Can salvation be lost?

In response to a Facebook question:

Salvation can't be lost because:

i) It's not a matter of chance who will or won't be saved. The Father made that decision (election). Salvation is too important to be left to chance.

ii) The Son atoned for the sins of those on whose behalf he died. The Son didn't die for them in vain. He went on a mission to save them. He didn't come up short. He got exactly what he died for. He got exactly what he went for (John 17).

iii) The Spirit renews and preserves the saints. 

iv) The Father, Son, and Spirit complete the work they began. They don't leave the job half-finished.

v) Put another way, sinners were lost before they were saved. So they can't be lost again. What's the point of saving the lost if they end up right where they began? If it comes full circle, why not leave them where God found them? 

When are we saved?

When are we saved? That's an important question. Is there a simple or single answer to that question? What's the benchmark? 

1. In traditional Catholicism/Lutheranism/Anglicanism, there's a sense in which you are saved when you are baptized. That's the benchmark. I reject that paradigm, for reasons I've given on multiple occasions. 

2. In popular evangelism, it's customary to say that you are saved when you are converted. That's the benchmark. On one definition, that's a useful answer. But there are limitations to that answer:

i) What about lifelong Christians? They don't have a conversion experience. They were believers for as long as they can remember.

ii) Moreover, to equate salvation with conversion doesn't explain why conversion saves you. 

3. Here's a deeper explanation: to be saved means that if you were to die at that moment, you'd go to heaven. In a sense, that shifts the benchmark to the moment of death rather than the moment of conversion. 

4. However, that explanation has complications. Freewill theists generally believe that you can lose your salvation. Ben Witherington likes to say that you're not eternally secure until you're secure in eternity. So a freewill theist might distinguish between getting saved and saved for good–or final salvation. 

So the answer depends on where you put the benchmark: conversion or final salvation. On one definition, you are saved when you begin going down the heavenbound road. On another definition, you are saved when you arrive at the heavenly destination. 

5. Here's a variation on the same metaphor: before you got saved, you were on a hellbound road. Getting saved is turning off the hellbound road and turning onto the heavenbound road. 

But in traditional freewill theism, once you get onto the heavenbound road, there are exits back to the hellbound road. 

6. There are some freewill theists who don't think you can lose your salvation (e.g. Charles Ryrie, Charles Stanley, Zane Hodges). 

7. You also have freewill theists who believe in postmortem conversion. Both roads extend into the afterlife. You can die on the hellbound road, but after death, take the exit to heaven. So that relocates the benchmark to a postmortem setting. 

8. For their part, Calvinists sometimes debate whether the elect undergo a transition from wrath to grace. Prior to regeneration and justification, were the elect under God's wrath? Put another way, were they lost prior to regeneration and justification? In Calvinism, what's the benchmark for salvation? 

9. Reverting to the metaphor of the journey, prior to regeneration/justification, the elect are on road leading to hell. And if they continued in that direction until they died, they'd be damned. When they are regenerated/justified, they exit onto the heavenbound road. 

You might say they were lost in the sense that if they maintained the initial trajectory, they'd end up in hell. That's the end of the road they started down. 

Or to vary the metaphor, in order to be saved, in the sense of reaching heaven, they must pass through various checkpoints along the way. Mountains to cross and rivers to ford. If they were to drop out of the race before negotiating the necessary checkpoints, they'd be damned. 

10. However, in the case of the elect, the hellbound trajectory or hellbound destination is hypothetical. Even if they started out in the wrong direction, they were predestined to turn off the hellbound road and turn onto the heavenbound road. Athough they haven't arrived at the heavenly destination, that outcome is inevitable. 

So in what sense were they lost–or were they? To vary the metaphor, suppose a father takes his young son hiking. At one point the son wanders off and loses his way. He doesn't know how to get back. He doesn't know the right direction.

However, the father is watching his son the whole time from a hill. He can see his son on the trail. 

The boy is hopelessly lost in the sense that the boy can't find his way back on his own. But in another sense the son was never lost because his father is his guide even when he can't see his father. While the son lost track of his dad, his dad never lost track of his son. The boy was always safe–under his father's watchful gaze. 

The tortoise and the hare

The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all (Eccl 9:11).

20Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe…27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 29 that no flesh should glory in His presence (1 Cor 1:21,27-29).

Some brilliant men who were raised in evangelical churches become apostates. Some become secular philosophers or secular scientists. Some redeploy their talents to attack the faith in which they were raised. In a sense, their apostasy is a loss to the Christian faith. Why doesn't God preserve them?

One reason is to demonstrate that salvation isn't based on natural aptitude. High IQ is not a ticket to heaven. Salvation is by grace alone. God doesn't favor intellectuals. It shouldn't unsettle us that many of the best in the brightest in every generation, including some who grew up in Gospel-affirming churches, disdain the Christian faith. For that is by divine design. In the economy of salvation, the tortoise often overtakes the hare. 

The times of ignorance

i) Gen 4-11 is skimpy regarding the postlapsarian history of humanity. To some degree this can be supplemented by Acts 14:16-17 & 17:30:

16 In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. 17 Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”

30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent

As one commentator explains:

[Paul] is not claiming that their ignorance and rebellion were ignored by God and without consequence (cf. 17:30-31 note). Since, in biblical teaching, his involvement in the life of Israel was for blessing and salvation, his abandonment of the nations "to go their own ways" (the plural tais hodois suggests a diversity of options) was a curse and an anticipation of final judgment (cf. Rom 1:18-32; 2:1-11) God did not provide the nations with special revelation, such as he gave to Israel, and did not directly offer them a way of salvation, though Israel was always meant to be a source of blessing to the nations (cf. Gen 12:3).

They belonged to the times of ignorance. God did not approve this ignorance, nor did he suppress it or bring retribution, as he might have. He "overlooked" it (hyperidon, "disregarded"; cf. 14:16 note). We might compare Rom 3:25, where Paul says that in his forbearance, before the coming of Christ, God had "left the sins committed beforehand unpunished". D. Peterson, The Acts of the Apostles (2009), 410,502.

The basic idea is that God didn't intervene in the history of most people-groups in the same way he did in the case of the Jewish people. Using ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman culture, which is Paul's immediate frame of reference, that alludes to the development of pagan polytheism, idolatry, necromancy, sorcery, astromancy, human sacrifice, &c. And beyond Paul's frame of reference, we might include animism. 

The distinction isn't merely before the new covenant. For even after the new covenant, it takes centuries for that to disseminate. 

ii) This doesn't necessarily mean God never revealed himself to individual gentiles or interceded on their behalf. We have biblical examples of pagans who receive revelatory dreams. There's also the dramatic example of the Magi (Mt 2). 

iii) Admittedly, these are mentioned in cases where the lives of Jews and gentiles intersect. Perhaps God never intervened except in cases where the two groups overlap. Or perhaps God did intervene in other cases, but the only occasion for Scripture to mention divine intervention in the lives of pagans is where their lives impinge on the lives of Jews and Christians. For instance, it would be unintelligible to the original audience for Scripture to refer to Indian tribes in North and South America.  Moreover, that would take the eye off the unique role of the Jewish people in the plan of redemption. 

iv) But even if (ex hypothesi) God sometimes intervened in the lives of individual gentiles, by way of private revelation, miracles, answers to prayer, that's different from public revelation to a people-group, or Exodus-style miracles on behalf of a people-group. 

v) This goes to the question of whether God preserved a continuous remnant between the Fall and the call of Abraham. Perhaps not. Maybe knowledge of the one true God was lost for a time. Maybe God allowed that to lapse. 

vi) However, this also goes to the question of whether peaceful coexistence was possible between pagans and adherents of the true faith. It's my impression that urbanization fostered religious intolerance. By that I mean, city-states typically have an official religion with a priesthood and cultus. The patron god of the city or the kingdom. 

Although that allows for syncretism, where residents are free to practice their folk religion, residents are required to participate in the cultic life of the city-state. I'm thinking, not merely of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but Aztecs, Incas, and Maya. 

It may be that in more pastoral societies, characterized by nomads or hunter-gatherers, there's greater tolerance for religious pluralism. There's not the same pressure to conform to a state religion. 

Is the lottery sincere?

In Calvinism, doesn't the butcher first determine that you won't like liver, and then offer you liver? That doesn't come across as a sincere offer.

That's a comment on my analogy in this post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/01/chopped-liver.html

I'd like to respond to it separately, because it has several permutations. 

i) God doesn't directly and individually address the Gospel offer to anyone. It's not like Gabriel appears to every human being. No one's name is on the Gospel offer. It's not a question of God making an offer to people face to face and one by one. Indeed, tens of millions of people never hear the Gospel offer.

So it's not as though God is personally encouraging the reprobate to take him up on the offer. Rather, it's an all-purpose promise that's filtered through second-parties. Preachers and evangelists who don't know who's elect and who's reprobate.

ii) Let's take a comparison. Suppose you buy a lotto ticket. There's an implied promise that if you have the winning number, the prize money is yours.

But the machine has no idea who you are. The ticket machine isn't making you an offer. 

iii) Moreover, does every ticket-holder have a chance to win the lotto? Depends on what you mean. The promise is that if you have the winning number, the prize money is yours. But every ticket-holder can't have the winning number. In that respect,99.9999% of ticket-holders have no chance of winning, since the vast majority of ticket-holders are bound to have a losing number. By design, the intention of the lottery is to limit the offer or promise to a single winner, to the exclusion of everyone else. Most customers go into the process doomed to lose. Their ticket number predetermines the outcome. Yet we wouldn't say that makes the lotto a scam.  

My point is not that that's a direct parallel to the Gospel offer, but it illustrates the complexities and unspoken assumptions about what makes an offer or a promise a bona fide offer or true promise. 

iv) Let's take a different comparison. Suppose two uncover cops infiltrate the mob. In fact, the two cops are partners.

Suppose the Don discovers that one of the agents is an undercover cop, while he's suspicious of the other agent, but unsure.

So he proposes to test the ultimate loyalties of the suspected agent. He names the agent he knows to be an infiltrator. He then tells the suspected agent to shoot him dead.

He does that to smoke out which side the suspected agent is on. He doesn't expect the suspected agent will kill his partner to maintain his cover. 

v) By the same token, Scripture depicts the atonement as having a twofold purpose. It's designed to save some, but drive others away or expose their ultimately loyalties. Intended to inculpate or aggravate their guilt. For instance:

7 But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart (Ezk 3:7).

Why does Yahweh send Ezekiel on a mission when he predicts the prophet's failure to win over his audience? Is the futility of the task "insincere"? But it demonstrates how hardhearted they are.

Likewise,

34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed” (Lk 2:34).

So the atonement is divisive of by design. Intended to stir up opposition. 

By the same token:

20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God (Jn 3:20-21).

39 Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (Jn 9:39).

37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,

    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,

40 “He has blinded their eyes

    and hardened their heart,

lest they see with their eyes,

    and understand with their heart, and turn,

    and I would heal them.” (Jn 12:37-40).

If God wants to save everyone, why did he only choose Israel?

http://bnonn.com/if-god-wants-to-save-everyone-why-did-he-only-choose-israel/

An Interesting Passage

Due to heavy snowfall, I have a two-hour delay before heading in to work this morning. I decided to use a bit of the extra time reading through the life of Abraham. As I read through the passage on the rescue of Lot from the town of Sodom, I read something I had missed before.

Most readers here will be familiar with the story already, but for those who are not I will offer a quick recap. God appeared in bodily form to Abraham in Genesis 18. With Him were two other angels (they are described as angels in Genesis 19:15, for example). God told Abraham that He was going to destroy Sodom. At the end of Genesis 18, Abraham asks if God would spare Sodom if fifty righteous men could be found. The LORD agrees to that. Abraham then asks, “What if five are missing?” and again the LORD says He would not destroy the city if there were forty-five righteous men. Abraham continues until the end of the chapter, where the LORD agrees not to destroy the city if there are but ten righteous men.

After this, the two angels depart and go to Sodom. Lot finds them in the town square and offers them lodging, but the men of Sodom want to take the angels by force. The angels end up rescuing Lot, pulling him into the house and shutting the door, then striking the men of Sodom with blindness. They then tell Lot to gather his family and get out of town. Lot asks if, instead of running to the hills, he can go to the town of Zoar instead, and this is granted to him. After Lot flees, Sodom is destroyed.

So what is the part that I missed before? It is a subtle point located in these two verses:

As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.” But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city (Genesis 19:15-16, ESV).

We are often told by our Arminian brethren that God respects our freedom so much that He would allow us to go to hell rather than violate our wills. Yet here, God was not willing that Lot should perish, and forcibly removed him and his family from the city. Again, Lot did not choose to depart; he delayed. The angels warned him he had to move and when he did not, the angels seized him.

And this violation of Lot’s will, far from being described as negative, is described as “the LORD being merciful to him.” Just as a Calvinist argues that it is not loving for a parent to stand on the side of the road and beckon his child to come to safety because true love is running out into traffic to actually save the child, regardless of what the child wants, so too, here God’s loving action is to rescue Lot even if it means He has to seize the man and forcibly remove him from the city. When God wishes to save someone, He will do so. He does not need our permission.

And thank God for it!

Grace, wrath, and eternal love

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2014/08/calvin-on-wrath-grace-and-eternal-love.html

Hillary's 3 AM phone call

Back when she was running for president, against then-candidate Barack Obama, Hillary's campaign ran a famous ad insinuating that she, unlike her greenhorn opponent, had the experience to handle a crisis:

It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. 

Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call, whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military — someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. 

It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?

Well, that was hypothetical, but later on, Hillary did, in fact, receive her 3 AM phone call. It was the Benghazi attack. And she bungled the crisis. 

Hillary may run for president in the next election cycle. Remember the ad. Remember how badly she performed when she was put to the test. 

How corporate election backfires

Brian Abasciano is a NT scholar and prominent Arminian apologist (indeed, the president of SEA). In that respect, he's a younger-generation version of I. H. Marshall. 

Here he's defending corporate election. What's striking is that he defines proginosko in a way that's very close to (or identical to) the Calvinist definition. He doesn't think it means foreknowledge in these passages. Rather, it means prior choice. 

On that view, we should render Rom 8:29 as:

For those whom he chose beforehand he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.

Rom 11:2 as:

God has not rejected his people whom he chose beforehand.

And 1 Pet 1:1-2 as:

To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2 according to the prior choice of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.

Of course, he'd try to blunt the force of this concession, but it's a damaging concession. 

While agreeing that God knows the future, including who will believe, the corporate election perspective would tend to understand the references to foreknowledge in Rom 8:29 and 1 Pet 1:1-2 as referring to a relational prior knowing that amounts to previously acknowledging or recognizing or embracing or choosing people as belonging to God (i.e., in covenant relationship/partnership). The Bible sometimes mentions this type of knowledge, such as when Jesus speaks of those who never truly submit to his lordship: “And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’” (Matt 7:23; cf. Gen 18:19; Jer 1:5; Hos 13:4-5; Amos 3:2; 1 Cor 8:3). On this view, to be chosen according to foreknowledge would mean to be chosen because of the prior election of Christ and the corporate people of God in him. “Those [plural] whom he foreknew” in Rom 8:29 would refer to the Church as a corporate body and their election in Christ as well as their identity as the legitimate continuation of the historic chosen covenant people of God, which individual believers share in by faith-union with Christ and membership in his people. Such a reference is akin to statements in Scripture spoken to Israel about God choosing them in the past (i.e., foreknowing them), an election that the contemporary generation being addressed shared in (e.g., Deut 4:37; 7:6-7; 10:15; 14:2; Isaiah 41:8-9; 44:1-2; Amos 3:2). In every generation, Israel could be said to have been chosen. The Church now shares in that election through Christ, the covenant head and mediator (Rom 11:17-24; Eph 2:11-22). 

http://evangelicalarminians.org/the-facts-of-salvation-a-summary-of-arminian-theologythe-biblical-doctrines-of-grace/

Election and prayer

I'm going to comment on this post:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/11/can-a-calvinist-pray-for-his-child-to-be-elect/

Recently I heard of a well-known Calvinist pastor, author, speaker, who, on a podcast, testified that he often goes into his little son’s bedroom after he’s asleep and prays over him that he be among the elect.While I certainly understand the pastor’s sentiment and desire, I wonder if this is consistent with Calvinist theology? 
Is it logically consistent for a Calvinist to believe that prayer can play a role (even as a foreordained means to a foreordained end) in bringing it about that a person prayed for be included among the elect?
This seems very different to me from the common Calvinist claim that prayer for the unsaved can be a “foreordained means” to help bring it about that the person, if he or she is elect, comes to repent and believe.    (Although I admit having qualms about the logic of that as well!)
According to Calvinism, God elects individuals unconditionally. Salvation itself is not unconditional, so Calvin argued, because it depends on repentance and faith. However, according to Calvin and most Calvinists, an elect person will come to salvation. God will assure it via irresistible grace. But God uses means which he has foreordained to bring it about that the elect repent and believe.
But is it consistent with Calvinism to believe that God uses human means to decide who will be elect? I don’t think so. I do not remember any Calvinist theologian saying so.
If God used means to decide who is among the elect (e.g., prayer), then election would not be strictly unconditional. 

i) To begin with , what makes Olson think praying to God to do something is equivalent to God using human means to decide what to do? Does Olson think God is undecided unless and until we pray for something? Does God think prayer helps God decide what to do or not to do? 

ii) Since every event is predestined, and some events are causally or teleologically contingent on other events, some divine decrees presuppose other divine decrees. For instance, you can't have a fallen world without a world to fall. In that sense, the decree to create is logically prior to the fall. On the other hand, if the rationale for the fall is to reveal God's justice and mercy in redemption and judgment, then the fall is teleologically prior to creation–as an ends/means relation. 

God decrees our prayers, God decrees our election. Assuming (ex hypothesi) that our prayers factor in divine election, election isn't directly conditioned on what we pray for, but on God's decreeing what we pray for. Put another way, our prayers are conditioned on God's decree that we pray. Predestination is still the cause, while prayer is the effect. God decided who and what we'd pray for in the first place. If we pray that God elect a loved one, that prayer is, itself, the result of God's decree. 

I think there are Calvinists who simply cannot stomach the implication of Calvinism that a loved one, especially a child, might not be elect, so they revert to inconsistency.

Since Olson is not a universalist, his own statement is inconsistent. 

Our banana republican prez

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/26/officials-found-guilty-in-obama-clinton-ballot-petition-fraud/print

Corporate election

Traditionally, Arminians subscribed to conditional election based on foreseen faith. That understanding of election would still involve individual election as well as soteriological election.

In dealing with Rom 9, another tactic was election to service, which would be a non-soteriological category.

Contemporary Arminian scholarship generally favors corporate election. That would still be soteriological election, but somehow avoids individual election (according to Arminian proponents).

Let’s play along with the Arminian corporate elective interpretation for the sake of argument. It would still be the case that, in OT times, God corporately elected Israel, in contrast to not electing the Gentile world.

Wouldn’t that still be discriminatory? By Arminian standards, if God’s corporately elected Israel, while he conspicuously did not corporately elect the pagan world at the same time, isn’t that unfair? You still have God conferring a soteriological opportunity on one people-group, while passing others by.  

At the center

One popular atheist meme says the Copernican Revolution demoted our place in the universe. Because we can no longer occupy the center of the physical universe, that’s a psychological comedown. We cease to have the significance which the Bible attaches to us.

The logic of this argument is far from clear. For instance, a mother may “center” her life on her growing children. She arranges her schedule to meet their needs. To be available for them.

That doesn’t mean her children must occupy a physically central place in her life. Does she love her children any less when they are 20 miles away from home? Indeed, physical distance, physical separation, can enhance the sense of love and longing. You wish they were closer.

It’s true that a sense of vast time and space can make us feel small and insignificant. However, our littleness supplies the backdrop for God’s special love:

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples (Deut 7:7).

To take a human illustration, there are 7 billion people in the world. But that doesn’t make your friends and family less special to you. If anything, that makes them more special to you. In a world full of strangers, it’s all the more important to have a few people you can call your own. That you’re a part of. That you “belong” to.

Compare that to lonely people who feel lost, forgotten, abandoned.

Same thing with our place in time. So many generations have come and gone before us. So many will succeed us after we’re gone.

That can certainly make you feel insignificant. Replaceable.

But the fleeting nature of our mortal existence makes God all the more important to us. Only he can preserve us. Only he can reunite us:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place

    in all generations (Ps 90:1).

We are special if we are special to God. It is not our place in time and space that makes us significant, but God’s involvement in human history. God making us. God redeeming us. God becoming one of us. God restoring us.

Likewise, if parents have ten kids, they can love each child as much as if they had only one child. For each child is different, yet each child is theirs. They love each child for his individuality, as well as what he means to them–as their own child.

Romans 9.1 and Asyndeton

http://danielbwallace.com/2012/11/24/romans-9-1-and-asyndeton/

As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

Mark Seifrid, the Romans commentator in the Carson/Beale work “Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament” (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, ©2007), wrote the following:

It is Jacob whom God has chosen, according to the word to Rebecca. In the context of Malachi, Israel lives under straitened conditions in the early Second Temple period, in which the Lord seems distant and indifferent to the conduct of his people (Malachi 3:8–15). The opening words of the oracle thus constitute a rebuke to the nation: “‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord” (Mal 1:1). The Lord answer’s Israel’s unbelieving response, “How have you loved us?” by pointing to Esau. Although Esau is Jacob’s brother (and therefore in no way differs from him), the Lord has loved Jacob and hated Esau. As in Romans 9, God’s love is here defined by its freedom. The evidence for the Lord’s love for Israel lies in the return from exile and the rebuilding that has already taken place. The Lord has brought Esau’s land to ruin, as he has done with Israel. Yet no matter how resolutely Edom determines to rebuild its ruins, the Lord will tear them down (Mal 1:3–5). Matters are obviously different for God’s people. Israel, blind to the evidence all about it of the Lord’s love, seeing only the unrequited conduct of the wicked and the righteous, lives in unthankfuness, indifference, and disobedience (Mal 1:4–14).

The prophetic announcement “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” is intended to open Israel’s eyes. Paul’s appeal to the text implies that the pattern has been repeated in his day. God in freedom has set his love on some within Israel, but not on others. And yet, faintly, the passage also brings a reminder of God’s love for all Israel, which has its beginning in “Jacob” and the word spoken before his birth. Paul later names that nation according to its beginning as he speaks of its final salvation (Rom 11:26–27). The reminder of God’s love for Jacob casts a shadow, faint though it may be, of the salvation of Israel yet to come.

Predestination and foreordination

By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death (WCF 3.3).

Does Calvinism teach “double predestination”? The answer depends in part on whether we’re posing a semantic question or a conceptual question. And even the semantics are variable.

i) “Predestination” and “foreordination” can be used synonymously. On that definition, Calvinism teaches double predestination.

ii) However, the Westminster Confession uses one term for election and a different term for reprobation. According to Warfield, the reason for this linguistic distinction is that, in 17C usage, “predestination” was a synonym for “election.” Therefore, the Westminster Divines chose a different term for the clause describing reprobation. Yet Warfield says the two terms can also be used interchangeably.

Cf. The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, 2:4-5; 4:125.

iii) At the same time, it doesn’t seem as though “predestination” was a technical term for “election,” because the Confession goes on to specify the objects of “predestination” (“until everlasting life”), as it also specifies the objects of “foreordination” (“to everlasting death”).

So “predestination” and “foreordination” aren’t technical terms for “election” and “reprobation” respectively, otherwise it would be unnecessary to clarify their scope by the additional referents. It’s the meaning of the sentence, not the meaning of one verb or another, that distinguishes them.

In principle, the Confession could just as well say “some men and angels are chosen beforehand to enjoy everlasting life while others are chosen beforehand to endure everlasting death–or something along those lines.

Or we could say “some are predetermined to everlasting life while others are predetermined to everlasting death.

In other words, we could use the same verb for both. What distinguishes the two propositions is not the bare choice of the verb, but the stated referents.

Of course, we do have technical terms for both concepts: “election” and “reprobation.”

iv) It’s also important to avoid the word=concept fallacy. There’s a difference between a semantic distinction and a conceptual distinction. The meaning or dictionary of “predestination,” “foreordination,” “election,” and “reprobation” won’t suffice to explain what they have in common or what differentiates one from another.

For instance, Reformed theologians frequently say election and reprobation are “asymmetrical” in some respects. They are said to have different grounds or different modes of execution. Those are not nuances you can pack into a single word. Rather, that requires a detailed explanation. That can also involve us in different theories of causation and/or determinism. 

Is reprobation conditional or unconditional?

Since this issue continues to crop up, I’ll discuss it from another angle. I’ve often read Arminians claim that Calvinism subscribes to unconditional reprobation. I don’t see them quoting any representative Reformed theologians to that effect. Rather, they apparently infer that if election is unconditional, then, by parity of argument, reprobation must be unconditional. However, that’s a fallacious inference.

The question of whether or not reprobation is unconditional suffers from a couple of ambiguities or equivocations.

i) To begin with, Reformed theologians classically subdivide reprobation into two distinct decrees or divine acts (i.e. timeless mental acts). As Berkhof puts it:

Preterition is a sovereign act of God, an act of his mere good pleasure, in which the demerits of man do not come into consideration, while precondemnation is a judicial act, visiting sin with punishment Even supralapsarians are willing to admit that in condemnation sin is taken into consideration.

Systematic Theology, 116. Turretin has a more detailed analysis. Cf. Institutes, 1:380ff.

Recasting this is philosophical jargon, we’d say preterition is unconditional whereas predamnation is conditional. (Called “predamnation” rather than “damnation” because we’re dealing with God’s timeless decree, whereas damnation occurs in time.)

ii) The term “conditional” is also ambiguous without further definition. For instance, Turretin says:

The question is whether the decree of reprobation is absolute from a cause properly so-called (immediate and external) by which God was influenced out of himself to reprobate man (1:382). 

Here, “absolute” is a synonym for unconditional.

For instance, in 1 Cor 1-3, Paul talks about God disproportionately electing or reprobating certain social classes. One might be tempted to say that makes election conditional, but that’s ambiguous–for in this case, God creates the distinguishing conditions. God determines when, where, and to whom you will be born. So God isn’t electing or reprobating individuals on account of their social class, as if that’s an independent variable. It’s not “conditional” in that sense.

Likewise, both Calvinists and Arminians say faith is a necessary condition of salvation. But in the case of Calvinism, faith is not an external factor which affects or effects the divine response. Rather, faith is a divine gift. That’s a condition which God himself supplies and satisfies.

In both cases, the condition is ultimately contingent or dependent on divine agency. Not something God responds to. Rather, our responsiveness, or lack thereof, is the result of divine agency.

Likewise, God can have reasons for electing one sinner and reprobating another sinners. But these are his reasons. They don’t take their source of origin in the creature. If God differentiates one creature from another, God made them different in the first place.

“Double Predestination”?

I’ve been taking part in a Reformed and Lutheran discussion group that was started by occasional Triablogue commenter Andrew Clover. One of the Lutheran commenters there brought up the question of “double predestination”.

But the concept of “double predestination” does not exist in Reformed doctrine. It is merely a caricature of the Reformed position.

Spurgeon on election

Arminians like to quote Spurgeon allegedly saying “God, save all elect, then elect some more”–or words to that effect. You can find variants of that attributed saying floating around the Internet. Arminians quote this to demonstrate that Calvinists pray like Arminians.

Two issues:

i) The fact that the wording of the statement varies from one Arminian to another is a telltale sign that Arminians are quoting other Arminians rather than quoting Spurgeon directly. They haven’t gone back to the source. If they knew the source, they could give a verbatim quote. Instead, we have Arminians paraphrasing other Arminians paraphrasing what Spurgeon supposedly said.

ii) The Arminian inference is naïve. Spurgeon was a preacher. Preachers consciously indulge in hyperbole to make a point. That doesn’t mean they take their hyperbolic statements at face value.