Is it fair to be born lost?

1. In Christian theology, there's a sense in which human beings are born lost. By that I mean, absent God's gracious intervention, we're already lost the moment we step into existence. 

Now God can intervene at any stage in our existence, so God can intervene between conception and birth. When I say born lost I don't mean that maybe we lost our way at some point during gestation. I don't mean we became lost in the womb. It's just concrete way of expressing the fact that we don't have to do anything to be in a lost condition. We don't become lost. Rather, we find ourselves in that condition. 

2. This is a doctrine that Christians accept on authority. One question is whether it's something we can explain, defend, or understand by reason. 

Intuition is paradoxical in the sense that on the one hand we depend on intuition for many things, but on the other hand, intuition isn't consistently reliable. It can lead us astray. Sometimes the problem is due to overgeneralizing from certain examples or illustrations. Or sometimes what we call intuition is just our social conditioning, and what's intuitive or counterintuitive is culturally variable. 

We need to make allowance of the live possibility that there are things we're just not smart enough to figure out, like the necessary conditions for moral responsibility or blame. 

3. Wesleyan Aminianism tries to relieve the tension by positing universal sufficient/prevenient grace. Sounds nice, but is it true? Or is it just an ad hoc solution to wish it away? Universalism is another way to evade the issue. 

4. In theory there are three different ways we might view the human condition:

i) We find ourselves born on a road. The road isn't going in the right direction or the wrong direction. But there's a fork in the road up ahead. That's the point at which we can lose our way, by taking the wrong turn. 

ii) We are born beyond the fork in the road. We are going in the right direction. But the road splits up further down the line. Depending one which turn we take at the second fork in the road, we will continue going in the right direction or else we will become lost. 

iii) We are born beyond the fork in the road. We are going in the wrong direction. But the road splits up further down the line. Depending one which turn we take at the second fork in the road, we will continue going in the wrong direction or else we will escape and finally get on the right path. 

(iii) represents the biblical view of the human plight. 

5. However, that raises the question of whether it's fair to be born lost. Let's consider another illustration. Suppose a rich man squanders his fortune in gambling debts. When he was rich he had a very luxurious lifestyle. But his children were born after he lost his fortune.

Although they suffer the consequences of their father's compulsive gambling, it's not unfair that they weren't born rich. It wasn't their money to begin with. They didn't make a fortune, then lose it. It was never theirs to lose. They weren't entitled to be born rich. 

6. An objection or limitation to that comparison is that the situation of his kids isn't punitive. Not to be born rich isn't punishment for their dad's gambling debts. But damnation is punitive. 

Here I'd introduce another consideration. The metaphor of lostness is, in itself, morally neutral. Indeed, we're apt to think of it as a kind of innocent, hapless misfortune. Mind you, it's possible to lose your way through reckless disregard of warning signs. 

But there's a glaring sense in which the lost condition of humanity isn't innocuous. Take the capacity for wanton human cruelty. And this manifests itself at a very early age. It's startling to see how cruel kids can be to each other. So something already went wrong. And not just because some kids are neglected or emotionally abused. Kids with loving parents can be gratuitously cruel to each other. 

7. In addition, while this is a doctrine which Christians accept on authority, it's also the case that human beings really do act like they're in a lost condition. We see that all the time. So it's not something we just take on faith, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. 

8. There's also the nature of salvation and damnation. What are human beings entitled to? How much good are they entitled to? How much deprivation do they have a right to be spared? The children of the man who lost is fortune don't deserved to be tortured for his behavior. But they don't deserve to be rewarded, either.

Do human beings deserve not to be lost? What does it mean to be lost forever? Does it mean to miss out on certain opportunities and certain goods? If so, is that unfair? Is that wrong? 

There's something tragic about that, but an element of tragedy makes life weightier. We don't take the good for granted. 

Of course, we're used to thinking of hell in much worse terms, but that's in large part because the wicked behave in much worse terms. 

9. A very popular storyline is a story about how somebody or some group got rescued. One variation is rescuing somebody who is lost. A lost child. A lost hiker. A lost sailor. Or a castaway who's stranded and forgotten on a desert island. But in stories like that, you must be lost before you can be rescued. 

Much of the appeal of the Gospel lies in the two-sided character of salvation. Salvation is only meaningful and thrilling because sinners are lost apart from salvation. That's why they have to be rescued. 

And there are different ways to be lost and rescued. You can be rescued from the bondage of a self-destructive addiction. You can be rescued from depression and self-loathing. 

10. In my view, human beings originate as divine ideas, like fictional characters in the mind of a storyteller. We initially exist in God's imagination. And God's imagination has alternate plots for every human life. In God's imagination, there's no one thing we were going to do or not do. Rather, there are endless plot variations. At this stage they're all just possibilities. Coequal possibilities. There is no one right plot. Each storyline will have unique points of interest and insight. 

When God creates us, he takes one of these plots and makes it real. In this case, he chooses a plot in which I'm born lost. He could choose a different plot. But it's not as if there's one way the story was supposed to begin or end. Because there's no one story to choose from. There are many different storylines. Did God wrong a human being by selecting one plot rather than another? 

"In Christ"

1. "In Christ" is a Pauline catchphrase, but what does it mean? Commentators aren't very helpful. They say things like it means "in union" with Christ, but that just substitutes one spacial metaphor for another. Or they say it means "in the sphere" of Christ," which again, substitutes one spacial metaphor for another. They are paraphrasing the catchphrase rather than defining it.

2. Just considered as a spatial metaphor, the metaphor implies a point of contrast between inside and outside. These are mutually definable. What it means to be inside depends in part on what it means to be outside. Let's consider some generic associations for people in the ancient world:

i) It was dangerous to be outside at night. You could get hopelessly lost. You could be attacked by nocturnal predators (e.g. the Asiatic lion). They can see you but you can't see them. You could step on a venomous snake. Crime was higher at night (that's still the case). 

ii) You didn't want to get caught in a storm (e.g. Ecclesiastes 13). You seek shelter. 

iii) If an army invaded, you needed to take refuge inside a fortified city. You didn't want to be left outside the defensive walls. 

3. Let's consider biblical connotations of the inside/outside dichotomy:

i) Inside the garden of Eden, with the river, fruit trees, tame animals, and tree of life. Expulsion from Eden: an inhospitable wilderness. Thirst, mortality, vulnerability. 

ii) Safe inside Noah's ark, doomed to die in the flood if stranded outside the ark.

iii) Hell as outer darkness

iv) The new Jerusalem. The damned are barred from entering (Rev 21:27). 

ii) The parable of the wise and foolish virgins. The foolish virgins are shut out. Find themselves on the wrong side of the door. 

ii) The plagues of Egypt: 

• The plague of hail. Better dive for cover lest you be struck dead by hailstones. 

• Plague of darkness. Sunlight in Goshen, pitch black outside Goshen. 

• Plague of the firstborn. Israelites inside their huts, with blood on the door jam, are safe from the angel of death. Outside the angel of death strikes the firstborn Egyptians.

4. However, the point of contrast isn't merely negative, where to be inside simply shields you from what lies outside. What lies inside can be good. A home that contain food and drink, a bed, a fireplace, and companionship. 

Take Paul's adoptive metaphor (e.g. Eph 1:5). Consider an orphan who's adopted. Who suddenly has all the benefits of an "instant" family by virtue of his adoption. His condition instantly changes for the better by virtue of his relationship to his adoptive father (in the ancient world) or adoptive mother and father. 

Consider if the most popular student in school befriends a loner. He befriends a low-status student whom other students have shunned. He brings the classmate into his social circle. That instantly elevates the standing of the loner.  The friendship brings perks. He now has access to the same things. So long as he is with his popular benefactor, he can do the same things.The benefactor shares his good fortune with the unfortunate classmate. 

By the same token, to be "in Christ" is to enjoy all the blessings that flow from the atonement. Because the atonement is vicarious, the benefits are made available to the redeemed by means of their relationship with the Redeemer. 

The Death Star

Brief exchange I had on Facebook:

Zach 

What’s the point of “engaging” with Mormons and evangelize your beliefs when your god has already elected those who are going to heaven? No amount of influence from Christians will change who is elected and who is not, right?

Hays

In Calvinism, God hasn't elected anyone to salvation apart from regeneration and faith, but through regeneration and faith. Election isn't isolated from other things which God foreordained as a necessary component to achieve the outcome. Your objection is like saying that if, according to the script, Luke Skywalker will escape the Death Star before it explodes, then he needn't leave the Death Star to survive. Yet the script doesn't merely predetermine that he will escape the exploding Death Star, but specifies how he will escape. He won't avoid the fatal outcome if he remains onboard.

Thielman on Rom 9

I was recently reading Frank Thielman's new commentary on Romans. His analysis of Rom 9 is a mess. I'll quote some representative statements, then comment:

Before the plagues descended on the Egyptians, God told Moses twice that he would "harden" Pharaoh's hear and that as a result Pharaoh would not grant Moses's request to let Israel go into the wilderness to sacrifice to God (Exod 4:21; 7:3). Throughout the subsequent narrative, we read either that Pharaoh "hardened" his heart (8:15,32; 9:34), that Pharaoh's heart "was hardened" (7:13; 8:19; 9:7,35), or that "the Lord hardened" the heart of Pharaoh (9:12; 10:20,27; 11:10; 14:8; cf. 10:1; 14:4). 

The interplay in Exod 4:14 between God's initiative and Pharaoh's initiative is helpful in understanding what Paul meant when he said that God "hardens' certain people such as Pharaoh. Paul believed that God punishes people for their own sin, not that God forced people to sin and then punished them for it. Otherwise, God would be acting nonsensically when he endured the rebellions of the wicked "with much patience" and stretched out his hands in appeal to disobedient Israel (Rom 9:22: 10:21). No patience is necessary for enduring the behavior of people doing what one wants them to do, and a lengthy appeal to people not to do what one has designed them to do is obviously fruitless.

When Paul says here, then, that God "hardens" people he must mean that God justly punishes people who, like Pharaoh (Exod 8:15,32; 9:34) and everyone else (Rom 1:18-3:20; 5:12-19), are already in rebellion against him. God punishes them by calcifying this rebellion, or, to put it another way, he further hardens resistant hearts. This second level of resistance, which God himself initiates, is Paul's concern here, and it corresponds exactly to God's judgment in 1:24,26, and 28 when he hands people over to their lust, dishonorable passion, and worthless thoughts [457-58].

Interpreters of this passage [9:21] often explain the image of God as a potter shaping clay as a reference to God's creation of human beings and his determination of their eternal destinies at creation…Paul does not, therefore, picture God as creating people in order to destroy them but as dealing sovereignly with a body of human beings who, without exception, are sinful. He mercifully saves some but justly punishes others [460]. 

One can describe the idea that God decides who will believe the gospel in a way that makes God not only responsible for the salvation of human beings but also for evil since he seemingly creates certain human beings in order that they might sin and that he might then destroy them for his glory. A variation on this idea depicts God as within his rights even to destroy innocent human beings, if any existed, simply because he created them. 

To read Rom 9:7-23 in these ways, however, is to read the passages in a one-sided way, without the balance provided by the context…The idea that this passage teaches God created people in order to destroy them, moreover, attributes conduct to God that God himself finds sinful in human beings. It depicts God as forcing people to sin and then condemning them for it or, worse, condemning the innocent…But he [Paul] tempers the entire concept with the notion that God endured the vessels of wrath that he made with much patience and by speaking of the fitting out of these vessels in the passive voice (9:22). By doing this, he indicates that one must not misread the illustrations to make God the author of evil and sin. 

Paul's illustration of the potter in 9:19-23, then, is not about God predestining certain people to sin, nor is it about the relationship between the entry of sin into God's creation and God's predestining will. It is instead about God's response to already sinful human beings. 

This does not mean that human sin took God by surprise and was somehow outside the scope of God's original design for the universe. It simply means that the answer to such questions lies beyond human understanding.

[Quoting Bavinck] Sin and its punishment can never as such, and for their own sake, have been willed by God…They can therefore have been willed by God only as a means to a different, better, and greater good…Sin is not itself a good. It only becomes a good inasmuch as, contrary to its own nature, it is compelled by God's omnipotence to advance his honor. It is a good indirectly because, being subdued, constrained, and overcome, it brings out God's greatness, power, and justice. 

God is not willing "that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Pet 3:9) [468-70]. 

Reformed exclusivism

Critics of Calvinism regard Calvinism as an especially harsh version of exclusivism. They castigate unconditional election and they criticize the Reformed position that regeneration is causally prior to faith. The point of this post is not to defend those tenets directly, but to consider a potential fringe benefit. 

i) In traditional evangelical exclusivism, premortem faith in Christ is a prima facie prerequisite of salvation. But there are caveats. That's usually confined to mentally competent individuals. Exceptions are often made for those who lack the cognitive faculties to exercise Christian faith. People below a certain age. People with severe congenital brain damage. 

Christians who become senile. Christians with brain cancer. The latter two lose their faith, but they don't lose their salvation. Rather, they lose the cognitive faculties to believe. 

That's not necessarily the same thing as declaring all those groups to be heavenbound. Because Scripture doesn't give definitive answers to the salvific status of special cases, some evangelical theologians suspend judgment while others stake out the universal salvation of all who die before the age of reason (to take one example). 

ii) Although Scripture attributes salvation to faith in Christ, Scripture also attributes salvation to regeneration. It's lopsided to focus on saving faith to the exclusion of saving regeneration. 

iii) According to evangelical freewill theism, faith causes regeneration. According to Calvinism, regeneration (in tandem with the Gospel) causes faith. In Calvinism, regeneration is causally and sometimes temporally prior to saving faith. There can be a chronological gap between regeneration and saving faith. For instance, God can regenerate someone as a young child or even in the womb, but they may not come to faith until they reach the age of reason or later. Likewise, in Calvinism, election is logically/teleologically prior to conception (indeed, prior to time). 

iv) Suppose (ex hypothesi) that God regenerates a Muslim with a view to the Muslim coming to Christian faith, only God regenerates the Muslim several years before he comes to faith in Christ. At that stage in the process, the Muslim hasn't been exposed to the Gospel. But suppose the effect of regeneration is to make him doubt or lose faith in Islam. At that stage he lacks an alternative. But regeneration broke through the social conditioning which made Islam unquestionable prior to regeneration. And suppose that prompts him to search for religious alternatives–until he discovers a Bible. Regeneration planted a seed that eventually germinated in faith. But there was some delay.

v) In principle, God might elect or regenerate someone who's killed in a traffic accident before coming to faith in Christ. I wouldn't press that. In general, God coordinates election and regeneration with the Gospel. 

That said, I'm not sure how we can rule out the possibility that God elects and regenerates some people who die before coming to Christ. Their faith will be postponed to the afterlife. Indeed, many Calvinists already believe that happens in special cases (see above). Is salvation a matter of lucky timing? If you die a minute before, you're damned? 

Ironically, something freewill theists find so objectionable in Calvinism has the potential to make it more magnanimous than traditional evangelical freewill theism. Not something to bank on, but an open question in Reformed theology.  By contrast, faith and regeneration are chronologically inseparable in traditional evangelical freewill theism, resulting in a harsher version of exclusivism. 

144,000

I believe dispensationists think the 144,000 in Rev 7:4 refers to ethnic Jewish converts. Bracketing the usual exegetical debates, that raises some philosophical and theodical issues. Some dispensationalists are Calvinists while others are freewill theists. Let's consider each in relation to that identification:

1. Reformed dispensationalism

This means God regenerated 144,000 ethnic Jews during the great tribulation. Freewill theists often allege that unconditional election is arbitrary. I've argued that their allegation is confused. The fact that God doesn't elect people based on foreseen faith or merit doesn't mean God is randomly choosing who will be saved or damned, like throwing dice to pick winners and losers. 

Humans are agents. The elect make different choices in life than the reprobate. Depending on who's elect or reprobate, that generates alternate world histories. 

In addition, it may well be the case that God made a multiverse in which alternate histories play out. It's not as if God is forced to choose one outcome to the exclusion of others. 

If, however, the Reformed dispensational interpretation of Rev 7:4 is correct, then who's saved and who's damned is based on numerology. Some ethnic Jews didn't make the cut because that would mess up the nice round number. God didn't save 144,303 Jews because that's not a pretty number compared to 144,000. Picking winners and losers to make a nice round number. Isn't numerical aesthetics an awfully frivolous criterion for salvation and damnation? 

2. Libertarian dispensationalism

On this view it's unclear how there can be exactly 144,000 ethnic Jewish converts. God can't zap 144,000 Jews to believe in Jesus, for faith is an independent variable. Human agents are the ultimate source of their choices and actions. So it's out of God's hands how many Jews will be saved during the Tribulation. 

But in that event, what are the odds that the number of converts just happen to add up to that nice round number? Consider all the different numerical possibilities. It's a vanishingly improbable coincidence that the raffle of freewill theism will pull that particular figure out of the hat.

The Moral Psychology of Depravity and the Difficulty of Living in the Kingdom

https://www.jamesagibson.com/2018/03/30/the-moral-psychology-of-depravity-and-the-difficulty-of-living-in-the-kingdom/

Accident of birth

Stephen J. Graham

@sjggraham 

Suppose God sent to Hell everyone who was born in South America before 10am. The rest of us go to heaven. Is there any reason on Calvinism to think there is anything wrong with God holding people morally accountable for being born in South America before 10am?

Secular Outpost Retweeted

Stephen J. Graham

@sjggraham

Can South Americans born before 10am complain to their creator "Why did you make me thus?" Who are they that they should talk back to God? (cf Romans 9:20)

Stephen J. Graham

@sjggraham

I'm asking whether it makes any moral sense for God to hold someone accountable for something beyond their control. I don't think the issue is about divine command ethics.

I wouldn't normally comment on some random tweet by an atheist, by since this was retweeted by Jeff Lowder at the Secular Outpost, I'll bite:

i) God wouldn't be holding folks morally accountable for when and where they are born, but for their sin. For instance, if an arsonist trips a silent alarm, and the police arrest him before he had a chance to get away, he wasn't held accountable for his poor timing. That's an incidental circumstance. 

ii) Since many South Americans are Christians, it would be morally wrong for God to damn them. For one thing, God would be breaking his promise to save those who trust in Jesus.

ii) In addition, it would be wrong for God to damn those whom Christ redeemed. Since Christ atoned for the sins of Christians (i.e. the elect), there's no judicial basis for damning them. Admittedly, some professing Christians are nominal Christians, but I'm referring to the elect.

iii) Hence, Rom 9:20 doesn't apply.

iv) Sometimes we're responsible for things beyond our control and sometimes not. Depends on the example. If a mother leaves her newborn baby on my doorstep, I'm not responsible for the child in the sense that I'm not its father. And I didn't create that situation. But having been thrust into a situation not of my own choosing, I'm responsible to see to it that the newborn doesn't die on my doorstep from exposure or predation. 

Election and adoption

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtnGGFqpT80

Unconditional election and infant salvation

From a Facebook exchange:

It is clear from the Institutes that Calvin taught double predestination. When, according to Calvin, does God predestine some to salvation and some to damnation? Would the predestined person's age have anything to do with anything? How could one consistently argue something different than double predestination from Calvin?

In and of themselves, election and reprobation are consistent with universal infant salvation. It's just up to God who he chose to elect or reprobate. That can't be inferred merely from the principle of double predestination.

Sounds like having your cake and eating it to. Either election is unconditional or it isn't. Seems to me you're wanting to make it conditional when it makes the doctrine more palatable.

Unclear what you think unconditional election means. The concept of unconditional election is not a restriction or imposition on God. What makes you think unconditional election means God can't elect all those who die before the age of reason, if that's what he wanted to do?

BTW, since you don't know my actual position, it would behoove you to avoid conspiratorial interpretations.

Completely true- God can do what He wants. I personally just find it inconsistent to hold to an unconditional election based solely on God's sovereignty, but then apply a condition to it (the age of reason).

The basic principle of unconditional election is that since all Adam's posterity will be guilty as well as unresponsive to spiritual good apart from grace, there's nothing to distinguish one human from another that accounts for God's choice. God could choose fewer or God could choose more. If everyone is in the same boat, choosing a particular subclass of the total (e.g. all who die before the age of discretion) is perfectly consistent with the unconditionality of election.

There's an ambiguity to how you're using "condition". To take a crazy hypothetical for illustrative purposes, suppose God elected all and only people with green eyes. Would that make it "conditional" election. If the notion is that having green eyes causes, constrains, or impels God to choose people with green eyes, then that would be conditional. If, however, the elect status of green-eyed people is the effect or result of God's choice, then that's not conditional.

Like I said, I would think from an unconditional election point of view, that God is sovereign. He can do what He wants. Not really interested in what He might do. I think he has declared what He will do: he who believes is not condemned. 

Hypotheticals are a way of testing whether a generalization is true or false in principle.

There's an elementary difference between what an individual Reformed theologian believes, and whether his position is a logical implication of Calvinism. Put another way, a difference between what's consistent with Calvinism and what's entailed by Calvinism.

Traditionally, the original rationale for infant baptism was to remove the stain of original sin. Unbaptized babies who died were consigned to hell. That wasn't based on Calvinism. What was the position of Arminian Anglicans like John and Charles Wesley?

Chopped liver

I recently had an exchange with an intemperate freewill theist:

"Calvinism tells sinners there is nothing they can do to change their eternal fate."

That confuses predestination with fatalism. Sure, there's nothing you can do to change a predestined outcome, but that hardly means faith or lack of faith is irrelevant to the outcome–for what sinners do or don't do is, itself, a predestined factor leading to the predestined outcome. The outcome won't happen apart from intervening causes.  

"Calvinists are dangerous heretics because they insist that God has NOT made a SINCERE offer of salvation to the whole world through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, His only son."

The offer of salvation is a conditional offer: if you repent of your sins and put your faith in Jesus, you will be saved. That's a sincere offer that's entirely consistent with Calvinism.

"God saves ONLY a relative handful that He Himself has chosen to save, and that these lucky few cannot"

That's a willfully ignorant Arminian trope. Calvinism is neutral on what percentage of humanity will be saved. Some Calvinists think it will be the majority.

"Is this something I can choose to do, or do I have to hope and pray that my 'dead spirit' has been supernaturally "regenerated" first?"

Unless you're Pelagian, even evangelical freewill theists believe prevenient grace is necessary to enable sinners to repent and believe the Gospel. 

What makes an offer a bona fide offer is that if anybody complies with the terms of the offer, he will get what he was offered.

To take a comparison, suppose a butcher offers to sell two pounds of chopped liver for the price of one. If you only buy one pound, you don't get half price. You have to buy two pounds. 

Okay, but suppose I can't stand the taste of liver. In that sense, I can't take him up on the offer. 

Does my distaste for chopped liver make the offer insincere? Not by any reasonable definition of a bona fide offer.

Once again, are you ignorant of evangelical freewill theism? According to evangelical theology generally, original sin renders humans unable to accept the Gospel unless God provides necessary preliminary grace. In Arminian theology, that's prevenient grace. To deny that is Pelagian.

In addition, you keep missing the point. The stated purpose of the chopped liver analogy is to illustrate that an offer isn't rendered insincere due to the inability of a customer to be receptive to the offer. A sale on chopped liver is a bona fide offer even if many customers hate chopped liver. 

"So the offer--at whatever price--is INSINCERE if the person it is being offered to has no ABILITY to receive it."

People who can't stand chopped liver are unable to enjoy the taste of chopped liver. Therefore, they are constitutionally unreceptive to the offer. They find the offer repellant. 

It is insincere for the butcher to offer chopped liver unless every customer is able to enjoy the taste of chopped liver? 

No. It's only insincere in case the butcher has no intention to giving them what was offered if they comply with the terms of the offer. 

Moreover, the butcher isn't even offering chopped liver to customers face-to-face. He simply put an ad in the newspaper.

Actually, the reprobate don't show up. That's the point. It's not as if they show up, only to be served bad food. Rather, they refuse to come because they hate the food. 

Or, to use my analogy, it's not as if they go to the store to buy the chopped liver, present their coupon, only to be charged full price. No, they don't take the butcher up on the offer in the first place since they hate chopped liver.

But there are other customers who just love chopped liver. They go to the store, present the coupon, and get two for the price of one–exactly as advertised. A bona fide offer. 

Dropping the metaphors, the elect accept the Gospel and the reprobate reject the Gospel.

Is unconditional election arbitrary?

A staple charge against Calvinism is that unconditional election is "arbitrary". Isn't "unconditional" election arbitrary by definition? If it's "unconditional," then it must be arbitrary, right? Like rolling dice. 

However, that's confused. It's unconditional in the sense that it's not conditional on anything outside of God. But that doesn't mean there can't be differential factors in God's choice. Different human agents, or the same agents making different decisions, will produce different chains of events. God could have reasons for preferring one chain of events over another. And that's still not conditioned on something outside of God, since God is the one who makes different agents different in the first place. The differences derive from God. Likewise, the same agent could choose a different course of action in the way a movie may have an alternate ending. Different plots originate in the mind of God, not the human agent. 

But we also need to examine the notion of "arbitrariness". There are degrees of arbitrariness. There's a distinction between what's reasonably arbitrary and unreasonably arbitrary. 

Consider age of majority, age of consent, drinking age, driving age, voting age, draft age, enlistment age, &c. Suppose, in most cases, that's 18. Now, that's a somewhat artificial threshold. Why not 17 years, 5 months, and 13 days? Why not 19 years, 2 months, and 9 days? In part because lawmakers like round numbers. In part because we've inherited the decimal system. 

Moreover, the age at which individuals are actually competent varies from one person to the next. But, of course, it isn't feasible to have a variable age. It has to be a general policy. Lawmakers can't individualize for millions of people. 

But even though the threshold is somewhat arbitrary, it's reasonable arbitrary. To begin with, the alternative to a somewhat artifical age threshold is to have no minimum age for sex, voting, drinking, driving, military service, &c. But that would be ridiculous. 

It is, therefore, preferable to have an age threshold, even if that's somewhat artifical, if the alternative is to have no age threshold at all for such activities. 

Moreover, 18 is reasonably arbitrary in a way that 8 or 28 would be unreasonably arbitrary. 8 would clearly be too low while 28 would clearly be too high. So the threshold is a rational compromise. A line has to be drawn somewhere, and while there's no ideal place to draw the line–indeed, because there's no ideal place to draw the line–any threshold will be somewhat artificial. Yet drawing the line some places is more reasonable or unreasonable than other places. 

Take the age of consent. Take statutory rape. If an 18-year-old seduces a 17-year-old, that's legally rape. Yet that's a legal technicality. The transaction was consensual. 

What if the seducer (or seductress) was a day shy of 18? Legally, it's rape if it happened a day after he or she turned 18, but not a day before. The fact that the seducer (or seductress) happens to fall on the liable side of that threshold may be arbitrary. And for that reason, I it would be unjust to charge the seducer (or seductress) in cases where it's nothing more than a legal technicality. 

But, presumably, that's not the intended target for age of consent laws. Rather, if you didn't have such laws, you couldn't prosecute someone for bona fide child rape. Or situations like the Roman Polanski case. So you need a certain spread to cover the egregious examples. 

So even if unconditional election were arbitrary in some respect, that doesn't ipso facto make it capricious or unjust. A critic of Calvinism needs to fine-hone his objection, to show that unconditional election is unreasonably arbitrary (even assuming that's is arbitrary in any sense). 

In principle, God could elect one more person or one less person. But even if there's a sense in which that's arbitrary, it doesn't follow that it's unreasonably arbitrary. If you were to take that objection to a logical extreme, a non-arbitrary line would be to damn everyone! 

Moreover, there's a sense in which God can't elect everyone possible person, even if he so desired. For the existence of some people depends on the existence of evil. And in many instances, that evil would be incompatible with the elect status of every ancestor. It's a domino effect. So election necessarily includes some individuals who might have been excluded while excluding some individuals who might have been included. A possible out is of God creates a multiverse. That, however, will entail evil. 

Corporate election

Most simply, corporate election refers to the choice of a group, which entails the choice of its individual members by virtue of their membership in the group. Thus, individuals are not elected as individuals directly, but secondarily as members of the elect group. Nevertheless, corporate election necessarily entails a type of individual election because of the inextricable connection between any group and the individuals who belong to it.6 Individuals are elect as a consequence of their membership in the group.
We have already noted that God’s Old Covenant people were chosen in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. More specifically, God chose Abraham and his descendants, but limited his election of Abraham’s descendants to only some of them by his choice of Isaac as the head of the covenant through whom Abraham’s covenant descendants were to be reckoned. He then limited his election of the covenant descendants even further by his choice of Jacob as the head of the covenant. At the same time, and as already pointed out above, people not naturally related to Jacob and so not part of the elect people could join the chosen people, becoming part of the elect. On the other hand, individual members of the elect people could be cut off from the covenant people due to violation of the covenant, rendering them non-elect.
 For Israel was chosen in Jacob. That is, the people Israel was chosen as a consequence of the man Israel’s election. When he was chosen, they were chosen. As Gen. 25:23 indicates, it could be said that the nation was in Rebekah’s womb because Jacob was. And as Mal. 1:2-3 affirms, God loved/chose the people Israel by loving/choosing Jacob. 
In the New Covenant, God’s people are chosen corporately as a consequence of their union with Christ, which is effected by faith.12 While this is not quite the traditional Arminian position, it fully supports Arminian theology because it is a conditional election. Most directly, such election is conditioned on being in Christ. But then being in Christ is itself conditioned on faith, meaning that the divine election of God’s people and the election of individuals for salvation is ultimately conditional on faith in Christ.
A critical part of the answer to that is provided by the incorporative, qualifying phrase, “in Christ.” It means that God chose us as a consequence of being in Christ. There is no denial here of the election of human beings, just that the election of human beings is individualistic and unconditional.  

http://evangelicalarminians.org/files/Article.%20Clearing%20Up%20Misconceptions%20about%20Corporate%20Election.%20Ashland%20Version%20with%20Different%20Note%20Format.pdf

Several issues:

1. Abasciano admits right up front that corporate election entails individual election. It's just an indirect result. The question at issue is how individuals become party to the collective. 

2. Before commenting on that, let's illustrate the general principle:

i) For the (temporary) duration of the Mosaic covenant, every lineal descendent of Jacob was obligated to abide by the terms of the Mosaic covenant by virtue of being a descendent of Jacob. The covenant applied to an entire class of individuals. 

The fact that covenant-breakers could be excommunicated is no exception, for that, in itself, was a covenant sanction. You already had to be a member of the covenant to be liable to that sanction. 

The further fact that foreigners could be incorporated into the covenant community is no exception, for the terms of the covenant make provision for that possibility. 

ii) To take a few secular examples, a citizen is someone who satisfies the conditions of citizenship. All and only those individuals who satisfy the conditions of citizenship are citizens. The conditions of citizenship select in advance for who can and can't be a citizen. That can include birthright citizenship, where an individual is a citizen, not by choice, but by virtue of where they were born or to whom they were born. 

Another example would be draft registration. Suppose the government stipulates that all males must register for the draft when the reach age 18. Yet another example might be an Indian treaty. It allocates land to members of a particular tribe. It stipulates the borders. It stipulates who counts as a member of the tribe. Say, an individual must have one grandparent from that tribe. 

Although it doesn't directly pick any particular individual, it designates a class of individuals. All and only those individuals who are covered are included. 

3. In the secular examples, the government doesn't know in advance who will be included. But apart from open theists, other freewill theists must concede that God had the affected individuals in mind. God knew who the concerned parties would be. Moreover, the terms of corporate election select for who the concerned parties will be. The terms of corporate election determine who can be a concerned party. Their status is a result of the stipulations. God knows the affected individuals, the specific individuals whom he's including or excluding, by how he defines the terms of corporate membership. His prior knowledge of that outcome is the logical consequence of his prior action, effecting that outcome. 

4. It's true that this, in itself, doesn't make election unconditional. However, the fact that God is said to choose Christians before the foundation of the world, or to choose them beforehand, or to predestine a chain of events resulting in their ultimate salvation, implies unconditionality. God is acting on behalf of people who did not exist. He is making decisions for them before they were conceived, or their parents were conceived, or their grandparents were conceived. That, in itself, implies a unilateral action. It depends on God, not on them. 

I don't mean "imply" in the sense of logical necessity, but implicature. What are the connotations of "predestination," "chosen beforehand," "chosen before the foundation of the world"? How would Paul expect his readers to register that terminology? I think they'd naturally take it to mean that they are beneficiaries of a choice they had nothing to do with. 

To take a comparison: suppose a man strikes it rich at age 20. He draws up a will. At the time he is childless. His will stipulates that if he has a grandson, the grandson will inherit a lump-sum (exact amount specified in the will). At the time of the will, his grandson doesn't exist. Indeed, his son or daughter doesn't exist. They have no say-so. 

By the same token, Paul's predestinarian language implies that Christians are impacted by a divine decision over which they had no control, since they were in no position at the time to say, think, or do anything about it one way or the other. They are entirely on the receiving-end of that transaction, just as children don't consent to their conception. 

In theory, union with Christ might be effected by faith. But Paul's antemundane framework removes that from consideration. Rather, individuals are in union with Christ by virtue of the Father's predestinarian choice. Faith happens in time rather than timeless eternity–before they even existed, except as divine ideas. 

5. Abasciano is arbitrarily selective about his emphasis on the "collectivist mentality" of Scripture. Making membership contingent on faith is individualistic. 

6. To say that salvation is contingent on faith is no alternative to Calvinism. That merely pushes the question back a step. Why do some people have faith while others do not? For that matter, why does God make salvation contingent on faith in Christ when that preemptively excludes many people who lived and died outside the pale of the Gospel? 

Christ died for sinners

In 5-point Calvinism, is limited atonement and/or limited election in tension with the universal offer of the gospel? 

i) God doesn't directly offer the gospel to every individual, or directly command every individual to believe the gospel. 

In that respect, the offer of the gospel parallels special revelation. In might be more efficient if God privately revealed himself to every individual, but instead, God resorts to a public revelation. A mass medium. 

One reason, perhaps, is that humans are social creatures, so having Scripture as a common reference point is a unifying principle.

Be that as it may, the offer of the gospel is like a recipe. If you follow the instructions, this will be the result. A recipe doesn't order anyone in particular to use that recipe. 

ii) In nature, there's a principle of redundancy. For instance, a maple tree produces far more seeds (or maple copters) than will every take root and become trees in their own right. But the redundancy is purposeful. If enough maple trees produce enough airborne seeds, that greatly raises the odds that some of them will take root and produce trees in their own right.

Likewise, many animals produce multiple offspring, only a few of which survive to maturity. But in order to at least achieve a replacement rate, it's necessary to produce offspring in excess of the replacement rate, to offset the loss of the offspring that are eaten by predators before they reach sexual maturity and repeat the reproductive cycle. By the same token, multiple sperm raise the odds that one will fertilize the ovum. 

Humans imitate this principle. For instance, absent vaccination, some people will contract a serious communicable disease and some won't. Since we don't know which is which, we resort to mass vaccination to ensure, as best we can, that everyone who would be susceptible is covered. We vaccinate everyone, not because everyone needs it, but to make reasonably certain that we get the ones who do need it. It isn't necessary for everyone, but it's necessary to include more people in order to cover the subset that really need it. 

Likewise, the military might resort to more extensive bombing strikes to raise the odds of hitting the targets. Or resort to bombs with higher yield to achieve the same end. It gives you a margin of error. 

By analogy, the universal offer of the gospel will be heard by elect and reprobate alike. That's the nature of a mass medium of communication. That doesn't mean it's intended for all. Rather, that's a way of reaching the intended subset. Given that humans are social creatures, unless God privately discloses the gospel to the elect, the only alternative is a general message. 

iii) Let's consider a more subtle illustration. Suppose one country invades another country. Some of the natives form an underground resistance movement. They are planning a counterattack to oust the occupation force. But it will take a while for them to get all their ducks in a row. 

When they are ready to launch the counterattack, they have sympathizers in the news media do a public service announcement. This will seem to be a perfectly innocuous message. But will contain some code phrases that members of the resistance movement will recognize. That will be the signal to come out of hiding and strike back.

The enemy will hear the same announcement, but it won't detect the coded message embedded in the announcement. The enemy isn't privy to the code phrases. 

The message has to be broadcast nationwide to reach all the far-flung resistance cells. Everyone will hear the same message, but everyone won't register the ulterior significance of the message. 

iv) Perhaps a 4-point Calvinist would say this is parallel to the relationship between unlimited atonement and limited election. Christ dies for everyone to cover the elect. 

Whether you think that makes sense depends on your view of what the atonement targets. Does it cover sin? Sins? Or sinners? Does the death of Christ make atonement for some abstraction we call sin? Does it make atonement for sins, as distinct from the agents who committed them? Or does it make atonement for elect sinners? For their guilt?

I don't deny that Scripture sometimes speaks of making atonement for "sin" or "sins", but I think that's shorthand for sinners. I doubt Scripture intends to treat sin as an aggregate substance in abstraction from the particular agents who commit particular sins. Sin is personal. 

If Christ died for elect sinners, then it isn't necessary for the scope of the atonement to exceed the elect in order to cover the elect. If, moreover, Christ dies for the damned, then the atonement doesn't entail the salvation of anyone in particular. That greatly weakens the link between atonement and salvation. 

Abortion, election, and apostasy

Abortionists sometimes cite popular belief in universal infant salvation as a wedge tactic to taunt Christians: If you believe all babies are heavenbound, why do you oppose abortion? This is meant to generate a dilemma: logically, you should either support both or oppose both. 

John Piper recently posted on this subject:

http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/if-babies-go-to-heaven-why-oppose-abortion

Given the cards he dealt himself, I think he played his hand fairly well. That said:

i) Speaking for myself, I'm dubious about universal infant salvation. All the world's worst people used to be cute little kids. I can't help mentally rewinding the clock. Go back in time from what they are to what they were. 

Seems arbitrary to say that if you die at seven you fly to heaven, but if you die at nine you fry. 

We see children as they are, not as they will be. At least initially. Sometimes we live long enough to see how they turn out–for better or worse. 

So I doubt a key premise of the argument. But even if I didn't, I don't think the argument goes through. 

ii) If this poses a dilemma at all, it only poses a dilemma for freewill theists rather than Calvinists. The unstated premise of the argument is that people can lose their salvation. Hence, if somebody is now saved, killing him now is the way to seal his salvation. If salvation can be lost, it is risky to live another day. To play it safe, die when you are saved. The longer you wait, the greater the risk that you will died unsaved. 

Incidentally, the logic of that argument is hardly confined to infants. It would apply just as well to born-again adults. 

iii) But, of course, Calvinism rejects the operating premise. What ensures your salvation is not when you die, but election–which is unalterable. Not, in the first instance, what happened in time, but what happened in eternity. The elect can't lose their salvation. You either have it or you don't.

From a Reformed standpoint, nothing you do can change the number of the elect. In the classic formulation of the Westminster Confession: "These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished" (WCF 3:4).

iv) But it might be argued that this misses the point. The claim is not that we retroactively cause God to elect more people if more babies die in the womb. The claim, rather, is that if more (elect) babies die in the womb, then that's how God predestined the end-result all along. Our alternate course of action (i.e. aborting elect babies) is the consequence of God's foreordination, rather than God's foreordination as the consequence of our alternate course of action. 

v) There is, however, a basic problem with that argument. It's a counterfactual scenario. As such, it doesn't refer to the world in which you and I actually live, but to an alternate timeline.

But even if you believe in universal infant salvation vis-a-vis the actual world, you can't just switch to an alternate timeline, yet assume everything else remains the same. Even if your thought-experiment only changes on variable, that's just a thought-experiment. You can conjecture that God might do it that way, but it's not as if you have given God a blueprint which he must follow. 

Suppose there's a possible world in which some people kill their children in the superstitious belief that doing so will ensure their salvation. It doesn't follow that in fact raises the number of the elect. For in that alternate timeline, God may not elect all dying infants, even if he does so in this world. 

vi) Furthermore, even if you subscribe to predestinarian universal infant salvation, that doesn't imply that more people are ultimately elect. It may simply mean a greater percentage of the elect die in infancy, and fewer in adulthood–even though the overall number is exactly the same. The sum is the same. All that's different is how the elect are distributed by time of death. Whether more die younger or older. 

Vos on predestination

The question is not whether sin comes into consideration as a factor in the decree of election and of rejection. On this point much misunderstanding reigns. One frequently hears the claim that those who place election above the fall teach that God has ordained men for eternal bliss and eternal miserly only because he willed to do so and without considering their sin. But that is a conclusion that is not present in supralapsarianism and has never been intended by its advocates. 

[Quoting Perkins] insofar as it pertains to the first act, that is, insofar as it refers to the purpose to abandon the creature and in this to demonstrate justice, is absolute…Sin itself occurs after the abandonment and the just permission of God…However, reprobation, insofar as it pertains to the second act, that is the purpose to damn, is not absolute or indefinite but it takes account of sin…God has not created man simply to destroy him, but so that by his just destruction of the sinner he would demonstrate his justice.

The older supralapsarianism [which Vos endorses] at least maintained that in God's decree the permitting of the fall of man together with creation was subordinated to the highest end, the glorification of his justice and mercy.

The supralapsarian taught that in his decree to create God already had in view the elect as his personal beloved.

One will perceive how the question whether in predestination God viewed man as still having to be created and still having to fall (creabilis et labilis), or as created and fallen (creatus et lapsus), is only a short formula for this difference.  It would perhaps be better to say creandus [to be created] et lapsurus [to be fallen] for characterizing supralapsarian sentiments…"Will be created" and "will be falling" gives a sense of how sin was certainly taken into account.

The objection that for the supralapsarian the object of predestination is a non-ens (a nonentity) rests on a misunderstanding. It is not a non-ens concerning the knowing part of God's decree but only concerning the willing act. Also, if this reasoning is extended, God could never have made a decree of creation. 

One should certainly keep in view that this harshness resides in the doctrine of God's decree as such, and supralapsarianism merely brings it out clearly.

[Quoting Calvin] "God has created us in order to redeem us."

According to infralapsarians, reprobation has two parts: (a) praeteritio, "passing by," God's decree not to grant the grace of salvation to certain persons lying in sin; and (b) praedamnatio, "predamnation," God's decree to commit these persons to eternal destruction because of their sin.

According to supralapsarians, reprobation has three parts: (a) the decree to set apart certain persons for the revelation of God's retributive justice in punishment for their sins; (b) permission in God's decree for the fall of man; (c) the decree not to grant grace to these persons, being once fallen, but to condemn them because of their sin.

The supralapsarian says: The legal ground why men perish lies in sin that they deliberately commit within time. Nobody perishes other than because of his own sin. But this sin itself cannot occur apart from the permission of God's decree. Therefore, this permission, that is, God's predestination, is the highest ground for the reality of perishing, although not the legal ground.

a) That generally hardening is the consequence of contact with the revelation or the truth of God against which sinful men rebels (so, for Pharaoh, Exod 7:3; Isaiah's contemporaries, Isa 6; Mt 13:11-16). "An odor of death to death."

b) That hardening is also caused by God simultaneously withdrawing the common grace of the Holy Spirit and permitting sin to break out and spread unhindered. Here, then, is a real act of God, but it is an act of withdrawing. God does not cause sin to arise in man but withdraws all influences that work for good. This is called, "given over to a depraved mind," 'to dishonorable passions," to the desires of their hearts" (Rom 1:28,26,24; Ps 81:13). 

G. Vos, Reformed Dogmatics (Lexam Press 2012-2014)1:144-154