"A Single Decision of Election" -- Article Eight, First Head of Doctrine, Canons of Dort

Article 8: A Single Decision of Election

This election is not of many kinds; it is one and the same election for all who were to be saved in the Old and the New Testament. For Scripture declares that there is a single good pleasure, purpose, and plan of God’s will, by which he chose us from eternity both to grace and to glory, both to salvation and to the way of salvation, which he prepared in advance for us to walk in.

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Scripture teaches us that election is based upon God’s eternal counsel and purpose, and is a mystery to us unless revealed by God in his word or through the passage of time, when that which God has decreed in eternity past comes to fruition in human history (cf. Ephesians 1:3-14). The previous articles have pointed out that election is not based upon anything God foresees in the creature. He sovereignly decrees what comes to pass, and does not merely react to what his creatures may or may not do.

In Article Eight, we now learn that God’s decree is one. God does not have multiple wills or purposes, as for example, when our Lutheran friends contend that God has an antecedent (prior) will to save all men and women, and a consequent (subsequent) will to save those who believe and do not resist grace (i.e., the elect). This may be a sincere attempt to solve the problem of reprobation (God not choosing some to be saved, thereby rendering them objects of his wrath), but ends up creating another unnecessary problem–two apparently contradictory wills within God. These two wills include God’s will to save all, and his subsequent will to save the elect, only because his prior will (the salvation of all), cannot be realized.

Therefore, it is important for the authors of the Canons to point out that Scripture teaches that God has a single eternal purpose based upon his own eternal counsel. While this is beyond our full comprehension, it is nevertheless a fundamental fact of the teaching of Holy Scripture (cf. Ephesians 1:11— “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will”). God’s will is immutable (unchangeable) and does not result from prior actions of his creatures, nor from any consequences which arise from their actions.

It is also clear from Scripture that God’s elect, who would otherwise remain dead in sin, are called from their former condition unto holiness of life. As Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:4, “we were chosen in Christ before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless.” And as the apostle says in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” From this it is clear that we have been called from our bondage and slavery to sin and its wage (death), and are given faith and are thereby united to Christ. As an inevitable result of this union with our savior is that we will now walk in the good works which God has prepared in advance for us to walk.

Far from making us indifferent to holy living and cold toward God and neighbor, God’s decree of election is the only biblical basis for a life of obedience, lived in gratitude, and as a response from a grateful heart to God’s grace bestowed upon us in Jesus Christ. The only way a bad tree will ever bear good fruit is if the nature of the tree itself is changed from a bad tree into a good one. This is, of course, exactly what happens in election and regeneration which flows from God’s decision in eternity past. This is what Jesus is getting at when he says in John 15:16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”