Awhile back, I suggested some reasons for leaning toward supralapsarianism. Here’s some more:
Infra seems to lack an eschatology. Creation is made, the fall is decreed, and then salvation is seen as a rescue from the fall. In supra, creation is never considered apart from a consummation. Salvation is not merely rescue from the fall, but the final realization of the purposes of the original creation. Supra underwrites the connection of protology and eschatology, and makes better sense of what Paul says in 1 Cor 15: if there is a natural man there is a spiritual man.
In supra, there is a narrative trajectory to the world and to each human life in supra. One is defined by the whole story that God is telling with you. I am what I am because of God?s decision to make me this particular way, and to tell this particular story in my life. In infra, you have creation, and then a second stage of grace that restores creation, and this seems to lose the narrative drive.
Infra really cannot sustain a narrative theology. You have men created without telos, without storyline, without destiny. They are considered as just created; they will fall, and then be redeemed or damned. But what are they while they are ?created,” and what is the creation before fall and redemption? A steady-state? Where?s it going? Anywhere?
Supra says that there is a story line from the moment of existence, that there is a telos and climax and eschaton already decided for the world and each individual. There is not a logical ?moment?Eof existence in the mind of God when we are not considered in our concrete reality as elect or reprobate. There is not a moment when the world is not contemplated in the light of its final eschatological state.
If I am right (as I’ve argued elsewhere) that there is an inherent connection between story and Trinity, and between eschatology and Trinity, then it appears that supralapsarianism is the more Trinitarian alternative.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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