"That wrath which pertaineth to us for our sins": Andrewes, Augustinianism and substitution
The short is, it was we that for our sins, our many great and grievous sins ... should have sweated this sweat and have cried this cry; should have smitten with these sorrows by the fierce wrath of God, had not He stepped between the blow and us, and latched it in His own body and soul, even the dint of the fierceness of the wrath of God.
In a footnote, Rutledge states that this use of the theme of substitution by Andrewes is significant because he "is generally considered anti-Calvinist". Caution, of course, must be exercised at this point. 'Reformed' was (from the outset) a deeply contested category, while allegations of 'Arminianism' in the Jacobean and Caroline church were far from straightforward (as was 'Calvinist' after the Restoration).
While Andrewes's rejection of the Lambeth Articles does testify to his hostility towards Calvinist scholasticism, he nevertheless affirms an Augustinian reading of the mystery of predestination against "the Moderns" - Calvinist scholastics, "all new Terms and Phrases". Thus Andrewes declares:
That God in his Eternal (whether you will call it Fore-knowledge,) or Knowledge, whereby he sees things which are not, as though they were, has predestinated some, and reprobated others, is (I think) without all manner of doubt.
Here Andrewes quotes both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas - "Election does not precede Justification (namely foreseen) but Justification precedes Election"- and so invokes the Augustinian tradition against the modernist innovations of Calvinist scholasticism.
When it comes to Article 3 of the Lambeth Articles - "The number of the elect is unalterably fixed" - Andrewes has no hesitation in affirming it:
They are St. Austin‘s very Words: The Number of those who are predestinated, is so certain, that none can be added to, or taken away from them.
Even regarding Article 4 - "Those who are not predestinated to life shall necessarily be damned for their sins" - Andrewes's concern is to recover the traditional Augustinian discourse of the Latin West to avoid misinterpretation:
And that he will be damned for his Sins, no body will deny; and that necessarily (if you will give me leave to say so) not by an absolute, but a conditional Necessity: That is, as the Article it self explains it, because of their Sins: It is because they have sinned, and not because they are not predestinated. Though at the same time I think we ought to avoid making use of the Terms [Necessity] and [Necessarily,] which the Fathers and Schoolmen have carefully done, and to substitute in their room [Certainly] or [without doubt] for we must avoid, as much as may be, all new Terms and Phrases.
In this context, then, it should not be surprising that Andrewes employs the traditional Augustinian language of substitution regarding the Lord's Passion. In Augustine's words:
And as he died in the flesh which he took in bearing our punishment, so also, while ever blessed in his own righteousness, he was cursed for our offenses, in the death which he suffered in bearing our punishment - Contra Faustum XIV.6
In the 1604 sermon, Rutledge notes that Andrewes quotes Isaiah 53. It was to this passage that Thomas Aquinas had also turned to explain the purpose of God the Father in the Passion:
because by His eternal will He preordained Christ's Passion for the deliverance of the human race, according to the words of Isaias (53:6): "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquities of us all"; and again (Isaiah 53:10): "The Lord was pleased to bruise Him in infirmity" - Summa Theologiae III.46.7
Andrewes's use of the language of substitution witnesses to a traditional Augustinianism much richer than any description of him as 'anti-Calvinist'. It also calls contemporary Anglicans to abandon a theologically shallow rejection of the the motif of substitution, and to re-receive it as proclaimed by one of the exemplars of the Anglican tradition:
... that 'by His stripes we are healed,' by His sweat we refreshed, by His forsaking we received to grace. That this day, to Him the day of the fierceness of God's wrath, is to us the day of the fulness of God's favour, as the Apostle calleth it, 'a day of salvation.' In respect of that He suffered, I deny not, an evil day, a day of heaviness; but in respect of that which He by it hath obtained for us, it is as we truly call it a good day, a day of joy and jubilee. For it doth not only rid us of that wrath which pertaineth to us for our sins; but farther, it maketh that pertain to us whereto we had no manner of right at all.
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