Cardinal Gasparo Contarini and John Calvin on predestination
The article is based on the report on conference «Calvinism-France-Europe: 500 years later… View from Russia» (November 23-24, 2017, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University). The question regarding divine predestination of people towards good or evil, became one of the central in the religious discourses during the times of Reformation. The radical way of thinking of Protestant ideologists that would insist on the thesis of «justification and salvation of a sinner by faith alone», was excused: by the corruption and secularization of the Roman Church in the spiritual respect; by the new formed European countries seeking emancipation in the political respect. Among the Catholic prelates were ones who sympathized the reforms of the Church, such was Gasparo Contarini who, in fact, was the executor of the Roman party at the Regensburg colloquiums in 1541. At that assembly were made the attempts of ideological convergence of Catholics and Protestants, where among the latter John Calvin was present. In the article, on the basis of the short analysis of the texts are presented the views of both - Contarini and Calvin concerning this particular issue of predestination. The article presents the similarities of the approach, its consequent logical problems and the lack of possible solutions for the contradiction that is incorporated in the issue of Theodicy. The main role in the colloquiums’ failure, as well as in the further attempts to find the consent, played not the theoretical controversies of the discussed theses, but the starting presuppositions of the participants that were shaped by many outward factors and their «party» identity.