Imperishable Inheritance

I myself have strug­gled with the doc­trine of double pre­des­ti­na­tion. It has come up again in my thoughts as I work on a Wikipedia arti­cle on the sub­ject of pre­des­ti­na­tion. I’m also debat­ing Simon on God’s decree man­i­fest in a deter­min­is­tic manner versus a Molin­is­tic one.

I was read­ing a his­tory arti­cle on the refine­ment of the doc­trine of pre­des­ti­na­tion. It states about how Calvin was the first to espouse ideas of mod­i­fy­ing the supralap­sar­ian posi­tion (that God’s decree of elec­tion came log­i­cally before the Fall), and how infralap­sar­i­an­ism and mod­i­fied supralap­sar­i­an­ism worked their way in. It’s inter­est­ing to reflect that the Canons of Dort (the his­toric creed which responded to the Remon­strance or “five points of Arminianism”) was mod­i­fied supra (I have read many places that it is infra, but I myself cannot find that in the Canon unless we use the lan­guage “leave them in the common misery” to refer to seeing after the Fall).

More­over, Holy Scrip­ture most espe­cially high­lights this eter­nal and unde­served grace of our elec­tion and brings it out more clearly for us, in that it fur­ther bears wit­ness that not all people have been chosen but that some have not been chosen or have been passed by in God’s eter­nal elec­tion—those, that is, con­cern­ing whom God, on the basis of his entirely free, most just, irre­proach­able, and unchange­able good plea­sure, made the fol­low­ing deci­sion: to leave them in the common misery into which, by their own fault, they have plunged them­selves; not to grant them saving faith and the grace of con­ver­sion; but finally to con­demn and eter­nally punish them (having been left in their own ways and under his just judg­ment), not only for their unbe­lief but also for all their other sins, in order to dis­play his jus­tice. And this is the deci­sion of repro­ba­tion, which does not at all make God the author of sin (a blas­phe­mous thought!) but rather its fear­ful, irre­proach­able, just judge and avenger.
The Canons of Dort, Arti­cle 15: Reprobation

I have become increas­ingly con­victed of the impor­tance of under­stand­ing, not just uncon­di­tional elec­tion, but that God’s decree for elec­tion did not come as a result of the Fall, but that God chose those before the Fall and then decreed the Fall. To say that elec­tion comes from some resul­tant factor out­side of God’s decree is the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion used by Armini­ans in their Molin­is­tic philosophy.

Also, mod­i­fied supralap­sar­i­an­ism binds the deter­min­is­tic hands of God as well. To declare that God pre­des­tines the sal­va­tion of a people, but does not pre­des­tine the repro­ba­tion of the others is to imply that an imper­sonal fate deter­min­ing the future of the repro­bate. While it is illog­i­cal, the Bib­li­cal pat­tern of elec­tion proves this wrong:

“I have loved you,” says the LORD. But you say, “How have You loved us?” “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD. “Yet I have loved Jacob; but I have hated Esau, and I have made his moun­tains a des­o­la­tion and appointed his inher­i­tance for the jack­als of the wilderness.”
Malachi 1:2-3

The Covenant of Redemption

In my study of covenant the­ol­ogy, it is also impor­tant to talk of how the covenant of redemp­tion took place (Psa 110:4; John 17). If we look at such a covenant in terms of space and time, then the Trin­ity is bound to make deci­sions as a result of time if it was made after the Fall. The mod­i­fied supra and infra seem incom­pat­i­ble with a true under­stand­ing of the covenant of redemption.

“Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foun­da­tion of the world.”
John 17:24

Here is a re-​enactment (roughly) of what would’ve hap­pened if His decree of elec­tion came after His decree of the Fall and He only des­tined the believ­ers and not the repro­bate (kind of sounds like a para­phrase of the Canon quote above):

The Father: Guys, we screwed up. I never should’ve left it in Adam’s hands. I knew that dirt was bad.

The Son: What should we do?

The Holy Spirit: Oh no, we wanted some glory and look what it did—just look what it did!

The Father: Calm down guys, I’ll inter­vene a little bit and pull some out of the mess they’re in. Son, you die for them; and Spirit you go and get the rebel­lious bunch. We’ll let the rest to their own devices.

The Son/The Holy Spirit: Yea!

(I’m making a the­o­log­i­cal state­ment on eter­nal son­ship as well.)