Review: Reprobation and God's Sovereignty

 

When I saw the title Reprobation and God’s Sovereignty: Recovering a Biblical Doctrine, by Peter Sammons, and I saw that John MacArthur wrote the forward, I knew this was a defense of the doctrine being biblical, and I hoped it would be good. I was not disappointed.

MacArthur writes: “to worship [God] as the one true sovereign God is to worship him for his glory revealed in heaven and his glory revealed in hell” (9).

In the first chapter, Sammons looks at Who God is – His Omnipotence, Holiness, and decrees.

Then he explains the God is Sovereign over damnation. And in the third chapter gives the reader a definition of reprobation: “Reprobation is defined as the eternal, unconditional decree of God for the non-elect. In this decree, he chooses to exclude the non-elect from his electing purposes of mercy and to hold them accountable to the strict standards of justice to display the glory of his righteous wrath” (47).

Sammons relies heavily on Romans 9 as he explains what this means and answers objections. The argument being – in part – that God does not merely elect some to salvation and allow the rest to their own devices, but God actively elects some to salvation and some to reprobation (72).

In chapter six, he argues that there is a distinction to be made between God causing people to sin – which He does not do – and God choosing some to salvation and some to reprobation apart from anything a person does or does not do – for, election and reprobation occur prior to the Creation.

He contrasts Hyper Calvinism with Calvinism (110) and defines the parts of reprobation (126-127).

A major assist in seeing that reprobation is biblical is to understand causality, compatibilism, and concurrence. In these, one sees that God often uses means to accomplish His purposes and God sometimes cooperates with the actions of a creature to accomplish what God would have done. In this, one can understand how God is not the author of sin. God does not force anyone to sin. Yet, sin occurs according to the Providential and Active Will of God (133ff). That is, humans have freedom according to their desires (135).

In chapter 11, he answers the objections of fatalism and reprobation limiting God’s Sovereignty. In chapter 12, he addresses the objections of reprobation demeaning God’s justice.

In chapters 13 and 14, he goes into detail explaining causality and how the understanding of causality is vital in understanding reprobation.

Then he turns to address human volition, will, responsibility, and theodicy. He follows this by looking at the idea of divine abandonment in the Scripture, hardening, and God’s use of personal and non-personal agency in affecting human volition.

The conclusion is a solid summary of the work, which is followed by charts outlining the types of restraints explored in the final chapters, followed by a Scripture index, a terms index, and a persons index.

This is a stunning, biblical, and God-glorifying book which I cannot recommend highly enough to anyone who wants to understand the biblical doctrine of reprobation and to address objections to it. This is the book I will recommend on the subject.

The one item that puzzled me was Sammons seems to indicate that there may be such a thing as an “age of accountability” (44). Perhaps I misunderstood that.

This is not an overbearing academic tome, but it is not something all congregants will be able to handle. Pastors, theologians, seminarians, and college students can and should read this and become aware of how to show that this doctrine is biblical and why it matters.

Excellent – highly, highly recommended.

[I received this book free from Kregel Academic in exchange for an honest review.]