Supralapsarianism is advocated by a slim minority of Calvinist theologians, and so it keeps a small a place at the debating table of reformed Christianity. I suspect…Schneider hopes that an…affiliation with this minority) will preserve his place at this table

Theologians who are also believers have an uneasy task: writing something new about an eternal subject, about the very foundations of their most deeply meaningful allegiances.

Historically, they have done so at the risk of professional and sometimes personal peril.

I am not a theologian, thankfully. I find writing hard enough without having to negotiate personal, social, and ecclesial loyalties. I am, however, a believer and a reader. Here, I too easily become one of those ill-informed critics freely boasting of their unprofessional, but deeply felt religious judgments.

All this to say, I have found a piece of academic theology and I have read it with an urgency I seldom feel for scholarly articles:

John Schneider. 2010. Recent genetic science and Christian theology on human origins:
an “aesthetic supralapsarianism”. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 62, no. 3 (September). http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2010/PSCF9-10Schneider.pdf.

Schneider, a professor at Calvin College, mis-titles or, rather, strategically titles the article. He writes very little of real significance about the impact of “recent genetic science” on theology.

In fact, I suspect that he merely sees (as many do) “recent” science as sufficient cause to revisit old debates not with new information, but with renewed (or reminded) energy. In a similar manner, he makes an even more strategic reference to supralapsarianism (supra for above or over and laps for the fall; more or less, the idea that God chose the elect for salvation prior to the sin foreseen).

Read More: http://commonlysomething.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/on-john-schneiders-aesthetic-supralapsarianism/