You asked for it, but this is going to be a
long one, so I hope you don't mind reading to get the answer you sought for. I've studied and written on this particular subject for years, so I hope my answer is satisfactory in relinquishing the confusion surrounding the ostensibly contrasting Scriptures that are conducive to this debate.
I agree. God's capacity to fairly and mercifully judge all through Christ, combined with His desire to see all men come to the knowledge of Christ gives us a profound and awesome mystery to think upon. Many, many Scripture passages present us with the fact of God's will, desire, and longing to see all men repent and come to Him through Christ.
That He would not in His mercy at least grant all souls an opportunity at some point to see and comprehend and accept or refuse the One God who is Triune is something that somehow does not synch up with Scripture for me.
Apart from Calvinism or Arminianism, there surely is a separate option.
There is a separate, better and sound option that reconciles the Scriptures that provide the constitution for both sides of the debate. If you want a title for it, call it Molinism (after Luis de Molina). But most importantly, call it Scriptural, which I will demonstrate using the Scriptures pervasively without causing them to appear as though they oppose each other (which this kind of debate mistakenly conveys without a reconciling understanding of the knowledge of God, as conveyed in the Scriptures, in conjunction with our free will, as conveyed in the Scriptures).
Some accuse God of being, "unfair" in His election of some, but not all, people; however, they don't seem to understand that the alternative view in which God simply provides a way for men to be saved, but leaves them to their own devices, i.e., "free will", makes God out to be truly unjust because not all people have had equal opportunity in which to make their "choice".
The Biblical doctrine of election teaches that God gives mercy on some, and justice to the rest. He would be completely just in condemning all mankind, would He not?
The alternate, and errant, view is that God gives everyone a choice, assuming that every person who has every lived has had access to good preachers, godly teachers, Bibles in their language, Christlike neighbors. . . The reality is that many many millions have lived and died without ever hearing the gospel. How "fair" is that?
Do you hold to a view of salvation which makes God out to be unjust? How do you defend your position?
The very reason we were put in our specific times and places in world history was to prepare all those who would receive the salvation that comes through Jesus Christ to do so:
"From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us (Acts 17:26-27)."
"...He has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself (Hebrews 9:26)."
And again: "...when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons (Galatians 4:4-5)."
That salvation is intended for all is also multiply attested: "For God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16, emphasis mine)." The Scripture continues:
"The death He died, He died to sin once
for all (Romans 6:10..." And He died for
all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again (2 Corinthians 5:15)." "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that
any should perish but that
all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9)." Jesus said: "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw
all people to myself (John 12:32)."
Proceeding from these Scriptures then, how can we reconcile this with the usage of language such as "election" and "predestination" concerning the Saints in the Scriptures? We reconcile it by demonstrating Scripturally, as well, what the knowledge of God comprises, and what the implications are in the world in which we find ourselves, and in the method God has chosen to distribute the Gospel. In creating a universe that would accommodate truly free moral agents, God would have a potentially infinite number of options available to Him with an equal amount of possible outcomes. From what we know about the nature of God, He would naturally choose to create the world which would produce the greatest possible outcome. What is the greatest possible outcome? There is none other than that world which provides the circumstances which leads the largest number of souls to freely accept the grace of God through the salvation provided in Jesus Christ. From what we know about God's nature, particularly that God is omni-benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent, this can be deductively inferred as follows:
1. Because God is omni-benevolent, He would be desire to create the world which would produce the greatest potential good
2. Because God is omniscient, He would know which world would produce the greatest potential good
3. Because God is omnipotent, He would be able to create the world which would produce the greatest potential good
Therefore the world in which we exist is that which would produce the great potential good. To repeat, this greatest good is the largest number of souls that would freely surrender themselves to God and receive His grace. It would follow that, in a world of free creatures, the world which produces the greatest potential good does not contain any gratuitous evil, but only whatever evil is necessarily
permitted in the course that results in the best possible outcome.
Again, God would have had a potentially infinite number of options present of worlds to create with an equal number of outcomes. By His perfect nature, however, God would not create a world at random in which His will to create concurrently free and absolutely loved creatures was not accomplished. So God would have to narrow His options to feasible worlds which accommodate creaturely freedom and yet lovingly provides the circumstances that permits each person who would freely choose God to do so. Knowing God, once He had narrowed the options to the assortment of great results, He would naturally choose the greatest of these possible outcomes. This is not to say God is predestining our decisions, but the creation of the world which would provide the social, environmental and personal circumstances that are necessary for each individual, in their own times and places as God foreknew, to interact with each other, their environment and God in a way that corresponds to their psychology/personality, ultimately and inevitably leading to the salvation of those who would freely respond affirmatively to God's grace in whatever circumstance they find themselves. In this sense, then, God can literally be said to have elected those who are saved, though their choices as well as those who reject God are entirely free.
As is stated in Acts 17, God placed us within our context because He knew that if given that context we would freely choose to accept Him by the testimony and in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit. It could then be rightly asked "
well then could God have not provided a precise set of circumstances that would be those which are necessary to win the soul of every person?", and the answer would be no. For some people, there is no such set of circumstances that would be sufficient for them to freely receive the salvation of Christ by the Holy Spirit's testimony. This is affirmed doubly in the Scriptures. First, in Daniel 12:10 concerning the course through to the end times Jesus says: "Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand." Again, concerning God's providence Paul says in 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?"
It may also seem confusing to think that God has among His human creation "objects of wrath" which He prepares for destruction, until you comprehend these points and Scriptures collectively. There are some souls which God would create that will freely reject Him under any and all circumstances, but are still necessary in the grand scheme of world history to play a role in drawing all those who will be freely saved into that salvation. God Himself illustrates this wonderfully in His statement to Pharaoh in Exodus 9:15-16: "For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."
See Acts 17:26-27, Genesis 50:20, Jeremiah 25:8-14 and Judges 14:4 for more Scriptural examples on the providence of God and how it works.
God is perfectly just and shows no partiality (Deuteronomy 10:7, 2 Chronicles 19:7). No person is favoured, whether man or woman, rich or poor, slave or free, great or small (Galatians 3:28). Thus we can be certain that if God selects the specific times and places of every individual for the explicit purpose of preparing them to receive the salvation that is in Christ, it follows that all who extend beyond the means of receiving that salvation on account of their place or time are not victims of misfortune, but are those whom God foreknew would freely reject that salvation. Their existence then serves to play a role, indiscernible to us, in world history in maximizing the number of souls who would freely come to Christ on account of the unfolding effects and ripples of their lives.
Finally, we could ask: "
Isn’t God showing partiality by creating a soul He foreknew would be condemned if they existed for the purpose of playing a role in leading another soul to salvation?"
There are two points to consider in answering this question:
1. To be partial is to show special favour towards someone or something. God is not being partial in the grace He extends towards any individual at any time in any place, but rather places us each in our contexts with the exclusive purpose of maximizing the number of souls that freely accept the salvation found through Christ alone (Acts 17:26-27). The circumstances vary because the individuals placed in them do, and thus their courses are plotted according to how they will affect other courses and respond to their own. That being said, those who accept salvation and those who reject it do so freely, and those who reject it would do so under any circumstances (Daniel 12:10, Revelations 9:20). Thus, God would be partial if He did not create the wicked who will be self-condemned rather than create them, as He would be favouring souls that would freely choose wickedness over souls that would freely choose righteousness, thereby precluding the one who would choose rightly from enjoying the eternal knowledge of God on account of a reprobate individual who would incessantly reject Him.
2. This question also neglects to consider that the inadvertent benefit of this self-condemned person’s life will likely extend beyond the salvation of one individual. The person who finds themselves lead to Christ by the direct or indirect causes of this person’s existence will, in many cases, have the broad opportunity to intentionally direct others to the salvation found in Him, resulting in potentially dozens, to hundreds, or even thousands more saved souls. To reemphasize the first point, partiality would be the cause for
not creating the self-condemned person at so large an expense, which would be true even if it were only for the one, which is unlikely.
In summation, God being unwilling to create the self-condemned to spare the freely saved would be like a man who refuses to spare the lives of his family in defending them from an armed attacker, who has had many warnings not to enter his house and threaten them, because He (God) does not want to choose between their lives and the assailant’s. The devil has come to steal, kill and destroy, but Christ has come to destroy the devil’s work (John 10:10, 1 John 3:8).