Objection 50

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

The confessions say "ordinarily," and their exception clause was written for infants and the mentally incapable, not for reachable adults. You are stretching a narrow clause into a broad doctrine.

Answer. The historical observation is accurate and is conceded: the framers had infants and the incapable chiefly in view, and the mainstream interpretation has kept the clause narrow. The argument here is not that the confessions teach the extension, but that the confessions' own principle entails more than their framers applied it to, which is a common and legitimate form of theological development. The clause's stated rationale is incapacity of outward calling and the Spirit's freedom; it nowhere grounds the exception in the psychology of the person rather than the absence of the call. A man in an unreached valley is, with respect to the ministry of the word, in precisely the position of the infant: the outward call cannot reach him, for reasons entirely outside his will. To admit the one and exclude the other requires a principle the confessions do not supply, and Shedd, at least, judged that no such principle exists. The reader may side with the narrow reading; but he should notice that the narrow reading is a tradition about the clause, not the clause itself.