Both sides were attempting to preserve something
of what they saw as the biblical teaching on grace. Infralapsarianism
underscored the point that God’s grace is a response to human sin. It is
not just an abstraction or a sentiment or a sentiment; nor is it arbitrary.
Rather, it is actually a positive act of God in the light of human rebellion.
Supralapsarianism arose out of a desire to rule absolutely out of bounds any
notion of foreseen merit playing any part in election. It thus connected to the
Reformation emphasis on grace as free and sovereign.
Both views also involved certain difficulties.
Infralapsarianism does carry with it the risk that it could be interpreted as
allowing for some elective discrimination on the basis of intrinsic merit or demerit
in those elected or reprobated. Further, while it attempts to ameliorate the
problem of the fall and its place within the plan of God, the fact that all the
Reformed regarded God as sovereign over all things really meant that the
distinction could be seen as a rather specious one.
Supralapsarianism, however, seems to defend God’s sovereignty
by creating a system in which God is very much the author of sin and in which
the fall and all evil it brings in its wake are merely instruments for bringing
about God’s glory. Also, the idea that reprobation is necessary in order to bring
about a full revelation of God’s righteousness is difficult to justify from
Scripture. In fact, the scheme seems to inject a harsh and unknowable
arbitrariness into God. Opponents of the Reformed understanding of grace would
see this as inevitable, given the Reformed view of God’s sovereignty and,
indeed, it was supralapsarianism that helped to precipitate the great breach in
Reformed theology, between so-called Calvinists and Arminians. (Carl R.
Trueman, Grace Alone Salvation as a Gift of God: What the Reformers Taught .
. . and Why it Still Matters [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2017], 148-49,
emphasis in original)
