Despite these responses, the Infralapsarian Order seeks to reflect the historical relationship between sin and salvation. The Lord has shown it to us in His sovereign good pleasure. " Supralapsarianism is the view that God, contemplating man as yet unfallen, chose some to receive eternal life and rejected all others. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church (Eph. Dr. Edwin Chr. From what Ive read Jonathan Edwards reacted against the supralapsarian position. We must be careful of saying supralapsarianism toward man would be unjust, since Gods election and non-election of angels must have been from a supralapsarian stance. Ive posted the section from my thesis on this question here. The reformed confessions generally express themselves in infralapsarian ways without condemning the other position. Im not aware of any two words in the theological lexicon quite like supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism. According to this view, God in order to manifest his grace and justice selected from creatable men (i.e., from men to be created) a certain number to be vessels of mercy, and certain others to be vessels of wrath.In the order of thought, election and reprobation precede the purpose to create and to permit the fall. First, all the angels who stood firm were elect. Some of the attending pastor-theologians at the Westminster Assembly clearly favored knowing the Lords work at a very practical earthly level, and professing this truth to thoroughoing detail in the Westminster articles. Infralapsarianism tries to ease the tension by saying that reprobation is just God leaving the fallen person in his own sinful condition. It was the Lords will and decree that it be as such. Yet knowing the Gospel with the Lord also involves knowing the Lords predestination as most directly related to the carnal fall of man, and the Lords saving work in view of the incarnate new covenant ministry of Jesus for fallen men. The infralapsarianist view follows Ephesians 1:4-6, " even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. Wrote The Holy Spirit; Justifying Faith; Christ the Mediator; other works mainly in systematic theology. Help train Christians to boldly share the good news of Jesus Christ in a way that clearly communicates to this secular age. Equally then, election thus was not an act of mercy, as it is with infralapsarians, but a determination that some will receive mercy in time. Ephesians 3:9-10 further describes creation as resulting from the prior will of God to display his grace in the elect: God, created all things,so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.. Geerhardus Vos distinguishes between the decretal and legal ground of reprobation, so that while Gods decree of reprobation precedes the decree of the fall, the actual condemnation of sinners involves both: The supralapsarian says: The legal ground why men perish lies in sin that they deliberately commit within time. Sorry just wanted to say that Jays point (number 6) is extremely important, while disagreeing with Edwards on Election being supraI think reprobation would not be just unless it was infra.. Reprobation, on the other hand, necessarily has sin in view, since it is fundamentally concerned with condemnation.. Knowing and upholding the predestination of the Gospel with the Lord means upholding the aspects of mystery and incarnate revelation in predestination with the Lord for developing unity in the church among questioning Christians. What are infralapsarianism, sublapsarianism, and supralapsarianism Theodore Beza (1519-1605) Johannes Bogerman (1576-1637) , Synod of Dort president Thomas Bradwardine (1290 - 1349) Johannes Braun (1628-1708) Martin Bucer (1491 - 1551) Paul is saying with the Lord that the marriage between Christ and the church ought to be upheld in praise to the Lord for what the Lord has both deliberately withheld and deliberately revealed for His people. The Christian, in understanding this text, asks, Are we to understand this lump as representing fallen humanity, or un-fallen humanity? Supralapsarians say un-fallen, and Infralapsarians say fallen. Here the Westminster Divines key language is about the elect fallen in Adam. The Westminster Divines wanted to move with the Lord to make special emphasis on the features of salvation in the redeeming and justifying and sanctifying grace of Jesus dwelling with His people, in both Jesus incarnate ministry, and in the keeping power of the Holy Spirit. In reality this is an angel on a pinhead question and is not part of the core Gospel of Jesus Christ. Warfield writes that the key issue is whether the saving grace of God, in which alone is salvation, actually saves.4 The Arminian scheme unbiblically answers No. Now, about your question specifically. Systematic Theology, pp.124-25). Non-election only speaks to Gods decision that some creatures not ultimately participate in his happiness. Turretin thus complains that Supralapsarianism asserts that the creation and the fall are the means of election and reprobation, so that God might be said to have created men whom he would destroy.8 To avoid this perceived slight, Infralapsarianism arranges the decrees in such a way that election logically occurs after the decree of the fall: Supralapsarians defend their ordering of the decree, first, by denying that their view fails to account for divine justice. Instead, the debate is about the logical order of the decrees. Today, Barry Cooper takes up this heady question and the two big words that seek to answer it. i: 2; 2 Thess. A general claim that most supralapsarians would have held to is the following: The result or final intention of the divine decree is the manifestation of God's glory particularly through the application of divine mercy upon some and divine justice upon others. According to this definition of predestination, the decree need not suppose fallenness, because, after all, whether the rational creature falls or not, the end in predestination has not changedit is still to bring him, her, or it (an angel) to eternal blessedness. ), I would also confess with the Lord, in a slight degree of caution about infralapsarianism, that there is great risk for sinners to try to make predestination too pragmatic for our human understanding and our work in evangelism.