Thanks for asking these questions. It provides a chance to clear up several misconceptions people might have.

You wrote: “[our choices] are typically grounded in what we choose or are arbitrary.” That is, if I choose X, the choice is grounded in X. You never made a claim about “our choices are grounded in things outside the chooser.” As I was objecting to your first formulation, it seems improper to claim my counterexample is faulty for failing to be a counterexample to a principle it was not intended to cover. I take it that the shift indicates you disagree with your original principle.

Your second principle: ‘For all x, if x is a choice, x is based on “something” outside the chooser.’ On some construal, this principle is completely consistent with everything I’ve said. God may base his choice to elect S on a very complicated reason, perhaps one that involves a many greater goods. I, and Reformed theology, have only claimed the reason can’t be grounded in the creature.

But taken another way, this principle is problematic. First, what does it mean to speak of something “outside” of God? Does he have a “boundary”? Second, it seems to deny that God made any choices “before” anything existed “outside” of him (whatever that means). Suppose all that exists is God. If a choice has to based on “something” outside of him, this seems to be what is being said: there exists an X such that X is “outside” of God. What would this be? We are supposing only God exists. For God to make a choice, does there need to be “something” that is not God and is eternal or timeless or? How would that square with aseity?

Specifically and historically, election has meant that the choice cannot be grounded in foreseen faith or good works. We can’t forget that Unconditional Election was formed as a response to the Five Articles of Remonstrance, which claims that God elects some based on considering them as believers.

As the WCF notes, the choice is made: “according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will.” Notice the three conjunctions. Arminians typically focus on only the last one, and give it a voluntaristic gloss at that. The choice is made according to a purpose and counsel. How could something that is made according to a purpose and counsel be “arbitrary”?

The Canons of Dort teach that: “For Scripture declares that there is a single good pleasure, purpose, and plan of God’s will, by which he chose us from eternity both to grace and to glory, both to salvation and to the way of salvation, which he prepared in advance for us to walk in.” Notice there is a “purpose” and “plan” “by which” God chose us.

You ask: “My inquiry is if factor F (unconditionality) can be understood other than apophatically?” Sure. For ‘unconditionality’ is not ‘unconditionality’ überhaupt. The Canons of Dort don’t suggest this, the Westminster Confession doesn’t either. It is trivial to find something election is conditioned on: for example, God’s decree, detailed plan, purpose, will. Each of these may be expanded to include complex reasons as constituting them. Sans any of these, there would be no decree, plan, or purpose. We may not know the reasons, but that’s not apophaticism.

Sure other aspects of choice could be understood. My inquiry is if factor F (unconditionality) can be understood other than apophatically?

God be with you,
Dan

I guess I think it’s just false that, necessarily or even as a matter of fact, our choice to X is grounded in X if it’s not an arbitrary choice. I think there are just too many counterexamples. I may choose to help someone study, and the choice is not grounded in the person or the desire to help them study, but in the fact that this would please their sister, whom I’d like to take to prom. Or, I may may choose X by mistake, thinking it was Y—it doesn’t seem right to me to say that my choice was grounded in X, even though I did choose X. Examples like this are multiply, so I think it is false that either: necessarily, our choosing X is grounded in X (when it’s not arbitrary), or: our choosing X is always in fact grounded in X (when it’s not arbitrary).

On God’s choice: To say there is some sense in which God’s choice is like ours does not license the move that because it is unlike ours regarding feature F, therefore it’s not like ours at all. Perhaps if F were essential or necessary to any choice whatever, it would license that move, but I’ve seen no reason to suspect that’s the case with the examples you’ve offered. One reason why is because I think the claim you’ve made is false.

On God’s choice being different; it has to be like or unlike some aspect of our choices, or we could have no knowledge of it at all.

God be with you,
Dan

Do you mean to say,necessarily our choices are arbitrary or grounded in the thing we choose, to get the position that God’s choice can’t be like ours. Or did you just mean God’s choices would not in fact be like ours, though they could be? I don’t know how one could show either. It seems possible that humans sometimes make a choice that is not arbitrary but the reason for the choice is not grounded in the object chosen. Here’s an example: I choose to do A for S, but my reason for doing A for S is not grounded in S but in S*. Or I choose to go running, but that choice is not grounded in running but in a higher-order choice or desire to be healthy. But that aside, I don’t think God’s ‘choosing’ is very much like ours. I often (discursively) reason through options, mull things over, etc. Or take Robert Kane’s definition: Robert Kane: “A choice . . . resolves uncertainty and indecision in the mind about what to do.” I’m not sure that’s true of God.

God be with you,
Dan

I think what I said is consistent with what you have said. Nevertheless, I took myself to simply affirm what the Westminster Confession (3.5) says about unconditional election, and the Confession is relevant for deciphering Reformed orthodoxy. But perhaps you took my inclusion of ‘necessitate’ to be too strong. That’s fine, you can remove that and replace it with “the reason can’t be grounded in the creature.” But from these affirmations you can’t conclude that there is no relevant reason God has for his choice in electing one individual over another, i.e., that his choice was arbitrary. In any case, the main and most relevant denials are the denials that God’s choice is grounded in the foreseen faith or good works of the creature, and those are the standard denials seen in Reformed systematics. This is the main focus, especially when we consider it in contrast to the Arminian claim that God’s choice to elect one over another is, at least partly, grounded in the (foreseen) faith of the first one (which I’m not assuming here to be a ‘good work’).

Many reformed commentators seem to go father than you on explaining unconditional election and say there was nothing outside of God that was the reason for why He elected who He did.

God be with you,
Dan