Double Predestination: Yes, It is Biblical and No, It Does Not Make God the Author of Evil

The Doctrine of Double Predestination

I. What is this doctrine?
A. The doctrine of double predestination is a term used to describe the activity of God regarding the doctrines of election and reprobation.
a. Election – The doctrine of who God saves from their sin to enjoy God’s grace and salvation. (Mk 13:20; Eph 1:4-5)
b. Reprobation – the doctrine of who is left in their sin to face God’s wrath and judgment. (Prov 16:4; Is 6:9-10; Mt 13:11-16; Rm 11:7-10)
- “Because they refused to receive God’s truth…their backs will be bent under the weight of guilt and punishment forever.”

II. What is not this doctrine?
A. The doctrine of election and reprobation is not based upon an act equal ultimacy or symmetry.
a. God acts differently to affect those who will be saved than He does with sinners who freely choose to reject Him.
- “Equal ultimacy teaches that God’s actions in election and reprobation are perfectly symmetrical, so that God is just as active in working unbelief in the heart of the reprobate as he is in working faith in the heart of the elect. It pictures God in eternity past contemplating all humanity as yet unfallen and morally neutral and arbitrarily deciding to work sin and unbelief in the reprobate in order to be justified in consigning them to eternal punishment. Though this is what many think of when they hear the terms…double predestination, it is a gross caricature of the biblical doctrine of reprobation that is utterly foreign to Scripture, repugnant to the love and justice of God…[and to the Reformed tradition].”

III. Does Scripture explicitly or implicitly demonstrate how this doctrine works in connection with man’s choices and God’s sovereignty?
A. Causation in relation to culpability:
a. Ultimate Cause – God ordains that evil exists but He never condones evil motives or acts, nor is He morally responsible for the evil committed by the free will of His creatures.
- “While God ordains the evil choices of free moral agents, he does not coerce them; rather, they act according to their own freedom of inclination. Because God is never the efficient cause of evil and because he always ordains evil for good, he incurs no guilt.”
b. Proximate Cause – An agent or event that is near or closest to the actual cause of an act or result.
c. Efficient Cause – The agent or thing that actually causes an event or result. (Gen 50:20; Acts 2:22-23; Rm 9:22-24; Col 3:5-7; Eph 5:5-8)

B. Biblical Examples:
a. Joseph and his Brother (Gen 50:20)
b. Jesus’ crucifixion (Acts 2:22-23)
c. Vessels of wrath and mercy (Rom 9:22-24, Col 3:5-7; Eph 5:5-8, 1:3-14)


- “The reason the Lord chose the body before the foundation of the world, the reason He preordained it, the reason He laid it out, the reason He did it all Himself, with no human will and no help…is that the glory might all be His…And just to make sure nobody ever got confused He laid it all out before any human being was ever born. So there's no question about it.” [cf.,Rom.9:6-24; John 6:37-40]

John A. Witmer, “Romans,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1985), 483.
John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, eds., Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017), 505.