A. C. Denlinger on Robert Baron (c.1593/6–1639) and God’s Universal Saving Will

God’s Universal Will to Save

Baron’s discussion of ‘the true sense of that statement “God wants all to be saved”’ occurs in the context of lengthy reflections about ‘whether God, who wants all to be saved (as the Apostle says in 1 Tim. 2), has denied the nations destitute of faith in Christ the means necessary unto salvation’.²⁶ Having previously argued that explicit faith in Jesus Christ, who is revealed only in the gospel, is necessary for salvation, Baron notes ‘an infinite multitude in the New World and the more remote parts of Asia and Africa who lack the light of the gospel’.²⁷ God’s providential withholding of the gospel from so many persons seems hard to reconcile with God’s desire for their salvation.

In formulating a response to this ‘serious and difficult question’ Baron takes his cues primarily from Augustine’s fifth-century disciple Prosper of Aquitaine, who ‘contemplated this mystery more than all the Fathers of the ancient church’.²⁸ In his work De vocatione omnium gentium, Prosper advanced three assertions which, in Baron’s judgement, comprise the right theological response to the question at hand. ‘The first is that God wills all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.’²⁹ With Prosper, Baron understands ‘all men’ in the apostolic affirmation quoted (1 Tim. 2.14) to mean every human person without exception; no one is excluded in the divine will to save.³⁰ ‘The second is that no one is actually saved or comes to a knowledge of the truth by his own merits or abilities, but only by the power and operation of divine grace’.³¹ Third and finally, ‘no one in this life can know exactly why God does not administer means of grace equally to all, or why God, who wants all to be saved, does not save all’.³²

Prosper’s assertions do not serve to alleviate the tension inherent to the question at hand; they serve to state it with greater force and clarity. His first and second assertions, in particular, establish an apparent contradiction between God’s sentiments and his actions towards humankind, or at least towards those who are not ultimately saved. God loves them and wills their salvation. God denies them a particular grace without which they will not be saved. His third assertion, far from serving to resolve this paradox, asserts the futility of attempting – at least ‘in this life’ – to reconcile these seemingly contradictory truths.

According to Baron, then, the proper dogmatic response to the apparent contradiction between God’s universal will to save and God’s sovereign discrimination in the distribution of his saving grace is to assert both truths with equal rigour. Neither truth, in other words, should be watered down or washed away in service to the other. This, of course, requires a rather careful balancing act; Baron proceeds by identifying two categories of theologians who ‘shrink back from the moderation and modesty of St Prosper’ on this issue, exalting one dogmatic truth at the expense of the other.

On one hand are ‘those who affirm that God’s grace for the obtaining of salvation is universal, so that its efficacy in some persons rather than others depends upon the freedom of man’s will’.³³ Baron has in mind certain medieval scholastics as well as contemporary Jesuit thinkers who:

explain and confirm their opinion with that well-known axiom facienti quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam. If, they say, the nations were to make good use of those natural gifts and means of salvation originally distributed to them, then God, who does not deny grace to those who do what lies within them, would grant them fuller grace, … and lead them finally to a knowledge of Christ.³⁴

Those advancing this position, Baron notes, deny that man can properly (or condignly) ‘merit grace through a good use of free will’. They affirm, however, that man might, ‘by virtue of his natural abilities’, render himself ‘disposed to grace’ –or at least ‘less indisposed to grace’ – which God in turn will grant according to his promise.³⁵

In Baron’s judgement such doctrine ‘is clearly semi-Pelagian, and hence contrary to Scripture and the general consensus of the Fathers’. He rejects it on the grounds that it makes God a debtor to man in the distribution of his saving grace: ‘If God has regard to deeds performed by the virtues of [human] nature when he confers helping grace upon some and denies the same to others, then our calling unto salvation in some way depends upon our works, contrary to Paul’s teaching in Rom. 11.6, Eph. 2.8–9, 2 Tim. 1.9, and Tit. 3.9.’ Moreover, such a doctrine creates space for human boasting: ‘The one who is called has distinguished himself [by his proper use of natural gifts] from the one who is not, contrary to Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor. 4.7: “Who has set you apart from others? And what do you have that you have not received?”’³⁶

While rejecting the positive assertion that man might elicit saving grace from God through the right use of natural gifts, Baron acknowledges some truth in the inverse claim that man’s abuse of natural gifts ‘provides a peculiar reason that he is denied grace’.³⁷ ‘Sacred Scripture’, notes Baron, ‘clearly testifies that man’s prior rejection of God is a cause of divine dereliction: “Because you have forsaken Jehovah, he has forsaken you” (2 Chron. 24.20).’³⁸ But two caveats are required. First, it should be noted that God also, and justly, denies men grace because ‘they have sinned in Adam’s loins’, regardless of their subsequent abuse of natural gifts.³⁹ In other words, actual sins merely aggravate the culpability established by original sin. So ‘Thomas, following Augustine, says that grace is justly withheld from those to whom it is not given as punishment for previous sin, even original sin’.⁴⁰ It should be noted, secondly, that human sin – whether original or actual – provides no ‘exact or adequate explanation for why certain men are denied grace, since … grace is given to other men who are no less unworthy’.⁴¹

Equally removed, on the other hand, from Prosper’s ‘moderation and modesty’ are those who ‘recklessly affirm that no divine grace whatsoever extends to those who have not received the gospel’, and that, ‘in the end, God in no way wants them to be saved’.⁴² Here Baron has in mind certain Reformed peers who, he says, interpret the biblical phrase ‘God wants all to be saved’ to mean not that God wants ‘every person’ to be saved, but that he wants ‘every kind of person, i.e. individuals from every nation, rank and position’ to be saved; thus they ultimately understand ‘all’ as a reference ‘only to the elect’, who in fact receive the means necessary to salvation. According to Baron, ‘the principal reason they cling so tenaciously to this stern doctrine’ is recognition that ‘if God wants some to be saved who are not actually saved, it follows that in God there is somehow an ineffective will, a desire for things to happen which never in fact occur, and this seems absurd’.⁴³

In response to these theologians Baron argues that God has granted some grace even to those who are not ultimately elected to eternal life – ‘not only to the reprobate living within the church, but also to the nations’ – and has done so from a genuine desire that they seek him. Concerning ‘the reprobate within the church’: these ‘are granted certain gracious assistances, not only externally but also internally (Heb. 6.4–5)’.⁴⁴ Baron appeals to those theologians who belonged to the British delegation to the Synod of Dort, who in their suffrage on the articles of that Synod affirmed that ‘God truly and earnestly calls and invites the reprobate within the church to faith and repentance, and neither deserts them nor desists from pushing them forward in the way of true conversion until they first desert him by voluntarily neglecting or rejecting his grace’.⁴⁵ He anticipates an objection: ‘You will say it follows that the reason one rather than another is converted is to be found not in God, but in men themselves; one made good use, another bad, of that initial grace given to them.’ Baron unequivocally rejects such an implication, insisting that both ‘the elect who are actually converted’ and ‘the reprobate’ equally ‘abuse that initial grace’. Indeed ‘all [within the church] are called by God in a certain manner which they resist’, but while God ‘justly deserts some because they have first deserted him’, others are ‘not deserted, but are led by an extraordinary and peculiar grace of God to genuine faith and repentance, and are saved’.⁴⁶

Those outside the church have some grace and certain gifts entrusted to them as well; they have ‘the law of nature written on their hearts (Rom. 2.14–15)’ and some further ‘witness to God (Acts 14.17)’ through ‘the works of creation’. Baron quotes Rom. 1.19–20: ‘What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.’⁴⁷ He discovers in Acts 17.27 a clear statement of the purpose for such divine self-disclosure: ‘It is said that God offers these means to them “in order that they might seek him”.’ Nevertheless some – Baron specifically names contemporary English divine William Twisse – discover in the ultimate clause of Romans 1.20 (‘so that men are without excuse’) a rather different purpose for God’s witness to himself in creation; they insist that ‘these means are imparted to [those who are not ultimately saved] merely in order to render them anapologia, that is, inexcusable before God’.⁴⁸

Baron takes strong exception to this interpretation of the final clause of Romans 1.20: ‘These words should not be understood to indicate cause, but only consequence; in other words, they should not be read as naming the reason that God manifests his invisible qualities to the nations, but only as naming the actual outcome of that manifestation.’ It is man’s sinful response to God’s self-disclosure through ‘the works of creation’ that properly renders man anapologia in the judgement; thus ‘inexcusability before God’ is ‘only secondarily and per accidens, not per se, an end of God’s manifestation’.⁴⁹ He highlights the support his reading of Romans 1.20 finds in the biblical commentaries of Reformed theologians Heinrich Bullinger, Martin Bucer, Augustin Marlorat, Wolfgang Musculus and David Pareus.⁵⁰ And he discovers a further argument in his favour in the claim of Rom. 1.21 that ‘those who knew God’ through his self-disclosure in creation ‘did not give thanks to God.’ He explains:

If God offered these means [of knowing him] to those who are perishing only to the end of rendering them inexcusable, then those means offered to them would not have the proper character of gifts, and consequently, those who abused those means and rendered themselves anapologia or inexcusable would be falsely accused of ingratitude towards God.⁵¹

The charge of ingratitude against those who squander the gift of God’s testimony to himself in creation assumes that such testimony flows from a genuine desire for their good and well-being.

As noted above, Baron perceives the fundamental objection against a universal salvific will in God to be that it credits God, at least by implication, with an ineffective will; he tackles this problem in a discrete section titled ‘whether there is in God a certain will which is ineffective or conditional’.⁵² Baron answers ‘yes’ to that question. God genuinely wills the salvation of all, but all are not saved; something, therefore, renders that divine will ineffective. He recognizes, however, that ‘Arminians, Lutherans, and some Romanists’ also affirm an ineffective will in God, and he is keen to dissociate his view from:

those who teach that God equally or indifferently seeks and intends the salvation of all, so that the reason one is saved rather than another is to be sought not in God’s eternal election or the measure and quality of grace which men in time receive, but in the free volition of men themselves, presupposing some grace.⁵³

In contrast to any such scheme of grace and salvation, Baron affirms that:

God generally wills all to be saved by his conditional or ineffective will, but he also specifically intends and seeks the salvation of certain men by his effective will, and he decrees the salvation of certain men prior to any foreknowledge of faith, repentance, or good works which they in time will perform.⁵⁴

The arguments that Baron subsequently advances serve to demonstrate the reality of some ineffective will in God per se, regardless of its orientation towards the salvation of all. He notes, for example, that God ‘loves and prescribes many good works in his law’. If God loves certain works, he must genuinely desire their performance by men. But ‘many good works which God prescribes do not happen’. Thus, Baron reasons, ‘it is necessary to attribute to God a certain will or volition which is, in fact, ineffective’.⁵⁵ Likewise, ‘God often, in sacred scripture, promises men good things, some temporal and some eternal, which in fact they never receive because they fail to fulfil some condition which is attached to the promise’. So, for example, ‘God promised Cain his favour and acceptance, adding the condition “if you do well” (Gen. 4); God promised the Israelites that he would dispel the remaining nations from the land, adding the condition “if you cling to Jehovah” (Josh. 23. 5, 8)’. Similarly, ‘Adam and his posterity were promised immortality on condition of obedience’. Such conditional promises, Baron reasons, require recognition of ‘a certain ineffective will in God’, for a promise made to man without some corresponding desire that man fulfil the prescribed condition and inherit that which is promised would be ‘false, deceitful, and hypocritical’.⁵⁶

Baron also appeals to authorities in support of his doctrine: ‘A conditional or ineffective will in God for the salvation of all is acknowledged not only by the sacred Fathers, … but also by many orthodox theologians.’ Among the Fathers he names Chrysostom, Jerome, Prosper, John of Damascus, ‘and, indeed, Augustine himself ’ as supporters of his doctrine. Among orthodox Reformed theologians he names Jerome Zanchi, Amandus Polanus and Musculus.⁵⁷ Lucas Trelcatius, he notes further, ‘distinguishes between an absolute and a conditional divine will, even if he does not explicitly say that God, by virtue of his conditional will, wants all to be saved’.⁵⁸ Pareus, moreover, ‘not only acknowledges a conditional will (which he also calls “antecedent”) in God, but also asserts that, according to it, God wills all to be saved by faith, i.e., on the condition that they believe in the Son of God’.⁵⁹ So also Daniel Chamier ‘distinguishes between … God’s will of approbation and his will of decree, and says that God, by virtue of the former, wills all to come to salvation’.⁶⁰

Baron addresses, finally, two objections to the doctrine of an ineffective or conditional will in God. Some theologians, he notes first, refuse to attribute an ineffective will to God because they deem such ‘to be an imperfection’. He responds that ‘an ineffective will is only an imperfection when it exists in one who is unable to procure that which he wills’. God, of course, is able to accomplish whatever he desires. Hence his will for certain outcomes remains ineffective merely by virtue of his own free decision not to achieve his desire.⁶¹ In other words, what trumps God’s (ineffective) desire for some end is not a force or forces outside of God, but God’s own effective desire for some other end.

‘Some say’, secondly:

that if God wants all to be saved on condition of faith and repentance, it follows that God’s decision concerning the salvation of men remains in suspense until he foresees who will fulfil that condition and who will not. Consequently, the reason he elects one man and not another lies in those men themselves; that is, God foresees that one man and not another will fulfil that condition of faith and repentance under which he wants all to be saved.

Baron again rejects the claim that a doctrine of a divine, ineffective will only properly fits in such a heterodox scheme of election. He argues: ‘Just as God from eternity wills to grant men salvation on condition of faith and repentance, so also from eternity, and without any foresight of human volitional consent, he resolves to grant certain men the most effective resources to fulfil that condition, and denies the same to other men.’ God, in other words, also has an effective will, by which he determines without regard to future human decisions that some men will indeed be saved and others will not. Baron concludes his defence of God’s ineffective, universal will to save by stressing again the proper relationship between divine election and human faith: ‘God has not elected any man to glory because he foresaw that that man would fulfil the condition of faith and repentance. On the contrary, he himself causes the condition to be fulfilled in a man because he has elected that man to glory.’⁶²
_______________
27. Ibid., p. 29. For Baron’s argument regarding the necessity of explicit faith in Christ for salvation, see pp. 22–9.
28. Ibid., pp. 29–30, 48.
29. Ibid., p. 30, citing Prosper of Aquitaine, De vocatione omnium gentium, 2.1 (PL vol. 51, p. 686).
30. See Prosper, De vocatione, 2.2 (PL vol. 51, pp. 687–8).
31. Baron, Septenarius sacer, p. 30, citing Prosper, De vocatione, 2.1 (PL vol. 51, pp. 686–7).
32. Ibid., p. 30, citing Prosper, De vocatione, 2.1 (PL vol. 51, p. 687).
33. Ibid., p. 31.
34. Ibid., p. 35.
35. Ibid., pp. 35–8. In addition to the medieval scholastics Durandus of Saint-Pourcain, Duns Scotus and Gabriel Biel, Baron names the Jesuits Luis de Molina and Leonard Lessius as representatives of the doctrine that man can, by virtue of his natural abilities, render himself ‘disposed or prepared for grace’ (pp. 35–7). He names the Jesuits Francisco Suarez and Diego Ruiz de Montoya as representatives of the doctrine that man can, by virtue of his natural abilities, render himself at least ‘less indisposed to grace’ (pp. 37–8).
36. Ibid., pp. 36–7.
37. Ibid., p. 45.
38. Ibid., p. 40. Baron also references Prov. 1.24.
39. Ibid., p. 45.
40. Ibid., p. 46, citing Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a2ae, 2, 5, ad primum.
41. Ibid., p. 41.
42. Ibid., p. 31.
43. Ibid., p. 31.
44. Ibid., p. 47. Baron does not define these ‘external’ or ‘internal’ graces specifically; presumably he has in mind the general call of the gospel and some internal promptings of God’s Spirit towards repentance. He distinguishes these ‘assistances’ from the God’s ‘efficacious call’ to the elect.
45. Ibid., p. 47, paraphrasing the delegates’ 3rd and 4th positions on the 3rd and 4th articles; see Anthony Milton, The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 253–4.
46. Ibid., p. 47, referencing the British delegation’s 6th and 7th positions on the 3rd and 4th articles at Dort; see Milton, British Delegation, pp. 255–6.
47. Ibid., p. 31.
48. Ibid., p. 31. See William Twisse, Vindiciae gratiae, potestatis, ac providentiae Dei (Amsterdam: Ioannem Ianssonium, 1632), lib. 1, pars 2, sect. 12.
49. Ibid., p. 34.
50. Ibid., pp. 33–4.
51. Ibid., p. 33.
52. Ibid., pp. 49–54.
53. Ibid., p. 49
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., p. 50.
56. Ibid., pp. 50–1.
57. Ibid., pp. 52–3, citing Zanchius, De natura Dei (Heidelberg: Iacobus Mylius, 1577), lib. 3, ca. 4, q. 3; Polanus, Syntagma theologiae christianae (Hanau: Wechelianis, 1609), lib. 2, ca. 19; Musculus, Loci communes (Erfurt: Georgium Bauuman, 1563), ca. De volunte Dei, ca. De remissione peccatorum.
58. Ibid., p. 53, citing Trelcatius, Institutio theologiae (London: Iohannis Bill, 1604), lib. 1, disp. De Deo.
59. Ibid., citing Pareus, Roberti Bellarmini … de gratia et libero arbitrio libri VI...explicati et castigati studio (Heidelberg: Iohannis Lancelloti, 1614), lib. 2, ca. 3.
60. Ibid., citing Chamier, Panstratiae Catholicae, sive, controversiarum de religione advresus Pontificios corpus (Geneva: typis Roverianis, 1626), tom. 3, lib. 7, ca. 6, and tom. 2, lib. 3, ca. 9, para. 19.
61. Ibid., pp. 53–4.
62. Ibid., p. 54.

Aaron Clay Denlinger, “Scottish Hypothetical Universalism: Robert Baron (c.1596–1639) on God’s Love and Christ’s Death for All,” in Reformed Orthodoxy in Scotland: Essays on Scottish Theology 1560–1775, ed. Aaron Clay Denlinger (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 87–94.

For more on Baron and the extent of the atonement, see here (link).

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