Religion

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Finally, those who know anything about Calvinism know that Cauvin asserted and defended a doctrine of election or predestination: we are lost or saved as God wills and our destiny has always been known to him. In this he parts with Chrysostom and embraces Augustine. His position is a consequence of his refusal to allow any limit to the power or knowledge of God or to the efficacy of his grace. Cauvin's apparent isolation with the burden of this thorny doctrine is an artifact of the history of polemic rather than of controversy. His great contemporary and nemesis, Ignatius of Loyola, says in his treatise, Spiritual Exercises, "Whilst it is absolutely true that no man can be saved withouht being predestined and without faith and grace, great care is called for in the way we talk about these matters." Furthermore, he warns, "Nor should we talk so much about grace and with such insistence on it as to give rise to the poisonous view that destroys freedom ... our language and way of speaking should not be such that the value of our activities and the reality of human freedom might be in any way impaired or disregarded, especially in times like these which are full of dangers."

Ignatius was writing for an elite of highly committed men; Cauvin, for anyone who could read him. Cauvin's theology does not permit the esotericism that allows Ignatius to nuance this doctrine by advising "great care" in the manner in which it is discussed, though in the Institutes he also warns that the subject should be approached with caution. Certainly neither Cauvin nor Loyola lived the life of a fatalist, nor does either show the least reluctance to urge others to act decisively. Anomalies must be expected along the conceptual frontiers between the temporal and the eternal. Surely it is not at all Ignatius's purpose in writing to find logical solutions to theological problems - " I will believe that the white object I see is black if that should be the decisiion of the hierarchical church." Nor is it Cauvin's, who does not "contrive a necessity of the perpetual connection and intimately related series of causes, which is contained in nature." He is as committed to the freedom and mystery of God as Ignatius is to the divine authority of the Church. The logical difficulties of their positions matter only if the question is understood in terms both explicitly reject.

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