Reprobate (Hastings' Dictionary)

The word ' reprobate ' occurs only once in AV of OT, viz. Jer 6^ (KV 'refuse;). It there represents the Heb. dncj, and is used in connexion with the ligure of smelting or retining metal. People who are incurably bad, from whom no discipline, however severe, can smelt out the badness, are compared to base metal which can only be thrown away. The assonance of the Heb. (DN?' . . DNC:) is preserved in LXX (dp7i/pio>' dxoSe- hoKLfjuafx^fOv . .

firt airedoKi/jLadetf aOroiii Kvpios)^ but lost in Vulg. (argentuni reprobum . . ({uia, pro jecit). It is from the Vulg. that the rendering 'reprobate' comes, the (ireek equivalent of which is found in a similar passage in Is 1^, describing the degeneracy of Israel : t6 apyvpiov v/iQd 6,S6kipmv= 'your silver is not proof,' cannot stand the test (-■^V 'is become dross,' wliich exactly reproduces Heb.) In this place Vulg. also gives argentum tuum verfium est %n scorinm.

In both cases people are regarded as ' reprobate,' or unable to pass muster in God's judgment, not in virtue of an eternal decree of reprobation, but as having reached a last and hope- less degree of moral debasement. It is the same with the use of d36KiMo$ in NT. This is usually rendered ' reprobate,' and is always passive.

The most instructive instance is perhaps Ro 1^ ' As they did not think fit on trial made (ouk iSoKlfiaaav) to keep God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind ' (eis vouv aSl>Kiiwv). This means a mind of which God can by no means apiirove, one which can only be rejected when it comes into judgment. The marg.

of AV (' void of judgment') brings out in accordance with the con- text whu the i/tus is iSiKi/iot : the mind which God rejects is one whose moral instincts are perverted, and which does not serve the purpose of a moral intelligence any longer ; but this is not what the term dWxi/ios itself expresses. It might be thought that there was here a more active relation of God to the state in Question than is foimd in Isaiah and Jeremiah, but tuat is doubtful.

There is no doom- ing of men ab initio to reprobation ; under God's government, and in the carrying out of His sentence on sin, evil works itself out to this hopeless end. The simple passive sense of the word is apparent also in the three instances in 2 Co 13°"'. "rhe test of true Christianity is that Christ is in men ; those who can stand this are Sd/ct/xot ('approved') ; those who cannot are dSSxi/j-oi ('reprobate ').

Here the test is to be applied by Christians to themselves ; in 1 Co 9" (where AV renders dJAiti/ioj ' castaway ' and RV 'rejected ') the final judgment by God is in view ; St. Paul subjects himself to the severest discipline that he may not at the last day be unable to stand trial. It would have been an advantage for some reasons to keep the rendering ' rejirobate ' here also. The relations in which one is d56«;iAios, or the trials which he cannot stand, may be variously conceived.

Thus in 2 Ti 3* we have ' repiol)ate concerning the faith.' The men who are thus characterized are described also as KaTC(t>9apiJL.ivoi rbv yovy. This expression unites in itself what we dis- tinguish as ethical and intellectual elements. The men in (jiiestion are men whose moral sense is per- verted, and whose minds are clouded with specula- tions of their own ; when they are brought into relation to ' the faith ' (which in the Pastoral Epp.

includes something like the Christian creed as veil as the Christian religion) they are dSi/ci^ioi — cannot stand the trial. Similarly in Tit 1'" when certain persons are described as irp6s vav Iprfov ayadbp aSdKipLoi the meaning is : put them to the test of any good work (as distinct from fine profession) and tliey can only be rejected. The same sense results from the only other passage in NT, He 6'.

The soil which receives every care from God and man, and yet produces only thorns and briars, is adiiKifioi. It is rejected as useless for cultivation. Taken together, these passages support the idea that men may sink into a condition in which even God despairs of them — a condition in which He can do nothing but reprobate or reject them. But they do not support the conception of an eternal decree of reprobation in which the destiny of man is related solely to the will of God.

No one who claims to hold this view will ever admit that another can state it without caricature, but it may be given in Calvin's words [Inst. ill. xxii. 11) : ' Si non possumus rationem assigiiare cur suos raiseri- cordia dignetur, nisi quoniain ita illi placet, neque etiam in aliis reprobandis aliud habebimus quam ejus voluntatem.'

Apart from the speculative objection that if salvation and reprobation are related in exactly the same way to the will of God there is no difl'erence between them, all the distinctions of the human world being lost in the identity of the Divine, it is obvious that this presents a conception of reprobation remote from that suggested by Scripture. Nor can it be said that the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation is a necessary inference from the true doctrine of elec- tion.

The true doctrine of election is experimental. It expresses the truth (which every Christian knows to be true) that it is God who saves, and that when He saves it is not by accident, or to reward human merit, but in virtue of His being what He is — a God who is eternally and unchange- ably Redeemer.

But while the Christian can say out of his experience that God in His infinite love has come to him, and made sure to him a redeem- ing mercy that is older than the world, faithful and eternal as God Himself, no one can say out of his experience that God has come to him ar;d made sure to him that in that love he has neither part nor lot. In other words, election has an expeii- mental basis, but reprobation has not.

It is true that men are saved because God saves them — true to experience as to Scripture ; but it is not true to experience that men are lost because God ignores or rejects them. The form in which the truth is Eut may be inadequate even in the case of election ; ut in the case of what is called reprobation there is no verifiable truth at all. For older theological opinion on this subject see Calvin, Inst. III. ohs. xxi.-xxiii. ; Hill, Lectures in Dii-initij, iii. 41 f.

; Hodge, Systematic Theology, iL 320 f. See also Election, Predestination. J. Denney.