I understand your sentiment.
Hell is a serious problem: it is eternal and permanent...Instead of denying determinism, which is logical, I am beginning to question the nature of Hell itself.
Good point. Please be open-minded to annihilationism, for example. Hell is unlikely to be an infinitely long sentence for a finite crime.
You describe the horrors of double-predestination:
For God to predetermine our eternal destiny, even though we are responsible for it, presents Him as an arbitrarily partial Creator. I say arbitrarily, because, those whom He elects had nothing in themselves that influenced their calling. Why He decided to choose Sam instead Tim has nothing to do with Sam or Tim, but still, that choice will have profound and eternal consequences for the both of them. If Tim was destined from eternity, in God's love, to eternal life, then Sam was destined from eternity, in God's wrath, to eternal damnation, for no actual reason in themselves. This is very partial, but arbitrary on a human level of understanding. If we use Paul's logic in Romans 9:22-23, then God has the right to create a majority of people for no other purpose but to show how much He loved His chosen few. The reprobate, in this case, who will consist of 99% of humanity, have no other ultimate meaning but to show that they weren't eternally loved by their Creator, and that they were only meant serve those whom God wanted to shower His covenant love on. So, from my perspective, this presents God in a very impersonal light toward His own fallen creatures who were victims of the fall. Yes, people commit sin, which has serious consequences, but at the same time, because they are serious, the fact that people are born sinners and cannot free themselves without God's effectual grace working in them makes any rational person cringe at the thought of it. Again, people are born to be condemned if that is the case. If you think about it long enough, it appears to be a horrifying reality, and to make matters worse, we aren't suppose to question God why (Romans 9:20), because God is above us.
Since Arminians tend to resist full monergism/election, their solution seems inadequate to me. On the other hand they are correct that Paul believed anyone can be saved (1 Corinthians 9:19-23). Let's go back to Adam and resolve this properly. True justice allows me to suffer consequences for Adam's sins only if I myself am Adam - or at least a tiny piece of his physical soul. Back then we functioned as one dense physical mind named Adam even though you and I don't remember it, we don't remember freely choosing to consume the forbidden fruit. Millard J. Erickson has rightly stated, "We were all [physically] present in Adam, and all sinned in his act" (Millard J. Erickson,
Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2001, reprint), p. 654).
Romans 9:22: "What if God, although choosing to show his
wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his
wrath—prepared for destruction?"
God cannot feel wrath/anger at the innocent! Nor at deterministic puppets! The point of that passage is that God has every right to elect whomsoever He wills because we
lost our rights when we sinned in Adam. You'll reply that Jacob and Esau were elected before they did anything bad of good. Not true. Admittedly as Jacob and Esau - in that prenatal state - they had as yet done nothing wrong. But Romans 1 thru 8 came first. According to those earlier chapters, all sinned, at least in Adam.
Can anyone be saved? In my view, God preelected sections/pieces of Adam's physical soul unto salvation before the foundation of the world, in case he should fall. My theory is that every human being's soul consists of at least one elect piece. That means anyone can be saved. If a person dies unsaved, his soul goes to hell, but God extracts his elect piece, moving it on to another generation. Eventually all the elect pieces will be saved by divine monergism.
To summarize: all people are the elect, and as such, anyone
MIGHT be saved.
"Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may [
MIGHT] obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory." (2 Tim 2:10).
Intercession should be made for everyone because prayer can move God to monergistically save anyone.
