Calvinism and the Demonic in the Divine

Abstract

Many of John Calvin’s followers took him to be advocating a supralapsarian view of salvation history according to which God has decided, from all eternity, what will happen, who will be elected, and who will be damned. This raises obvious questions about divine goodness—or, put another way, this brand of Calvinism raises questions about the extent to which there is a streak of the diabolical even in the heart of the divine. Such a view of the divine tends to provoke a strong reaction, which we see in Horace Mann’s turn to a view of the divine that foregrounds kindness and ethical integrity.