Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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the greatest weight, for he had no superior, and scarcely an equal, in
thorough and systematic Bible knowledge and exegetical insight.
And here we must freely admit that not a few passages, especially in the
Old Testament, favor a double decree to the extent of supreme
supralapsarianism; yea, they go beyond the Calvinistic system, and seem to
make God himself the author of sin and evil. See Ex. 4:21; 7:13 (repeatedly
said of God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart); Isa. 6:9, 10; 44:18; Jer. 6:21;
Amos 3:6 (“Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?”);
Prov. 16:4; Matt. 11:25; 13:14, 15; John 12:40; Rom. 9:10–23; 11:7, 8; 1
Cor. 14:3; 2 Thess. 2:11; 1 Pet. 2:8; Jude 4 (“who were of old set forth
unto this condemnation “). f850
The rock of reprobation is Romans 9. It is not accidental that Calvin
elaborated and published the second edition of his Institutes simultaneously
with his Commentary on the Romans, at Strassburg, in 1539.
There are especially three passages in Romans 9, which in their strict literal
sense favor extreme Calvinism, and are so explained by some of the
severest grammatical commentators of modern times (as Meyer and
Weiss).
(a) 9:13: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,” quoted from Mal. 1:2, 3.
This passage, whether we take it in a literal or anthropopathic sense,
has no reference to the eternal destiny of Jacob and Esau, but to their
representative position in the history of the theocracy. This removes the
chief difficulty. Esau received a temporal blessing from his father (Gen.
27:39, 40), and behaved kindly and generously to his brother (33:4); he
probably repented of the folly of his youth in selling his birthright, f851
and may be among the saved, as well as Adam and Eve—the first
among the lost and the first among the saved.
Moreover, the strict meaning of a positive hatred seems impossible in the
nature of the case, since it would contradict all we know from the Bible of
the attributes of God. A God of love, who commands us to love all men,
even our enemies, cannot hate a child before his birth, or any of his
creatures made in his own image. “Can a woman forget her sucking child,”
says the Lord, “that she should not have compassion on the son of her
womb? Yea, these may forget, yet will I not forget thee” (Isa. 49:15). This
is the prophet’s conception of the tender mercies of God. How much more
must it be the conception of the New Testament? The word hate must,