Temporary Special Call

Federal Vision advocates claim that the benefits of the covenant belong to the covenant people. Whether some of those in the covenant will apostatize or not, God still promises to bless them while they are in the covenant. Some have distinguished between these two groups as “Decretally Elect” and “Covenantally Elect.” Calvin expresses the same idea–using different categories, but maintaining the same idea– in the following paragraph:

Calvin’s Institutes (3.24.8): “there is a universal call, by which God, through the external preaching of the word, invites all men alike, even those for whom he designs the call to be a savor of death, and the ground of severer condemnation.  Besides this there is a special call which, for the most part, God bestows on believers only, when by the internal illumination of the Spirit he causes the word preached to take deep root in their hearts.  Sometimes, however, he communicates it [i.e., the special call] also to those whom he enlightens only for a time, and whom afterwards, in just punishment for their ingratitude, he abandons and smites with greater blindness.”

{Thanks to Peter Leithart for the quote}