[Volumen Thesium theologicarum per locos communes disputatarum in academia Franequerana; (Franekerae: Uld. Balck, 1639)]
Johannes Maccovius (c. 1588–1644), born Jan Makowski in the year of our Lord 1588 in Lobzenic, Great Poland, emerged as a radiant star in the firmament of Reformed scholastic theology. Of noble Polish lineage, he was nurtured in learning first at the gymnasium of Danzig under the tutelage of the renowned Bartholomaeus Keckermann, wherein he laid a strong foundation in the arts and the philosophy of Aristotle. Ever zealous for wisdom, he journeyed as a peregrinus academicus through the academies of Germany, including Prague, Marburg, Heidelberg, and Leipzig, before at length attaining the celebrated University of Franeker in Friesland. At Franeker he attained his doctorate in sacred theology in 1614, being speedily advanced to the office of professor ordinarius, where he exercised his gifts for near thirty years. Maccovius did tenaciously defend the purity of Reformed doctrine, being noted for his supralapsarian convictions concerning predestination and for his subtlety in scholastic method, wherein he was esteemed above many. With keen intellect and ardent zeal, he contended for the faith against Jesuits, Socinians, Arminians, and all adversaries of orthodox Calvinism. His disputations were many, and his classes thronged with students from Poland, Hungary, Transylvania, and beyond, whom he instructed with rigor and piety. Throughout his course he was not without controversy: his method, logical distinctions, and strong assertions occasioned strife, notably with Sibrandus Lubbertus and William Ames, as well as censure at the Synod of Dordrecht. Yet he was acquitted of heresy and confirmed in his teaching. His principal works, Collegium Theologicum and Distinctiones et Regulae Theologicae, endure as monuments of Protestant learning. Having completed his pilgrimage, he fell asleep in Christ at Franeker in 1644, leaving an enduring legacy among the Reformed.
Table of Contents:
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THESIS I. Election is the decree of God concerning certain men to be saved from the Fall, and the means to be given to them by which they might attain that salvation, and this from His gratuitous mercy.
Indeed, the further account of God’s Decrees is this (we speak according to our manner of conceiving): I will save some who have fallen, and condemn others, and therefore I will give to Christ those whom I will save, and endow them with saving faith; and conversely, those whom I will condemn, I will leave in the Fall.
THESIS II. This Election of God is eternal. The reason is Ephesians 1:1.
But 2 Thessalonians 2:13 is objected:
“‘But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.’ Where ‘from the beginning’ cannot be taken for eternity, for what is from eternity is without ἀρχή [beginning], therefore ‘from the beginning’ will signify shortly after the beginnings, just as these words are taken in this sense when it is said in John 8:44 that the Devil was a murderer from the beginning and sinned from the beginning, 1 John 3:8. That is, shortly after the world’s beginnings, he was corrupted and bound by the guilt of foul murder. Indeed, a parallel to this passage to the Thessalonians exists in Revelation 17:8, where the Elect are said to be inscribed in the book of life from the foundation of the world.”
Response: It is a customary manner of speaking in Scripture that something is said to be done when it is declared and manifested; see Proverbs 17:17. The Holy Spirit uses this manner in these places, so that He says the elect are “from the beginning,” inscribed in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when He means some external declaration of Election made from eternity, namely He alludes in these places to that famous promise made to Adam after the Fall concerning the Seed of the Woman who would crush the serpent’s head. For there appears a notable sign of the distinction placed by God between the Elect and the Reprobate: “I will put enmity between thee and the Woman, between thy seed and her seed.”
THESIS III. Election is not made on account of Christ as a meritorious cause.
I. Because Christ the Mediator is the means through which God confers salvation upon us. Wherefore the Apostle indeed calls Christ λυτρὸνἱλιαση ριον [redemption price, propitiation] in Colossians 1 and Romans 3, but never says He is the cause why these rather than those are elected.
II. Christ’s mediation and redemption is an action which satisfies God’s justice, which indeed is not signified by the word Election. For it is one thing to be a Mediator, and another to be the cause of Election, or of the preference of one over another in God’s secret counsel. Whence it happens that Christ is indeed the meritorious cause of salvation, but not of Election. Which is the same as if I should say that Christ is the foundation and cause of the execution of the decree of Election, but not the cause of Election.
III. But reason itself also convinces. For as the healing of the sick always precedes the employment of a Physician in intention, so it is necessary that in the mind of God the thought of saving men was prior (not indeed in time, but in order) to that of sending a savior.