Supralapsary

Part of speech: adjective, noun

Definitions

1. A theological position holding that God's decree of predestination was made before the fall of humanity into sin
2. The doctrine that divine election and reprobation were determined by God prior to Adam's transgression
3. A Christian belief maintaining that God's choice of the saved and damned came before the original sin of mankind

Etymology: Supralapsary describes a position in Reformed Christian theology about the logical order of God's decrees. Its parts are Latin: "supra," meaning "above" or "before," and "lapsus," meaning "fall" (as in the Fall of humanity), with the suffix "-ary" marking a relation to it. The ordering it names is logical, not chronological, since theologians debated what God decreed first in his plan, not what happened first in time. Supralapsarians held that God's decree to elect some people and reprobate others came before his decree to permit the Fall. Their opponents, the infralapsarians, held that the decree to permit the Fall came first, with election following it. The two terms were coined from the same Latin root as "lapsarian," used to name the "fall" of the scheme.