Predestination

Did God determine from eternity who will be saved and who will be lost — before a single human being was born and had done good or evil? Calvin and Reformed theology answered yes. Fausto Sozzini answered no, and not out of disregard for God’s greatness but for its sake: a God who damns a man whose sin he himself decreed before that man lived would not be just, and a gospel that is offered to all but is meant to apply to only a few would not be sincere.

The Question: Who Decides between Salvation and Damnation?

Predestination (Latin praedestinatio, “foreordination”) is the name for God’s decree concerning the eternal destiny of human beings. That God has a plan of salvation and formed it before all time is denied by no one who reads the Bible: the New Testament speaks of predestining, electing, and calling (Rom 8:29–30; Eph 1:4–5). What is disputed is what this decree is directed at. Does it concern particular persons, fixed by name, whose lot was decided before their birth? Or does it concern a way on which anyone who walks it can be saved?

The first answer has a long history. Augustine (354–430) developed it and sharpened it in his dispute with Pelagius: out of a humanity condemned through Adam’s fall, God by grace alone elects some to salvation and leaves the rest in the damnation they deserve. In 1525 Martin Luther set his book The Bondage of the Will (De servo arbitrio) against Erasmus’s treatise on free will. John Calvin (1509–1564) built the doctrine up into the double decree: God destines some to life and others to death. His successor Theodore Beza made it sharper still; the Synod of Dort (1618/19) and the Westminster Confession (1646/47) made it the confession of many Reformed churches. In the Roman Church, theologians such as Luis de Molina sought to reconcile predestination and free will with each other.

Fausto Sozzini held the two to be irreconcilable: to assert the predestination of individuals and to save free will. His reasons are set out in the Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae), which Valentin Schmalz published at Raków in 1609, five years after Sozzini’s death. Schmalz dedicated the book to the University of Heidelberg, the leading Reformed faculty in the Empire, and that was a challenge: the Heidelberg professor David Pareus, so Schmalz reports, had called Sozzini “a monster of a man” in his commentary on Romans. The first fourteen chapters deal with man — with his mortality, with original sin, with free will, with predestination, and with the foreknowledge of God. In his preface Schmalz writes what mattered to him in publishing the book:

“Surely, to think differently from others and to set forth one’s own views modestly — not rashly, but supported by the strongest reasons, as Socinus constantly does — is no crime, but the proper office of Christian liberty.”

Valentin Schmalz, Preface to Fausto Sozzini’s Theological Lectures (Raków 1609)

This claim — to think differently and to give reasons for it — carries the whole book: Sozzini does not want to revile his opponents but to refute them, and to that end he takes up their arguments one by one.

Calvin’s Doctrine of the Double Decree

Calvin did not invent the doctrine, but he set it out with particular consistency, and he did not conceal its harshness. His principal work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion (Institutio Christianae Religionis, final edition 1559), devotes four chapters of its third book to it. The Calvin quotations on this page are our own translations from the Latin original (text after the Calvini Opera); the definition stands at the beginning:

Two features carry this doctrine. First, the decree applies to each individual: it fixes not a way but the lot of particular persons. Second, it does not depend on faith or works that God might have foreseen; Calvin expressly rejects this explanation: God elects in order that we may become holy, not because he foresaw that we would be.

This raises the question of the reprobate. Calvin does not evade it. He does not allow that God merely passes them over without reprobating them: “Those, therefore, whom God passes over, he reprobates” (III.23.1). Even the fall of Adam, and with it the ruin of his descendants, God, according to Calvin, “not only foresaw, but … also ordered by his own decision” (III.23.7). And he confesses what he feels about it:

How, then, can God punish the reprobate? Calvin’s answer has two parts. The first: man falls indeed by God’s ordaining, but through his own fault.

The second: whoever asks further why God so decreed is seeking something higher than God’s will — and there is no such thing.

Calvin does not mean to teach arbitrariness by this. In the same section he calls the notion of an “absolute power” profane, and God’s will is for him “the law of all laws”. But a rule of righteousness by which God’s will could be measured does not exist for him. Luther had already captured the bondage of the will in a drastic image in 1525:

The Lutheran church, however, did not follow Calvin: the Formula of Concord (1577) teaches an election to salvation but no predestination to damnation. The Westminster Confession of 1646/47, by contrast, brought the Reformed doctrine together in a single sentence:

Sozzini’s Starting Point: Man Remains Free

Before Sozzini comes to speak of predestination, he spends five chapters clearing away the ground on which it stands. Adam, in his view, was mortal by nature even before the fall; an “original righteousness” as an endowment created along with him did not exist, for righteousness is “not a natural perfection of man but a voluntary one”. Above all, guilt presupposes a will of one’s own. A newborn child therefore cannot be guilty, and there is no guilt inherited from Adam — that is the core of the Socinian critique of original sin:

“Since, then, the constituting of guilt absolutely requires the will of the very person who is to be guilty, while punishment cannot exist without preceding guilt, it seems impossible in any way to say that any guilt or punishment can have place in a man while he is being born; for at that time he has no use of his own will, nor could he have had it before.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. IV: Whether There Is an Original Sin

From this follows the proposition on which everything else rests: man has free will even after the fall. Among the punishments God imposes after the fall (Gen 3:16–19) there is no mention anywhere of a loss of the freedom of the will.

“From what has been discussed above it can be sufficiently established that free will exists in man — provided only that what everyone concedes, and what reason itself plainly teaches, is true: namely, that free will existed in the first man before the fall. For there is no reason why he should have been deprived of it on account of the fall, since neither the nature of the matter itself demands this nor does God’s justice permit it.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. V: The Free Will of Man

The lever Sozzini applies here is worth noting. That Adam was free before the fall is, according to Sozzini, “what everyone concedes” — Calvin included. When Sozzini comes back to this in the chapter on foreknowledge, the printed edition refers expressly in the margin to Calvin’s Institutes I.15.8. There we read:

But if a free will in the creature was compatible with God’s nature and dominion, then God’s nature cannot exclude it. Whoever denies it must show that the fall extinguished it — and that is written nowhere.

Sozzini is no enthusiast for human strength. He concedes that most people are corrupted by long habituation to sin and have only slight powers to keep God’s commandments. God’s help is needed, but God denies it to no one to whom he has given his law:

“Moreover, these powers are not so slight that man, when God’s help is added and he is willing to do violence to himself, could not obey the divine law. And God denies his help to none of those to whom he has given the law; otherwise he could in no way either reprove or punish those who do not keep his law — and yet he does both.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. V: The Free Will of Man

This help Sozzini distinguishes carefully. The outward help consists of the promises and threats that God has attached to his command; under the New Covenant the promises are far greater, and therefore obedience is easier. The inward help is the Spirit, which God gives into the heart as an “earnest” (2 Cor 1:22), and the enlightenment of the understanding. It is granted, however, only to one who has rightly used the outward help; Sozzini grounds this on Acts 5:32 and Eph 1:13: “for the Holy Spirit is given to those who believe and obey”. Grace in Sozzini is, as a rule, an offer that man can accept or refuse. Cases in which God “transforms and renews” people’s “mind and heart, and brings it about that they obey him” he expressly does not rule out.

Two Reasons against Predestination

In the sixth chapter Sozzini describes the opposing doctrine exactly as Calvin formulated it: as that predestination by which God is said to have “decreed from all eternity, concerning each individual man by name, who is absolutely to be saved and who to be damned”. Then, without further ado, comes his verdict:

“We therefore deny this predestination, and do so — apart from the countless testimonies of Holy Scripture which openly deny it, but which we shall forgo citing, since our purpose is rather to refute the opinion of our adversaries than to confirm our own — chiefly for two reasons. The one is that, if it were true, all religion would be overthrown from its foundations. The other, that if it is admitted, one must attribute to God many things most unworthy of him.”

Negamus igitur nos istam prædestinationem … ob duas potissimum caussas.

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. VI: The Predestination of God

First: It Abolishes Religion

The first reason concerns the meaning of all piety, which is unthinkable without one’s own effort:

“All religion would be utterly overthrown if this predestination were true, because it manifestly follows from it that everything pertaining to piety happens of necessity. But if that is true, to what end should we labor and strive to be pious? For all labor and all striving is in vain where everything comes about necessarily, as common sense itself teaches us. And once this labor and striving is taken away, all religion must necessarily perish.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. VI: The Predestination of God

This is not a psychological argument. Sozzini does not claim that Calvinists were sluggish Christians — many were the very opposite. He argues from the meaning of speech itself: exhortation, threat, and promise presuppose that the one addressed can also act otherwise. Where everything happens necessarily, every “Repent!” is an empty word. In his treatise on justification Sozzini put it still more concisely:

“But if this will and this action were in no way free but entirely necessary, so that nothing in this matter stood in our power, then those who speak or write about these things are — as the saying goes — wasting oil and effort.”

Fausto Sozzini, On Justification (De Iustificatione) — On Faith and Works › The Inner Causes of Justification › Defense of Free Will

Whoever denies freedom therefore takes away not only man’s responsibility but also the meaning of preaching.

Second: It Attributes to God What Is Unworthy of Him

The second reason weighs more heavily. If the predestination of individuals is admitted, four things must be attributed to God “which the mind shudders even to name” (quatuor quæ vel nominare animus horret). The phrase recalls Calvin, who himself calls his decree “dreadful” (horribile). Calvin accepts the shudder and holds fast to the decree. Sozzini takes it as a sign that the doctrine is false.

1. Injustice. “For it is plainly most unjust to punish anyone for not having done what he could in no way do.” Whoever is destined to disobedience cannot obey; to punish him for it is the most unjust thing that can be conceived.
2. Dissimulation joined with deception. God has salvation offered to all who hear the gospel, but has long since decreed that the greater part of them will not be saved: “Thus he does one thing and professes another, which is properly to dissimulate”. Whoever amends his life on the strength of the promise and then, because God withdraws his grace from him, collapses in the middle of the course has been deceived.
3. Folly. God would be attempting “what he knows full well cannot come about” — he would call in all earnest to repentance where he himself has ruled repentance out.
4. Wickedness. God would become the author of sin.

That Sozzini does not exaggerate with the second charge is shown by Calvin himself. According to Calvin, even the reprobate can believe for a time, and he names the reason:

This is precisely what Sozzini calls deception: whoever is offered salvation at God’s bidding must also be able to attain it. The last point, wickedness, he develops in detail. Whoever ordains that a man shall absolutely be damned, even before he sins, has thereby also ordained that he shall sin. And Sozzini cuts off the obvious way out for his opponents with a precise description of their own doctrine:

“Nor can our adversaries take refuge in saying that God damned some from all eternity because he foresaw that they would sin. For they declare it impious for anyone to say that God’s predestination depends in any way on foreknowledge or prescience. Hence they steadfastly affirm that he by no means reprobated them because he foresaw that they would sin, but that, because he had reprobated them, he therefore foresaw that they would necessarily sin.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. VI: The Predestination of God

Sozzini’s account is exact. Calvin puts it thus:

The Reformed confessions always rejected the charge that God is thereby made the author of sin. The decree of reprobation, declare the Canons of Dort (1619, I.15), “by no means makes God the author of sin — a thing blasphemous even to think”. There is no need to doubt that the opponents mean this sincerely. Sozzini only denies that it is compatible with their premise: whoever decrees damnation before sin and expressly makes foreknowledge depend on the decree has decreed the sin as well, whatever he may call it.

The Opponents’ Arguments and Sozzini’s Answer

Sozzini is not content to point out the consequences of the doctrine. He takes up the opponents’ three main arguments one by one: God’s omnipotence, God’s government of the world, and God’s foreknowledge. Each of these arguments seems to prove that nothing can happen which God has not decreed beforehand.

Omnipotence: Must Everything God Wills Come to Pass?

“Our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased” (Ps 115:3). If anything happened against God’s will, he would be neither omnipotent nor perfectly blessed — so runs the first objection. Calvin had added that God does not merely permit evil but wills and directs it.

Sozzini does not deny omnipotence. He denies that every will of God must be an absolute will. What God wills of free human beings he can, by the nature of the case, will only in such a way that they could also refrain from it; otherwise he would not have what he seeks:

“I explain this. God desires, for example, that no murders be committed. But what is it that he desires? Surely this: that men, although it may happen that they are able to kill someone, nevertheless never kill. This he wills so much that he could not will it more. … And he wills this so that there may be room both for virtue and for vice, and for that very reason for reward and punishment as well — for which there can be no room at all where the thing can happen in only one way.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. VII: The Opponents’ Arguments Refuted

Nor does God’s blessedness suffer any harm from this: “For God himself willed that things could turn out so; and whatever men may in the end do contrary to what he desired, all of it he knows how, in his infinite wisdom, to turn to his everlasting glory.”

Two Wills in God?

Reformed theology helped itself with a distinction. God, it held, has a revealed will, which he makes known in command and promise, and a hidden will, according to which he actually decrees what comes to pass. In his command God wills that all should repent; in his decree he has determined that most will not. Calvin anticipated the charge and denied that God dissembles; his will, he said, is one in itself and only appears manifold to us:

What this looks like in detail is shown by his exposition of 2 Pet 3:9, where God is said to be “not willing that any should perish”:

Sozzini reads the same verse as the expression of what God “always wills by his ordinary will”. For him there is no second, hidden will that would contradict the revealed one; such a distinction, he says, makes God a dissembler:

“In order to preserve God’s omnipotence and at the same time to show that it can stand together with that will of his which appears in the giving of his commandments, it is not necessary to take refuge in the distinction that there is one will of God revealed and another hidden … and in this way, no less ridiculously than impiously, to make God out to be a dissembler, as though he did not truly will what he commands, but only what we see come to pass. For there is only one ordinary will of God, and it fully accords with his commandments and is expressed in them …”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. VII: The Opponents’ Arguments Refuted

Sozzini examines the other side’s two favourite examples one by one. Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac and was then prevented; did God, then, not will what he commanded? No: God “did tempt” Abraham (Gen 22:1), and Abraham did everything that lay in him, so that Scripture says he “offered up” his son (Heb 11:17; Jas 2:21). God did not revoke his command; rather, Abraham fulfilled it perfectly. And the hardening of Pharaoh is a special case of just judgement upon one who had already oppressed God’s innocent people — more will be said of him below.

The Government of the World: Does God’s Rule Become Uncertain?

The second argument: if man is free, the government of the world proceeds partly from God’s will and partly from man’s, and nothing is certain any longer. Sozzini’s answer is a careful distinction. The will is free; the outward deeds, however, God has kept in his own hand. “The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the LORD” (Prov 16:1) — in Sozzini’s reading: “it belongs to man to prepare the heart, but to God the answer of the tongue”.

“The things that we affirm God has placed in man’s power are not of such a kind as to bear in any way on the government of this world. They are willing and not willing, and that most perfectly and most absolutely. … rather, the whole efficacy lies in outward deeds. These, however, God has entirely reserved to himself, and has given man in them — even in the very least — no power that is simply free. … For God measures both the obedience and the disobedience of men by the perfect and completed will itself, not by the outward deed.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. VII: The Opponents’ Arguments Refuted

God therefore judges man by what lies in his power: by the completed will. Abraham did not kill his son and yet obeyed perfectly; Balaam did not curse Israel but blessed it, and is nevertheless rebuked for his will (2 Pet 2:15–16). God can direct even the will when his judgements require it. But the rule remains that he leaves it free, and so does the distinction between decree and permission: what is committed against God’s law happens not by his decree but only by his permission, “except very rarely, for certain reasons which will be explained elsewhere” — meaning the hardened, of whom more will be said below. It is precisely the permission that Calvin had mocked as an evasion.

Does God Know the Future? Sozzini’s Boldest Thesis

The third argument is the strongest. God knows everything in advance, and infallibly. What he knows infallibly is certain; what is certain cannot turn out otherwise. Therefore everything is necessary, whether God decreed it or merely foresaw it. Others held foreknowledge and freedom together: the Jesuit Luis de Molina with his doctrine of God’s “middle knowledge” of what free human beings would do in every conceivable circumstance, and, soon after Sozzini’s death, Arminius and the Remonstrants, who grounded election on foreseen faith. Both presuppose a certain foreknowledge of free decisions.

Sozzini takes another path. He agrees with his opponents that certain foreknowledge and freedom are incompatible. Then he draws the conclusion that hardly anyone before him had dared to draw: God does not know the free decisions of human beings in advance. This is expressly no limitation of his omniscience:

“I answer: God knows all things that are knowable by their nature, just as he can do all things that are possible by their nature. But as there are some things which by their nature can in no way come about, so that it can in no way be said that God can do them, and yet nothing whatever is taken from his omnipotence, so there are some things which it can in no way be said that God knows, and yet nothing whatever is taken from his omniscience.”

Deus omnia scit, quæ sua natura scibilia sunt, quemadmodum omnia potest, quæ sua natura possibilia sunt.

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. VIII: The Foreknowledge of God

Sozzini explains this by the counterpart in omnipotence. That God cannot make undone what has been done is no weakness, for it lies in the nature of the thing, not in a defect in God. Likewise it is no defect if God does not know what does not yet exist at all. A free decision that has not yet been made stands open either way:

“It must be understood that contingent future things, before they happen, neither are future nor are not future. Hence the saying: Of future contingents there is no determinate truth, for they stand open either way. And before they happen we can indeed affirm that they either are future or are not future, in this manner: that will either be or not be; yet we can assert neither of the two. For that rule, that of any thing whatever one must either affirm or deny, has no place in future contingents.”

Sciendum est, futura contingentia antequam fiant, nec futura esse, nec esse non futura.

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. VIII: The Foreknowledge of God

In the margin of the printed edition there is a reference here to Aristotle, On Interpretation, chapter 9 — the famous example of tomorrow’s sea battle, of which it is true today neither that it will take place nor that it will not. Nor does Sozzini accept the objection that God stands outside time and sees everything as present. “For time is eternal, whatever our theologians may argue to the contrary”; all things are indeed present to God, but only those which in some way are. “As the knowable is, such must the knowledge of the knowable be” — God knows past things as past, present things as present, future things as future — and what is still open, as open.

That there are such open decisions at all is God’s own choice. Sozzini asks which is more probable: “that God willed to leave man no freedom at all, so that he himself might foreknow all things; or that he gave man some freedom and deprived himself of that foreknowledge”. And he puts to his opponents a question to which their doctrine has no good answer: if a free act was already certain from eternity, where did this certainty come from?

“Now since no effect is without its proximate cause, I ask: what is the proximate cause of this certainty? It surely cannot be the man himself or his will, since neither the one nor the other as yet exists. … There must therefore be some other cause: if you say that it is God, you will make God the author of all crimes; if something else, you will set up, besides God, another principle that acts and understands. Both of these are plainly impious and blasphemous.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XI: Conclusion on Foreknowledge

Does God lose anything by knowing what is open as open? Sozzini thinks the opposite is true.

“Certainly that foreknowledge is so far from attributing anything to God that it rather takes something from him: namely, it removes and obscures, at least in part, the perpetual care which he bears for human affairs, and renders him in a manner idle. … In short, the perpetual oversight and direction of human actions, which in Holy Scripture is everywhere attributed to God and most strongly demonstrates his supreme dominion and government over men, is by that foreknowledge thoroughly shaken and all but overturned from its foundations.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. VIII: The Foreknowledge of God

For Sozzini, the God of the Bible is not the spectator of a course of events long since fixed, but one who looks, tests, and acts.

What Scripture Says about God’s Knowledge

That this is not mere philosophy Sozzini shows from passages that can hardly be reconciled with an infallible foreknowledge. “It repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart” (Gen 6:6). When Abraham raises the knife, God says: “now I know that thou fearest God” (Gen 22:12). Over his vineyard he laments: “wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?” (Isa 5:4). Sozzini puts the case of the oath most sharply. God had sworn to bring the people into the promised land, and after their unbelief he swears that this generation shall not see it (Num 14):

“For who among men is so senseless as to swear in earnest that he will do something which he already knows for certain he will by no means do, or when he already fully discerns the reasons why he will in no way do it? Or what would be more unworthy of God than to swear that he will do something — not in intent, but in words only?”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XI: Conclusion on Foreknowledge

An oath whose breaking was already settled would be no oath. Whoever takes such passages seriously must either reinterpret them or admit that God really responds to what human beings do.

And the Prophecies?

Yet the Bible does foretell future deeds of human beings — Israel’s apostasy, Peter’s denial, the coming of false prophets. Sozzini examines these passages one by one and sums up the result in four rules:

1. If Scripture foretells good works with certainty, God himself has decreed them.
2. A prediction can rest on what is highly probable without being certain. “For I know their imagination which they go about, even now,” says God of the people whose apostasy he foretells (Deut 31:21): he infers it from what he sees in them.
3. A prediction can be more a warning than an announcement — as a father foretells to his child with assurance that it will fall into a fault, so that it may guard itself all the more carefully.
4. If an evil deed is foretold with certainty, God has decreed the deed, but not the wickedness of the heart; that he finds already present.

In the same way Sozzini explains Peter’s denial: by his presumption Peter had deserved that God should withdraw from him the grace that could have preserved him; Christ foretells the consequence of this withdrawal. And if Christ as the Lamb “was foreordained before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet 1:20), this was, according to Sozzini, a conditional decree: Christ was to be delivered up if human beings should sin. A condition does not cancel the decree; but it shows that the sin was not foreseen.

The Proof Texts of the Other Side

Sozzini does not evade the difficult texts. In three long chapters he goes through the passages on which the doctrine of predestination relies. His method is the same throughout: read the context, attend to the wording of the original text, and do not turn a particular decree of God concerning individual persons into a general rule. “For it is not right to establish a rule from certain particular examples; rather, rules are to be established from what applies to all in general and is said of all in general.”

Romans 9: Jacob and Esau, Pharaoh, and the Potter

No chapter is cited so often for double predestination. “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” (Rom 9:18). Sozzini reads the chapter in the light of its aim: Paul wants to show that not all who are physically descended from Abraham are true children of Abraham, but those who believe through Christ, whatever parents they were born of. That the decision about Jacob and Esau was made with “the children being not yet born” (Rom 9:11) answers the objection that God preferred Jacob because he was the better man; it concerns Jacob’s precedence, not eternal salvation and eternal damnation. “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth” (Rom 9:16) refers to the willing and running to obtain God’s benefits — not to the will to do God’s command. Pharaoh, for his part, had long oppressed God’s people before God hardened him; his hardening was punishment, not the beginning of his guilt. Finally, Sozzini interprets the image of the potter thus:

“Paul’s meaning, however, is this: just as the potter may form from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable, so God may, out of the whole human race, visit some men with the punishments their crimes deserve, and load others, undeserving though they are, with his gifts.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XII: Scriptural Testimonies against Free Will

The clay from which the potter forms the vessels, then, is not human beings before their birth but human beings who have already become upright or wicked. For this Sozzini refers to Jeremiah 18 and Isaiah 45, from which Paul took the image. In Jeremiah the potter is precisely the one who binds his word to the conduct of human beings:

“At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.”

Jeremiah 18:7–8

Romans 8:29–30: The Chain of Salvation

“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”

Romans 8:29–30

To the Reformed this “golden chain” was proof that the elect infallibly attain to glory. Sozzini reads it in the light of the preceding verse: Paul is speaking of “them that love God” (Rom 8:28). The Greek proegnō (“did foreknow”) means here, as in Rom 11:2, “approved beforehand” or “chosen beforehand”, not a mere knowing in advance.

“In these words the apostle teaches that those who love God, and have therefore already been approved beforehand by God himself, are destined to glory by his decree, and he shows by what steps they are led to it by him.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XIII: Predestining, Electing, Calling

Sozzini’s conclusion is that the passage “contains no other immutable decree of God than this: that it cannot be otherwise with those who love God than that they are loved by God with that love which he has shown in Christ, and so are saved forever”. The chain describes the way of those who love God, not a list of names.

Ephesians 1:4–5: Chosen before the Foundation of the World

“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4). According to Sozzini, “chosen” here denotes not the act of election but the decree to elect — just as Paul can say that God has already “glorified” his own (Rom 8:30). And this decree concerns not names but a kind of human being. Sozzini shows this from the kingdom “prepared for you from the foundation of the world” of which Christ speaks to the blessed (Matt 25:34): the next verse gives the reason — “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat”.

“And in no other way, truly, are all those passages to be explained in which a divine and most ancient decree about the salvation of certain men is spoken of: namely, so that not certain particular men are to be understood by name, but a certain kind of men.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XIII: Predestining, Electing, Calling

What is predestined, then, is who will be saved — by kind: whoever believes, loves, and obeys.

Acts 13:48: “… As Many as Were Ordained to Eternal Life”

To the opponents this passage seemed irrefutable. Sozzini first notes, without laying much weight on it, that the Greek has tetagmenoi, “ordained” or “ordered”, not protetagmenoi, “foreordained”, and that no one is named who might have ordained them. What is meant, he says, are those who through their uprightness were “fit and suited” for the gospel. Earlier, in his treatise On Jesus Christ the Saviour, he had already shown where the opposing interpretation leads: Luke would have to have known that of all the predestined in Antioch in Pisidia not one remained in unbelief. What use could such knowledge be?

“Surely, when you have weighed all things in your mind, you will confess that nothing but some great evil could have come from it; and above all that which we were just now saying about Luke himself — namely a slackening, and almost an extinction, of love, in those who then lived, toward those who were known not to have believed.”

Fausto Sozzini, On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Jesu Christo Servatore) — Part Four: Justifying Faith and the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness › Faith and Predestination

A doctrine that allowed one to write others off as reprobate would run counter to the commandment of love — for Sozzini, reason enough not to find it in this verse.

John 6:44: The Father’s Drawing

“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him” (John 6:44). Does coming, then, depend solely on whether God draws? Sozzini first grants, for the sake of argument, that the drawing might be an inward force not granted to all, and shows that even then nothing follows against freedom:

“Even if that drawing of God (if I may so call it) were nothing other than a certain inward force of God which was not granted to all who hear the outward word, it still could not be concluded from this that, as regards the assent to be given to God’s outward word, nothing lies in man’s power. For Christ does not say that all who are drawn by his Father go to him, but that no one can go who is not drawn.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XII: Scriptural Testimonies against Free Will

Someone who is drawn can therefore still fail to come, “namely because he will not go”. Sozzini’s own interpretation goes further. Through the preaching of Christ the Father wishes to draw all who hear it. Whoever does not come is not drawn by God, “who wishes to draw him through the preaching of Christ” — because of his own wickedness, not because God would not have wished to draw him. The context shows what Jesus is driving at. He is answering Jews who murmur against him, and he traces their unbelief back to their own disposition: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God” (John 7:17); the condemnation is “that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). Had Jesus traced unbelief back to God’s decree, he would have excused it.

John 10: The Sheep No One Can Pluck out of His Hand

“Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep” (John 10:26) — from this the opponents conclude that the sheep were determined from eternity. Sozzini answers: Jesus says this as a reproach; he thereby exposes his hearers’ guilt instead of excusing it. Sheep are those who have already embraced his teaching or are open to it through their uprightness. And that no one shall pluck them out of his hand (John 10:28) concerns what others can do against them, not whether they themselves can throw away their faith.

Philippians 2:12–13: God Works Both to Will and to Do

“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). Here, it seems, even the willing is God’s work. Sozzini does not deny this — he simply reads the preceding verse along with it:

“I answer that, as was said above, I do not doubt that God must be called the author even of our good will itself; yet I deny that it follows from this that we accomplish nothing freely in this matter. And this is manifest even from this very passage, since before the words just quoted it is written in verse 12: ‘Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,’ and the reason for this exhortation is at once given in the very words we are inquiring about.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XII: Scriptural Testimonies against Free Will

From this it follows, he says, that “it was in part in the power of those Philippians to accomplish something toward obtaining their salvation”. God works the willing through his word, through the promises of the gospel and the signs that confirmed it; for God’s working in the Philippians Paul uses the same word as for the word of God that “effectually worketh” in the Thessalonians (1 Thess 2:13). A working through the word does not abolish the hearer’s freedom; it presupposes it.

Ezekiel 36:26: The New Heart

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (Ezek 36:26) — does God not here create the will itself anew, without man contributing anything? Sozzini first takes up an image from Erasmus: a teacher might say to his pupil, “I will take out this barbarous tongue of yours and put in a Roman one”, and nonetheless require diligence of him. Then he shows from the text in what way God gives the new heart:

“Add to this that it is sufficiently apparent from the passage itself that God meant to signify no necessity, nor yet any inward force, since God shows that he will bring about what he promises there in no other way than by the multitude of benefits with which he was going to load the people, and thereby soften its heart and mind, and in a manner engender and create in it the will and the readiness to obey him.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XII: Scriptural Testimonies against Free Will

By the same rule Sozzini reads the passages in which God “gives” or “does not give” something (Deut 29:4; 2 Tim 2:25): the word denotes the effect, not the mere will; “quite rightly”, says Sozzini, he is said not to give “who finds no one to receive”. That Israel was not given “an heart to perceive” was not because God was unwilling to give it.

Pharaoh, Judas, and the Hardened

There remain the cases in which God himself hardens a person or uses him for an evil deed: Pharaoh, Sihon, the sons of Eli, Absalom, Judas. Sozzini shows in each single case that the decree was preceded by a wickedness that grounded it. It was decreed that one of those who ate at Jesus’ table would betray him — not that it would be Judas. Judas was chosen for this role when he was already a thief and covetous (John 12:6; Matt 26:15). Sozzini reads 1 Pet 2:8 in the same way, where it is said of the unbelieving that they stumble at the word, “whereunto also they were appointed”: what is appointed is not their unbelief, but that whoever rejects the gospel shall stumble at this stone. Sozzini sums up the result in a principle:

“And throughout this whole discussion we must recall to mind what was said by us when we treated of God’s foreknowledge: that God is never the author and cause of the guilt or sin that is in a deed, but only of the deed itself. For the malice and iniquity from which all guilt proceeds he finds already present in the man whom he drives to commit some misdeed, because that man is already wicked and unjust …”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XIV: Testimonies of a Particular Decree

God makes use of the wickedness he finds; he does not create it. Even with the false teachers who were “before of old ordained to this condemnation” (Jude 4), God, according to Sozzini, waits with the greatest patience in case they should come to their senses “and give him a reason for revoking his decree”.

The Book of Life

Nor does the language of the book of life (Rev 13:8; 17:8) prove an irrevocable destination. Moses prays: “blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written”, and God answers: “Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book” (Exod 32:32–33). Christ promises him that overcometh: “I will not blot out his name out of the book of life” (Rev 3:5) — a promise that makes sense only if blotting out is possible. And Paul says of his fellow workers that their names are in the book of life (Phil 4:3); one of these fellow workers, Demas (Phlm 24), he must later give up as lost: “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world” (2 Tim 4:10).

What Sozzini Puts in Its Place: The Way Is Predestined

Sozzini does not strike out the biblical words; he gives them back their meaning. What God predestined, and that before the foundation of the world, is how he wills to save human beings: through Jesus Christ, all who believe and obey. The Racovian Catechism, which sums up Sozzini’s doctrine, put it this way:

“The predestination of God means nothing other in Scripture than the following decree of God concerning human beings, which he made before the foundation of the world: that he would give eternal life to those who would believe in him and obey him; on the other side stands that decree: that he would punish with eternal damnation those who would refuse to believe in him and obey him. For Christ, the perfect interpreter of the divine will, set forth for us this counsel of God and both decrees as follows: whoever believes in him shall certainly have eternal life; but whoever does not believe shall certainly be condemned.”

Racovian Catechism — The Scriptural Proofs of the Opponents for Predestination › The Concepts of Predestination, Election, and Calling

From this follows Sozzini’s understanding of election as well. Scripture knows two meanings. In a broader sense all are called “elect” who have accepted the gospel; thus Paul speaks of the “election” of the whole church at Thessalonica (1 Thess 1:4). In a firmer sense only those are called elect who also lead a life in keeping with the gospel — “For many are called, but few are chosen”, says Jesus of the guest without a wedding garment (Matt 22:14). That is why Peter urges: “give diligence to make your calling and election sure” (2 Pet 1:10). An election that has to be made sure is not one that stands fixed from eternity.

“From what we have discussed so far, it is, we believe, sufficiently clear that nothing can be gathered from the election of God of which Holy Scripture speaks that would show that we do nothing freely in obtaining our salvation. Rather, it must be sufficiently understood from it that salvation is not obtained for us, and nothing whatever is accomplished, without our will — since not even election itself can exist or in any way stand without some free act of our will.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XIII: Predestining, Electing, Calling

Election therefore does not replace faith; it follows it: God elects those who follow his call, and he holds to those who remain in his love.

Christ: The One Who Was Certainly Predestined

Augustine and his followers liked to appeal to Christ himself: he was certainly destined to salvation before the foundation of the world; as the head, so the members. Sozzini grants the first statement and denies the second:

“I answer: if the members had to be certain just as the head had to be certain, the argument would hold. But in fact, while the head had indeed to be certain — otherwise the very way of our salvation which God had chosen would have been uncertain —, the members not only can be uncertain but even must be: otherwise God could in no way punish those who were not members for the very reason that they are not members.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XIV: Testimonies of a Particular Decree

What is certainly predestined is the Saviour, and with him the way; what remains open is who walks it. In this Sozzini sees no loss but a comfort: if even Christ, who could not do otherwise than obey, was so richly rewarded for his obedience, then “surely we, who could refrain from obeying, shall not be cheated of our wages”.

Is Faith Then Still a Gift of God?

The objection lies close at hand: if man can believe or not believe, then in the end he owes his salvation to himself. Sozzini answers with a simple image:

“Nor does faith cease to be a gift of God, even if it is in man’s power to believe, that is, to accept the faith offered to him by God through the preaching of the Gospel. In the same way, if I wished to give money to someone to whom I owe absolutely nothing, my liberality would be in no respect diminished, even if it were in his power to accept that money or not to accept it.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XII: Scriptural Testimonies against Free Will

God owes no one anything “except by promise”; he sends the gospel, gives the promises, confirms them, and grants his Spirit to those who believe. Man only accepts what is offered to him — but he accepts it himself. At the end of the fourteenth chapter Sozzini draws the sum:

“Therefore I conclude at last: there is no one among those to whom the Gospel is preached in its purity (unless he has previously been hardened and blinded by God’s just judgment on account of his sins) who could not assent to it freely and of his own accord; and once this has happened, there is no need to fear that we could not keep the precepts of the Gospel itself. For to those who assent to the Gospel God grants everything they need in order to fulfill them. And in this sense I hold that there is free will in man.”

Fausto Sozzini, Theological Lectures (Praelectiones theologicae) — Ch. XIV: Testimonies of a Particular Decree

In Sozzini, freedom and grace do not stand against each other: God gives everything that is needed for faith and obedience, and man freely accepts it.

What Scripture Testifies

The passages that Sozzini and his successors set against the double decree speak of God’s will to save all and of each individual’s responsibility. God says through Ezekiel: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezek 33:11). He “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4) and is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). Moses sets before the people “life and death, blessing and cursing”: “therefore choose life” (Deut 30:19). And Jesus laments over Jerusalem: “how often would I have gathered thy children together … and ye would not!” (Matt 23:37). Calvin read these passages differently: 1 Tim 2:4, he said, speaks “not of individual men but of orders of men” (Institutes III.24.16), and in 2 Pet 3:9 God speaks only of his revealed will (see above). Sozzini takes the words as they stand.

• Ezekiel 18:20 — “The soul that sinneth, it shall die”: each bears his own guilt. A verdict fixed before any deed would be the opposite.
• Jeremiah 31:29–30 — The proverb of the sour grape that the fathers have eaten no longer holds: “every one shall die for his own iniquity”.
• John 3:16 — God so loved “the world” that “whosoever believeth in him” should not perish. The condition is faith, not a name fixed beforehand.
• 1 Timothy 2:6 — Christ, “who gave himself a ransom for all”, directly after the statement that God will have all men to be saved (2:4).
• James 1:14–15 — Temptation comes from one’s “own lust”; God “cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” (1:13). God is not the author of sin.
• Matthew 7:13–14 — Two ways, and the summons: “Enter ye in at the strait gate”. A summons presupposes that one can follow it.
• Romans 5:12 — Death passed upon all men, “for that all have sinned”: their own sin, not an imposed lot.
• 1 Peter 1:20 — Christ, “who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world”: what is predestined is the Saviour, and with him the way of salvation.

Objections and Answers

“Then in the end man owes his salvation to himself.”

No. Whoever accepts a gift has not earned it, and it remains a gift even if he could have refused it. God sends the gospel and gives the promises and the Spirit; no one can believe in Christ “unless God bestows the knowledge of Christ through some instruments”. The freedom to accept or to reject does not make salvation a reward. It only makes damnation one’s own fault.

“Sozzini’s God, too, hardens people and makes use of their wickedness. Where is the difference from Calvin?”

The difference lies in the order. In Calvin the decree precedes the sin; in Sozzini the sin precedes the decree. God hardens only those who have already hardened themselves, and he is the author of the deed, not of the guilt. Why someone so hardened is nevertheless punished, Sozzini explains thus: “For when someone falls by necessity into some crime, he is not excused, if he himself gave rise to that necessity, but is punished just as if he had committed that crime wholly willingly and freely.” God did not destine this man to fall from eternity; he found him fallen.

“A God who does not know the future is not omniscient.”

Omniscience means knowing everything that is knowable — as omnipotence means being able to do everything that is possible. God knows every thought, every intention, and every possibility; he knows his own decrees, and he knows what he will do, however human beings decide. What he does not “know” is a decision that has not yet been made at all. And even those who do not follow Sozzini on this point can share his main thesis: that God destines no one to damnation before his birth.

“Without unconditional election there is no assurance of salvation.”

Assurance rests, according to Sozzini, on God’s promise, not on a hidden decree: whoever believes and loves God will not perish, and no one can pluck him out of Christ’s hand (John 10:28; Rom 8:31–39). Calvin directs the troubled soul to Christ as the “mirror” in which one is to contemplate one’s election (Institutes III.24.5). Yet he himself concedes that the reprobate are sometimes so affected that “even in their own judgement they do not differ in any way from the elect” (III.2.11). Who, then, can know to which of the two he belongs?

“If God does not determine everything, chance rules.”

What is free is man’s will, not the course of the world. The outward deeds God has kept in his own hand: he permits or hinders as seems good to him, he sees through all intentions, and whatever human beings may undertake, he “can turn all things to his own glory”. God’s rule is therefore not weaker but more alive: God sees, tests, responds, and directs, instead of merely carrying out what has been fixed from eternity.

“That is the heresy of Pelagius.”

In rejecting original sin Sozzini does indeed stand close to Pelagius, and his opponents held this against him. But he does not teach that man becomes righteous by his own strength. He considers most people weak and corrupted by habit, he holds God’s help to be indispensable, and he traces salvation wholly back to God’s goodness in Christ. What he denies is only that God refuses this help to someone who has not first forfeited it by his own wickedness, and then punishes him for what he could not do without it. Where God withdraws his grace — from Pharaoh, from Peter, from the sons of Eli — it is, according to Sozzini, always punishment for prior guilt.

Legacy

The congregations of the Polish Brethren adopted Sozzini’s doctrine. The Racovian Catechism follows it down to the wording: it rejects predestination “chiefly for two reasons” and lists the four “unseemly things” that it would have to attribute to God. For the Reformed, “Socinianism” became a catchword that was also applied to the Remonstrants, who were condemned at Dort. Today a great many Christians believe that God wills to save all and that man can accept or refuse the grace offered to him. On this question they stand closer to Sozzini than to Calvin — even if very few know where these reasons were worked out so early and so coherently.

• Original Sin — why Adam’s guilt is not inherited
• Atonement — forgiveness without vicarious punishment
• Fausto Sozzini — life and work
• Philosophy — faith and reason in Socinianism