Leibniz as Arbitrator: The Infralapsarian and Supralapsarian Debate

It’s been a few years since I’ve waded into the infralapsarian vs supralapsarian literature, so the following will probably have some oversights.

My suggestion is that it isn’t possible to hold to infralapsarianism without also adopting some version of Leibniz’s model.  If this is true, then it should motivate any Calvinists that are inclined towards the infralapsarian view to accept Leibniz’s model.  I take it that the majority of Calvinists are infralapsarian.  

Here’s the traditional principle behind supralapsarianism:  

The Sup Principle (SP):  Given a perfectly effective agent that wishes to perform an action, the event in an action which is last in execution is first in intention.  

The idea here is that since the last executed act in history is wrath for the reprobate and mercy for the elect that God must have predestined each group without any intervening considerations.  The predestination of each group is intended before any consideration of their qualities.  This just is supralapsarianism.  

But I don’t think that SP is sufficient to establish the truth of supralapsarianism.  It also requires a distinctive doctrine of standard Calvinism.  Let’s call it the CC doctrine:

CC Doctrine:  Human choices are post-volitional to God’s decree.  They follow entirely from God’s creative decree and are determined by it.

This doctrine is required in conjunction with SP for supralapsarianism to get off the ground.  If it is true, there can be no intervening human actions that enter the flow of God’s decree that can initiate a new action sequence from God. The CC Doctrine ensures that the creative decree of God is not in view of human causes.  Paired with the Sup Principle, all of God’s actions are really a part of a global and homogenous action of God.  My claim is that there’s no way to splice up God’s global action apart from positing a pre-volitional realm of human choice which would allow God’s decree to be interactive in some sense--this requires a rejection of the CC Doctrine.

The Argument Schematized:

1.  If there are no independent human choices that play out in history, God’s plan cannot be spliced.  (The CC Doctrine and splice claim)
2.  If God’s plan cannot be spliced, then God’s initial plan is still in place. 
3.  His initial plan was put in place prior to man’s fall. 
4.  Given that the Sup Principle applies to the plan at this logical moment (at the beginning of creation), and there are no intervening novel action sequences, then God is predestinating individuals without regard to their property of being fallen.  This just is supralapsarianism.    

The way to escape the implication of supralapsarianism is to deny the CC Doctrine.  Leibniz offers a way to do this without violating the ultimacy/aseity intuitions of the Calvinist.  

This is a deeply vague paper.  Apologies.