Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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the Supralapsarians, who held different views on the order of the divine
decrees and their relation to the fall (lapsus). The Infralapsarians adjust, as
it were, the eternal counsel of God to the temporal fall of man, and assume
that God decreed, first to create man in holiness; then to permit him to fall
by the self-determination of his free will; next, to save a definite number
out of the guilty mass; and last, to leave the rest in sin, and to ordain them
to eternal punishment. f828 The Supralapsarians reverse the order, so that
the decree of election and reprobation precedes the decree of creation; they
make uncreated and unfallen man (that is, a non-ens) the object of God’s
double decree. The Infralapsarians, moreover, distinguish between an
efficient or active and a permissive or passive decree of God, and exclude
the fall of Adam from the efficient decree; in other words, they maintain
that God is not in any sense the author of the fall, but that he simply
allowed it to come to pass for higher ends. He did not cause it, but neither
did he prevent it. The Supralapsarians, more logically, include the fall itself
in the efficient and positive decree; yet they deny as fully as the
Infralapsarians, though less logically, that God is the author of sin. The
Infralapsarians attribute to Adam before the fall the gift of free choice,
which was lost by the fall; some Supralapsarians deny it. The doctrine of
probation (except in the one case of Adam) has no place in the Calvinistic
system, and is essentially Arminian. It is entirely inapplicable to infants
dying in infancy. The difference between the two schools is practically
worthless, and only exposes the folly of man’s daring to search the secrets
of God’s eternal counsel. They proceed on a pure metaphysical abstraction,
for in the eternal God there is no succession of time, no before nor after. f829
Calvin was claimed by both schools. He must be classed rather with the
Supralapsarians, like Beza, Gomarus, Twysse, and Emmons. He saw the
inconsistency of exempting from the divine foreordination the most
important event in history, which involved the whole race in ruin. “It is not
absurd,” he says, “to assert that God not only foresaw, but also
foreordained the fall of Adam and the ruin of his posterity.” He expressly
rejects the distinction between permission (permissio) and volition
(voluntas) in God, who cannot permit what he does not will. “What
reason,” he asks, “shall we assign for God’s permitting the destruction of
the impious, but because it is his will? It is not probable that man procured
his own destruction by the mere permission, and without any appointment
of God. As though God had not determined what he would choose to be
the condition of the chief of his creatures. I shall not hesitate, therefore, to