[Explanatory notes: Most of what Bavinck says here is excellent and thought provoking. However, a couple of cautionary comments. 1) it is very doubtful that Calvin was a supralapsarian. For Calvin, While God is the ultimate cause of a man’s reprobation, the man is the proximate cause. Further, it is on the supposition of corruption that God predestines the reprobate to destruction. 2) Bavinck’s discussion of permission is problematic. At one point he says the one who permits sin is just as guilty as the one who commits sin. This is problematic because God is not bound to prevent sin. And if what he says holds good, then election itself is undercut and seen as seriously unethical. 3) Supralapsarian, though held by many Reformed theologians, is theologically unhealthy. It distorts one’s perception of God’s revelation to mankind. For sure, so does infralapsarianism, but supralapsarianism magnifies the distortion. 4) The so-called Amyraldian order of the decrees is also suspect given the denials and explanations of Amyraut himself.]

Bavinck:

In Christian theology, however, the word “predestination” (poorosmos)h as been used in very different senses. Meanings varied from broad to narrow. On the Pelagian position it is nothing other than the decree to grant eternal salvation to those whose faith and perseverance God had foreseen, and to consign others, whose sins and unbelief he had foreseen, to eternal punishment. The creation, the fall, Christ, the preaching of the gospel and the offer of gate to all, a persevering faith or unbelief–they all precede predestination, are not included in it but excluded from it. This decree is restricted to the decision to predestine some to eternal life and others to eternal punishment. Here predestination is understood in the most restricted sense and is totally dependent on the bare foreknowledge of God. It is uncertain and undeserving of the name “predestination.” Not God but humans make history and determine the outcome of it. This view has been sufficiently rebutted above and needs no further discussion here.

What does need further consideration is the important difference between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism. This, in fact, consists in nothing other than a more restricted or broader definition of the concept of predestination. Augustine, to cite a major figure in this discussion, restricted the word in two ways. In the first place, in the order of the decrees he had the decree of predestination follow that of creation and the fall; second, he usually construed the word in a favorable sense, equated foreordination with election, and favored describing the decree of reprobation with the word “foreknowledge.” Predestination tells us what God does, that is, the good; but foreknowledge refers to what humans do, that is, evil. Generally speaking, scholasticism Roman Catholicism, and Lutheranism followed this latter usage. The infralapsarians among Reformed theologians similarly had the decree of creation and fall precede that of election and reprobation. But while the majority of them were willing to include reprobation in the decree of predestination-provided it follows that of the fall–and hence spoke of “double predestination,” others preferred to restrict predestination to election and to treat reprobation separately under a different name. Now if the word “predestination” is not construed in a Pelagian sense and reprobation is not withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the divine will, as was done in the thinking of later Catholic and Lutheran theologians, this difference is not material but merely verbal. Still, it is characteristic for the infralapsarian position that the decree of creation and fall precedes that of election and reprobation. Supralapsarianism, by contrast, so expanded predestination that it includes the decree of creation and the fall, which are then considered as means leading to an ultimate end: the eternal state of rational creatures.

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[Note: Shedd, is cited to respond to the claim that the expiation must, in and of itself, secure its application with regard to all those for whom it was made (contra Smeaton, et al) . See also Lane and Daniel for an explanation of this point.]

Shedd:

1) In the third place, an atonement, either personal or vicarious, when made, naturally and necessarily cancels legal claims. This means that there is such a natural and necessary correlation between vicarious atonement and justice, that the former supplies all that is required by the latter. It does not mean that Christ’s vicarious atonement naturally and necessarily saves every man; because the relation of Christ’s atonement to divine justice is one thing, but the relation of a particular person to Christ’s atonement is a very different thing. Christ’s death as related to the claims of the law upon all mankind, cancels those claims wholly. It is an infinite “propitiation for the sins of the whole world,” 1 John 2:2. But the relation of an impenitent person to this atonement, is that of unbelief and rejection of it. Consequently, what the atonement has effected objectively in reference to the attribute of divine justice, is not effected subjectively in the conscience of the individual. There is an infinite satisfaction that naturally and necessarily cancels legal claims, but unbelief derives no benefit from the fact. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 2:437

2) The expiation of sin is distinguishable from the pardon of it. The former, conceivably, might take place and the latter not. When Christ died on Calvary, the whole mass, so to speak, human sin was expiated merely by that death; but the whole mass was not pardoned merely by that death. The claims of law and justice for the sins of the whole world were satisfied by the “offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:10); but the sins of every individual man were not forgiven and “blotted out” by this transaction. Still another transaction was requisite in order to this: namely, the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the sinner working faith in this expiatory offering, and the declarative act of God saying ” Thy sin is forgiven thee.” The Son of God, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, ” sat down on the right hand of God ” (Heb. 10:12) ; but if the redeeming work of the Trinity had stopped at this point, not a soul of mankind would have been pardoned and justified, yet the expiatory value of the “one sacrifice” would have been just the same. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 3:418.