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fact that the decree respecting the entrance of sin into the world was a permissive decree, and
that the decree of reprobation should be so construed that God was not made the author of sin
nor in any way responsible for it. The Reformed Confessions are remarkably consistent in
embodying this doctrine, though they do not all state it with equal fulness and precision. As a
result of the Arminian assault on the doctrine, the Canons of Dort contain a clear and detailed
statement of it. In churches of the Arminian type the doctrine of absolute predestination has
been supplanted by the doctrine of conditional predestination.
Since the days of Schleiermacher the doctrine of predestination received an entirely different
form. Religion was regarded as a feeling of absolute dependence, a Hinneigung zum Weltall, a
consciousness of utter dependence on the causality that is proper to the natural order with its
invariable laws and second causes, which predetermine all human resolves and actions. And
predestination was identified with this predetermination by nature or the universal causal
connection in the world. The scathing denunciation of this view by Otto is none too severe:
“There can be no more spurious product of theological speculation, no more fundamental
falsification of religious conceptions than this; and it is certainly not against this that the
Rationalist feels an antagonism, for it is itself a piece of solid Rationalism, but at the same time
a complete abandonment of the real religious idea of ‘predestination’.”[The Idea of the Holy, p.
90.] In modern liberal theology the doctrine of predestination meets with little favor. It is either
rejected or changed beyond recognition. G. B. Foster brands it as determinism; Macintosh
represents it as a predestination of all men to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ; and
others reduce it to a predestination to certain offices or privileges.
In our day Barth has again directed attention to the doctrine of predestination, but has given a
construction of it which is not even distantly related to that of Augustine and Calvin. With the
Reformers he holds that this doctrine stresses the sovereign freedom of God in His election,
revelation, calling, and so on.[The Doctrine of the Word of God, p. 168; Roemerbrief (2nd ed.),
p. 332.] At the same time he does not see in predestination a predetermined separation of
men, and does not understand election like Calvin as particular election. This is evident from
what he says on page 332 of his Roemerbrief. Camfield therefore says in his Essay in Barthian
Theology, entitled Revelation and the Holy Spirit:[p. 92.] “It needs to be emphasized that
predestination does not mean the selection of a number of people for salvation and the rest for
damnation according to the determination of an unknown and unknowable will. That idea does
not belong to predestination proper.” Predestination brings man into crisis in the moment of
revelation and decision. It condemns him in the relation in which he stands to God by nature, as
sinner, and in that relation rejects him, but it chooses him in the relation to which he is called in
Christ, and for which he was destined in creation. If man responds to God’s revelation by faith,
he is what God intended him to be, an elect; but if he does not respond, he remains a