Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563): God elected us in Christ and on account of Christ

In their articulation of the doctrine of God’s eternal election, early modern Reformed theologians were very careful to express the fact that God did not elect his chosen people in the abstract, but rather God’s election was always founded on Christ as the only mediator. Election is always “in Christ” (in Christo) and “on account of Christ” (propter Christum). The prominent Reformer Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563), who served as professor of theology at Bern, explains this in his Loci Communes Sacrae Theologiae (1561 edition, p. 249-250, own translation):

Although it is evident that our election is not in any respect to be attributed to any quality or worthiness in us, but only to the pleasure, will, and purpose of God, and that we cannot identify any cause besides his immense goodness for why it was bestowed on us, yet it is not at all proper for us to believe that it is not dependent on an intermediary in whom, before the foundation of the world, the majesty of God chose humans unto himself, who would be so different to him in nature, and who would be wretched in so many ways. For this election is instituted in such a way that it cannot permit the separation of the elector from the elect. For just as reprobation excludes any connection between those who are reprobated and the one who reprobates them, so election joins the elect with the elector, and this conjunction of two very different natures, of God and of man, could not be made without the unifying link of some mediator.

Heat and cold cannot be united, except in some mean which accommodates them both; so it was much less possible that man, who is colder than ice, should without some mediator be united to God, who is a consuming fire. These things are clear to all, except to those who, considering neither the eminence of the divine majesty nor the abjectness of human infirmity and corruption, fancy that they can be conjoined to God – I know not by what rites or works – without a mediator.

Now, who that mediator is, in whom God has chosen us before the foundation of the world and has united us unto himself by a perpetual conjunction, the Apostle diligently expresses to the Ephesians (1:3-4), saying: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.” And so we are chosen by God the Father in Christ his Son in an eternal election before time, that is to say, the world was only made afterwards.

In this we see that it was so determined from eternity, that we should be saved through Christ the mediator, the Son of God. And it was so predestined that the same eternal Word should be born in his time in our flesh, so that by the very same one by whom we were to be created, in the same we were also elected to be redeemed and saved. In this way our faith in our mediator and saviour Christ has altogether a most ancient foundation, that is to say, eternal, and laid down before all times and ages. In this way we were also in Christ before the world was made, that is to say, by virtue of this eternal election. He did not elect us as being in him before we were chosen, but he elected us so that we may be in him and be saved through him.

Chrysostom takes en autō [in him] to be the same as di’ autou [through him]. But, in my judgment, just as it is not proper for us to say of Christ, as our mediator, that he is our elector, so it is not proper to say that we have been elected by him. But it is proper to say, as the Apostle does, that we have been elected in him by God the Father. God elected us on account of Christ, he elected us in Christ: On account of Christ, as mediator; in Christ, as the head of the elect or those who are to be saved. And it was not at his birth according to the flesh that he was first made the mediator, head, and saviour of the elect, but he was constituted as such from eternity by the Father, and we were chosen in him and on account of him before we were born. When God determined the head or mediator of those who would be saved, he simultaneously also determined those that would be saved by him as his members, which determination the Apostle calls the election made in Christ.

Wherefore we must not consider this mystery of our election by halves or piecemeal, but in full and as a whole, with both these parts joined together, with sincere faith and highest devotion, admiration, and gratitude to Christ our mediator, head, and saviour. And for the confirmation of the certainty of our salvation in our hearts, we must also consider how our election is grounded and built upon the same counsel of God, the same eternity, and indeed the same strength as the mystery of Christ.

Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563) on God foreseeing the fall of Adam, and the felix culpa

The logic of the Reformed doctrine of election left theologians with the obligation to show that God did not cause the fall. Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563) states below the standard position that God foresaw humanity’s fall in Adam but did not cause it to occur. Adam had been created good but fell into sin of his own accord. Hence humanity has only itself – not God – to blame for its predicament.

Musculus was professor of theology at Bern, Switzerland, from 1559 until his death, having previously been converted to the Reformation faith through reading Luther and spending time in both Augsburg and Strasbourg. This excerpt is from his Loci communes sacrae theologiae:

“God’s ways are not like men’s ways, so that it must be thought that it happened to im, as it usually comes to us every day: our plans and acts promptly fall out far otherwise than we had intended. He created man in His image, upright and unimpaired. Who [is] so senseless as to say that He had not foreseen what would happen to man by the serpent’s persuasion? All therefore generally agree, and rightly, in this, that Adam’s sin had been foreseen and foreknown from eternity. Thus the lapse of the human race did not so occur as to be beyond the mind and intention of the Creator: which means that He is a sham creator in His work, as though the thing happened otherwise than He resolved…

[I]t is I think pretty clear that God refused to establish man’s felicity and salvation upon his first state and constitution such as it was, but established it on his (man’s) restoration predestined in Christ the Son, and He so arranged, that he should be redeemed and preserved neither by his knowledge of Himself (whence He even forbade him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) nor by the worthiness and merits of his own righteousness, but by the sole grace and mercy of his free election, when otherwise ready to perish, by the intervention of His Son. The universal fall of the human race served to illustrate this grace of election. By the fall, before he had acquired any offspring, Adam fell into sin; and the result is that no mortal can be saved except by God’s mercy. In the next place also the wretchedness, corruption and perdition, which overtaking this lapse of our first parents now holds the whole human race, renders the power and might of divine providence much more splendid, while through Christ we are more happily restored after the fall than we had been when created, before we fell: just as on the day of resurrection, when we shall be raised from the dust of the earth and the corruptible shall put on incorruption and the mortal immortality, the might of God’s power will be declared much more gloriously, than if we were living for ever in this life devoid of corruption and death.”

– Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563), Loci communes sacrae theologiae, p. 620-621

Musculus’ assertion that God having permitted the fall means that “we are more happily restored after the fall than we had been when created”, is no novelty of the 16^th century. This idea is apprehended in the Latin phrase felix culpa, which can more or less be translated as “fortunate fall”. It can be traced back to Augustine (354-430), who in his Enchridion, viii, said  “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” (in Latin: Melius enim iudicavit de malis benefacere, quam mala nulla esse permittere). Ambrose of Milan (c. 340-397) also spoke of the fortunate ruin of Adam in the Garden of Eden in that his sin brought more good to humanity (i.e. the grace of God in Christ, and the new creation) than if he had stayed perfectly innocent. This was picked up in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who in his Summa Theologica, III, 3, ad 3, said “God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom”, which underlines the causal relation between original sin and the Christ our Redeemer’s Incarnation.

Furthermore, we see in the Bible itself that in a number of places, though not a “fall”, God employed evil (which He himself did not cause, but were caused by men) for the greater good, such as, to give but two examples, with Joseph in Genesis, and most staggeringly of all, the pernicious murder of Christ on the cross, which was for the redemption of the world.

Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563) on trusting God as Creator

“The knowledge that we all have the same creator and maker admonishes us not to harbor contempt for God’s work, whether in ourselves or in another, by asking ‘Why did he make it like this?’ Thus we read in Isaiah, ‘Woe to anyone who, like an earthen potsherd, argues with its maker. Shall the clay say to the potter, What are you making?’ And in Proverbs, ‘Whoever disregards the needy insults their maker.’ And so this faith, wherein we believe that we have been created by God, brings about these three things in our hearts: First, that with all our hearts we depend in all things upon God our creator. Second, that each of us be contented with our circumstances–indeed, that we embrace them with thanksgiving, given that God our creator has placed us in them. Third, that none of us view our neighbor’s circumstances with contempt, however vile and miserable they be, lest we thereby cast aspersions upon our common creator.”

– Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563), Genesis 1-11: The Reformation Commentary on Scripture, p. 12