NOT ALL ARE NEGATIVE, SOME ARE PRO FREE WILL

I was a few months into my studies after a few things fell into place and my jokes didn’t sit right with me any longer. I of course still say “I am a Baptist except for dress and drink”… but a Baptist, nonetheless. I have always joked that I am a 3.0 Calvinist when I read Norman Geisler, and a 4.5 Calvinist when I read James White. NO MORE. Then this sermon hit and I grabbed this from my pastor on a Sunday [who will remain nameless]…

• “Make a choice. Choose this day. In fact, you can choose one of the… He’s not saying that he’s happy if you choose the pagan gods, but he says, in fact, pick one of the pagan gods. Do you know that something that God is extremely kind and gracious to us and that he gave us free will? Did you know that? He didn’t force a relationship on us. He gave us free will. Do you remember what he gave Adam and Eve? Free will. You can make a choice. I’m not gonna force it. Hey, you choose, yeah, you, make the choice.”

When I asked an elder [who will remain nameless] if this pastor really believed this statement he made regarding free will from the pulpit, I got an honest answer of “No.”

— RPT

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Augustine’s perverse reading of the text `God wills all men to be saved’ is not limited to the Encheiridion* and thus cannot be explained away as a slip. On the contrary, as we have seen, it accords with some of his most deeply held views. Elsewhere he will suggest that in the scriptural text `all men’ means only `all the elect,’ or that it means `men of every kind.’⁶⁶ The most pathetic passage on this subject is from the De Correptione et Gratia**.⁶⁷ God, argues Augustine, makes us (that is, those who preach his Gospel) wish all men to be saved. The only conclusion from this extraordinary passage is that the Christian preacher is made by God to be more merciful than God himself.

66. De Praed. Sanct. 3. 7; cf. Retract. L 1. 23. 2-4.
67. For a rejection of the Two Cities thesis see Sage, `La Predestination’, pp. 31-40.

* The Enchiridion (or Handbook) is a short, classic manual of Stoic ethical advice by the Greek philosopher Epictetus, compiled by his student Arrian, focusing on practical wisdom for daily life, particularly distinguishing between what we can control (our thoughts and actions) and what we cannot (external events) to achieve inner peace and virtue.

** On Correction and Grace

R. A. Markus (editor), Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books; Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1972), 238-239

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In order to understand this better theologians have come up with the term “compatibilism” to describe the concurrence of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. Compatibilism is a form of determinism and it should be noted that this position is no less deterministic than hard determinism.

John Hendryx, Compatibilistic Determinism (Accessed 2-5-2026) ARCHIVED 2-5-2026. John Hendryx is the creator and editor of Monergism.com

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“I wish very Frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do so …In Ephesians 1:11, Paul tells us that God works all things, not some things only, after the counsel of his own will.” Gordon H. Clark: “I wish very Frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do so …In Ephesians 1:11, Paul tells us that God works all things, not some things only, after the counsel of his own will.”

Gordon H. Clark, Religion, Reason and Revelation (Nutley, N. J.: Craig Press, 1961), 221

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Ephesians 1:11 goes even further by declaring that God in Christ

“works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Here the Greek word for “works” is energeø, which indicates that God not merely carries all of the universe’s objects and events to their appointed ends but that he actually brings about all things in accordance with his will. In other words, it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex. 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his people’s good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4). This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child: “The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4, NASB ).14 “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other” (Eccl. 7:14, NIV).

Mark R. Talbot (John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds.), Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 42.

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“I need to spell out what I mean by free will: Free will is your capacity to discern different possible paths; weigh their pros and cons; and choose one path because of your deliberations. I believe in free will because I exercise this capacity now and then, for example, when I write a column like this one. I see others exercising the same capacity–including free-will deniers like…” [insert name].

John Horgan

https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/free-will-and-the-sapolsky-paradox

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“Hence we maintain that, by his providence, not heaven and earth and inanimate creatures only, but also the counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined.”

John Calvin, The Institutes, 1.16.8

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“The hand of God rules the interior affections no less than it superintends external actions; nor would God have effected by the hand of man what he decreed, unless he worked in their hearts to make them will before they acted.”

John Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, tr. J. K. S. Reid, p.175f

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“Men do nothing save at the secret instigation of God, and do not discuss and deliberate on anything but what he has previously decreed with himself, and brings to pass by his secret direction.”

John Calvin, The Institutes, 1.18.1

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… how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission. . . . It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them. . . . Who does not tremble at these judgments with which God works in the hearts of even the wicked whatever He will, rewarding them nonetheless according to desert? Again it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good for His mercy’s sake, or to evil according to their merits.

John Calvin, The Eternal Predestination of God, 10:11 — MORE

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God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity, but also at His own pleasure arranged it.

John Calvin, Institutes, trans. H. Beveridge, 232 [3.23.7]

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We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction.

John Calvin, Institutes, trans. H. Beveridge, 210 [3.21.7]

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REPENTANCE

Quite contrary to the impression which the usual theology has spread abroad is the correct definition of repentance, the usual idea being that it means sorrow or agony of heart respecting sin and wrongdoing. The true meaning of the word shows that it is a change of mind; and although there may be nothing to preclude that change being accompanied by grief, yet the sorrow itself is not repentance. Instead, it is the reversal of mind.

Another serious Arminian error respecting this doctrine occurs when repentance is added to faith or believing as a condition of salvation. It is true that repentance can very well be required as a condition of salvation, but then only because the change of mind which it is has been involved when turning from every other confidence to the one needful trust in Christ. Such turning about, of course, cannot be achieved without a change of mind. This vital newness of mind is a part of believing, after all, and therefore it may be and is used as a synonym for believing at times (cf. Acts 17:30; 20:21; 26:20; Rom. 2:4; 2 Tim. 2:25; 2 Pet. 3:9). Repentance nevertheless cannot be added to believing as a condition of salvation, because upwards of 150 passages of Scripture condition salvation upon believing only (cf. John 3:16; Acts 16:31). Similarly, the Gospel by John, which was written that men might believe and believing have life through Christ’s name (John 20:31), does not once use the word repentance. In like manner, the Epistle to the Romans, written to formulate the complete statement of salvation by grace alone, does not use the term repentance in relation to salvation.

Again, confusion over this doctrine arises when it is not made clear that covenant people such as Israel or Christians may repent as a separate act. Throughout the time when the gospel of the kingdom was preached by John the Baptist, Christ, and the Lord’s disciples, there issued a call to repentance which was for none other than the anticipated repentance of that Jewish nation, as Matthew 3:2 has indicated: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This is not a gospel call, but one leading to restoration of a covenant people into its right and original relationship to God (cf. Matt. 4:12–17). In like manner, a Christian, once having sinned, may repent as a separate act, which is something far removed from being saved over again (cf. 2 Cor. 7:8–11).

Repentance itself is one act only and not two. This observation is well illustrated by 1 Thessalonians 1:9–10, “…how ye turned to God from idols.”

Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, vol. VII, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregal Publications, 1976), 265-266.

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4. ONE CONDITION. About 115 passages condition salvation on believing alone, and about 35 simply on faith. There are certain things, however, often added by man to this one and only condition, like the following: believe and repent, believe and be baptized, believe and confess sin, believe and confess Christ publicly, believe and promise a better manner of life, believe and pray for salvation.

Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, vol. VII, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregal Publications, 1976), 273-274.

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What predestination means, in its most elementary form, is that our final destination, heaven or hell, is de­cided by God not only before we get there, but before we are even born. It teaches that our ultimate destiny is in the hands of God. Another way of saying it is this: From all eternity, before we ever live, 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 others he chose to pass over, to allow them to follow the consequences of their sins into eternal torment in hell.

R.C. Sproul, Chosen By God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1986), 22.

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YOUR FREE WILL

^“Do you believe in God?” the old man asked, as if we had known each other forever but had somehow neglected to discuss that one topic. I assumed he wanted reassurance that his departure from this life would be the beginning of some­thing better. I gave a kind answer.

“There has to be a God,” I said. “Otherwise, none of us would be here.” It wasn’t much of a reason, but I figured he didn’t need more.

“Do you believe God is omnipotent and that people have free will?” he asked.

“That’s standard stuff for God. So, yeah.”

“If God is omnipotent, wouldn’t he know the future?” “Sure.”

“If God knows what the future holds, then all our choices are already made, aren’t they? Free will must be an illusion.”

He was clever, but I wasn’t going to fall for that trap. “God lets us determine the future ourselves, using our free will,” I explained.

“Then you believe God doesn’t know the future?”

“I guess not,” I admitted. “But he must prefer not knowing.”

“So you agree that it would be impossible for God to know the future and grant humans free will?”

“I hadn’t thought about it before, but I guess that’s right. He must want us to find our own way, so he inten­tionally tries not to see the future.”

“For whose benefit does God withhold his power to determine the future?” he asked.

“Well, it must be for his own benefit, and ours, too,” I reasoned. “He wouldn’t have to settle for less.”

The old man pressed on. “Couldn’t God give humans the illusion of free will? We’d be just as happy as if we had actual free will, and God would retain his ability to see the future. Isn’t that a better solution for God than the one you suggested?”

“Why would God want to mislead us?”

“If God exists, his motives are certainly unfathomable. No one knows why he grants free will, or why he cares about human souls, or why pain and suffering are necessary parts of life.”

“The one thing I know about God’s motives is that he must love us, right?” I wasn’t convinced of this myself, given all the problems in the world, but I was curious about how he would respond.

“Love? Do you mean love in the way you understand it as a human?”

“Well, not exactly, but basically the same thing. I mean, love is love.”

“A brain surgeon would tell you that a specific part of the brain controls the ability to love. If it’s damaged, people are incapable of love, incapable of caring about others.”

“So?”

“So, isn’t it arrogant to think that the love generated by our little brains is the same thing that an omnipotent being experiences? If you were omnipotent, why would you limit yourself to something that could be reproduced by a little clump of neurons?”

I shifted my opinion to better defend it. “We must feel something similar to God’s type of love, but not the same way God feels it.”

“What does it mean to feel something similar to the way God feels? Is that like saying a pebble is similar to the sun because both are round?” he responded.

“Maybe God designed our brains to feel love the same way he feels it. He could do that if he wanted to.”

“So you believe God wants things. And he loves things, similar to the way humans do. Do you also believe God experiences anger and forgiveness?”

“That’s part of the package,” I said, committing further to my side of the debate.

“So God has a personality, according to you, and it is similar to what humans experience?”

“I guess so.”

“What sort of arrogance assumes God is like people?” he asked.

“Okay, I can accept the idea that God doesn’t have a personality exactly like people. Maybe we just assume God has a personality because it’s easier to talk about it that way. But the important point is that something had to create real­ity. It’s too well-designed to be an accident.”

“Are you saying you believe in God because there are no other explanations?” he asked.

“That’s a big part of it.”

“If a stage magician makes a tiger disappear and you don’t know how the trick could be done without real magic, does that make it real magic?”

“That’s different. The magician knows how it’s done and other magicians know how it’s done. Even the magician’s assistant knows how it’s done. As long as someone knows how it’s done, I can feel confident that it isn’t real magic. I don’t personally need to know how it’s done,” I said.

“If someone very wise knew how the world was designed without God’s hand, could that person convince you that God wasn’t involved?”

“In theory, yes. But a person with that much knowledge doesn’t exist.”

“To be fair, you can only be sure that you don’t know whether that person exists or not.”

GOD’S FREE WILL

^“Does God have free will?” he asked.

“Obviously he does,” I said. It was the most confidence I had felt so far in this conversation. “I’ll admit there’s some ambiguity about whether human beings have free will, but God is omnipotent. Being omnipotent means you can do anything you want. If God didn’t have free will, he wouldn’t be very omnipotent.”

“Indeed. And being omnipotent, God must be able to peer into his own future, to view it in all its perfect detail.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re going to say that if he sees his own future, then his choices are predetermined. Or, if he can’t see the future, then he’s not omnipotent.”

“Omnipotence is trickier than it seems,” he said.

Scott Adams, God’s Debris: A Thought Experiment (Kansas City, KS: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2004), 12-17.

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… it’s true that Adam Harwood does not believe in inherited guilt. He teaches that we all receive a sinful nature from Adam according to Romans 5:12 means we are bent toward sin and live in a broken world. But he also says we are not guilty of Adams sin we are guilty only when we choose to sin according to Ezekiel 18:20 so he accepts original sin as corruption, but he rejects the idea that Adams guilt is automatically ours.

Adam Harwood an Arminian? I think some people call him Arminian just because he disagrees with Calvinism. But he identifies more with the Provisionist or Southern Baptist perspective. Classical Arminians often teach that believers can lose salvation but like Adam Harwood usually hold to eternal security according to John 10:28 & Romans 8:38–39.

I respectfully disagree of your claim that he is “Arminian who believes you can lose salvation” is false…..Your statement…..

“That’s not grace at all”….

Provisionists believe God’s grace is even greater because it is offered to all people according to Titus 2:11. It is not forced on anyone but that God truly invites. A persons salvation is secure in Jesus Christ because salvation rests on His promise, not on our works.

Provisionism teaches true, biblical grace is free, undeserved, open to all, and again — secure in Jesus Christ. The accusations are not true. Adam Harwood believes without inherited guilt. He is not Arminian and he does not teach that salvation can be lost. His view is Provisionism, that is: salvation is by grace through faith, available to all, and secure in Jesus Christ.

(I do not remember where off of Facebook I grabbed this — RPT)

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It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all; for then the effulgence would not answer the reality. For the same reason it is not proper that one should be manifested exceedingly, and another but very little. It is highly proper that the effulgent glory of God should answer his real excellency; that the splendour should be answerable to the real and essential glory, for the same reason that it is proper and excellent for God to glorify himself at all.

Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all. If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from.

How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired, and the sense of it not so great, as we have elsewhere shown. We little consider how much the sense of good is heightened by the sense of evil, both moral and natural. And as it is necessary that there should be evil, because the display of the glory of God could not but be imperfect and incomplete without it, so evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature’s happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect; and the happiness of the creature would be imperfect upon another account also; for, as we have said, the sense of good is comparatively dull and flat, without the knowledge of evil.

Jonathan Edwards via John Piper, “Newly Published Edwards’ Essay” (Accessed 2-5-2026) via Desiring God. ARCHIVED 2-5-2026

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Plainly it was God’s will that sin should enter this world, otherwise it would not have entered, for nothing happens save as God has eternally decreed. Moreover, there was more than a bare permission, for God only permits that which He has purposed.

A.W. Pink, Sovereignty of God (chapter 8, SOVEREIGNTY AND HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY)

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Not only did God have a perfect foreknowledge of the outcome of Adam’s trial; not only did His omniscient eye see Adam eating of the forbidden fruit, but He decreed beforehand that he should do so

A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, Appendix II, The Case of Adam, p. 283

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Total Depravity: The whole of man’s being is corrupted by sin and he is, therefore, incapable of doing any eternal spiritual good.

Calvinism’s understanding of total depravity includes a compatibilist view of human nature, unconditional election, and limited and selective regeneration. This means the only interpretive option Calvinism permits for God to be able to redeem such a compatibly defined totally depraved person is that God must give him a new nature (variously called quickening, regeneration, or restoration), which he is pleased to do only for the limited unconditionally elect; thereby, guarantying their subsequent free exercise of faith.

Viewing man from a compatibilist perspective means that while fallen man freely chooses to sin, he cannot freely choose to believe in the gospel unless God gives him a new nature and past that assures he will freely choose to exercise faith in Christ; however, in either state, man cannot choose to do other than he did choose because while freely choosing, he has no salvific choice.

Although it seems most Calvinists in the SBC do believe in regeneration prior to faith, it is true not all Calvinists depend upon regeneration preceding faith. Nevertheless, they all do depend upon on a preceding determinative work of God that changes the elect’s past. This work of God changes their nature from what it was before to something different after the work. This is due to their commitment to compatibilism. Technically, compatibilism requires that given the same past, man cannot choose, in the moral moment of decision, other than he did in fact choose.

Consequently, while some may seek to avoid reliance upon a new nature preceding faith, if they are going to be consistent compatibilists, they must believe God works determinatively in the unconditionally elect so as to change man’s past in order that he can transition from only being able to reject Christ to only being able to accept Christ. Therefore, regardless of what term they choose to employ, it never changes the deterministic nature of salvation nor its limited accessibility. This pre-faith work necessary to exercising faith is intentionally withheld by God from the non-elect.

Ronnie W. Rogers, Does God Love All or Some? Comparing Biblical Extensivism and Calvinism’s Exclusivism (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2019), 30-31.

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Some Calvinists, however, in the name of exalting God’s sovereignty, accuse God of causing all things, including sin. R. C. Sproul Jr., for example, says, “Every Bible-believing Christian must conclude at least that God in some sense desired that man would fall into sin. . . . I am not accusing God of sinning; I am suggesting that he created sin.”^[1] Sproul Jr. describes God as “the Culprit” that caused Eve to sin in the garden.^[2] Sproul Jr.’s argument is that God changed Eve’s inclination to cause her to sin and thus created sin so that His mercy and wrath may be gloriously displayed. […] Scripture also denies that God is the author of evil:

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. . . . Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow (Jas 1:13, 16–17 NASB).

[1] 75. R. C. Sproul Jr., Almighty in Authority: Understanding the Sovereignty of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 53–54
[2] 76. Ibid., 51.

Page 148 of “Whosoever Will: A Biblical-Theological Critique of Five-Point Calvinism”

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The historical person of Saul of Tarsus is the necessary starting point to understand not only the saint but also his writings preserved by the Church in the New Testament. Saul was a man—a man formed by a particular culture in a particular time and place, with a particular education. He operated, during his entire life, within the Roman Jewish world. Yet his letters, or epistles, have long since ceased being communications from a person to communities he had helped found or was seeking to advise. Instead, they have become theological treatises for abstract arguments disconnected from any historical reality. Discussions of the Book of Romans, for example, now enter the realm of speculation over the potential logical order of various decrees in the mind of God—not any actual concerns of Christians, both Jewish and former pagans, in the capital city of the Roman Empire.

Saul of Tarsus lived in the first century AD and spent the vast majority of his life in the Eastern Roman Empire. As a Jewish man who inherited Roman citizenship from his father, he occupied a liminal position in Roman society. Jewish religion, in all its manifold forms, never fit neatly within the religious and cultural milieu of Roman civilization. This reality led to the general oppression of the Jewish people as noncitizens and to occasional outbreaks within St. Paul’s lifetime of more significant forms of persecution. Near the time of his martyrdom, these tensions erupted into open Jewish revolt, leading to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and a brutal, systemic de-judification project throughout Palestine.

Nevertheless, St. Paul’s citizenship exempted him from any number of the indignities suffered by his people. Yet Paul was never a Roman collaborator, nor did he remain long a member or supporter of the violent resistance groups that proliferated during his lifetime. He sought to lead a Jewish way of life and of being in the world despite the external pressures of Rome. As communities formed surrounding his preaching, he led and advised them to adopt the same tack—living out quiet lives in pious simplicity that would let the authorities safely ignore them.

Saint Paul considered himself a Pharisee throughout his life; even Christianity as a label referred to one of many Judaisms extant in the period.¹ His encounters with, and commissioning by, the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth caused Paul to identify Him with a particular understanding of the Jewish Messiah. The coming of the Messiah, then, caused Paul to see his life and the lives of the other apostles as standing at the inauguration of a new epoch—an epoch in which he had been called to play a particular role in the working out of the salvation of the world. He sought, more than anything, to faithfully answer this call with his life.

[….]

The Protestant Reformation not only brought about but, in many ways, consisted of a radical reinterpretation of the epistles of St. Paul. This sixteenth-century mode of interpretation, now known somewhat ironically as the “old perspective on Paul,” has more recently fallen out of vogue even in Protestant circles, which are arguably dependent on it. A number of scholars from a Protestant background, beginning in the latter half of the twentieth century, formed what they called the “new perspective on Paul.” They focused on questioning certain basic distinctions of the Protestant Reformation based on a renewed knowledge of the facts on the ground in first-century Palestinian Judaism. As this move to get beyond Reformation-era approaches to reading and understanding St. Paul has gained strength and confidence, it has become common to refer to these views as the “original perspective on Paul.”

The new (“original”) perspective represented a movement to overcome a stereotyped, ahistorical reading of St. Paul’s writings that had become Protestant orthodoxy—with any deviation from that ahistorical approach risking the label of “heresy.” It was not long before various “post-new perspective” movements began that were more comfortable abandoning entirely what is ultimately Martin Luther’s reading of Paul for a more contextual understanding. These movements have culminated in an approach called “Paul within Judaism.” This view of Paul as writing within Judaism rather than participating in the founding of a new religion— or even being the founder of Christianity himself—has opened new vistas of interpretation. This movement has included not only Christian and secular scholars from a variety of backgrounds but also a number of prominent Jewish scholars.

From the introduction of V. Rev. Dr. Stephen De Young’s book, SAINT PAUL THE PHARISEE: Jewish Apostle to All Nations (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2024), pp 6-7, 8 (of my digital copy).

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Here is my view: God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, What doest thou? Mans will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.

Perhaps a homely illustration might help us to understand. An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of sovereignty.

On board the liner are several scores of passengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port.

Both freedom and sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with mans freedom and the sovereignty of God. The mighty liner of Gods sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history. God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfilment of those eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began. We do not know all that is included in those purposes, but enough has been disclosed to furnish us with a broad outline of things to come and to give us good hope and firm assurance of future well-being.

A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1961), 110-111.

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Those issues involving the relationship of sovereignty and human responsibility become acute in several ways. First, views differ in relation to choice or ‘free will’, the belief that the human will has an inherent power to choose between alternatives. In opposition to determinism, the will is said to be free from necessary causation (libertarianism), or the will coexists with all events being determined by previous states of affairs (compatibilism). Calvinists agree that free agency is necessary to human nature, but insist that moral choices can only take place according to the condition of human nature as fallen and not in some neutral state. Human depravity necessitates moral inability. They deny absolute autonomy, insisting on prevenient grace to enable the will to respond. Classical Arminians agree, but insist that prevenient grace is not coercive. Some later theologians (misleadingly classified as ‘Arminians’) disagreed with Arminius by defending a doctrine of natural free will.

D. W. H. Thomas, “Sovereignty of God,” in New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic, ed. Martin Davie et al. (London; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press; InterVarsity Press, 2016), 859–860.

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“It may occasion some surprise to discover that the doctrine of Predestination was not made a matter of special study until near the end of the fourth century. The earlier church fathers placed chief emphasis on good works such as faith, repentance, almsgiving, prayers, submission to baptism, etc., as the basis of salvation. They of course taught that salvation was through Christ; yet they assumed that man had full power to accept or reject the Gospel. Some of their writings contain passages in which the sovereignty of God is recognized; yet along side of those are others which teach the absolute freedom of the human will. Since they could not reconcile the two they would have denied the doctrine of Predestination and perhaps also that of God’s absolute Foreknowledge. They taught a kind of synergism in which there was a co-operation between grace and free will. It was hard for man to give up the idea that he could work out his own salvation. But at last, as a result of a long, slow process, he came to the great truth that salvation is a sovereign gift which has been bestowed irrespective of merit; that it was fixed in eternity; and that God is the author in all of its stages. This cardinal truth of Christianity was first clearly seen by Augustine, the great Spirit-filled theologian of the West. In his doctrines of sin and grace, he went far beyond the earlier theologians, taught an unconditional election of grace, and restricted the purposes of redemption to the definite circle of the elect.”

Loraine Boettner, Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, Chapter XXVIII “Calvinism in History”

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When we say that God is Sovereign in the exercise of His love, we mean that He loves whom He chooses. God does not love everybody.

A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God,  Chapter One – GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY DEFINED

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And I have my own private opinion, that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and him crucified, unless you preach what now-a-days is called Calvinism.  I have my own ideas, and those I always state boldly.  It is a nickname to call it Calvinism.  Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else.

Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Sermons, vol. I (Baker Books, reprinted 2007), 88-89.

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One aspect of Augustine’s understanding of grace needs further comment. As human beings were incapable of saving themselves, and as God gave his gift of grace to some (but not all), it followed that God had “preselected” those who would be saved. Developing hints of this idea to be found in the New Testament, Augustine developed a doctrine of predestination. The term “predestination” refers to God’s original or eternal decision to save some, and not others. It was this aspect of Augustine’s thought which many of his contemporaries, not to mention his successors, found unacceptable. It need hardly be said that there is no direct equivalent in Pelagius’s thought.

Alister E. McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought (Malden, MA: Wiley & Sons LTD, 2013), 34.

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CS LEWIS was another huge influence on my apologetic life. I noted in his book, The Problem of Pain, this part from chapter 3 and 4,

“Divine Goodness”

“Human Wickedness”

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Even the fall of Adam, and through him the fall of the race, was not by chance or accident, but was so ordained in the secret counsels of God.

Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 234

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Surely, if God had not willed the fall, He could, and no doubt would, have prevented it; but He did not prevent it: ergo He willed it. And if He willed it, He certainly decreed it

Jerome Zanchius, The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination, Ch. II, Sec. II, Par. 4

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Also, Calvinists often affirm that Adam was free before the Fall. But again, I always speak of freedom relative to God, and from this perspective, I would say that Adam had no freedom whatsoever even before the Fall. To be “free” from sin is irrelevant. The issue is whether Adam was free from God to choose to remain free from sin – he was not. In addition, I would not say that God permitted Adam to fall, but that God caused it.

Vicent Cheung, The Author of Sin (WEBSITE), last accessed 7/29/2025. ARCHIVED 2-5-2026

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Augustine said, I still, in my fallenness, have the ability to choose what I want, but in my heart there’s no desire for God. I have lost any desire for the things of God. If I’m left to myself, the desires of my heart are only wicked continuously. My heart and my soul are dead to the things of God.

I can listen to preaching, I can hear hymns, I can see — I can do all those things and see other people weeping and in ecstasy and all moved by all kinds of religious overtones and consideration.

It leaves me cold.

My heart has calluses on it. It’s recalcitrant.

My neck is stiff.

I’m not moved by anything that has anything to do with God. That’s our natural state. The Bible says that we are dead to the things of God in our fallen condition. Original sin deadens the soul to the things of God.

God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth should not perish, but have everlasting life. And I have people quote that to me, to say man is not fallen to such a degree that he’s lost his power to choose Christ, because that verse says that whosoever believeth will not perish, but have everlasting life.

Now, what does that verse teach us about the extent of the fall of man? Absolutely nothing. It doesn’t say who will believe in Christ. All it says is, if you do A, if you believe, you will not perish, and you will have everlasting — you will live forever.

But the question still is left, Why does one person believe and another person not believe?

Augustine said, Now, you’re dead in your sins and trespasses. You don’t have any desire for Christ, and the only way you will ever choose Christ is if God melts your heart, if God softens that stone-cold, recalcitrant heart, if God the Holy Spirit rapes your soul and puts in you a desire for Christ.

That’s what has to happen.

According to Augustine.

R.C. Sproul and his Augustinian view of Irresistible Grace. (Listen at RPT)

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5. REPROBATION

Statement—Comments by Calvin, Luther, and Warfield—Proof from Scripture—Based on the Doctrine of Original Sin—No Injustice is Done to the Non-Elect—State of the Heathens— Purposes of the Decree of Reprobation—Arminians Center Attack on this Doctrine—Under no Obligation to Explain all These Things.

The doctrine of absolute Predestination of course logically holds that some are foreordained to death as truly as others are foreordained to life. The very terms “elect” and “election” imply the terms “non-elect” and “reprobation.” When some are chosen out others are left not chosen. The high privileges and glorious destiny of the former are not shared with the latter. This, too, is of God. 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. As Mozley has said, the whole race after the fall was “one mass of perdition,” and “it pleased God of His sovereign mercy to rescue some and to leave others where they were; to raise some to glory, giving them such grace as necessarily qualified them for it, and abandon the rest, from whom He withheld such grace, to eternal punishments.”⁵⁰

The chief difficulty with the doctrine of Election of course arises in regard to the unsaved; and the Scriptures have given us no extended explanation of their state. Since the mission of Jesus in the world was to save the world rather than to judge it, this side of the matter is less dwelt upon.

In all of the Reformed creeds in which the doctrine of Reprobation is dealt with at all it is treated as an essential part of the doctrine of Predestination. The Westminster Confession, after stating the doctrine of election, adds: “The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the inscrutable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.”⁵¹

Those who hold the doctrine of Election but deny that of Reprobation can lay but little claim to consistency. To affirm the former while denying the latter makes the decree of predestination an illogical and lop-sided decree. The creed which states the former but denies the latter will resemble a wounded eagle attempting to fly with but one wing. In the interests of a “mild Calvinism” some have been inclined to give up the doctrine of Reprobation, and this term (in itself a very innocent term) has been the entering wedge for harmful attacks upon Calvinism pure and simple. “Mild Calvinism” is synonymous with sickly Calvinism, and sickness, if not cured, is the beginning of the end.

Comments by Calvin, Luther, and Warfield

Calvin did not hesitate to base the reprobation of the lost, as well as the election of the saved, on the eternal purpose of God. We have already quoted him to the effect that “not all men are created with a similar destiny but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say, he is predestinated either to life or to death.” And again he says, “There can be no election without its opposite, reprobation.”⁵² That the latter raises problems which are not easy to solve, he readily admits, but advocates it as the only intelligent and Scriptural explanation of the facts.

Luther also as certainly as Calvin attributes the eternal perdition of the wicked, as well as the eternal salvation of the righteous, to the plan of God. “This mightily offends our rational nature,” he says, “that God should, of His own mere unbiased will, leave some men to themselves, harden them and condemn them; but He gives abundant demonstration, and does continually, that this is really the case; namely, that the sole cause why some are saved, and others perish, proceeds from His willing the salvation of the former, and the perdition of the latter, according to that of St. Paul, ‘He hath mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth.”‘ And again, “It may seem absurd to human wisdom that God should harden, blind, and deliver up some men to a reprobate sense; that He should first deliver them over to evil, and condemn them for that evil; but the believing, spiritual man sees no absurdity at all in this; knowing that God would be never a whit less good, even though He should destroy all men.” He then goes on to say that this must not be understood to mean that God finds men good, wise, obedient, and makes them evil, foolish, and obdurate, but that they are already depraved and fallen and that those who are not regenerated, instead of becoming better under the divine commands and influences, only react to become worse. In reference to Romans IX, X, XI, Luther says that “all things whatever arise from and depend upon the Divine appointment, whereby it was preordained who should receive the word of life and who should disbelieve it, who should be delivered from their sins and who should be hardened in them, who should be justified and who condemned.”⁵³

“The Biblical writers,” says Dr. Warfield, “are as far as possible from obscuring the doctrine of election because of any seemingly unpleasant corollaries that flow from it. On the contrary, they expressly draw the corollaries which have often been so designated, and make them a part of their explicit teaching. Their doctrine of election, they are free to tell us, for example, does certainly involve a corresponding doctrine of preterition. The very term adopted in the New Testament to express it—eklegomai, which, as Meyer justly says (Ephesians 1:4), ‘always has, and must of logical necessity have, a reference to others to whom the chosen would, without the ekloga, still belong’—embodies a declaration of the fact that in their election others are passed by and left without the gift of salvation; the whole presentation of the doctrine is such as either to imply or openly to assert, on its very emergence, the removal of the elect by the pure grace of God, not merely from a state of condemnation, but out of the company of the condemned—a company on whom the grace of God has no saving effect, and who are therefore left without hope in their sins; and the positive just reprobation of the impenitent for their sins is repeatedly explicitly taught in sharp contrast with the gratuitous salvation of the elect despite their sins.”⁵⁴

And again he says: “The difficulty which is felt by some in following the apostle’s argument here (Romans 11 f), we may suspect, has its roots in part in a shrinking from what appears to them an arbitrary assignment of men to diverse destinies without consideration of their desert. Certainly St. Paul as explicitly affirms the sovereignty of reprobation as election,—if these twin ideas are, indeed, separable even in thought; if he represents God as sovereignly loving Jacob, he represents Him equally as sovereignly hating Esau; if he declares that He has mercy on whom He will, He equally declares that He hardens whom He will. Doubtless the difficulty often felt here is, in part, an outgrowth of an insufficient realization of St. Paul’s basal conception of the state of men at large as condemned sinners before an angry God. It is with a world of lost sinners that he represents God as dealing; and out of that world building up a Kingdom of Grace. Were not all men sinners, there might still be an election, as sovereign as now; and there being an election, there would still be as sovereign a rejection; but the rejection would not be a rejection to punishment, to destruction, to eternal death, but to some other destiny consonant to the state in which those passed by should be left. It is not indeed, then, because men are sinners that men are left unelected; election is free, and its obverse of rejection must be equally free; but it is solely because men are sinners that what they are left to is destruction. And it is in this universalism of ruin rather than in a universalism of salvation that St. Paul really roots his theodicy. When all deserve death it is a marvel of pure grace that any receive life; and who shall gainsay the right of Him who shows this miraculous mercy, to have mercy on whom He will, and whom He will to harden?”⁵⁵

50. The Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, p. 297.
51. Ch. III: Sec. 7
52. Institutes, Book III, Ch. 23.
53. In Praefat, and Epist. ad Rom., quoted by Zanchius, Predestination, p. 92.
54. B.B. Warfield, Biblical Doctrines, art. Predestination, p. 64.
55. Biblical Doctrines. p. 54.

Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1932), 104-108.

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Worse yet, the hidden/revealed wills approach appears to make God out to be hypocritical, which is a fifth problem. God universally offers a salvation that He has no intention for all to receive. Reformed soteriology teaches that the gospel is offered to all, but efficacious grace is given only to the elect.⁴⁶ The limits of salvation are set by the sovereign and secret choice of God. Numerous times—through the prophets, the Savior, and the apostles—God publicly reveals a desire for Israel’s salvation while secretly seeing to it they will not repent. Calvin, citing Augustine, states that since we do not know who is elect and who is reprobate we should desire the salvation of all.⁴⁷ Shank retorts, “But why? If this be not God’s desire, why should it be Calvin’s? Why does Calvin wish to be more gracious than God?”48

Which brings us to a sixth and fundamental objection to the hidden/revealed wills paradigm: it fails to face the very problems it was intended to address. It avoids the very dilemma decretal theology creates. Peterson, in his defense of the Reformed position on God’s two wills, states, “God does not save all sinners, for ultimately he does not intend to save all of them. The gift of faith is necessary for salvation, yet for reasons beyond our ken, the gift of faith has not been given to all.”⁴⁹ But then he concludes, “While God commands all to repent and takes no delight in the death of the sinner, all are not saved because it is not God’s intention to give his redeeming grace to all.”⁵⁰ I must be candid and confess that to me the last quote makes no sense.

Let us remember that there is no disagreement about human responsibility. Molinists, Calvinists, Arminians, and all other orthodox Christians agree that the lost are lost because of their own sin. But that is not the question at hand. The question is not, “Why are the lost lost?” but “Why aren’t the lost saved?” The nasty, awful, “deep-dark-dirty-little-secret” of Calvinism is that it teaches there is one and only one answer to the second question, and it is that God does not want them saved.⁵¹ Molinism is sometimes accused of having similar problems,⁵² but Reformed theology has the distinction of making this difficulty the foundational cornerstone for its understanding of salvation.

46. See T. R. Schreiner and B. A. Ware, “Introduction” in The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will, 12. They affirm that efficacious grace is given only to the elect: “Our understanding of God’s saving grace is very different. We contend that Scripture does not teach that all people receive grace in equal measure, even though such a democratic notion is attractive today. What Scripture teaches is that God’s saving grace is set only upon some, namely, those whom, in his great love, he elected long ago to save, and that this grace is necessarily effective in turning them to belief.”
47. J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster, [1559] 1960), 3.23.14.
48. R. Shank, Elect in the Son (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1989), 166.
49. R. Peterson and M. Williams, Why I Am Not an Arminian (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 130.
50. Ibid.
51. Both the point and the phrase come from Walls and Dongell, Why I Am Not a Calvinist, 186–87. Cf. Daane, The Freedom of God, 184. Both Dort and Westminster warn about preaching decretal theology publicly. Many thoughtful Calvinists concede that the moral and logical problems with the doctrine of reprobation are irresolvable. See P. Jewett, Election and Predestination (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 76–77, 99–100; and T. R. Schreiner, “Does Scripture Teach Prevenient Grace in the Wesleyan Sense?” in Schreiner and Ware, The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will, 381–82.
52. See J. Walls, “Is Molinism as Bad as Calvinism?” Faith and Philosophy 7 (1990):85–98.

Kenneth Keathley, Salvation and the Sovereignty: A Molinist Approach (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2010), 57-58.

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“reprobation,” the decision of God to pass over those who will not be saved, and to punish them for their sins. As will be explained below, election and reprobation are different in several important respects, and it is important to distinguish these so that we do not think wrongly about God or his activity.

The term predestination is also frequently used in this discussion. In this textbook, and in Reformed theology generally, predestination is a broader term and includes the two aspects of election (for believers) and reprobation (for unbelievers). However, the term double predestination is not a helpful term because it gives the impression that both election and reprobation are carried out in the same way by God and have no essential differences between them, which is certainly not true. Therefore, the term double predestination is not generally used by Reformed theologians, though it is sometimes used to refer to Reformed teaching by those who criticize it. The term double predestination will not be used in this book to refer to election and reprobation, since it blurs the distinctions between them and does not give an accurate indication of what is actually being taught. [670]

[….]

When we understand election as God’s sovereign choice of some persons to be saved, then there is necessarily another aspect of that choice, namely, God’s sovereign decision to pass over others and not to save them. This decision of God in eternity past is called reprobation. Reprobation is the sovereign decision of God before creation to pass over some persons, in sorrow deciding not to save them, and to punish them for their sins, and thereby to manifest his justice.

In many ways the doctrine of reprobation is the most difficult of all the teachings of Scripture for us to think about and to accept, because it deals with such horrible and eternal consequences for human beings made in the image of God. The love that God gives us for our fellow human beings and the love that he commands us to have toward our neighbor cause us to recoil against this doctrine, and it is right that we feel such dread in contemplating it.

[….]

In spite of the fact that we recoil against this doctrine, we must be careful of our attitude toward God and toward these passages of Scripture. We must never begin to wish that the Bible was written in another way, or that it did not contain these verses.

Moreover, if we are convinced that these verses teach reprobation, then we are obligated both to believe it and accept it as fair and just of God, even though it still causes us to tremble in horror as we think of it. [684-685]

Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Bible Doctrine (Leicester LE17GP, Great Britain: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994; and, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), 670, 684-685.

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Reprobation. Derived from the Latin reprobatus, the past participle of the verb reprobare, “to reprove,” this term refers to God’s having condemned the nonelect to eternal punishment for their sins. Calvin set forth this doctrine very precisely in Institutes of the Christian Religion (3.23.1–3.24), and while he regarded it as dreadful, he denied that it was to be avoided, for it is clearly taught in the Scriptures. He cites various instances, such as the divine choice of Jacob and rejection of Esau, even before the twins were born (Gen. 25:21– 23; Mal. 1:2–3; Rom. 9:10–15), God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (Exod. 4:21; 10:20, 27; Rom. 9:17–18), and Paul’s statement in Romans 9:18–21 concerning God’s ability to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor. He also insists that this is not just a matter of God’s “passing over” the nonelect but actual hardening to resist the gospel. Yet he insists that because we cannot comprehend the full counsel of God, we must simply believe, knowing that the Judge of all the earth will do what is right (Gen. 18:25). He also warns that this doctrine must be dealt with very carefully lest it discourage Christians and give unbelievers an excuse for rejecting the gospel call.

Moderate Calvinists deny that there is equal ultimacy to the decrees of election and reprobation. Hence reprobation is fundamentally a “passing over.” God’s election secures the elect’s salvation, whereas the nonelect are left in their lostness and thus responsible for their own condemnation.

Arminian theologians, of course, reject the entire Calvinist schema, founding God’s decrees of election and reprobation on God’s foreknowledge of how one will respond to the gospel: those who respond favorably secure election for themselves, and those who reject the gospel are reprobated.

See also Elect, Election; Predestination; Preterition

Bibliography. G. C. Berkouwer, Divine Election; H. R. Boer, The Doctrine of Reprobation in the Christian Reformed Church; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology; C. H. Pinnock, ed., Grace Unlimited.

S. Reid, “Reprobation,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1984), 1012-1013.

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Dr. William Lane Craig argues that, against the determinism on which reprobation is based, five objections can be raised: (1) “[It] cannot offer a coherent interpretation of Scripture,” (2) “cannot be rationally affirmed,” (3) “makes God the author of sin and denies human responsibility,” (4) “nullifies human agency,” and (5) “makes reality into a farce.”

1. Universal, divine, causal determinism cannot offer a coherent interpretation of Scripture. The classical Reformed divines recognize this They acknowledge that the reconciliation of scriptural texts affirming human freedom and contingency with scriptural texts affirming divine sovereignty is inscrutable. Now, Helseth does manage to reconcile universal, divine, causal determinism with human freedom by interpreting freedom in compatibilistic terms. Compatibilism entails determinism. The problem is that adopting compatibilism achieves reconciliation only at the expense of denying what these scriptural texts seem clearly to affirm: genuine indeterminacy and contingency. It is the mirror image of the open theist’s “reconciliation” of these two textual traditions by his denial of God’s meticulous providence.
2. Universal causal determinism cannot be rationally affirmed. There is a sort of dizzying, self-defeating character to determinism. For if one comes to believe that determinism is true, one has to believe that the reason he has come to believe it is simply that he was determined to do so. One has not in fact been able to weigh the arguments pro and con and freely make up one’s mind on that basis. The difference between the person who weighs the arguments for determinism and rejects them and the person who weighs them and accepts them is wholly that one was determined by causal factors outside himself to believe, and the other not to believe. When you come to realize that your decision to believe in determinism was itself determined and that even your present realization of that fact right now is likewise determined, a sort of vertigo sets in, for everything that you think, even this very thought itself, is outside your control. Determinism could be true, but it is very hard to see how it could ever be rationally affirmed, since its affirmation undermines the rationality of its affirmation.
3. Universal, divine determinism makes God the author of sin and denies human responsibility. Curiously, Bavinck admits that if we construe divine conservation in terms of continual re-creation, “All created beings would then exist in appearance only and be devoid of all independence, freedom, and responsibility. God himself would be the cause of sin.”¹¹⁴ But there is no more independence, freedom, and responsibility on the deterministic view than on the re-creation view. For in contrast to the Molinist view of simultaneous concurrence, the deterministic view holds that even the movement of the human will is caused by God. God moves people to choose evil, and they cannot do otherwise. God determines their choices and makes them do wrong. If it is evil to make another person do wrong, then in this view God not only is the cause of sin and evil, but he becomes evil himself, which is absurd. By the same token, all human responsibility for sin has been removed, for our choices are not really up to us: God causes us to make them. We cannot be responsible for our actions, for nothing we think or do is up to us. Helseth’s response? “The mechanics of how God can be the efficient cause of sin without actually doing, and thus being culpable for, sin is inscrutable.”
4. Universal, divine determinism nullifies human agency. Since our choices are not up to us but are caused by God, human beings cannot be said to be real agents. They are mere instruments by means of which God acts to produce some effect, much like a man using a stick to move a stone. Of course, secondary causes retain all their properties and powers as intermediate causes, as the Reformed divines remind us, just as a stick retains its properties and powers that make it suitable for the purposes of the one who uses it. Reformed thinkers need not be occasionalists like Malebranche. But these intermediate causes are not agents themselves but mere instrumental causes, for they have no power to initiate action. Hence, Yandell’s claim that it is dubious that in divine determinism there really is more than one agent in the world seems quite justified. Helseth’s response that “Reformed believers are not persuaded that ‘omnicausality’ necessarily entails ‘monocausality’ “ tells us merely about the psychology of Reformed believers rather than the shortcomings of Yandell’s objection and in any case misconstrues the objection by conflating “monocausality” (which need not follow from divine determinism) and “monoagency” (which does follow.) Helseth’s lengthy quotation from Warfield affirms “the reality and real efficiency of all second causes … as the proximate producers of the effects that take place in the world” but does not answer the objection that in a deterministic world there is but one agent: God. I suspect that since Helseth believes that there really is only one primary cause in reality, he would at the end of the day agree that there is but one agent in reality. This conclusion not only goes against our knowledge of ourselves as agents but also makes it inexplicable why God then treats us as agents, holding us responsible for what he caused us and used us to do.
5. Universal, divine determinism makes reality into a farce. The whole world becomes a vain and empty spectacle. There are no free agents in rebellion against God, whom God seeks to win through his love, and no one who freely responds to that love and freely gives his love and praise to God in return. The whole spectacle is a charade whose only real actor is God Himself. Far from glorifying God, Helseth’s view, I am convinced, denigrates God for engaging in such a farcical charade. It is deeply insulting to God to think that he would create beings that are in every respect causally determined by him and then treat them as though they were free agents, punishing them for the wrong actions he made them do or loving them as though they were freely responding agents. God would be like a child who sets up his toy soldiers and moves them about his play world, pretending that they are real persons whose every motion is not in fact of his own doing and pretending that they merit praise or blame. I am certain that Helseth will bristle at such a comparison. But why it is inapt for the doctrine of universal, divine, causal determinism remains for me inscrutable.

William Lane Craig, “Response to Paul Kjoss Helseth’s ‘God Causes All Things,’” in Four Views on Divine Providence, ed. Dennis W. Jowers (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 58–62.

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“The nasty problem for the Calvinist [is] . . . . If God can and does choose to insure the salvation of some, why then does he not insure the salvation of all? [35]

[….]

The only answer I can give to this question is that I don’t know. I have no idea why God saves some but not all. I don’t doubt for a moment that God has the power to save all but I know that he does not choose to save all I don’t know why.

One thing I do know. If it pleases God to save some and not all there is nothing wrong with that. God is not under obligation to save anybody If he chooses to save some, that in no way obligates him to save the rest. Again the Bible insists that it is God’s divine prerogative to have mercy upon whom he will have mercy. [37]

R.C. Sproul, Chosen By God: Know God’s Perfect Plan for His Glory and His Children (Wheaton, IL: Tyndal House Publishers, 1986), 35,37.

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DOES ELECTION NECESSARILY IMPLY REPROBATION?

This question may be rephrased as follows: does God have the same caus­ative relation to the non-election of the non-elect as He does to the elec­tion of the elect? To this question three answers have been given.

First, some have answered clearly and unhesitatingly “yes.” Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) declared: “Predestination is twofold, either of the elect to rest or of the reprobate to death.”⁷⁶ Gottschalk of Orbais (c. 805-c. 868) taught a strict doctrine of double predestination with “an obsession that sometimes seems to turn into morbid joy over the condemnation of the reprobate.”⁷⁷ Martin Luther seems to have held to reprobation inasmuch as he asserted that God’s foreknowledge is not contingent, but necessary, and that necessity means immutability and moral responsibility, not compulsion. Luther emphasized God’s hatred of Esau and Judas’s re­sponsibility for his destiny.⁷⁸ Calvin declared that by “predestination” “God adopts some to hope of life, and sentences others to eternal death.” “For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreor­dained for some, eternal damnation for others.”⁷⁹ He held that “election itself could not stand except as set over against reprobation.” “Therefore, those whom God passes over, he condemns; and this he does for no other reason than that he wills to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his own children.”⁸⁰ Calvin even asserted: The decree [of reprobation] indeed is dreadful, I confess.”⁸¹ Ford Lewis Battles (1915-­79), Calvin’s modern translator, has commented: “Calvin is awestruck but unrelenting in his declaration that God is the author of reprobation.”⁸² Calvin sought to use Isa. 6:9-10 to support his teaching that the reprobate were “reprobate by the secret counsel of God before they were born,”⁸³ and he concluded concerning the fact that “the reprobate are the vessels of the just wrath of God, and the elect vessels of his compassion” that such distinction is grounded “in the pure will of God alone, which is the supreme rule of justice.”⁸⁴

According to Jerome Zanchi, God eternally decreed “to leave some of Adam’s fallen posterity in their sins” so as “to exclude them from the participation of Christ and His benefits.” These were also “ordained to continue in their natural blindness” and “hardness of heart” to “infernal death.” Their reprobation was not due to divine foreknowledge of the future sins of the reprobate but “to the Sovereign will and determinating pleasure of God.”⁸⁵ The Irish Articles of Religion (1615) declared con­cerning predestination to life and reprobation to death that of both groups “there is a certain number, known only to God, which can neither be increased or diminished.”⁸⁶  John Gill taught both preterition and the “pre-damnation” of the nonelect to “condemnation for sin,” that is, both angels and humans,⁸⁷ and Shedd concluded that “whoever holds the doctrine of election, must hold the antithetic doctrine of reprobation.”⁸⁸ David Engelsma (1939- ) has recently defended this position.⁸⁹

Second, there have been those who have answered the question about reprobation with only a probable or tentative “yes.” Augustine of Hippo seems to have been far less explicit about reprobation than Calvin would later be. Augustine did join his doctrine of predestination with three related doctrines: the predestined humans as equal in number to the number of the fallen angels; divine grace as irresistible; and the gift of per­severance as given only to the predestined. But whether Augustine was a determinist has been answered variously in the modern era,⁹⁰ and whether he taught reprobation has been both affirmed⁹¹ and denied.⁹² Inasmuch as the passages in Augustine which have been identified⁹³ as teaching rep­robation are on close examination found to be either inapplicable⁹⁴ or inconclusive,⁹⁵ we ought to give heavier weight to his statements in the late treatise against the so-called Semi-Pelagians, On the Gift of Perseverance, which seem to affirm preterition.⁹⁶ Hence we classify Augustine under the probable or tentative answer. Various Protestant confessions of faith taught preterition.⁹⁷ James Henry Thornwell (1812-62), while using the language of reprobation, explicated the doctrine of preterition.⁹⁸ Robert Charles Sproul has recently reaffirmed preterition, rejecting the “equal ultimacy” of “Hyper-Calvinism” and interpreting God’s hardening of human hearts as the removal of the restraints to evil.⁹⁹

Third, yet others have answered the question as to reprobation with a decisive “no.” The Second Council of Orange (529) in southern Gaul, contrary to what some were ascribing to Augustine, concluded: “Predestina­tion to evil is to be anathematized with detestation.”¹⁰⁰ John Smyth’s group in Amsterdam also concluded: “so God doth not create or predestinate any man to destruction.¹⁰¹ John Wesley, who saw preterition as being almost as objec­tionable as reprobation, declared that “unconditional election cannot appear without the cloven foot of reprobation” and “necessarily implies uncondi­tional reprobation.” Hence he forcefully rejected unconditional election and reprobation.¹⁰² Daniel Parker (1781-1844), the American frontier preacher, contrary to a widely held interpretation, set forth his two-seed doctrine in order to vindicate God with respect to the nonelect, not as a corollary to an eternal decree of reprobation, and hence concluded that the nonelect are condemned for their willful refusal to believe in Jesus Christ, being not prompted, as are the elect, by the Holy Spirit.¹⁰³ Two twentieth-century Reformed theologians, Emil Brunner¹⁰⁴ and George S. Hendry,¹⁰⁵ rejected the doctrine of reprobation, and so did Fred L. Fisher,¹⁰⁶ a Baptist.

We add to this review of answers the conclusion that there seem to be no compelling reasons for holding that God has ordained, as distinct from permitting, the nonelection of the nonelect. Hence election does not stand or fall with reprobation as its twin doctrine.

76. Sententiarum libri 2.6.1, as quot, in Latin by Barth, Church Dogmatics, 11/2, p. 17.
77. Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, (rev. ed., 1987), 2:113. The Domini­can order has normally taught in some form both predestination and repro­bation. For a modern exposition, see Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, 0. P. (1877-1964), Predestination (London: B. Herder Book Co., 1953), esp. pp. 183-93.
78. On the Bondage of the Will (1525), 2.4, 5, 8; 4.16; 5.7, 10, 11 (Packer-Johnston transl.). See Harry Buis (1924- ), Historic Protestantism and Predestination (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1958), pp. 47-49.
79. Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559 ed.), 3.21.5 (trans. F. L. Battles).
80. Ibid., 3.23.1.
81. Ibid., 3.23.7. “Decretum quidem horribile, jateor.”
82. Ibid., p. 955, n. 17.
83. Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God (1552), 5.5., trans. J. K. S. Reid (Cambridge: James Clarke and Co., 1961), pp. 92-94.
84. Articles concerning Predestination, trans. J. K. S. Reid (LCC, 22:179).
85. “The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination Stated and Asserted” (1562), 4.1-4, in The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination, trans. Augustus M. Toplady (1769) (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977), pp. 104-9.
86. Art. 12, in Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3:528.
87. A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, 2 vols., doct. div., 2.3 (Lon­don: Thomas Tegg, 1939; 2 vols. in 1: Paris, Ark.: Baptist Standard Bearer, 1987), pp. 275-84 (1839 ptg.); pp. 192-98 (1987 ptg.). The decree of rejec­tion, according to Gill, is caused by “the good pleasure” of God’s “will” and by his glory. See also Thomas Julian Nettles (1946- ) By His Grace and for His Glory: A Historical, Theological, and Practical Study of the Doctrines of Grace in Baptist Life (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1986), p. 90.
88. Dogmatic Theology, 1:430.
89. Hyper-Calvinism and the Call of the Gospel (Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Pub­lishing Association, 1980), pp. 42-47.
90. Adolf Harnack, History of Dogma, 5:218, accused Augustine of “determin­ism.” Reinhold Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 2:539-40, as cited by Heick, A History of Christian Thought, 1:206, identified his position as “modi­fied determinism.” Friedrich Loofs (1858-1928), Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte, p. 411, as cited in ibid., 1:206, concluded that “Augustine was no determinist.”
91. L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, pp. 109-10.
92. Calhoun, Lectures on the History of Christian Doctrine, pp. 225-26, strongly asserted that Augustine taught only single predestination, for he never taught that God ordained sin or evil and never clearly articulated reproba­tion. Calhoun had earlier held that Augustine taught single predestination throughout most of his life and shifted to double predestination during the last three years of his life. Also Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 341.
93. Seeberg, Textbook of the History of Doctrines, 1:352, n. 1.
94. Tractates on the Gospel of John 43.13; 110:2; The City of God 15.1; Enchiridion 26.
95. Enchiridion 100.
96. Chs. 19, 21.
97. French Confession of Faith (1559), art. 12; Belgic Confession (1561), art. 16; Canons of the Synod of Dort (1619), 1st head, arts. 6, 15; Westminster Con­fession, 3.1, 3, 7, in Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3:367, 401, 582, 584, 608-10; Second London Confession of Particular Baptists (1677), 3.3, in Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, p. 254.
98. Election and Reprobation (1840), International Library of Philosophy and The­ology (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1961), pp. 6-7, 39-44.
99. Chosen by God (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1986), pp. 141-60, esp. 143, 145.
100. As summarized by Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 372, on the basis of Joannes Dominicus Mansi (1692-1769), Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, 53 vols. in 58 (Paris: H. Welter, 1901-27), 8:711-19.
101. “Propositions and Conclusions concerning True Christian Religion” (1612-14), art. 25, in Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, p. 128.
102. Predestination Calmly Considered (1752), 10-12,15,19.
103. Max Lee (1931- ), “Daniel Parker’s Doctrine of the Two Seeds” (Th.M. thesis, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1962), based on Parker’s Views on the Two Seeds (Vandalia, Ill.: Robert Blackwell, 1826; reprint: S. L. and C. J. Clark, 1923); A Supplement or Explanation of My Views on the Two Seeds (1826), and Second Dose of Doctrine on the Two Seeds (1827). The pres­ent author has not had access to the last two titles.
104. The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 326.
105. The Westminster Confession for Today: A Contemporary Interpretation (Rich­mond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1960), pp. 49-56. Hendry contrasted the note of joy in Eph. 1 and Rom. 8 with the “air of dread and doom” in the doctrine of double decrees, seeing the latter as built too exclusively on Rom. 9:19-23 and noting that the New Testament uses “purpose” rather than “decree.”
106. The Purpose of God and the Christian Life, pp. 101-12.

James Leo Garrett, Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, vol 2, 2^nd edition (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 483-486.

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