Calvin below:
John Calvin confessed that the doctrine of Double Predestination was
a horrible and dreadful decree in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion - Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Why would anyone believe such a horrific and dreadful doctrine ?
Again I ask: whence does it happen that Adam's fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God? Here their tongues, otherwise so loquacious, must become mute.
The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess. (latin. "Decretum quidem horribile, fateor."; french. "Je confesse que ce decret nous doit epouvanter.") Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created him, and consequently foreknew because he so ordained by his decree. If anyone inveighs against God's foreknowledge at this point, he stumbles rashly and heedlessly. What reason is there to accuse the Heavenly Judge because he was not ignorant of what was to happen? If there is any just or manifest complaint, it applies to predestination. And it ought not to seem absurd for me to say that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his descendants, but also meted it out in accordance with his own decision. For as it pertains to his wisdom to foreknow everything that is to happen, so it pertains to his might to rule and control everything by his hand. And Augustine also skillfully disposes of this question, as of others: "We most wholesomely confess what we most correctly believe, that the God and Lord of all things, who created all things exceedingly good [cf.
Gen 1:31], and foreknew that evil things would rise out of good, and also knew that it pertained to his most omnipotent goodness to bring good out of evil things to be . . . , so ordained the life of angels and men that in it he might first of all show what free will could do, and then what the blessing of his grace and the verdict of his justice could do. (Augustine, On Rebuke and Grace X. 27)"
Calvin regarded soteriological predestination as God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition: rather, eternal life is fore-ordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death. gospelcoilitio
" God is said to set apart those whom he adopts into salvation; it will be highly absurd to say that others acquire by chance or by their own effort what election alone confers on a few. Therefore, whom God passes over, he condemns: and this he does for no other reason than that he wills to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his own children. " Institutes, III, 23, 1.
“We also note that we should consider the creation of the world so that we may realize that everything is subject to God and ruled by his will and that when the world has done what it may, nothing happens other than what God decrees.” Acts: Calvin, The Crossway Classic Commentaries, p.66
“First, the eternal predestination of God, by which before the fall of Adam He decreed what should take place concerning the whole human race and every individual, was fixed and determined.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.121
“When he uses the term permission, he means that the will of God is the supreme and primary cause of everything, because nothing happens without his order of permission.” The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book I, Ch. 16, Sect. 8
“For myself, I take another principle: Whatever things are done wrongly and unjustly by man, these very things are the right and just works of God. This may seem paradoxical at first sight to some....” Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.169
“Indeed, the ungodly pride themselves on being competent to effect their wishes. But the facts show in the end that by them, unconsciously and unwillingly, what was divinely ordained is implemented.” Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.173,
“Does God work in the hearts of men, directing their plans and moving their wills this way and that, so that they do nothing but what He has ordained?” Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.174
“But it is quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing but the author of them.” Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God page 176
“But the objection is not yet resolved, that if all things are done by the will of God, and men contrive nothing except by His will and ordination, then God is the author of all evils.” Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.179
" God is said to set apart those whom he adopts into salvation; it will be highly absurd to say that others acquire by chance or by their own effort what election alone confers on a few. Therefore, whom God passes over, he condemns: and this he does for no other reason than that he wills to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his own children. " Institutes, III, 23, 1.
.Individual Election in Calvinism is false. Christ is the elect one.
