Dracula, irresistible grace, and reprobation

It has long been noted that Dracula has strong Anglican religious overtones, from its use of sacraments in a High Anglican way to its persistent use of consecrated objects to hold back the tides of Dracula.¹ It has also been seen as an example of the inter-Anglican fight between Low Church and High Church advocates.² Of van Helsing, it is said, “He also represents Catholicism and what the Lower Church Anglicans feared about Catholic practices and rituals, especially through his sacrilegious overuse of the Host.”³

These comments should not be surprising since Stoker was a member of the Church of Ireland, the Anglican expression of the faith on the Isle of Erie. I will add a short thought to what has been written on Dracula. It may be that someone else has already written on it, and I have not seen it. However, note that, as a member of the Church of Ireland, Stoker would have been a moderate Calvinist. Among the official statements of Anglicanism are the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, one of which happens to be on predestination.⁴ But alongside the doctrine of election is inevitably the doctrine of reprobation. The Reformed on the Continent were more evident in stating what has become called the doctrine of double predestination. If God chooses who is saved, so does He choose who is damned, since if you are not chosen, you will not be saved but rather damned.

Notice that the definition of predestination includes the phrase “by grace they obey the calling.” This is a summary of an acrostic used among the Reformed in Continental Europe to summarize their doctrine. The acrostic is TULIP, and it means:

• T – Total Depravity
• U – Unconditional Election
• L – Limited Atonement
• I – Irresistible Grace
• P – Perseverance of the Saints
  

Irresistible Grace means that when God elects someone, they will not be genuinely able to refuse to become Christian. The Westminster Confession of Faith (a Presbyterian Confession) tries to soften Irresistible Grace’s effect by claiming that although the election cannot be resisted, it does not mean that the person’s free will is violated.⁵ When a complete Calvinist is questioned, the word paradox is used. That is, this is true but not understandable. While I understand such a claim, I doubt its efficacy in this case.

But let us go on to the subject of vampires. I contend that vampires picture irresistible grace in its most negative aspect. The doctrine of reprobation is that God inevitably elects who goes to Hell. Its softest version merely states that if God has not elected someone, that person cannot be saved and will go to Hell. In this interpretation of reprobation, people go to Hell because, without the intervention of grace, the ability to truly repent is not present. So, they will not repent and will not be saved. The softest version of reprobation pictures God as mercifully choosing to save some rather than letting all die. In its most robust version, God actively chooses both salvation and reprobation. In this version, it is not that God fails to elect someone to salvation. It is that God elects someone to damnation. They never have a chance.⁶

Looking at the original Stoker vampires, one can see the opposite of irresistible grace at work. It is reprobation. Once Dracula, or one of the other vampires, bites you to death, you will come back as an evil, changed person. How good you might have been before is irrelevant. You will not be able to resist your descent into Hell. You will begin to behave like a demon. You will need to be disposed of and removed from this world. It is as though a vampire will experience a personal Armaggedon and judgment with neither hope of redemption nor of being able to resist.

The most tragic case is that of Lucy Westenra. “Lucy seems to represent a delicate and pure female of Victorian society. She is not only beautiful, but also pure and innocent, which makes her an angel of the household.”⁷ At the end of Lucy’s life, she is a sexual temptress and a child abuser. She has been bitten by a vampire, died, resurrected, has a new life, and now is no longer redeemable. Instead of irresistible grace, she experiences reprobation. The necessity of dying and being born again becomes but a sick reflection of the death and resurrection of grace. She is the false opposite of new life in Christ. And, yet, she chose none of it. It was selected for her. Her supposed free will was shown to be false. Her outcome was fixed once Dracula chose and brought her to death. Such is reprobation.

Not surprisingly, Stoker could not follow through on the doctrine of reprobation, just as the Thirty-Nine Articles never quite spell out the results of the failure to be elected. Lucy’s face changes after her slaughter and beheading. Everyone feels a “holy calm,” which is an “earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign forever.”⁸ That this is never expressed for the other vampires is an indication that Stoker built a character who was too loveable to damn to Hell, at least in his mind. Stoker could not get himself to condemn Lucy, only the other vampires.

Many modern writers are not Calvinist, so the myth of the Stoker vampire has been rewritten. While not all writers have gone with the change, many now allow for some significant free will in their vampires. There are those vampires who fight their inclinations and only feed from animals or from willing donors. Entire fantasy series are built on the “good” vampires, who hire willing donors and do what they must to control themselves. Opposed are the “bad” vampires who continue the tradition of feeding on the unwilling and converting various of them to fellow predators. The taint of vampirism has been reduced from irresistible to reasonably resistible. Reprobation has been reversed, and a more Arminian universe has been created.⁹ Vampires now have a hope that they did not have under a more Calvinist conception of them.

1. See https://study.com/academy/lesson/examples-of-religion-in-dracula.html [↩]
2. Landix, Kelle (2017) “Dracula: An Allegory of Anglican Conflict,” Ellipsis: A Journal of Art, Ideas, and Literature: Vol. 44, Article 27. [↩]
3. Bowles, Noelle. “Crucifix, Communion, and Convent: The Real Presence of Anglican Ritualism in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Christianity & Literature 62.2 (2013): 243-258. Religion and Philosophy Collection. Web. 17 Apr. 2016, p248 [↩]
4. Predestination to life is the eternal purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he has consistently decreed by his counsel which is hidden from us to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he has chosen in Christ out of mankind and to bring them through Christ to eternal salvation as vessels made for honor. … By grace they obey the calling [↩]
5. God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. [↩]
6. John and Charles Wesley were Anglicans. They rejected the doctrine of reprobation. However, they agreed with Calvinists that, as a result of the Fall, a person does not have enough free will to accept Jesus as Lord. Thus the Wesleys proclaimed the doctrine of prevenient grace. That doctrine states that God gave just enough grace to all humanity to return sufficient free will to them to allow them to accept Christ as Savior. They rejected both the Calvinist doctrines of Limited Atonement and Irresistible Grace. Eventually, the Wesleyan Anglicans split off and formed the Methodist Church. [↩]
7. Kunz, Sarah, The Fallen Woman. Two Ideals of Women in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” 2016 [↩]
8. Stoker, Bram, Dracula, Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, New York, 1897, 202 [↩]
9. Yes, I know that some writers are purely secularists and believe in absolute free will. But, this still points to a rejection of reprobation in both Church and culture. [↩]