Calvin on Predestination and Original Sin

 

"To this witless argument I reply, What wonder is it that Pighius should thus, (to use his own expression,) indiscriminately confound all things, in reference to the deep judgments of God, when he knows not how to make the least distinction between remote and proximate CAUSES!"  John Calvin

The third end of man’s creation which is so clearly and powerfully expressed by Solomon (The Lord hath made all things for himself, even the wicked for the day of evil, Prov. 16:4), Pighius attacks in this way.—With reference to God’s condemnation of the reprobate, and his punishment of sin; he argues, “If we say that God in his eternal decrees had any respect to what would happen to each person, after his creation, we must necessarily confess, that the discrimination between the elect and the reprobate, was, in the Divine mind, antecedent to the fall of man. Whence it will follow, that the reprobate are not condemned, because they were ruined in Adam; but because they were already devoted to destruction, even before the fall of Adam.”—To this witless argument I reply, What wonder is it that Pighius should thus, (to use his own expression,) indiscriminately confound all things, in reference to the deep judgments of God, when he knows not how to make the least distinction between remote and proximate CAUSES! After men have looked this way and that way, they can never, by so doing, fix upon the cause of their destruction; nor upon the fault that produced it. And why? because the proximate fault rests with themselves. And should they complain, that the wound is inflicted on them from some other quarter; the internal sense of their mind will bind them fast to the conclusion, that the evil arose from the voluntary defections and fall of the first man.—I know full well, that the insolence of the carnal mind cannot be prevented from immediately bawling, “If God foreknew the fall of Adam, and yet, was unwilling to apply a remedy; we are rather perishing, in our innocence, by his bare external decree, than suffering the just punishment of our sin.” And suppose we grant that nothing was in this way foreseen of God, or thus viewed by Him; the old complaint, concerning original sin, will still be made, and as loud as ever;—“Why was not Adam left to sin for himself, as a private individual, so as to bear the consequences alone? Why was he made to involve us, who deserved no such calamity, in a participation of the same ruin! Nay, under what colour of justice does God visit on us the punishment of another’s fault?” But, after all has been said, that can be said, on the subject; the internal feeling of every man’s heart continues to urge its conviction: nor will it suffer any child of Adam to absolve himself (even himself being his own judge) from the sin, the guilt, or the punishment, consequent on the original transgression of Adam! Nor can any one, in truth, raise a controversy on the matter. For as, on account of the sin of one man, a deadly wound was inflicted on all men; all men at once acknowledge the judgment of God thereon, to be righteous!

Calvin, John, and Hendry H. Cole. Calvin’s Calvinism: A Treatise on the Eternal Predestination of God. London: Wertheim and Macintosh, 1856. Print.

(Italics are mine.  CJR)