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The Incarnation as God's First Intention: Supralapsarian Christology for Faith and Practice
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November 2, 2025Fully, rambly review here
[I had intended to write some notes during the reading, and these didn’t end up being as exhaustive as I intended. But I’m going to start with the one thought — a prayer, actually — that I did jot down.]
It feels like real Good News, Lord. Real Good News.
Edwin Chr. van Driel maintains that it was always God’s plan to become incarnate — regardless of sin — to be a God with us. Strongly anchored in Paul’s doxology from Colossians, The Incarnation as God’s First Intention argues that humans exist because of Jesus, rather than Jesus becoming a “Plan B” when humans messed everything up. The resulting framework offers an extremely rich lens through which to interpret Jesus’s coming and His design for intimacy with humans.
The very core of atonement is God’s refusal to let God’s intentions for creation be undermined by our constant wanderings, illusions, and sinful rejections.
Loc. 7530
Reviewing
Hmm, the last section ended up being quite long, and I shared exactly one quote. My challenge, I think, is that it’s very hard to attempt to briefly sum up what I read, considering how many pages the author used to establish his argument. Plus, I did end up skimming and just skipping over some good-sized chunks.
So, here’s my slightly more formal attempt to engage with what I read:
What to Expect
The Incarnation as God’s First Intention covers the doctrine of supralapsarian — the concept that God prioritized Jesus coming in the flesh, apart from our sin. Jesus’s incarnation wasn’t Plan B, but rather God’s first priority.
Author Edwin Chr. van Driel offers a strong expository approach to the doctrine, engaging with how supralapsarianism extends to / effects interpretations of, various other tenets of doctrine. For instance, the chapter that I found most interesting interacts with the question of whether there could be, say, other instances of God incarnating Himself in other forms in our galaxy. (While this is a speculative consideration, the author’s argument draws to a negative conclusion).
Throughout, Van Driel juxtaposes supralapsarian arguments against the opposing position: infralapsarianism, and he also explores various subsets of supralapsarian thought, often explaining where his book’s project diverges from the scholarship of extant supralapsarianism positing.
What I Liked
Because, as mentioned, I struggle to actually sum up what the author is expressing in a work that’s upward of 300 pages, I’m coming back to my personal experience of the text.
What beautiful, heart-stirring arguments: that we were created — and Jesus came to us — for the very purpose of relationship! What a sweet delight to consider His desire that we turn to Him in relationship. I think Van Driel embraces a fairly Augustinian approach with the idea that sin is a turning away from God and not being the creatures we were made to be. (I reference Augustine because this was one of the ideas that stuck out to me during my college studies. It’s another one I find both beautiful and reassuring, and I think it’s the basis of a good deal of Van Driel’s arguments).
I like that Van Driel demonstrates the biblical basis for his arguments, while also showing the deep significance of supralapsarianism in our day-to-day beliefs, as Christians. As someone who does not like reading theology, I found this book to be immensely practical, and oh so sweetly reassuring.
Content Notes
I’m dispensing with my typical format here because I didn’t read word for word, nor did I seek to deeply follow each argument cited. Therefore, I’m not endorsing every tenet of the book, but, for those who feel stirred to read… I’m happy to recommend it as a very prayerful project.
Recommendation Status
Recommended. As I’ve emphasized throughout this post, I’m not seeking to take a hard and fast position and say “this, and this belief only, is correct.” But, wow, the Lord sure used this book to bless me!
Disclosure: I received a complimentary eARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley. Opinions expressed are my own.
[I had intended to write some notes during the reading, and these didn’t end up being as exhaustive as I intended. But I’m going to start with the one thought — a prayer, actually — that I did jot down.]
It feels like real Good News, Lord. Real Good News.
Edwin Chr. van Driel maintains that it was always God’s plan to become incarnate — regardless of sin — to be a God with us. Strongly anchored in Paul’s doxology from Colossians, The Incarnation as God’s First Intention argues that humans exist because of Jesus, rather than Jesus becoming a “Plan B” when humans messed everything up. The resulting framework offers an extremely rich lens through which to interpret Jesus’s coming and His design for intimacy with humans.
The very core of atonement is God’s refusal to let God’s intentions for creation be undermined by our constant wanderings, illusions, and sinful rejections.
Loc. 7530
Reviewing
Hmm, the last section ended up being quite long, and I shared exactly one quote. My challenge, I think, is that it’s very hard to attempt to briefly sum up what I read, considering how many pages the author used to establish his argument. Plus, I did end up skimming and just skipping over some good-sized chunks.
So, here’s my slightly more formal attempt to engage with what I read:
What to Expect
The Incarnation as God’s First Intention covers the doctrine of supralapsarian — the concept that God prioritized Jesus coming in the flesh, apart from our sin. Jesus’s incarnation wasn’t Plan B, but rather God’s first priority.
Author Edwin Chr. van Driel offers a strong expository approach to the doctrine, engaging with how supralapsarianism extends to / effects interpretations of, various other tenets of doctrine. For instance, the chapter that I found most interesting interacts with the question of whether there could be, say, other instances of God incarnating Himself in other forms in our galaxy. (While this is a speculative consideration, the author’s argument draws to a negative conclusion).
Throughout, Van Driel juxtaposes supralapsarian arguments against the opposing position: infralapsarianism, and he also explores various subsets of supralapsarian thought, often explaining where his book’s project diverges from the scholarship of extant supralapsarianism positing.
What I Liked
Because, as mentioned, I struggle to actually sum up what the author is expressing in a work that’s upward of 300 pages, I’m coming back to my personal experience of the text.
What beautiful, heart-stirring arguments: that we were created — and Jesus came to us — for the very purpose of relationship! What a sweet delight to consider His desire that we turn to Him in relationship. I think Van Driel embraces a fairly Augustinian approach with the idea that sin is a turning away from God and not being the creatures we were made to be. (I reference Augustine because this was one of the ideas that stuck out to me during my college studies. It’s another one I find both beautiful and reassuring, and I think it’s the basis of a good deal of Van Driel’s arguments).
I like that Van Driel demonstrates the biblical basis for his arguments, while also showing the deep significance of supralapsarianism in our day-to-day beliefs, as Christians. As someone who does not like reading theology, I found this book to be immensely practical, and oh so sweetly reassuring.
Content Notes
I’m dispensing with my typical format here because I didn’t read word for word, nor did I seek to deeply follow each argument cited. Therefore, I’m not endorsing every tenet of the book, but, for those who feel stirred to read… I’m happy to recommend it as a very prayerful project.
Recommendation Status
Recommended. As I’ve emphasized throughout this post, I’m not seeking to take a hard and fast position and say “this, and this belief only, is correct.” But, wow, the Lord sure used this book to bless me!
Disclosure: I received a complimentary eARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley. Opinions expressed are my own.
September 11, 2026
The Incarnation as God’s First Intention is an interesting book. I’m grateful for this book’s help to clearly articulate the nuanced meaning and application of supralapsarianism. I do have some disagreements that will get into below, but the book is helpful in its overview of prior thinkers and its explanation as to how some applications of supralapsarianism may enrich our perspective of the centrality of Jesus Christ in all things. However, the book is also potentially dangerous to the degree that other applications of the author’s version of the doctrine shift our attention away from the biblical gospel message of a substitutionary atonement for sin.
The author notes that infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism are names for a family of perspectives that describe a common position on the intent of the incarnation while leaving room for variance in details. The question is whether “the divine intention to become incarnate precedes (supra, before) the divine intention to allow for sin (lapsus, fall). Again, “to put it differently, infralapsarian Christology holds that the incarnation is contingent upon the fall; supralapsarian Christology holds that it is not.”
The preface is strong in its explanation of the supralapsarian position’s meaning and significance. He summarizes the position stating, “Jesus did not come for the sake of us, but we exist for the sake of him. The incarnation is not God’s response to sin, but the very first of God’s intentions. Christ is not the means to a larger goal; Christ is the goal.” Now the author and I would affirm this sentence in different ways which I will demonstrate later in this article. From my perspective, of course there is a very significant sense that Christ came for our sake in response to sin, and I do see Christ as the person in which the means and reality of the revelation of God’s glory meet. However, in the ultimate sense, the incarnation is not primarily a problem-solving response, it is God’s sovereign initiative to exalt and magnify Christ.
Consequently, “everything and everyone around us… are created for Jesus” and we ourselves (in my view assuming we are Christians) are “not just people created by God but people called into existence to be part of Jesus’ family.” This idea of the absolute centrality of Christ behind God’s intention for all of creation is what I am deeply encouraged by and full heartedly endorse in the supralapsarian position. On these points, I am in strong agreement with the author.
What would lead us to this conclusion? Is supralapsarianism a biblical term? No, but I do think it is a term that represents a biblical idea. Colossians 1:16 is the most significant supporting verse as Paul makes the grand claim about Christ that “all things have been created through Him and for Him.” The logic demands God’s intention to become incarnate prior to creation which also means prior to the fall. If all things were created for Christ, then the purpose of His incarnation goes beyond just redeeming sinners. The author helpfully argues that redemption fits within a larger story of the Father’s love for the Son. Romans 11:36 and Ephesians 1:10 seem to echo the same logic.
Now the author constructs his version of Supralapsarianism based on a modification of John Duns Scotus’ view. For the sake of time, I’ll focus on the first two steps in the Duns Scotus’ argument because they serve as the interpretive crux. The author summarizes the argument as “God is the best possible person, and as such the most lovable. As the best possible person, God loves that which is most lovable above all else (Himself). In the second instance, this God then also loves Himself for others.” The author argues this second instance is best interpreted as God’s self-determination to be a God-with-others. However, the author finds a potential contradiction with Chalcedonian Christology in asserting that Duns Scotus “seems to be saying that God becomes incarnate so that, in addition to being loved by Godself, God may be loved by another.” This is potentially contradictory because Christ though distinct in person, is not another but is in nature the same God.
On this basis, the author proposes redirecting God’s loving intention in the incarnation to be “not an expression of divine self-love but an expression of love for others.” I think this conclusion is potentially problematic. In my opinion, it comes too close to saying that God had some want of being loved by others which undermines His aseity and makes God’s motivations revolve around man. I think the author would probably suggest it was not for want of love, but something like for the love of love that God created others.
Whether it was Duns Scotus’s intention or not, I think his thought can be used for inspiration to affirm a much stronger and more consistent intention behind the incarnation. The Bible speaks ubiquitously about God’s self sufficiency and delight in His own glory. God’s self love and love of others are not mutually exclusive. Rather than interpreting God loving Himself by determining to be loved by another who is Christ (which opens potential Christological error), we can say God loves Himself by being loved by others in Christ. In other words, God delights in His own glory through the exaltation of Christ among others.
In my opinion, this is the most pure understanding of how God “loves Himself for others.” God’s delight in His own glory is preeminent, and our love and joy in relationship with Him is a means to that end. God loves Himself through loving others in Christ.
Here is the supralapsarianism I hold to and propose following after the likes of Jonathan Edwards, Gordon Clark, and John Piper: If the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, then that intention precedes the creation of man. I am of the opinion that this intention is fully realized through the incarnation of Christ because of verses like Colossians 1:16 that say, “all things were made for Him” (Christ). You might say (slightly modifying John Piper’s famous thesis statement): God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him in Christ. Therefore, prior to the fall it was always God’s intention to become incarnate and to be glorified and enjoyed by others in the person of Christ. Not out of want or need, but out of His own delight for Himself.
Furthermore, I think this book distinguishes between God’s redemptive and eschatological missions in a way that goes too far. In short, the author tries to make a case for a Supralapsarian view that makes God’s intention for the relationship between Christ and humanity to be one that is not contingent upon sin. While I agree with some of the points he raises about redemption being part of a broader narrative, I think the author distances the theology of the cross and redemption too far from God’s central mission to make His love known to and through creation out of delight for Himself.
A few statements jumped out to me from the book and that made me feel this way:
1) The author notes that the traditional theology of the cross requires the preacher to preach sin before they can preach Christ. In contrasting his supralapsarianism with the Luther’s infralapsarian theology of cross the author states, “a preaching that centers the narrative of Christ on the dynamic of sin and forgiveness leaves the preacher’s message open to the misunderstanding that the most important thing the Christian faith has to say about human beings is that they are sinners… The most important thing the Christian faith has to say is that they are beloved children of God.” However, the Bible teaches that human beings become children of God through adoption (Ephesians 1:5, Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:4-5, John 1:12) and union with Christ by putting their faith in Him. Not everyone is a beloved child of God. Sin may not be the only thing we have to say, but the preaching of sin is necessary for the full revelation of God’s love in Christ and sin is the greatest barrier separating us from a relationship with God.
2) The author advocates for Samuel Wells’ understanding of supralapsarianism as God intending the incarnation primarily to be “with others”. Wells is quoted as saying, “If being with people is what brought Jesus to the cross, then Jesus’s ‘Father forgive them’ is Jesus’s finding a way to be with them even when they have abandoned him. Jesus outlasted humanity’s hatred, cruelty, and enmity. After everything the crowds and authorities could throw at him, he was still there. His endurance demonstrated the love that holds on, whatever happens—the love that will never let go. His perseverance showed that nothing can separate us from the love of God.”
Again, such a description seemingly deemphasizes the atonement mission in a way that is foreign to scripture. How does Paul describe the atonement in relation to God’s eschatological intentions? He says, “[God] made Him who knew no sin (Jesus) to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). In Paul’s theology, the substitutionary atonement for sin is intimately connected to God’s eschatological intention to make us images of His own righteousness and glory.
Furthermore, while God does sovereignty initiate and complete the salvation of totally depraved sinners, His salvific and fatherly love we come to know through adoption does not persevere for those who continually deny Him and are not adopted by Him. When Paul triumphantly proclaims at the end of Romans 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of God, he says so speaking about believers. It is the concluding statement after Paul’s explanation of a thesis that all things work together for good specifically to “those who love God and are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). For those who ultimately reject God and are hardened to the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, “whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:33)
3) This framing of the gospel message as God ultimately desiring to “be with people” is described by the author as a “fresh telling of the ‘story of everything’ that has the potential to create new ways in which the Christian community might relate missionary to a culture that is setting aside its Christian heritage a worn, tired, and irrelevant.” I find this statement very disturbing. Novelty should never be appealed to in establishing a truth claim because truth is not fluid. To be clear, the author isn’t directly using novelty as a justification, but the hope of a potential new effect feels like a subliminal appeal nonetheless. We should be very careful to heed Paul’s warnings throughout his epistles of preaching another gospel. Moreover, Jesus warns the gospel is offensive to the world (John 15:18-20, Matthew 10:34-36). Peter describes the gospel as “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense” (1 Peter 2:8) and Paul described it as “foolishness” to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18). All this to say, cultural resistance is a natural response to the gospel message, and this is why Paul charges Timothy to preach the word in 2 Timothy 4 anticipating a future culture with “itching ears that accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.”
4) In objecting to an infralapsarian position (the incarnation being contingent on the fall), the author notes the danger of maintaining a functional relationship with Christ in which we enjoy Him simply because He atoned for our sin rather than delighting in who He is. That point is well taken, however I think he goes too far in saying, “we do not need sin in order to benefit from the incarnation. We do not need sin in order to relate to Christ.” Again, while redemption does not exhaustively inform our relationship with Christ, it one of the means by which we relate to and adore the fullness of who God is. I know the semantics of objecting to this statement are awkward, but in the context of his discussion of the theology of the cross, it sounds too close to saying apart from addressing the problem of sin, we don’t need Christ’s redemptive mission to enjoy the fullness of his self-revelation. I think that is wrong.
5) In a similar vein of thought, the author states, “I hold that God does not need the cross, Jesus’s suffering, or his death. The cross is, rather, an expression of our resistance to Jesus’s being with us. Human beings wished Jesus dead, not God.” Of course, I agree God does not need the cross as all things are contingent on Him and He is not contingent on anything. However, to say that God did not will the crucifixion of Christ debatably violates God’s will to crush the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 and blatantly denies Acts 4:27-28 speaking about the predestination of Herod, Pilate and the people’s opposition to Christ. It also fails to acknowledge that Christ speaks of His own impending death as necessary (Matthew 16:21) and in submission to the Father’s will (Luke 22:42). The author’s position fundamentally undermines the Christian understanding of an effective and finished penal substitutionary atonement for sin in Christ. If I am understanding the author correctly, this appears to be another gospel that is foreign to the Bible.
In my view the cross and redemption from sin through Christ precisely serves the chief end of making God’s love known to creation for His own sake. Therefore, while I agree that the incarnation is not merely a response to the fall, I would pose that the fall sets up and serves the purposes of the incarnation, namely to reveal the fullness of God’s glory and love to and through creation. So Christ is not exalted in response to the fall of man, rather the fall of man was ultimately intended to exalt Christ.
Naturally this raises serious questions about the so called problem of evil. Are we saying God is the author of sin? I’m not particularly fond of that phrase because it’s inherently vague and possesses extremely negative connotations. If we are asking whether God is the ultimate prerequisite cause of the occurrence of the fall and sin, I would say yes. However, if we are asking whether God is the original sinful agent bearing moral guilt, I would say no.
I am convinced in God’s sovereignty that all things occur according to His providential plan and creative decree. Yet, God has no judge by which he can be judged and so whatever he ordains is right by his own authority and nature. Genesis 50 serves as the perfect paradigm saying that “what man meant to evil, God meant for good.” Sin is a category relative to a standard. We might say sin is a violation of God’s instructive command (aka His prescriptive will). Therefore, the occurrence of sin relative to God’s prescriptive will is evil. In relation to God’s providential decree determining what shall come to pass (aka His decretive will), the occurrence of sinful acts ultimately serve a good purpose because it leads to God’s ultimate glory and our ultimate joy in Christ. In this way, it is not a contradiction to suggest God ordains sinful acts that he commands men not to commit.
A contradiction is to say that something is and is not, at the same time and in the same relation. I am suggesting that God-ordained sinful events such as Genesis 50 are both good and evil in different relations. Does not the predestination of Christ’s crucifixion in Acts 4 attest to this same thing? The greatest sin ever simultaneously brings about the greatest good, namely the exaltation of and joy in Christ.
In this way the theology of the cross is not separate or subordinate to the revelation of God’s glory and love to creation, but it is the very means by which it is accomplished. We know the fullness of His glory and love because of His wrath against unrighteousness and His grace for sinners (Romans 9:22-23).
In sum, God’s ultimate purpose in creation is to delight in the revelation and communication of His own glory in Christ, so that rational creatures may participate in the enjoyment of God through Christ. The incarnation therefore belongs to God’s positive Christological purpose for creation and should not be conceived merely as a remedial response to the fall. Nevertheless, the fall and redemption were themselves eternally incorporated into God’s providential plan, such that Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection, and exaltation become the supreme means through which God’s glory—particularly His justice, mercy, grace, and love—is manifested to creation and enjoyed by it.
On one hand, I’m grateful for this book’s helpful explanation of supralapsarian thought. On the other hand, the author at times gets so focused on exploring the implications of God’s intention to relate “with others” in creation and incarnation, that this relationship in his mind becomes an end in itself seemingly at the expense of deemphasizing the atonement and God’s delight for His own glory. While I believe these three intentions are intimately interwoven with each other in the biblical narrative, it is my opinion that the author separates them and potentially dismisses some of them in ways that can be quite dangerous. To forget the necessity of Christ’s atonement for sin, leaves us prone to licentiousness and antinomianism. To forget God’s preeminent delight for His own glory, leaves us prone to an arrogant sense of our own loveliness and that God might be in some way deprived without us. However, if we hold these three intentions appropriately, with God’s relating to others and atonement for sin as a means of His delight in His own glory, we preserve an appropriate view of God and ourselves. Such an understanding magnifies God’s glory and our joy ultimately consummated in the incarnation of Christ.
The author notes that infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism are names for a family of perspectives that describe a common position on the intent of the incarnation while leaving room for variance in details. The question is whether “the divine intention to become incarnate precedes (supra, before) the divine intention to allow for sin (lapsus, fall). Again, “to put it differently, infralapsarian Christology holds that the incarnation is contingent upon the fall; supralapsarian Christology holds that it is not.”
The preface is strong in its explanation of the supralapsarian position’s meaning and significance. He summarizes the position stating, “Jesus did not come for the sake of us, but we exist for the sake of him. The incarnation is not God’s response to sin, but the very first of God’s intentions. Christ is not the means to a larger goal; Christ is the goal.” Now the author and I would affirm this sentence in different ways which I will demonstrate later in this article. From my perspective, of course there is a very significant sense that Christ came for our sake in response to sin, and I do see Christ as the person in which the means and reality of the revelation of God’s glory meet. However, in the ultimate sense, the incarnation is not primarily a problem-solving response, it is God’s sovereign initiative to exalt and magnify Christ.
Consequently, “everything and everyone around us… are created for Jesus” and we ourselves (in my view assuming we are Christians) are “not just people created by God but people called into existence to be part of Jesus’ family.” This idea of the absolute centrality of Christ behind God’s intention for all of creation is what I am deeply encouraged by and full heartedly endorse in the supralapsarian position. On these points, I am in strong agreement with the author.
What would lead us to this conclusion? Is supralapsarianism a biblical term? No, but I do think it is a term that represents a biblical idea. Colossians 1:16 is the most significant supporting verse as Paul makes the grand claim about Christ that “all things have been created through Him and for Him.” The logic demands God’s intention to become incarnate prior to creation which also means prior to the fall. If all things were created for Christ, then the purpose of His incarnation goes beyond just redeeming sinners. The author helpfully argues that redemption fits within a larger story of the Father’s love for the Son. Romans 11:36 and Ephesians 1:10 seem to echo the same logic.
Now the author constructs his version of Supralapsarianism based on a modification of John Duns Scotus’ view. For the sake of time, I’ll focus on the first two steps in the Duns Scotus’ argument because they serve as the interpretive crux. The author summarizes the argument as “God is the best possible person, and as such the most lovable. As the best possible person, God loves that which is most lovable above all else (Himself). In the second instance, this God then also loves Himself for others.” The author argues this second instance is best interpreted as God’s self-determination to be a God-with-others. However, the author finds a potential contradiction with Chalcedonian Christology in asserting that Duns Scotus “seems to be saying that God becomes incarnate so that, in addition to being loved by Godself, God may be loved by another.” This is potentially contradictory because Christ though distinct in person, is not another but is in nature the same God.
On this basis, the author proposes redirecting God’s loving intention in the incarnation to be “not an expression of divine self-love but an expression of love for others.” I think this conclusion is potentially problematic. In my opinion, it comes too close to saying that God had some want of being loved by others which undermines His aseity and makes God’s motivations revolve around man. I think the author would probably suggest it was not for want of love, but something like for the love of love that God created others.
Whether it was Duns Scotus’s intention or not, I think his thought can be used for inspiration to affirm a much stronger and more consistent intention behind the incarnation. The Bible speaks ubiquitously about God’s self sufficiency and delight in His own glory. God’s self love and love of others are not mutually exclusive. Rather than interpreting God loving Himself by determining to be loved by another who is Christ (which opens potential Christological error), we can say God loves Himself by being loved by others in Christ. In other words, God delights in His own glory through the exaltation of Christ among others.
In my opinion, this is the most pure understanding of how God “loves Himself for others.” God’s delight in His own glory is preeminent, and our love and joy in relationship with Him is a means to that end. God loves Himself through loving others in Christ.
Here is the supralapsarianism I hold to and propose following after the likes of Jonathan Edwards, Gordon Clark, and John Piper: If the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, then that intention precedes the creation of man. I am of the opinion that this intention is fully realized through the incarnation of Christ because of verses like Colossians 1:16 that say, “all things were made for Him” (Christ). You might say (slightly modifying John Piper’s famous thesis statement): God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him in Christ. Therefore, prior to the fall it was always God’s intention to become incarnate and to be glorified and enjoyed by others in the person of Christ. Not out of want or need, but out of His own delight for Himself.
Furthermore, I think this book distinguishes between God’s redemptive and eschatological missions in a way that goes too far. In short, the author tries to make a case for a Supralapsarian view that makes God’s intention for the relationship between Christ and humanity to be one that is not contingent upon sin. While I agree with some of the points he raises about redemption being part of a broader narrative, I think the author distances the theology of the cross and redemption too far from God’s central mission to make His love known to and through creation out of delight for Himself.
A few statements jumped out to me from the book and that made me feel this way:
1) The author notes that the traditional theology of the cross requires the preacher to preach sin before they can preach Christ. In contrasting his supralapsarianism with the Luther’s infralapsarian theology of cross the author states, “a preaching that centers the narrative of Christ on the dynamic of sin and forgiveness leaves the preacher’s message open to the misunderstanding that the most important thing the Christian faith has to say about human beings is that they are sinners… The most important thing the Christian faith has to say is that they are beloved children of God.” However, the Bible teaches that human beings become children of God through adoption (Ephesians 1:5, Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:4-5, John 1:12) and union with Christ by putting their faith in Him. Not everyone is a beloved child of God. Sin may not be the only thing we have to say, but the preaching of sin is necessary for the full revelation of God’s love in Christ and sin is the greatest barrier separating us from a relationship with God.
2) The author advocates for Samuel Wells’ understanding of supralapsarianism as God intending the incarnation primarily to be “with others”. Wells is quoted as saying, “If being with people is what brought Jesus to the cross, then Jesus’s ‘Father forgive them’ is Jesus’s finding a way to be with them even when they have abandoned him. Jesus outlasted humanity’s hatred, cruelty, and enmity. After everything the crowds and authorities could throw at him, he was still there. His endurance demonstrated the love that holds on, whatever happens—the love that will never let go. His perseverance showed that nothing can separate us from the love of God.”
Again, such a description seemingly deemphasizes the atonement mission in a way that is foreign to scripture. How does Paul describe the atonement in relation to God’s eschatological intentions? He says, “[God] made Him who knew no sin (Jesus) to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). In Paul’s theology, the substitutionary atonement for sin is intimately connected to God’s eschatological intention to make us images of His own righteousness and glory.
Furthermore, while God does sovereignty initiate and complete the salvation of totally depraved sinners, His salvific and fatherly love we come to know through adoption does not persevere for those who continually deny Him and are not adopted by Him. When Paul triumphantly proclaims at the end of Romans 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of God, he says so speaking about believers. It is the concluding statement after Paul’s explanation of a thesis that all things work together for good specifically to “those who love God and are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). For those who ultimately reject God and are hardened to the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, “whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:33)
3) This framing of the gospel message as God ultimately desiring to “be with people” is described by the author as a “fresh telling of the ‘story of everything’ that has the potential to create new ways in which the Christian community might relate missionary to a culture that is setting aside its Christian heritage a worn, tired, and irrelevant.” I find this statement very disturbing. Novelty should never be appealed to in establishing a truth claim because truth is not fluid. To be clear, the author isn’t directly using novelty as a justification, but the hope of a potential new effect feels like a subliminal appeal nonetheless. We should be very careful to heed Paul’s warnings throughout his epistles of preaching another gospel. Moreover, Jesus warns the gospel is offensive to the world (John 15:18-20, Matthew 10:34-36). Peter describes the gospel as “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense” (1 Peter 2:8) and Paul described it as “foolishness” to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18). All this to say, cultural resistance is a natural response to the gospel message, and this is why Paul charges Timothy to preach the word in 2 Timothy 4 anticipating a future culture with “itching ears that accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.”
4) In objecting to an infralapsarian position (the incarnation being contingent on the fall), the author notes the danger of maintaining a functional relationship with Christ in which we enjoy Him simply because He atoned for our sin rather than delighting in who He is. That point is well taken, however I think he goes too far in saying, “we do not need sin in order to benefit from the incarnation. We do not need sin in order to relate to Christ.” Again, while redemption does not exhaustively inform our relationship with Christ, it one of the means by which we relate to and adore the fullness of who God is. I know the semantics of objecting to this statement are awkward, but in the context of his discussion of the theology of the cross, it sounds too close to saying apart from addressing the problem of sin, we don’t need Christ’s redemptive mission to enjoy the fullness of his self-revelation. I think that is wrong.
5) In a similar vein of thought, the author states, “I hold that God does not need the cross, Jesus’s suffering, or his death. The cross is, rather, an expression of our resistance to Jesus’s being with us. Human beings wished Jesus dead, not God.” Of course, I agree God does not need the cross as all things are contingent on Him and He is not contingent on anything. However, to say that God did not will the crucifixion of Christ debatably violates God’s will to crush the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 and blatantly denies Acts 4:27-28 speaking about the predestination of Herod, Pilate and the people’s opposition to Christ. It also fails to acknowledge that Christ speaks of His own impending death as necessary (Matthew 16:21) and in submission to the Father’s will (Luke 22:42). The author’s position fundamentally undermines the Christian understanding of an effective and finished penal substitutionary atonement for sin in Christ. If I am understanding the author correctly, this appears to be another gospel that is foreign to the Bible.
In my view the cross and redemption from sin through Christ precisely serves the chief end of making God’s love known to creation for His own sake. Therefore, while I agree that the incarnation is not merely a response to the fall, I would pose that the fall sets up and serves the purposes of the incarnation, namely to reveal the fullness of God’s glory and love to and through creation. So Christ is not exalted in response to the fall of man, rather the fall of man was ultimately intended to exalt Christ.
Naturally this raises serious questions about the so called problem of evil. Are we saying God is the author of sin? I’m not particularly fond of that phrase because it’s inherently vague and possesses extremely negative connotations. If we are asking whether God is the ultimate prerequisite cause of the occurrence of the fall and sin, I would say yes. However, if we are asking whether God is the original sinful agent bearing moral guilt, I would say no.
I am convinced in God’s sovereignty that all things occur according to His providential plan and creative decree. Yet, God has no judge by which he can be judged and so whatever he ordains is right by his own authority and nature. Genesis 50 serves as the perfect paradigm saying that “what man meant to evil, God meant for good.” Sin is a category relative to a standard. We might say sin is a violation of God’s instructive command (aka His prescriptive will). Therefore, the occurrence of sin relative to God’s prescriptive will is evil. In relation to God’s providential decree determining what shall come to pass (aka His decretive will), the occurrence of sinful acts ultimately serve a good purpose because it leads to God’s ultimate glory and our ultimate joy in Christ. In this way, it is not a contradiction to suggest God ordains sinful acts that he commands men not to commit.
A contradiction is to say that something is and is not, at the same time and in the same relation. I am suggesting that God-ordained sinful events such as Genesis 50 are both good and evil in different relations. Does not the predestination of Christ’s crucifixion in Acts 4 attest to this same thing? The greatest sin ever simultaneously brings about the greatest good, namely the exaltation of and joy in Christ.
In this way the theology of the cross is not separate or subordinate to the revelation of God’s glory and love to creation, but it is the very means by which it is accomplished. We know the fullness of His glory and love because of His wrath against unrighteousness and His grace for sinners (Romans 9:22-23).
In sum, God’s ultimate purpose in creation is to delight in the revelation and communication of His own glory in Christ, so that rational creatures may participate in the enjoyment of God through Christ. The incarnation therefore belongs to God’s positive Christological purpose for creation and should not be conceived merely as a remedial response to the fall. Nevertheless, the fall and redemption were themselves eternally incorporated into God’s providential plan, such that Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection, and exaltation become the supreme means through which God’s glory—particularly His justice, mercy, grace, and love—is manifested to creation and enjoyed by it.
On one hand, I’m grateful for this book’s helpful explanation of supralapsarian thought. On the other hand, the author at times gets so focused on exploring the implications of God’s intention to relate “with others” in creation and incarnation, that this relationship in his mind becomes an end in itself seemingly at the expense of deemphasizing the atonement and God’s delight for His own glory. While I believe these three intentions are intimately interwoven with each other in the biblical narrative, it is my opinion that the author separates them and potentially dismisses some of them in ways that can be quite dangerous. To forget the necessity of Christ’s atonement for sin, leaves us prone to licentiousness and antinomianism. To forget God’s preeminent delight for His own glory, leaves us prone to an arrogant sense of our own loveliness and that God might be in some way deprived without us. However, if we hold these three intentions appropriately, with God’s relating to others and atonement for sin as a means of His delight in His own glory, we preserve an appropriate view of God and ourselves. Such an understanding magnifies God’s glory and our joy ultimately consummated in the incarnation of Christ.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 19, 2025
Just finished this good book on Supralapsarian Christology. First off, it's on a very important subject for any Christian to consider. With that said, I have always struggled with the idea of the Advent of Jesus Christ being only a rescue operation of a Creation gone wrong. Many scripture passages can be read that way, but I think that that has to be a secondary take on what happened and happens with the coming of Jesus. For one thing, it always has disturbed Me, that God's Creation has this surd or major flaw in it. Sin and evil and the underlying inference that all of this has taken the Infinite Creator by surprise. Really sad view of God in my opinion. This book argues that the Death and Resurrection of Jesus addresses the Sin/evil problem, but that it was foreseen and that the Creation was for the Sake of Jesus Christ. Mind blowing view, if you stop to consider it. We were created for Jesus' sake as friends and family for Him. A lot of theology is overly anthropomorphic. Jesus is "for" us. This can lead to some cringe worthy ideas about Jesus Christ. "I have my Jesus" and the rest of the world can go to hell. I have heard this kind of thing from some people. So as in all things ultimate, we will have to die or wait for the promised return of Jesus Christ, however one can conceive that unconceivable event, to know for sure who was closest to being right about God/Reality. Professor Driel also made a good point about the Barthian Eschatology, where we are remembered by God, our lived lives are in God, but we are dead and no longer really living or existing. Which sounds very much like a Process idea, as I am writing this. If that is all it amounts to, then we are in a pretty hopeless and bleak situation. He points out the short falls of this kind of view of the End things. Good book and worth reading.,
December 8, 2025
This was not the book I was hoping for. Like the author, I am a supralapsarian (believing that the decree to elect logically precedes the decree to allow the Fall), but I would not argue for it in the same manner. Van Driel approaches with a more liberal bent. He sees the purpose of election to be solely that Jesus would be with mankind (he explicitly rejects the deeper goal of God's self-glorification). He does not believe in individual election.
Later in the work he sees the crucifixion as God's proof that he will remain in love with mankind despite mankind's murdering him (he here rejects a deeper penal purpose to the cross). It is one of the weirdest accounts of the atonement that I've ever read.
I did appreciate some parts. Van Driel rejects a recent misunderstanding of Genesis 12 that sees God's calling of Abraham as merely to bless the nations--as though Israel were simply a means to the end. At the other end of redemptive history, he rejects the increasingly popular view that glorification will entail some sort of divinization (based on a misreading of 2 Peter 1--or Mormons, maybe?).
So, some good spots here, including some that made me think more deeply about what God is up to in all of this. But the author's idiosyncrasies outweighed the value of his contributions.
Later in the work he sees the crucifixion as God's proof that he will remain in love with mankind despite mankind's murdering him (he here rejects a deeper penal purpose to the cross). It is one of the weirdest accounts of the atonement that I've ever read.
I did appreciate some parts. Van Driel rejects a recent misunderstanding of Genesis 12 that sees God's calling of Abraham as merely to bless the nations--as though Israel were simply a means to the end. At the other end of redemptive history, he rejects the increasingly popular view that glorification will entail some sort of divinization (based on a misreading of 2 Peter 1--or Mormons, maybe?).
So, some good spots here, including some that made me think more deeply about what God is up to in all of this. But the author's idiosyncrasies outweighed the value of his contributions.
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