CHOSEN BY GOD—OR CALLED BY GRACE?
Before any critique is offered, something must be said plainly and without qualification. I have long admired R. C. Sproul’s intellect, his disciplined mind, and his visible reverence for Holy Scripture. He was no theological lightweight, nor was he careless with the text.
His passion for the holiness of God stirred many to take the Bible more seriously, to think more carefully, and to worship more reverently. I have learned real and lasting things from his teaching. I believe he was a godly man who loved Jesus, loved the God’s people, and labored sincerely to defend what he believed to be the truth.
There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Brother Sproul is with the Lord now. What follows, then, is not an attack on his character or his devotion, but a disagreement with a system he championed—one I believe ultimately presses Scripture further than Scripture itself will go.
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R. C. Sproul’s Chosen by God is written with clarity, seriousness, and reverence; it is not a careless book, nor the work of a man indifferent to holiness or the glory of God. For that reason, it deserves a careful response rather than a reactionary one. Yet clarity does not equal correctness, and reverence does not guarantee balance.
The system Sproul defends—classical, deterministic Calvinism—ultimately presses Scripture into a philosophical mold that Scripture itself resists. The God of the Bible is sovereign, yes; but His sovereignty is personal, covenantal, and moral—not mechanical, exhaustive, or coercive. When sovereignty is defined in such a way that human response becomes illusory, love becomes selective by decree, and judgment falls on those who never possessed genuine opportunity, something vital has been lost.
Sproul insists that if God is truly sovereign, then human freedom must be radically curtailed. Yet Scripture never defines God’s sovereignty in opposition to meaningful human response. Again and again, the biblical narrative holds both together without embarrassment. “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
The command is not theatrical, nor is the invitation hollow. The God who declares the end from the beginning also pleads, warns, grieves, and rejoices. Divine sovereignty in Scripture is not displayed by rendering human decisions irrelevant, but by accomplishing redemptive purposes through real choices made by real people—choices that matter eternally.
At the heart of Chosen by God is the doctrine of unconditional election: that God, before creation, chose certain individuals for salvation and passed over the rest, not based on foreseen faith, but solely on His secret will.
Yet the New Testament consistently frames election in Christ, not as an abstract decree concerning isolated individuals. God chose a people, a body, a covenant family—and the means of entering that chosen reality is faith-union with the Son. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4).
The phrase “in Him” is not incidental; it is decisive. Election is Christ-centered before it is individualized, and corporate before it is personal. Sproul’s reading reverses that order, beginning with an eternal decree about individuals and only later situating Christ as the mechanism for its execution.
Moreover, Chosen by God asserts total inability in such a way that the Gospel call itself becomes selective in intent. Sproul maintains that the unregenerate cannot respond positively to God under any circumstances unless first regenerated—and thus the universal invitations of Scripture function merely as instruments to gather the already-chosen.
But the apostles did not preach as if this were so. They pleaded, reasoned, persuaded, and warned. Paul declares that God “now commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30), not as a rhetorical flourish, but as a sincere summons grounded in the reality of accountability. A command that cannot possibly be obeyed—even in principle—empties language of its moral meaning.
Most troubling is the portrait of God that inevitably emerges. Sproul denies that God delights in the damnation of the reprobate, yet the system he defends requires that God eternally wills the non-salvation of multitudes for His own glory.
The Bible, however, repeatedly affirms that God’s disposition toward the world is genuinely salvific. He is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). He “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). These statements are not explained away by appealing to hidden wills or divided intentions; they are revelations of the heart of God as He has chosen to make Himself known.
None of this denies grace. Salvation is not earned, initiated, or completed by human effort. Faith itself is a response made possible by grace from beginning to end. But grace, in Scripture, is not irresistible force—it is divine generosity that can be received or resisted.
“You always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51) is not a hypothetical accusation; it is a historical indictment. Love that cannot be refused is not love as the Bible presents it; and judgment that falls where no real alternative was possible cannot be reconciled with the justice God declares of Himself.
Chosen by God is right to exalt God; it is wrong to do so by diminishing the sincerity of His invitations, the integrity of human response, and the breadth of His redemptive desire. The Gospel does not announce that some are secretly chosen while others are silently doomed—it proclaims that Christ has been lifted up so that “whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
That promise is not qualified in the fine print of eternity; it is spoken plainly in history, to the world God so loved.
BDD
