Objection Answered

Wintery Knight wrote, "My own reservation about Calvinism is that it requires that God create people who go to Hell. They go to Hell only because God chooses not to draw them to him. So there are people pre-destined to Hell for eternity who are not responsible since it’s God’s choice where they are saved or not."

This, I suppose, is one of the most common objections. I know it was mine for awhile and I remember lengthy conversations with my mother over this very same objection. Does God create people who are destined for hell?

First, I need to address the extremely inaccurate representations offered here (and in so many other cases). One is here: "They go to Hell only because God chooses not to draw them to him." First, they go to hell because they choose to reject Him. They go to hell justly condemned for their sins. As a matter of fact, the real question of justice is not "Why would God allow so many go to hell?" but "Why would God allow one not to?" It is neither a failure nor a refusal on God's part. Second, the Gospel is offered to all. Salvation is offered to all. Redemption is available to all.

There is another problem here that is so often missed. Most of the people who object to Calvinism on these grounds do admit that there is a group of people called "the elect", people chosen by God for salvation. The objection isn't that God doesn't choose. The objection is that God doesn't ordain people to hell. Now, I'm not chasing this objection for a rabbit trail. It becomes important. You see, if you admit that God chooses some for salvation by whatever means you care to allow, then you also have to admit that those who are not chosen ... are not chosen. Now, your means of choice may be that God chooses them on the basis of their choice of Him or that He chooses without their input, but it doesn't change the fact that a choice for the salvation of one group of people means that the other group are not chosen.

What is the difference between the chosen and the not chosen? In this case, the difference is that in one case God chose and in the other He didn't. The problem is one of symmetry. The perception of that original objection is that God takes definite steps to save one group and takes definite steps to damn the other. This isn't suggested anywhere in Scripture and Calvinism doesn't claim it. The idea is asymmetrical action. God acts to save some and allows the rest their own way. He intrudes in the lives of some and doesn't bother the others. But however you want to view it, if you admit to the very biblical category of "the elect", then there is the necessary conclusion of the "non-elect".

Still, the objection comes down to this: "It's God choice of whether or not they are saved." (Note that they are responsible for their own sin and so it is not God's responsibility that they go to hell -- it's their choice.) This is where the objection rubber meets the road. Is it God's choice or theirs?

We could examine it from various approaches. What does the Bible say? In discussing why Jacob was chosen over Esau, Paul says that it was "in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls" (Rom 9:11). Is that fair (the objection in Rom 9:14)? Of course it is because God says, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion" (Rom 9:15). The demand seems to be that God is obligated to have mercy and compassion on all. God appears to disagree. Further, Paul says that God's choice of whom to save "depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy" (Rom 9:16). Even more shocking is this allegation: "He has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills" (Rom 9:18). Not my words. Not Calvin's words. Paul's words. What is the next objection? The next objection is exactly the objection above: "Why does he still find fault?" (Rom 9:19). If God sovereignly chooses whom to save and does so without their will or effort and He even chooses to harden some, how can He hold anyone responsible? Paul's answer to that is a bit ominous. "Are you sure you want to ask that?" Okay, my version. He says, "Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?" (Rom 9:21). Paul comes to the same conclusion I did above. (Okay, I came to that conclusion because I read what Paul wrote.) The question isn't "Why would He save some and not others? Why would He make people He knows will go to Hell?" (And that conclusion is unavoidable, remember?) The question is "Why would He save even one?" Why do I say that? Because Paul characterizes the entire race of humans as "vessels of wrath prepared for destruction" and tells us that it is God's will to "show his wrath and to make known his power" (Rom 9:22). On that basis no one should be saved. This simply makes it all the more stunning when He "endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory" (Rom 9:22-23). So from a biblical perspective, is it God's choice or is it theirs? Well, if His choice does not depend on human will, then it is His choice.

Or we could examine the logical perspective. The aim of this objection is to say that we all have the opportunity to choose Christ. To which I say, "Yes! We all do." And that's as far as I go. The suggestion is "We all can", to which the Bible says, "Nay!" There are too many "cannots", too many "no man can's" to conclude this. There are too many conditions of natural man that prevent this. Look, what is the essence of free will? Free will is, essentially, doing what you please. If it's not what you want to do, it's not a free choice, right? If we are dead in sin, hostile to God, by nature children of wrath, inclined only to evil, not righteous, not good, not seeking God, not capable of understanding the things of God (shall I go on?), by what stretch of the imagination would the principle of "free will" include "I freely choose God"? No amount of wooing, no wise argument, no drawing will make a person described this way to, of their own free will, choose God. No! This vast bulk of hindrances that make up the sin nature have to be removed before any such free will choice can occur. And that is the act of God toward the elect. Logically, to call sinful humans to choose Christ is to call them against their wills, and to expect a positive outcome of such a venture would be to demand a violation of their wills.

What prevents them from coming to Christ? Nothing. Their own natures. Their own ... free choice. Their own culpable choice. What would it take to overcome such a problem? It would take new life, a new character. That new character would be able to make a new choice not previously available, would be able to exercise faith not previously operable, would be willing to come to Christ. Without it this new life, this new character, do you really expect a natural man to make the right choice? Only if you violate his will. Oh, and that's what we're trying to avoid, isn't it? See the problem?