Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors

by James Freeman Clarke

4. God causes the sin which he forbids. This is not a contradiction in him, for his nature is different from ours.

God created all for his own glory, and sinners to glorify his justice.

Finally, Calvin himself admits that this is “a horrible decree.”

§ 5. Election is to Work and Opportunity here, not to Heaven hereafter. How Jacob was elected, and how the Jews were a Chosen People.

This reductio ad absurdum disproves the common idea of election. If a man were elected by God to heaven, and so could not help going to heaven, it would not be worth his while to give diligence to make his calling and election sure. It is sure already, without any diligence.

The common Orthodox idea of election is, therefore, a false one. God does not elect, or choose us, for passive enjoyment, but for active duty. He elects us to opportunities. He elects, or, as we may say, selects, us for certain special work, gives us certain special privileges, and holds us to an accountability for the use of them.

In the parable of the talents, God elected, or selected, one man to the possession of five talents, another to the possession of two, and another one. Each was elected; but each was elected to opportunities, and each to a different opportunity; but they all had to give diligence to make their calling and election sure.

The word “elect” was first applied to the Jews. They were an elect or chosen people. They were selected from among all nations for a great duty and opportunity. They were taught the unity of God and his holiness. They were a city set on a hill, a light shining in the darkness of the [pg 277] world, to proclaim these truths. That was their opportunity. It was not happiness, or heaven, or even goodness, that they were chosen for, but work. As long as they continued to do this work, they continued to be God's chosen or selected people. But when they hardened into the bigotry of Phariseeism, and froze into the scepticism of Sadduceeism, when they ceased to do the work, then they ceased to be the elect people. While they were diligent to make their election sure, they were the elect, but no longer.

God selected Jacob and rejected Esau. “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated.” But how did God love Jacob? He loved him by giving him opportunity. And why? Not because he was better than Esau, but because he was different. Jacob was selected to be father of the chosen people because he had the qualities required for his work. Esau was wild, reckless, martial. Jacob was industrious, money-making, fond of small trade; pastoral, rather than warlike; tenacious of his ideas even to obstinacy. These were the qualities required in a people who were so few that if they had been warlike they would have been swept from the earth. They never fought for the pleasure of fighting, but only when they could not help it, or when a political necessity compelled it. Though surrounded by nations much more powerful than themselves,—the Assyrians on the north-east at Nineveh, the Egyptians on the south-west, the Babylonians on the east, the Tyrians on the west, and the Greeks on the north-west,—they saw the fall of all these great nations and empires, but they continued. Many waves of war swept over their Syrian hills, and left them still there, peaceful, industrious, worshipping Jehovah in their sacred city, offering no motive for conquest, too poor to tempt invasion, too far from the sea to grow rich by commerce, like the Phœnicians. Their obscurity, poverty, and unheroic qualities were their salvation, and these they derived apparently from Jacob, their ancestor.