Unconditional Election in Light of Scripture

Unconditional Election in Light of Scripture

(Vance: Other Side of Calvinism, ).

(Boettner, Predestination, ).

(Seaton, Calvinism, ).

(Palmer, Five Points of Calvinism, ).

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(Steele & Thomas, Five Points of Calvinism, ).

(Hanko, et. al, The Five Points of Calvinism, ).

(Piper, 5 Points, ).

(Beck, The Five Points of Calvinism, ).

(Storms, Chosen for Life, ).

(Canons of Dort, I:7).

(Calvin, Institutes, ).

(Engelsma, Hyper-Calvinism, ).

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(Girardeau, Calvinism and Evangelical Arminianism, ).

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(Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, ).
Calvinism, TULIP, Unconditional Election, election, predestination, foreordination,

The Calvinistic doctrine of Unconditional Election is sometimes said to be the heart of Reformed theology.⁰ It follows logically from the doctrine of Total Depravity.⁰ Lorraine Boettner links the two doctrines with this explanation:

If the doctrine of Total Inability or Original Sin be admitted, the doctrine of Unconditional Election follows by the most inescapable logic. If, as the Scriptures and experience tell us, all men are by nature in a state of guilt and depravity from which they are wholly unable to deliver themselves and have no claim whatever on God for deliverance, it follows that if any are saved God must choose out those who shall be the objects of His grace.⁰

Edwin Palmer concurs:

If men are totally depraved and if some are still saved, then it is obvious that the reason some are saved and some are lost rests entirely with God. All of mankind would remain lost if left to itself and not chosen by God to be saved. … Therefore, if total depravity is Biblically true, then faith and consequent salvation come only when the Holy Spirit goes to work through regeneration. And the decision as to which persons He will work in must rest entirely, one hundred percent, with God, since man, being spiritually dead, cannot ask for help.⁰

So if people are totally depraved so that they cannot even believe in Jesus for eternal life or respond positively to God in any way, then God must unilaterally give eternal life to certain people. Who receives such a blessing? According to Calvinism, God gives eternal life to those whom He chooses to give it. This is the doctrine of election.

The following chapter will provide numerous quotes from Calvinists on how they understand and explain Unconditional Election. After this, we will look carefully at numerous texts from Scripture which are often used by Calvinists to defend the doctrine of Unconditional Election, and will suggest alternative explanations for these texts which fit better with their grammatical, cultural, theological, and historical contexts. Finally, this chapter will close with an explanation of what I believe the Bible teaches about election and predestination.

In Their Words

The basic explanation of Unconditional Election is that God, in eternity past, had an eternal decree by which He predetermined all things that would happen. This decree is related to His foreknowledge, which does not mean that God looked forward in time to see what would happen and then decreed that it would be so, but rather, that God, being omniscient, knew what would happen because He had decided and decreed that it would be so. To clarify what Calvinists mean, they often use the words “foreordination” or “predetermination” instead of foreknowledge, as these words better describes the view that God did not just know what was going to happen before it happened, but actually ordained, decided, or determined what would happen.

Part of this foreknowledge or foreordination is predestination. While foreknowledge refers to God’s knowledge and determination of everything that happens, predestination refers specifically to the destiny of human beings. In eternity past, as part of God’s divine decree, He determined or decided the eternal destiny of every individual person, whether they will spend eternity in heaven or in hell. As such, this predestination is composed of two parts: election and reprobation. Election refers to God’s choice of whom He will redeem, regenerate, and grant eternal life, while reprobation refers to God’s choice of whom He will leave to remain in sin, condemnation, and everlasting destruction.

Often the term election is used as a synonym for predestination. Technically this is incorrect. The term election refers specifically to one aspect of divine predestination: God’s choosing of certain individuals to be saved. The term election has a positive connotation, referring to a benevolent predestination that results in the salvation of those who are elect. Election also has a negative side, called “reprobation,” which involves the predestination of those who are not elect.⁰

Just as with every other system of theology, not every Calvinist would agree completely with the way the terms have been described above. So let us turn to various Calvinistic authors and teachers to allow them to define Unconditional Election and its related terms in their own words.

Foreordination means God’s sovereign plan, whereby He decides all that is to happen in the entire universe. Nothing in this world happens by chance. God is in back of everything. He decides and causes all things to happen that do happen. … Predestination is part of foreordination. While foreordination refers to God’s plan for everything that ever happens, predestination is that part of foreordination that refers to man’s eternal destiny: heaven or hell. Predestination is composed of two parts: election and reprobation. Election concerns those who go to heaven, and reprobation concerns those who go to hell. … Divine election means that God chooses some to go to heaven. Others are passed by and they will go to hell.⁰

The doctrine of election declares that God, before the foundation of the world, chose certain individuals from among the fallen members of Adam’s race to be the objects of His undeserved favor. These, and these only, He purposed to save. God could have chosen to save all men (for He had the power and authority to do so) or He could have chosen to save none (for He was under no obligation to show mercy to any)—but He did neither. Instead, He chose to save some and to exclude others. His eternal choice of particular sinners for salvation was not based upon any forseen act or response on the part of those selected, but was based solely on His own good pleasure and sovereign will. Thus, election was not determined by, or conditioned upon, anything that men would do, but resulted entirely from God’s self-determined purpose.⁰

Election is, therefore, that decree of God which He eternally makes, by which, with sovereign freedom, He chooses to Himself a people, upon whom He determines to set His love, whom He rescues from sin and death through Jesus Christ, unto Himself in everlasting glory.⁰

Election refers to God’s choosing whom to save. It is unconditional in that there is no condition man must meet before God chooses to save him. Man is dead in trespasses and sins. So there is no condition he can meet before God chooses to save him from his deadness.⁰

We mean, therefore, by this doctrine, that God, in eternity, chose or picked out of mankind whom He would save (by means of Christ’s death and the work of the Holy Spirit), for no other reason than His own wise, just, and gracious purpose.⁰

Divine election may be defined as that loving and merciful decision by God the Father to bestow eternal life upon some, but not all, hell-deserving sinners. This decision was made before the foundation of the world and was based not upon any act of will or works of men and women, but solely upon God’s sovereign good pleasure. One does not enter the ranks of the elect by meeting a condition, be it faith or repentance. One enters the ranks of the elect by virtue of God’s free and altogether gracious choice, as a result of which he enables us to repent and believe. Thus, election is both sovereign and unconditional.⁰

Election is the unchangeable purpose of God, whereby, before the foundation of the world, he hath out of mere grace, according to the sovereign good pleasure of his own will, chosen, from the whole human race, which had fallen through their own fault, from their primitive state of rectitude, into sin and destruction, a certain number of persons to redemption in Christ, whom he from eternity appointed the Mediator and Head of the elect, and the foundation of Salvation.⁰

As we saw in the chapter on Total Depravity, many Calvinists believe that regeneration precedes faith. One of the reasons they believe this is because of election. They believe that election also precedes faith.

But faith is not a condition for election. Just the reverse. Election is a condition for faith. It is because God chose us before the foundation of the world that he purchases our redemption at the cross, and then gives us spiritual life through irresistible grace, and brings us to faith.⁰

God’s choice was not based upon foreseen faith. Faith is the result and therefore the evidence of God’s election, not the cause or ground of His choice.⁰

Furthermore, there is wide disagreement among Calvinists about reprobation, which is sometimes referred to as double predestination. Some Calvinists (though not all) hold to reprobation—which is the belief that God not only decided whom He would choose for eternal life, but also chose whom He would send to eternal damnation—while others flatly deny it. Though Calvinists admit that this doctrine is “unpleasant” and “harsh,” they teach it because they believe a balanced view of predestination requires it.⁰ Below are a few quotes from Calvinists who believe and teach the doctrine of reprobation, beginning with John Calvin himself:

Whence does it happen that Adam’s fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God? … The decree is dreadful, I confess. Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created him, and consequently foreknew because he so ordained by his decree.⁰

[Reprobation is] God’s eternal decree that the destiny of certain men shall be everlasting death, whether one views it as God’s passing those men by with the grace of election or as the determination to damn.⁰

From all eternity some were decreed by their sins to come into judgment or condemnation.⁰

We believe that from all eternity God has intended to leave some of Adam’s posterity in their sins, and that the decisive factor in the life of each is to be found only in God’s will.⁰

By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His own glory, some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.⁰

Predestination includes two parts, namely, election and reprobation, the predetermination of both the good and the wicked to their final end, and to certain proximate ends, which are instrumental in the realization of their final destiny.⁰

The Reformed view makes a crucial distinction between God’s positive and negative decrees. God positively decrees the election of some, and he negatively decrees the reprobation of others.⁰

Predestination is, by Calvinist theologians, regarded as a generic decree including under it Election and Reprobation as specific decrees: the former predestinating some human beings, without regard to their merit, to salvation, in order to the glorification of God’s sovereign grace; the later foreordaining some human beings, for their sin, to destruction, in order to the glorification of God’s retributive justice.⁰

Most Calvinists reject double predestination or reprobation, and instead say that God did not actively choose who to send to heaven and who to send to hell, but simply chose out of everyone who was already headed to hell to save a few for heaven. In this way, He does not actively choose who will go to hell, but simply “passes over” them in His choice of who will spend eternity with Him.

From all eternity God decided to save some members of the human race and to let the rest of the human race perish. God made a choice—he chose some individuals to be saved unto everlasting blessedness in heaven, and he chose others to pass over, allowing them to suffer the consequences of their sins, eternal punishment in hell.⁰

Though many Calvinists argue that double predestination is the only logical conclusion to the Calvinist position on God’s election of some (but not all) to receive eternal life, I am not going to belabor the point or try to refute such a dreadful idea since most Calvinists claim that they do not teach or believe it.⁰ Instead, the next section of this chapter will focus on the primary texts that Calvinists use to defend their understanding of election and predestination, and in so doing, will see that while election is a truth of Scripture, the Calvinists have simply misunderstood what the Bible teaches about this beautiful truth.