n the opposite direction, developing
with increasing clearness and boldness an absolute, bifurcated
predestination, _i.e._, a capricious election to eternal damnation as
well as to salvation, and in accordance therewith denied the
universality of God's grace, of Christ's redemption, and of the
efficacious operation of the Holy Spirit through the means of grace. In
his "_Institutio Religionis Christianae_, Instruction in the Christian
Religion," of which the first edition appeared 1535, the second in 1539,
and the third in 1559, Calvin taught that God created and foreordained
some to eternal life, others to eternal damnation. Man's election means
that he has been created for eternal life, man's reprobation, that he
has been created for eternal damnation. We read (_Lib_. 3, cap. 21, 5):
"_Praedestinationem vocamus aeternum Dei decretum, quo apud se
constitutum habuit, quid de unoquoque homine fieri vellet. Non enim pari
conditione creantur omnes; sed aliis vita aeterna, aliis damnatio
aeterna praeordinatur. Itaque prout in alterutrum finem quisque conditus
est, ita vel ad vitam, vel ad mortem praedestinatum dicimus_." (Tholuck,
_Calvini Institutio_ 2, 133.) In the edition of 1559 Calvin says that
eternal election illustrates the grace of God by showing "that He does
not adopt all promiscuously unto the hope of salvation, but bestows on
some what He denies to others--_quod non omnes promiscue adoptat in spem
salutis, sed dat aliis, quod aliis negat_." (Gieseler 3, 2, 172.) Again:
"I certainly admit that all the sons of Adam have fallen by the will of
God into the miserable condition of bondage, in which they are now
fettered; for, as I said in the beginning, one must always finally go
back to the decision of the divine will alone, whose cause is hidden in
itself. _Fateor sane, in hanc qua nunc illigati sunt conditionis
miseriam Dei voluntate cecidisse universos filios Adam; atque id est,
quod principio dicebam, redeundum tandem semper esse ad solum divinae
voluntatis arbitrium, cuius causa sit in ipso abscondita_." (173.)
Calvin's successor in Geneva, Theodore Beza, was also a strict
supralapsarian. At the colloquy of Moempelgard (Montbeliard), 1586, in
disputing with Andreae, he defended the proposition "that Adam had
indeed of his own accord fallen into these calamities, yet,
nevertheless, not only according to the prescience, but also according
to the ordination and decree of God--_sponte quidem, sed tamen non modo
praes