The
Doctrine of Election
Its Importance and Relevance for the Church Today (Part II)
By David Samuel
The Teaching of the Church of England
We have in the previous part of this article traced the doctrine of predestination
and election through the Bible, Augustine and Wycliffe. I need not trace it
through the Reformers, it is unquestionably there. It was present in them all
in some form or other, simply because the cry of Sola gratia cannot be sustained
without it. If salvation is of grace not of works, then the ground of distinguishing
grace must be found outside man not within him. It is found in the secret and
inscrutable purpose of God who worketh all things after the counsel of his own
will (Ephesians 1: 11). As to the doctrine of the Church of England, we see
that it preserves the same two-sidedness, the same double aspect of the church,
that is, its visible and invisible sides that we have noticed before. The proper
understanding of its visible and institutional character is found in Article
XIX Of the Church.
The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in which the
pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according
to Christ's ordinance in all things that of necessity are requisite to the same.
Where is the Article on the invisible church? There are those who have contended
that we have not got one, that our Articles speak only of the visible church,
and do not mention the distinction that was universal amongst the Reformers.
But this is not the case. The Article concerning the invisible church is found
in Article XVII Of Predestination and Election.
Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the
foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel
secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen
in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation,
as vessels made to honour...
This is ‘the little flock’ of which our Saviour speaks, to whom it
is the Father's good pleasure to give them the kingdom. There is the invisible
church, which is related to, but not commensurable with, the visible, outward,
institutional church. Moreover, as Article XVII Of Predestination comes before
Article XIX Of the Church it is intended to be understood as having logical
priority over it. The concept of election is, as in the Bible, Augustine, Wycliffe
and the Reformers, the controlling doctrine, which governs and presupposes our
thinking about the visible church, its preaching, sacraments, and fellowship.
The Value of the Doctrine of Predestination for Today
We must turn now to the usefulness and relevance of the doctrine of election
for the church today, and its importance too, for many of the ills we suffer
are attributable to the neglect, or contempt of this doctrine by those who ought
to know better.
First, it should if properly attended to preserve us from unworthy views
of God. J.B. Phillips wrote a book a number of years ago with the intriguing
title, ‘Your God is too Small’. It epitomises the particular affliction
of the church and its leaders today. We have partial, limited and unworthy views
of God. Our thinking about God is anthropocentric. The categories we use are
subjective rather than Biblical. It would come as just such a great surprise
to many within the church today to discover that God is at the centre of things,
as it came to the contemporaries of Galileo to learn that the earth revolved
around the sun. We are in the age of 'flat earth' theology. God in the present
church scene is reduced to a benevolent and interested spectator. We make our
plans for the church and then ask God to bless them. We are now so confident
that we can predict how many people will join the church in the next twelve
months and have devised just the right teaching and marketing research. Where
God fits into all this it is difficult to see, except in the role of an observer.
This is the consequence of the Arminian theology that has taken control of the
church, though most would not be able to give it a name at all. What is happening
in the church today is not happening by accident. It has causes, theological
causes. The practice of the church today has been determined by the theology
it adopted yesterday, and that theology was Arminian.
Arminianism is essentially man-centred, and it reduces God to the role of an
observer or spectator in his own universe. This can be demonstrated. Arminianism
makes a distinction between God's foreknowledge and his foreordination. It recognises
that God must foreknow events, but denies that he ordains them to come to pass.
But by the nature of the case, if God foreknows what will be done in the future,
it follows that those events must be certain, otherwise he would have no knowledge
of them. However, Arminianism has already denied that the certainty of events
is attributable to God. He has not ordained them. Therefore their certainty
must be attributed to some other course, or causes, outside God - to the working
of blind fate or necessity. Thus God becomes a mere spectator in his own universe.
He is made dependent for his knowledge upon the things known, instead of all
things being dependent upon him. The only way of escape from this conclusion
is to lapse into Socinianism or Unitarianism, and deny also that God even knows
what will come to pass.
Now the demoralising consequences of this theology must be apparent. They are
all about us in the church today, in the way in which modern Christians set
about, not only their own salvation, but the ordering of the church, its bureaucracy,
planning and focus groups. God is brought in almost as an afterthought, when
some ultimate justification is required for the system. Is the God of the General
Synod of the Church of England less remote and passive than the God of eighteenth
century Deism? I suggest that the doctrine of predestination and election and
all that it means in terms of the power and sovereignty of God is the necessary
corrective that is needed to these unworthy and limited views of God. The remedy
lies close at hand in its very own Articles of Religion.
Secondly, it should serve to preserve the church from popery. Against
the medieval system of the papacy, clad like Goliath in helmet and greaves of
brass and bearing spear and shield, Wycliffe advanced with, as it were a stone
and a sling, that is, with the Biblical doctrine of predestination. It was sufficient
to break its power and write its doom, for this doctrine is, as we have said,
fatal to all ecclesiastical pretensions. It strips every manifestation of priestcraft
of its power, for it reveals the truth, that the grace of God is not tied to
any order of men, be they in the so-called apostolic succession or not, but
is dispensed by him who says, I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious,
and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy. (Exodus 33.19). Before the brilliance
of that light the claims of Romanism and every other sacerdotal system melt
as the shades of night before the rays of the sun.
Let us be under no illusion about the growing cult of the papacy and priestly
religion in the popular mind today, in this so-called age of secularism. Hardly
a day passes without the pope being featured in the newspapers. Wherever he
goes he draws millions of people and the news media behind him in popular acclamation.
They do not know what they are following. They have no real comprehension of
the claims of the papacy. But the popular appeal and the potential power that
goes with it are there. The essence of Roman Catholicism lies in the power of
the priest who is regarded as mediator, the exclusive channel of God's grace
to man. Without this claim the whole sacerdotal system loses its raison d'être.
The influence of such teaching is growing in the Church of England. Once only
esoteric groups of Anglo-catholic clergy used to visit Walsingham. Now the image
of Our Lady of Walsingham is taken on tour of the dioceses. With the decay of
Protestant principles and Reformation teaching in the national church, its clergy
and people slide inexorably into unreformed concepts of ministry.
As the ecumenical movement gathers pace, the orientation of the churches is
towards the papacy, and the goal towards which it aspires is the exaltation
of the visible, institutional church with its consequent claim to exclusiveness
and authority over the souls of men. Many Protestants feel dispirited and defeated
as this movement gathers momentum. With what can we oppose this Colossus? Let
us remember the words of Paul: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal,
but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations,
and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and
bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; (2 Cor 10.4,5).
The churches of the Reformation have in their armoury the weapon that can overthrow
all such false claims and teaching. It is their disregard and neglect of it
that has made them a prey to sacerdotalism and the growing influence of Rome.
If we have the courage to proclaim the whole counsel of God we shall have nothing
to fear.
Thirdly, it should preserve evangelicals from incipient sacramentalism.
By incipient sacramentalism I mean the tendency to attribute to the sacraments
a power to work of themselves, regardless of the spiritual condition of the
recipient, whether he has faith or not. At the time of the Reformation all the
Reformers opposed this ex opere operato doctrine of the sacraments. In more
recent years some evangelicals have chosen to speak in exaggerated language
about the efficacy of the sacraments. In a book called "Growing into Union"
written by two evangelical and two Anglo-catholic authors, the expression "the
sheer, unqualified efficacy of the sacrament" was used, and the claim made
that "the sacrament effects what it signifies", brushing aside the
Biblical warning on the need for worthy reception. This tendency is a dangerous
one. It has been justly, and to my mind, unanswerably criticised by Dr Scales
in the ‘Evangelical Succession’ published by James Clark. All I want
to say here is, that the teaching and the tendency to ascribe such power to
the sacraments would not arise amongst evangelicals if they held the doctrine
of election in due regard, and gave it its rightful place in their doctrinal
system. It is, as we have seen, the controlling doctrine regarding the church.
It should govern our understanding of the visible, institutional church, its
preaching, sacraments and fellowship. When this is recognised, the language
of 'sheer, unqualified efficacy' in regard to the sacraments, as indeed to the
preaching of the Word, is quite unjustifiable and inapposite. “The sacraments,”
wrote Calvin, “duly perform their office only when accompanied by the Spirit,
the internal Master, whose energy alone penetrates the heart, stirs the affections,
and procures access for the sacrament into our soul. If he is wanting, the sacraments
can avail us no more than the sun shining upon the eyeballs of the blind, or
sounds uttered in the ears of the deaf.” This is the proper theological
milieu in which the Reformers did all their thinking and writing about the sacraments.
It follows that the sacraments can only be truly efficacious, or operative,
in the elect, in those to whom the Holy Spirit is imparted.
Divorced from the doctrine of election the understanding of the sacraments quickly
degenerates into ex opere operato notions and the language of ‘sheer, unqualified
efficacy’.
The doctrine of the visible church must always have the teaching of the invisible
church of God's elect to qualify and control it. Without this two-sidedness,
the visible, institutional church assumes a dominant and oppressive role, and
its rites and ceremonies are gradually invested with magical potency.
Fourthly, it gives the church a sense of purpose. Behind the flux and
change of the world and its history in which the visible, institutional church
is involved, there is the eternal and unchanging plan and purpose of God. Let
us take an illustration from nature and experience. Our senses are continually
bombarded by impressions of colour, sound and feeling from the world about us.
What enables us to impose some order and coherence upon all this confusion?
The mind; the human mind is so equipped that it is able to impose order upon
all these random impressions and make sense of it all. If the mind did not perform
this function, the world would be ‘buzzing, booming confusion’. When
we look out upon the world and its history, we are confronted with a multiplicity
of events, with the flux and change and passage of history. What sense can we
make of it all? One historian claims that he discerns a purpose, only to be
debunked by another, and the modern approach seems to be one of skepticism regarding
any purpose at all. It seems to me that we can make no sense of the empirical
data of the world and history and life unless we have the categories of the
Bible, of revelation, with which to do it. And especially important among them
is the doctrine of predestination and election. Across the tracts of time marches
the unchanging, invincible purpose of God to call out a people for himself,
to justify and glorify them.
Without this great plan I cannot make sense of the manifold facts of history
and life. The history of the world often hangs literally by a thread. Think
of the baby Moses adrift on the waters of the Nile. Think of Paul, before his
great mission was properly begun, suspended from the walls of Damascus by a
rope in a basket. Why was the Gospel first preached in the West rather than
in the East? Why did Christ come into the world when he did rather than earlier
or later? ‘How odd of God,’ says the cynic, ‘to choose the Jews.’
Why should this person believe the Gospel and not that person, when humanly
speaking they have had the same opportunities and privileges? If we confine
ourselves to the contingent facts and the secondary causes we can make no sense
of it. The world becomes a 'big, buzzing, booming confusion'. Indeed, the philosophy
of chance and the absurd seems to be the only possible conclusion, which is
where our generation has arrived.
We must view the facts of history and experience in relation to God and his
purposes. This is what men of faith have always done, and it has brought order
out of confusion. Joseph saw that what had fallen out for him was not accidental,
but ordained by God to fulfil his purpose, not merely for himself but for the
people of God. He said to his astonished brethren, when they met up with him
in Egypt, where he had become the chief power in the land next to Pharaoh, God
sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your
lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but
God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and
a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. (Genesis 45:7,8). The same thing
is true when the foreordination of God is applied to the contingent, historical
facts relating to the crucifixion of our Lord, as it was by Peter and the church
in Acts 4:27, For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed,
both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel,
were gathered together. The same is true when the contingent facts of our own
personal histories are brought into relation with the purposes of God in election.
Truly, nothing happens by accident, And we know that all things work together
for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his
purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed
to the image of his Son.... (Romans 8: 28, 29).
All this has a practical application which I need hardly point out. I conclude
with this observation. The trouble with the church and many Christians today
is that they look only at the contingent facts. They view the events of the
world and of their own lives only superficially and not in the light of the
Bible and the context of the overarching purpose of God in election and predestination.
This does not minister to faith. If we do this we allow the world to set the
agenda. But the truth is that the agenda has already been set. The purpose and
goal of history have been determined by the counsel of Almighty God, the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said to his disciples, Fear not, little flock;
for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. When the church
and the Christian grasp that truth by faith they will know that they are not
the victims of events, but "more than conquerors".