Classical Calvinism follows in the pattern of Augustine’s conception of election/predestination. JND Kelley (with criticism) describes Augustine’s conception this way:

The problem of predestination has so far only been hinted at. Since grace takes the initiative and apart from it all men form a massa damnata, it is for God to determine which shall receive grace and which shall not. This He has done, Augustine believes on the basis of Scripture, from all eternity. The number of the elect is strictly limited, being neither more nor less than is required to replace the fallen angels. Hence he has to twist the text ‘God wills all men to be saved’ (1 Tim. 2, 4), making it mean that He wills the salvation of all the elect, among whom men of every race and type are represented. God’s choice of those to whom grace is to be given in no way depends on His foreknowledge of their future merits, for whatever good deeds they will do will themselves be the fruit of grace. In so far as His foreknowledge is involved, what He foreknows is what He Himself is going to do. Then how does God decide to justify this man rather than that? There can in the end be no answer to this agonizing question. God has mercy on those whom He wishes to save, and justifies them; He hardens those upon whom He does not wish to have mercy, not offering them grace in conditions in which they are likely to accept it. If this looks like favouritism, we should remember that all are in any case justly condemned, and that if God makes His decision in the light of ‘a secret and, to human calculation, inscrutable justice’. Augustine is therefore prepared to speak of certain people as being predestined to eternal death and damnation; they may include, apparently, decent Christians who have been called and baptized, but to whom the grace of perseverance has not been given. More often, however, he speaks of the predestination of the saints which consists in ‘God’s foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits by which those who are to be delivered are most assuredly delivered’. These alone have the grace of perseverance, and even before they are born they are sons of God and cannot perish.[1]

And Calvin, as an echo of Augustine, writes:

Election–but no reprobation?

Now when human understanding hears these things, its insolence is so irrepressible that it breaks forth into random and immoderate tumult as if at the blast of a battle trumpet. Indeed many, as if they wished to avert a reproach from God, accept election in such terms as to deny that anyone is condemned. But they do this very ignorantly and childishly, since election itself could not stand except as set over against reprobation. God is said to set apart those whom he adopts into salvation; it will be highly absurd to say that others acquire by chance or obtain by their own effort what election alone confers on a few. Therefore, those whom God passes over, he condemns; and this he does for no other reason than that he wills to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his own children. And men’s insolence is unbearable if it refuses to be bridled by God’s Word, which treats of his incomprehensible plan that the angels adore. . . .[2]

We see development in Calvin from Augustine; Calvin has a more active place for the reprobate than Augustine. Even so, Calvin relegates a doctrine of reprobation to the secret will of God, whereas he places election into the revealed will of God (this causes problems for the coherence of Calvin’s doctrine of election, which I critique here).

People might wonder why virtuosos like Augustine, Calvin, and other latterly Reformed thinkers would operate with such a harsh view of God’s relationship to humanity. They might wonder if God is love, then where does the idea of God decreeing that the majority of humanity will be condemned to an eternally hot hell with no way of escape. It comes back to their doctrine of God; where else?! Calvinists, in the main, operate with Aristotelian conception of God. This conception starts its thinking about God from Aristotle’s pure being god, or actual infinite, or unmoved mover. What characterizes this conception of God most is that he is a brute creator God who is shaped by an Almighty power that cannot be challenged. Now, we can affirm that God is Almighty, and that He cannot be challenged. What we cannot affirm is that God is simply a brute Creator who creates, and remains unmoved by His relation to His creation in an abstract sense.

If God is triune love, which He is, then He cannot be thought of arbitrarily; we must think Him in the way He has chosen for us to think Him. He hasn’t chosen that we think Him through apparatus given to the Christian tradition by the philosophers. Instead, He has chosen that we think Him as Father. If God is Father of the Son, and we think Him this way by the comfort of the Holy Spirit, then we cannot think Him in terms provided for by philosophers like Aristotle. But this is what the classical Calvinists would have us do. Richard Muller has identified the roots of classical Calvinism, as that developed in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, as what he calls: Christian Aristotelianism. Aristotle’s god requires that He remain unmoved by the contingencies of the created reality. When synthesized with Christian soteriology, what this requires is that the Christians have a mechanism in place that keeps God immovable vis-à-vis creation; and the Reformed in particular, as they have adopted this conception of God, developed what is called God’s decretum absolutum (or absolute decree). It is by way of this mechanism that God can relate to the world, in all His brute sovereignty and remain untouched, unmoved by creation. When applied to thinking about election, what this determines is that some will believe in Christ, in keeping with God’s decree, and others will reject Him. The Calvinist claims that if someone who has been chosen by God to eternal salvation could reject God’s choice that they be saved, that God’s sovereignty (His Almighty bruteness) would be flummoxed thus dealing the death of God, so to speak.

We can see the ulterior motive for developing what I consider to be a heinous and anti-Christ doctrine when it comes to thinking about the doctrine of election. Classical Calvinists will defend this doctrine to the death because they know that if they cease affirming God’s power in this way, that the God they consider to be God will cease being the God of the Bible. This is a sad state of affairs, since we know that God has not revealed Himself this way. We know that God has revealed Himself as the Father of the Son/Son of the Father in the sweet fellowship of the Holy Spirit. When we know this about God we can arrive at conclusions like TF Torrance does when he writes:

God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.[3]

When we think of election/reprobation the right way, from a proper triune doctrine of God we can arrive at the conclusion that Karl Barth does:

The doctrine of election is the sum of the Gospel because of all words that can be said or heard it is the best: that God elects man; that God is for man too the One who loves in freedom. It is grounded in the knowledge of Jesus Christ because He is both the electing God and the elected man in One. It is part of the doctrine of God because originally God’s election of man is a predestination not merely of man but of Himself. Its function is to bear basic testimony to eternal, free and unchanging grace as the beginning of all the ways and works of God.[4]

[1] J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Revised Edition (New York: Harper Collins, 1978), 368-69.

[2] Calvin, Institutes 3.23.1.

[3] T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 94.

[4] Barth, CD II/2:1.