B.H. Carroll’s Pastoral Theology
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 58, No. 2 – Spring 2016
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
By Leif Dixon. Edited by Bruce Gordon et al. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Burlington: Ashgate, 2014. viii + 380 pages. Hardcover, $149.95.
While the doctrine of double predestination has had no shortage of critics over the centuries, it was the spiritual salve succoring many souls in early modern England according to Dixon’s Practical Predestinarians in England, c. 1590–1640. In this work, Dixon (Associate College Lecturer in Early Modern British History at the University of Oxford) attempts to fill an important lacuna in Reformation studies by explaining why the doctrine of double predestination was seen “by many English Protestants as a source of tremendous ‘comfort’ in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,” and how the English, predestinarian ministers during this period understood and communicated double predestination as a message of utmost “comfort” (3).
Methodologically, Dixon works with the primary sources—mostly printed sermons and treatises—of those whom he is studying (e.g., William Perkins, Richard Greenham, Richard Rogers, Thomas Wilson, and Robert Sanderson). Dixon also investigates the pragmatic, pastoral use of these materials in the sanctification of these “practical predestinarians.”
Structurally, Dixon’s work consists of an introduction, seven chapters, a twenty-page bibliography, and index. Dixon conspicuously places his thesis in his introduction, which can be summarized thusly: sundry crises (e.g., the horrors surrounding the pandemic of the Black Death) necessitated for some English Protestants “a radical shift of emphasis” in their theological thought and praxis, and the doctrine of double predestination “was forced to change form and became a means of guiding believers through their lives, of strengthening their faith and of helping them to interpret—and change—the world in a meaningful way” (7). Dixon stands against the consensus of scholarly opinion in that for him, double predestination did not result in spiritual anxiety, but rather was a ministerial tool that fostered the growth of “self-confident and assertive” saints who were able to engage their culture and their world more effectively because they were not wasting their time worrying over the eternal fate of their souls.
Dixon elucidates the fact that “English Calvinism” was not monolithic, but a “complex amalgam” that evinced a diachronic rather than synchronic development (9). Dixon then defines and differentiates between key, technical terms such as “credal” and “experimental” predestinarianism before opting for his moniker, “practical” predestinarianism (11). By “practical” Dixon means a combination of the “experimental,” self-assuring sort who were, because of their assurance of election, to practice their faith daily as a visible sermon to a watching world (12). In this sense, “good works” are the effect and not the cause of election.
Chapter 1 (perhaps Dixon’s weakest chapter in terms of supporting his argument) traces the history and misconceptions surrounding predestination. In chapters 2–6, Dixon studies the aforementioned pastor-theologians (and a few others) whose works are seminally important to his study. Through this investigation, Dixon convincingly argues his thesis regarding the variegated views toward predestinarianism as well as their respective pastoral applications. Chapter 7 (Dixon’s most innovative chapter) investigates the interesting melding of the genres of the funeral sermon and that of the ars moriendi. Dixon highlights the fact that though the ars moriendi exposed many gaps and inconsistencies in the thinking and preaching of predestinarian pastors (e.g., the emphasis on the works of the dying saint for proof of election), a synergistic union existed between the two seemingly antithetical doctrines during this period. Dixon quips: “the two ideas were not comfortable bedfellows, but neither could they be placed in separate beds” (352). In other words, both of these doctrines (i.e., ars moriendi and predestination) were seminally important to the religious experience of English Protestants during this period—thus, each doctrine informed and shaped the other.
The chief strength of this work is that Dixon has successfully argued his thesis in proving that early modern English predestinarianism was not monolithic, and did not appear ex nihilo through the quills of Luther and Calvin. Rather, Dixon argues that predestinarianism progressively developed and changed form over several centuries. In its most basic form, according to Dixon, predestination is explicated in the writings of Augustine and even that of Aquinas (21).
However, this work should give its readers some pause in at least one critically important area. Dixon overstates his case regarding the origins of double predestination, while seemingly offering a cavalier dismissal to those holding antithetical views. Dixon states: “The doctrine of [double] predestination is . . . clearly articulated in the Epistles of Saint Paul, and was a constant theme in the writings of the Ancient Fathers” (20–21, emphasis added). Dixon writes this without giving a single scriptural reference or even a footnote as to exactly who these “Ancient Fathers” (pace Augustine) are. It seems that Dixon commits the same error of oversimplification that he accuses other historians of in terms of their depictions of “English Calvinism” (4–6).
In sum, Dixon’s work is written well, and deserves a hearing from anyone interested in this “central theological controversy” within “the most theologically controversial period in the history of Christianity” (2). While not without its faults (as no work is), Dixon’s work reveals the complexity of predestinarianism, and informs the discussion through the framework of the cultural crises and pastoral concerns inherent within the medieval/early modern English Sitz im Leben.
