SOURCE: "Christ and Election in Calvin's Theology," in The Will of God and the Cross: An Historical and Theological Study of John Calvin's Doctrine of Limited Redemption, Pickwick Publications, 1990, pp. 64-88.

[In the following excerpt, Rainbow treats Calvin's views on Predestination in contradistinction to Arminian theologians like the seventeenth-century Frenchman Moyse Amyraut. Rainbow shows that the doctrines of Divine Election, Limited Atonement, and Assurance of Salvation, are intricately knotted together in Reformed theology.]

There is no single place where Calvin addressed the extent of Christ's redemption in a systematic fashion. The absence of such a locus in the Institutes has led some scholars to think that it was not important for him, but this was not the case. Calvin, unlike Bucer, was never much involved in controversies about the extent of redemption; like Augustine, his most significant statements are to be found in biblical exposition and preaching. This means for us that the evidence is strewn about, in the Institutes but also in the commentaries, the sermons, and the tracts, and I have attempted to gather together in a reasonably complete way Calvin's teaching that bears on our question. That is, above all, what needs to be done.¹

But how to arrange the large body of evidence that emerges from Calvin's writings? Here the existence of the Amyraut thesis has tended to influence my approach. On the one hand, there is a body of evidence from the side of the Amyraut thesis, consisting of Calvin's statements about Christ's death for "all" and the "world," which needs to be evaluated. Advocates of the Amyraut thesis, as a matter of fact, have only scratched the surface here, especially in regard to Calvin's statements to the effect that souls perish for whom Christ died. To reach a valid conclusion about Calvin, it is essential to face this theological theme head-on, not simply to explain it away, but to account for its strong presence in Calvin's thought.

On the other hand, there is decisive evidence that Calvin was a limited redemptionist. Holding center stage in this group of evidence are Calvin's exegeses of the famous universalistic texts of the New Testament, John 12:32, I Timothy 2:4-6, I John 2:2, and the like. We have seen already how limited redemptionists from Augustine on handled these texts, and their importance in deciding the question was recognized by Kendall when he said that Calvin "generally leaves verses like these alone, but never does he explain, for example, that 'all' does not mean all or 'world' does not mean the world, as those after him tended to do."² This assertion of Kendall's was a huge mistake, and catastrophic for his whole case. As we shall see, in almost every case Calvin follows the Augustinian interpretation of the text.

The claims of the Amyraut thesis will also lead us beyond those Calvin passages that deal in some explicit way with the extento of redemption. It is claimed, for example, that Calvin maintained a universal saving will of God; that he did not link Christ's death to the decree of election, nor to Christ's work of intercession; that his doctrine of assurance was grounded in his doctrine of universal redemption. These claims take us beyond the proof-texts for or against limited redemption and demand a close look at some of Calvin's larger soteriological themes. It is with these that we begin.

Along the way we will hold Calvin's theology up against Amyraut's version of his theology (as expressed both by Amyraut and by his modern supporters), and find that the Saumur professor extensively distorted the reformer's thought.

The centrality of the death of Christ

As I worked through the Calvin corpus, I was, naturally, looking for Calvin's view of the extent of redemption. Other things came into focus too, things not so much looked for as felt by sheer repetition and accumulation. One of these things was that the center of Calvin's theology was Christ.

The "quest" for the center of Calvin's theology has yielded other answers. Alexander Schweizer argued in the mid-nineteenth century that predestination was Calvin's Centraldogma?³ This viewpoint has been re peated innumerable times since and has even passed into the popular consciousness. Certainly predestination was Calvin's dominant polemical topic.⁴ Others have maintained that the doctrine of justification by faith alone formed the heart of Calvin's outlook.⁵ There are good arguments for this contention as well, not least Calvin's own statement—certainly an echo of Luther's famous comment on justification as the article of the standing or falling church—that justification by faith alone is the "main hinge on which religion turns."⁶

But prominence must not be mistaken for centrality. Predestination and justification were extraordinarily important doctrines without which Calvin's theology would not be the same. Their prominence and frequency in his writings, however, was the special product of historical struggle. The deeper principle underlying both predestination and justification was for Calvin, as for the other magisterial reformers, that of sola gratia. Here was the chief treasure, the soul of the Reformation, and the heart of the gospel itself: salvation by God's grace alone, the radical reduction of man in his potentialities and abilities and the equally radical elevation of God in the sovereignty of his saving grace. Calvin perceived this principle to be under mortal assault, both from the side of Tridentine Catholicism with its affirmation of meritorious good works, to which Calvin counterposed justification sola fide, and from the side of the Anabaptists with their championing of free will, to which he counterposed predestination. The assaults on justification by faith alone and on predestination were for Calvin assaults on something that lay behind them in the theological holy of holies: the principle of grace. Salvation by grace was the treasure in the heart of the fortress, justification and predestination the outer bastions where most of the blood was spilled. Salvation by grace was the king on the chessboard, justification and predestination its queen and rooks.

But this still does not go deep enough. What does the abstract slogan sola gratia really embody? Calvin's answer to this, if I have absorbed anything at all from his writing and preaching, would be Christ. Simply Christ, incarnate, obedient, crucified, and risen. For what John Calvin really delighted to expound, lecture, and preach, when he was unencumbered with the burden of doing polemical battle with some enemy, was Christ. Christ, and the grace of Christ, is everywhere—in the commentaries, in the sermons, in the Institutes preeminently, in the Old Testament as well as the New, at the center of ethical instruction as well as soteriology, as much in the midst of the prayers of the Psalms as in the gospel narratives.⁷

Calvin was well aware of this Christological orientation of his thought, and often called attention to it explicitly. Especially did he focus in on the death and resurrection of Christ as the irreducible core of the gospel:

For there is no part of our salvation which may not be found in Christ. By the sacrifice of his death he has purged our sins …by his resurrection he has purchased righteousness for us.⁸

The principal thing he did for our salvation was his death and resurrection.⁹

Or even, at times, simply the death of Christ alone. In one place, after an eloquent recitation of the benefits which the Messiah would bestow—satisfaction for sin, reconciliation, righteousness, regeneration—Calvin stated "that all those things were fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ crucified."¹⁰ "We have in his death the complete fulfillment of our salvation."¹¹ "The whole accomplishment of our salvation, and all the parts of it, are contained in his death."¹² "His sacrifice was the most important part of his redemption."¹³ The Christ of Calvin's gospel is the Christ who is "never to be separated from his death."¹⁴ The death of Christ is his "principal office," and from "this source flow all the streams of blessing."¹⁵ If the death of Christ is seen this way, it necessarily becomes the focal point of the believer's own apprehension of salvation: "The whole assurance of life and salvation rests upon the Lord's death."¹⁶ Calvin could express this all with a terse and paradoxical equation: "The death of Christ is our life."¹⁷

It has not often been appreciated to what extent Calvin's theology was a theologia crucis, not only as a soteriology but as theology of the Christian life. There was in Calvin's thought, in a way that must remind us strangely of the Anabaptists themselves, the vision of the life of the church and the life of the individual Christian lived under the humility of the cross.

Theological systems rooted in moralism or metaphysics could conceivably bypass the question, for whom did Christ die? But Calvin's theology was a theologia crucis, with a crux on which the Redeemer saved men by suffering vicariously in their place. The death of Christ was, to be only a little hyperbolic, everything. So, to conclude, as a few historians have, that for Calvin the extent of redemption was a non-issue, is not only to be unaware of the history of the doctrine which we have traced (of which Calvin could not have been ignorant), but to say that Calvin did not think through his own most central tenet. Calvin had a position, which can be felt even as he speaks of the relationship of the Father and the Son in the work of salvation.

The work of the Father and the Son

If Calvin's theology was Christocentric, it was also Trinitarian. For Calvin, the eternal ontological unity of the Godhead was the premise of the work of salvation, so that the work of each person of the Godhead—whether Father, Son, or Spirit—is also the work of the whole Godhead; the classic orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is therefore closely reflected in the divine accomplishment of salvation.

For this reason we obtain, and, so to speak, clearly discern in the Father the cause (causa), in the Son the substance (materia), and in the Spirit the effect (effectus) of our purgation and regeneration.¹⁸

Calvin in this remark borrowed the philosophical terminology of multiple causation to describe the unityin-diversity of the work of the Trinity. This concept posits the most intimate kind of unity between the saving purpose of the Father and the saving work of the Son and Spirit. The particular interest of this study is with the relationship of the Father and the Son, and specifically with the question: in Calvin's thought, did the saving work of the Son correspond in scope and intention to the electing work of the Father?

To appreciate the importance of this topic it is necessary to return briefly to the theology of Moyse Amyraut, who believed that the will of the Father in regard to man's salvation was twofold. There was, first, a particular, predestinating, saving will of God directed toward the elect alone and effectuated through calling and the work of the Spirit. There was also a general saving will of God directed toward every human being and effectuated through the death of Christ and the general preaching of the gospel. Amyraut called these wills "covenants," respectively, the foedus absolutum and the foedus hypotheticum. The activity of God was a two-pronged thing with a clear division of labor between the Son, as the executor of one purpose, and the Spirit, as the executor of the other. Thus, in Amyraut's theology it was possible to say both, "God desires only the elect to be saved," and, "God desires every human being to be saved." Although Amyraut formally conceded that there must be some ultimate unity between these wills, he resisted the urge to reconcile them, preferring instead to emphasize the distinction and to leave them side by side. He summed it up well in these words:

No, my brethren, when on the one hand the word of God will teach me that he has reprobated some and consigned them to eternal punishment, and that on the other hand this same word invites them to repent, that he extends his arms to them …although my reason found there some things which seemed to be in conflict, although whatever effort I exert I am not able to harmonize and reconcile them, still I will not fail to hold these two doctrines as true.¹⁹

The pivotal point in all this is that Amyraut linked the death of Christ to the general saving will of God and not to the electing will of God. The death of Christ was thus the effectuation of the foedus hypotheticum; it got its intention, its telos, from God's will to save every human being.²⁰" Then, that only the elect are actually saved was the result of the outworking of the foedus absolutum, effectuated by the Spirit. "The Spirit makes effective to the particular believer what Christ had accomplished for the world."²¹

Amyraut claimed Calvin in support of this conception, appealing to passages in which Calvin distinguished a "secret" and a "revealed" will of God,²² and, of course, to passages in which Calvin taught that Christ died for "all" and for the "world." Amyraut was correct that there was in Calvin the identification of a revealed will of God by which God calls every man to salvation through the preached word. This doctrine of Calvin concerning the universal offer of the gospel will be examined more closely in another connection. The substructure of this teaching, however, for all its resemblance to that of Amyraut, was not the same. For Calvin was not content to be left with a double will of God. In the Institutes (1.18.3) he energetically argued that God's will is "one and simple," and explained its apparent duality not (as Amyraut) by appeal to two covenants in the eternal counsel of God, but to the imperfection of human perception.²³ While there may appear to humans to be two wills of God, in reality there are not. The duality of the divine will was for Calvin an epistemological thing; for Amyraut it assumed an ontological existence, to the extent that it could become for him a tool for the ordering of systematic theology.

The crucial question here is whether in Calvin's theology the saving work of Christ was linked to the particular saving purpose of God the Father. Amyraut said no; others, Kendall for instance, said no. But was Amyraut actually following Calvin? To come back to our earlier question, did the scope of the redemptive work of the Son correspond for Calvin to that of the electing work of the Father?

The answer must be yes. So identical in intention are the works of the Father and the Son that the term "Savior" is interchangeable between them:

The Father is called our Savior, because he redeemed us by the death of his Son …and the Son, because he shed his blood as the pledge and the price of our salvation. Thus the Son has brought salvation to us from the Father, and the Father has bestowed it through the Son.²⁴

Both the Father and the Son are "Savior"; it may also be properly said that each "gave himself for us, though in different ways, the Father by decreeing redemption from eternity and the Son by carrying it out in history.²⁵

This harmonious and connected work of the Father and the Son had to do, in Calvin's theology, not with a general intention to save every human being, but with the salvation of the elect. God's saving will is at this point "one and simple"; it is directed toward the elect, and is entrusted for its accomplishment (its materia, to use the causal term) to Christ. At precisely this juncture in Calvin's thought, the statement of Jesus, "All that the Father gives me will come to me" (John 6:37), always an important text in the discussions of predestination, became a central theme. Calvin commented on the passage:

Faith is not a thing which depends on the will of men, so that this man and that man indiscriminately and at random believe, but …God elects those whom he hands over, as it were, to his Son.²⁶

This giving of souls by the Father to the Son is the language of John's gospel for what Paul would call election, as Calvin recognized. Whereas "election" and "predestination" denote mental acts, "giving people to the Son" denotes a relational act; it draws the Son into the act of election. Largely as a consequence of the Johannine language, Christ became in Calvin's view the executive, the trustee, of the election decree.

Christ brings none to the Father but those given to him by the Father; and this donation, we know, depends on eternal election; for those whom the Father has destined to life, he delivers to the keeping of his Son, that he might defend them.²⁷

The donation of the elect by the Father to the Son is thus a transaction rooted in predestination, and one that also faces the future; that Christ has been made the sole Protector of God's chosen people guarantees their final perseverance. We would surely perish

were we not safe under the protection of Christ, whom the Father has given to be our guardian, so that none of those whom he has received under his care and shelter should perish.²⁸

The Father gives the elect to the Son; the Son brings the elect to the Father; the Father wills their salvation and perseverance; the Son carries it out. All this was implied in Calvin's understanding of John 6:37, and because of the richness of the image and its appropriateness for the doctrine Calvin wanted to express, the picture of the Father entrusting the elect to Christ was an image that permeated his writing and preaching.

But where did the death of Christ, specifically, fit into this picture for Calvin? Did Christ, having received the elect as his peculiar donation from the Father, to bring them to the Father, to keep them and defend them, then proceed to give his life on the cross for every human being indiscriminately? It sounds strangely out of joint; but this is exactly what the Amyraut thesis asks that we believe about Calvin. The truth is otherwise.

"Let us therefore learn that every part of our salvation depends on [election]."²⁹ In Calvin's theology the free election of God was the source to which all other blessings of redemption must be traced. The dual involvement of Father and Son in election, implied in Calvin's teaching on John 6:37, suggests that Christ himself is an integral part of Calvin's doctrine of election. We turn now to an examination of Calvin's concept of the relationship of Christ to election. Here we will identify four themes: that Christ is the elector; that election is in Christ; that Christ is the executor of election; and that the assurance of election is to be found in Christ.

Christ the elector

Calvin never lost sight of the fact that Christ, who for the salvation of men took to himself a human nature and became thereby the Mediator between God and men, nevertheless preexisted as the fully divine and sovereign second person of the Trinity. "Unchangeable, the Word [i.e. the Son] abides everlastingly one and the same with God, and is God himself."³⁰ Here again was Calvin's premise that the persons of the Trinity operate in unity; as eternal God, the Son necessarily participated in the decree of election.

Meanwhile, although Christ interposes himself as Mediator, he claims for himself, in common with the Father, the right to choose …From this we may infer that none excel by their own effort or diligence, seeing that Christ makes himself the author of election (electionis authorem).³¹

The right of Christ to designate himself as the author electionis rests, not only upon his own personal authority as Deity, but upon the intimate sharing of function which exists between the Father and the Son, a kind of communicatio officiarum:

That Christ declares himself to be the author of both [election and ordination] is not to be wondered at, since it is only by him that the Father acts, and he acts with the Father. So then, both election and ordination belong equally to both.³²

So while it was Calvin's usual pattern of thought to ascribe election to God the Father, he could also on occasion speak of Christ as the one who "has chosen and set apart the church as his bride,"³³ and of the church as elected by Christ.³⁴ These references to Christ as author electionis, while not numerous, were direct and clear. While Calvin normally saw Christ in his servant-mediator role, he never forgot that Christ did not cease to be God, even in his incarnation.

Election in Christ

The complexity of Calvin's thought concerning the relationship of Christ to election begins to appear even more clearly in his concept of Christ as the locus of election, or the one in whom election takes place. In this role Christ stands, not as the one facing man and acting sovereignly upon him, but as the Mediator standing alongside his people as they are considered by God as objects of his election.

The passage Ephesians 1:4 ("[God] chose us in him before the foundation of the world.") exercised an enormous influence on Calvin, as it had on predestinarians before him; it furnished him not only with a prooftext for the doctrine of election, but also with a Christological connection: "in him." Calvin derived from these words the principle that the union of the redeemed with Christ began "before the foundation of the world." He used this idea to push Christology back into election: Christ did not begin to function as mediator only at his incarnation, but was present and involved when the elective decree of God was made.

This doctrine suffused Calvin's writing and preaching. In the short space of one paragraph of a sermon on Esau and Jacob, he said: "God chose us before the creation of the world in Jesus Christ …St. Paul says that he chose us in Jesus Christ …Our election is founded in Jesus Christ."³⁵

What did Calvin mean by this? He meant that in the act of election God regarded those whom he chose, not as they were in themselves (that is, as they would be when they were created), but as they were (or would be!) in union with Jesus Christ. It was, one might say, a matter of how God graciously chose to perceive his elect. Given this, certain things followed for Calvin.

First, election in Christ meant for Calvin that human merit was excluded, not only in the course of the individual's historical life, not only at conception and birth, but at the absolute fountainhead of salvation in the decree of God. This was Calvin's comment on Eph. 1:4:

"In Christ." This is the second proof that the election was free; for if we were chosen in Christ, it is not of ourselves. It is not from a perception of anything that we deserve, but because our heavenly Father has introduced us, through the privilege of adoption, into the body of Christ. In short, the name of Christ excludes all merit, and everything which men have of their own; for when he says that we are chosen in Christ, it follows that in ourselves we are unworthy.³⁶

This is one of the arguments with which Calvin countered the notion, urged by his antipredestinarian opponents, that election was based upon God's foreknowledge of something the individual would do as the condition for the bestowal of grace. Calvin argued that if this were the case, there would be no need for God to elect us in Christ. The intervention of Christ even at the point of divine election therefore excludes merit.

Those whom God has adopted as his sons are said to have been chosen not in themselves but in his Christ; for unless he could love them in him, he could not honor them with the inheritance of his kingdom.³⁷

Now if they are elect in Christ, it follows that …each man is elected without respect to his own person.³⁸

The doctrine of election in Christ also functioned in Calvin's theology to buttress the doctrine of perseverance, the endurance of the elect to the end in faith. Much more than a stark divine decree, election defined in this Christocentric way is the creation of an indissoluble personal bond, very much like a marriage, between Christ and the elect. To describe this elective union Calvin resorted habitually to the Pauline image of Christ as the "head" of his "members":

We must, in order that election may be effectual and truly enduring, ascend to the head, in whom the heavenly Father has gathered his elect together and has joined them to himself by an indissoluble bond.³⁹

This redemptive organism of head and members, once created, can never be torn asunder; therefore the effectuation of election is certain. The "members of Christ," once "ingrafted to their head," are "never cut off from salvation."⁴⁰

As a result of this, the doctrine of election in Christ meant for Calvin that the whole weight of the believer's assurance of his own election must rest on Christ. If the effectuation of election flows from head to members, then the members must always look to the head. This leads us logically to the topic of assurance, which, as we will shortly see, was for Calvin Christocentric.

Calvin's doctrine of election in Christ, and particularly his insistence that God's consideration of the elect in Christ excludes merit, brings up a form of the cartand-the-horse question: if God saw the elect in Christ as he elected them, then how did they come to be in Christ in the first place? Was election the act of God's placing humans in Christ, or was it—as the recently quoted statements would suggest—the act of God's seeing the elect already in Christ and setting their destiny? Calvin was not unaware of this question, and addressed it directly:

Although we are elected in Christ, still in terms of order God's considering us as among his own people is first, and his making us members of Christ is second.⁴¹

God's determination to save came first in terms of logical order, and his determination to save through union with Christ came second. Yet both, taken together as a unity, constituted election for Calvin. Election was, to revert to the language of John 6:37, the act by which God the Father handed over a people to the Son.⁴²

Christ the executor of election

Was the Christ who was himself the elector, and in whom election took place, also for Calvin the one who carried out the decree of election by his own redemptive work? This is the most important question we have posed so far. For the Amyraut thesis must say no to this. If Christ is the executor of election, then his death, as the centerpiece of his work, must be for the elect.

F. Wendel affirmed that Calvin saw Christ as the executor of election.⁴³ R. T. Kendall, however, denied this: "The decree of election, however, is not [for Calvin] rendered effectual by the death of Christ."⁴⁴ Kendall was at this point fighting for the life of his thesis about Calvin; he realized that if Christ was the executor of election through his death, limited redemption follows as a consequence. But the texts support Wendel.

A third time he repeats that the decree was eternal and unchangeable, but that it must be ratified by Christ, because in him it was made.⁴⁵

The mediatorial work of Christ is that means by which God's decree was ratified (sanciri). And Calvin rooted this arrangement in the fact that the decree of election took place "in him." An election which took place in Christ is most fittingly carried out by Christ. Again, the same doctrine:

[Christ] has been manifested to the world in order to ratify (ratum faciat) by his own work (ipso effectu) what the Father has decreed concerning our salvation.⁴⁶

For, by the coming of Christ, God executed what he had decreed.⁴⁷

Because it was through the Mediator that God "ratifies" and "executes" his eternal decree,⁴⁸ Christ was the "channel" (canalis) through whom our salvation, eternally hidden in the predestination of God, flows to us.⁴⁹ And the nexus between election and the mediato rial work of Christ can be described as that between a plan and its fulfillment.⁵⁰

Election, important as it was for Calvin, was in itself an empty act, ineffectual for the salvation of men, if not ratified and executed. Christ is the one who did this by his redemptive work. The eternal covenant of adoption, made with the elect, must be made firm "through the hand of Christ (per manum Christi)."⁵¹

Calvin made a parallel point when he spoke of Christ as the one through whom the secret purpose of God was revealed. The emphasis here was not effectuation but manifestation. God's hidden purpose was made "clear and manifest" by the appearance of Christ.⁵² "The predestination of God is in itself hidden, but it is manifested to us in Christ alone."⁵³ The same nexus between the work of Christ and election underlies this theme. And because the manifestation of Christ in human history was the revelation of election, Christ becomes, again from this new angle, the focal point of assurance.

Yet another path into Calvin's thought on the relationship of election to Christ is his doctrine of the love of God. There was for Calvin a sense in which God "loves" all his creatures, including even the reprobate, but this love amounts in the final analysis to God's present patience with them and his bestowal upon them of many temporal blessings before the final judgment day. This concept was not akin to Wyclif' s idea of "secondary benefits" of redemption; Calvin never connected the idea to the sacrifice of Christ. In this connection we might also mention that there was no trace in Calvin's theology of the idea, often ascribed to him, that worldly prosperity is a visible sign of election. God causes the rain to fall on the unjust as well as the just (Matt. 5:45). This universal "love" of God is then a kind of universal benevolence.⁵⁴ But it is not the soteriological love of the gospel which issues in the redemption and renewal of sinners. Calvin reserved the love of God in this sense for the elect alone. His salvific love is directed to "his elect"⁵⁵ and to "the whole church."⁵⁶ And the following statement is blunt: "God embraces in fatherly love none but his children."⁵⁷

God's love in this sense was for Calvin synonymous with election. Here again the Ephesians 1 passage had a formative role in Calvin's thought since it designates the divine love as the motive for God's predestination of the elect (1:5). So Calvin often intertwined the themes of election before the beginning of time and God's love. The Father's favor is "the love with which God embraced us before the foundation of the world,"⁵⁸ and the elect are "those whom he loved before the creation of the world."⁵⁹ Furthermore, God's love, like his election (or, perhaps more accurately, because love and election are simply two aspects of the same divine act), is in Christ. Christ is the person in whom the elect are loved;⁶⁰ since sinners are inherently odious to God, it is necessary that God love them in the acceptability and merit of Christ, the Beloved Son.

Finally—and in this sense too Calvin's doctrine of God's love resembled his doctrine of election—God's love was expressed and effectuated through the redemptive work of Christ. He is, said Calvin, the "mirror" of God's love.⁶¹ The love of the Father for his children cannot remain a mere sentiment; it must take expression in redeeming action.

For how comes it that we are saved? It is because the Father loved us in such a manner that he determined to redeem and save us through the Son.⁶²

The redemption which the Father effected through the Son was, then, the outworking of his special love for the elect. Calvin captured something of the New Testament linkage of the divine love with the divine gift which appears in passages like John 3:16 ("God so loved the world that he gave …"), Galatians 2:20 ("the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me"), and Ephesians 5:25 ("Christ loved the church and gave himself for her"). God loved and so he gave, and the giving of which these passages speak is specifically the giving of Christ in his sacrificial death; following this pattern, Calvin coupled God's love with the death of Christ:

How did God begin to embrace with his favor those whom he had loved before the creation of the world? Only in that he revealed his love when he was reconciled to us by Christ's blood.⁶³

The love with which God embraced us before the creation of the world was established and grounded in Christ. These things are plain and in agreement with scripture, and beautifully harmonize those passages in which it is said that God declared his love toward us in giving his only begotten Son to die (John 3,16).⁶⁴

The sense of these passages is that Christ's death is the revelation and effectuation of God's love for the elect.

According to Calvin, Christ was the executor of election. He was also, and specifically in his death, the manifestation and effectuation of the love of God for the elect. Surely, as even Kendall recognized, the logical outcome of such a Christology is the doctrine of limited redemption.⁶⁵

Christ and the assurance of election

The role of Christ in the believer's assurance was a dominant theme for Calvin R. T. Kendall claimed that Calvin's Christocentric doctrine of assurance, based on universal redemption, was replaced in the "experimental predestinarian" theology of the English Calvinists by an introspective mode of assurance; he claimed that this change was the result of the introduction of the idea of limited redemption through Beza. "Beza's doctrine inhibits the believer from looking directly to Christ's death for assurance," he stated.⁶⁶ "Had Christ died for all, we could freely know that we are elected," he asserted; however, because of limited redemption, assurance "must be sought elsewhere than in Christ."⁶⁷ This contention needs to be tested against Calvin's own exposition of Christ's role in assurance.

Calvin's doctrine of assurance was bordered by two premises which, like the banks of a river, determined its direction and shape. On the one side lay the fact that election is secret. Calvin often reminded his hearers and readers that God's predestination, considered in itself, is inscrutable and inaccessible to human knowledge. He described election characteristically as "secret" or "hidden." As he began his treatment of election in the Institutes, he warned that those who presumptuously rush into this doctrine in order to satisfy their own curiosity will find themselves in a labyrinth.⁶⁸ Philosophical and speculative inquiries into election are ruled out. There is absolutely nothing man can do to discover his election.

On the other side lay the necessity to know one's own election. Such knowledge Calvin considered essential for spiritual health. He took a staunch stand, as a Reformation theologian, against the medieval doctrine of uncertainty which was formulated emphatically at Trent. He said, "Satan has no more grievous or dangerous temptation to dishearten believers than when he unsettles them with doubt about their election."⁶⁹ He considered it no part of piety or humility to be in doubt about one's own election. Rather, piety was, for Calvin, to be certain of it and therefore to be able to ascribe the praise for such grace to God with a confident heart. True piety flows from certainty.

So the question arises: how does the believer know something which must be known but which cannot be known through direct knowledge? Calvin asked this question himself: "What revelation do you have of your election?"⁷⁰ The word "revelation" is crucial here; it signals one of Calvin's important assumptions. If there is to be any knowledge of election, it will have to be because God reveals it, not because man has found it out in an empirical manner. But Calvin had good news: God does in fact reveal to the believer the knowledge of his election.

How? Calvin's answer to his own question was multilayered. The believer's calling—the awakening of faith which is the work of the Holy Spirit through the gospel—is incontestable evidence of election,⁷¹ since "those whom he predestined, he also called" (Rom. 8:29). Knowledge of election is also to be sought and found only in the word.⁷² But in the end it is Christ himself on whom Calvin focused his doctrine of the assurance of election. For it is Christ whom the word reveals, and it is Christ to whom the elect person is drawn through calling. To push through the implications of Calvin's theology is to find oneself again and again, and from every possible angle, face to face with Christ.

We must always come to our Lord Jesus Christ when it is a question of our election.⁷³

How do we know that God has elected us before the foundation of the world? By believing in Jesus Christ.⁷⁴

Do you want then to know that you are elect? Consider yourself in Jesus Christ.⁷⁵

Only by founding the assurance of election on Christ can the believer avoid despair on the one hand and the quagmire of speculative investigation of God's unsearchable mind on the other. Certainty of election is through Christ alone, and all who inquire into it by any other means are "insane to their own destruction."⁷⁶

Building on this Christocentric foundation, Calvin employed a rich variety of verbal images to express the place of Christ in the assurance of election. To apprehend God's election, faith directs itself to Christ, who is the "pledge of election" (electionis arrarri).⁷⁷ Christ, that is, can be likened to the down payment or earnest money which proves the good faith of the giver and is in fact a portion of that which has been promised. The gospel, when received by believers, is an "authentic letter"—a faithful and trustworthy copy of the original document—of their election, because it is "signed" by the blood of Christ.⁷⁸ Calvin also refers to Christ's blood as a "sacred seal" (sacrosanctum sigillum) which erases the doubt that so often assails the believer.⁷⁹

So Christ was for Calvin the pledge, the notarized copy, and the sacred seal of election. But the most important and common of Calvin's analogies was that of Christ as the "mirror" (speculum) of election. This image, as the following passage from the Institutes shows, was grounded in the concept of election in Christ. If election was in Christ, reasoned Calvin, then it is only in Christ that assurance may be found.

But if we have been chosen in him, we shall not find assurance of our election in ourselves; and not even in God the Father, if we conceive him as severed from his Son. Christ, then, is the mirror wherein we must, and without self-deception may, contemplate our own election.⁸⁰

The same analogy occurred frequently in the sermons,⁸¹ once with a striking double vantage point: not only is Christ the mirror in which we behold our election, but also the mirror in which God beholds us to find us acceptable.⁸² There was for Calvin, it would seem, no direct relationship between the Father and his elect. Christ stands always between.

But what did it mean that Christ is speculum electionis? To answer this it is possible to draw on a wealth of references to speculum and miroir in Calvin's writings to form a definition. Indeed, to read the Calvin corpus at any length is to be struck by how often the term comes up. In a few cases, Calvin used "mirror" in a way that was roughly equivalent to "example": the history of the church in Acts is a mirror of perseverance in tribulation,⁸³ and the godly family described by Paul in Titus is a mirror of chaste behavior.⁸⁴ But this was not the typical meaning. Almost always it had a deeper sense. The "mirror" in Calvin's mind was a symbolic or even a typological thing, a bearer of meaning beyond itself in which a more profound or general truth may be glimpsed. The Old Testament types, Calvin said, were mirrors of heavenly reality;⁸⁵ man is a mirror of God's glory;⁸⁶ the word is a mirror of God himself;⁸⁷ David is a mirror of Christ,⁸⁸ Jacob of the whole church of the elect,⁸⁹ nature of the glory of God,⁹⁰ and the Lord's Supper of Christ's death.⁹¹ The physical creation, redemptive history, and the Scripture itself formed for Calvin a complex revelatory structure through which God, who is always fundamentally deus absconditus, wills to reveal himself. The mirrors are the vehicles of this revelation. Through them man learns about the true God in indirect ways. The knowledge of God for Calvin was always this kind of mirror-knowledge, true but indirect.

Christ himself was the mirror par excellence. In the person of Christ the necessity of prying into the secrets of heaven is obviated, for in his face the God who would otherwise be hidden and distant appears.⁹² Christ is the mirror of God's grace,⁹³ of God's love,⁹⁴ all ethical perfection,⁹⁵ and therefore of Christian conduct.⁹⁶ He stands at the very center of the revelatory structure of God. To see and to understand the Mediator is for Calvin to see and understand God, indirectly but truly.

This is the larger context of Calvin's references to Christ as the speculum electionis. The image is not poetic or allusive, but precise and theological. It meant in Calvin's usage that Christ is the point at which God's election pierces, as it were, through the cloud of secrecy in which God's decree is normally veiled. To behold Christ in faith is to behold one's own election. Beyond Christ it is not only unnecessary but unlawful to pry to find certainty of election. And the Chris who, seen with faith, is the mirror of election was undoubtedly for Calvin Christ crucified: "Therefore, whenever our hearts waver, let us remember that we should always go to the death of Christ for confirmation."⁹⁷ Because the election of God is revealed in the death of Christ, believers may find assurance at the cross.

The figure of Christ the Mediator loomed over the landscape of Calvin's doctrine of election like a mountain. There was literally no doctrine of election without him. He was there, at the making of the decree of election, as its co-author. He was there also as the one in whom election took place, covering the elect already, in the divine counsel, with his merit. He undertook, in history, as the incarnate God, to execute and reveal the decree of election by his life, death, and resurrection. He presents himself, through the word, as the anchor of assurance.

This all points logically to the doctrine of limited redemption. If Christ elected his people, it would seem to follow that it was for them he died. If Christ was the executor of election, it would seem to follow that his task was to redeem the elect. There was no trace in Calvin's theology of the doctrine attributed to him by Amyraut, that Christ came to carry out something other than the predestinating decree of God for the salvation of the elect. Everywhere Calvin's doctrine was that Christ's redemptive work was linked to, flowed from, and carried out the election of God.

What about Kendall's claim that Puritanism lost Calvin's doctrine of assurance because of limited redemption? On a theological level the sense of this is not clear. How can a Christ who died for everyone, even the nonelect who will perish, be a source of the assurance of election? Kendall misread both the mind and the heart of the predestinarians who advocated limited redemption. If anything is clear in theologians like Beza, Perkins, and Whitaker—whom Kendall treated—it is that limited redemption was for them precisely a doctrine of assurance.⁹⁸ Kendall was convinced that only a universal redemption can bring assurance to be focused on Christ. But the limited redemptionists were convinced that only a limited redemption can accomplish this. For, as they argued, if Christ died for everyone but only the elect will be saved, then there are humans for whom Christ died but who will perish anyway. So it does the troubled soul

no good to know that Christ died for him; he may be "redeemed" but still on his way to hell. He still does not know if he is elect. The Puritans argued that only when the scope and intention of Christ's work corresponds to that of the Father's election does Christ function meaningfully in assurance. If I know that Christ died for me (which knowledge is, in Calvinism, imparted by the testimony of the Spirit), then I know, without further probing or speculation, that I am elect. And this is exactly what Calvin himself meant by calling Christ the "mirror of election."

Notes

¹ Treatments of Calvin's doctrine of election in its relationship to Christology can be found in Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956); Paul Jacobs, Prädestination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin (Clark, 1956); Wendel, John Calvin; and Muller, Christ and the Decree.

² Kendall, p. 13, footnote 2.

³ Alexander Schweizer, Die Protestantischen Centraldogmen in ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der Reformierten Kirche, 2 vols. (Zurich, 1854-56). This interpretation has been upheld more recently in David Wiley, Calvin's Doctrine of Predestination: His Principal Soteriological and Polemical Doctrine (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1971).

⁴ For example, Defensio sanae et orthodoxae doctrinae … (1543), CO 6:225-404; De aeterna Dei praedestinatione (1552), CO 8:249-366; Sur L'Election Eternelle (1551), CO 8:85-118; Brevis responsio Io. Calvini … (1557), CO 9:253-66; De occulta dei providentia (1558), CO 9:285-318.

⁵ E.g. E. Doumergue, 4:267-71.

⁶ Inst. 3.11.1.

⁷ Richard Muller (Christ and the Decrees) proposed an alternative approach to the whole question of a "Centraldogma" in Calvin's theology. He refuted the notion that either Calvin or Reformed orthodoxy had a starting doctrine from which everything else was logically deduced, and argued that the central feature of Calvin's theology was actually the tandem (or the "multiple foci") of predestination and Christology. "The predestinarian structure (the decree and its execution) and the christological structure (the Son and his manifestation in the flesh) together provide a basis for the parallel development and mutual interpenetration of the doctrines of predestination and person of Christ." (p. 38)

⁸ Comm. on Acts 20:21, CO 48:463.

⁹ Sermon on Acts 1:1-4, CO 48:586.

¹⁰ Comm. on Acts 28:23, CO 48:569.

¹¹Inst. 2.16.13.

¹² Comm. on John 19:30, CO 47:419.

¹³ Comm. on Luke 24:26, CO 45:806.

¹⁴ Comm. on Hebrews 9:22, CO 55:116.

¹⁵ Comm. on John 1:29, CO 47:25.

¹⁶Inst. 4.17.37.

¹⁷Inst. 4.17.37.

¹⁸Inst. 4.15.6.

¹⁹ Moyse Amyraut, Sermons sur divers textes de la sainte ecriture. 2nd ed. (Saumur: Desbordes, 1653). Armstrong's translation, p. 184.

²⁰ "La grace de la redemption qu'il leur a offerte et procurée deu estre egale et universelle." Amyraut, Brief Traitté de la predestination et de ses principales dependances (Saumur: J. Lesnier, 1634), p. 77.

²¹ Armstrong, p. 177.

²²CO 8:301; Comm. on II Peter 3:9, CO 55:476.

²³Inst. 1.18.3.

²⁴ Comm. on Titus 1:3, CO 52:407.

²⁵ Comm. on Galatians 1:4, CO 50:170.

²⁶ Comm. on John 6:37, CO 47:146.

²⁷ Comm. on Hebrews 2:13, CO 55:31.

²⁸ Comm. on Jude 1, CO 55:488. Cf. also CO 58:66.

²⁹ Comm. on John 13:18, CO 47:311. Election is understood here by the context.

³⁰Inst. 1.13.7.

³¹Inst. 3.22.7. Cf. also CO 47:311.

³² Comm. on John 15:16, CO 47:347.

³³ Inst. 4.1.10

³⁴ Comm. on Luke 8:2, CO 45:356.

³⁵ Sermon on Genesis 25:19-22, CO 58:49. Calvin's Christological concept of election was in line with Bucer's. In his comments on Ephesians, Bucer stressed that election is "through Christ," and "in Christ," and is enacted only "by the merit of Christ's blood." Cf. Stephens, p. 25.

³⁶ Comm. on Eph. 1:4, CO 51:147. Cf. also CO 51:269, where Calvin called Christ le vray registre of election.

³⁷Inst. 3.24.5.

³⁸Inst. 3.22.2.

³⁹Inst. 3.21.7.

⁴⁰Inst. 3.21.7.

⁴¹CO 9:714.

⁴² Perhaps it is here, in connection with the topic of election in Christ, that we should mention Calvin's reference to Christ as the object of election. This comment (Inst. 2.17.1) was wholly dependent on Augustine (De praedestinatione sanctorum liber, MPL 44:981). Since Calvin used the idea only here, and that for a special polemical purpose, it should not be considered a major element of his view of election and Christ.

⁴³ F. Wendel, Calvin, pp. 231-2.

⁴⁴ Kendall, p. 15.

⁴⁵ Comm. on Eph. 3:11, CO 51:183.

⁴⁶ Comm. on John 6:38, CO 47:146.

⁴⁷ Comm. on I Peter 1:20, CO 55:226.

⁴⁸ Comm. on John 6:40, CO 47:147.

⁴⁹ Comm. on Matt. 11:27, CO 45:319.

⁵⁰ Sermon on II Timothy 1:9-10, CO 54:54.

⁵¹Inst. 2.6.4.

⁵² Sermon on II Tim. 1:9-10, CO 54:59.

⁵³ Comm. on John 17:6, CO 47:379.

⁵⁴ Comm. on Mark 10:21, CO 45:541.

⁵⁵ Comm. on John 17:24, CO 47:390.

⁵⁶ Comm. on Matt. 12:18, CO 45:331.

⁵⁷ Comm. on Mark 10:21, CO 45:540.

⁵⁸Inst. 2.16.4.

⁵⁹Inst. 2.17.2.

⁶⁰ Cf. CO 45:540-41, 47:390.

⁶¹Inst. 2.12.4.

⁶² Comm. on I Tim. 1:1, CO 52:249.

⁶³ Cf. Inst. 2.16.4.

⁶⁴Inst. 2.16.4.

⁶⁵ Kendall, p. 15.

⁶⁶ Kendall, p. 29.

⁶⁷ Kendall, p. 32.

⁶⁸Inst. 3.21.1.

⁶⁹Inst. 3.24.4.

⁷⁰Inst. 3.24.4.

⁷¹Inst. 3.24.4.

⁷²Inst. 3.21.2.

⁷³ Sermon on II Tim. 1:9-10, CO 54:58.

⁷⁴ Sermon on Eph. 1:4-6, CO 51:281.

⁷³Sur L'Election Eternelle, CO 8:114.

⁷⁶ Comm. on I John 4:10, CO 55:353-54.

⁷⁷ Comm. on Acts 13:48, CO 48:314. The Latin arrha and its closely related synonym arrhabo appear to be borrowed from the Greek arrabon, which Paul uses in II Cor. 1:22, 5:5, and Eph. 1:4 to characterize the work of the Spirit. The application of the term to Christ is Calvin's own idea.

⁷⁸ Sermon on II Tim. 1:9-10, CO 54:57.

⁷⁹ Comm. on I Tim. 6:13, CO 52:330.

⁸⁰Inst. 3.24.5.

⁸¹ Sermon on II Tim. 1:9-10, CO 54:54.

⁸² Sermon on Eph. 1:4-6, CO 51:281-82. Cf. also CO 51:269.

⁸³ Comm. on Acts 16:11, CO 48:375.

⁸⁴ Comm. on Titus 1:16, CO 52:410.

⁸⁵Inst. 2.11.1.

⁸⁶Inst. 2.12.6.

⁸⁷Inst. 3.2.6.

⁸⁸ Sermon on Matt. 26:40-50, CO 46:854.

⁸⁹ Sermon on Gen. 27:11-19, CO 58:174.

⁹⁰ Sermon on II Thess. 1:6-10, CO 52:230.

⁹¹ Comm. on Matt. 26:29, CO 45:709.

⁹² Comm. on John 5:22, CO 47:114.

⁹³ Comm. on Eph. 1:20, CO 51:158.

⁹⁴ Comm. on John 15:9, CO 47:342.

⁹⁵ Sermon on Matt. 27:11-26, CO 46:900.

⁹⁶ Comm. on Philippians 2:9, CO 52:28.

⁹⁷ Comm. on I Tim. 6:13, CO 52:330.

⁹⁸ Dewey Wallace noted the proper emphasis of the doctrine of limited redemption in Puritan theology in Puritans and Predestination (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), p. 48.