Double predestination: does God eternally decree the reprobation of some as well as the election of others?

Jean Calvin, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

Yes. God from eternity determined what he would do with each person, and the decree that passes over some is as much his act as the decree that elects. Scripture says it and the alternative makes salvation turn on the creature.12

Sources

  1. V. Predestination, by which God adopts some to the hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no one, desirous of the credit of piety, dares absolutely to deny. But it is involved in many cavils, especially by those who make foreknowledge the cause of it. We maintain, that both belong to CHAP. XXI.] CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 146 God; but it is preposterous to represent one as dependent on the other.
    Institutes of the Christian Religion Vol 2, p. 145
  2. Yet this is no objection to our having in the person of one individual a specimen of the election, which can never fail of attaining its full effect. These, who truly belong to Christ, Paul correctly observes, are called '^a remnant;" for experience proves, that of a great multitude the most part fall away and disappear, so that often only a small portion remains. Ifiiat the general election of a CHAP.
    Institutes of the Christian Religion Vol 2, p. 149

Where the argument is made

  • Institutes III.xxi–xxiv, especially the decretum horribile of III.xxiii.7
  • De aeterna Dei praedestinatione (1552), against Pighius and Georgius
  • the Consensus Genevensis

How the argument was received

The doctrine most attached to his name, most attacked, and least central to the architecture of the work it appears in.