The Reformation
Heretical Predestinarianism received a new and vigorous impulse at the outbreak of the Reformation. Luther having denied the freedom of the will in sinful man as also freedom in the use of grace, logically placed the eternal destiny of the individual solely and entirely in the hands of God, who without any regard to merit or demerit metes out heaven or hell just as He pleases. Zwingli endeavoured to obviate the grave consequences that this principle necessarily produces in the moral order by the vain excuse that
"just as God incited the robber to commit murder, so also He forces the judge to impose the penalty of death on the murderer" (De provid. Dei, in "Opera" ed. Schuler, IV, 113). Melanchthon taught expressly that the treason of Judas was just as much the work of God as was the vocation of St. Paul (cf. Trident., Sess. VI, can. vi, in Denzinger, n. 816).
Calvin is the most logical advocate of Predestinarianism pure and simple. Absolute and positive predestination of the elect for eternal life, as well as of the reprobate for hell and for sin, is one of the chief elements of his whole doctrinal system and is closely connected with the all-pervading thought of "the glory of God". Strongly religious by nature and with an instinct for systematizing, but also with a harsh unyielding character, Calvin was the first to weave the scattered threads which he thought he had found in St. Paul, St. Augustine, Wyclif, Luther, and Bucer, into a strong network which enveloped his entire system of practical and theoretical Christianity. Thus he became in fact the systematizer of the dread doctrine of predestination. Although Calvin does not deny that man had free will in paradise, still he traces back the fall of Adam to an absolute and positive decree of God (Instit., I, 15, 8; III, 23, 8).
SOURCE:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12376b.htm
Topic: Dangers of Predestinationism (Read 593 times)