Is it fair to be born lost?

1. In Christian theology, there's a sense in which human beings are born lost. By that I mean, absent God's gracious intervention, we're already lost the moment we step into existence. 

Now God can intervene at any stage in our existence, so God can intervene between conception and birth. When I say born lost I don't mean that maybe we lost our way at some point during gestation. I don't mean we became lost in the womb. It's just concrete way of expressing the fact that we don't have to do anything to be in a lost condition. We don't become lost. Rather, we find ourselves in that condition. 

2. This is a doctrine that Christians accept on authority. One question is whether it's something we can explain, defend, or understand by reason. 

Intuition is paradoxical in the sense that on the one hand we depend on intuition for many things, but on the other hand, intuition isn't consistently reliable. It can lead us astray. Sometimes the problem is due to overgeneralizing from certain examples or illustrations. Or sometimes what we call intuition is just our social conditioning, and what's intuitive or counterintuitive is culturally variable. 

We need to make allowance of the live possibility that there are things we're just not smart enough to figure out, like the necessary conditions for moral responsibility or blame. 

3. Wesleyan Aminianism tries to relieve the tension by positing universal sufficient/prevenient grace. Sounds nice, but is it true? Or is it just an ad hoc solution to wish it away? Universalism is another way to evade the issue. 

4. In theory there are three different ways we might view the human condition:

i) We find ourselves born on a road. The road isn't going in the right direction or the wrong direction. But there's a fork in the road up ahead. That's the point at which we can lose our way, by taking the wrong turn. 

ii) We are born beyond the fork in the road. We are going in the right direction. But the road splits up further down the line. Depending one which turn we take at the second fork in the road, we will continue going in the right direction or else we will become lost. 

iii) We are born beyond the fork in the road. We are going in the wrong direction. But the road splits up further down the line. Depending one which turn we take at the second fork in the road, we will continue going in the wrong direction or else we will escape and finally get on the right path. 

(iii) represents the biblical view of the human plight. 

5. However, that raises the question of whether it's fair to be born lost. Let's consider another illustration. Suppose a rich man squanders his fortune in gambling debts. When he was rich he had a very luxurious lifestyle. But his children were born after he lost his fortune.

Although they suffer the consequences of their father's compulsive gambling, it's not unfair that they weren't born rich. It wasn't their money to begin with. They didn't make a fortune, then lose it. It was never theirs to lose. They weren't entitled to be born rich. 

6. An objection or limitation to that comparison is that the situation of his kids isn't punitive. Not to be born rich isn't punishment for their dad's gambling debts. But damnation is punitive. 

Here I'd introduce another consideration. The metaphor of lostness is, in itself, morally neutral. Indeed, we're apt to think of it as a kind of innocent, hapless misfortune. Mind you, it's possible to lose your way through reckless disregard of warning signs. 

But there's a glaring sense in which the lost condition of humanity isn't innocuous. Take the capacity for wanton human cruelty. And this manifests itself at a very early age. It's startling to see how cruel kids can be to each other. So something already went wrong. And not just because some kids are neglected or emotionally abused. Kids with loving parents can be gratuitously cruel to each other. 

7. In addition, while this is a doctrine which Christians accept on authority, it's also the case that human beings really do act like they're in a lost condition. We see that all the time. So it's not something we just take on faith, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. 

8. There's also the nature of salvation and damnation. What are human beings entitled to? How much good are they entitled to? How much deprivation do they have a right to be spared? The children of the man who lost is fortune don't deserved to be tortured for his behavior. But they don't deserve to be rewarded, either.

Do human beings deserve not to be lost? What does it mean to be lost forever? Does it mean to miss out on certain opportunities and certain goods? If so, is that unfair? Is that wrong? 

There's something tragic about that, but an element of tragedy makes life weightier. We don't take the good for granted. 

Of course, we're used to thinking of hell in much worse terms, but that's in large part because the wicked behave in much worse terms. 

9. A very popular storyline is a story about how somebody or some group got rescued. One variation is rescuing somebody who is lost. A lost child. A lost hiker. A lost sailor. Or a castaway who's stranded and forgotten on a desert island. But in stories like that, you must be lost before you can be rescued. 

Much of the appeal of the Gospel lies in the two-sided character of salvation. Salvation is only meaningful and thrilling because sinners are lost apart from salvation. That's why they have to be rescued. 

And there are different ways to be lost and rescued. You can be rescued from the bondage of a self-destructive addiction. You can be rescued from depression and self-loathing. 

10. In my view, human beings originate as divine ideas, like fictional characters in the mind of a storyteller. We initially exist in God's imagination. And God's imagination has alternate plots for every human life. In God's imagination, there's no one thing we were going to do or not do. Rather, there are endless plot variations. At this stage they're all just possibilities. Coequal possibilities. There is no one right plot. Each storyline will have unique points of interest and insight. 

When God creates us, he takes one of these plots and makes it real. In this case, he chooses a plot in which I'm born lost. He could choose a different plot. But it's not as if there's one way the story was supposed to begin or end. Because there's no one story to choose from. There are many different storylines. Did God wrong a human being by selecting one plot rather than another? 

Cliché objections to Calvinism

@RandalRauser

Calvinists 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. 

Finessing the problem of evil

From a Facebook exchange:

That's a simplistic caricature of reprobation. The fact that the reprobate end up in hell doesn't mean that's the purpose of God creating them. If a soldier throws himself on a grenade to shield is comrades, that's the last thing he does, but it's not as if he was born for that sole purpose.

You repeat the same oversimplification. According to reprobation, the reprobate are hellbound in part because they were predestined to hell. But that doesn't mean they were born with that sole end in mind. To the contrary, the reprobate have an important role to play in world history and sacred history. In addition, they are damned because they are wicked. Culpability is a necessity (albeit insufficient) condition for reprobation.

To begin with, it's no different from Augustinianism or classical Thomism, both of which are highly predestinarian. If you're posing a philosophical question about whether libertarian freedom is necessary to be blameworthy, that's a hotly contested issue in the philosophical literature. Are you going say God is worse than the devil based on disputed philosophical conjectures?

You're raising a philosophical objection, but you're not prepared to defend your position philosophically. And you're prepared to blaspheme God based on a philosophical objection which, by your own admission, you lack the competence to defend. Reprobation doesn't make eternal suffering the "foundation of creation and salvation." Why not say unconditional election makes eternal bliss the foundation of creation and salvation? The point, though, is that evil is not an unplanned evil. God has a good reason for the foreordination of the fall, otherwise it was within his power to preempt it. There are certain kinds of good, second-order goods, that are made possible by evil. You and I wouldn't exist in an unfallen world. You and I are the product of chains of events leading up to us that include many intervening evil variables. So there are tradeoffs.

i) I'm saying you want to have to both ways. You want to have the benefit of a philosophical objection without the hard work of philosophical argument to justify your objection. You raise a philosophical objection, but then play the "I'm a simple man card". 

ii) The deny that God planned evil means that evil caught God off-guard. If God foresaw evil as a result of his creative fiat, then he intended the consequences of his own actions. That's logically unavoidable. 

iii) Yes, God is responsible for whatever happens. But there's a difference between responsibility and culpability. Responsibility is a necessary but insufficient condition of culpability. The former doesn't entail the latter. And to say God is responsible for whatever happens doesn't make him solely responsible. He's not the only agent. 

iv) The comparison with slaves and murdered children fails to take guilt into account. So your comparison is amoral. 

v) So you deny that God will the long-term consequences of his own actions? 

God doesn't will evil for evil's sake, but he wills evil for the compensatory goods. Do you think God willed the crucifixion of Christ?

vi) Certain kinds of goods require evil. If a child dies of leukemia, and the parents make a replacement child, the new child wouldn't exist apart from the tragedy of the first child's death. 

vii) You've presented no argument for the claim that double predestination is arbitrary.

"it's possible for God to foresee evil without intending either it or its consequences, and to act and plan in a manner that provides for it."

i) It's not just a case of God foreseeing the consequences of an action, but the consequences of his own actions. Does God not intend the consequences of his own creative/providential actions? Is it an divine accident that those actions have those end-results? Like an uncoordinated house guest who breaks an antique flower vase by inadvertently bumping into it and knocking it over?

ii) Perhaps you're using "intend" in the specialized sense of double effect theory, where the evil is a necessary but indirect side-effect of the action. If so, Calvinism can draw the same distinction.

Mind you, it's disputable in the double effect literature whether the dichotomy between intended and foreseen outcomes is stable. 

"I'm using 'responsibility' and 'culpability' interchangeably."

You can do that if you wish, but there's an important conceptual distinction inasmuch as responsibility for an action may be either praiseworthy or blameworthy. 

"I'm actually kind of concerned now by what you mean by those cases being 'amoral'."

It's amoral for you to compare cases of innocent suffering with just punishment.

"God wills only good, otherwise He is not God."

But God can will good indirectly.

"Of course He didn't will the Crucifixion"

Was the crucifixion an unplanned event? If God planned it, how can God not intend or will his own plans? 

How is your denial consistent with Acts 2:23 & 4:27-28? (Not to mention that the Greek is probably using proginosko in the idiomatic sense of prior choice.)

"That the 'replacement' child is a good in no way makes the earlier child dying of leukemia not an evil."

Unresponsive to the argument inasmuch as I never said the death of the first child was not an evil. To the contrary, it was a necessary evil for the second-order good of the replacement child to transpire.

If we were living in an unfallen world, we could discuss what God is prepared to plan with respect to evil with greater speculative freedom because evil would just be an abstraction and the debate would be hypothetical. But in a situation where God and evil actually coexist, that takes certain explanations off the table. At this stage we must play the hand we were dealt, which curtails the range of available theodical options. Lots of Christians act like they can artificially buffer God from complicity in evil, but given the fact of evil along with divine creation and providence, that logically commits us to certain positions, like it or not, and forecloses certain escape routes.

Will few be saved?

13 Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few (Mt 7:13-14).

22 He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. 23 And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, 24 “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. 25 When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ 26 Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ 27 But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ 28 In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. 29 And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. 30 And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last” (Lk 13:23-30).

1. Will the majority of the human race be saved or damned? 

i) The two passages I quoted are standard prooftexts for belief that the majority of the human race is doomed to hell. That's what I'll be discussing in this post.

ii) There is another argument for the same position. If you combine exclusivism (i.e. one must believe in Jesus before death to be saved) with church history up until the present, then that's another argument for the proposition that the majority of the race will be damned. 

There are, however, some potential complications. There's the question of whether those who die before the age of reason are heavenbound or hellbound. There's the question of how much longer the churn age will last, and the success or failure of evangelicam worldwide.  

You also have progressives who subscribe to inclusivism and/or postmortem evangelism. That's becoming more popular. 

Even if we conclude that (i) fails to establish the claim, the claim may still be true, given (ii). But this post is about the first line of argument.

2. In addition, the traditional interpretation is a fixture of the anti-Calvinist polemic. Freewill theists routinely allege that according to Calvinism, the elect are a "chosen few". However, that's not based on Calvinism, per se. Rather, that's based in part on a freewill theist's interpretation of Mt 7:13-14–which he combines with the Reformed doctrine of election and reprobation. And to that extent it reflects a failure to distinguish between his own position and the opposing position. The critic is imputing one of his own assumptions to Calvinism. 

3. We might begin by filling in the implicit imagery in Christ's two sayings. Try to visualize the whole picturesque metaphor. 

i) Jesus seems to be using mixed metaphors, although these are closely related metaphors. The basic picture appears to be a fortified city. The city has a defensive wall with one (or more) gates. The main gate is wide. Wide enough so that several people can leave or enter simultaneously. It can accommodate several people (some mounted on horses or mules) abreast. 

ii) Matching the main gate is the broad road. The basic idea is that the broad road is the default thoroughfare. The path of least resistance. Most folks unthinkingly go with the flow. To vary the metaphor, Christians must swim against the tide. 

iii) In contrast to the main gate is the side gate. Because it's narrow, people only enter single file rather than side-by-side. 

The imagery of gates and roads trades on spatial metaphors. Two divergent paths. One leads to heaven while the other leads to hell. 

However, the narrow gate may also trade on a temporal metaphor. The main gate closes at sunset. To enjoy the protection of the fortified city, you generally had to get there before sundown. If you got there after dark, you were out of luck. Had to sleep outside. Exposed to the dangers of bandits and nocturnal predators. 

But a function of the side gate was to admit some parties who arrived after dark. Yet that wouldn't be just anyone. That would be reserved for dignitaries or friends of the sentinel. 

So an additional lesson might be not to procrastinate. If you try the main gate, but it's locked, and there's a line at the side gate, it may close before your turn comes. A lost opportunity. This is similar to the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. It was too late for the foolish virgins to make up for lost time. 

If the spatial dimension of the metaphor illustrates the need to resist conformity, the temporal dimension illustrates the need for urgency. 

Furthermore, the narrow gate may be inconspicuous compared to the main gate, so you have to be observant or well-informed to find it, compared to the indifferent, inattentive masses. 

It's possible that I'm pressing the imagery beyond what Jesus intended. However, the reason imagery is sketchy is probably because the scene was so familiar to his audience that he didn't need to draw a detailed word-picture. His thumbnail sketch would conjure a fuller picture in the minds of the listener. So I think it's safe to pencil in the implied details. 

4. This also raises the question of whether his admonition is predictive or hortatory. Is he saying for a fact that when the roll call is recited, most humans will be damned? Or is he using contrastive imagery to shake people out of their complacency? Put another way, is it like some prophetic oracles of doom which are implicitly conditional or counterfactual? The purpose of the dire warning isn't to say their fate is sealed, but to give them an opportunity to avert disaster by changing course before the clock runs out.  

5. The version in Luke might suggest that the comparison is more specific. The point of contrast is not about the ratio lost and saved humanity in general, but the difference between the few Jews who respond to Jesus compared to many gentiles who respond to Jesus. On that view, perhaps the majority of the human race will be saved, but mostly drawn from gentile people-groups. 

Thielman on Rom 9

I was recently reading Frank Thielman's new commentary on Romans. His analysis of Rom 9 is a mess. I'll quote some representative statements, then comment:

Before the plagues descended on the Egyptians, God told Moses twice that he would "harden" Pharaoh's hear and that as a result Pharaoh would not grant Moses's request to let Israel go into the wilderness to sacrifice to God (Exod 4:21; 7:3). Throughout the subsequent narrative, we read either that Pharaoh "hardened" his heart (8:15,32; 9:34), that Pharaoh's heart "was hardened" (7:13; 8:19; 9:7,35), or that "the Lord hardened" the heart of Pharaoh (9:12; 10:20,27; 11:10; 14:8; cf. 10:1; 14:4). 

The interplay in Exod 4:14 between God's initiative and Pharaoh's initiative is helpful in understanding what Paul meant when he said that God "hardens' certain people such as Pharaoh. Paul believed that God punishes people for their own sin, not that God forced people to sin and then punished them for it. Otherwise, God would be acting nonsensically when he endured the rebellions of the wicked "with much patience" and stretched out his hands in appeal to disobedient Israel (Rom 9:22: 10:21). No patience is necessary for enduring the behavior of people doing what one wants them to do, and a lengthy appeal to people not to do what one has designed them to do is obviously fruitless.

When Paul says here, then, that God "hardens" people he must mean that God justly punishes people who, like Pharaoh (Exod 8:15,32; 9:34) and everyone else (Rom 1:18-3:20; 5:12-19), are already in rebellion against him. God punishes them by calcifying this rebellion, or, to put it another way, he further hardens resistant hearts. This second level of resistance, which God himself initiates, is Paul's concern here, and it corresponds exactly to God's judgment in 1:24,26, and 28 when he hands people over to their lust, dishonorable passion, and worthless thoughts [457-58].

Interpreters of this passage [9:21] often explain the image of God as a potter shaping clay as a reference to God's creation of human beings and his determination of their eternal destinies at creation…Paul does not, therefore, picture God as creating people in order to destroy them but as dealing sovereignly with a body of human beings who, without exception, are sinful. He mercifully saves some but justly punishes others [460]. 

One can describe the idea that God decides who will believe the gospel in a way that makes God not only responsible for the salvation of human beings but also for evil since he seemingly creates certain human beings in order that they might sin and that he might then destroy them for his glory. A variation on this idea depicts God as within his rights even to destroy innocent human beings, if any existed, simply because he created them. 

To read Rom 9:7-23 in these ways, however, is to read the passages in a one-sided way, without the balance provided by the context…The idea that this passage teaches God created people in order to destroy them, moreover, attributes conduct to God that God himself finds sinful in human beings. It depicts God as forcing people to sin and then condemning them for it or, worse, condemning the innocent…But he [Paul] tempers the entire concept with the notion that God endured the vessels of wrath that he made with much patience and by speaking of the fitting out of these vessels in the passive voice (9:22). By doing this, he indicates that one must not misread the illustrations to make God the author of evil and sin. 

Paul's illustration of the potter in 9:19-23, then, is not about God predestining certain people to sin, nor is it about the relationship between the entry of sin into God's creation and God's predestining will. It is instead about God's response to already sinful human beings. 

This does not mean that human sin took God by surprise and was somehow outside the scope of God's original design for the universe. It simply means that the answer to such questions lies beyond human understanding.

[Quoting Bavinck] Sin and its punishment can never as such, and for their own sake, have been willed by God…They can therefore have been willed by God only as a means to a different, better, and greater good…Sin is not itself a good. It only becomes a good inasmuch as, contrary to its own nature, it is compelled by God's omnipotence to advance his honor. It is a good indirectly because, being subdued, constrained, and overcome, it brings out God's greatness, power, and justice. 

God is not willing "that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Pet 3:9) [468-70]. 

144,000

I believe dispensationists think the 144,000 in Rev 7:4 refers to ethnic Jewish converts. Bracketing the usual exegetical debates, that raises some philosophical and theodical issues. Some dispensationalists are Calvinists while others are freewill theists. Let's consider each in relation to that identification:

1. Reformed dispensationalism

This means God regenerated 144,000 ethnic Jews during the great tribulation. Freewill theists often allege that unconditional election is arbitrary. I've argued that their allegation is confused. The fact that God doesn't elect people based on foreseen faith or merit doesn't mean God is randomly choosing who will be saved or damned, like throwing dice to pick winners and losers. 

Humans are agents. The elect make different choices in life than the reprobate. Depending on who's elect or reprobate, that generates alternate world histories. 

In addition, it may well be the case that God made a multiverse in which alternate histories play out. It's not as if God is forced to choose one outcome to the exclusion of others. 

If, however, the Reformed dispensational interpretation of Rev 7:4 is correct, then who's saved and who's damned is based on numerology. Some ethnic Jews didn't make the cut because that would mess up the nice round number. God didn't save 144,303 Jews because that's not a pretty number compared to 144,000. Picking winners and losers to make a nice round number. Isn't numerical aesthetics an awfully frivolous criterion for salvation and damnation? 

2. Libertarian dispensationalism

On this view it's unclear how there can be exactly 144,000 ethnic Jewish converts. God can't zap 144,000 Jews to believe in Jesus, for faith is an independent variable. Human agents are the ultimate source of their choices and actions. So it's out of God's hands how many Jews will be saved during the Tribulation. 

But in that event, what are the odds that the number of converts just happen to add up to that nice round number? Consider all the different numerical possibilities. It's a vanishingly improbable coincidence that the raffle of freewill theism will pull that particular figure out of the hat.

The tortoise and the hare

The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all (Eccl 9:11).

20Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe…27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 29 that no flesh should glory in His presence (1 Cor 1:21,27-29).

Some brilliant men who were raised in evangelical churches become apostates. Some become secular philosophers or secular scientists. Some redeploy their talents to attack the faith in which they were raised. In a sense, their apostasy is a loss to the Christian faith. Why doesn't God preserve them?

One reason is to demonstrate that salvation isn't based on natural aptitude. High IQ is not a ticket to heaven. Salvation is by grace alone. God doesn't favor intellectuals. It shouldn't unsettle us that many of the best in the brightest in every generation, including some who grew up in Gospel-affirming churches, disdain the Christian faith. For that is by divine design. In the economy of salvation, the tortoise often overtakes the hare. 

Unconditional election and infant salvation

From a Facebook exchange:

It is clear from the Institutes that Calvin taught double predestination. When, according to Calvin, does God predestine some to salvation and some to damnation? Would the predestined person's age have anything to do with anything? How could one consistently argue something different than double predestination from Calvin?

In and of themselves, election and reprobation are consistent with universal infant salvation. It's just up to God who he chose to elect or reprobate. That can't be inferred merely from the principle of double predestination.

Sounds like having your cake and eating it to. Either election is unconditional or it isn't. Seems to me you're wanting to make it conditional when it makes the doctrine more palatable.

Unclear what you think unconditional election means. The concept of unconditional election is not a restriction or imposition on God. What makes you think unconditional election means God can't elect all those who die before the age of reason, if that's what he wanted to do?

BTW, since you don't know my actual position, it would behoove you to avoid conspiratorial interpretations.

Completely true- God can do what He wants. I personally just find it inconsistent to hold to an unconditional election based solely on God's sovereignty, but then apply a condition to it (the age of reason).

The basic principle of unconditional election is that since all Adam's posterity will be guilty as well as unresponsive to spiritual good apart from grace, there's nothing to distinguish one human from another that accounts for God's choice. God could choose fewer or God could choose more. If everyone is in the same boat, choosing a particular subclass of the total (e.g. all who die before the age of discretion) is perfectly consistent with the unconditionality of election.

There's an ambiguity to how you're using "condition". To take a crazy hypothetical for illustrative purposes, suppose God elected all and only people with green eyes. Would that make it "conditional" election. If the notion is that having green eyes causes, constrains, or impels God to choose people with green eyes, then that would be conditional. If, however, the elect status of green-eyed people is the effect or result of God's choice, then that's not conditional.

Like I said, I would think from an unconditional election point of view, that God is sovereign. He can do what He wants. Not really interested in what He might do. I think he has declared what He will do: he who believes is not condemned. 

Hypotheticals are a way of testing whether a generalization is true or false in principle.

There's an elementary difference between what an individual Reformed theologian believes, and whether his position is a logical implication of Calvinism. Put another way, a difference between what's consistent with Calvinism and what's entailed by Calvinism.

Traditionally, the original rationale for infant baptism was to remove the stain of original sin. Unbaptized babies who died were consigned to hell. That wasn't based on Calvinism. What was the position of Arminian Anglicans like John and Charles Wesley?

Will just a few be saved?

13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few (Mt 7:13-14).

23 And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, 24 “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able...29 And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God (Lk 13:23-24,29).

A popular trope that critics of Calvinism mechanically resort to is the allegation that according to Calvinism, God reprobates most human beings. Problem with that allegation is that Calvinism has no official statement on the percentages. 

In my experience, critics who say this usually refuse to offer any justification for their allegation. They seem to think that's an implication of Calvinism, but they rarely construct an argument to that effect. On the rare occasion that them attempt to justify their allegation, they appeal to their interpretation of Mt 7:13-14/Lk 13:23-24. So let's discuss this:

i) To begin with, that's not an implication of Calvinism. Rather, that's a hybrid position in which the critic of Calvinism takes his own interpretation of Scripture as a frame of reference, combines that with the Reformed doctrine of reprobation, then alleges that "according to Calvinism," God reprobates most human beings. But he didn't get that from Calvinism. Rather, he's imputing his interpretation of Scripture to Calvinism, then deriving a conclusion. He lacks the critical detachment to distinguish his own assumptions from the opposing position. 

ii) The imagery of these two prooftexts is somewhat ambiguous. The imaginary probably envisions city gates, with roads leading into the city or away from the city. But the relationship between the gate and the roadway is unstated. Is the gate at the end of the road? That envisions a journey to the city, where the gate is the entry-point. Or is the gate an exit from the city onto the road? 

If the gate is an exit, then this suggests that getting through the gate is just the starting-point in what may be a long, treacherous journey. Leaving is when the hard part begins. The challenges lie ahead.

If the gate is an entrance, then this suggests that if you get to that point, you have it made. You arrived at your destination. Now you're safe. You put the treacherous journey behind you.

iii) What's the distinction between the narrow gate and the wide gate? The wide gate envisions the main gate into a city. That's used by visitors, traders, and the hoi polloi. By contrast, the narrow gate is a side-gate used by people with special entree. They know the porter. 

iii) The imagery of the narrow gate has ironic implications for critics of Calvinism. If we press the imagery, then most folks cannot enter by the narrow gate even if they want to, even if they try to, because it would generate a bottleneck. Indeed, Lk 13:24 makes that very point. 

So by that logic, God has not made universal provision for the salvation of everyone. It's not simply that only a few will avail themselves of the opportunity. Rather, the narrow gate screens out most seekers. They can't go through all at once. They must line up single file. People in the front of the line have an advantage. For folks waiting in back, it's too late. If you don't make it inside before the gates close for the night, you'll be turned away. "Outer darkness". That's the gist of the imagery.

iv) Notice, though, that Jesus doesn't answer the question of whether few be saved. He probably leaves it up in the air as a stimulus to the reader. Each reader needs to answer that question for himself by heeding the warning and taking appropriate action. 

v) Does the passage imply that only a few will be saved? We need to compare that with the messianic banquet in Lk 13:28-29. That evokes a motif in Isaiah (e.g. Isa 25:6-9; 26:5; 43:5; 49:12; 55:1-2), including the image of Gentiles flooding into God's kingdom (Isa 59:19). That envisions a multitude. 

Why does Scripture use disparate imagery? Why does some imagery picture a few while other imagery pictures a multitude? Probably to encourage initiative and perseverance, on the one hand, while discouraging presumption, on the other hand. 

vi) In addition, it may be that Christ's statement is not a prophecy about church history in general, but focused on the hostile reaction to his message and mission in 1C Palestine. The short-term situation that his immediate followers will confront. No doubt that has analogues in church history, but it's not a statement about every place and every time. 

Reprobation and hardening

I responded to someone on Facebook on the topic of reprobation:

i) The "election" of Israel refers to God's choice of ethnic Israel for his redemptive purposes. That doesn't mean "election" in the sense of election to salvation.

Mind you, a percentage of Jews were/are elected for salvation, but that's a different principle. Use of the same term to denote different concepts fosters confusion, but that's a semantic issue.

ii) People can know the truth without believing it. Likewise, people can believe in the true, then cease to believe. That's not the same thing as losing salvation.

iii) Hardening is not synonymous with reprobation. Reprobation is a timeless decision by God. Hardening happens in time. Although God may harden the reprobate, hardening serves more than one purpose. Hardening can be temporary.

iv) Keep in mind that Paul isn't necessarily or even probably talking about the same group of people. Due to human mortality, there's a constant rate of turnover every few generations.

i) God chooses individuals or collectives for different reasons. Take God's choice of Judas compared to God's choice of Paul. 

We need to distinguish how the term "election" is used in systematic theology or Reformed dogmatics from Biblical usage. They overlap but they don't coincide.

Likewise, we need to examine different functions that are served by God choosing X. That's not something to be determined by the meaning of a particular word-group.

ii) In Calvinism, one can't come to saving faith apart from monergistic regeneration. It is, however, possible to believe theological truths apart from divine grace. You have professing Christians who believe their theological tradition simply due to social conditioning. Take the cliche of the young man raised in a fideistic, "Fundamentalist" church who loses his faith when he goes to college, and is suddenly exposed to hitherto unsuspected objections to Christianity. 

iii) Take the paradigm-case of Pharaoh. God didn't harden of Pharaoh to keep him from exercising saving faith, if that's what you mean. Rather, the purpose was to make him fanatically stubborn, so that he didn't exercise prudence. 

Can you explain why hardening the reprobate would be necessary if they are depraved? Is that not like making a dead man more dead, or the deaf more deaf?… but He has to harden those that would believe and be obedient if He didn't.

1. Hardening is used in a variety of contexts. We'd really need to examine them on a case-by-case basis. Most pertinent to our discussion are passages where hardening has, or may have, soteriological significance for groups or individuals (e.g. Mk 4:12; Jn 12:39-40; Rom 9:18; 11:7,25; Eph 4:18). 

2. "Hardening" is a metaphor, so there's the question of what the metaphor stands for. In addition, it's roughly interchangeable with other related metaphors in Scripture, viz. "darkened," spiritual "blindness," "deafness," "stiff-necked," and "dead" in sin. 

In context, it can be used for resistance to spiritual truth–among other things.

3. In Reformed theology, there are basically two reasons why some people can't exercise saving faith:

i) In the case of the reprobate, they've been predestined not to exercise saving faith, and no one can act contrary to whatever has been predestined.

ii) In the case of the reprobate and/or unregenerate, they are psychologically ill-disposed to accept the Gospel. They suffer from "spiritual inability". And that, in turn, is grounded in original sin.

This isn't unique to Calvinism. Any non-Pelagian tradition says divine grace is necessary to make sinners receptive or responsive to the Gospel. The difference is that in freewill theism, every sinner has prevenient grace (or the equivalent) whereas in predestinarian traditions like Augustinianism, Thomism, Jansenism, and Calvinism, that's confined to the elect.

4. Apropos 3(i), predestination or reprobation, all by itself, doesn't cause anything. It's a divine plan. It must be implemented. And that usually take the form of ordinary providence. So there are various means by which God may cause the reprobate to be unreceptive to the Gospel. 

5. Apropos (2), these varied picturesque metaphors may well be alternate representations of the same basic principle. Bible writers tend to use them interchangeably, or bunch two or more together for emphasis. 

So I wouldn't assume that hardening is necessarily something over and above "dead in sin", but a different related metaphor. 

Likewise, these metaphors can represent various providential factors by which God executes his timeless intentions in time and space. 

6. BTW, if you think hardening is inconsistent with Reformed theology, the same could be said for freewill theism. Why would God block people from exercising saving faith in Christ when, according to freewill theism, God wants everybody to be saved and has made universal provision for their salvation? 

7. In the Gospels, resistance to Christ takes more than one form. You have the Sabbath controversies. However, that falls outside the purview of spiritual inability. That's about how to interpret and apply the Mosaic law–as well as the finality (or not) of the Mosaic law.

In addition, there's resistance in the face of the miracles and exorcisms of Christ. Although these are signs of his divine mission, a hostile reaction to miraculous signs isn't necessarily the same thing as spiritual inability. For instance, modern-day cessationists are often implacably antagonistic to evidence for contemporary charismatic miracles. That doesn't mean they're unregenerate or reprobate. 

8. Finally, the tension you perceive in Reformed theology has precedent in Scripture. On the one hand, John's Gospel says no one can have saving faith in Christ apart from divine enablement (e.g. Jn 6:44,65). On the other hand, the same Gospel describes divine hardening (Jn 12:39-40).

Now, by your logic, that's superfluous. If grace is necessary for sinners to believe, all God needs to do to ensure that some people won't believe is to withhold grace. So why harden them in addition to that underlying condition? Just leave them in their default condition.

However, these may simply be different ways of expressing the same idea. One representation is more passive (i.e. their default condition, absent divine intervention) while the other is more active ("hardening").

But that doesn't necessary mean these reflect different types of divine action. Rather, these may well be varied ways of depicting the same dynamic. 

Is the lottery sincere?

In Calvinism, doesn't the butcher first determine that you won't like liver, and then offer you liver? That doesn't come across as a sincere offer.

That's a comment on my analogy in this post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/01/chopped-liver.html

I'd like to respond to it separately, because it has several permutations. 

i) God doesn't directly and individually address the Gospel offer to anyone. It's not like Gabriel appears to every human being. No one's name is on the Gospel offer. It's not a question of God making an offer to people face to face and one by one. Indeed, tens of millions of people never hear the Gospel offer.

So it's not as though God is personally encouraging the reprobate to take him up on the offer. Rather, it's an all-purpose promise that's filtered through second-parties. Preachers and evangelists who don't know who's elect and who's reprobate.

ii) Let's take a comparison. Suppose you buy a lotto ticket. There's an implied promise that if you have the winning number, the prize money is yours.

But the machine has no idea who you are. The ticket machine isn't making you an offer. 

iii) Moreover, does every ticket-holder have a chance to win the lotto? Depends on what you mean. The promise is that if you have the winning number, the prize money is yours. But every ticket-holder can't have the winning number. In that respect,99.9999% of ticket-holders have no chance of winning, since the vast majority of ticket-holders are bound to have a losing number. By design, the intention of the lottery is to limit the offer or promise to a single winner, to the exclusion of everyone else. Most customers go into the process doomed to lose. Their ticket number predetermines the outcome. Yet we wouldn't say that makes the lotto a scam.  

My point is not that that's a direct parallel to the Gospel offer, but it illustrates the complexities and unspoken assumptions about what makes an offer or a promise a bona fide offer or true promise. 

iv) Let's take a different comparison. Suppose two uncover cops infiltrate the mob. In fact, the two cops are partners.

Suppose the Don discovers that one of the agents is an undercover cop, while he's suspicious of the other agent, but unsure.

So he proposes to test the ultimate loyalties of the suspected agent. He names the agent he knows to be an infiltrator. He then tells the suspected agent to shoot him dead.

He does that to smoke out which side the suspected agent is on. He doesn't expect the suspected agent will kill his partner to maintain his cover. 

v) By the same token, Scripture depicts the atonement as having a twofold purpose. It's designed to save some, but drive others away or expose their ultimately loyalties. Intended to inculpate or aggravate their guilt. For instance:

7 But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart (Ezk 3:7).

Why does Yahweh send Ezekiel on a mission when he predicts the prophet's failure to win over his audience? Is the futility of the task "insincere"? But it demonstrates how hardhearted they are.

Likewise,

34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed” (Lk 2:34).

So the atonement is divisive of by design. Intended to stir up opposition. 

By the same token:

20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God (Jn 3:20-21).

39 Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (Jn 9:39).

37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,

    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,

40 “He has blinded their eyes

    and hardened their heart,

lest they see with their eyes,

    and understand with their heart, and turn,

    and I would heal them.” (Jn 12:37-40).