Friday, March 18, 2022

William G. T. Shedd (Infralapsarian) on Reprobation and Preterition

  

Reprobation is the antithesis to election and necessarily follows from it. If God does not elect a person, he rejects him. If God decides to convert a sinner into a saint, he decides to let him remain a sinner. If God decides not to work in a man to will and to do according to God’s will, he decides to leave the man to will and to do according to his own will. If God purposes not to influence a particular human will to good, he purposes to allow that will to have its own way. When God effectually operates upon the human will, it is election. When God does not effectually operate upon the human will, it is reprobation. And he must do either the one or the other. The logical and necessary connection between election and reprobation it seen also by considering the two divine attributes concerned in each. Election is the expression of divine mercy, reprobation of divine justice. God must manifest one or the other of these two attributes toward a transgressor. St. Paul teaches this in Rom. 11:22: “Behold the goodness and severity of God (divine compassion and divine justice) on them which fell severity; but toward you goodness.”

 

Consequently, whoever holds the doctrine of election must hold the antithetic doctrine of reprobation. A creed that contains the former logically contains the latter, even when it is not verbally expressed (e.g., Augsburg Confession 1.5; First Helvetic Confession 9; Heidelberg Catechism 54). . . . The reprobate resist and nullify common grace, and so do the elect. The obstinate selfishness and enmity of the human heart defeats divine mercy as shown in the ordinary influences of the Holy Spirit, in both the elect and nonelect: “You stiff-necked, you do always resists the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51). The difference between the two cases is that in the instance of the elect God follows up the common grace which has been resisted with the regenerating grace which overcomes the resistance, while in the instance of the reprobate he does not. It is in respect to the bestowment of this higher degree of grace that St. Paul affirms that God “has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardens.” Says Bates (Eternal Judgment, 2):

 

It is from the perverseness of the will and the love of sin that men do not bey the gospel. For the Holy Spirit never withdraws his gracious assistance, till resisted, grieved, and quenched by them. It will be no excuse that divine grace is not conferred in the same eminent degree upon some as upon others that are converted; for the impenitent shall not be condemned for want of that singular powerful grace that was the privilege of the elect, but for receiving in vain that measure of common grace that they had. If he that received one talent had faithfully improved it, he had been rewarded with more; but upon the slothful and ungrateful neglect of his duty, he was justly deprived of it and cast into a dungeon of horror, the emblem of hell.

 

Reprobation comprises preterition and condemnation or damnation. . . . The decree of preterition or omission is a branch of the permissive decree. As God decided to permit man to use his self-determining power and originate sin, so he decided to permit some men to continue to use their self-determining power and persevere in sin. Preterition is no more exposed to objection than is the decree to permit sin at first. . . . Preterition is not inconsistent with the doctrine of divine mercy. A man who has had common grace has been the subject of mercy to this degree. If he resists it, he cannot complain because God does not bestow upon him still greater mercy in the form of regenerating grace. A sinner who has quenched the convicting influence of the Holy Spirit cannot call God unmerciful because he does not afterward grace him the converting influence. A beggar who contemptuously rejects the divine dollars offered by a benevolent man cannot charge stinginess upon him because after this rejection of the five dollars he does not give him ten. A sinner who has repulsed the merc of God in common grace and demands that God grant a yet larger degree virtually says to the infinite one: “You have tried once to convert me from sin; now try again and try harder.” . . . . The decree of preterition does not necessitate perdition, though it makes it certain. (a) It has no effect at all, in the order of decrees, until after the free will of man has originated sin. The decree of preterition supposes the voluntary fall of man. It succeeds, in the order of nature, the decree to permit Adam’s sin. Preterition, consequently, has to do only with a creature who is already guilty by his own act and justly “condemned already” (John 3:18). (b) It is a permissive not an efficient act on the part of God that is exerted in preterition. In respect to regeneration, God decides to do nothing in the case of a nonelect sinner. He leaves him severely alone. He permits him to have his already existing self-determination, his own voluntary inclination. This is not compulsion, but the farthest possible from it. Compulsion might with more color of reason be charged upon election, than upon preterition. For in this case, God works in the human will “to will.” . . . The decree of preterition makes perdition certain, because the bondage of the sinner’s will to evil prevents self-recovery. There are but two agents who can be conceived of as capable of converting the human will from sin to holiness, namely, the will itself and God. If owning to its own action the human will is unable to incline itself to holiness and God purposes not to incline it, everlasting sin follows, and this is everlasting perdition. The certainty of the perdition of the nonelect arises from his inability to recover himself from the consequences of his own free agency and the decision of God to leave him “to eat of the fruit of his own way and to be filled with his own devices” (Prov. 1:31).

 

The reason for preterition or not bestowing regeneration grace is secret and unknown to man. It supposes sin, but not a greater degree of sin than in the elect. . . . Again, preterition, while supposing existing sin and unbelief, does not rest upon foreseen perseverance in sin and unbelief. God did not omit Esau in the bestowment of regenerating grace, because he foreknew that he would continue to do wrong in the future. He was passed by, “not having done any evil,” that is, without reference either to past or future transgression. (William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology: Complete and Unabridged, Volumes 1-3 [Reformed Retrieval, 2021], 267, 268, 269-70, 273, 274)

 

The supralapsarian quotes Rom. 9:11 in proof of his assertion that election and preterition are prior to the creation of man: “The children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil,” Jacob was chosen and Esau was left. This is an erroneous interpretation. Birth is not synonymous with creation. Parents are not the creators of their children. Man exists before he is born into the world. He exists in the womb; and he existed in Adam. Accordingly, in Rom. 9:10-12 it is said that “when Rebecca had conceived, it was said to her, The elder shall serve the younger.” The election and preterition related to the embryonic existence. Jacob and Esau had real being in their mother, according to Ps. 139:15-16: “By substance was not hid from you, when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect, and in your book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them.” St. Paul (Gal. 1;15) says that he was “separated and called form his mother’s womb.” God says to Jeremiah (1:5), “Before you came out of the womb, I sanctified you.” In saying that they had not “done any good or evil” at the moment of their election and preterition, actual transgression after birth is meant. Original sin, or corruption of nature, characterized them both; otherwise, it would be absurd to speak of electing one of them to mercy and leaving the other to justice. Absolute innocence can neither be elected or rejected, saved or lost. Ephesians 3:9-10 is explained by the supralapsarian to teach that creation is subsequent in the order to redemption. But the clause who created all things by Jesus Christ is parenthetical, not the principal clause. The clause who created all things by Jesus Christ is parenthetical, not the principal clause. The clause hina gnōristhē depends on euangelisasthai and phōtisai in verses 8-9 . . .(Ibid., 272-73)