A Monday Radio Free Geneva!

A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.

I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them. They're following men instead of the Word of God.

Our helper, he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.

On top of my feet, standing on a stump and crying out,. He died for all those who elected, were selected.

For still our ancient foe does seek to work us woe. His craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate.

Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the Reformers.

On earth is not his equal.

I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves Calvinists.

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.

But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

We're not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing. Doomed before the womb? You ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is he. Lord, swallow off his name. Read my book. From age to age the same.

We must win the battle.

Opening Remarks and the Plan for a Live Exegesis Debate

From our underground bunker, hidden deep beneath Liberty University, where no one would think to look, safe from those mutter Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re-read George Bryson's book, we are Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say to his own eternal glory.

And welcome to another oddly scheduled special edition of Radio Free Geneva on the Dividing Line. My name is James White, and yes, I was riding again this morning. And when I do that, and I am listening to Steve Gregg talk about Calvinism, in fact, finishing the entire series, the nine tapes, nine MP3, thirteen and a half hours of lecture on the subject of Calvinism, I simply could not before heading out of town resist doing another Radio Free Geneva to address some of the particular issues raised in the last section of this particular series.

And I do so once again in the hopes that a meaningful response, a biblically based response will be helpful to people who are indeed confused about this issue, looking for information on this issue. And I would like to announce, now having listened to all of the tapes, there were a number of things that struck me that were somewhat disappointing to me.

I had asked, for example, if Acts 4, 27, 28 would be exegeted. I may have missed 15 minutes at some point. I think at one point I had 15 minutes left in one of the nine of them. And since they're an hour and a half each, and you're listening on an iPod, you know what it's like to try to get the last 15 minutes.

And I think the iPod reset, you know, sometimes it turns off, and the little Apple comes up and blah, blah, blah. And I may have missed 15 minutes. So maybe it's possible in those 15 minutes. All the texts that I had hoped for in-depth exegesis appeared, such as Acts 4, 27, 28, and Isaiah chapter 10, and a more in-depth exegesis of Genesis 50, because what was offered wasn't exegesis of Genesis 50.

It just said, well, God can make good things come out of evil, which is not what Genesis 50 is talking about. Genesis 50 says that God intended this action. The men intended this action. It was one action, two intentions, two wills, good intentions on God's part, evil intentions on man's part.

Man's judged for his evil intentions. This would help Mr. Gregg to avoid about 90 of his argument against Calvinism, but I just don't have any reason to believe in what I've listened to that he's familiar with that.

So maybe that's there. I don't know. But I did not hear any in-depth discussion of those particular issues. And so those would be some of the things we'd still be looking for in future encounters. But what I would like to suggest that would be the most helpful to those who are truly concerned about these subjects, who are concerned about what the Bible really says, they want to take the Bible seriously, and the fact you have two individuals, Steve Gregg and myself, who are basically saying the same thing about each other.

That is, Steve Gregg says that the Armenians can do exegesis and the Calvinists can't. And my experience has been that in my debates, I'm the one doing the exegesis and the Armenians aren't. And so therefore, the best way to decide that is to do live counter exegesis.

We have the dividing line. Mr. Gregg has his own radio program. So let's do a week. Let's do a week and let's put together the list of verses and give each side the amount of time necessary to present their exegesis, and then each side gets to cross-examine the other based upon the Greek and Hebrew texts themselves directly.

See, we couldn't do that in a single one-night debate. There just wouldn't be enough time in one particular context. So let's find a way where we can either, during the course of his radio program, I'm not sure how long his radio program is, or we can do it at another time where we do maybe two hours at a time, record it, we play it on the dividing line, he plays it on his radio program, then maybe once those have aired, do a live call-in thing where people can call in and ask questions based on what they've heard, whatever.

But let's schedule something where we can do John 6, we can do Ephesians 1, we can do Romans 9, we can do Genesis 50, Acts 4, 27 to 28, Ephesians 2, 2 Peter 3, 9, 1 Timothy 2, 4. Let's get into the text and let's do exegesis.

Let's debate this in a format that will allow both sides to present their exegesis of the text and then cross-examine each other based upon the original languages. Mr. Gregg makes a number of statements about the original languages.

Now I cannot tell from even nine full tapes if Mr. Gregg can actually read the original languages or if he's just using secondary sources, I don't know. But he makes comments, he's said that Calvinists are twisting and contouring the text and we're desperate and so on and so forth.

So I say, all right, let's do it. I'm a Calvinist, I've taught Greek and Hebrew and Greek and Hebrew exegesis. So let's go to the text and let's find out, let's edify the people of God and allow them to hear the two sides coming together.

Now, you know, Mr. Gregg may not want to do this, I don't know. He contacted us and suggested it, but I got the feeling that was because some of his supporters and friends were in essence saying that he should do that.

But I'm certainly open to doing it. Let's try to schedule something to present a debate that will allow people to hear a much longer than just one, say, two, two-and-a-half-hour encounter. Let's do this over the course of a period of time.

Like I said, a week. Let's do it on special broadcast Dividing Line, on his radio broadcast and let the maximum number of people hear what we have to say. And, of course, I think I'm helping Mr. Gregg out a little bit by providing my responses here on Radio Free Geneva, but I think that's a fair thing to do.

Equal Ultimacy, Predestination, and the Meaning of Divine Decree

I have some sections to play out of the ninth tape, the last tape, the last MP3 available from TheNarrowPath .com. The first is an issue of equal ultimacy. I actually heard this on Saturday while I was writing.

And this is a situation where, again, people get mad at me when I say it this way, but there's no other way of saying it, so I just can't get around it. Mr. Gregg does not understand what he's talking about, and he accuses R .C. Sproul of contradicting John Calvin when he doesn't understand either what Calvin is saying or what Sproul is saying.

And so, quite simply, this is based upon Mr. Gregg's ignorance of the vocabulary and language of scholarship. And he doesn't understand the categories in which they're speaking, and he thinks that Sproul is contradicting Calvin.

And when you listen to the presentation, hopefully you'll be able to see where this is, but it's important because what's being addressed is equal ultimacy, something that I have frequently addressed on this program in refuting those who attack Reformed theology is they try to make the act of predestining to life equal to the reprobation of individuals.

And they try to say, see, there's this big equal sign. And Calvin didn't say there was a big equal sign. Yes, he said that it was certain, but that doesn't mean there's an equal sign. You just don't seem to understand.

Mr. Gregg just doesn't seem to understand that part, that one involves the extension of grace, resurrection to life. The other does not. They are not equally ultimate with one another. And Sproul makes the statement that God does not coerce evil out of someone.

And, of course, all Reformed people say that. God never takes an individual who is some morally neutral agent and puts a gun to his back and says, be evil. What God is doing is he's restraining the evil of men.

That's what he does the vast majority of the time. And there are times when, in his decree, he restrains. He does not restrain and allows that person to do something that is a part of his will. Selling of Joseph into Egypt, the king of Assyria, etc., etc., etc.

We see this over and over again in Scripture. But it doesn't mean that this was a morally neutral person. The problem is Mr. Gregg is at some times almost a full-on Pelagian in what he thinks about man's abilities to do good things.

Other times he's just the opposite, and he's talking about how depraved man is. But then when you listen to him talking about faith, you listen to him talking about man's abilities, you sort of fall over the road on that.

But listen to what he says about Sproul and Calvin here.

Mysteries of God's justice that we are not permitted to challenge. In R .C. Sproul's book, Chosen by God, on pages 142 and 143, he said the concept of equal ultimacy seeks a complete balance between election and reprobation.

The key idea is this. Just as God intervenes in the lives of the elect to create faith in their hearts, so God equally intervenes in the lives of the reprobate to create or work unbelief in their hearts.

Equal ultimacy is not the Reformed or Calvinist view of predestination since some have called it hyper-Calvinism. I prefer to call it sub-Calvinism, or better yet, anti-Calvinism. The dreadful error of hyper-Calvinism is that it involves God in coercing sin.

This does radical violence to the integrity of God's character. Now, in this, R .C. Sproul is speaking like a popular Calvinist. He calls the view of equal ultimacy or what is sometimes called double predestination.

God predestines not only the saved, but he predestines the lost. That concept, he says, is a terrible thing because it involves God in coercing sin.

Now, stop just for a moment. Again, when someone refers to double predestination, if they are using that term predestination to where they are equal with each other, then that's what we're objecting to.

Other people use the term double predestination to simply mean that there is both the decree of salvation and what its nature is, its graciousness, so on and so forth, and the decree of reprobation, which is a different kind of decree not only in its scope, but in its nature as well.

You have to distinguish between those two, and Mr. Gregg isn't distinguishing between those two, and that's why he creates a false dichotomy and a false contradiction between Sproul and Calvin at this particular point.

Dominions have the same complaint.

What's interesting is that R .C. Sproul is not willing to acknowledge that this is what Calvinism teaches. He says it's not even hyper-Calvinism, it is sub-Calvinism. However, let us see what John Calvin himself said.

I think Calvinism has the right to be defined by the man after whom it is named.

Now let's see if the quote, I'm only going to give one of them, but let's see if the quote he comes up with from Calvin is actually addressing the issue of God coercing evil out of men. Okay, let's see if we've really got an understanding of the issue here.

In his book, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 321 .5, John Calvin wrote,. By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man.

All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others preordained to eternal damnation. And accordingly, as each has been created for one or the other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or to death.

So it sounds like Calvin simply taught this concept of equal ultimacy or double predestination, although Sproul calls that view sub-Calvinistic. John Calvin then was sub-Calvinistic apparently.

Now see, that's not what Calvin was talking about, and it's not equal ultimacy. A double predestination does not involve equal ultimacy as long as you recognize the difference between the nature of the decree of salvation and that of reprobation, that they do not involve coercing evil out of someone.

So, you know, I know that Sproul was the primary source he used. He read a little bit from Ness and read a little bit from Owen, but 90 of the time he's going after R .C. And so it bothers me just a little bit that if you're going to go after somebody, at least sort of, you know, it would strike me that there might be some recognition.

If you were to sort of step back and go, man, you know, you look at Princeton, and you look at Edwards, and you look at Machen and Hodge, and, okay, you may disagree with these folks, but it might be good to recognize some of the greatest minds of exegesis and church history and theology actually believe these things, and there might be a reason why they did.

And you might want to enter into that just a little bit more before you sort of take them out with that kind of thing. Then I think I got to this morning, right at the beginning of my ride, I got to what I would consider to be the low point of the nine.

Certainly a whole lot lower than I expected it to go when reading or listening to the first programs. The first program, you know, gave me some hope of believing that there is going to be some decent representation and not a whole lot of mockery.

I honestly, this part, I can't avoid the recognition that this is just mockery, and it's mockery of something that Mr. Gregg just doesn't understand. And it's mockery of something that's very important as well.

And so it was rather bothersome, but I think we need to hear it.

Not be, but that Adam would sin is equally true, considering Adam was subordinate to the decrees of God, determining what Adam would do out of the freedom of his own will. That is a funny statement, and it was written in 1700, but Calvinists have not stopped talking this way.

God determined flawlessly what Adam would do out of the freedom of his will. So you've got Adam doing this out of the freedom of his will, but it was determined by the eternal decrees of God and could not happen any other way, but he was free.

Now, I stop it just for a moment. You can hear the laughter in his voice. Mr. Gregg simply does not believe that an eternal God creating time, and again, I can't figure out what his theology is because he affirms foreknowledge, but foreknowledge would mean that free creatures, what's the nature of their freedom?

Can they do something that violates the foreknowledge of God? Well, if they can't, then can they really do other than what God has known they were going to do? And if when he created, he knew what they were going to do, then all you're saying is he didn't really have a purpose in what they were going to do, but he knew they were going to do, so he's responsible for it anyways, blah, blah, blah.

You know, there's all these theodicy issues that Armenians think they're avoiding when they aren't. And the only way they can really be consistent is to engage in open theism and deny God's ability to know all things and future events.

But be it as it may, what Mr. Gregg refuses to allow for is that there can be a single action in which there are two wills involved. Now, you have, you know, he keeps saying God makes all decisions for us and blah, blah, blah, you know, the puppet stuff and all the standard strawman argumentations, but Adam, of course, is the big bugaboo, because we're given very little information about Adam in the scriptures, about the nature of Adam before the fall.

We can only speculate about certain things, but all the examples we have of two wills acting in one particular event, one with evil intentions, one with good intentions, are after the fall. We just don't have any revelation concerning the nature of Adam.

And what Ness is saying is that somehow in the decree of God, there is a unity between God's purpose. When God created, he didn't just sort of roll the dice and, oh, Adam fell, didn't see that coming.

He had a purpose in it, and yet Adam himself is free in what he does. Now, Mr. Gregg does not like that idea, but he still has to answer the question that if God has foreknowledge of all future events, when he created all things, that somehow God knew that was going to happen.

And when God created, was he surprised that Adam fell? Did he have a purpose in Adam's falling? He has to answer these things, and we don't get any of these answers, at least in the series that I have listened to.

And so the problem here is that for Gregg, God's will must exist in time with man's equal to man's. And that's how you say, well, you can't have this issue of freedom. You can't have an eternal God whose creative decree creates the very fabric of time itself and creates the matrix in which mankind is judged on the basis of the attitudes of his heart and his actions.

You can't have an eternal God who can create temporal beings who have moral choice and capability. By definition says, that is not possible. And, of course, that's why I've been looking for these particular texts to find out if he's going to wrestle with them, and I've found no evidence of that.

And so without any references to Acts 4, 27, 28, and things like that, and with far too many references to Clark Pinnock, I'm left going, okay, this is one of the problems of the presentation.

To do something else, but God determined that he would do it this way. This is simply, as I said earlier, I'm trying to have your cake and eat it too, trying to have man responsible and free in his choices.

And God responsible and determining. Only actually God not really that responsible. To say man did this out of the freedom of his own will is to say it's really his fault, it's really man's fault. But God ordained that he would do it.

In fact, decreed infallibly and sovereignly that he would do it. That's the juggling act the Calvinist is forced to do. That somehow man is responsible and free, although everything he chose he was determined by God, infallibly he had to choose.

But that's still free. How this is so, well, it's a mystery. It truly is a mystery. I would have to grant that.

Yeah, you can hear the sarcasm there. It truly is a mystery. It's going to get worse here in a second. But of course, again, we turn the very same question around. How do you account for God's foreknowledge if, in fact, he does not have an eternal decree?

Did time just turn out the way that it did based upon the actions of free men and God creates, looks at the end, sees, he wins. Ah, good, glorify me. Could it have been otherwise? He'd have to say that it could have been otherwise.

But if it could be otherwise, then God might have created and the end was not what he wanted. So he just scraps the whole thing, starts all over again. Is that what we've got? I mean, I really do have to wonder about the basis of such things as God's foreknowledge, the concept of prophecy.

All these things strike me as being rather without a foundation in Mr. Gregg's theology.

The two authors of Calvinism, Hyper-Calvinism, and Arminianism make this point. The Reformed Christian may even biblically say that God has foreordained sin. For if sin was outside the plan of God, then we would have to maintain that God does not control all things and that some things come into being apart from his sovereign will.

Yeah, we would have to say that. We would have to say that God does not ordain all things and some things come to pass contrary to his sovereign will.

I actually noticed that he missed the point that the actual quotation was making. Some things come into being apart from his sovereign will, and then Gregg repeats that as come to pass apart from his sovereign will and doesn't see the point they're actually making.

That if this comes into being outside of his will, then something can happen in God's creation and there can be a change in that creation that was not a part of his will rather than something coming to pass that was not a part of his will, which Gregg understands to be every time we sin, we're violating God's will.

He denies or functionally denies the difference between the prescriptive will of God and the decretive will of God that just does not even enter into the conversation, which leads to a lot of his misunderstanding of the reform materials that he's reading.

At one level, that is certainly true.

God doesn't will for me to curse him. By the way, I don't, but some people do, and he doesn't will for them to either, as far as the Bible is concerned, and therefore he gets angry when they do and punishes them for it.

If he wanted it, he wouldn't get angry. Anyway, the Calvinist assumes at the outset that all things are ordained by him and nothing happens outside his sovereign will. He is not to be considered the author of sin, they say.

Oh, this is so hard for them. You can just see the discomfort with which Calvinists have to address this issue. In one statement they say, God has foreordained sin. Then in the next sentence they say, he's not to be considered the author of sin.

Oh, okay, I get it. He foreordained it, but he's not the author of it. Okay, what do you do with it? How do you solve this? Well, they'll work hard at it. Let me show you their valiant effort. They say God was the divine first cause, whereas godless men were the second cause.

Nothing is outside his sovereign purpose, including sin, but the decree with reference to sin is permissive rather than an efficient decree. Notice they disagree with Calvin on this. That is, it is a decree that renders sin an absolute certainty, but is not brought about by a direct divine act.

Ah, okay, so God ordains sin by a decree that renders sin an absolute certainty. In other words, God guarantees it. God makes it certain. God decrees it in such a way as nothing else can happen. Okay, but he's not the author of it.

He's the divine first cause, but he's not the author. Oh, this is deep stuff. It's shoveled high and deep. It's very deep stuff. It's deep theology, but it's not biblical theology, as near as I can tell.

Well, I was taken aback. Shoveled high and deep. Well, we all know what that refers to. You see, if Mr. Gregg had ever actually had to do something more than just throw his traditions at Genesis 50, ignore Isaiah 10, ignore Acts 4, and it actually had to deal with them and struggle with them and actually exegete them, then I just don't think that he'd be able to, in such a cavalier fashion, mock the reality of the difference between primary causes and secondary causes, the difference between being the author of something and decreeing something, author that comes forth from one's being, one's nature, things like that.

You know, he might have to actually deal with that stuff, but he just hasn't. And since he hasn't, then he can sort of get into the mood there, you know, and start doing the ha-ha-ha type thing and sort of laughing at these things.

And, you know, I would love to be able to play his comments on those texts and compare them with Scripture, but I can't because I just didn't really sort of bother dealing with them. Same thing in John 8.

Didn't really deal with Jesus' statements in John 8 that are so clear and compelling as well in regards to the reason you don't hear the words of God is because you don't belong to him and things like that.

But there were a number—one of the things that caused me to want to do this program today, even though I'm going out of town tomorrow, I've got lots of stuff to do, but I'm taking the time to do this, is there were some exegetical comments made that we can actually get into the text and say, Mr. Gregg, you said this.

The text says this. Here are the rules. You are wrong. What will you do? What will you do? What answers will you come up with when you are shown you're just wrong? You missed the boat. You said the rules of Greek grammar say this.

You're wrong. That's not what the rules of Greek grammar say. What will you do? And so we're going to get a chance to look at some of those. The next section is where he attempts to deal with two particular texts in the text of the New Testament.

The first is 1 Peter 2 .8, which says,. And a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. For they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were appointed. Or a little bit more literally, honestly, is the ESV.

And a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. This is the rather clear statement of 1 Peter 2 .8. And then the other text is from Jude 4.

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed. Those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation. Ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.

And so here you have two texts. And they make reference to this idea of ordination. This idea of being appointed to a particular action of disobedience. And so how is he going to respond to them? Well, let's find out.

Likewise, those verses in 1 Peter and Jude, this one. Even to them, 1 Peter 2 .7 and 8, even to them which stumble at the word being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed. Now, what does this mean, they were appointed?

Were they appointed to stumble and to be disobedient? That is to say, did God make some sovereign decree that these particular individuals, from the day of their birth, they were determined by God and he desired it, that they would be disobedient and stumble?

Well, again, the verse kind of sounds that way at first glance, but anyone can tell if they're objective that the verse doesn't necessarily involve that particular concept. It says these people stumble at the word being disobedient.

What that means is they were disobedient, resulting in them stumbling at the word. Which result was ordained by God?

Now, let me make sure you understand what he's saying. What he's saying here is what God has ordained is that those who are disobedient and stumble at the, if they're disobedient, then they'll stumble at the word.

So, what you need to hear, and this is where people sometimes struggle with this. Many of the questions I've gotten from people have demonstrated that they struggle at this particular point. What is it that has been ordained?

What is it that has been ordained? Now, in his understanding, what has been ordained is that people who are disobedient and stumble at the word will be punished. And you see, that's true. There's a perfectly true statement that those who are disobedient to God can expect punishment.

That's a true statement. And so, what people who want to get around what the Bible teaches about this, hear that true statement and go, oh, well, there it is. There you go. The problem is, when you look at the term, etetheisan, ha kai etetheisan, the last three terms, ais ha kai etetheisan, unto which also they were appointed.

It's a plural. However you want to work this thing out, it's an aorist passive. They were appointed unto ha. Unto this. Has he ha. Now, this is the neuter. And we're going to find out, this is a point of weakness in Mr. Gregg's presentation, is he doesn't seem to understand that that neuter very frequently is used to wrap up the entire preceding phrase.

That's why the ESV renders it the way it is, the way that I read it for you earlier. That is, as they were destined to do. And so they were destined unto this. This wraps up the preceding phrase. And the preceding phrase uses the term that is translated to stumble, is the ones stumbling at the word, being disobedient.

And so it's a plural. Each one of these is the plural. And so there is no way to stick a singular thing in here that is punishment or judgment. The ones who are appointed, they are appointed. That plural is consistent all the way through the text.

There's no way to say, well, what was appointed was punishment. No. Unto which they were appointed. They were appointed to stumble and be disobedient. That's what it says. You may not like it. You may not want it to say that.

But you can't just go, well, what it really means. The way it's going to say is, this is an equally good reading he's going to offer. No, I'm sorry, it's not. You've got to explain. You've got to exegete.

You've got to bring out of the text the basis upon which you say that what was actually appointed is that God will judge sinners. There is no word doom here. You notice he's going to focus on the word doom.

Doom is an italics in NASB. There is no term doom here. That's why I said the ESV is a little bit more literal at that point when it says, because they disobeyed the word as they were destined to do. There is no word doom.

So you can't say, oh, well, see, their doom is what's appointed. No, there is no word doom for that to be the object of appointed. Besides that, appointed is plural. It's they. And they're the ones who are stumbling.

They're the ones who are disobedient. And they're the ones appointed unto that. That's what it says. I mean, there's the text. And so, Mr. Gregg, exegetically, where do you get this conclusion? Where does it come from outside of your tradition?

And you have your traditions. I know you say the Calvinists only have theirs. Where do you get this from the text?

That is, whereunto also they were appointed. Were they as individuals appointed to stumble and to be disobedient? Or did God appoint in advance that those who are disobedient would, in fact, stumble? They happened to choose to be disobedient and, therefore, fell into that appointed class.

Now, at least both interpretations are equally.

Now, I just heard something that I want to point out here. He is making a distinction in the time frames between the disobedience and the stumbling. Both of the verb that is used, to stumble, is a present tense verb.

And to disbelieve and to disobey is a present tense participle. So, again, Mr. Gregg, upon what basis are you introducing this temporal distinction upon which you're basing your entire interpretation?

Where does that come from in the text itself? Possible from the passage.

That is to say, they stumbled being disobedient. That means, because they were disobedient, they stumbled. And this stumbling was something God had appointed would happen to disobedient people. God had determined that disobedient people would stumble at the Word as a judgment on them.

It doesn't necessarily mean that he appointed these individuals to be disobedient, but rather they fall into the general condemnation that comes on all disobedient people because they are disobedient.

And God appointed this punishment for disobedient people.

So, did you catch that? There it is. There it is. God appointed this punishment. So, the object of appointment here is punishment. So, why is appointment, why is etetheison plural? Why is it plural if it is a singular thing?

See? This is what I mean. This is why I say, let's go into the text. Let's do this on our programs and let Mr. Gregg answer my questions and I'll answer his. We'll have our Greek text in front of us, we'll have the Septuagint, we'll have the Hebrew text.

We'll answer the questions directly. That's what I would like to see done. And they are them.

Likewise in Jude, similarly, Jude 4. For there are certain unencrypted unawares who were before of old ordained to this condemnation. Well, God planned long ago to condemn such wicked men that he describes, ungodly men.

It doesn't mean that God ordained these particular men to be ungodly.

Now, to catch it, so what God ordained was to punish wicked men. That's all this is saying. And yet, again, what does the text say? What is the assertion of the text? Those who were long ago marked out, that is, to write before, prographo.