Calvin on Sovereignty, Providence, and Predestination

This little book is an informative, concise, and clear read on Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. For complex and dense abstract theological topics such as God’s sovereignty, predestination, election, and reprobation, this book handles them with ease and brevity.

Certainly when making assertions such as Calvin’s on a theological stage, a clearly definable understanding of terms is vital to supporting one’s claims– and Beeke really does a great job at this. In instances such as arguing the coexistence of God’s sovereignty and human free will, Beeke takes the time to clarify differences between “God’s law” and “God’s decree”— the nuance of which makes digesting the metaphysics of sovereignty and free will much easier for the reader.

As Calvin himself does, Beeke does a great job at directly grabbing supporting scripture for these claims; obviously as this is a summary read of Calvin’s views, these scriptural supports are predominantly routed by Calvin’s own arguments and explanations— however it is always important in Christian theology, apologetics, and exegesis to return to scripture for anchorage and foundational framework (especially when the foundation of this doctrinal assertion is founded on sola scriptura!).

Further to this, Beeke has some rather interesting but well-argued ‘inversions’ of assertions which I found to be incredibly strong arguments to his points. For example, when looking at election & reprobation in predestination, Beeke challenges the reader instead of starting from “Heaven is the standard and God predestines certain souls to reprobation” to rather consider a starting point of “Hell is the standard and God predestines certain souls to be saved to election”. Regardless of personal perspective or belief, Beeke’s reframe and pitch of arguments in this way was very firmly logically founded and served to be a great re-laying of foundation when it came to establishing a cohesive argument.




Now, onto a few points of contention/places I would caution an approaching reader.

Firstly, (in my opinion) there isn’t enough exploration dedicated towards the rebuttal of any of these points. Now, seeing as this is a short read simply denoting Calvin’s views on these ideas, it can be argued that rebuttal doesn’t really need to be addressed throughout this. However, considering the general argumentative voice throughout this (as well as Beeke’s very clear bias of agreement to Calvin’s points), exploring the rebuttal would have been an excellent opportunity to create an air-tight lock on these assertions.

Following, as I just mentioned, is Beeke’s very clear bias throughout this. Bias, of course, is not inherently wrong nor does it make any of the arguments less reliable (there are of course many times where bias enhances certain assertions), however I am simply listing it here as a point for readers to be aware of prior to picking this up. If one is looking for an equally balanced explanation for and against Calvinistic views, this might not be the best resource.

As for my main qualm with this read— not all the argued points necessarily follow from their previous assertions. Some assertions and reasoned conclusions throughout this are truncated by assuming that the readers will grant certain presuppositions. This was admittedly quite frustrating, because this then painted a firmly-founded logical argument, but one which actually was only built on an existing presupposition that is neither addressed nor actually universally accepted (ex. “If God has sovereignly determined all things, won’t that lead to human passivity in missionary endeavors?”).

The final qualm I’ll mention in this review is Beeke’s absence of acknowledging Calvin’s role within the Reformation period. Specifically acknowledging both sides of the coin in terms of positive and negative influence. Of course, this is not a historical account of the Reformation. And likewise, it is likely that a majority of readers picking up this read will likely have at least some foundational understanding of the Reformation.
However, lines such as, “The Huguenots in France, the Gueux in the Netherlands, the Puritans in Scotland, England, and America, were profoundly mindful in their right to be free and were wiling to shed their blood in order to safeguard that right” on a surface-level sound incredibly righteous and noble, but does not actually acknowledge important Reformation history such as the fact that Calvin used biblical scripture as a means to justify violence towards perceived heretics. As I have said, this is not a historical read but a theological one, however this would have been a significantly worthwhile acknowledgement to address within this book.

Overall, I was quite satisfied with this read — I certainly did have a lot of takeaways and overall I was very satisfied with Beeke’s ability to handle and pitch dense abstract concepts to the reader in an easy-to-digest manner.

Overall Rating: 3/5

Would I Recommend? Yes