I finally got around to picking up a copy of Sproul's "What Is Reformed Theology" (Formally Grace Unknown) today and was flipping through it and stopped on his section on Double Predestination to see what he had to say. In part he said:
Now I like Sproul but does this not seem really simplistic? It seems to leave out the fact that God ordained everything to come to pass and therefore even if He does simply leave men to sin on their own (although I believe Romans 9 shows that He doesn't), which since the fall they would, He still ordained that the original sin would occur and thus ordained who would and wouldn't save. So I would agree with Sproul that there is not an exact balance between election and reporbation but I do believe that God is not as passive in reporbation as he makes Him out to be when the ordaining of sin is considered.
The other thing that bugs me is calling the last two lines of the first paragraph hyper-calvinism. Is this all hyper-calvinism is? How does Sproul then explain the hardening of people in scripture?
Bryan
SDG
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. There are different views of double predestion. One of them is so frightening that many shun altogether the use of the term double predestion. This scary view is called equal ultimacy, and is based on a symmetrical view of predestion. It sees a symmetry between the work of God in election and his work in reporbation. It seeks and exact balance between the two. Just as God intervenes in the lives of the elect to create faith in their hearts, so he similarly intervenes in the hearts of the reporbate to work unbelief. The later in inferred from biblical passages that speak of God's hardening people's hearts.
Classical Reformed theology rejects the doctrine of equal ultimacy. Thought some have labeled this doctrine "hyper-Calvinism" I perfer to call it "sub-Calvinism," or even more precisely, "anti-Calvinism." Though Calvinism certainly holds to a kind of double predestination, it does not embrace equal ultimacy. The Reformed view makes a crucial distinction between God's positive and negitive decrees. God positively decrees the election of some and he negatibely decrees the reprobation of others. The difference between positive and negative does not refer to the outcome (though the outcome indeed is either positive or negitive), but to the manner by which God brings his decrees to pass in history.
The postive side refers to God's active intervention in the lives of the elect to work faith in their hearts. The negative refers, not to God's working unbelief in the hearts of the reporbate, but simply to his passing them by and withholding his regenerating grace from them.
Now I like Sproul but does this not seem really simplistic? It seems to leave out the fact that God ordained everything to come to pass and therefore even if He does simply leave men to sin on their own (although I believe Romans 9 shows that He doesn't), which since the fall they would, He still ordained that the original sin would occur and thus ordained who would and wouldn't save. So I would agree with Sproul that there is not an exact balance between election and reporbation but I do believe that God is not as passive in reporbation as he makes Him out to be when the ordaining of sin is considered.
The other thing that bugs me is calling the last two lines of the first paragraph hyper-calvinism. Is this all hyper-calvinism is? How does Sproul then explain the hardening of people in scripture?
Bryan
SDG