If we criticize it, we should not say it is a simple contradiction between God’s causality and human freedom – that’s too easy – because the levels are different, and there is no possible contradiction on different levels. If you want a contradiction, you can have it only on the same level. If you therefore have two levels, namely the Divine action which is mysterious because it doesn’t fit our categories; and the human action in which freedom and destiny are mixed – then you have the real picture. Don’t think of the Reformers, or of all great theologians, in a one-leveled thinking. Then you come to all these impossible statements which not only contradict each other – and, with a heroic attempt of your mind to destroy itself you say that this is a contra diction which we must accept; but think in terms of two levels, whereby enough mystery is still left, but not a simple logical contradiction, which simply means you use words without meaning. And this should not be done even if you emphasize the paradox: don’t make it into a speaking of words without meaning. You can think in terms of two levels; for example, you can say, “I cannot escape the category of causality when I speak of God’s action, and when I do so I derive everything from God, including my eternal destiny.” This sounds like a mechanical determinism. But this is not what they mean. The two levels, of which the one uses the term “causality” properly, and then posits against it finite freedom – the human level; then the Divine level, where causality is used symbolically, and where everything which brings us to God is derived from God. These two statements must be made. And if you divide them up into two levels, they are not logical contradictions, i.e., meaningless sentences. But never demand of anybody to destroy his own logos, I. e., the Image of God, and to make meaningless statements.
That is not the relationship between God and man.
This gives a problem, of course, for the individual Calvinist, I. e., the question: Is he elected? What gives us the assurance of election? And so the looking for the criteria, the marks, of election starts. And Calvin finds some of them: the first and decisive of course is the inner relationship of God in the act of faith. But there is also the blessing of God, the moral high standing of someone – which are all symptoms.
Now psychologically this brought a situation in which the individual was not able to get certainty except in producing the marks of certainty, namely a moral life and an economic blessing. And this means he tried to become a good bourgeois industrial citizen, and believed that if he were this, then had marks of his predestination. Of course, theology knew that predestination never can be caused by such actions. But if they are there, then you can have certainty. And this was the danger of this theology of the marks of predestination.
It is remarkable how little Calvin has to say about the Divine love. The Divine glory replaces the Divine love. And if he speaks of the Divine love, it is love towards those who are elected. But the universality of the Divine love is denied, and the demonic negation, the split of the world, has in Calvin a kind of eternity, through his doctrine of double predestination. Therefore this is a doctrine which contradicts the doctrine of the Divine love as sustaining everything that is, a doctrine which Dante still knew when he wrote, at the entrance of Hell, in his Divina Comedia., “I also have been created by Divine love.” But if something is created by Divine love, then it is not eternal condemnation.
