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Chapter 28 - Fatal Necessity

from Part IV - Laudianism and Predestination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2023

Peter Lake
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
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Summary

This chapter explores the Laudian critique of the (allegedly) puritan doctrine of absolute predestination, and particularly absolute reprobation. This critique imputed an absolute, fatal or stoic necessity to questions of salvation and damnation, which, the Laudians claimed, reduced the role of human free will and moral effort to nothing. In so doing it created desperately difficult pastoral dilemmas for ministers trying to rescue members of their flocks from the desperation such doctrines all too often induced. This was particularly the case for absolute reprobation. It was in the course of dealing with puritan error on this subject that the Laudians came to deal with the topic of predestination, and faute de mieux, to adumbrate their own position, asserting that saving grace was offered to all, that Christ died for the sins of the whole world, that God willed the salvation of every sinner, that human effort was required for salvation, that true faith could be totally and finally lost and that no one was simply doomed to damnation; contentions which they defended not as resolutions of the paradoxes at the heart of the debate about predestination, but rather as saving truths central to the nature of Christianity.

Type
Chapter
Information
On Laudianism
Piety, Polemic and Politics During the Personal Rule of Charles I
, pp. 366 - 375
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Fatal Necessity
  • Peter Lake, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
  • Book: On Laudianism
  • Online publication: 05 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009306829.036
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  • Fatal Necessity
  • Peter Lake, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
  • Book: On Laudianism
  • Online publication: 05 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009306829.036
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Fatal Necessity
  • Peter Lake, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
  • Book: On Laudianism
  • Online publication: 05 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009306829.036
Available formats
×