Claim
Divine Principle explicitly rejects Calvin’s absolute double-predestination and replaces it with a conditional predestination structure: God’s will (the restoration of humanity) is absolutely predestined; but individuals’ participation in that providence is conditional on their fulfilling their portion of responsibility. The position rereads Pauline predestination passages (Rom 8:29-30, Eph 1:4-5) as conditional, not absolute, and excludes evil from God’s predestined content.
Reasoning
Per dp-gods-will-is-absolutely-predestined-toward-restoration, the providential end is absolutely fixed — God’s love-nature requires the restoration of humanity, and the providence will achieve this end. Per dp-individuals-conditionally-predestined-pending-responsibility-completion, the individuals who participate in that end are not absolutely predetermined — their participation depends on their responsibility-completion. Per dp-god-predestines-only-good-never-evil, God does not predestine evil events (the Fall, Jesus’s crucifixion); these are providential responses to human failure rather than positively-decreed-by-God events. Per dp-rom-rereads-vindicate-conditional-predestination-against-calvin, DP’s reading of Romans 8:29-30 (“whom He foreknew, He predestined”) treats “foreknew” as recognizing the future-actualized-respondents, not as ground-zero selection.
The position generates a distinctive theodicy structure: the end is sure (God will accomplish His will), but the means (which specific persons) are open. This avoids both Calvinist determinism (in which God’s choice of the saved overrides human response) and open-theist uncertainty (in which God does not know the end).
Counter-argument
The strongest critique is Calvin himself (Calvin 1559, Institutes of the Christian Religion III.21.5):
“By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man.” (III.21.5)
“All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation.” (III.21.5)
Calvin’s position is unambiguous: predestination is eternal decree, applying to every man, sorting individuals into life or damnation by God’s sovereign decision, not by their response. Section 5 explicitly distinguishes predestination from prescience: “predestination flows from God’s sovereign will and good pleasure, not from divine foresight of human merit or actions.”
The bite: DP’s “God foreknew the future-actualized respondents and predestined them on that basis” is exactly what Calvin says predestination is not. Calvin’s framework holds that grounding election in foreknowledge collapses predestination into prescience — a position Calvin attacks because it makes God’s sovereignty depend on human action.
The Westminster Confession (1646) III.3-5 codifies the Calvinist position: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death… These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.”
A complementary critique from 28 (Reformed proof-text on predestined evil-instrumental events): “to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” — naming the crucifixion as predestined. DP must reread this verse (treating “predestined” as conditional-given-response) or accept tension with dp-god-predestines-only-good-never-evil.
Response
The DP defense distinguishes the end-being-decreed from the individuals-being-decreed.
(1) Calvin conflates ends and individuals. Calvin’s framework treats the destiny of each individual (life or damnation) as decreed; DP separates the end of the providence (restoration of humanity as a whole) from the destiny of each individual (conditional on response). The God who absolutely wills the restoration of all humanity is not committed to absolutely deciding the destiny of each specific person within that restoration. DP’s reading is closer to Karl Barth’s universal-election (in Church Dogmatics II/2) than to Calvinist double-predestination.
(2) Romans 8:29-30 reading. Calvin reads “whom He foreknew” as “whom He chose to know” (an act of divine election). DP reads it as “whom He recognized as future-respondents” (an act of divine foreknowledge of actualized response). The Greek προέγνω (proegnō) admits both readings; the disambiguation depends on prior theological commitments. DP’s reading is congruent with Arminian and Molinist traditions, not novel.
(3) 28. DP must hold that the crucifixion was predestined-as-fallback rather than predestined-from-eternity-as-positive-decree. This requires reading the verse against its plain sense (the verse uses προώρισεν, “predestined,” with no conditional language). DP’s defense: even if Calvin’s surface-reading is right about 28, the conflict is with a single Reformed proof-text — not with the NT’s broader predestination language, which is more compatible with DP’s conditional framing (Eph 1:4-5 with its “in love” emphasis; 1 Pet 1:2 “according to foreknowledge”).
Still wrestling — 28 is the canonical Reformed proof-text precisely because it names evil as predestined, which is what DP explicitly rejects. The cluster’s parking question ([dp-1-6][critical]) presses exactly this. The DP defense requires either (i) reading 28 as predestined-given-failure (which the verse’s grammar resists), or (ii) accepting that DP’s reading of predestination is at sharp odds with one canonical Reformed proof-text while consonant with broader NT predestination language. (ii) is the more honest position; (i) is exegetically strained.
See also
- dp-95-5-ratio-of-divine-to-human-responsibility
- dp-individuals-conditionally-predestined-pending-responsibility-completion
- Research notes:
_meta/research/theodicy-fall-and-divine-constraint.md