Scripture proclaims the omniscience and omnipotence of God, who therefore knows in advance who will believe in Jesus Christ to receive the salvation acquired by his death on the Cross. But do the ‘saints’ believe because God has chosen them, or has God chosen them because they would believe? We examine the two traditional solutions to the problem of election, and propose a biblical and theological alternative that does justice to faith and reason.

1 The problem of election

1.1 The theological data and the statement of the problem

Divine election (from the verb “to elect”, meaning here simply “to choose”) is the act by which God chose before the world existed which men would inherit salvation and the world to come.
This act of God’s election is clearly recorded in several places in Scripture, such as Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (1:3-14, see below) and Peter’s first letter:

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are strangers and scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, and who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctification of the Spirit, that they may become obedient, and partakers of the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: grace and peace be multiplied to you.

First Epistle of Peter, Chapter 1, verses 1-2

“The sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” is perhaps a reference to the account in Exodus (Chapter 12) where the Israelites had to sprinkle the blood of a lamb on their doorposts and lintels, in order to be protected from the “destroyer”, the angel sent by God to administer his judgement on Egypt. The rest of the text (verses 3 to 9) shows that these “chosen ones” to whom the apostle is addressing himself are “kept by faith through the power of God for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last times” (v4), because they “will obtain the salvation of their souls as the price of their faith” (v9).

Thus, the principle of Christian salvation by faith is not denied here in favour of election, but on the contrary, is strongly and unequivocally affirmed in verse 9. However, divine election is linked to human faith by the mention of the “power of God”, which itself guards the elect with a view to future salvation, by means of faith.
Those who take these texts seriously in faith will not have failed to identify here an antagonism that is as much existential as theoretical, which we will call the problem of election, and which constitutes the apparent impossibility of reconciling two well-established affirmations:

1. Each person is free and responsible to turn to God, i.e. to believe in him, for his salvation.
2. God has sovereignly chosen from before all time who would inherit this salvation.

1.2 Two classic attempts at resolution

This problem is sometimes reformulated, particularly in the heritage of the Reformed tradition, as the following alternative: does the man who believes in God for his salvation believe because God has chosen him in advance, or has God chosen him in advance because he has believed? In the first case, God’s election is the cause of man’s choice; in the second, human choice is the cause of God’s election.
The problem arises most acutely in this tradition when John Calvin makes divine election the cause of man’s choice for his salvation, or of his rejection for his reprobation, in other words the origin of a double predestination, which for some constitutes a scandalous extrapolation of the statements of Scripture.

Now, even if Calvin does not speak of this causality between God’s choice and that of man as a determinism (Aristotle already distinguished four types of causality, taken up in the classification of medieval scholasticism with which the reformer of Genesis was familiar), his approach nevertheless seems to be confined to it, and in particular when he deals with original sin, making Adam’s obedience in Eden somehow impossible because of God’s eternal decree (even if the term “decree” is undoubtedly anachronistic).

This is why, schematically, the solution that consists of affirming that man believes in God because God has chosen him for salvation and gives him to believe is called “Calvinistic” (we speak of “unconditional” election). The “Arminian” solution, named after the (Reformed!) theologian Jacob Arminius, consists of affirming that God has chosen man for salvation on the basis of the faith that man would place in him, and that God has known in advance (this is called “conditional” election).
These two positions are undoubtedly caricatures of the two figures to whom they refer, and who moreover belong to the same tradition. That said, they both have undeniable strengths in relation to Scripture and reason, but also weaknesses in both respects, which disqualify them as truly convincing solutions.

2 A schematic review of traditional solutions

2.1 Historical Calvinism

These two types of solution agree on one of the modalities of election: divine foreknowledge, which can be defined as the power according to which God knows in advance everything that is to happen before it happens. Indeed, Calvinists and Arminians generally accept that God’s election is eternal, i.e. that it took place “before the world existed”, albeit in an analogical sense, since the time we experience exists only in the created universe. It is in fact difficult to get around this biblical affirmation, which we find explicitly in 1 Peter 1:1 (“… and who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God […]”, 1 Peter 1:1). It is the meaning of this foreknowledge, and the ways in which it is integrated into divine election, that differ, the “according to” being interpreted differently in the two cases.

In the “Calvinist” solution, it is generally considered that it is illicit to derive divine election from man’s choice: God’s foreknowledge therefore means not only that God would have known in advance the choice that man would have made, but that he would have integrated this choice into his exhaustive plan for the world. Calvin took the view that God knew the world in the sense that he had decreed in advance all its events, which thus occur in accordance with his will. This understanding of God’s foreknowledge and omnipotence finds clear support in Scripture, starting with the text of the Epistle to the Romans, which presents, among other things, man’s salvation as the exclusive work of God, from beginning to end:

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that his Son might be the firstborn among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 8, verses 28-30

In this text, man’s very participation seems to be excluded, or rather bracketed, and God’s foreknowledge the ultimate cause of all aspects and stages of salvation. We also think of the first epistle to the Ephesians, in a context where the apostle speaks of election with similar language:

In him we have also become heirs, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his will, that we should serve to the praise of his glory, who beforehand have hoped in Christ.

Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter 1, verses 11-12

In this extract, the predestination of the saints, that is to say of true believers, is a consequence of divine election, and is established according to the resolution of God, who “works all things according to the counsel of his will”. In other words, everything that happens (these “all things” that “God works”) reflects God’s decision alone (the “counsel of his will”). The apostle puts it another way in Romans, where he claims that nothing ultimately proceeds from anyone but God:

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how incomprehensible his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or been his counsellor? Who gave him first, that he should receive in return? All things are from him, through him and for him. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen!

Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 11, verses 33-36

Thus traditional Calvinism, in its demand for fidelity to Scripture, forcefully maintains the omnipotence of God, to the point of including, with the Bible to back it up, everything that happens – and therefore also the conversion of the individual – in the total plan of God, and therefore cannot conceive how divine election could depend on a free decision by finite man, without harming the independence, and therefore the freedom, of God himself. To put it in the words of Cornelius Van Til, Arminianism makes God “dependent on man”, which is a metaphysical impossibility: so we must now consider this other position.

2.2 Contemporary Arminianism

Arminius was a churchman in the Calvinist tradition who developed an alternative theology of election and predestination. “Arminianism” refers to the theological trend that claims to be the heir of his thought on this point, no doubt to the point of distorting it in a caricatural way among his followers, just as Calvinism is often a distortion of Calvin’s thought. Those who call themselves Arminians insist on man’s free will: they consider it unthinkable that God could determine his choices, to the extent that the freedom of these choices allows the individual to self-determine before the Creator. The popular expressions “man is not a robot” or “man is not a puppet” are often used, and a strong argument is frequently made on this point in relation to salvation, based for example on a text such as Paul’s first epistle to Timothy :

I exhort therefore, first of all, that we make prayers, supplications, petitions, thanksgiving, for all men, for kings, and for all that are exalted in dignity, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all […].

First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, Chapter 2, verses 1-6

In this extract, God’s express will in favour of the salvation of all men – without exception, it would seem – is forcefully stated. This apparently poses two problems for the Calvinist doctrine of divine election:

1. If God wills all men to be saved, but not all of them are, then something can stand in the way of God’s will, and therefore God is not omnipotent.
2. If God wants all men to be saved, then he cannot have selected only some to reject others.

The first problem comes up against Scripture itself: the notion of election, whether as a reality or as a term, is indisputably present, and we must therefore find another explanation for the rejection of the express will of the God who saves all men. One solution is to observe that the verbs used here, and in a similar text such as the 2nd Epistle of Peter, possess all the possible nuances of the French “vouloir” :

But one thing you must not forget, beloved, is that before the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord does not delay in fulfilling the promise, as some think; but he is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but wanting all to come to repentance.

Second Epistle of Peter, Chapter 3, verses 8-9

So, to summarise the two texts, if God wishes all men to come to repentance and to the knowledge of the truth, so that all may be saved and none may perish (eternally), this may well have the value of a wish, of a divine disposition: man’s freedom does the rest, and he chooses whether or not to accept the salvation proposed by God. In this way, the idea of divine omnipotence – difficult to deny because of Scripture, even in the acts of rational creatures – is safeguarded while maintaining the affirmation of a genuine divine will that all men should attain salvation.

But those who claim to be Arminians tend to accentuate this aspect of the question to the point of rejecting divine sovereignty, at least the exhaustive scope of it, which always seems, even if we interpret the “will” here as a “desire”, to be opposed to man’s freedom. God’s decree would only intervene in certain very specific cases, many events being rather a consequence of the freedom of human choice, without any control on God’s part. And so, with regard to the second problem, the Arminian solution also consists in denying divine election as determining man’s choice, but rather in affirming it, if necessary, as determined by man. In other words, God’s foreknowledge of election would consist rather in the fact that God knows in advance the choices that men will make, and that he has decided to choose in advance for salvation all those who, in principle, will or would turn to Jesus Christ.

This solution presents a certain elegance, and finds a certain echo in reason: on the one hand, it leaves the possibility for each man to freely access salvation and thus to conform to God’s will that all be saved; on the other hand, it no longer makes man’s choice a deterministic consequence of a divine election that seems arbitrary. So why reject divine omnipotence?

3 Towards a biblical and theological solution

3.1 Bringing together God’s sovereignty and man’s freedom

The so-called Arminian solution simply shifts the problem. If God knows in advance what the choices of rational creatures will be, how can these choices be free? For it seems to reason that only deterministic events can be known in advance. Thus, such an interpretation of divine foreknowledge remains paradoxical in relation to man’s finite freedom. This is why this solution is inconsistent, because by rejecting God’s sovereign election in the name of man’s finite freedom, it presupposes a contradiction between the two, which it cannot really resolve.

Moreover, it clashes head-on with the biblical affirmations concerning not only the reality of election, but also its entanglement with the responsible acts of men, as is made clear, for example, in the book of Acts:

The kings of the earth are risen up, and the princes are gathered together against the Lord, and against his anointed. For against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate joined forces in that city with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do all that your hand and your council had foreordained.

Acts, Chapter 4, verses 26-28

The disciples, raising their voices together to God, strangely consider that the powerful men who killed Christ, and whose responsibility cannot be denied (see Peter’s previous speeches on this subject in the same book of Acts), nevertheless acted according to what God’s “hand” (action) and “counsel” (will) had “determined beforehand”: these acts therefore reflect a decree from God that came before they happened. The language is the same as that used in Ephesians 1:11: “he works all things according to the counsel of his will”.

Faced with texts of this kind, those who want to reject the complete sovereignty of the biblical God over human acts invoke a special case, which would not concern all the actions of all men: it would be a question here of key events associated with salvation, through the passion of Jesus Christ. This is to forget too quickly biblical texts such as the 1st chapter of Ephesians (op. cit.), and other texts such as the one also found in Acts on the very question of the conversion of Christians, who had nothing to distinguish them from the common people:

On the following Sabbath almost the whole city gathered together to hear the word of God. But when the Jews saw the crowd, they were filled with jealousy and opposed what Paul was saying, contradicting and insulting him. But Paul and Barnabas said to them boldly, “The word of God should have been spoken to you first; but since you reject it and consider yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles. For thus has the Lord commanded us: I have appointed you to be a light to the Gentiles, to bring salvation to the ends of the earth. The Gentiles rejoiced when they heard this, and glorified the word of the Lord; and all who were destined for eternal life believed.

Acts, Chapter 13, verses 44-48

While their preaching in Antioch of Pisidia was rejected by some of their Jewish co-religionists, Paul and Barnabas turned to the Gentiles, some of whom showed faith: the text tells us quite plainly that these were those destined for eternal life. So if these Christians, whom nothing distinguished, believed as they were destined to, there is no reason to exclude all the others from predestination, and therefore from divine election. And if man’s choice for his salvation reflects the completeness of the divine plan through election, why should it not be the same for all his choices? The problem that arises here, and which neither of these two classical solutions confronts, is therefore to articulate man’s responsibility, and therefore, in our view, his freedom, with God’s sovereignty.

3.2 The requirement of existential reason

Because of the demands of Scripture and reason, it seems impossible to adopt either of the two solutions caricaturised as “Calvinist” or “Arminian”. On the contrary, it seems to us that the following elements must be maintained:

• God has chosen in advance those who are to inherit salvation, and he has predestined them, i.e. destined them in advance, to receive adoption and to be conformed to the image of Christ
• In principle, in this life, people must freely determine by personal choice to receive God’s salvation by converting to him
• Divine election takes place in two ways: in accordance with God’s foreknowledge, and by means of the sanctification of the Holy Spirit
• Everything that happens is brought about by God, according to his eternal counsel, and therefore reflects his exhaustive plan.

Here, the requirement of reason manifests itself through the notion of freedom: if man is to be held responsible for his choices, as Scripture testifies, then he must be capable of making free choices – the distinction made by Luther in The Bondage of the Will between necessity and constraint seems insufficient to us. Even sin, which alienates him and locks him into habits that enslave him, never entirely deprives him of this possibility, as God’s exhortation to Cain before he had killed his brother Abel, but living in the alienation of “natural man”, underlines:

And the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry, and why is your face downcast? Surely, if you do right, you will lift up your face; but if you do wrong, sin will lie at the door, and his desires will be for you: but you will have dominion over him.

Genesis, Chapter 4, verses 6-7

Against Calvin, who maintains that such an exhortation may only have the purpose of revealing the impossibility of acting well, it seems to us that the exhortation would make no sense if Cain did not possess the capacity to obey: reason being the faculty of sense, we must admit this possibility, and therefore maintain the finite freedom of man, even fallen man, so as not to fall from rationality on our side. When we take our offender to court, or when we are simply angry with him, is it not because we believe that he could have acted differently? So the law can only impute guilt to someone who is free to act otherwise, and we think that this requirement of reason must be maintained here.

3.3 Another solution

What reason does not require, on the other hand, is that we apply the categories and limits of our finite experience to what concerns God and his relationship to the universe. This is already evident in the understanding of God as Trinity, so there is no coherent reason to reject it here. In order to resolve the question along these lines, as we see it, both biblically and theologically, we have to admit two things:

1. God can, in his infinity which transcends all the limits of the created world, know in advance the free choices of rational creatures, without these choices being determined
2. God can, in this same transcendence, in particular of finite causality, give man freedom to do what he has decided in advance, and operate all things according to what he has decided in himself.

These two affirmations fit in well with the texts of Scripture, which mention both God’s sovereign freedom, which is exercised in all things – notably in his election, by which he has destined in advance certain people to receive salvation – and man’s responsibility for his actions – particularly those that reflect God’s eternal purpose for the decision by which he believes in him to receive the redemption offered to him in Jesus Christ. The solution to the apparent contradiction between God’s sovereign freedom and man’s finite freedom is thus to be found once again in God’s infinity, by which he transcends not only the finite space and time of creation, but also the causality of events and the finite freedom of rational creatures.

So, according to this way of thinking, God knows in advance everything that men will decide, and also incorporates it by foreknowledge into his exhaustive plan, which governs the entire universe from its beginning to its end. He can thus dispense every event, “work all things out”, according to the “counsel of his will”, and give men the freedom and responsibility to carry out what has nevertheless been known and established by him in advance. We thus confess with Calvin the total sovereignty of God in election, and with Arminius the free will of man even in his determination to salvation: the infinity of God integrates the latter into the former by his foreknowledge. Such a solution seems to us to do justice both to the typical Calvinist emphasis on divine sovereignty in all things, and to the Arminian emphasis on the infra-Lapsarian character of God’s decrees, as well as to his prevenient grace towards all men.