Calvinism on unreached people
[This is taken from my post "As evil as it gets: Calvinism on babies and the unreached." I'm breaking that longer post up into shorter pieces, to focus on one topic per post. I left the same lettering from the original post. I'll intersperse this series with the Alana L series and Troublemaker series.]
Calvinism and unreached people:
As I said, take heart about all those babies going to hell because, as Calvinists say, it glorifies and pleases God. And not only that, but those "gently burning" babies will have lots of company in hell: All those who haven't heard the gospel or Jesus's name. They're all non-elect and predestined to hell, too, according to Calvinists:
ff. Vincent Cheung (“Infant Salvation”): "If someone dies without hearing the gospel, it just means that God has decreed his damnation beforehand."
gg. John Piper (Can an elect person die without hearing the gospel?): "You have to hear the gospel and believe in order to go to heaven. If you don’t hear the gospel and believe, you don’t go to heaven. If you don’t go to heaven, you weren’t among the elect."
hh. John Piper answering the question What happens to those who have never heard the gospel?: "They perish. And they perish justly... I don't believe, since the cross of Christ, that anywhere in the world there is a person outside the gospel who is a genuinely brokenhearted, repentant, truster in the grace of God. Rather they suppress the truth [as Calvi-god decreed], and since they suppress the truth they have, that will be the foundation of their judgment." [Translation: All people who never hear the gospel are hardened, unrepentant suppressors of the truth who need to be - and will be - punished."]
ii. John MacArthur, answering a question about if those on a remote island who never heard the gospel can be saved: "No, you can't receive salvation, except through Christ... If God had determined to save that guy in isolation, somehow He would see to it that the gospel arrived to him."
jj. SBC Voice (Missions and the fate of those who never hear): "One of the things that helps me is to realize that there are no 'innocent' persons out there that are condemned for the ill fortune of not hearing about Jesus. The Bible is clear that 'all have sinned' (Rom 3:23) and that all have rejected even the truth that has been revealed to them so that they are 'without excuse' (Rom 1:20). Further, if anyone is condemned apart from hearing and receiving the gospel, they are not condemned for not hearing the gospel. They are condemned for their sin and rebellion against a holy God in thought, word, and deed." [So even though the non-elect never had a chance to believe in Jesus, they are still condemned - not for not hearing the gospel, but for their sins, which also were predestined by Calvi-god.]
kk. Likewise, I read a comment from one Calvinist which was this: "The non-elect aren't punished for something they had no control over, but they are punished for the sin they willingly commit."
But the quick answer here is: "But their desire to sin is exactly what they had no control over, in Calvinism. It was ordained by Calvi-god. He gave them the sin-nature that made them want to 'willingly' commit sin, and they had no ability to resist it. Like a magic potion we're forced to obey." [Calvinism is nonsense!]
ll. Matt Smethurst from The Gospel Coalition (What happens to those who never hear the gospel?): "So will God condemn the innocent tribesman who has never heard the name of Christ? No, because there are no innocent tribesmen. Scripture simply does not picture fallen humans as having some vague but noble desire for mercy and forgiveness. Moreover, we seem to have an inescapable pull toward enacting our faith in ritual, liturgy, and sacrifice. So what does the man on the island do? In the imagination of the inclusivist, he just cries out for vague mercy and forgiveness, claiming no merits of his own. In the real world, however, he probably participates in a form of idolatrous folk religion that contradicts and undermines the gospel of grace [thereby proving he is non-elect and "earning" his predestined damnation, of course]."
mm. From the EFCA website: "What is the destiny of the unevangelized who have not heard of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ—can they be saved? Since the coming of God’s final work in Jesus Christ, Scripture speaks clearly of the need to hear and to believe the gospel. Among those capable of understanding the gospel, we affirm that we have no clear biblical warrant for believing that, since the coming of Christ, God has saved anyone apart from conscious faith in Jesus [which would also condemn infants and the mentally-handicapped who are incapable of making a conscious decision for Jesus]... While God could reveal Christ to some apart from the normal means of the ministry of the Word (e.g., through dreams or visions), we have no biblical warrant for believing that He will reveal Himself in that way to anyone... Because all have sinned and are deserving of God’s condemnation, we believe that we can be saved only by the atoning work of Christ, and we believe that we can be sure that people can be saved by that work only if they are told about it." [Though the EFCA officially says it has both Calvinist and Arminian churches under its umbrella, I think that just like the SBC, the EFCA has been aggressively hijacked by Calvinists lately.]
nn. Jordan Standridge (Where do people go who have never heard of Jesus?): "When we think about those around the world who have yet to hear the Gospel... We should remind ourselves about the perfect holiness and justice of God, who will be perfectly righteous to cast every unregenerate human being into Hell... People who never hear of Jesus go to Hell."
oo. David Platt (What happens to people who never hear the gospel?): "All people everywhere are guilty of sin before a holy God. Here's why this point is important. So many times this question is asked: 'Pastor, what happens to the innocent man or woman or child in this remote part of the world who's never heard of the gospel when they die?'
If you were to ask me that question, I would say, 'Without question, based on the Bible, those people go to heaven even though they've never heard the gospel. [Wait for it...] Without question, an innocent man, woman, child would go to heaven without ever hearing the gospel, because they have no need to hear the gospel. [Keep waiting...] If they're innocent of sin, they don't need to hear that Jesus died to save them from sin. If they're innocent of sin, they'll go straight to heaven. Of course they'll go to heaven.' [Still waiting...]
The only problem is those people do not exist. [There it is!]... There are no innocent people in the world just waiting to hear the gospel. There are guilty people all over the world - that's why they need to hear the gospel.
... He loves us and has made a way for us to be saved from our sin... The way is faith in Jesus... [But] people cannot put their faith in Jesus if they never hear of Jesus... Over two billion people cannot go to heaven if they don't have faith in Jesus, but they cannot have faith in Jesus if they don't hear about Jesus... If we don't go [to evangelize in the nations], they won't hear, they won't believe, they won't call and they won't be saved..." [Ergo, all those who do not hear the gospel or cannot respond to the gospel (this would include remote tribesman, babies, and the mentally-handicapped, wouldn't it?) are non-elect, predestined to hell.]
pp. John Piper (We are accountable for what we know): "I think this text carries a huge implication for understanding the justice of God in dealing with people around the world — some of who know God only through natural revelation rather than any gospel witness. They’ve never heard the gospel. In Romans 1:18-23 we see that every human being has enough knowledge of God to be held accountable before him at the judgment day.... Whenever people ask me, 'What about those who have never heard the gospel?' My answer, based partly on Luke 12, is that no one will be judged for not obeying revelation they did not have. We will all be judged according to the knowledge of the truth we have access to."
Note carefully that Piper is not saying that everyone has enough revelation of God through nature to be able to believe. He's not saying that they're being judged because they had a chance to believe but chose not to.
He's saying that the non-elect ("those who know God only through natural revelation rather than any gospel witness" - because, in Calvinism, all elect people will hear the gospel) have enough revelation of God in nature only to make them guilty for rejecting the evidence of Him in nature, guilty for their unbelief (even though it was predestined), but not enough to save them.
It's kinda like saying that your car is predestined to go 100 miles per hour. But the police - knowing that your car must go 100 miles per hour, that it's impossible for you to change it (because they're the ones who programmed your car to only be able to go 100 miles per hour) - post a "Speed Limit 5 mph" sign. The police didn't post it to make you change your speed, to help you, to save you - because they knew you couldn't reduce your speed - but they posted it only to make you guilty of speeding, to make you a lawbreaker, so that they can punish you like they always planned to do anyway.
That's what's going on here. In Calvinism, the revelation of God in nature is not to save the non-elect or to help them find Him, but it's to condemn them, to make them guilty.
qq. John Calvin even says it clearly, that God did not reveal Himself in nature to draw us to Him but to condemn us, to make us guilty for not seeing Him (Institutes, Book 1, Chapters 5-6): "Wherefore, the apostle, in the very place where he says that the worlds are images of invisible things, adds that it is by faith we understand that they were framed by the word of God (Hebrews 11:3); thereby intimating that the invisible Godhead is indeed represented by such displays, but that we have no eyes to perceive it until they are enlightened through faith by internal revelation from God. When Paul says that that which may be known of God is manifested by the creation of the world, he does not mean such a manifestation as may be comprehended by the wit of man (Romans 1:19); on the contrary he shows that it has no further effect than to render us inexcusable (Acts 17:27)."
As he says in Institutes, chapter 6 section 1, God gave revelation of Himself in nature (paraphrased) "in order to bring the whole human race under the same condemnation." So it's not to save us or help us find Him, but to ensure that we are damnable.
rr. Similarly, my ex-pastor said this in his June 22, 2014 sermon: "[Nature] screams out there's an Almighty God. So we call this 'general revelation.' Theologians call it 'natural revelation.' There is a certain amount of information about God that comes through creation and nature... But 'special revelation' is the information about God that can only be known through the Bible... [General revelation] is not enough information in order to lead someone to Christ as Savior. It is enough information to indict them on Judgment Day, but it is not enough information to save them."
ss. And again in a July 2015 sermon on what happens to those who don't hear the gospel (his reference verses were Romans 1:18-25): "General revelation is enough to indict us, but it's not enough information to save us... We must call on the name of Jesus to be saved... Lost sinners must hear the gospel and call on the name of Jesus... Those who've never heard are liable and they will face judgment someday..."
tt. And again in January 2016: "General revelation can’t lead you to Christ. It’s enough to inform you about God and to indict you, but it’s not enough to save you. That’s why Paul says that no one will have an excuse on Judgment Day... It’s exhilarating to be outdoors, but it’s not enough to lead you to saving faith. That’s why God gave us the Bible.... So what about those who never heard the gospel?... All people suppress the truth in their wickedness. That’s everybody on the planet…all people, to the most primitive tribal person you can imagine on the most remote island. Everybody suppresses the truth that there is an almighty, personal God they are accountable to… Unless the gospel is preached [to them], they can’t believe.”
[Non-Calvinists would say that the verse about "no one has an excuse" means that all people have the chance and ability to believe and be saved, even if all we have is God's general revelation, that God holds us accountable for how we respond to the information He gives us. And because we all have the chance and ability to believe - and because God gives us all enough revelation of Himself to prove He's real - there's no excuse for not believing in Him.
But Calvinists think that "no one has an excuse" simply means that even though Calvi-god predestined you to hell and ordained your sins/unbelief and prevented you from believing in him, that's no excuse, and so you'll still be punished for it, even though you had no control over it. Very different!]
uu. And again in July 2018: "What about the innocent native who never heard of Christ? Well...there's no such thing as an innocent native. All of us are born into sin and depravity... All people suppress the truth because of their sin and wickedness... All people know there's a God [because of general revelation]...so all people are without excuse... Those who never heard of Christ are damned for two reasons. One: They are born rebels and they sin throughout the course of their lives. And two: They're sinning in a floodlight of God's revelation of Himself."
In Calvinism, general revelation is only enough to make the non-elect damnable (and all those who never heard of Christ are non-elect), not enough to lead them to salvation.
(So why on earth would we thank God for His creation and for how creation points back to Him if it's the very thing that damns most people to eternal hell and torment? That's sick.)
