@RandalRauserCalvinists often respond to the question "If God could've elected all to salvation, why didn't he?" by replying, "Hey, he didn't need to save any!" But that's a problematic response for two reasons. First, on the Calvinist view, God is the primary cause of the Adamic fall in the first place.
That raises a philosophical conundrum. The Calvinist response is twofold:
i) The revelatory authority of Scripture is our point of departure. If that's what Scripture teaches, then that's what we'll defend, even if it generates intellectual challenges.
ii) There are philosophical conundra on both sides of the determinist/indeterminist, compatibilist/incompatibilist debate. There are sophisticated defenses of compatibilism/determinism. It's not like one side is transparently true while the other side is transparently false.
Second, if you have a vaccine that could protect 100 people from coronavirus and you only give it to 50, people can reasonably ask "Why not all 100?" And saying "Hey, I didn't need to give it to the 50 either!" isn't a satisfactory reply.
That's a classically ill-conceived analogy because it compares innocent victims with the wicked. But not everyone is entitled to equal treatment. Through misconduct, an individual can forfeit certain prima facie rights. We should treat like cases alike and unlike cases unalike.
//That's a classically ill-conceived analogy because it compares innocent victims with the wicked. But not everyone is entitled to equal treatment. Through misconduct, an individual can forfeit certain prima facie rights. We should treat like cases alike and unlike cases unalike. //
ReplyDeleteAnd their rejoinder to that legitimate response is to complain that God ordained that they be sinful, guilty and deserving of condemnation prior to their having committed any sins. And then they attack the Calvinist conception of God's goodness, wisdom and justice. Claiming the Calvinist God is shown to be agent irrational because allegedly His highest goal is to be glorified, yet He does the nearly diametrically opposite of what would have brought Him most glory. Which would have been the salvation of all. Instead, He saves a very few. Foreordaining the damnation of the non-elect, they say, results in God being unjust.
Regarding God's goodness, they claim a really good God would either save all if He had the power to do so, or if He doesn't have that power, to do His very best to save as many as possible [or at least the optimum amount, e.g. in Molinism]. Often they're willing to admit that God's power is either limited or self-limited on account of the necessity of libertarian free will in humans [for a number of philosophical reasons like human responsibility, genuine praise and blame, freeness of acceptance and rejection of the gospel etc.].
My quick responses to those charges would be:
1. Regarding the percentages of the saved and lost, there is no standard Calvinistic position. Calvinism is compatible with the majority being lost or the majority being saved. And there have been notable Calvinists on both sides. For example, Loraine Boettner and Charles Spurgeon, to name just two, both believed that when all is said and done, the majority of humanity will have been saved.
Regarding God's wisdom, we Calvinists argue (with the Apostle Paul, cf. Rom. 9) that God is also glorified in the damnation of sinners. Not just in the salvation of believers. So, it's in keeping with God's wisdom and goals to reprobate a part of humanity.
Regarding God's justice, Calvinists disagree on the order of God's logical decrees. Some believe the decree to reprobate occurs prior to the decree to create [supralapsarians], while others after the decree to create [infralapsarians]. Regardless of that logical order which is atemporal, temporally speaking, God's decree to both 1. allow humanity to sin and 2. reprobate a portion of humanity is logically prior to their actual temporal creation. In which case, they don't yet exist and therefore cannot be the subject of justice or injustice. Moreover, the lost are damned for the actual sins they commit voluntarily [even though they are admittedly previously decreed to be voluntary].
Regarding God's omnibenevolence, I would define it differently than the usual wayS non-Calvinists do. Rather than God being maximally good toward all creatures [which I suspect is logically impossible given any difference between any two or more creatures], I define God's omnibenevolence to refer to either 1. God being the source of all good things, and 2. that all of God's actions are infused with goodness such that any disparity in goodness is not on account of evil on God's part, but rather of His sovereign prerogative to limit or withhold some degree of goodness or "grace" in some instances when compared to other instances. God, by nature, must and can only do good, but there's nothing in God's nature that requires Him to bestow the same amount of goodness to all creatures. So, the non-elect are never treated by God with any evil, but only limited goodness and then afterwards just [and earned] wrath.
So, I think the theological concept of privatio boni, the absence of goodness, or at least its limitation, can also be appealed to [among other things] to help explain and vindicate the various [sometimes competing] Calvinistic conceptions of reprobation.
DeleteJesus is the one who searches hearts and minds.
ReplyDeleteI once gave a sermon on the Samaritan woman. An outcast from the village. Regarded as an immoral woman. He revealed himself as the Messiah to her, whereas he rejected the educated clergy of the day.
He gets the final say on who he wants to spend eternity with. Even if it doesn't make sense to us.