Editing Predestination in Calvinism (section)

==Double predestination==
'''Double predestination''' is the idea that not only does God choose some to be saved, He also creates some people who will be damned.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bayer |first1=Oswald |title=Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation |date=2008 |publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing |isbn=978-0-8028-2799-9 |page=209 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=52K_zOZJ1IsC&q=Double+predestination&pg=PA209 |language=en}}</ref>

Some modern Calvinists respond to the ethical dilemma of double predestination by explaining that God's active predestination is only for the elect. God provides grace to the elect causing salvation, but for the damned God withholds salvific grace. Calvinists teach that God remains just and fair in creating persons he predestines to damnation because although God unilaterally works in the elect producing regeneration, God does not actively force the damned to sin.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Phillips |first1=Richard |title=What Are Election and Predestination? |publisher=P & R Pub. |location=Phillipsburg, New Jersey}}</ref> 

Double predestination may not be the view of any of the [[Reformed confessions]], which speak of God passing over rather than actively reprobating the damned.{{citation needed|date=August 2021|reason=The [[Westminster Confession of Faith]], Chapter III in wikisource seems to contradict this.}} However, John Calvin rejected such a position, stating: "This they do ignorantly and childishly since there could be no election without its opposite reprobation ... whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children."<ref name="Reference">Calvin, ''Institutes of the Christian Religion'', 3.23.1.</ref>

Scholars have disagreed over whether [[Heinrich Bullinger]] accepted the doctrine of double predestination. [[Frank A. James, III|Frank A. James]] says that he rejected it, preferring a view called "single predestination" where God elects some to salvation, but does not in any way predestine to reprobation.<ref>{{cite book |last=James |first=Frank A. III |author-link=Frank A. James, III |title=Peter Martyr Vermigli and Predestination: The Augustinian Inheritance of An Italian Reformer |publisher=Clarendon Press |year=1998 |location=New York |pages=30, 33 |url=https://www.questia.com/read/13711474/peter-martyr-vermigli-and-predestination-the-augustinian |access-date=2017-09-08 |archive-date=2018-02-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180218210452/https://www.questia.com/read/13711474/peter-martyr-vermigli-and-predestination-the-augustinian  }}</ref> [[Cornelis Venema]], on the other hand, argues that "Bullinger did not consistently articulate a doctrine of single predestination," and defended double predestination on a few occasions.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Venema|first1=Cornelis|author-link=Cornelis Venema|title=Heinrich Bullinger and the Doctrine of Predestination|date=2002|page=104}}</ref>

===Calvin's writings===

[[John Calvin]] taught double predestination. He wrote the foundational work on this topic, ''[[Institutes of the Christian Religion]]'' (1539), while living in [[Strasbourg]] after his expulsion from [[Geneva]] and consulting regularly with the Reformed theologian [[Martin Bucer]].<ref name="Cambridge" /><ref>Nimmo, Fergusson, p. 45.</ref> Calvin's belief in the uncompromised "[[sovereignty of God]]" spawned his doctrines of providence and predestination. For the world, without providence it would be "unlivable". For individuals, without predestination "no one would be saved".<ref>Susan E. Schreiner, "Predestination and Providence" in ''Ad Fontes. To the Sources: A Primer in Reformed Theology'' (Erdman Center of Continuing Education at Princeton Theological Seminary). {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150918100135/http://www3.ptsem.edu/offices/coned/adfontes/second.aspx?reflect=16&title=2&detail=+Predestination+and+Providence |date=2015-09-18 }}. Accessed April 27, 2014.</ref>

Calvin's doctrine of providence is straightforward. "All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." Therefore, "nothing happens but what [God] has knowingly and willingly decreed." This excludes "fortune and chance."<ref>Calvin, ''Institutes of the Christian Religion'', 1.16.2–3, 8.</ref> Calvin applied his doctrine of providence concerning "all events" to individuals and their salvation in his doctrine of predestination.

Calvin opened his exposition of predestination with an "actual fact". The "actual fact" that Calvin observed was that even among those to whom "the covenant of life" is preached, it does not gain the same acceptance.<ref name="ReferenceA">Calvin, ''Institutes of the Christian Religion'', 3.21.1.</ref> Although, "all are called to repentance and faith", in fact, "the spirit of repentance and faith is not given to all".<ref name="ReferenceB">Calvin, ''Institutes of the Christian Religion'', 3.22.10.</ref>

Calvin turned to the teachings of [[Jesus]] for a theological interpretation of the diversity that some people accept the "covenant of life" and some do not. Pointing to the [[Parable of the Sower]], Calvin observed, "it is no new thing for the seed to fall among thorns or in stony places".<ref name="ReferenceB"/> In Jesus' teaching in John 6:65 that "no one can come to me unless it has been granted him by my Father", Calvin found the key to his theological interpretation of the diversity.<ref>Calvin, ''Institutes of the Christian Religion'', 3.22.7.</ref>

For Calvin's biblically-based theology, this diversity reveals the "unsearchable depth of the divine judgment", a judgment "subordinate to God's purpose of eternal election". God offers salvation to some, but not to all. To many this seems a perplexing subject, because they deem it "incongruous that ... some should be predestinated to salvation, and others to destruction". However, Calvin asserted that the incongruity can be resolved by proper views concerning "election and predestination".<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

Thus, Calvin based his theological description of people as "predestinated to life or to death" on biblical authority and "actual fact".<ref>Calvin, ''Institutes of the Christian Religion'', 3.21.5.</ref> Calvin noted that Scripture requires that we "consider this great mystery" of predestination, but he also warned against unrestrained "human curiosity" regarding it.<ref>Calvin, ''Institutes of the Christian Religion'', 3.21.1 and 3.23.12.</ref> For believers, knowing that "the cause of our salvation did not proceed from us, but from God alone" evokes gratitude.<ref>{{Cite web |title=John Calvin: Calvin's Commentaries—Complete |url=https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/commentaries.i.html |access-date=2023-04-27 |website=www.ccel.org |publisher=Christian Classics Ethereal Library}}</ref>

===Reprobation: active decree, passive foreordination===
Calvinists emphasise the ''active'' nature of God's decree to choose those foreordained to eternal wrath, yet at the same time the ''passive'' nature of that foreordination.

This is possible because most Calvinists hold to an [[Supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism|infralapsarian]] view of God's decree. In that view, God, before Creation, in his mind, first decreed that the [[Fall of Man]] would take place, before decreeing [[Unconditional election|election]] and [[reprobation]]. So God actively chooses whom to condemn, but because he knows they will have a [[Total depravity|sinful nature]], the way he foreordains them is to simply let them be – this is sometimes called "preterition."<ref>[[Robert L. Reymond]], ''A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith'' (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1998), p. 345.</ref> Therefore, this foreordination to wrath is passive in nature (unlike God's active predestination of his elect where he needs to overcome their sinful nature).

===Equal ultimacy===
{{See also|Free will in theology#Calvinism}}
The Westminster Confession of Faith, uses different words for the act of God's election and reprobation: "predestinated" and "foreordained" respectively. This suggests that the two do not operate in the same way. The term "equal ultimacy" is sometimes used of the view that the two decrees are symmetrical: God works equally to keep the elect in heaven and the reprobate out of heaven. This view is sometimes erroneously referred to as "double predestination", on which see above. [[R. C. Sproul]] argues against this position on the basis that it implies God "actively intervenes to work sin" in the lives of the reprobate.<ref>{{Cite web |title="Double" Predestination by R.C. Sproul |url=http://www.the-highway.com/DoublePredestination_Sproul.html |access-date=2023-04-27 |website=www.the-highway.com}}</ref> [[Robert L. Reymond]], however, insists on equal ultimacy of election and reprobation in the divine decree, though he suggests that "we must not speak of an exact identity of divine causality behind both."<ref>[[Robert L. Reymond]], ''A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith'' (2nd ed., Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1998), p. 360.</ref>

Calvinists hold that even if their scheme is characterized as a form of determinism, it is one which insists upon the free agency and moral responsibility of the individual. Additionally, they hold that the will is in bondage to sin and therefore unable to actualize its true freedom. Hence, an individual whose will is enslaved to sin cannot choose to serve God. Since Calvinists further hold that salvation is by grace apart from good works (''[[sola gratia]]'') and since they view making a choice to trust God as an action or work, they maintain that the act of choosing cannot be the difference between salvation and damnation, as in the [[Arminianism|Arminian]] scheme. Rather, God must first free the individual from his enslavement to sin to a greater degree than in Arminianism, and then the [[regeneration (theology)|regenerated]] heart naturally chooses the good. This work by God is sometimes called [[irresistible grace|irresistible]], in the sense that grace enables a person to freely cooperate, being set free from the desire to do the opposite, so that cooperation is not the cause of salvation but the other way around.