Distortions of the Biblical View of Predestination - Part 2

Continued from yesterday's post - here is the Biblical view of predestination as presented by R.C. Sproul -

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In sharp contrast to the caricature of double predestination seen in the positive-positive schema, is the classic position of Reformed theology on predestination. In this view, predestination is double, in that it involves both election and reprobation but is not symmetrical with respect to the mode of divine activity. A strict parallelism of operation is denied. Rather, we view predestination in terms of a positive-negative relationship.

In the Reformed view, God from all eternity decrees some to election, and positively intervenes in their lives to work regeneration and faith by a monergistic work of grace. To the non-elect, God withholds this monergistic work of grace, passing them by and leaving them to themselves. He does not monergistically work sin or unbelief into their lives. Even in the case of the "hardening" of the sinners' already recalcitrant hearts, God, as Luther stated, does not "work evil in us by creating fresh evil in us." That is not to say that "hardening of the sinners' hearts" is a work of evil. It is God's free choice. For if there were not lost people in the world, Christians would have no need to spread the Gospel, though Jesus commanded Christians to in Matthew 28:19. However Luther did not understand this and wrote:

When men hear us say that God works both good and evil in us, and that we are subject to God's working by mere passive necessity, they seem to imagine a man who is in himself good, and not evil, having an evil work wrought in him by God; for they do not sufficiently bear in mind how incessantly active God is in all His creatures, allowing none of them to keep holiday. He who would understand these matters, however, should think thus: God works evil in us (that is, by means of us) not through God's own fault, but by reason of our own defect. We being evil by nature, and God being good, when He impels us to act by His own acting upon us according to the nature of His omnipotence, good though He is in Himself, He cannot but do evil by our evil instrumentality; although, according to His wisdom, He makes good use of this evil for His own glory and for our salvation. (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will (Westwood: Fleming H. Revell, 1957), p. 206)

Thus, the mode of operation in the lives of the elect is not parallel with that operation in the lives of the reprobate. God works regeneration monergistically but never sin. Sin falls within the category of providential concurrence.

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Soli Deo Gloria,

Pastor Ed