Survivors

Richard Thompson:

           

Okay, consider these axioms: 1. God can do ANYTHING, except sin.

That’s overstated. Sophisticated definitions are divine omnipotence are more nuanced:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/omnipote/

 2. According to Calvinism, God chooses who will be saved or damned entirely according to His own plan, with human choice not figuring into the issue.

Agreed.

 3. Not everybody is going to Heaven. If I got any of those three axioms wrong, then please correct me. However, if they are all right, then God does NOT love everybody. Because a God who saved people regardless of their choices would save everyone He could, or everyone He loved, whichever is greater. And a God who can do ANYTHING would be able to save everyone He loved.

That’s simplistic. God can do anything consistent with his objectives. If his objective is to save everyone, then God can (and will) save everyone.

If, on the other hand, God’s objective is to demonstrate that sinners are hell-deserving by consigning some sinners to hell, then God can’t save everyone consistent with that objective.

Likewise, if God’s objective is to demonstrate the gratuity of grace by reprobating some sinners, then God can’t save everyone consistent with that objective. God could have different objectives, but given his objectives, universal salvation won’t be consistent with his objectives.

 But axiom #3--supported by John's Revelation--means that God isn't saving everybody. Which means that, according to Calvinism, there are people God doesn't love.

Agreed.

 So why SHOULDN'T you look down on people God doesn't love?

How does that conclusion follow from the preceding “axioms”?

i) For one thing, I’m not God. I’m a creature. As a creature, I have desires appropriate to my creatureliness. I may find some thing desirable that God does not, or vice versa.

Maybe I like the sensation of walking on a warm sandy beach barefoot, with the sun on my back and the breeze in my face. God doesn’t share my physical pleasure. So what?

ii) Assuming I’m elect, God doesn’t love me because I’m more lovable than the reprobate. God didn’t choose me because I’m better than the reprobate.

I don’t know who the reprobate are, but even if I did, when I saw a hellbound sinner, I’d logically say to myself, “That could just as well be me. I deserve the same fate!”

In WWI, C. S. Lewis had a buddy in the trenches: Paddy Moore. Paddy was killed, Lewis survived. Could just as well have been the other way around. Did Lewis look down on Paddy because he survived while his friend died?

Take Os Guinness. His parents were medical missionaries in China. His two brothers died in the Henan famine of 1943. Does he look down on his brothers because he made it and they didn’t?

What is it about the twisted logic of Arminians that they draw such perverse conclusions from the gratuity of grace?