Calvinist Hogwash #4 (hell and justice)
I think that Calvinists who deny double predestination are fooling themselves. To not choose someone for heaven is to choose them for hell, especially if those are the only two options and if God created them to be exactly who they are for certain reasons (which He didn't, except in Calvinism).
Instead of just admitting that Calvi-god predestines people for hell, Calvinists soften or obscure it as much as possible to make it seem less harsh, less deliberate, than it is: "God passes over people... He just lets them be the sinners they already are... He leaves them to themselves... He doesn't force them to reject Him, He just doesn't give them saving faith..." (I wonder if they'd try so much to soften it if they thought themselves one of the non-elect.)
It's really just haggling over terminology because it all amounts to the same thing: In Calvinism, God predetermined that the non-elect would be who they are and do what they do, and He made sure that they couldn't choose or do anything different because He wanted them in hell for His glory. God (Calvi-god) deliberately created them to bring Him glory through their damnation. This is predestining them for hell, no matter how Calvinists try to soften it or hide it.
While this view of God horrifies many of us (as it should), Calvinists aggressively defend their "doctrine of reprobation" by saying that God had to predestine people to hell to demonstrate His justice so that He could fully display all His attributes and get praise and glory for them.
And yet there is not one verse in the Bible that clearly teaches this!
But do you know what is in the Bible? Verses where God Himself clearly tells us how He Himself chose to demonstrate His justice and get glory:
“God presented [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished- he did it [sent Jesus to the cross for our sins] to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:25-26, emphasis added)
John 12:27-28: Jesus said "Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!"
John 13:31: "When he was gone, Jesus said, 'Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.'"
God Himself tells us that He sent Jesus to take our punishment in order to demonstrate His justice and be glorified ... and yet Calvinists would have us believe that God created people to be non-elect so that He could punish them in hell to show off His justice and wrath and to get glory.
What a horrible misunderstanding of God's justice! What a horrible twisting of God's Word and character! And although it presents itself as so "God-glorifying," what Calvinism actually does is contradict what God said He did to show His justice and to get glory. It replaces/detracts from Jesus's sacrifice. It steals God's glory.
(If we end up in hell, it's by our choice to reject God's offer of salvation, not because God predestined anyone to go there.)
So as you read the following Calvinist quotes, remember these three things:
1. In Calvinism, God predestined unbelievers to be unbelievers so that they would go to hell for His glory, and they had no chance or ability to do anything different.
2. It is not true justice to first predestine people to sin and be unbelievers and then to punish them for it. [Calvinists will just claim, though, that God's ways are higher than our ways, that what we see as injustice might be justice in His eyes and what we see as evil might be good in His eyes, and so who are we to judge. Essentially, they're saying that there's really no difference between injustice and justice, between evil and good, even if it appears that way to us. But then how in the world can God then expect us to do good and seek justice (as we're instructed in many Bible verses) if we can't really tell the difference between injustice and justice, between evil and good, because there might not be one (as Calvinists teach)? Can you not see how this destroys God's character and Word, His goodness and justice, the line between Satan and God!?!]
3. In the Bible, God said He showed His justice by sending Jesus to the cross for our sins, not by creating unbelievers to punish.
Okay, ready for some fun... here we go...
John Calvin (quoted in various online sources): “God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.”
The Westminster Confession of Faith: "The rest of mankind [the non-elect] God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will [meaning "We don't know why, so don't ask questions"], whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His Sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice."
A.W. Pink ("The Sovereignty of God in Reprobation"): "If then God has foreordained whatever comes to pass--then He must have decreed that vast numbers of human beings should pass out of this world unsaved--to suffer eternally in the Lake of Fire! ... From [the human race] God purposed to save a few as the monuments of His sovereign grace; the others He determined to destroy as the exemplification of His justice and severity..."
R.C. Sproul ("The Reformed View of Predestination"): "Another significant difference between the activity of God with respect to the elect and the reprobate concerns God’s justice. The decree and fulfillment of election provide mercy for the elect while the efficacy of reprobation provides justice for the reprobate. God shows mercy sovereignly and unconditionally to some and gives justice to those passed over in election."
Wayne Grudem (from Election and Reprobation in Systematic Theology): “When we understand election as God’s sovereign choice of some persons to be saved, then there is necessarily another aspect of that choice, namely, God’s sovereign decision to pass over others and not to save them. This decision of God in eternity past is called reprobation. Reprobation is the sovereign decision of God before creation to pass over some persons, in sorrow [Hogwash! Fake sorrow from Calvi-god!] deciding not to save them, and to punish them for their sins, and thereby to manifest his justice… It is something that we would not want to believe, and would not believe, unless Scripture clearly taught it.” [No, Scripture doesn't teach it. Calvinism does.]
John MacArthur (Romans 9-16, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary): "God demonstrates His attributes for the sake of His own glory. Without sin, God's wrath would never be on display. Without sinners to redeem, God's grace would never be on display. Without evil to punish, God's justice would never be on display. And He has every right to put Himself everlastingly on display in all the glory of His attributes." [So apparently, Calvi-god needed sin and sinners in order to be fully appreciated as God. So was he then somehow lacking in his "God-ness" and in glory before sinners came along? Calvinism makes God's "God-ness" and glory dependent on humans, on sin. What kind of a God is that!?! And look how MacArthur makes such a twisted theology that damages God's righteous character seem so God-honoring, so humble. To me, that's a sign of a well-crafted demonic lie.]
John Piper (Is double predestination biblical?): "But my effort over the years has yielded the fact that I think [the biblical texts] do in fact teach that God plans the destiny of each person, whether judgment or salvation... Now, the primary objection to this biblical teaching of predestination — whether you call it single or double — is that it seems to result in people being punished when they are not morally accountable.
So this seems to be unjust... [but] God prioritizes something above his desire for all to be saved — because not all are saved. Something restrains God from saving all... what restrains God from saving all is that he prioritizes the glory of the freedom of his sovereign grace above saving all. Better that some perish than that the freedom and greatness of God’s grace be diminished.... [So in Calvinism, it's not that God doesn't save all people because He's given people the right to make their own choice if they want Him or not (the non-Calvinist belief). It's that He doesn't save all because He chose to deliberately create people to damn to hell because it brings Him glory somehow (the Calvinist belief). That's sick.]
Here’s the paradox — not a contradiction, a paradox. [Nice spin!] Lots of people try to make this out to be a logical contradiction. It’s not. It runs through the whole Bible. Human beings are morally accountable, even though they do not have ultimate self-determination. There is no injustice with God (Romans 9:14). No one is punished who does not truly deserve to be punished... Though God predestines who will be saved and who will not be saved, no one comes into judgment who does not deserve judgment. [Calvinists say that the non-elect deserve to be punished because they are sinners and they reject the gospel - even though Calvi-god predestined it and they couldn't choose otherwise. That's twisted!]
This is not a logical contradiction, which so many try to make it out to be. It is a mystery. I don’t think the Bible makes plain how both of these truths — God’s sovereignty and man’s accountability — are in perfect compatibility. But the whole Bible testifies to both truths. They are compatible. The Bible teaches the truth of both. And they are profoundly important to embrace for the good of our souls, and for the integrity of God’s word, and for the health of the church, and for the advancement of God’s mission, and for the glory of God’s grace."
Richard Blaylock (Founders Ministries, "Reprobation and the Second London Confession"): "Reprobation refers to God’s eternal decree to refrain from providing saving grace to particular fallen individuals and to harden these in their willful sins so that they might be justly condemned and God’s glorious justice might be made manifest. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many have found the doctrine profoundly distasteful... The doctrine of reprobation continues to trouble many Christians and to invite much controversy. [As it should!] Yet, faithfulness to the God of the Scriptures often requires theological courage. [Manipulative-flattery: "Wow, look how courageous you are to accept such a terrible-sounding teaching. You're such good little Christian boys and girls. So wise and godly."] It requires Christians to receive all that the Scriptures teach, to accept the necessary implications of clear doctrines, and to trust that God’s revelation is always consistent and beneficial." [Sure, except Calvinism is none of that: It's not what the Scriptures teach, it's not "clear" doctrine, it's not God's revelation, and it's sure as heck not beneficial for most people.]
Peter Ditzel (Word of His Grace, "Did God deliberately reprobate the non-elect to hell or did He merely pass them by?...") admits that God is the ultimate cause of anything and everything that happens and that God reprobates people to hell. He claims that double-predestination is an important and necessary doctrine and that those who reject it water-down other doctrines, do harm to their understanding of God's sovereignty, and become inconsistent and confused in their teaching of the Word.
R.C. Sproul ("Is double predestination biblical?"): "If God has predestined some but not all to election, does it not follow by what Luther called a 'resistless logic' that some are not predestined to election?... [If] all salvation is based upon the eternal election of God [It's not, and that's where Calvinism goes wrong!] and not all men are elect from eternity, does that not mean that from eternity there are non-elect who most certainly will not be saved? Has not God chosen from eternity not to elect some people? If so, then we have an eternal choice of non-election which we call reprobation. The inference is clear and necessary, yet some shrink from drawing it.
I once heard the case for 'single' predestination articulated by a prominent Lutheran theologian in the above manner. He admitted to me that the conclusion of reprobation was logically inescapable, but he refused to draw the inference, holding steadfastly to 'single' predestination. Such a notion of predestination is manifest nonsense... the only way to avoid 'double' predestination is with the use of 'double-talk'..."
From the Sovereign Grace Churches' statement of faith (God's Sovereign Purposes — We Believe): "God in his great love, before the foundation of the world, chose those whom he would save in Christ Jesus. God's election is entirely gracious and not at all conditioned upon foreseen faith, obedience, perseverance, or any merit in those whom God has chosen. His decision to set his saving love on the elect is based entirely on his sovereign will and good pleasure. The number of God's elect is fixed for eternity, and no one who has been chosen by God will be lost. In the mystery of his will, God passes over the non-elect, withholding his mercy and punishing them for their sins as a display of his holy justice and wrath..."
R.C. Sproul Jr. (Almighty Over All): “God wills all things that come to pass… God desired for man to fall into sin. I am not accusing God of sinning; I am suggesting that God created sin… We cannot imagine God looking at His wrath like unwanted pounds He wants to lose, if only He had the power. No, God is as delighted with His wrath as He is with all of His attributes. Suppose He says, ‘What I’ll do is create something worthy of my wrath, something on which I can exhibit the glory of my wrath...’” [Yes, God did create something to exhibit the glory of His wrath: Jesus's human body to crucify in our place. Not non-elect people.]
Tim Challies ("God hates wicked people"): "He hates wicked people from his soul, from the very depth of his being... he hates the evil people themselves. His soul reacts to them with righteous revulsion as his arm extends toward them in holy fury. But who are the wicked? All of us. We are all wicked... God also hates the wicked because their wickedness is expressed in ways that harm the people he has created in his image. [Wait a second. I thought he just said we are all wicked and so God hates us all from the very depth of His soul. And so why, then, would it bother Him if one wicked person whom He hates but created in His image causes harm to another wicked person whom He hates but created in His image? And how could being thoroughly wicked, totally depraved, God-haters from birth coincide with being "created in His image" anyway? Doesn't make sense.]...
God must judge the wicked for their [Calvi-god-ordained] rebellion... God will judge the wicked and give them the fitting punishment for their wickedness... Yet there is hope for the wicked... some will be welcomed by God into his everlasting kingdom... There is hope for wicked people if only they will turn to Christ in repentance and faith. [In Calvinism, there's hope for "the wicked" as a class, just not for all wicked individuals. Because some lucky ones - and only those lucky ones - have been prechosen for heaven instead. Everyone else is hated by Calvi-god and will be punished in hell for their God-ordained wickedness.]
Tim Barnett ("Hell: a solution, not a problem"): "Many people have no problem with a God who forgives. The problem is a God who punishes. [No, the problem is a god who punishes people for what he causes, for things they had no control over.]... There is no incompatibility between love and final justice. [But there is incompatibility between predestining sin/unbelief and then punishing sin/unbelief. Between the Calvinist doctrine of predestination/election and true justice/love.] As Volf points out, a god who is indifferent towards injustice would not be good. [But a god who preplans and causes injustice is!?!] In fact, it is precisely because God is good that he punishes the guilty. The goodness of God requires final judgment. It is a manifestation of the perfect justice of God. [This would all make sense if Calvinism didn't destroy God's goodness and justice in the first place.]
Ligonier Ministries ("Vessels of destruction"): "As Christians in the Reformed tradition, we affirm the biblical view of providence that affirms the world is governed by God’s sovereign ordination (Eph. 1:11). The length of our lives, the color of our hair, your reading of this magazine, and everything else that ever happens was decreed by God.... Those things that God has ordained include also the eternal salvation of His people, thus leaving the rest of mankind eternally damned....
How can God be just and yet punish some people if their wickedness and condemnation is foreordained?... As the Creator, God has the right to do with His creation as He pleases [meaning "So shut up and don't challenge us on this"]. God is just and His glory is manifested in punishing those whom He has ordained to do evil just as a potter has the right to make some vessels fit for destruction.
This decree of reprobation is God’s action in leaving some people in their state of sinfulness, thus leading to their damnation.... Though it remains mysterious as to how God ordains all things and yet is not responsible for evil, we must affirm both truths. [It's only a mystery if you misunderstand God's sovereignty.]...
Many misunderstand Reformed theology to say that God forces some to go to hell against their will. Though God does indeed pass over some people, He never acts apart from their desires. In our natural state since the fall, all men truly desire hell because they truly desire evil. [And how did they get these evil desires and natures? By Calvi-god's decree and predestination!] Some of these He passes over, but in mercy He has chosen to change the desires of others so that they will love Him forever....
Jenny Manley ("Evangelists, let the doctrine of predestination batter your heart"): "[God] sovereignly reigns over people and their eternal destinies as well.... The corollary of predestination is double predestination, which takes the clear biblical teaching to its logical end by affirming the reprobate are as much under God’s sovereign rule as the regenerate. [At least she admits it.] The Bible approaches the topic with causality grounded in God’s character. ["God causes" - at least she admits it.].... Some people were created to be a display of God’s glory as recipients of his grace, and some were created to display his glory and holiness through judgment...
The doctrine of double predestination corrects the faulty assumption that the goal of evangelism is always conversion or that the highest good to come from sharing the gospel is the salvation of sinners. Something better and more important is at stake—God’s glory. If God is glorified both in showing mercy to sinners and in the just judgment of their sin, then every time the gospel is faithfully shared, it’s a success."
[Oh... oh dear! Don't get me started on this one! What a demonic twist to claim that evangelism's goal is not necessarily to win souls for Christ, but that it's also to cause the non-elect to reject the gospel so that God can get glory by punishing them for rejecting it. What a horrible twist to call that "successful" evangelism! In that case, the Calvinist evangelist can never fail, can they? Because even when they lose, they win. The Great Calvinist Commission: "Go and make disciples of all the nations... or get the non-elect to reject the gospel so that God can get glory by punishing them for rejecting it. Either way, it's good!"]
Likewise, in different words, this is from a Calvinist article called "If God predestines people, why evangelize?": "If God is Sovereign, Our Evangelism Has a 100% Success Rate: In a culture where evangelism may lead people to walk away and even scoff at our words, we can have confidence in our preaching efforts. Because God is the Author of salvation (and not our evangelistic proficiency or presentation), our faithful proclamation of the Gospel will yield the exact result the Lord has willed."
And in even harsher words: An atheist (Godless Granny) asks a Calvinist named Joe this question: "What is the purpose of telling people about God if the only way they can come to believe is if God chooses to come and move them?"
Joe answers "Because any kind of evangelistic efforts, I have a 100% success rate for the kingdom of God. So either it is going to add to the condemnation of vessels prepared for wrath, for destruction, that God will use to glorify Himself - so it will be adding to the condemnation of unbelievers where God will be just in destroying them for eternity - or He will use the preaching of the gospel...[to] draw the elect to Himself. So I have a 100% success rate with whatever I'm doing because I'm accomplishing God's purpose either way." [It's "success" to bring people more condemnation in hell? And it's "for God's glory"? That's sick and disturbing. Watch the video of this conversation at Soteriology 101's "Warning: This may be the CRINGIEST video you watch about Calvinism".]
Godless Granny then asks, "If you found out that God chose not to save one or more of your children, how would you feel about that?"
Joe answers "It means He's God. You see, God is a bigger being than I am. He's higher than I am. And I sure hope that God has chosen my children...but if God chooses not to save my children, that is His prerogative because He is God and I am not God. He decides who's in His heaven. He decides who's in His hell."
Godless Granny then points out that the odds are that at least one of Joe's children is predestined to eternal torment in hell, and she asks "And you don't have a problem with that?"
And Joe responds "Okay, we've got two ways to look at this. This is a glass half-full or half-empty. Either I can rejoice that God chose a wretched sinner for salvation, which is me, or I can worry about God's choices with other wretched sinners. When I realize that the human nature and the human position against God is that I've sinned against an almighty God and that everyone deserves His judgment, I should be mystified, shocked, and stunned whenever He chooses anyone, not surprised when someone doesn't get chosen." [This is the glorious end of Calvinism, where it leads to! Oh, how this must hurt his children's hearts!]
In this Leighton Flowers- James White debate (starting at the 1:27:12-minute mark - and for the record, Leighton did an awesome job!), Leighton asks James "Why can't [the reprobate] believe and why are they being judged for their unbelief if that's a default condition from birth that they have no control over?"
James answers "God is demonstrating to the entire universe His justice... the praise of his glorious grace."
Leighton asks "So you think it's just for God to judge somebody who, by default, can't believe?"
I so wanted James to answer this, but he evades the question several times. (And James the Cry-Baby even complained to the moderator to help him get out of answering, and then he claims that he already answered and so he shuts down and refuses to say anything more, even though he clearly was not giving a clear, full, honest answer at all. He clearly didn't want to be forced to give a clear, full, honest answer because I'm sure he knew it wouldn't go well for him.)
James: "God is demonstrating the praise of his glorious grace... in both the salvation of undeserving people and in the condemnation of people who love their sin and remain in rebellion." [By Calvi-god's decree!]
Leighton: "So it's a demonstration of God's justice to condemn people for something they have no control over?"
James: "I utterly reject... that gross misrepresentation... We believe that the non-elect love their sin, that they are invested in their sin, and to say that they have no control over it means that - as the incarnate one - Jeus had no control over what He did. We reject that..."
[Essentially, he's admitting that if Calvinists say that man has no control over his choices, then it's saying that Jesus - as a man - had no control over His choices. And so since they can't say that, they don't call it "having no control," even though that's what it is. It's like saying "we don't say God is the author of sin," even though that's exactly what He is in Calvinism. But as long as Calvinists don't come right out and say it, then it lets them off the hook... right!?!
And remember that, in Calvinism, the non-elect are preprogrammed to "love their sin" by the sinner-nature that God created them to have. And so sinning and rejecting Him is all they can do, by God's design. They have no choice or ability to do anything else but want to sin and choose to sin because that's what their God-determined nature makes them do.
This is why Calvinists can claim, as James does later (1:29:40), that God "doesn't force [the reprobate] to be a bad guy... [the reprobate] is justly judged for the love of his sin. It's not a matter of being forced into doing anything. It's not a matter of being incapable of doing anything..."
James is saying, like all Calvinists do, that God doesn't "force" the reprobate to sin, making it sound like they choose to sin all on their own, as if they actually had options they could choose between. But this is deceptive because what Calvinists really mean is that the reprobates' sinner-nature - preplanned for them and given to them by God - makes them want to sin "on their own."
As Leighton said it so well in his debate review (at the 40:22-minute mark): "God [Calvinism's god] doesn't use a gun. He uses the sovereign decree. He doesn't need a gun. He sovereignly and unchangeably determined [the reprobate's] nature from birth to be a God-hater, from birth. He's determining what [the reprobate's] will is from birth. He controls what [the reprobate] wants to do. He controls [the reprobate's] desires, by sovereign decree."
Basically, in Calvinism, God gives the reprobate a "magic potion" (an unregenerated sinner-nature) that comes only with the desires to sin... and so that's the only thing they can want to do... which means it's the only thing they can "choose" to do... all by His decree and orchestration. And Calvinists think this isn't "forcing" them to sin.
But all Calvinists really do is add an extra step between God and "forcing sin" to hide God's causation of sin in Calvinism: God gives the sinner-nature to reprobates and then the sinner-nature forces them to sin. And they think this gets God off the hook for causing sin. It doesn't. (Unless you've been brainwashed into Calvinism.)
Because either way, the reprobate still had no choice or control about it. They're still doing what God pre-planned and willed and caused them to do, according to Calvinism. They couldn't do anything differently and couldn't even want to do anything differently, and yet God punishes them for it. For doing exactly what He planned. And this is what Leighton was pressing James on, trying to get James to explain and answer. No wonder James kept weaseling out of giving a clear, honest answer.]
Robin Schumacher (The Christian Post article "If God wants everyone saved, why isn't everyone saved?"): "God’s passion for His glory takes priority over the salvation of everyone... God gets glory when He showcases His justice and wrath in the same way He does when He distributes His mercy... [God] desires to put His justice on display with those He allows to continue in their chosen sin. ["Allows" and "chosen" are deceptive words because Calvi-god predetermined that the non-elect would have the unregenerated nature which comes only with the desire to sin and reject him, which means the non-elect only have the ability to desire to sin and reject him, which means they can only "choose" to sin and reject him. No other options or abilities are possible for them. They cannot change their nature, and so they must follow the desires of their Calvi-god-given nature. They "choose" to sin and reject him because Calvi-god predestined that it's all they could choose. That's not truly merely "allowing" anything, and it's not true "choice!"] He receives glory in this as well... This is the answer, then, as to why everyone is not saved and what God desires more than everyone’s salvation... what God desires most – His glory that comes from displaying both His mercy and justice on those He chooses."
[Calvinists believe that God's greatest priority - His greatest reason for making people - is to get more glory for Himself... and that He gets it through ordaining sin and predestining people to hell. They think this is why people are in hell: for God's glory.
I, however, tend to think that God has a different "greatest priority, greatest reason for making people." I don't think it's to "get more glory," as if He doesn't have all the glory already, as if He's like some insecure king who needs to walk around seeking, demanding, and creating opportunities for more glory because he's unfulfilled with the amount he already has. The way I see it, He is the highest Being there is, the most glorious, and He will be glorified no matter what... and He knows it. And so He doesn't have to walk around proving it to Himself or others. And so "getting more glory" isn't what He truly wants, because He already has it all. [Aren't Calvinists actually minimizing God's glory by claiming He needs sin to be more glorious, as if He wasn't already fully glorious and glorified?]
And so what I think He truly wants - His great priority - is to love and to be loved (which is also reflected in the two greatest commands: love God and love others). This is something He didn't already have: love relationships with people, an eternal family that included more than just the members of the Trinity.
I think God created people not for more glory but because He is a relational being who wants an eternal family of people who want to be with Him, who choose to love Him, and who He can love in return. And in order to have this - to have love-relationships that are truly meaningful, valuable, enjoyable, joy-filled, and glorious - He needed to allow people to decide for themselves if they want to love Him and accept His love for them, or not. And this can't be forced - because forced love is no love at all. And so He made people with free-will, the ability to decide and choose for themselves. And a natural, inevitable consequence of this is that there will be people who reject Him and end up in hell: eternal separation from Him.
This is why people are in hell - not because God's greatest goal is glory obtained through damning people, but because His greatest goal is love (and the joy and glory that comes with love) obtained through creatures who voluntarily choose to love Him.
He didn't create people so that He could get more glory through their eternal damnation. He created people because He wants to love people and be loved in return, voluntarily, and this meant He had to give us the free-will to decide, which means that many of us will reject Him and end up in hell. This is the way it has to be if true love is God's goal in creating people in the first place, to have an eternal family of people who choose to love Him and to accept His love for them.
This is just my idea. And I think it makes sense and upholds His good, holy, loving, just, righteous character. And it better explains why people are in hell. They're in hell not because He wanted them there, but because He wanted them in heaven voluntarily. And that meant offering Himself to all of us and making it possible for all of us to have a relationship with Him, but ultimately letting us decide for ourselves.]
Joel Beeke ("How do we glorify God?"): "The desire to glorify God supersedes even the desire for personal salvation in every truly pious person." [What!?!]
Steven Lawson ("Theology for the glory of God"): "... This points back to eternity past, when God designed His master plan for whatever would come to pass. God is the Author of His eternal purpose... which includes everything that will occur... Long ago, God chose His elect... God brings to pass “all things” that He planned... Nothing happens, not even the smallest movement, apart from His sovereign purpose... God directs everything toward His own glory... All that He orchestrates within history is to demonstrate the greatness of His name... All that He does in salvation to rescue perishing sinners is for the praise of the glory of His grace... Everything has this highest end: soli Deo gloria—for the glory of God alone. [Which, according to the comprehensiveness of "everything," would also mean that the reprobation of the non-elect is for God's glory.]... The One who created and controls all things, who converts all His elect, deserves all the praise. [Or put another way: the One who reprobates the non-elect to hell, who causes them to remain unbelievers, deserves all the praise.]"
Greg Gilbert ("Why hell is integral to the gospel"): "the doctrine and reality of hell actually throws the glory of the gospel into sharp relief for us. It helps us to understand just how great God really is [if you ignore the fact that Calvi-god predestined all sin and unbelief], how sinfully wretched we really are [by Calvi-god's decree], and how unutterably amazing it is that he would show us grace at all [well, some of us, the lucky ones who were graciously not forced to be unrepentant sinners]....
We may want to minimize our sin, or excuse it, or try to argue our consciences down. But the fact that God has declared that we deserve eternal torment for those sins should remind us that they are not small at all. They are enormously evil. [And yet Calvinists call God "good, trustworthy, just, righteous, praise-worthy, etc." even though He, in Calvinism, is ultimately responsible for all that evil. Where's the line between Calvi-god and Satan when both want sin to happen, get glory for sin, want people in hell, deceive people, etc.?)...
Hell shows us how immovably and unimpeachably just God really is [if you call it justice for God to punish people for what He created them to do].... If God is to continue being God, he cannot simply set justice aside and sweep sin under the rug. He must deal with it—decisively and with exacting justice. [He did - by sending Jesus to pay for our sins.]...
The Bible tells us that on that day, when God sentences his enemies to hell, the whole universe will recognize and acknowledge that what he has decided is unimpeachably just and right.... We may not understand it fully now, but one day hell itself will declare God’s glory.... In fact, the horrific nature of what we have been saved from only intensifies the glory of what we have been saved to. Not only so, but as we see ever more clearly the horror of hell, we look with ever more love, ever more gratitude, and ever greater worship to the One who endured that hell for us and saved us. [And ever more horror that Calvi-god predestined people to go there, that he forced them to be sinning unbelievers, then pretended to offer them salvation that was never intended for them, and then punished them for rejecting his fake offer and for being the sinners he made them be. If Calvinists trust, love, praise, and worship a god like that, then that's tragic.]
Mayhue and Johnson in an interview with John MacArthur ("Election and Predestination: The Sovereignty of God in Salvation")
Mayhue: ... Calvinism becomes kind of the target for everybody's objections. And—but there's a brand of Calvinism that's called 'double predestination.' That means that God, by his decisive will, elected some to heaven and some to hell before the foundation of the world... [But] man is held responsible for his sins not because he's not elect, but because he's responsible for his sins. And it's on the basis of his sin, which hasn't been cared for by Christ, that he's consigned to hell...
Johnson: Just to clarify that: The error there I would call equal ultimacy; that God—the idea that some people have is that God appoints some people to heaven, some people to hell, and then He is as active in making those people on their way to hell evil, as He is active in making those people on their way to heaven good. And obviously, Scripture doesn't teach that or wouldn't affirm it. That's a doctrine I would call equal ultimacy. There's a—there's a sense in which, if God chose whom He would save and before the foundation of the world, left everyone else, passed over them, left them in their sins, then their destiny is determined as well. It's determined. But it isn't by any active effort on God's part that they are made evil. [But Calvi-god did actively create them to be unbelievers who want to sin and reject him. He did actively harden their hearts, blind their eyes, and prevent them from being able to believe. It'd be like a man pushing a child off a cliff and actively removing all the things that could break the child's fall or help the child climb to the top... and then, when the child splatted all over the ground at the bottom, the man claims "But I didn't actively make the child fall to their death. Gravity did that."] It's their own fault...
Mayhue: ... And the other thing that people stumble over: If God is sovereign, and He is, if He predestined, and He did, if He elected, and He did, and if man is responsible, and they are, then how do you reconcile that? [Calvinists can't reconcile this because they have terrible, unbiblical definitions of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. You can't reconcile or make sense of hogwash.]
... the Bible doesn't tell us this. It tells that God's sovereign, man is responsible, when we get to heaven he'll tell us something else that'll make sense. [Translation: "Accept the terrible, contradictory things we say now, and wait until you're dead for it to make sense." How convenient!]
... No matter where you go, God is sovereign, God's determinative; man is responsible, and man participates with his will. But he doesn't have free will to determine, and he doesn't have free will to override." [In Calvinism, man is only "free" to choose what God predetermined he'd choose. No one but Calvinists would consider that true free-will.]
Jim Hamilton, 9Marks ("How does hell glorify God?"): "Hell is about God keeping his word. That God sends the wicked [whom Calvi-god ordained to be wicked] to hell shows God to be faithful and just. If God does not enforce the terms he has set, he does not keep his word and he is unfaithful. [Could you really trust a god anyway who causes people to do things he commands them not to do (sin, reject him)... and who prevents people from doing things he commands them to do (repent, believe, obey)... and who pretends to offer salvation to those he never intended to save in the first place... and who gives some non-elect people evanescent grace to trick them into thinking they're really saved when they're not just so he can damn them more? If that's faithful and just, I'd hate to see unfaithful and unjust!]
If he does not send the wicked to hell, he has not upheld his own righteous standard and he has not been just. If he does not punish rebels in hell, the righteous are not vindicated. In fact, if there is no hell, we might conclude that the righteous were wrong for having trusted God...
Hell glorifies God.
Do you object to this?... You are a creature in the Creator’s work of art. Accept it. He is the Creator, not you... God punishes the wicked in hell to uphold justice against all who refuse [by Calvi-god's decree] to repent of sin, glorify him as God, and give thanks to him..."
Richard Blaylock (Gospel Coalition, "The Doctrine of Reprobation"): "Reprobation is the Augustinian/Reformed doctrine that God has eternally decreed (1) to refrain from extending saving grace to particular individuals and (2) to judge them according to the strict standards of divine justice... God decrees that certain individuals will be justly punished for the purpose of magnifying God’s justice and grace and that this punishment is (in some aspects) according to his good pleasure... [And here comes the manipulation...] [The doctrine of] reprobation encourages radical submission to God’s word. By summoning us to believe a doctrine that is so dread-inspiring, so counter-intuitive, and so contrary to our man-centered instincts, the passages that teach reprobation train us to place our hearts and minds completely under the authority of God’s word."
[If someone can manipulate us into thinking that it's good, godly, humble, submissive, and God-honoring for us to shut off our critical-thinking skills, turn off our red-flag radars, and just eat whatever disgusting, contradictory, evil-sounding garbage they spoon-feed us, then there's no limit to the "dread-inspiring, counter-intuitive, contrary" hogwash they can brainwash us into accepting. How do you think cults operate and take over people's minds!?! (See my "9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult".]
