INFRALAPSARIANISM, in soteriology, the characteristic theological tenet and practice of those Calvinists and even also of some Ro man Catholics, who maintain the dogma of ab solute divine decrees of election and approba tion and consider the decree of election as con, templating the apostasy as a past event, and the elect as being at the time of election in a fallen and guilty state. Infralapsarianism is really synonymous with sublapsarianism, and is opposed to supralapsarianism. Sublapsarian ism conveys the general idea of having been after the time of the fall of mans; and this too is the meaning, considered etymologi cally, of infralapsariarnsm also. The Infra lapsarians suppose that God in predestinating had respect to man, not merely as a fallen be ing, but specifically as either also redeemed through union with Christ, or as condemned through final impenitence. This, it need scarce ly be said, amounts to an assertion that God decrees men to suffer His wrath on the ground of their foreseen guilt. This is the ultra-Cal vinism of the Gomarist school. And it is con sciously or unconsciously, implicitly or explic itly, presupposed—that an all-loving God somewhere in His Word appears as Creator of men simply with the sovereign purpose of then damning them eternally! It assumes likewise that believers are elected on the ground of foreseen faith and obedience, whereas the finally impenitent are predestinated to perdition by a damnatory decree on the grounds of their foreseen impenitency. This rigid Christianity refers the eternal election of men and their rep robation by God to his foreseeing, rather than his positively decreeing, that all men would fall in Adam, and thus would deserve repro hation; and thus the election of grace becomes conceived as simply a remedy for existing evil. Out of the entire mass of mankind thus fallen, God in his sovereign grace freely elects a cer tain number to life; and by virtue of the same electing act, He in an equal exercise of his sov ereignty leaves others, non-elect, to the death which their sins deserve. Some, calling them
selves Preteritionists, hold a modified—can it be said a less gloomy? —view on this subject. These reject the dogma that God has deter mined in the exercise of his authority to elect any, but to blessing. Yet they nevertheless contend for the decree of preterition, in virtue of which God has determined to pass by those who are not saved. Can it be necessary more than to allude to the gross fatalism inherent in all these dogmas? Here the Bible takes on the aspect of a gloomy epic, terrible and grand as the elder (Edda,) a book to plunge man into melancholy; the prophets thunder out doleful menaces; men burden their minds with the piti less doctrines of Calvin. Fancy, if you can, the effects of such ideas on solitary and morose minds! An anthropomorphic superstition per vades them all. Admitting for a moment that God decrees anything at all (which, seriously, is to look upon him as Zeus, or even as a hu man legislator, making enactments)— might one not logically adopt the principle that He decrees in respect of what He does, but not in respect of what He does.not do; and conclude that He decreed, by an absolute decree, to save the saved, but did not decree not to save the lost? And, obiter dicta, in all fatalism, whether (said to be) Christian, Mohammedan, Hellenic, Old Norse, Roman or Teutonic, whether Mate rialistic, Socialistic, Individualistic or Intellec tualistic—and all are variations on a single theme— there is involved a fictitious idea both of causation and of necessity. Man's will is free. And it is no more logical—and this all determinists do, whether openly or tacitly — to presuppose that prevision creates the future, than to presuppose that memory creates the past.