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Predestination: A Scottish Perspective1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

David A. S. Fergusson
David A. S. Fergusson
Affiliation:
Department of Divinity with Religious StudiesKing's CollegeOld Aberdeen AB9 2UB
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Extract

In contemporary Scottish culture the subject of predestination is guaranteed to evoke a variety of reactions ranging from horror and disgust on the one hand to laughter and ridicule on the other. It is viewed by some as a nightmare scenario devised by Christian theologians in their worst moments, while for odiers it is a ludicrous aberration of the medieval and Reformation mind. It is perceived frequently as the trademark of a theological mindset which is marked by harshness, legalism and a fatalistic attitude towards life. A clear example of this is Edwin Muir's biography of Knox which writes vitriolically of the oppression and tyranny of the predestinarian religion that was imported from Calvin's Geneva.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , November 1993 , pp. 457 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1993

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References

2 John Knox: Portrait of a Calvinisl (London, 1930), pp. 99–121Google Scholar. The two best known statements of hte doctrine of predestination in Scottish culture are probably the third chapter of the Westminster Confession (1646) and its parody in Holy Willie's invocation (1784). Burns, Robert, ‘Holy Willie's Prayer’, Poems and Songsed. Kinsley, J., (Oxford, 1969), p. 56.Google Scholar

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12 Ibid., III. 23. 6.

13 It should not be assumed, of course, thai pre-Reformation thinkers in Scotland had not wrestled with theological and philosophical problems relating to the doctrine. For a discussion of the work of John Ireland and William Manderston see Broadie, Alexander, The Tradition of Scottish Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 12–19, 52–73Google Scholar.

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24 Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XI.

25 Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly; yet, by the same providence, he ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently. Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter V.

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28 Institutes of Theology, II, (Edinburgh, 1849), p. 366Google Scholar.

29 Ibid. p. 352.

30 Ibid. p. 384.

31 The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Oxford, 1981), pp. 122–123Google Scholar. Cf. Mack, D., ‘Hogg's Religion and “The Confessions of ajustified Sinner’’, Studies in Scottish Literature, 7, 1970, pp. 272–275Google Scholar.

32 Erskine, Thomas, The Doctrine of Election, Second Edition, (Edinburgh, 1878), p. 120Google Scholar.

33 Discussed by Cheyne, A. C., The Transforming of the Kirk (Edinburgh, 1983), pp. 63ffGoogle Scholar.

34 Practice and Procedure in the Church of Scotland, ed. Cox, J. T., (Edinburgh, 1976), p. 435Google Scholar.

35 The Church of Scotland's formal endorsement of the Short Statement of Faith (1935) and the Leuenberg Lutheran-Reformed Concordat (1973) indicates a further departure from the predestinarian scheme of the Westminster theology.

36 Church Dogatics II-2, ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F. (Edinburgh, 1957), p. 111Google Scholar.

37 Ibid. p. 3.

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39 Op. cit. p. 141.

40 for Barth's repudiation of the charge of universalism see ibid. pp. 417ff.

41 This is a standard libertation objection to Hume's theory of free will. Cf. Stroud, Barry, Hume (London, 1977), pp. 151ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Cf. T. F. Torrance, ‘Predestination in Christ’, op. cit. pp. 123–124.

43 E.g. Church Dogmatics III/3, ed. Bromiley, G. and Torrance, T. F. (Edinburgh, 1960), pp. 118ffGoogle Scholar.

44 Cited by Wiggins, David, ‘Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism’, Essays on the Freedom of Action, ed. Honderich, T. (London, 1973), p. 53Google Scholar.

45 Cf. Lucas, J. R., ‘Foreknowledge and the Vulnerability of God’, The Philosophy in Christianity, ed. Vesey, G., (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 119–128Google Scholar.

46 E.g. McFague, Sallie, Models of God (London, 1987), pp. 16ffGoogle Scholar. The claim that the sovereignty of God enables rather than defeats human endeavour is argued by Sontag, Frederick, ‘Metaphorical Non-Sequitur’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 44, 1991, pp. 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Colin Gunton, appealing to Edward Irving, argues that a stronger account of the Holy Spirit's activity in the present can offset a rigid determinism on the one hand, and a capricious subjectivism on the other. ‘The Triune God and the Freedom of the Creature’, Karl Barth: Centenary Essays, ed. Sykes, S. W. (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 63ffGoogle Scholar.