The debate between equal ultimacy and reprobation isn’t merely academic—it strikes at the heart of who God is. Does Scripture teach God actively creates sin and unbelief in the reprobate with the same positive action He uses to create faith in the elect? Or does it reveal a more nuanced picture where God actively saves some while justly leaving others in their rebellion?

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Get this wrong, and we risk either compromising God’s holiness or undermining His sovereignty. But Scripture provides clear guidance, and the Reformed tradition has consistently defended what the Bible actually teaches: reprobation, not equal ultimacy.

 

UNDERSTANDING THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE

Equal Ultimacy (often called hyper-Calvinism) claims God operates with identical positive action in both election and reprobation. Just as He actively creates faith in the elect, He actively creates unbelief and sin in the reprobate. This makes God the efficient cause of both salvation and damnation, of both righteousness and sin.

Biblical Reprobation, the historic Reformed position, teaches something quite different. God actively regenerates the elect through His sovereign grace, but He passes over the reprobate, leaving them in their natural state of sin and rebellion. The elect receive unmerited mercy; the reprobate receive deserved justice.

The difference is crucial: in reprobation, God is the efficient cause of salvation but not of sin. He saves some and justly condemns others—but He never authors evil.

 

WHY SCRIPTURE REJECTS EQUAL ULTIMACY

God’s Unchanging Holiness Forbids It: The most devastating blow to equal ultimacy comes from Scripture’s unwavering testimony to God’s absolute holiness. James 1:13 declares “God cannot be tempted with evil, neither does he tempt anyone.” 1 John 1:5 proclaims “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” Habakkuk 1:13 marvels that God is “of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong.”

If equal ultimacy were true, these passages would be meaningless. How could God be without darkness if He actively creates the darkness of sin in human hearts? How could He be too pure to look upon evil if He is actively producing it? Equal ultimacy doesn’t just compromise God’s holiness—it obliterates it.

Human Responsibility Becomes Meaningless: Scripture consistently holds us responsible for our sin, but equal ultimacy makes this responsibility a cruel charade. Romans 1:18-20 speaks of God’s wrath against those who “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Romans 2:1-6 warns of judgement according to deeds. Ezekiel 18:20 declares “the soul who sins shall die.”

But if God actively creates the sin for which He then judges people, how can this judgment be just? Equal ultimacy turns the courtroom of divine justice into a theatre of the absurd, where God punishes people for sins He forced them to commit.

God’s Displeasure with Sin Becomes Pretence: Perhaps most troubling, equal ultimacy makes God’s expressed displeasure with sin merely theatrical. When Ezekiel 33:11 records God saying, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,” equal ultimacy forces us to respond, “But You actively caused their wickedness!” When 2 Peter 3:9 tells us God is “not willing that any should perish,” equal ultimacy makes this divine unwillingness a contradiction of His own creative work.

The God of equal ultimacy becomes internally divided—creating what He claims to hate, causing what He says displeases Him.

 

HOW SCRIPTURE AFFIRMS REPROBATION

The Asymmetry is Unmistakable: Scripture reveals a consistent asymmetry between God’s treatment of the elect and the reprobate. Romans 9:15-16 speaks of God’s active mercy: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” This is God’s sovereign, positive action.

But notice how Scripture describes God’s treatment of the reprobate. Romans 1:24, 26, 28 repeatedly uses the phrase “God gave them up”—not “God made them sin,” but “God gave them up.” This is judicial abandonment, not active creation of evil.

2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 provides another crucial example. God sends “strong delusion” to those who “refused to love the truth.” The delusion comes after and because of their refusal. God’s action is His judicial response to human rebellion, not the creation of that rebellion.

 

THE ‘HARDENING’ PASSAGES CONFIRM THE PATTERN

The so-called “hardening passages” are often misunderstood as support for equal ultimacy, but they actually demonstrate reprobation. Romans 9:17-18 speaks of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, but this hardening came after Pharaoh’s repeated self-hardening (Exodus 8:15, 32; 9:34). God’s hardening was the withdrawal of restraining grace, allowing Pharaoh’s natural rebellion to reach its full expression.

Romans 11:7-8 describes Israel’s hardening through “a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear.” But this judicial blindness came upon those who’d already rejected the light. John 12:37-40 confirms the pattern—the hardening followed persistent unbelief.

God hardens by removing His restraining grace, not by creating new sin. He gives rebels over to their rebellion; He doesn’t create their rebellion.

Sufficient Grace Preserves Responsibility: Scripture reveals a God who provides sufficient grace for human responsibility while reserving efficacious grace for the elect. Acts 14:17 speaks of God’s general revelation to all nations. Romans 2:14-15 describes Gentiles with God’s law written on their hearts. John 1:9 speaks of the true light that “enlightens everyone.”

This sufficient grace means the reprobate have enough light to be held responsible for their rejection of it. They aren’t condemned for lacking what they never had, but for spurning what they were given. Meanwhile, the elect receive not just sufficient grace but efficacious grace—the sovereign work of the Spirit that actually produces faith and repentance.

 

THE BEAUTY OF BIBLICAL REPROBATION

• It Preserves God’s Character: Reprobation maintains what equal ultimacy destroys: God’s perfect holiness and justice. God remains the source of all good while never becoming the author of evil. He exercises sovereignty not by creating sin but by determining how to respond to it—with mercy for some, justice for all.
• It Maintains Real Responsibility: Under reprobation, human responsibility isn’t a charade but a reality. The reprobate are condemned for their own sin, not for actions God forced them to perform. They had sufficient grace to respond, sufficient light to see, sufficient truth to believe. Their condemnation is just because their rebellion is real.
• It Magnifies Grace: Perhaps most beautifully, reprobation makes grace truly amazing. If God were obligated to save everyone, salvation wouldn’t be grace—it would be debt. If God actively created some people to damn them, salvation would be arbitrary favouritism. But when God saves some rebels while justly condemning others, we see grace in its purest form: unmerited favour to those who deserved only judgment.

 

ADDRESSING THE HARD QUESTIONS

• “Isn’t this just semantic word-play?” Far from it. The distinction between creating evil and permitting it, between causing sin and withdrawing restraining grace, preserves essential biblical truths about God’s nature. Words matter when they protect truth.
• “Doesn’t reprobation still make God unfair?” No, because justice doesn’t require equal treatment—it requires giving people what they deserve. No one deserves salvation; therefore, God can show mercy to some while giving others exactly what they’ve earned through their rebellion.
• “How can God be sovereign if He doesn’t decree everything equally?” God’s sovereignty includes His right to show mercy to some while justly condemning others. A king who pardons some criminals while punishing others hasn’t surrendered his sovereignty—he’s exercised it according to his wisdom and justice.

 

EQUAL ULTIMACY VS REPROBATION: SCRIPTURE’S VERDICT

Scripture’s verdict is clear: God actively saves the elect while justly abandoning the reprobate to their chosen rebellion. He is the efficient cause of every good thing, including salvation, while never becoming the author of evil. This isn’t equal ultimacy—it’s biblical reprobation.

This doctrine doesn’t diminish God’s sovereignty; it displays it in its full glory. It doesn’t compromise His justice; it demonstrates it perfectly. And it doesn’t make His grace common; it reveals it as the extraordinary, unmerited favour that it truly is.

The God of Scripture is both perfectly holy and absolutely sovereign. He saves sinners without becoming the author of sin. He exercises complete control without becoming responsible for evil. This is the God we worship, the God who is worthy of all praise—not because He creates both good and evil with equal ultimacy, but because He brings good out of evil through His sovereign grace while maintaining His perfect righteousness.

 

EQUAL ULTIMACY VS REPROBATION: RELATED FAQs

What do contemporary Reformed theologians say about equal ultimacy? Leading Reformed theologians consistently reject equal ultimacy as unbiblical. RC Sproul called it “a serious error” that makes God the author of sin, while John Piper emphasises that God’s sovereignty includes His right to show mercy to some while withholding it from others. Michael Horton argues equal ultimacy “collapses the distinction between God’s decretive and preceptive will,” and JI Packer warned it “impugns God’s holiness.” Theologians Paul Helm and John Frame maintain God’s hardening work is always judicial—a response to pre-existing sin, not the creation of it.

• How does reprobation handle verses like Isaiah 45:7 (“I create evil”) and Amos 3:6 (“Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has done it”)? These passages refer to God’s sovereign control over calamity and judgement, not His creation of moral evil. The Hebrew word “ra” in Isaiah 45:7 primarily means calamity or disaster, not moral wickedness—God creates earthquakes and famines as instruments of judgement, but He doesn’t create the sin that deserves such judgement. Amos 3:6 similarly speaks of God’s sovereign orchestration of historical events and natural disasters. Reprobation handles these texts perfectly: God sovereignly controls all events, including using disasters to judge sin, while never being the author of the moral evil that provokes His judgement.
• Didn’t Calvin himself teach something close to equal ultimacy? This is a persistent misunderstanding of Calvin’s position. While Calvin used strong language about God’s sovereign decree, he consistently maintained the crucial distinction between God’s active grace in election and His passive permission in reprobation. In his Institutes (III.23.1), Calvin explicitly states the reprobate “draw their condemnation from themselves” and God “does not create monsters in order to destroy them.” Calvin taught God “hardens” by withdrawing His Spirit and common grace, not by infusing wickedness. Later Reformed orthodoxy, following Calvin’s lead, codified this distinction in the Canons of Dort, which explicitly reject the idea that God is the author of sin.

How does reprobation differ from Arminian prevenient grace? While both reprobation and Arminian theology acknowledge God’s common grace to all, they differ fundamentally on efficacious grace. Arminian prevenient grace claims God gives everyone sufficient grace to believe if they choose, making human free will the decisive factor. Reprobation teaches that while God gives sufficient grace for responsibility, He gives efficacious grace only to the elect—grace that actually produces faith and repentance. The key difference is that in Arminian theology, grace can be ultimately defeated by human will, while in reprobation, efficacious grace is irresistible while common grace is resistible.

• What about Romans 9:22—doesn’t “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” suggest God actively prepares people for hell? The grammar of Romans 9:22 actually supports reprobation over equal ultimacy. Paul uses different verbs for the vessels of wrath versus vessels of mercy—the vessels of wrath are described as “prepared” (Greek: katartizo) in the passive voice, while God actively “prepared beforehand” (Greek: proetoimazo) the vessels of mercy. This suggests the vessels of wrath prepare themselves for destruction through their rebellion, while God actively prepares the vessels of mercy for glory. The context of Romans 9:17-18 with Pharaoh confirms this pattern: God hardens hearts already bent toward rebellion, He doesn’t create the rebellion itself. The passive construction indicates that the wicked ready themselves for judgement through their own sin.
• How does reprobation handle the logical problem of “double predestination”? The phrase “double predestination” is actually misleading because it suggests symmetry where Scripture teaches asymmetry. Reformed theology teaches “double predestination” in the sense that God eternally chose some for salvation and passed over others, but this doesn’t mean equal ultimacy. Election is positive (God actively saves), while reprobation is negative (God justly condemns). Think of it like a governor who pardons some death-row inmates while allowing others to face their deserved sentence—the governor actively saves some but doesn’t actively kill others. This preserves both God’s sovereignty (He chooses who receives mercy) and His justice (He gives others what they deserve).

Why do some Reformed people still drift toward equal ultimacy despite these biblical arguments? The drift toward equal ultimacy often stems from an over-philosophical approach to God’s sovereignty that prioritises logical consistency over biblical revelation. Some Reformed thinkers worry that if God doesn’t decree sin with the same positive action He uses for salvation, then something exists outside His control. However, this confuses God’s sovereignty with His causation—God can sovereignly permit and even use evil without being its author. The Westminster Confession wisely distinguishes between God’s decree (His eternal plan) and His causation (His direct action), allowing for secondary causes and human responsibility. Biblical theology must constrain philosophical speculation, not the reverse.

 

EQUAL ULTIMACY VS REPROBATION: OUR RELATED POSTS

• Unveiling Reprobation: Does Scripture Truly Teach This Difficult Doctrine?
• Understanding Predestination: Is God’s Choice Arbitrary?
• Does God Choose Who Goes to Hell? How Is It Even Fair?
• Why Does God Show Grace to Some Sinners and Send Others to Hell?
•  If God Ordained Evil, Why Am I Accountable? Find Bible Answers
• The Calvinist View of Human Free Will: Are We Truly Free?