Theodore Beza

⭐ What he did was not repeat Calvin but push forward in two places, both of them matters of method. First, he moved predestination out of the doctrine of salvation and into the doctrine of God. Olson records that Calvin placed the doctrine of predestination within the sphere of redemption, as part of God's saving action, and admitted that the purpose of God's election and reprobation is a mystery, whereas Beza placed predestination under the doctrine of God, making it a direct consequence deduced from God's power, knowledge and providence. That is, it went from admitted to be a mystery to deduced from God's attributes. Second, limited atonement (Christ died only for the elect) was deduced in the same way — ⚠ Olson specially notes that this deduction, though logical, was not one Calvin himself made. And to protect predestination from being undermined by synergism, he developed supralapsarianism: in logical order, it places predestining some creatures to salvation and others to damnation before creating the world and permitting the human fall. ⚠ Note that what was being debated here was logical order, not order in time — they accepted Augustine's view that eternity is an everlasting present, and held that all God's decrees are simultaneous and timeless.

⭐ The supralapsarian order of the five decrees (our source lists it in full, and we record it here so that this side's view has its complete shape): (1) to predestine some creatures to salvation and eternal life, and others to damnation and eternal punishment in hell; (2) to create the world; (3) to permit the human fall into sin; (4) to provide the means of salvation (Christ and the gospel) for the elect; (5) to apply salvation (the righteousness of Christ) to the elect.

⚠ What this order expresses is that the first and most important purpose of God's relation to the world is to glorify himself by saving some creatures and damning others. By this logical order, double predestination comes before creation, the fall and everything else — including the incarnation and redemption of Christ.

⚠ The opposing view, infralapsarianism, places predestination after the permission of the fall, and holds that the ultimate goal of God's whole plan is not to elect some and damn others but to glorify himself by creating the world. In fact the two parties agreed on a great deal: both held that God's plan and purpose is to glorify himself through all things; both held that nothing would happen unless God decreed it and brought it about; both held that the human fall and each person's final destiny are predestined by God, not merely foreknown. ⭐ They differed on one point only: whether God's first and ultimate purpose is to glorify himself through predestination or through creation.