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THE ELECT: Article 17 of the 39 Articles -- Part II

THE ELECT: Article 17 of the 39 Articles -- Part II

By Roger Salter
Special to VIRTUEONLINE
www.virtueonline.org
July 25, 2016

Godly Consideration

The topic of Predestination occasions an insight into and an appraisal of the state of mind of the person considering it. Only the godly mind is fit to approach it reverently, appreciatively, and accurately. Here the dependence upon the grace of God and the sweet, calm influences of the Holy Spirit are essential. Rashness of intellect is bound to err speculatively or with hostility. It is in this area that we must bow humbly before a sovereign and incomprehensible God whose thoughts are infinitely higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9), whose wisdom is unimpeachable (1 Corinthians 1:18-25, Daniel 2:20-23), and whose prerogatives are incontestable (Daniel 4: 34-35).

Faced with the fact of Predestination as a key and solemn element in the revelation of God granted so clearly to us in Holy Scripture we surrender our intellectual competence, presuppositions, and naturally acquired assumptions (from culture, conditioning, and personal inclinations) before the Most High and Holy God. We can only delve into his thoughts as he leads us by taking our hand into his. Predestination challenges the pride of our nature and its claim to be in control as far as possible. Arminianism in the believer is the residue of sinful self-will. Self-will is a tendency that remains in all of us to some degree.

The energy and ingenuity with which some attempt to evade the simple Biblical fact and implications of divine election are astounding and the proffered logic baffling. Predestination is mistakenly pondered and propounded zealously from a zone within the personality that is cordoned off from the absolute sovereignty of God and the efficacy of his every action. The human mind naturally erects certain barriers against interventions and intrusions of God that threaten our still remaining quest for autonomy. There is a sense in which we are still paid up members of our father Adam's Independence Party.

The Lord's predetermined purpose will prevail. Divine thought and intention is not static, "somewhere up there" in the ether of human notions concerning God's eternalness (the great escape hatch for many who dispute the decisive hard fact of a real prior selection of the company of the redeemed). His plan is realized in a process of sequential events and acts that are completed in created time in which he deigns to work "in due season".

Divine decrees affect definite dates in the flow of history. The elect are not only considered in the divine mind, they are called in the course of time, into which God stoops to perform his marvels. Predestination means that God has a fixed intent actually wrought, (not suspended in some mystical "eternal now") through occurrences in the realm of creation and the lives and affairs of men. Election is election, plain and simple. Lovely!

Predestination . . . and salvation are clean taken out of our hands, and put in the hands of God only . . . for we are so weak and so uncertain, that if it stood in us, there would of a truth be no man saved; the devil, no doubt, would deceive us. (Willam Tyndale).

Sweet, Pleasant and Unspeakable Comfort.

The cart loads of sufferers and martyrs for the sake of the gospel in the Reformation era pleaded with Calvin to expound the doctrine of election for their peace of mind and encouragement through the ordeals that beset them. His grasp of this vital truth was not the result of abstract enquiry, pointless speculation, and mischievous malice. Among so many other blessings it is the basis of Christian fortitude. The prophets and apostles needed to know that they were called of God when facing the afflictions and assaults arrayed against them. The call of God to these men, as we see in the examples of Jeremiah and Paul, was preordained to be effectual and incapable of failure.

Calvary is the most compelling incidence of the decree of predestination and the sureness of its results: "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you by him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him" (Acts 2: 22-24). The Messiah's fate was wholly in the hands of God. His death and defeat of death were decreed. In union with Christ believers share the identical outcome with their Savior. They will surely walk the path of life to the joy of the divine presence because God wills it (Acts 2:25-28). Through different modes of operation God's purposes prevail both though human criminality (he brings good out of evil) and the consolations he confers upon his chosen (they feel in themselves the working of the Spirit).

To deny or deride election is to deprive believers of some of their strongest joys and encouragements - the definite pledges God has made to them, the prospects of a paradise that awaits them, and the never-failing Presence that fills them. How temporary and tentative is the security of Arminianism if the Christian is not saved from himself and the tendency to wander and stray. It means to place some confidence in feeble human resolve and here audacity sets up man as part savior in the welfare of his soul. Salvation is election and enablement willed and assured by God.

*As the godly consideration of Predestination and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of God, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well as because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because is doth fervently kindle their love towards God:

The Book of Life will be opened at the conclusion of history but the Spirit of the Lord imparts predictions of the outcome of the lives of the elect in the signatures and suggestions that he inscribes upon the soul. Not all believers read them with equal clarity and assurance but most are sensible of the witness of the Spirit, if only as faint and occasional whisperings to defective hearing and hesitant faith.

Sin becomes distasteful and is increasingly avoided. Previously unknown controls, restraints, and good intentions influence desires and behavior. Life takes a new turn with a constant looking to God and a longing to please him. The mind rises often too high and heavenly things, preoccupied with meditations upon God, his word, and his ways, and the guidance of his will. The trends of thought and relationship in attachment to God become richly Trinitarian in the adoration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each in their operations, unity and harmony. If there are times when the human spirit sinks for a while there are also occasions when it soars. The sense of uplift is the support of the Spirit whose role is to establish and confirm the faith that seizes upon eternal salvation wrought through Christ and in which there is the deepest delight. Election in all its essence and effects engages us with God in intense awe, gratitude, affection, and devotion. It creates an immediacy of communion and an immense sense of confidence in the compassionate One.

Caution against Carnal Curiosity

* So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchedness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.

Our Article is eminently sensitive and pastoral in its treatment of election. It warns us that predestination is support and comfort for the believer, no hindrance to the enquirer, and the leveler of pride to the scoffer. It is strong and enduring sustenance to the godly who never embrace it boastfully but gently as good tidings to the meek in spirit. Only the Spirit of Christ can impart a safe understanding of and attitude to the matter of election. For others its meaning is bound to be "tortured out of all recognition" to the denial of truth or torture of the mind.

Carnal and worldly curiosity can produce cruel results because it is so obviously a flawed focus on an edifying truth. The carnal mind, unregenerate persons, lack the Biblical context in which the doctrine of predestination is presented. Cognizance of human rebellion, fallenness, evil, and obduracy prevent ill thoughts off the justice of God. Mercy, atonement, gospel, in adequate explanation, alleviate suspicion and mistrust of God and remove any fear of his reluctance to forgive the penitent. There is no obstacle in him to hearing the cry for compassion from the sincere seeker. Desperation, should it occur, is failure to gaze upon Christ and believe in his assurances of grace towards sinners. Unclean living is the passion of the perverse who defiantly repudiate submission to God in the full force of their vile volition and dissipation in sexual promiscuity and other forms of physical gratification. Lord Byron and Bertrand Russell, familiar with the desperation of their mothers, used their dread of divine judgment to facilitate lives of wantonness and intellectual revolt. Excuse cannot be made for a Dorian Gray style of life. God commands against it and bids us to trust him. Salvation is of the Lord. Damnation is of man. Divine condemnation ratifies the decision of the heart and reviews the direction of the life of the wicked.

It is not for men to peer beyond the Lord Jesus to gain a peek into the things that belong to God. Sound theology does not probe into dark places but only into the areas where God sheds his pure light.

* Furthermore, we must receive God's promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.

Obedience to the Word and Gospel means that we rest the matter of Predestination, as regards ourselves and others specifically, in God's hand and perfectly exercised wisdom.: "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25).

We have watertight promises to rest our hopes upon. They apply to all who rely upon them. The revealed Will of God is the terrain we walk upon through life. Such practice and obedience will not be disappointed. The Word guides, the Spirit witnesses, Faith appropriates the testimony of the two.

David Broughton Knox (formerly of Melbourne and Sydney Dioceses in Australia) draws these inevitable, undeniable conclusions from his brief discussion of Article Seventeen: "The doctrine of predestination is a doctrine for the believer . . . Predestination to life is a constant topic of Scripture, and consequently finds a prominent place in own articles . . . The seventeenth Article not only accompanies Calvin beyond the point where Augustine dropped short, but it effectively excludes an Arminian interpretation of predestination (Thirty-Nine Articles: The Historic Basis of Anglican Faith, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1967).

The Rev. Roger Salter is an ordained Church of England minister where he had parishes in the dioceses of Bristol and Portsmouth before coming to Birmingham, Alabama to serve as Rector of St. Matthew's Anglican Church.

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