This is an excerpt from Geoffrey D. Robinson’s book, Saved by Grace Through Faith or Saved by Decree? A Biblical and Theological Critique of Calvinist Soteriology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2022), pages 171-184.

g) Double Predestination?

From within a Calvinistic perspective, Sproul is surely correct when he says: “Given that the Bible teaches both election and particularism, we cannot avoid the subject of double predestination. The question then is not if predestination is double, but how it is double.”²⁰⁵

Double predestination, a term mainly relevant to those committed to Calvinism, is the term used by theologians to describe the nature of God’s predestinating work of electing some for salvation and damning the rest. There are two main ways this choosing of God is considered to work. The first, held by consistent Calvinists and mainly found in earlier (post-Reformation) Calvinistic writers, views God as positively choosing those whom he unconditionally elects for salvation and positively choosing those whom he selects for hell. Merely for convenience I will call this form of predestination “symmetric predestination.” In the other form of this doctrine, God positively chooses unconditionally the elect for salvation and the rest he leaves in their sin to take the consequences of unforgiven sin, hell. Again, for convenience, I will call this “asymmetric predestination.”²⁰⁶

John Calvin is a good example of symmetric predestination:

By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or the other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or to death.²⁰⁷

The Westminster Confession of 1646 likewise strongly affirms symmetric predestination: “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.”²⁰⁸ In more recent times Wright is an example of a proponent of symmetric predestination: “God cannot logically choose some for salvation without at the same time choosing to reject others, even though they are no more sinful. This, of course, is the doctrine of reprobation taught today by all consistent Calvinists.”²⁰⁹ For Lorraine Boettner, “the doctrine of absolute Predestination logically holds that some are foreordained to death as surely as others are foreordained to life. . . . 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.”²¹⁰

Much more common among contemporary Calvinists is asymmetric predestination. For such thinkers, symmetric predestination jeopardizes God’s goodness. Sproul is typical: “Reprobation is the flip side of election, the dark side of the matter that raises many concerns. It is the doctrine of reprobation that has prompted the label of `horrible decree: It is one thing to speak of God’s gracious predestination to election, but quite another to speak of God’s decreeing from all eternity that certain unfortunate people are destined for damnation.”²¹¹ Grudem too expresses the same reservations about symmetric predestination:

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.²¹²

Grudem helpfully summarizes the asymmetric predestination position when he says that “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.”²¹³ While God positively decides who will be saved, he only passes over the rest (the reprobate) who are consequently punished for their sins. Horton echoes the same logic: “God only has to leave us to our own devices in the case of reprobation, but it requires the greatest works of the triune God to save the elect.”²¹⁴ Bruce Ware argues similarly: “In brief, reprobation is conditional, i.e., based on what sinners have done and deserve, whereas election is unconditional, i.e., based on the unmerited grace and favor of God despite what sinners have done and deserve. . . . None of what has been argued above militates against the fact that God has ordained both evil and good, both sin and obedience, both reprobation and election.”²¹⁵

Before critiquing the Calvinist’s notion of symmetric predestination and asymmetric predestination, I want to briefly examine a few scriptures appealed to by Calvinists to justify the idea of God predestinating the reprobate.

Proverbs 16:4

“The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, Even the wicked for the day of evil.”

Berkhof in his Systematic Theology cites this verse to justify the all-comprehensiveness of God’s sovereign decree: “The decree includes whatsoever comes to pass in the world . . . whether it be good or evil” and includes the wicked acts of men.²¹⁶ Superficially, it is easy to see why appeal is made to Prov 16:4 for does it not say that God’s purpose includes the wicked for a day of evil? However, as always, context and genre must be brought to bear to truly understand this (and any other) verse. The first thing to notice is that the saying is a proverb which, by definition, expresses a general truth. And what is the general truth being expressed in this verse (and the preceding verses)? It is that, despite what may appear on the surface, ultimately it is God who rules. In this case, God’s rulership (purpose) includes the punishment of evildoers in the end. “The general meaning is that there are ultimately no loose ends in God’s world: everything will be put to some use and matched with its proper fate. It does not mean that God is the author of evil: James 1:13,17).”²¹⁷ A good historical example of this proverb is the punishment of Babylon for their iniquity (Jer 25:12) after the king of Babylon’s wickedness has been used by God to punish disobedient Judah (Jer 25:7-9).

Isaiah 45:7

“The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.”

Grudem comments on this verse, “Isaiah 45:7, which speaks of God `creating evil, does not say that God himself does evil, but should be understood to mean that God ordained that evil would come about through the willing choices of his creature.”²¹⁸ However the evil comes about, according to Grudem, God ordains the evil; it must therefore happen because God wills it to happen.

The Hebrew word that Grudem translates as evil has, like all words, a range of meanings.²¹⁹ The Hebrew Lexicon of Brown et al., for example, cites evil, distress, misery, injury, calamity, adversity.²²⁰ In its context this verse underscores God’s sovereignty to confirm his ability to call the Persian King Cyrus (Isa 45:1-4) to effect God’s purpose for ancient exilic Israel, that they be granted permission to return to Jerusalem. The phrase causing well-being and creating calamity is typically assumed by Calvinistic scholars to express God’s all-determining decretal will whereby all that happens in the universe is an outworking of God’s ordaining before the creation of the world—in Grudem’s words, “God ordained that it [the evil] would come about, both in general terms and in specific details.”²²¹ Yet there is nothing in the verse itself that would indicate that such divine actions are the result or consequence of some preordained, detailed plan. The text merely says that God does these things—how or why he does it is not specified. Is there any portion of Scripture that might indicate why God might choose to act in such a way as to bring “calamity”? Yes. The covenant blessings and curses that comprise a very important part of the Mosaic covenant (Lev 26, Deut 28) clearly indicate that God will bring blessings (“causing well-being”) for covenant loyalty by Israel, and God will bring disaster in the form of judgments (“creating calamity”) for covenant disloyalty. Far from the outworking of an unconditional overarching decree that ordains all that unfolds in history, Isa 45:7 is a reminder of what God can do, and has done, in response to human actions and choices. This is simply the kind of God he is; he reacts negatively to human sin whether that sin be the idolatry of ancient Israel, or the wickedness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18).

Romans 9:18

“So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.”

Earlier in this chapter when discussing the significance of Rom 9:10-16, we concluded that yes, God does choose unconditionally—but his choosing is not for salvation but for service. God has the right to choose which individuals to call and use in the service of his redemptive purposes for the world. Furthermore, Paul’s argument concerning God’s right to choose how salvation would be applied to the Jews (by grace, not ethnicity [vv. 6-81), and who will play key roles in his redemptive purposes (Isaac, Jacob, Pharaoh [vv. 7-171), extends all the way down to v. 18. Consequently, this verse is to be understood within a context of election to service, not salvation. Calvinists are quite right to see God exercise his sovereign right to choose, but they are mistaken in seeing the choosing in terms of God’s selecting some individuals for salvation and selecting (either directly or indirectly) some individuals for perdition.²²²

A word about the words mercy and hardens. These words are usually, especially by Calvinists, understood in salvific terms. God has saving mercy on some (the elect) and he hardens others (the reprobate) so that they cannot believe or are left in their unbelief. However, as always, the meaning assigned words is governed by the context,²²³ and as we have seen, the context here has to do with God’s choosing some for a task of service and rejecting others for that task. “‘Having mercy’ in this context refers not to saving mercy but to the favor of being chosen by God to play some role in the working out of his redemptive purposes (see v. 15). Whether one is conscious of being chosen and used is irrelevant; even whether one is saved or not is irrelevant (see Isa 45:4-5 concerning Cyrus).”²²⁴ Similarly with the hardening: because God wanted to use Pharaoh in a negative way, to impede Israel’s exodus from Egypt, God hardened his heart for that specific purpose (v. 17). The hardening of v. 18 expresses God’s providential working at a crucial point in redemptive history, as well as God’s judgment on an individual’s persistent rebellious unbelief. In short, this verse (Rom 9:18) cannot be used to support the Calvinist’s contention regarding God’s unconditional choosing of the elect for salvation, and the reprobate for damnation.

Romans 9:21

“Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?”

Calvinists tend to see Rom 9:7-29 as a whole, as Paul sustaining his explanation for the implied question behind Rom 9:1-5, namely, why aren’t the Jews being saved in (supposed) fulfillment of Old Testament promises? The Calvinist answer is that God has the right whom to save and whom to not save. Romans 9:21 summarizes that contention. Michael Horton is typical of this perspective: In “Romans 9, God is said to be free to choose and to reject, to save and to harden, `to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use (Rom 9:21):” ²²⁵

A key to understanding Rom 9:21 is Rom 9:6: “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel.” Fundamental to Paul’s concern for his lost ethnic brethren (fellow Jews) is the idea of two Israels-physical Israel (those descended from Israel/Jacob) and spiritual or true Israel. In vv. 7-18 the focus has been on God’s dealings with physical Israel, his calling the nation to a work of service in the redemptive outworking of God’s salvific purposes for the world. But now in vv. 19-29 the focus shifts to true Israel, those within physical Israel (the one lump of v. 21) who will actually enjoy salvation and be “for honorable use” for God (v. 21), and also be “vessels of mercy” (v. 23). This latter group have always been a remnant within physical Israel (v. 27-29).

As Cottrell notes, “A major part of this section [vv. 19-29] is the fact that the calling and saving of spiritual Israel was all along a part of the very purpose for the existence of ethnic Israel. In other words, it has always been God’s sovereign purpose to distinguish between the two Israels.”²²⁶ Bearing this in mind, we can paraphrase and expand the meaning of Rom 9:21 as: “Does not God have a right over the nation of Israel, to make from within the one nation one group that would enjoy salvation and another group that would function as the vehicle of God’s redemptive purposes?” The fact of the two groups is established in vv. 19-29, but the basis upon which God distinguishes between the two is discussed in 9:3o-10:21. The fact of the two groups lies in God’s unconditional intent to call a saved people from within the ethnic nation; the basis of the saved people’s existence is conditional upon an exercise of faith in God. It is clear from the above analysis that Rom 9:21 does not support the idea that God determines whoever will be personally saved or lost.

1 Peter 2:7—8

“This precious value, then, is for you who believe; but for those who disbelieve, `The stone which the builders rejected, this became the very corner stone,’ and, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also appointed.”

Grudem, in typical Calvinistic fashion, commenting on the last clause, says: “Amazing as it may seem, even the stumbling and disobedience of unbelievers have been destined by God.”²²⁷ John Piper likewise makes it clear that he understands v. 8 to mean that God (pre)destined the unbelievers to not obey the word.²²⁸

In order to understand Peter’s teaching here, it is necessary to capture the flow of thought in the larger context. In the passage (1 Pet 2:4-1o) Peter identifies two groups of people. On the one hand are the Christians he is writing to and “who believe” and, on the other hand, “those who disbelieve” (v. 7). Here, as throughout the New Testament, belief in Christ and in God’s word is crucial in demarking the two classes of people. These two groups hold two very different attitudes to Christ. For believers Christ is “a living stone” (v. 4) who is “precious in the sight of God” (v. 4) and recognize Christ as “a precious cornerstone” (v. 6). For unbelievers, however, Christ is “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense” (v. 8a). The attitude toward Christ is markedly different for the two groups. The believers are “coming to Him as to a living stone” (v. 4) and glory in Christ’s preciousness (vv. 4, 6, 7); in strong contrast, unbelievers reject Christ (vv. 4, 7). As a consequence of the two sharply differing attitudes and approaches to Christ, God’s cornerstone, the two groups experience two sharply contrasting outcomes. Believers are being built up as a spiritual house, offer spiritual sacrifices to God (v. 5), and are not ultimately disappointed (v. 6b). Unbelievers, because of their disobedience to the word (gospel) by contrast, stumble over Christ who, for them, has become “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense” (v. 8a).

By way of preliminary observation, we may note that even though the Greek does not explicitly make the causal connection between the disobedience of the unbelievers and their stumbling in v. 8 (“they stumble because they are disobedient”) most translators recognize the implied connection and accordingly include it in their translation of v. 8.²²⁹ Furthermore, the word doom in the NASB translation of v. 8 above is not in the Greek.²³⁰ Unfortunately, the grammatical construction of the phrase “to this they were also appointed” does not resolve the question as to what the disbelievers were appointed.

Because of the textual ambiguity of 1 Peter 2:8, grammatically the passage may be construed either as supporting, or as not supporting, the doctrine of positive reprobation. The matter hinges on the reference assumed for the phrase “to which they were appointed.” Was the appointing to disobedience, or to both stumbling and disobedience, or to stumbling as the consequence of disobedience? All three assumptions have their advocates, and all are admissible grammatically.²³¹

One way to resolve the issue is to examine elsewhere within Peter’s letter whether he hints at God having appointed or destined the unbelief itself. This is easy to answer: nowhere within the letter is such divine action stated.²³² On the other hand, are there indications within the rest of the letter that God reacts negatively against unbelief and evil? The answer to this is also clear; there are at least four other passages where God is said to react negatively toward unbelievers. In 1 Pet 3:12 God is said to set his face “against those who do evil.” In 4:5, Peter reminds his readers that the sinful practices of the Gentiles will be held accountable to God on the day of judgment. In 4:18, it is implied that severe judgment awaits “the godless man and the sinner.” Finally, in 5:5, Peter tells his readers that believers are to clothe themselves with humility because “God is opposed to the proud.” So, we may conclude, on the basis of Peter’s teaching in other parts of his letter, that the stumbling referred to in v. 8 is a consequence of the unbeliever’s disobedience toward Christ and the gospel. In short, Yor those who disbelieve . . . the very cornerstone [Christ, has become] . . . a stone of stumbling” (vv. 7, 8).

Finally, the broader biblical witness likewise testifies against God’s being responsible for the soteriological status of the reprobate. Just one scripture will make the point: 1 Tim 2:4: God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” As Shank comments:

[The fact the] immediate context militates against any assumption of support from i Peter 2:8 for the doctrine of unconditional reprobation is augmented by an evidence that must be regarded as finally decisive: such a doctrine radically contradicts the many explicit, categorical affirmations of Scripture of God’s desire and provision for the salvation of all men. The great body of “universal” passages dictates the rejection of all interpretations (and translations) of 1 Peter 2:8 which, though grammatically allowable, are inadmissible in the light of the context of the whole body of the Holy Scriptures. Any assumption that the appointing was to disobedience or to disobedience and stumbling is in radical contradiction of 1 Timothy 4:10 and its many cognates.²³³

Joel Green captures the essence of the passage well when he says that “faith and unfaith are matters of human volition, but the consequences of faith and unfaith have been preset.”²³⁴

Jude 4

“For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

Grudem appeals to this verse to justify a doctrine of reprobation: “It is something that we would not want to believe, and would not believe, unless Scripture clearly taught it.”²³⁵ Likewise Berkhof appeals to Jude 4 to justify his contention that “reprobation is so clearly taught in Scripture as the opposite of election that we cannot regard it as something purely negative:’ as something only resulting from man’s sin. ²³⁶

Since Jude makes reference in this verse to “this condemnation,” but has not yet spoken of any judgment or condemnation,²³⁷ the reference must be to condemnations to be described in the following verses. The verb translated as “marked out” in the NASB has as its root form προγράφω (prographō) — literally, “written before.” The NIV translates the word as “written about” Jude’s point is that the condemnation of the ungodly men who were posing a threat to the church(es) to whom Jude was writing was foretold or prophesied. S. L. Bloomfield, cited by Robert Shank, summarizes the point clearly: “The expression [marked out beforehand for this condemnation] does not imply any predestination of the persons, but merely imports that they were long since foretold, and thereby designated, as persons who should suffer.”²³⁸ Baukham concurs: “Just such people, Jude claims, were long ago described in prophecy, which also predicted their condemnation by God.”²³⁹

Is there justification in Jude’s letter that would reinforce this understanding of v. 4, i.e., the understanding that it is not certain individuals unconditionally elected for damnation as Calvinists hold, but rather a specific type of persons—ungodly persons—to whom God reacts in condemnation as was foretold in previous times? Yes, there is. In the immediately following three verses Jude gives three examples of ungodliness incurring divine judgment: the people of Israel in the wilderness were destroyed for their unbelief (v. 5); angels who strayed from their assigned abodes God has kept in darkness (v. 6); the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah who indulged in immorality God punished with fire (v. 7).

Especially significant is the midrash from Enoch in vv. 14-15:²⁴⁰ “It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, `Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”‘

This is probably a reference to the judgment to be meted out against the ungodly when Christ returns at the end of the age. “The message of Jude’s whole midrash [is] that those who indulge in ungodly conduct, as the false teachers do, are those on whom judgment will fall.”²⁴¹ The notion of any form of predestinarian language or thought is quite absent from this letter. Jude is simply concerned for the fidelity of his reader’s faith (v. 3) and that they be warned about, and be on guard against, ungodly teachers who would bring true Christians into spiritual harm. Such, says Jude, will one day receive a just condemnation, and in any case were anticipated by earlier spokesmen for God.

By way of reminder, we are considering the doctrine of double predestination, the belief that God predestines some (the elect) to salvation and the rest (the reprobate) to hell. We noted at the beginning of this study that there are two forms in which this double predestination is said to occur. The first, the stronger version, I have called symmetric predestination because there is a fundamental symmetry between God’s positively choosing those whom he saves and those whom he likewise chooses to damn. The weaker form I have labeled asymmetric predestination because, while God positively chooses those whom he saves, he merely bypasses the rest in their sins; the latter group are then considered to be justly condemned for their sins. We then considered six key scriptures often appealed to by Calvinists to justify the idea of reprobation, and have shown how, when due consideration is given to the literary and historical contexts in which these verses sit, there is no basis for reaching the Calvinist’s conclusions; there is no such thing as reprobation in any form. I want now to go on to critique the entire notion of symmetric predestination.

Proponents of symmetric predestination are at least consistent with the Calvinistic view of particular sovereignty and “the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man.”²⁴² Wright, commenting on the ninth-century monk Gottschalk’s view on this topic, says, “God cannot logically choose some for salvation without at the same time choosing to reject others. . . . This, of course, is the doctrine of reprobation taught today by all consistent Calvinists.”²⁴³ However, such consistency comes at a price—”the dark side of the matter that raises many concerns.”²⁴⁴ Sproul observes that “it is one thing to speak of God’s gracious predestination to election, but quite another to speak of God’s decreeing from all eternity that certain unfortunate people are destined for damnation.”²⁴⁵

Calvin himself acknowledged the idea of symmetric predestination as “dreadful,”²⁴⁶ and Grudem feels that the doctrine of reprobation “deals with such horrible and eternal consequences for human beings made in the image of God” that it causes us “to recoil against this doctrine, and that it is right that we feel such dread in contemplating it. It is something that we would not want to believe . . . [and] causes us to tremble in horror as we think of it.”²⁴⁷ But why would such a doctrine, if truly biblical, cause us to react in this way? How can such a sentiment be maintained in the light of such scriptures as Ps 119:24: “Your testimonies also are my delight; they are my counselors.” Similarly, Ps 119:47-48: “I shall delight in Your commandments, which I love. And I shall lift up my hands to Your commandments, which I love.” Surely, the revelation of God is something that should cause us great delight and joy—not dread and horror!

More seriously, what sort of God is the God who determines the eternal destinies of his human creation by means of symmetric predestination? Recall that according to symmetric predestination God actively had in mind men and women who would never, and indeed could never, find salvation because they were predestined by God before the foundation of the world to be consigned to hell. Furthermore, such a predestination is supposedly for the glory of God.²⁴⁸ How, exactly, is God glorified in unconditionally consigning people to hell? Nowhere in Scripture is God said to be glorified for acting unilaterally and unconditionally in such an evil manner.²⁴⁹ On the contrary, God is glorified when his goodness, wisdom, kindness, and so on is recognized and appreciated. Psalm 86:9-13 illustrates the point:

All nations whom You have made shall come and worship before You, O Lord, And they shall glorify Your name. For You are great and do wondrous deeds; You alone are God. Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name. I will give thanks to You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, And will glorify Your name forever. For Your lovingkindness toward me is great, And You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.

Once again, with a doctrine of symmetric predestination, it is difficult to see how God cannot be charged with being the author of evil and sin, given that it is evil and sinful to positively seek the harm of any individual. Grudem is quite right when he says that “the love that God gives us for our fellow human beings and the love that he commands us to have towards our neighbor cause us to recoil against this doctrine.”²⁵⁰ Can it really be the case that what God expects us to do (love our neighbor) he himself is not bound by? We are to love our neighbor, but God can damn them! In sum, while the doctrine of symmetric predestination is quite consistent with Calvinism’s view of divine sovereignty it is quite inconsistent with God’s attributes of love, justice, righteousness, and goodness clearly revealed on virtually every page of Scripture.

If symmetric predestination is consistent with Calvinism’s “eternal plans of God, before the creation of the world, to bring about everything that happens:’ as Grudem states, then asymmetric predestination, the reprobate being those whom God merely bypasses, is quite inconsistent with this view of the outworking of the predestinarian decrees. The question of consistency is not insignificant to my mind. It is incoherent to say on the one hand x is all black and then also x is all white, in other words, to say God decrees everything to the minutest extent and also that men are accountable for their own sin-as though the latter were somehow independent of God’s decree. Within Calvinistic thought, nothing, absolutely nothing, acts or wills independently of what God has decreed and determined will be the case. And so “Calvinists who accept unconditional election and at the same time propose to reject unconditional reprobation are radically inconsistent.”²⁵¹ Consistency may not be a sufficient condition for a successful argument, but it is most certainly a necessary condition for a coherent argument.²⁵²

Crucial to the asymmetric predestination view is the idea of permission, God permitting men to suffer the consequences of their own sin and so, in a sense, reprobate themselves. The appeal of this notion of reprobation to modern Calvinists is quite apparent; it just seems too harsh to believe that God positively chooses some to be predestined for hell.²⁵³ It sounds much more reasonable to say God just lets people take the consequences for their own sin which is, of course, condemnation. Calvin roundly rejects this attempt to get God off the hook. Some “recur to the distinction between will and permission, the object being to prove that the wicked perish only by way of permission, but not by the will of God. . . . Nor indeed is there any probability in the thing itself—viz., that man brought death upon himself, merely by the permission, and not by the ordination of God; as if God had not determined what he wished the condition of the chief of his creatures to be.”²⁵⁴ Calvin is right, within a Calvinistic worldview there is no independent will of man operating apart from God’s ordaining, determining, and decreeing. There is nothing to “permit” as though man’s actions and choices were independent of God’s determination. Intrinsic to the notion of permission with respect to symmetric predestination is the idea that God determines some things (who would comprise the elect), and the rest God merely “bypasses” to suffer the consequences of their own choices and actions. In this scenario “reprobation is conditional, i.e., based on what sinners have done and deserve, whereas [Calvinistic] election is unconditional, i.e., based on the unmerited grace and favor of God despite what sinners have done and deserve.”²⁵⁵ But note that “what sinners have done and deserve” is itself ordained by God: “God has ordained both evil and good, both sin and obedience, both reprobation and election.”²⁵⁶ Despite protestations from Calvinists, this way of thinking is simply incoherent, because actually contradictory. Roger Olson, in his thorough discussion of reprobation and in his assessment of Lorain Boettner’s view, echoes my own sentiment above:

Like all Calvinists I am aware of, Boettner claims that the reprobate deserve their punishment (eternal suffering in hell) because they “voluntarily chose to sin.” Ultimately, he leaves this apparent contradiction in the realm of mystery: “Predestination [including reprobation] and free agency are the twin pillars of a great temple, and they meet above the clouds where the human gaze cannot penetrate:’ It seems, however, that this mystery is a blatant contradiction.²⁵⁷

A final point concerning the asymmetric predestination version of predestination concerns its logical status. The notion that God merely bypasses the non-elect and permits them to suffer the consequences of their own sins does not really achieve what the Calvinist hopes it will, namely distance God from direct responsibility for assigning the reprobate to their fate. This is because, within a given pool of humanity, whoever is designated by God to be chosen for salvation is also thereby effectively identified and designated by God to be the non-elect (the reprobate). To determine who the elect will be is to determine who the non-elect will be. George Bryson expresses this logical situation in this way: “Even though most Calvinists will say that the unelect are damned because they deserved to be, the logical implication of Calvinism says otherwise. Since the unelect were not elected to be saved, they were never meant to be regenerated, to believe, to be saved, or to be anything other than totally depraved.”²⁵⁸

________________

Geoffrey D. Robinson, Saved by Grace Through Faith or Saved by Decree? A Biblical and Theological Critique of Calvinist Soteriology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2022), 171-184.

NOTES

205. Sproul, Reformed Theology, 158, emphasis original.
206. The technical term used to describe those who are not part of the elect is “reprobate:’ And the technical term used to describe symmetric predestination is “preterition:’
207. Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.5. Several other passages could be cited, as for example this one in 3.21.7: “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:’
208. Westminster Confession of Faith, 33.
209. Wright, No Place for Sovereignty, 21. Notice his use of the term “consistent” here; in this respect I agree with him fully.
210. Boettner, “Reformed Doctrine of Predestination:’ 96.
211. Sproul, Reformed Theology, 157.
212. Grudem, Systematic Theology, 685. For this reason, Grudem feels that “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:’ Grudem, Systematic Theology, 670.
213. Grudem, Systematic Theology, 685.
214. Horton, For Calvinism, 58.
215. Ware, “Divine Election,” S4, emphasis original.
216. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 105.
217. Kidner, Proverbs, 118.
218. Grudem, Systematic Theology, 328, emphasis original.
219. The NASB translates the word as calamity, the NIV as disaster, the KJV as evil.
220. Brown, Driver, Briggs, Lexicon of the Old Testament, 948.
221. Grudem, Systematic Theology, 328, emphasis mine.
222. Thus, e.g., Murray is mistaken when he says, “The whole argument of the apostle in this section in refutation of the objection that there is unrighteousness in God (vs. 14) is conducted on the premise that salvation is not constrained by the dictates of justice, that it proceeds entirely from the exercise of sovereign mercy.” Murray, Romans, pt. 2, 29, emphasis mine.
223. “As readers we do not determine the meaning of biblical words; rather, we try to discover what the biblical writer meant when he used a particular word:’ Duvall and Hays, Grasping God’s Word, 163.
224. 224. Cottrell, Romans, 2:102.
225. Horton, For Calvinism, 57. Cottrell makes the same point when he says that Calvinists “find this doctrine [unconditional election] especially in vv. 19-23, which they see as simply repeating the point of vv. 7-18.” Cottrell, Romans, 2:108.
226. Cottrell, Romans, 2:107. 227. Grudem, i Peter, 106.
227. Piper, “Destined to Disobey,” 5/13. Piper uses the ESV for v. 8, which says: “They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do:’
228. This would include the NASB, ESV, NIV, NLT, Christian Standard Bible.
229. A woodenly literal translation v. 8b of the Greek ὁι προσκοπτουσιν τω λογω ἀπειθουντες εἰς ὁ και ἐτεθησαν (hoi proskoptousin tō logō apeithountes eis ho kai, etethēsan) would be close to this: “Who stumble at the word disobeying to which indeed they were appointed.”
230. Shank, Elect in the Son, 188.
231. In fact, nowhere within any of Peter’s two letters (other than, allegedly, 1 Pet 2:8b) is there any indication that God is responsible for the unbelief or disobedience or stumbling of the ungodly.
232. Shank, Elect in the Son, 189, emphasis original.
233. Green, 1 Peter, 58.
234. Grudem, Systematic Theology, 685.
235. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 116.
236. The Greek word κριμα (krima), commonly translated as judgment, is used here in v. 4.
237. Shank, Elect in the Son, 191.
238. Baukham, Jude, 41.
239. A midrash is an interpretation of an ancient Jewish text; usually in an Old Testament book, but occasionally, as here, an apocryphal book.
240. Baukham, Jude, 100.
241. Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.5.
242. Wright, No Place for Sovereignty, 21-22, emphasis mine.
243. Sproul, Reformed Theology, 157.
244. Sproul, Reformed Theology, 157. Sproul himself considers the doctrine of symmetric predestination sub-Calvinism.
245. Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.7.
246. Grudem, Systematic Theology, 685. Grudem himself is a proponent of asymmetric predestination, not symmetric predestination. Grudem, like all Calvinists, holds to the doctrine of reprobation because he believes Scripture teaches it.
247. Grudem, Systematic Theology, 687, 686. As the Westminster Confession states: “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:’ Westminster Confession of Faith, 3.3.
248. It is important to maintain the distinction between, on the one hand, God reacting in judgment to evil people who deserve their judgment and, on the other hand, God unilaterally and unconditionally bringing evil upon certain individuals. The former is quite consistent with both the biblical testimony and moral sense, while the latter is neither.
249. Grudem, Systematic Theology, 685. 251. Shank, Elect in the Son, 192.
250. Sometimes the inconsistency is explicitly formulated by Calvinists. Thus, e.g., Calvin speaking of Adam’s sin says this: “Man therefore falls, divine providence so ordaining, but he falls by his own fault.” Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.8.
251. “The problem for Calvinism is how to relieve God of responsibility for sin and rejection and still retain the thesis of monothetism.” Shank, Elect in the Son, 140. Monothetism is the belief in a single will (God’s will) that determines everything.
252. Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.8. Sproul appeals to another work of Calvin in which Calvin seems to defend an asymmetric predestination view of reprobation as Sproul himself does. Sproul, Reformed Theology, Calvin was not always consistent in his views.
253. Ware, “Divine Election,” 54.
254. Ware, “Divine Election,” 54. This is also why appeal to the justice of God in merely treating the reprobate as they deserve is meaningless.
255. Olson, Against Calvinism,105, emphasis mine.
256. Bryson, Five Points, 39, emphasis mine.