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.)