Summary
In Calvinist theology, election is considered to be one aspect of predestination in which God selects certain individuals to be saved. Those elected receive mercy, while those not elected, the reprobates, receive justice without condition. This unconditional election is essentially related to the rest of the TULIP hinged upon the supreme basic belief in the sovereignty of God. Unconditional election is God's choice to save people regardless of their sin or any condition. This basically means, God's act of saving is not based on what man can do or choose to will, but man is loved by God without any conditions or man's action or deeds but solely by God's grace, thus unconditional election.
In Calvinist and some other churches (Waldensians, Katharoi, Anabaptists, Particular Baptists, etc.) this election has been called "unconditional" because his choice to save someone does not hinge on anything inherent in the person or on any act that the person performs or belief that the person exercises. Indeed, according to the doctrine of total depravity (the first of the five points of Calvinism), the influence of sin has so inhibited the individual's volition that no one is or able to come to or follow God apart from God first regenerating the person's soul to give them the ability to love him. Hence, God’s choice in election is and can only be based solely on God's own independent and sovereign will and upon the foreseen actions of man. Scholastic Calvinists have sometimes debated precisely when, relative to the decree for the Fall of man, God did his electing – see supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism – though such distinctions are not often emphasized in modern Calvinism.
The Reformed position is frequently contrasted with the Arminian doctrine of conditional election in which God's eternal choice to save a person is conditioned on God’s certain foreknowledge of future events, namely, that certain individuals would exercise faith and trust in response to God's of salvation.
Read more about this topic: Unconditional Election
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