There are two fundamental features of life that Christians are to seek to obtain. These two characteristics that Jesus placed such a high value on for the christian are love for God with all one's being and love for the neighbor that is of the degree that it is equivalent of the love one has for one's self.
I would suggest that it is impossible for a Christian to do more than 2 of the three actions: Loving God with all one's being, loving the neighbor as one's self, and believing that God reprobates.
Here's why:
Of all the things that self love entails, it necessarily entails that one desires to live, to be happy, and to do so as abundantly possible. It entails the desire to live forever.
To love the neighbor as yourself entails that you would identify his most important needs as your own. So his need is to live forever, to be saved, and if eternal torment is a possibility, one certainly needs to avoid it. So if you love your neighbor as yourself, then you should desire that those needs of his be satisfied as strongly as if they were still needs of your own.
In order for that need to be met, God must love them, and this must be a love that either gaurantees salvation or makes it possible. Thus we need for God to love our neighbor.
And of course, our neighbor has a need to love God himself, but that can only happen if God first loves him.
Now if we hold to predestination, the sort that says God passed over and refused to grant the salvation of persons that he could have saved, a conflict arises.
If we are identifying our neighbor's need for God to love him as our own as intensly as if that need were our own, then we are not capable of loving God as we are identifying a need for God's love in order for love to be returned as our own.
less strongly, but still to the point, if God does not love our neighbor and we identify that need as our own, then if we can love God at all, we cannot love him with all our being because God is thwarting a desire that is central to our being, the desire for salvation, and though it isn't our personal salvation, It is still a desire for salvation that God has implicitely commanded us to have on the same level as our desire for our own salvation.
Now here are some calvinistic responses that do not work.
One is that God loves peoples in different ways. This does not matter because it is only a salvific love that counts for this problem.
Second, we don't know who God loves. This is not a fitting solution because we need assurance of God's salvific love for our own salvation in order to fully love God. Also, Our basis for love is not ignorance.
Thirdly, someone expressed to me that sometimes, so confident was he in God's goodness in soverignty, that he could be content that it would be for the best even if he himself was ******. This clearly doesn't come from an understanding of damnation as I understand it, which is to be given over to isolation, despair, and the hatred of God. If you love God with all your being, you could never affirm it as good that you should be given over to the hatred of God.
I would suggest that it is impossible for a Christian to do more than 2 of the three actions: Loving God with all one's being, loving the neighbor as one's self, and believing that God reprobates.
Here's why:
Of all the things that self love entails, it necessarily entails that one desires to live, to be happy, and to do so as abundantly possible. It entails the desire to live forever.
To love the neighbor as yourself entails that you would identify his most important needs as your own. So his need is to live forever, to be saved, and if eternal torment is a possibility, one certainly needs to avoid it. So if you love your neighbor as yourself, then you should desire that those needs of his be satisfied as strongly as if they were still needs of your own.
In order for that need to be met, God must love them, and this must be a love that either gaurantees salvation or makes it possible. Thus we need for God to love our neighbor.
And of course, our neighbor has a need to love God himself, but that can only happen if God first loves him.
Now if we hold to predestination, the sort that says God passed over and refused to grant the salvation of persons that he could have saved, a conflict arises.
If we are identifying our neighbor's need for God to love him as our own as intensly as if that need were our own, then we are not capable of loving God as we are identifying a need for God's love in order for love to be returned as our own.
less strongly, but still to the point, if God does not love our neighbor and we identify that need as our own, then if we can love God at all, we cannot love him with all our being because God is thwarting a desire that is central to our being, the desire for salvation, and though it isn't our personal salvation, It is still a desire for salvation that God has implicitely commanded us to have on the same level as our desire for our own salvation.
Now here are some calvinistic responses that do not work.
One is that God loves peoples in different ways. This does not matter because it is only a salvific love that counts for this problem.
Second, we don't know who God loves. This is not a fitting solution because we need assurance of God's salvific love for our own salvation in order to fully love God. Also, Our basis for love is not ignorance.
Thirdly, someone expressed to me that sometimes, so confident was he in God's goodness in soverignty, that he could be content that it would be for the best even if he himself was ******. This clearly doesn't come from an understanding of damnation as I understand it, which is to be given over to isolation, despair, and the hatred of God. If you love God with all your being, you could never affirm it as good that you should be given over to the hatred of God.
