Friday, August 15, 2014
Gottschalk on Double Predestination and Equally Ultimacy
"I believe and confess that the omnipotent and immutable God has gratuitously foreknown and predestined the holy angels and elect human beings to eternal life, and that he equally predestined the devil himself, the head of all the demons, with all of his apostate angels and also with all reprobate human beings, namely, his members, to rightly eternal death, on account of their own future, most certainly foreknown evil merits, through his most righteous judgment." - Gottschalk of Orbais
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7 comments:
I would call this active reprobation rather than equal ultimacy. But good quote.
http://joeltay81.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/is-double-predestination-and-active-reprobation-equal-ultimacy/
Joel Tay, the idea of Equal Ultimacy is the idea that God predestines men to wrath in the same way that he predestines men to life.
In one of my other post I had made a few years ago I quote R.C. Sproul - "Equal ultimacy is based on a concept of symmetry. It seeks a complete balance between election and reprobation. The key idea is this: Just as God intervenes in the lives of the elect to create faith in their hearts, so God equally intervenes in the lives of the reprobate to create or work unbelief in their hearts. The idea of God's actively working unbelief in the hearts of the reprobate is drawn from biblical statements about God hardening people's hearts."
The idea is that God is sovereign in the Reprobate THE SAME WAY how he is also Sovereign in the Elect.
Gordon Clark says in his three R's that good and evil are equally ultimate.
Let it be unequivocally said that this view certainly makes God the cause of sin. God is the sole ultimate cause of everything there is absolutely nothing independent of him. He alone is the eternal being. He alone is omnipotent. He alone is sovereign. Not only is Satan his creature, but every detail of history was eternally in his plan before the world began; and he willed that it should all come to pass. The men and angels predestined to eternal life and those foreordained to everlasting death are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. Election and reprobation are equally ultimate. God determined that Christ should die; he determined as well that Judas should betray him. There was never the remotest possibility that something different could have happened.
(Emphasis is mine)Gordon H. Clark., Religion, Reason and Revelation., Pg. 173
The concept that God elects and reprobates equally is seen in verses such as one blogger said it - "As a supporter of equal ultimacy I have a question: if one reads John 12;37-41 I believe the Word here teaches that God is actively involved in blinding the reprobate; this passage does not speak of anything the reprobate did as a cause to this end. This passage is referring to Isaiah 6:9,10; which if one reads that they will not see any action by the reprobate-only God's will to blind them. This is all part of God's glory (John 12:41) and we should honor God in His glory."
Unless you have a different definition of Equal Ultimacy.
I want to also say this that in the idea of Equal Ultimacy we are not saying that God is evil when He works in man to do evil. Does God do anything Immediately? Yes God causes us to believe in regeneration, but is our belief His belief in us? Likewise, in Reprobation we are concerned with the hardening. God hardens the reprobate ultimately but he is not the one doing the actions immediately.
Can we say that God is good? yes. He is good. However, God is not bound by the same measure of goodness and badness we are bound by - the law.
In your blog - you say - "But where reprobation or evil things are concerned, God is the primary/ultimate cause (active reprobation), but he is not the do-er of the sinful act. In other words, God is the primary cause, but not the secondary cause of evil things. God does not tempt (James 1:13). But God led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (Matt 4:1). When we repeat the “Lord’s prayer” (Matt 6:13), “… lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil”, who are we praying to? Are we not praying to the Father not to lead us into temptation? But why pray such a prayer unless God does indeed decree that secondary agents tempt man according to the will and purpose of God."
I suppose you consider the issue in the small statement that God is not the do-er of the act. But does that mean that my faith is not my faith? You use some of the same phraseology you have used with the elect, but then you go ahead and say BUT God does not do this... But election and reprobation are not Equally Ultimate.
As an occasionalist, I would be confuse in your language of course. Does not God ultimately cause all things?
Your statement here, "Once we understand this distinction between election and reprobation, we immediately see that the doctrine of active reprobation is not equal ultimacy. God does not elect and reprobate man in exactly the same way."
So how does God elect and reprobate? Does he reprobate out of a fallen mass? I suppose you are saying that God does not have to work evil in the hearts of the reprobate the same way he works good in the hearts of the elect. perhaps that is clearer in your distinction. But then ultimately we want to understand where did evil come from? What is evil? Who caused evil to begin with. I like Traducianism I think it has answers that I like. But still this does not say that God has to create every single individual soul. Likewise God does not have to immediately create evil in men. A.W. Pink says that there are instances where hardening is not a judicial act, but is free and sovereign act. For instance Pharoah - God was not moved by anything in Pharaoh to harden Him. We also consider the issue with Adam as well or better Satan the former Arch Angel. Or as one said above that God was not moved to blind the reprobate because of anything done in them.
But then again generally speaking this view is true in that both good and evil are ultimately caused by God for nothing happens in this world in which God is not the cause of it.
Anyways those are just a few of my thoughts on this issue. I think the Assyrian army was caused by God to go up against the Israelite.
I certainly affirm active reprobatino, the question I am wondering about though, is whether we can say that election and reprobation is exactly the same, not in the sense that they are both active, but rather, that there is a difference in primary and secondary causation where God is never the secondary cause of evil. And the reason why God cannot be the secondary cause of evil is that if God does command a temptation, that command makes that action good. So that for evil to be evil, God has to work through a secondary agent rather than tempt himsef. I am completely with you on occasionalism.
I am wondering if active reprobation is necessarily equal ultimacy since there is a non-symetry where good and evil is concerned.
Good = God is both primary and secondary cause.
Evil = God is primary but never the secondary cause.
Reprobation is of course always active.
Or perhaps we can say that it is equally ultimate in that both election and reprobation are active, but that the outworking of good and evil are different where primary and secondary causation are concerned. What do you think?
Do does a difference in primary and secondary causation make it Asymmetrical even if both election and reprobation are active?
Robert Reymond affirms equal ultimacy but then say that "we must not speak of an exact identity of divine causality behind both." I assume that by this he is saying that God does not work evil in the hearts of the reprobate the same way he works good in the hearts of the elect.
If equal ultimacy is purely a reference to the decree of election/reprbation as Robert Reymond is using the phrase, then indeed the eternal decrees are equally ultimate.
But if by equal ultimacy we are refering to the outworking of both good and evil, then perhaps we should say there is a difference. Sproul seems to be definingit such that it not only refers to a symmetry in the eternal decrees, but also a symmetry in the way God work both good and evil.
Sproul defines: "The key idea is this: Just as God intervenes in the lives of the elect to create faith in their hearts, so God equally intervenes in the lives of the reprobate to create or work unbelief in their hearts. The idea of God's actively working unbelief in the hearts of the reprobate is drawn from biblical statements about God hardening people's hearts."
Under Sproul's definition of equal ultimac, it would therefore be wrong to say that there is equal ultimacy.
Your thoughts?
My question is why does God have to be the primary and secondary cause of good and yet he is merely the primary cause of Evil?
Cannot God be the only the Primary cause of both good and evil? Clark says in his three R's, "The question is slightly complex. One part of it has to do with the necessity of means, or secondary or proximate causes. God does not do everything - he hardly does anything - immediately. For this reason the Westminster Confession, to which Berkouwer pays insufficient attention, has a phrase about secondary causation." Pg. 172
I suppose I need to understand what you mean by secondary causes are you referring this to mean the immediate cause?
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