A few things. I've conversed with staunch Calvinists before and realized the futility in trying to get them to re-think their position, so I'm under no delusion that I'll convince you of anything. I'm only responding because there may be people reading this who aren't beyond help.
Likewise, I am not trying to get you to rethink your position. In fact, I don't think debate on forums is the best way to get someone to change their views. I would recommend study of scholarly materials, sermons, articles, and Bible exegesis. So the reason I am responding and participating is not to change your mind, but for the benefit of other readers who are seeking. And also, to correct any misconceptions I think I see. And I do think I see some. I think you may have some skewed understandings of the assertions Calvinism makes.
But first, an argument's validity isn't voided simply because it can be applied somewhere else.
I was not saying what I said to deflect anything away from Calvinism, but to simply point out that everyone who believes God is omniscient must conclude that God created people
specifically to go to hell. It sounds bad on paper, yes. All kinds of emotions start bubbling up inside of us. But at the end of the day we have to remember the Bible's clear teaching that "The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble" (Prov 16:4). It's not an accident that there are wicked people. And the Bible doesn't say that God is doing the best he can with the fact that there just so happens to be wicked people on the planet. In outright says that the Lord
made them for that purpose. Sin has a place in God's grand design. Sin is not an accident. Sin is not holding God by the horns and having reign over His universe. God remains sovereign over sin,
and sinful creatures. He has made them for their purpose. In God's infinite wisdom he has determined that sin exist in the universe and that Christ be glorified in the saving of sinners. In order to save sinners, there has to be sinners. It's not an accident. So rather than arguing against any particular soteriology, you are arguing against the very sovereignty of God and his grand purpose for the universe at large, which includes sin and evil, per his own design.
But I disagree with the core of your argument as well. I understand the point you're making, in that God still knew Bob's fate because of His omniscience, and by creating him anyway, in some way, he “determined his future”. But there's a monumental difference in God creating Bob and him actually having the opportunity to accept God's grace and choosing to reject it, or in Bob being able to hear the gospel, but being unable to comprehend it or respond to it because God never enabled him to do so, and unless I've misunderstood something somewhere, the latter is what some of the most outspoken and public of today's Calvinist are teaching. And I think it's a complete distortion of the nature and character of God, and I'll continue to write against it unless the Holy Spirit shows me differently. Admittedly, it's a fine line between God knowing and God determining, but I'll always believe the line is there, and that it's meaningful.
There is where I think you may misunderstand Calvinism. Calvinism doesn't say that God is preventing people from believing the gospel. It says that because of Adam's fall, and because of Christ's own admission in John 6:65,
man has no innate ability to believe the gospel. You can easily derive this truth from other verses as well such as Romans 8:8 which says that nobody can do anything pleasing to God without the Spirit. And again "No man can say Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit". (1 Cor 12:3)
Since man by fallen default nature has no ability to do any spiritual good, anything pleasing to God, and no ability to come to Christ of his own strength/power/ability, for God to enable anyone to do so is a function of 100% pure, undeserved grace.
What Calvinism says is that God pursues billions and billions of people, and grants them this ability, out of nothing but covenental love and mercy, saving billions of people whom would have perished into hell otherwise for their sins.
In doing so, God guarantees and secures, infallibly, that there will be billions of saints in heaven praising God for his grace. God should have let them go to hell (it would have been just to do so) but he instead chose to save them, out of grace.
You seem to cry injustice at this, saying "Well why didn't God do this for everybody?". But what you fail to see is that your objection is an argument against your own position, because in your position, too, God did not do this for everyone. In fact, in your position, God did a whole lot less than guaranteeing that billions of people would be infallibly changed and saved by grace. In your view, God merely made it a potentiality, but not a guarantee. Heck, the entire human race might have ended up in hell if nobody had cooperated with God's plan. Heck, Christ might have zero people in heaven praising him and glorying him as the Savior in your view, had events played out differently.
In my view, God
guaranteed that multitudes, too many to number, would be saved. In your view, God didn't guarantee that even a single person would be saved. He simply made it a possibility for fallen, rebellious sinners to suddenly decide to come to Christ (whom by nature, they hate, by the way). If we take seriously the Bible's teaching on fallen man's attitude towards God and the gospel, we rightly conclude that had God simply merely made it possible for people to be saved, nobody at all would be saved and heaven would be empty. Therefore, your view gives man too much credit and doesn't take seriously the spiritual inabilities that fallen man has, and doesn't take seriously his hostile attitude towards the Thrice Holy God, whom is His enemy.
Therefore, it boggles the mind how you can think your view is better than my view. In my view, God guarantees that billions of people will be saved. In your view, he doesn't guarantee that even a single person is saved. Effectually, God is gambling with the human race. He is hoping to get lucky that someone at least will cooperate with His plan.
You might say "He's not trying to get lucky, because He knows that there will be people who get saved", but you still haven't deflected the dilemma away from your view, because I could turn around and ask "Why didn't God create only those people He knew would willingly believe of their own free will? That way, Nobody would be in hell and God would have an entire race of willing believers". You never really escape the dilemma that God created people knowing they will go to hell. You pretend this is some exclusive argument against Calvinism, when it isn't. All the while the giant elephant in the room is that in Calvinism, God is exalted as the Sovereign who "made everything for its purpose, even the wicked", and the fact that God guarantees that billions of people will be saved, when he did no such thing in your view, only made it "possible" for people to be saved.
To me,
your view is a complete distortion of the character of God.
Concerning Grace, I don't think anything I wrote implied that it's not a gift freely given. I just believe it's given to all mankind.
But you see, in faulting Calvinism for asserting that enabling grace is not given to everyone, you are
necessarily saying that grace is
owed to everyone. How else could you find fault if you didn't think that people aren't getting what they are owed? It's hardly a fault to say that God didn't give something he isn't obligated to give.
Here's the reality:
Some people get grace
The rest get justice
In not giving enabling grace to men, God is simply giving them the justice they are owed. For their sins, they deserve hell, and have earned hell, and are going to hell. This is God's justice. Some men get mercy, some men get justice. Nobody receives injustice. Those who go to hell get justice. Those who go to heaven get mercy and grace. Neither is bad. Neither is wrong. Both are good things. When is justice wrong to give? When is mercy wrong to give?
In your objection that God didn't give enabling grace to everyone, you are basically saying "It's wrong of God to give justice to those people!" Since when was justice the wrong thing, Scott? Or worse, you are saying "It's wrong of God to give mercy to those other people!" Since when is mercy wrong, Scott?
The bottom line is, your argument is "God
should have given mercy to more than He did", but you see, in saying "should", you are making mercy obligatory, thus destroying the meaning of mercy.
But why do Calvinists consider non-Calvinists unreasonable when we make the point that, by the same token, just as we were nothing before we were conceived and didn't deserve life, that a person who God chooses to bring into being (but doesn't “choose”
neither deserves an eternal conscious punishment. Punishment can only be justly given if someone is in violation of something in a scenario where there was an option to never violate, or to stop violating it once made aware they're
in violation.
here it sounds like you are denying that the fall happened. When Adam sinned, it affected you, Adam. It forced you to be born as a sinner, inclined towards sin, and headed to hell by default. Because of Adam's sin, all men are born into this world headed to hell. That is the default destination. Physical birth always results in hell, and the new birth (being born again, the spiritual birth) always results in heaven. I don't see you complaining about this. Why? Your argument works against the doctrine of the fall. Nobody asked your permission to be born as a fallen human, headed to hell by default. You object that a man shouldn't go to hell if he had no choice, but this argument works against, and denies, the very doctrine of the fall. It also denies the fact that a new birth is mandatory to change your destination from hell to heaven. Why the inconsistency, Scott? Why do you not abhor the idea that the default destination for humans, without asking their permission first, is hell? it seems like if you are going to take such a strong stance of men having a say in their destiny, we should rip out all of the parts of the Bible that teach these things, such as Romans 5 and John 3. Romans 5 teaches that I'm a sinner because of Adam. John 3 teaches that my first birth isn't good enough for heaven. It's my second birth that is mandatory. Nobody asked my permission that I must abide by these rules. Should I abandon those doctrines, then?
A free will Bob who is able to believe, yet continuing in unbelief in the face of God's attempts to show Himself through creation itself and through the gospel is a violation that deserves punishment. A Bob who has no control over what he ultimately believes about God, but who God chose to bring into conscious existence anyway would obviously have a strong argument against the validity of his punishment (if he could think for himself). But Scripture maintains that all of us are without excuse. I couldn't imagine any better excuse than “You gave me a rule, and made me in such a way that I was unable to obey it. And now you're going to punish me for what I couldn't control?”. Nobody is going to be able to stand before God and say anything like that, but when you break it all down, that's the core message behind today's Calvinism, at least what I hear often from Christian FM radio (which I continue to listen to for the life-giving messages that are sprinkled in between the junk).
Here's where I think you misunderstand the issues. Nobody is saying that Bob might really want to believe, but just can't because he wasn't graciously enabled, and therefore is going to stand before God and say "God, I really wanted to believe, but you forgot to enable me to do so!" And on the flip side of the coin, nobody is saying that some people just don't want to believe the gospel or trust in Jesus, but God forces them to anyways and says "You were chosen, you must do this against your will!" and thus are dragged kicking and screaming into salvation.
The thing is, Bob doesn't
want to believe. He hates the gospel. He thinks its stupid. It's not that he wants to, but has no ability to. But rather,
he doesn't want to in the first place. It's called being enslaved to sin. It's called being spiritually dead.
If I could have a 5 minute conversation with any anti-Calvinist, I would make sure they understand this important distinction:
When Calvinists speak of "inability" or "are not able", they aren't saying that "Bob" doesn't have the faculties to believe the gospel. What we are saying is
he has no willingness to believe the gospel, because of sin. The reason we speak in terms of "ability" is because we believe that a person can only do what they are first willing to do. Since Bob isn't willing to come to Christ, he is not able to come to Christ. He must first have the willingness in order to do so.
So as I said, it's not as if Bob is walking around, willing to come to Christ, but God refuses to enable him to do so. But rather, because of Bob's enslavement to sin, he isn't willing to do so. He is a rebel. In fact, he likes it that way. He wants to rebel and continue in his sins and lusts. The last thing on earth he wants to do is give up the sins he loves and submit tot he God he hates. He doesn't want a god. He is his own god at this moment, and loving it.
You may ask, "how then does anyone become saved? If what you are saying is true about Bob (who is a picture of all of us), it would take a miracle for Bob to be saved!" The Calvinist answer is "Yes, it will." That's why it's called amazing grace.
