Alana 5U (Hell and God's glory/"justice")
This series is loosely based on this 14-minute video from Alana L.: 5 Signs Your Loved One is Becoming a Calvinist
Point #5 still:
U: "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."
So, Why?
So why does Calvi-god predestine/ordain/cause evil, sin, and unbelief? Why do Calvinists fight so hard to protect and promote their belief that he does this?
Because, as I've pointed out in other posts, Calvinists think he does it all for his glory.
[I can admire that Calvinists desire to humbly glorify God. But what I can't admire is that they've allowed this desire to be used against them, against God, tricking them into unbiblical doctrines and a false gospel which destroy God's character.]
And how does Calvi-god get glory from predestining sin, evil, and unbelief?
Well, if there was no sin, no unbelievers, then he couldn't show off his wrath and "justice" against sin - and so a big part of him would lie dormant, unused, unpraised. And so he needed/created sin, evil, unrepentant sinners ("the non-elect") so that he had people to hate and to punish (and other people to love and redeem: "the elect"), so that he could show off his wrath and "justice" against sin, allowing him to fully exercise all his attributes and get glory/praise for it.
I know what you're thinking: "That sounds a little far-fetched."
Well...
William Perkins (1558-1602, The Workes of That Famous and Worthy Minster of Christ in the Universitie of Cambridge): "God before all worlds did purpose to hate some creatures...for the manifestation of his justice"
John MacArthur ("Divine Providence: The Supreme Comfort of a Sovereign God"): "I think God, in putting Himself on display for His own glory, necessarily had to allow for evil, or a whole aspect of His nature would never have been manifest. It would never have been known, and He would never have been praised for it. And that is this: If there’s no sin, then there’s no redemption on the one hand, and there’s no judgment on the other hand. It’s only when you have sin, it’s only when you have fallen people that God can show His wrath [against the non-Calv-elect]—which is an essential part of His nature for which we give Him glory—and God can show His mercy and His compassion and His grace [for the Calv-elect]... [before sin] there was no opportunity for God to demonstrate this massive part of His nature that we exalt: His compassion, His love, His mercy, His grace, His lovingkindness, His forgiveness, His tender-heartedness [these are only for the Calv-elect, which is why they sound so positive and pleasant]. All of those things, to be put on display so that God could be eternally glorified, had to permit evil; otherwise, those things would never have been manifest." [But Calvi-god doesn't just "permit" evil. He preplans, decrees, orchestrates, causes it. Very different.]
Rev. Angus Stewart, Covenant Protestant Reformed Church ("Does God really desire to save the reprobate?"): "God does not love [the reprobates]... All who are reprobated, God hates. God does not desire to save them... In God’s purpose it brings glory to Him. It magnifies His justice... God judged that it was good not to save these people but to punish them for their sins... It was a sovereign choice of His, and it pleased Him. To say it pleased God means that God desired to do it; that is what He willed and wished and wanted to do."
R.C. Sproul Jr. (watch The Church Split's video: "Calvinism's Most DISTURBING claim yet: This Is Monstrous Theology") says that God ordained the kidnapping, torture, rape, and strangulation-to-death of a 10-year-old girl, and that the little girl "received the judgment from God she had earned." According to Sproul Jr, this was justice. Godly, "deserved" justice.
Likewise, a Calvinist in a clip in an Idol Killer video ("Why Calvinist Apologetics FAIL") responds to an atheist's comment about God not feeding starving children with "Yes, thanks for pointing out the obvious. We also recognize that those children don't deserve any food. They deserve much worse for their sins. They should repent and believe the gospel." So children "deserve" to starve - and much worse than that - for their sins: Calvi-justice! [Watch from 4:40 to 5:21 to see this and the Sproul Jr. comment above. And, yes, John Calvin would agree that God sovereignly controls, for His pleasure, which babies starve because their mothers couldn't provide enough milk (from Institutes of the Christian Faith, book 1, chapter 16): "Indeed, if we do not shut our eyes and senses to the fact, we must see that some mothers have full provision for their infants, and others almost none, according as it is the pleasure of God to nourish one child more liberally, and another more sparingly." So starvation is a not only deserved punishment for their sins, but it pleases Calvi-god to starve babies, specifically-chosen babies. And, yes, there are Calvinists who believe that even babies deserve hell for their sins (and if not for their own sins, then the sin of Adam passed down to them). See "Calvinism on infant damnation." So in Calvinism, babies and children "deserve" not only starvation, torture, rape, and strangulation, but also eternal damnation - for being the wretched, depraved sinners they are.😕😖😡]
Randy Alcorn ("Hell: Eternal sovereign justice exacted upon evildoers"): "Hell is not evil... Hell is morally good, because a good God must punish evil [yeah, but does a "good" God predestine/cause evil?]..... It saddens me to think of people suffering forever. But if there were no Hell, that would diminish the very attributes of God that make Hell necessary..."
Another reason Calvi-god gets glory for creating the reprobates is that the Calv-elect will praise him when they realize how good they have it by comparison, how wonderful it is that they won the "salvation lottery" and don't have to spend eternity in hell like the reprobates.
It's really very sick when you think about it. Would you hate, beat, and starve one of your children just so the other child could feel more loved, special, and thankful that they weren't hated too? Would you praise and glorify a dictator who tortured, starved, and killed most people just so the favored "chosen few" could feel special, grateful, and loved by comparison? That's not glorious or praiseworthy. That's sick!
But in Calvinism...
[*In this article, MacArthur also says "I didn’t invent this. This doctrine [of limited atonement] goes way back, back to the Reformation, back to John Owen, and even back to Charles Spurgeon." So... not back to Jesus or Paul or biblical times, but to the 1500's!?!😕 (And see the additional footnote about a limited atonement at the end of this post.)]
Robert Murray M'cheyne, Monergism ("Vessels of wrath fitted to destruction", from a sermon preached in 1843, talking up the "good" reasons for the damnation of the non-elect]: "Some of you, I think, are going to hell, and some, I trust, are going to heaven; and doubtless it is best it should be so... Every one of you will be to the glory of God. You will be made to glorify him in one way or another...either a beacon of wrath or a monument of mercy.... This seems to be the reason why there are vessels of wrath.... the destruction of the vessels of wrath will be no grief to the vessels of mercy.... The redeemed will have no tears to shed; and here is the reason - the very destruction of the wicked makes known the riches of divine grace."
Robert Golding [Themelios, Vol 46, Issue 1, "Making Sense of Hell"]: "Jonathan Edwards taught that the saints in heaven will rejoice over the damnation of their unbelieving family members in hell because they will be witnessing the justice of God in glorious display.... Traditionally, Christians [Calvinists!] have taught that the necessity of hell is such that, without it, God would not be fully glorified since his justice would not be fully manifest.
In this vein Edwards said that 'mercy and grace are more valuable on this account. The more they [that is, the saints in heaven] shall see of the justice of God, the more will they prize and rejoice in his love.'... I have sought to show that the reprobate are so hellish that any fond feelings for them (as the universalists seek to evoke) are misplaced...."
Paul Washer (“The Gospel is only Good News to a needy man”): “If you reject Christ, then the moment when you take your first step through the gates of hell, the only thing you will hear is all of creation standing to its feet and applauding and praising God because God has rid the earth of you. That’s how not good you are."
R.C. Sproul (start at the 4:45-minute mark in the Idol Killer video "James White Responds - Infant Salvation?"): "Don't you know that when you're in heaven, you'll be so sanctified that you'll be able to see your own mother in hell and rejoice in that, knowing that God's perfect justice is being carried out."
Jim Hamilton, 9Marks ("How does hell glorify 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 to repent of sin [by Calvi-god's decree], glorify him as God, and give thanks to him..."
[And yet Ez. 18:23 says that God Himself does not take any pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that He'd rather they turn from their evil ways and be saved. And Luke 15:10 says that angels rejoice when even one sinner repents. But interestingly, I find no verse saying that they rejoice when someone is damned or that God is pleased by it. But apparently Calvinists think that everything and everyone should - and will - take pleasure in the death and destruction of the wicked, just like Calvi-god does. That's sick.]
Who we worship says a lot about who we are. And these are the kinds of things Calvinists celebrate. This is the kind of god Calvinists praise, trust, love, and emulate - a god who preplans, orchestrates, and causes all the sin, evil, and unbelief in the world (things he commanded us to not do) and who then punishes us for doing what he predestined, things we had no real choice about or control over. And they call this "justice" and "a good God."
But if we question, doubt, or pushback against their views on this, Calvinists accuse us of being unhumble and of fighting God, saying that we have no right to question or challenge these teachings but that we must simply accept them because they said so "God is God and He can do whatever He wants" and it's "what the Bible teaches" and "it's for God's glory," yada, yada, yada.
In fact, the best they can do to our very serious objections is manipulative non-answers like these:
John Piper (Is double predestination biblical?): "Human beings are morally accountable, even though they do not have ultimate self-determination. There is no injustice with God. [Of course not, but there is injustice with Calvinism's horrible caricature of God!]... 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. This is not a logical contradiction, which so many try to make it out to be. It is a mystery." [If it's such a "mystery" that Calvinists cannot understand it, then there's no way they can declare that it's not a contradiction. If they don't understand it enough to know what it is, then they can't declare for sure what it isn't.]
[For more, see "A Calvinist's best defense of their worst doctrine". And for a response to the Calvinist view of "the potter and the clay," see "When Calvinists say, 'But Romans 9!'", under "verses 19-21".]
But we non-Calvinists are not fighting God; we are fighting Calvinism's corrupted view of God. We are not denying God's Word; we are exposing and countering the damage Calvinism does to God's Word.
And contrary to what Calvinists think, I think that Calvinism's teaching that God predestines people to hell and "ordains" sin, evil, and unbelief actually does the opposite of glorifying Him and showing His love. I think (as I've said many times) it destroys His good, righteous, just, trustworthy, gracious, loving character.
And furthermore, I think...
1. Calvinism contradicts what God Himself says about how He chose to demonstrate His justice and get glory when it comes to sin:
“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 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).
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 12:27-28)
God chose to demonstrate His justice and get glory not by predetermining/causing our sins or creating unrepentant people for hell, but by sending Jesus to the cross to pay for our sins. Was Jesus's death not enough? Did God also have to predestine/cause sin and unbelief for more glory and justice? If you think about it, Calvinism actually detracts from Jesus's sacrifice, as if it wasn't enough.
God says He demonstrates His justice by sending Jesus to the cross, to pay for sin and save people from hell. Calvinists say God demonstrates His justice by ordaining sin and predestining people to hell, the exact opposite of what God said.
Hmm, I wonder who's right?
2. Calvinism's view that God needed sin and sinners so that He could fully exercise His attributes makes His "God-ness" dependent on us and our sin. It suggests that He was somehow a reduced, limited God before humans and sin came to be. I mean, seriously, if God needed hell and people to punish in order to fully show off all His attributes, in order to be fully Himself, then what condition was He in before hell and sinners existed? Was He not "God" enough back then?
3. It also makes His glory dependent on sin and sinners (and Satan), as if He can't be fully glorified without the existence of sin. And so once again, what was He like before sin and sinners existed? Was He lacking in glory? Is His gloriousness proportional to sin? Is Satan an equal-but-opposite, necessary counterpart to God, as if God wouldn't be God, wouldn't be glorious, without him?
4. Calvinism blurs the lines between good and evil, between justice and injustice. They claim that it's good for God to ordain/preplan/cause sin for His glory (but that it's bad for people to do it), and that it's "justice" for Him to ordain evil and unbelief (giving people no choice or ability to do anything else) but then to punish people for it. However, that's the exact opposite of good and justice. Calvinism turns injustice into justice, evil into good. And we all know what the Bible says about that: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." (Isaiah 5:20) Blurring the line between good and evil, justice and injustice, is actually blurring the line between God and Satan. (And I wonder who benefits from that?)
5. And when it comes to God's wrath against sin, Calvinism puts the cart before the horse: Because it's teaching that Calvi-god's wrath was an eternal, pre-existing quality of his from the very beginning (even before sin entered the world), one that he simply needed to vent... and so he created sinners and predestined sin/unbelief so that he had something to throw his wrath at, to lash out at.
[And Calvi-god doesn't just lash out in wrath at the reprobates he predestined to hell, but he also lashes out at Calvi-Jesus on the cross. In Calvinism, Jesus didn't die merely to pay for sin and to give us a chance to be saved, but Calvi-god predestined Calvi-Jesus's death so that he could pour his wrath on him, to punish him for our sins, as if Calvi-god just had to have an outlet for all this wrath and anger he had inside.
(But if God needed to punish Jesus because He needed to vent His pre-existent wrath at Him, then doesn't that negate the idea that Jesus went to the cross voluntarily, as a sacrifice in our place? Because it can only be a voluntary sacrifice in our place if He didn't have to do it.😕)
So I guess pouring it on either Calvi-Jesus or on the non-Calvi-elect wasn't enough, huh? Calvi-god must've had so much wrath and anger from the beginning that he simply had to have both.😲
(And yet isn't it ironic that Calvinists are always waxing poetic about Calvi-god's "great, abundant love," as if it's his greatest quality? When it really seems like his wrath and anger must be so much greater and more abundant than his love, seeing as how not even Calvi-Jesus's death alone satisfied his wrath, but that he needed more outlets for it.😕 Calvinism, in multiple ways, diminishes Jesus's sacrifice.)]
But contrary to Calvinism which teaches that God's wrath led to the creation of sin/sinners (and Calvi-Jesus's death), I think that sin leads to wrath (and the need for justice). It seems to me that there was no need for wrath (or justice) until after rebellion occurred - and there will be no need for it when God defeats sin and evil forever in the end.
And so wrath is not an eternal characteristic of God. It wasn't present in the very beginning, needing an outlet, needing to be displayed. It was not the cause of or precursor to sin... but it is a response to sin, a result of sin. Likewise, God didn't predestine sin because He needed something to redeem, but redemption became necessary only after there was sin.
[I would think that before sin there was no wrath, and after sin is destroyed there will be no wrath. And so for Calvinists to make it an inherent and eternal characteristic of God's, it would mean either that Calvi-god loses a big part of himself when sin is destroyed forever in the end ... or that in order to keep exercising the "wrath" part of him, he must continue to have things to lash out at, even after making the new heavens and the new earth.😕]
And on the flipside, I don't think it's necessary for God to predestine/create/cause sin and unbelief just so He can pour out things like compassion, love, tender-heartedness, grace, mercy, etc. - because humans freely choosing on their own to sin is what makes all that possible and necessary. Those things are God's response to our freely-chosen sin, not the reason for predestined sin. (And if He had to have sin in order to show these things, then what happens when sin is gone for good in the end? Does He stop demonstrating things like compassion, love, tender-heartedness, grace, etc., when there's no sin to punish anymore?)
Calvinism's reasons for why sin, evil, hell, and unbelief exist don't hold up, and (as I said) they actually destroy God's good, righteous, just, trustworthy character. [For more along these lines, see my post "God's greatest priority (and why there's a hell)."]
Personally, I think C.S. Lewis (in The Problem of Pain, chapter 9) said is best - why there's sin and evil - and he says it in a way that makes sense and preserves God's good character: "... evil comes from the abuse of free will."
It's as simply as that.
God created a good creation and gave people the free-will ability to choose to follow Him or to rebel... and we used that free-will to rebel against Him, instead of obey Him.
It's our fault, not God's. We (and Satan) corrupted God's good creation by our own free-will, but He has found a way to redeem it and turn it to good.
God does not get glory by predestining sin and punishing people for it - because that actually ruins His character - but He gets glory when people use their free-will to love, follow, worship, trust, and obey Him. Accepting Jesus's free gift of eternal life that He paid so dearly for. (And if we choose not to do those things, He can still get glory somehow in spite of our sins, which is much different than Calvi-god getting glory by causing our sins.)
*Additional footnote about a "limited atonement": Commenter mrblonde624 (in a reddit post on Calvinist predestination) adds the idea that a limited atonement - Calvi-god picking only some for heaven but reprobating the rest to hell - is not really a bad thing because at least "God isn’t robbing unbelievers of something when He makes the atonement limited."😕
Translation: "So because the non-elect never had the chance for salvation/eternal life anyway - it was never offered for them, never meant for them - then at least Calvi-god isn't taking anything away from them when Calvi-Jesus didn't die for them."
Wow. Calloused.
And how easy it is to say that when you think that you are one of the Calvinist-elect!
But you'd better hope that you're not one of the supposed "elect" who actually and unknowingly got evanescent grace instead of real saving grace.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 3, ch. 2, section 11: "... the reprobate are sometimes affected in a way so similar to the elect, that even in their own judgment there is no difference between them... by Christ himself a temporary faith, is ascribed to them... impressed for a time with a fading faith... [God enlightens them] with a present sense of grace, which afterwards proves evanescent."
These unfortunate non-elect were handpicked by Calvi-god to get a fake, temporary faith that tricks them into thinking they are elect. And they themselves can't tell the difference between themselves and the true elect. They are "those whom he enlightens only for a time, and whom afterwards, in just punishment for their ingratitude, he abandons and smites with greater blindness." (book 3, ch. 24, Section 8).
This should strike absolute and unconsolable terror in the heart of every Calvinist, making them doubt their salvation/"Calvinist election" all the way until the end of their lives.
And it should make them wonder how they could ever trust a god like Calvi-god!
Most Calvinist theology books are huge, complicated, and convoluted, like Calvin's Institutes and Grudem's Systematic Theology and Piper's Providence. But all Calvinism really does with all their huge, complicated, convoluted theology books is try to put extra steps between Calvi-god and our sin/evil/unbelief, trying to bury the fact that he - not we - is really responsible for all sin and evil and unbelief. Calvinists seem to think that the more links they add to the chain and the more words they add to their word-salad, the more innocent Calvi-god is.
But, sadly, they're not just trying to trick us into thinking this. They've tricked themselves into thinking it, too. So they're actually being sincere when they spread these beliefs, convinced that it's what good, humble, God-honoring Christians must believe and affirm.
And that's what makes it the most dangerous - because they're fighting for things they really believe in (or at least things they think they need to believe in), not things they know are lies and deceptions disguised as truth.
But seriously, if Satan can convince us to believe that God predestines people to be unrepentant sinners and to commit the horrible sins they do - that He commands them to believe in Him and not sin while He also causes/orchestrates them to sin/reject Him and that He then punishes them for it because they "deserve" it - if Satan can convince us to think that in spite of all this, Calvi-god is still righteous, good, and trustworthy, that he is pleased with it all and glorified by it all, that this is true "justice," and that we are being "good, humble, God-honoring, Bible-believing Christians" if we affirm it all without resistance or pushback...
... then what evil, unjust, or nonsensical thing can he not convince us of?
I mean, this is as bad as it gets. Everything else is just gravy.
[The posts in this series will be added to the "Alana L." label as they get published.]
