's great work. ‘A Biblical Theology of the Love of God’, by Geoffrey Grogan examines the diversity of biblical evidence, focusing on the objects of God's love, presenting exegetical issues that theologians should not ignore. Lewis Ayres in ‘Augustine, Christology, and God as Love: An Introduction to the Homilies on 1 John’, grounds Augustine's understanding of the God of love in an incarnational Trinitarianism, as the ultimate act of God's love for humanity; an understanding of knowing-loving is essential here, we can know the love of God only as we come to participate in it. In ‘How Do We Define the Nature of God's Love?’, Trevor Hart attempts to explain the love of God, though initially examining the question of whether we can say anything about God, therefore he asserts that such human utterances can only be predicated upon the incarnation. In ‘Is Love the Essence of God?’ Alan J. Torrance likewise considers the analogical language of the Trinitarian incarnation in a theological exegesis of 1John 4:8, but also drawing on Athanasius' understanding of homoousion. Thus concludes what is the first part of the book on epistemological and ontological themes, which then leads into three specific questions/essays. Tony Lane in ‘The Wrath of God as an Aspect of the Love of God’, examines the question, ‘Can we think of God's wrath and God's love together?’, which includes a critique of the contemporary sentimental view of God's love characterised by an indiscriminate inclusivity; by comparison, he argues, wrath is part of God's love, true inclusivity includes a hatred of evil within the love of God (therefore hints of a Barthian principle here). Paul Helm in ‘Can God Love the World?’ examines the relation of the love of God to the world. Essentially this is, in terms of methodology, an exercise in natural theology: Helm's aim is a discursive exploration of what it means to say that God's love is equally distributed. David Fergusson in ‘Will the Love of God Finally Triumph?’, examines a third key question relating to the universal achievement of the love of God. He argues that those who affirm a double predestination and also those who adopt a universalist position are in effect removing the element of human freedom positing that God's love is infinitely patient and infinitely persuasive, sufficient to ensure all sinners turn. Despite the, broadly speaking, Evangelical/Presbyterian/Baptist credentials of the contributors, this volume has an unassertive caution about it that, personally, appears to play down the importance of the sufferance of redemption: the Cross. However, this is an academically sound study, though also an academically safe volume, which, surprisingly, has no bibliography, a glaring omission. However, this notwithstanding, this is an excellent volume on a relatively neglected subject, though perhaps it is all important to remember that we do not study the love of God — indeed it is probably utterly impossible to fully comprehend such love — but are in fact, the object of God's love: light and love that we are beckoned into, drawn into despite our uncomprehending, which all philosophers and theologians would do well to remember.

Visions of an Unseen World Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth-Century England by Sasha Handley

93 opean owners gives way to a careful appeasement of those owners’ concerns that evangelism among their slaves would lead to their freedom. As practiced in Caribbean colonies and the southern US, Anglican theology comes to argue that conversion makes the slaves’ souls equal to their masters’ while their persons must remain enslaved : slavery is justified as an opportunity for conversion to Christianity. Despite some uneasiness about slavery itself voiced by some Anglicans as early as the 1740s, the church largely continued to preach a policy of amelioration of the slaves’ condition—not abolition —and considered that the slaves themselves ‘‘lacked an ethical awareness ’’ even while the Anglican Church’s plantation possessions failed to become models of benevolent Christian rule. Mr. Strong logically, if implicitly, concludes that missionary experience in the New World shaped imperial practice and moved Anglican theology away from the Enlightenment principles with which it began. Shannon Hartling University of Waterloo SASHA HANDLEY. Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth-Century England. London : Pickering & Chatto, 2007. Pp. ix ⫹ 287. £60; $99. Like Rabelais’s ‘‘Lantern’’ guiding we mere faggots ‘‘with legs of wood,’’ Ms. Handley lights the reader’s way through a maze of ghost stories from the Restoration to the year 1750. Methodically and painstakingly, she examines their evolution from a predominant oral tradition to print formats, concluding that ‘‘ghost stories’’ were the collective expression of beliefs and practices in Georgian England. Whereas she could have investigated ways in which her eighteenth-century ‘‘hierarchy of the supernatural’’ had been modeled after earlier celestial hierarchies—a welldeveloped topic—Ms. Handley observes simply that this ‘‘strictly ordered hierarchy . . . emerged by the close of the eighteenth century.’’ She appropriates the ‘‘supernatural’’ vocabulary of the era, clothing her ghosts, specters, and souls in such terms as ‘‘preternatural’’ and ‘‘apparition.’’ In Chapter 1, tantalizingly entitled ‘‘Restoration Hauntings,’’ Ms. Handley continues to employ mystifying wordimages such as ‘‘spirit world,’’ ‘‘wishes of the dead,’’ ‘‘the wandering dead,’’ ‘‘a guiding spiritual light within,’’ ‘‘visions of the dead,’’ and ‘‘ghostly appearances .’’ Readers of the Scriblerian might have an ear for the aura of mystery surrounding eighteenth-century esoteric studies. Ms. Handley’s terminology certainly captures it. Chapter 1 investigates the Restoration ’s radical reaction to Calvinist psychological torment. Theologian Henry More, a Calvinist by upbringing, ‘‘was plagued by fears of damnation as a young boy.’’ In the Calvinist scheme of salvation, the doctrine of double predestination mandated that no good works or faith could change the fate God had ordained for the individual, resulting in severe emotional anxiety. Fierce antiCalvinist controversies over the nature of life after death fueled promotion of ghost stories by Anglican clergy, polemicists , and natural philosophers. In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, Ms. Handley details popular culture’s truck with ghosts in socially stratified forms of print, some more fashionable or acceptable in polite company, and clothes her 94 arguments of the permeability between spoken and written ghost stories in plausible garb. Virtually every form of written and enacted production was employed during the eighteenth century for distributing ghost stories. Ms. Handley discusses, for example, ballads, chapbooks , almanacs, jestbooks, rumor and gossip, oral and musical performance, theatrical enactments, letters, interactive periodicals, essay periodicals, and general magazines. Written ghost stories, clothed in dialogue , image, and circumstantial detail dramatized not only real events, but also the emotions and interior worlds of people —much like ourselves I point out— both skeptical of and intensely curious about the existence of their own souls after death. Ms. Handley attributes the shift in ghost imagery—evolving from the more concrete winding-sheet, faggot -bearing ghosts into the more poetic, ethereal visions—to technological advances in the sciences of optics and astronomy , whereby people could see within and beyond what had before been impermeable. Given that currentday readers will hang expectantly on each of her wordily retold stories, their expectancy of visual rewards that illustrate or portray these ‘‘visions’’ is left as unfinished business, since the stories are accompanied by a mere four illustrations . Nonetheless, Ms. Handley convinces us that Georgian England is the time and place when marvelous ghost stories happened and were told, stories worthy of studying and rereading. Kathryn LaFevers...

New Perspectives on an Old Debate: Friedrich Schleiermacher's Essay on Election

Abstract: This article analyses Schleiermacher's essay on election, which has not received the attention it deserves. I argue that it presents a significant advance in the debate about unconditional grace and the relation between redemption and predestination. While Schleiermacher defends the Augustinian‐Calvinist view of election, he criticizes the ideas of double predestination and eternal damnation (for the unbelievers). Thus, he wants to provide a new basis for Lutherans and Calvinists to settle or, at least, reconsider their longstanding controversy over the matter. After the publication of the essay in 1819, Schleiermacher's doctrine of election remained unchanged, except for minor modifications.

Guds frie nåde, troens frie gensvar: Frelsens betingelser hos N. F. S. Grundtvig og John Wesley

Guds frie nåde, troens frie gensvar: Frelsens betingelser hos N. F. S. Grundtvig og John Wesley[Free Divine Grace andfree Response o f Faith: Conditionalist Motives in N. F. S. Grundtvig and John Wesley]By Niels Henrik GregersenThe essay aims to point out common theological grounds between John Wesley (1703-1791) and N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783-1872). It is argued, first, that Wesley and Grundtvig share the same problem of how to reformulate the Reformation insight in God’s unconditional justification in a context of modernity, in which human freedom is seen as essential also in spiritual matters. It is furthermore argued that Wesley and Grundtvig concur in criticizing the Augustinian-Reformed doctrine of double predestination. Both argue that grace is for all humankind, but grace is not an irresistible force that captivates the human mind. Grace, rather, is a divine self-offering that stimulates the sinner to give a positive response to God’s free offer. Due to his Arminian allegiance, Wesley was an outspoken conditionalist, who explicitly criticized Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. Grundtvig’s critique of Augustine and Luther, by contrast, was mostly of a more indirect nature and couched in his independent use of the Augustinian motifs of grace. The most important difference between Wesley and Grundtvig, however, is that whereas Wesley develops an expanded notion of prevenient grace, Grundtvig expands the traditional notion of creation and imago dei. According to Grundtvig’s doctrine of baptism (central to his so-called Church View), the invitation by Christ to become baptized puts the requirement on the old human being (who is not yet baptized by the Holy Spirit) that he or she must renounce the Devil and embrace the truth of God. Grundtvig’s rich doctrine of imago dei and divine providence can thus be seen as a functional equivalent to Wesley’s doctrine of prevenient grace. Grundtvig, however, never shared Wesley’s view of the possibility of a Christian perfection. Instead, Grundtvig developed a theory of the possibility of a post-mortal conversion (cf. 1 Pet 3). This eschatological vision has the same universal scope as Wesley’s doctrine of prevenient grace, but involves a temporal relaxation as compared with Wesley’s evangelicalism.The common ground between Grundtvig and Wesley casts a new light on the very structure of Grundtvig’s theology. Grundtvig’s “Church View” should not be understood as a precursor to 20th century dialectical theology. Divine action, according to Grundtvig, is certainly primary to human activity, but it is not unilateral. The baptismal covenant between God and the human person involves an “agreement”, or contract, between two parties, God and humanity. God offers His divine grace, but human beings should themselves accept grace in order to be part of salvation. This important motif is reflected in Grundtvig’s doctrinal writings, especially in his doctrine of baptism; however, conditionalist motifs can also be found in his hymns and sermons.

Godly Fear, Sanctification, and Calvinist Theology in the Sermons and "Holy Sonnets" of John Donne

I N an influential interpretation of John Donne's religious poetry, John Stachniewski suggests that doctrinal Calvinism underwrites expressions of passivity, fear, and resentment in Holy Sonnets. After tracing influence of Calvinist emphasis on total depravity, double predestination, and prevenient grace in sonnets, Stachniewski concludes that the sonnets reveal that Donne experienced tormented doubt of his salvation in a way not dissimilar to [the] Calvinist despairers.' In response to such a one-sidedly Calvinist reading of sonnets-a reading that Stachniewski shares with John Carey and, with certain qualifications, Barbara Lewalski-Richard Strier has argued provocatively that Donne's Holy Sonnets are not consistently Calvinist in theology, and that throughout Holy Sonnets Donne alternates between on one hand an Erasmian belief in repentance as a means to salvation, and on other hand a Reformation belief in passively received, justified righteousness.2 In advancing his argument, Strier suggests that Stachniewski and others have mistakenly linked Holy Sonnets and Calvinism because Donne's evident preoccupation with religious fear, broadly defined, is a preoccupation that runs throughout Reformation theology and Puritan sermons. Strier questions such an affiliation by pointing out that Calvinist theology, particularly doctrine of justification by

Peter Martyr Vermigli and Predestination: The Augustinian Inheritance of an Italian Reformer

This study is in its broadest sense an inquiry into the intellectual origins of the Reformed branch of Protestantism generally, but inaccurately, designated Calvinism. More specifically, it concerns one of the early theologians who gave formative shape to Reformed theology, Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562), and focuses on his adoption of the soteriological doctrine of gemina praedestinatio, double predestination: divine election and divine reprobation. One of the most erudite men of his age, Vermigli was also one of the most remarkable, for his religious career spanned the ecclesiastical horizon from prominence as a Roman Catholic theologian to one of the formative theologians of sixteenth century Reformed Protestantism. No other theologian of the early sixteenth century was so distinguished in both camps. James argues that Vermigli derived the doctrine of gemina praedestinatio from the writings of Gregory of Rimini and that it was fully formed before he allied himself with the Protestant cause, thus illustrating an important aspect of soteriological continuity between late medieval and reformation thought.

Heinrich Bullinger, the Covenant, and the Reformed Tradition in Retrospect

This paper is a response to the criticism of my interpretation of Heinrich Bullinger in Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant: The Other Reformed Tradition (1980) and (coauthored with Charles S. McCoy) Fountainhead of Federalism (1991). Criticism has focused on four aspects of my interpretation: (1) the centrality of the covenant in his thought, (2) whether his was a bilateral covenant, (3) whether he disagreed with Calvin on predestination, and (4) whether there were two Reformed traditions. After again carefully examining Bullinger's works-eight early manuscript writings; thirty published works from 1526 to 1574; and relevant correspondence-I generally reiterate my earlier position on these four issues: (1) the covenant was the leading pervasive conviction in Bullinger's theology, (2) it was a bilateral, conditional covenant, (3) he taught a moderate, single predestination in contrast to Calvin's double predestination, and (4) Bullinger's (Zurich) theology was the basis for the original Reformed tradition to which Calvin and the Calvinists presented a later alternative in the matter of the covenant and predestination.

Predestination and the Heresy of Merit in Othello

Predestination and the Heresy of Merit in Othello Maurice Hunt According to John King, "the Italianate settings of Jacobean plays inherit a polemical Protestant edge; thus Shakespeare and his successors recreate the Reformation image of Italy in such plays as Othello, Volpone, and The Duchess ofMalfi, which convey a steamy atmosphere of sexual corruption, jealousy, and revenge."1 In the case of Othello, a Reformation Protestant image becomes historically sharp—not simply atmospherically general. Early modern doctrines of Protestant predestination clarify more fully than other ideologies do the contemporary nature of personal tragedy in Shakespeare's Othello. This is particularly true in Desdemona's case. The year 1604, the date favored for the writing of Othello, proved climactic for godly Protestants' efforts to persuade officials to make Calvinistic double predestination more explicitly part of the creed of the Church of England.2 The religious debate surrounding the puritanical campaign constitutes a context for my argument about the relevance of sixteenthcentury doctrines of predestination for understanding tragedy in Othello. Since my claims run counter to established theological readings of Shakespeare's play, a brief summary and a critique of these interpretations at the end of my essay serve to define the revisionary nature of my argument. The somber Calvinistic God of Othello, the God of double predestination, materializes in the play in a remark of Cassio's, made during his drinking bout celebrating the nuptials of Othello and Desdemona and the removal of the Turkish armed threat. "Well, God's above all," Cassio philosophizes, "and there be souls that must be saved, and there be souls must not be saved" (II.iii.96-98).3 "It is true, good lieutenant" (II.iii.99), lago replies: Cas. For mine own part, no offence to the general, nor any man of quality, I hope to be saved. lago. And so do I, lieutenant. 346 Maurice Hunt347 Cas. Ay, but by your leave, not before me; the lieutenant is to be saved before the ancient. Let's ha' no more of this, let's to our affairs: God forgive us our sins! (Il.iii. 100-05) Concerning this dialogue and its context, Herbert Coursen, noticing the reference to the drinking of wine, has judged that The "celebration of [Othello's] nuptial" . . . becomes, for Cassio, a burlesque Communion. In his drunkenness, Cassio reminds the celebrants that "god's above all, and there be souls must be saved, and there be souls must not be saved." ... He expresses his "hope to be saved" and requests "God [to] forgive us our sins" . . . yet pulls rank on lago in the hierarchy of salvation: "the lieutenant is to be saved before the ancient" . . . thus suggesting that his anti-ritual is serious only to a point; it represents the kind of "error" or "excess" typical of comedy. Cassio falls before the "devil drunkenness," and, instead of achieving the purification promised in the Communion Service, is reduced to bestiality, to a shallower version of what Othello will become . . . . The "invisible spirit of wine" . . . does not confirm Cassio's soul to everlasting life. In an "unbless'd cup" ... it costs him—in Cassio's hyperbole—his immortality [his reputation, the immortal part of himself]. . . . But surely an audience would agree with lago that Cassio is "too severe a moraler." . . . And few spectators would equate "reputation" with "immortality," particularly in the context of the anti-mass that they have just witnessed.4 Absent in Coursen' s account of the ironic Christian overtones of Cassio's and lago's dialogue is mention of the Protestant doctrine to which Cassio alludes. "Predestination was a labyrinth into which one was well advised not to wander," Roland Mushat Frye concludes, "and only Cassio does wander into it, in his maudlin discussion with lago."5 Despite Coursen's and Frye's suggestions that playgoers not make too much of this dialogue, Shakespeare (as he often does) in a semicomic context focuses a serious dramatic motif. Cassio refers to the Calvinistic dogma of divine election and reprobation, to the Protestant article of faith that God in his mysterious Providence before time began had elected some souls to salvation and consigned others to damnation. Thus Cassio's verb "must" connotes...

The Pilgrim's Progress in the Context of Bunyan's Dialogue with the Radicals

My text from The Author's Apology suggests two reasons for the extraordinary popularity that The Pilgrim's Progress enjoyed for more than two centuries. First, despite its adherence to a rather harsh doctrine of double predestination, which divides the world into the saved and the damned, it is essentially a work of reconciliation, demonstrating the fundamental compatibility of ancient paradigms (“Gospelstrains”) and modern experience (“Novelty”). Second, it invites, even necessitates, the active engagement of its readers, who will enlist their knowledge of the Bible to recognize the “sound and honest Gospel-strains” beneath or behind or within what seems a novel. But that Bunyan felt somewhat ambivalent about this achievement is indicated here, I think, by his choice of the word “seems” to characterize the surface of his book. This ambivalence derives from the author's position midway between the hermeneutical procedures of his chief precursor, Martin Luther, and those of the radical Protestants with whom he had come in contact from the time that he experienced his conversion.

George Herbert: His Religion and Art

Reviews Joseph H. Summers, George Herbert: His Religion and Art. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Textsand Studies, rpt. 1981. 247 pp. cloth $13.95. paper $5.95. by Louis L. Martz It is good to see Summers' book back in print, and at a price amazingly low for a book so well produced: only about six dollars for the paperback version. I hope that a great many students and teachers will buy it, for it stands as a valuable, indeed essential supplement or corrective for the various approaches to Herbert that have recently been offered by a later generation of readers: Stanley Fish's "self-consuming artifacts." Helen Vendler's "reinvented poem," or Barbara Lewalski's strictly Calvinist poetic. Summers' book represents a happy juncture of traditional scholarship and the old "new" criticism which was just rising to the peak of its power as this book appeared in 1954. Summers was one of the first to see that the "new" analytic criticism, searching for organic verbal unity in the poem, was no threat to scholarship, despite the outcries from an older generation (rather like the outcries now against the new critical theorists!). Summers' temperate, modest way of proceeding moves with utmost clarity to recognize the full complexity of Herbert's "religion and art" as inseparably one. His third chapter, "Religion," offers a warning that readers nowadays may well heed, when he says, "The religious differences in Herbert's lifetime . . . were much more complicated than the modern labels indicate." One can, he notes, "construct an abstract picture of the 'true-blue Puritan' and the 'Anglo-Catholic' — both members of the Church of England." And it is true that individuals may be found in Herbert's era "who conformed to these patterns." But, he adds, "they were far fewer than most of the discussions of the period's churchly affairs lead the modern reader to believe." "Those who sought the much79 Louis L. Martz praised via media between the two extremes found that it was no marked highway but a vaguely defined area; the paths which conscientious searchers for the truth found through it were rarely identical." Amid all the "debates and fretting jealousies" that Herbert deplored, some areas of agreement could be found: in "the devotional life and everyday activity" (pp. 49-54). It is in the devotional life of Herbert's poetry that apparent or latent contradictions in theology may be reconciled. There is no doubt, as Summers points out, that Herbert, like most clerics of the Church of England, adhered to certain aspects of Calvinism: his poem "The Water-course" shows him accepting the doctrine of double predestination. Such a stern doctrine, rigorously held, ought logically to lead to an opposition to the Book of Common Prayer, to destruction of stained glass windows, and to a denial of any efficacy in the sacraments. And yet, as Summers well says: "TheTemple shows that Herbert believed as strongly in predestination and the doctrine of the Covenant of Grace as he believed in the significance and beauty of the ritual" (p. 58). How could this be? The significance of the ritual, the ultimate source of its beauty, lies in its function of celebration and thanksgiving for the divine presence that Herbert, Donne, Hooker, and many others felt as still working with or within the "instrumental" sacraments of communion and baptism. If these are mere "tokens" the function of the ritual evaporates: even a priesthood is no longer needed. How that presence works Herbert does not say: he regards all such arguments as futile. But he knows that there is an efficacy that occurs in the very taking of the sacrament, as he tells us in his poem "The H. Communion" (for a detailed account of this issue see my forthcoming review of Barbara Lewalski's Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric in Modern Philology). All this is surprising, illogical, but undeniable, as the dozens and dozens of eucharistie allusions show throughout The Temple. The religious sensibility of the early seventeenth century could contain multitudes: Herbert could hold predestination and a version of the real presence within his belief at the same moment. We perhaps cannot see how this was possible...

Nikolaus von Amsdorf on Vessels of Wrath and Vessels of Mercy: A Lutheran's Doctrine of Double Predestination

The classic debate between Erasmus and Luther over the role of the human will in conversion is only the most famous of several Reformation era disputes over several related soteriological and anthropological issues. As Reformation developed into Orthodoxy, Calvinists and Lutherans went to battle over the doctrines of double predestination and the perseverance of the saints. The debate over God's eternal decree remained a point of irritation between the two confessions throughout the early modern period even though within each confession differences on these doctrines surfaced during the course of the seventeenth century.

A Critique of the Doctrine of Universal Salvation

Three basic attitudes toward human destiny have precipitated out of the modern theological mentality: double predestination, Arminianism, and universalism. Of the three, Arminianism and double predestination have been unacceptable to a large segment of modern protestantism. The result is that universalism, in one form or another, has assumed wide popularity in recent years. The doctrine has become what might be called an article in the popular creed. But since the influence of universalism has come about largely through default, its explicit formulation has remained incommensurate with its popularity and importance.