Jesus My Wisdom said:
Calvinists say their doctrine is not fatalism which is by definition the philosophical doctrine that:
all events are predetermined in advance to happen and human beings cannot therefore change their destinies
even though they themselves believe that :
all events are predetermined in advance to happen and human beings cannot therefore change their destinies.
This is also indicated in Chapter III of the Westminster Confession, "God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass."
Your problem is not with Calvinism, but God. The Westminster Confession is what the bible teaches. Man is a creature trapped in time, moving forward in time with only minimal knowledge of the future, which he must deduce from the present. God suffers from no such limitation. A friend of mine put it this way:
God, being perfectly Omniscient and Omnipotent, in considering all of the possible worlds He could create, and knowing in exacting detail the actions of each and every inhabitant of those worlds should He create any one of them, chose to create this world, and in so doing, predestined by its very creation, every event and action in this world, simply by the creation of it. It took no extra decree or thought on His part to predestine any part of it, because it was known in exacting detail in the Mind of God before He even said the words, "Let there be Light".
The events, actions, and even the people who have existed, do exist, or will exist, were all known by God, and their actions, thoughts, and decisions were known by Him before He created anything. He chose this world as the best of all possible worlds, as He said at the beginning, that it was good, and if God days something is good, it is good indeed.
Now along come the semi-pelagians and Arminians, who claim that man messed up God's Plan, and He's been in "damage-control" ever since, and that's why He had to send His Son, Jesus, to die for the whole world's sins and get everything back on track, which He must depend on the free will choices of men to do. Jesus, according to them, died specifically for every man, woman, and child, and all they have to do is decide of their own free will to come to Him. They are saddened by the fact that not all do so, and they don't seem to see any problem with God's Will not being always accomplished, even though they will affirm that it's God's will to save every man, and that is what he purposed to do, but man doesn't always choose to do God's Will. What they fail to see is that the logical end of their doctrine is that the Atonement was, in part, a failure on Christ's part, because it didn't accomplish all it was meant and purposed to do, in direct contravention of scripture, which says:
(Isa 55:11) So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper [in the thing] whereto I sent it.
If it's God's will that ALL men be saved, but obviously not all men are saved, then God's Will is not being accomplished. But this passage of scripture says otherwise. Therefore, a problem arises. Since God's will is basic, and He says the word that goes forth from His mouth shall accomplish that which he pleases, then God cannot be the one failing, so it must be something else. Men fail God every day, and men have a Righteous Judgment awaiting them for those failures (called sin). If God chooses to save SOME men, because it pleases Him, Then God's Will is being accomplished 100% of the time, for both the saved and unsaved. For the saved because He chose them, and for the unsaved, not because He didn't choose them, but because His Will is also a part of His Justice and Judgment, and the unchosen are rightly judged for their sin, that Judgment also being God's Will. Hence, God's will is always accomplished.
Given the choice between a God Who is in absolute and minute control, or a frustrated God in damage control mode because of man's failure to avoid sin, I'll take the God who is in absilute control every time.
Fatalism? Nope! An assurance that all is as God Wills, and nothing can happen to me that God has not ordained, nor can I fall from His Hand if I am one of His. Fatalism is distasteful to those who think that they can run their lives better than (or at least as well as) God, and only need his "help" every once in a while.
