Christ conditioned Election

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I think Myk Habets provides a good summation of how an Evangelical Calvinist (Thomas F. Torrance) thinks of election:

One of the distinctive features of a Reformed doctrine of election is the recurring instance that election ‘is christologically conditioned.’10 Following Calvin, Torrance claims that Christ is the ‘cause’ of election in all four traditional senses of ‘cause’: the efficient and the material, the formal and the final. ‘He is at once the Agent and the Content of election, its Beginning and its End.’11 Election proceeds from the eternal decree of God but this eternal decree of election assumes in time once and for all the form of the wondrous conjunction of God and humanity in Christ.12 The hypostatic union is the heart of any understanding of election as Torrance makes clear when he writes, ‘How are we to relate God’s action to our faith? The secret of that is seen only in the God-manhood of Christ, for that is the very heart of election, and the pattern of our election, and is visible only there since it is election in Christ.’13 (Myk Habets,”The Doctrine of Election in Evangelical Calvinism: T. F. Torrance as a Case Study,” Irish Theological Quarterly 73 (2008) 336)

What this illustrates is that the Evangelical Calvinist still speaks of election, even in Classically Reformed terms; but instead of grounding election in Creation (as the Classic approach does, by way of “decree”), it is based in Christ.

2 thoughts on “Christ conditioned Election”

  1. “but instead of grounding election in Creation (as the Classic approach does, by way of “decree”), it is based in Christ. ”

    This is the truth that is so hard to grasp. But it is key. Thank you.

    Craig

  2. Hey Craig,

    Great to hear from you, brother! This is such an exciting truth to me; it gets rid of the false dichotomy so often forwarded between Christ and the “elect” people of God — as if the “elect” are added on to Christ in by way of His “purchase” at the cross. It’s exciting to think out of the hypostatic union and realize that what we actually have in Christ is fully God and fully Man (archetypical). That Christ as the “electing God” was also willing to submit to the Father’s electing as The ‘eternally elected man’ for us. In this sense then salvation is so inextricably tied to Christ that salvation is in fact the union and communion of God’s Holy life (i.e. vs. the classical notion of salvation by “decree” or impersonal and thus non-Trinitarian in nature).

    It’s good to know the LORD, can’t imagine living w/o Him 🙂 !

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