What I believe: What is Unconditional Election?

 

You may have noticed that I'm taking forever to make these "What I believe" posts, and that when they do come out, they're super huge.  I have found a solution to both problems!  Frankly, I'm embarrassed that I didn't come up with this before.

Okay, so you know how I divide each post into five parts?  Well, I'll be dividing each of those individual points into individual posts.  This will not only make posts more frequent and easier to swallow, but it will also make it easier for me to do justice to each point.

So right now we're on the topic of Unconditional Election, the second of the five points of Calvinism outlined in the acronym 'TULIP.'  We'll be looking at:

1. What Unconditional Election means (and doesn't mean)
2. Where the idea of Unconditional Election comes from
3. How Unconditional Election applies to us
4. Common arguments against Unconditional Election (refuted!)

Today we'll be introducing the topic with the first point:

What is Unconditional Election?  What does it mean?

As you'll remember from the last post in this series, we looked to the Dutch Reformer's for our definition, and we'll be doing it again here.  In the Canons of Dordt, the Dutch Reformers defined Unconditional Election this way:

"Before the foundation of the world, by sheer grace, according to the free good pleasure of his will, [God] chose in Christ to salvation a definite number of particular people out of the entire human race, which had fallen by its own fault from its original innocence into sin and ruin. Those chosen were neither better nor more deserving than the others, but lay with them in the common misery. He did this in Christ, whom he also appointed from eternity to be the mediator, the head of all those chosen, and the foundation of their salvation. And so he decided to give the chosen ones to Christ to be saved, and to call and draw them effectively into Christ's fellowship through his Word and Spirit. In other words, he decided to grant them true faith in Christ, to justify them, to sanctify them, and finally, after powerfully preserving them in the fellowship of his Son, to glorify them."

Let's sum up this definition by asking a few basic questions. Who: God.  What: Elects people.  Where: to salvation.  How: Without favoritism or conditions.  When: before the foundation of the world.

To get a better understanding of what Unconditional Election is, we'll break it up into two points: "Unconditional" and "Election."  Pretty straightforward, huh.  I don't want to make things too easy for you though, so we'll make things confusing by starting with "Election" first.

Election: Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines Election as: "predestination to eternal life." Ah, Predestination.  Predestination and Election go hand-in-hand.  Here's the definition for Predestination: "the theological doctrine that God determines, in His sovereign will, certain things to happen ahead of time." In the case of election, the salvation of certain individuals is what God is determining to happen ahead of time.
Now it's important to discern the difference between Predestination and fatalism/determinism.  I have seen people equate those two a lot, and it's wrong.  Let's look back at that definition of predestination.  "God determines, in His sovereign will, certain things to happen ahead of time."  Certain things does not mean all things.  In the example on the right, Calvin (not to be confused with John Calvin) believes that all events are preordained and unalterable.  In Predestination, certain things are preordained and unalterable.  As they say on the internet: learn the difference.

So that's what Election is (and isn't).  Let's look at what the "Unconditional" part of Unconditional Election means.

Unconditional: Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines Unconditional as: "not conditional or limited."  That's a pretty lame definition if you ask me, so I looked up 'conditional' so we know what it's not.  Conditional is defined as: "subject to, implying, or dependent upon a condition"  Slap a "not" in front of that second definition, and I think we have a good definition for Unconditional: "Not
subject to, implying, or dependent upon a condition"  There, that's better.  So if Election is unconditional, this means that Election is not subject to, implying, or dependent upon any conditions (for the record, I did not copy and paste that).  Now you might be wondering, what conditions would there be in the first place?  Good question.  The Arminians, who we mentioned in the last post in this series, believe in Conditional Election.  What are the conditions?  Faith and/or works.  The Arminian view says that back before the foundation of the world, God looked forward in time, saw which people would be faithful, and predestined them to eternal life (elected them).  I'll go into this in more detail in the next post, but Unconditional Election was the Calvinist's comeback to the Arminian's Conditional Election.  The reformers were saying "No, it's not by works, lest any man should boast, it's a gift of God.  It's not based on what we've done or will do, it's unconditional."

So now you hopefully have a good idea of what Unconditional Election is, and what it means.  Stay tuned for the next post, "Where does Unconditional Election come from?"  where we will be looking at the historical and biblical backgrounds of Unconditional Election.