Calvin Against the Calvinists in Early Modern Thomism

chapter 14 Calvin against the Calvinists in Early Modern Thomism

Matthew T. Gaetano

Reformed Protestants opposed to Arminianism saw themselves as aligned with the Dominican Thomists who opposed the accounts of free choice provided by Luis de Molina (1535–1600) and many of his fellow Jesuits.1 Do- minicans and Reformed Protestants both defended a fiercely anti-Pelagian doctrine of predestination, reprobation, and intrinsically efficacious grace, while Jesuits, Arminians, and some Lutherans honed notions like middle knowledge out of concern that their opponents, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, destroyed free choice and made God the author of sin.2 Scholars have recognized these cross-confessional resemblances, and this volume has helped to clarify the substantive borrowings. Reformed theologians clearly expressed their sense of a common outlook on predestination, reprobation, and the relationship of grace and free choice not only with Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) but also with post-Tridentine Dominicans.3 At times, they employed

1 The title is a reference to Basil Hall, “Calvin against the Calvinists,” in John Calvin: A Collection of Distinguished Essays, ed. Gervase Duffield (Grand Rapids: 1966), 19–37. But, in contrast with Hall, the Dominicans examined in this essay generally praised the (supposed) depar- tures of later Reformed theologians from John Calvin. For an excellent discussion of the problems with Hall’s approach and with the term Calvinist, see Richard A. Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation (Grand Rapids: 2012), 15, 48, 52, 145, 159–60. 2 Besides the contributions to this volume, see the clear account of the figures and issues in this debate in Willem J. van Asselt, “Christ, Predestination, and Covenant in Post-Reformation Reformed Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600–1800, eds Ul- rich L. Lehner, Richard A. Muller, and A.G. Roeber (New York: 2016), 213–27, here 217–21. For Arminian appropriations of middle knowledge from the Jesuits, see the essays of Keith D. Stanglin and Richard A. Muller in the present volume. See also Eef Dekker, “Was Arminius a Molinist?” Sixteenth Century Journal 27 (1996): 337–52. Although the Lutheran Johann An- dreas Quenstedt (1617–88) saw the idea of middle knowledge as largely unnecessary, he list- ed Lutheran theologians—along with some Reformed theologians—who appropriated the idea. See Johann Andreas Quenstedt, Theologia didactico-polemica, sive systema theologicum (Wittenberg: Johann Ludolph Quenstedt 1691), 1:314–18. 3 See, e.g., William Whitaker, “Cygnea cantio,” delivered on 9 October 1595, in Praelectiones (Cambridge: Johannes Legat, 1599), 5; Samuel Ward, Gratia discriminans (London: Milus

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409309_015 298 Gaetano key notions like physical predetermination or premotion employed by major Thomist theologians like Domingo Báñez (1528–1604) and Diego Álvarez (c.1550–1635) in the context of their long controversy with the Jesuits.4 For decades, the Dominicans did not respond in kind. While the Jesuits accused the Dominicans of Protestant and specifically Calvinist tendencies, major Dominican theologians continued to describe Calvin’s view of grace, divine causality, free choice, and reprobation as heretical. Eventually, Dominican Thomists recognized that their association with the Reformed was not merely Jesuit slander. In the aftermath of the Synod of Dordt (1618–19), Thomists were aware that Reformed theologians used their works, and some Thomists even acknowledged the strong affinities with the 17th-century Reformed teaching on reprobation and other soteriological issues. Nonetheless, this rapproche- ment did not lead to a reappraisal of the standard Thomist judgment of John Calvin (1509–1564). And it did not bring about a substantial reexamination of other early Reformed theologians, such as Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562), who offered accounts of divine causality and free choice that were more Thomistic.5 Instead, these Dominican Thomists argued that these later “Cal- vinists” abandoned the teaching of Calvin on these issues surrounding grace, free choice, and predestination. At the outset of the controversy between the Jesuits and the Dominicans, Domingo Báñez and his confreres found themselves responding to the charge of Lutheranism or Calvinism. From the start of the controversy de auxiliis, Jesuit

Flesher, impensis Roberti Mylbourne, 1627), 29–30. Ward wrote, “I use the words of the most erudite Báñez, which I have used many times nor do I hesitate to repeat them, since they vigorously assail—nay, rather, they conquer—the enemies of truth and the foes of grace.” See also the discussion of this point in David S. Sytsma, “Vermigli Replicating Aquinas: An Over- looked Continuity in the Doctrine of Predestination,” Reformation & Renaissance Review 20 (2018): 155–67; David S. Sytsma, “Reformed Reception of Aquinas in the Sixteenth Century,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas, eds Matthew Levering and Marcus Plested (New York: forthcoming). 4 Andreas J. Beck, “God, Creation, and Providence in Post-Reformation Reformed Theology,” in Lehner et al., The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600–1800 , 195–212, here 208; Richard A. Muller, Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Ear- ly Reformed Thought (Grand Rapids: 2017), 309–10; Willem J. van Asselt, J. Martin Bac, and Roelf T. te Velde (eds), Reformed Thought on Freedom: The Concept of Free Choice in Early Modern Reformed Theology (Grand Rapids: 2010), 165–69. For a discussion of Reformed ap- propriation and criticism of physical predetermination, see Simon J.G. Burton, The Hallow- ing of Logic: The Trinitarian Method of Richard Baxter’s Methodus Theologiae (Leiden: 2012), 352–57. 5 See Muller, Divine Will, 185–97. See also John Patrick Donnelly, “Calvinist Thomism,” Viator 7 (1976): 441–55.