"How does God decide?"

Roger Olson
Your assertion does not answer the question. "According to his will" doesn't say HOW God chooses certain individuals. It leaves arbitrariness lingering over the doctrine of unconditional election. Try again. If God's selection of certain individuals is absolutely unconditional, as traditional Calvinism claims, then HOW does God decide "this one, not that one?" What criteria does he use? Once you say the selection is absolutely unconditional, that it has nothing to do with anything God "sees" in the individuals he selects, arbitrariness is already included in that assertion. There is no logical alternative. 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/07/arminianism-faq-1-everything-you-always-wanted-to-know/#comment-1487985588

In this post I'm going to expand on something I said in my previous post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2014/07/despicable-calvinists.html

i) It isn't clear how Olson arrives at his definition. He seems to begin with the adjective ("unconditional"), then based on a dictionary definition of the adjective, concludes that "unconditional election" is synonymous with arbitrary election. 

If so, that's an inept way to define theological terms. The meaning of unconditional election is derived, in no small part, from what it stands in contrast to. In terms of historical theology, it stands in contrast to Arminianism, Molinism, and Roman Catholicism. Let's take a few brief definitions:

Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions (WCF 3:2). 

Election does not in any way depend on the foreseen faith or good works of man, as the Arminians teach, but exclusively on the sovereign good pleasure of God, who is also the originator of faith and good works (Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 115). 

There is no previously merit or condition in the creature, either present or foreseen, which determines the divine choice (Roger Nicole, Standing Forth, 430). 

So election to salvation is not based on anything we do. It is entirely gracious (John Frame, The Doctrine of God, 328).

So unconditional election is meant to exclude certain considerations, like merit (Roman Catholicism), foreseen faith (classical Arminianism), or the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom (Molinism) as the basis of election. "Unconditional election" is "unconditional" in reference to specific positions to the contrary. 

This doesn't mean election is unconditional in the sense of being random, haphazard, or fortuitous. God can have a reason for why some individuals are elect and others reprobate. 

ii) Another problem is the misleading way Olson frames the issue. There's the specter of preexistence, as if these people came on the scene, and God must decide, after the fact, what to do with them. As if God is confronted with a bunch of people, to whom he subsequently assigns a destiny, for good or ill. 

But, of course, that's not a Calvinistic way of framing the issue. That seems to reflect Olson's subconsciously Arminian framework, where there are foreseen persons. Persons whose foreseeable existence is independent of God. 

From a Calvinist standpoint, Olson's question is like asking a novelist if he chose a character based on what he saw in the character. But that's backwards. For the character is the product of his own imagination. What he saw in the character is what he saw in his own imagination. The character has no individuality apart from the conception of the novelist. 

We're talking about God's idea of individuals. God's prior concept is the source of the individual. The individual has whatever personality, or life-experience that God mentally supplies for him. 

Election isn't contingent on what the individual is like, for what he's like is contingent on God's defining idea of what's he's like. The Reformed position is more radical than Olson appreciates. A creaturely mode of existence is entirely derivative. God "sees" in us what he puts in us–like a painter sees in a painting what he sees in his own mind and transfers to the canvass. 

Although election isn't conditioned on what God sees or foresees in the individual, that doesn't mean God has no reason for electing some and reprobating others–just as a novelist has a reason for making some characters heroes or heroines while making other characters villains. 

History is like a story in time and space. A concrete narrative. It's populated by individuals whose actions advance the plot. God's "criterion" for who's elect and reprobate is their contribution to the story. Human agents figure in historical causation. If God made Abraham reprobate rather than elect, that would change the course of world events. If Pilate was elect rather than reprobate, that would change the course of world events. God has a preferred timeline. What happens is based in part on what people are like, what they do, and that's based on the kinds of people God chooses to populate history. 

How does a novelist decide what characters to put in his story? That depends on the story he wants to tell. Plot and characters fit together. Change a character and you change the plot. You have a different outcome. By the same token, that's why God elects one individual but reprobates another.