Following are two more responses to my article “Do the Doctrines of Grace Affect Evangelism?” published on SBCToday 4/6/2014. The article is published here on my blog May 26, 2014 as well.
You said, “Also, most Calvinist would agree that God desires all people to be saved. Therefore, a Calvinist preacher can also stand before a crowd and say that God desires all to be saved.” In one of your later responses, you say, “I believe a person can hold to double-predestination (I prefer to use terms elect and reprobate) and still believe that God desires all to be saved.”
My dear brother, although you may believe this, it is impossible to reconcile that with the essence of Calvinism. Faced with the teaching of Scripture, which is consistent with what you have said, and the irreconcilability of such (and other similar biblical truths) with consistent Calvinism, is precisely why I eventually abandoned Calvinism. If you truly believe God desires all to be saved, then I pray you will seriously look at freeing yourself from the label Calvinist.
Let me clarify this irreconcilability. Calvinism believes in unconditional election of some, and those so elected for salvation are the only ones who receive the efficacious calling (selective regeneration, selective calling, etc.) that inexorably leads to a predetermined free exercise of faith unto salvation. Now, regardless of the order of decrees, etc., Calvinism teaches that this is inviolably sufficient for saving the elect, and without such no one can be saved. Further, Calvinism explicitly and ubiquitously teaches that God could have done this for the non-elect, which would have made them elect if He desired such. That being the case, it is impossible to be a consistent Calvinist and maintain that God genuinely desires (in any meaningful sense, which involves some action to that end) everyone to be saved.
One may seek to argue that the Bible does not teach that God genuinely (as evidence by His actions) desires all to be saved and be a Calvinist, or one may argue that the Bible does teach that God desires everyone to be saved and not be a Calvinist; however, one cannot be a consistent Calvinist and believe God genuinely desires all to be saved. This is precisely the heart and essence of the entire disagreement. If you truly believe that God genuinely desires everyone to be saved, that is a signal of the inadequacy of Calvinism and the need to abandon the system for the simple teaching of Scripture.
If you choose to continue to describe yourself as a Calvinist, I would love to hear how you reconcile your statement with the belief in unconditional election, selective application of efficacious grace, and compatibilism.
Also, please see my response to your comment regarding God sending people to hell to preserve their free will.
Another response to Mitchell is as follows:
You said in your various comments, “God sends them to hell because God wants them to keep their free will rather than save them” and “The same logic can be applied to Traditional view.” One could say, “I find it difficult to say that God desires all to be saved, yet God still allows some to go to hell in order to preserve their free will.”
First, please read my response to Daniel regarding the nature of man and libertarian free will.
Your lack of understanding is not due to our position, but rather from an inadequate view of what the possession of free will (otherwise choice) means.
The view of man being endowed with otherwise choice does not regard that as something that God gives to a human; rather, it is an intrinsic component of being human. Consequently, if you strip man of otherwise choice, you do not merely strip him of free will, but rather you strip him of being human and created in the image of God. Now you may disagree, and surely you do as a Calvinist, but do not superimpose aspects of compatibilism or false assumptions upon what we believe and clearly articulate (I do not believe you are intentionally doing this).
To wit, otherwise choice is not like a leash on a dog wherein if you remove the leash you still have a dog, but rather it is like the “dogness” of the dog; if you remove the dogness, you no longer have a dog. Accordingly, God would have to destroy man as He created him in order to force him to be saved against his will, which does not merely destroy the choice, but the human; thus, God would not be redeeming man, but a phantom man. To wit, it is an actual impossibility to either strip man of otherwise choice or force a new nature upon him because unlike compatibilism determinism this destroys man.
In contrast, according to compatibilism, God can force a new nature upon the person, which will result in a predetermined free choice, and man is still man because he was created as determined and still is. However, when God creates one with true otherwise choice, he gives him, as with Adam, the freedom and responsibility to either choose to remain in the garden or leave. God actually desired that Adam not sin, but He knew he would and comprehended it in His eternal creation-redemption plan. Free acts are the result of free moral persons acting through free will, but the source of the choice is the person and not something non-essential to being human. Therefore, God is not sacrificing people to preserve some extraneous component of man such as free will, but rather seeking to save people by providing everything needed. I do not impose permissables or concepts of what we mean by libertarian free choice upon compatibilism, and I would ask that you not impose compatibilist permissables upon libertarian free will. While we may still disagree, we can rightly reflect the position with which we disagree.
