As I was sitting here having just completed my last blog post I detected a critical hole in the argument. I don’t think the governor loved his son in my example. That’s not the problem. The core problem lies in my criterion for what it is to love someone: to love a person means that, if […]
election
Don’t you want your baby to feel alright? John Calvin meets the Rascals
Surely y’all ain’t too old to remember the Rascals singing “Good Lovin’.” In the song the singer begins by visiting the doctor about a particular ailment. The song does not spend much time describing the symptoms but the antidote soon becomes clear: Now honey please, squeeze me tight (squeeze me tight) Don’t you want your […]
Why God might save a Chinese over a German
PM raises a good question to my charge that election, and God’s love with it, is arbitrary within Calvinist theology. He asks: How do you derive [A] God’s selection of any arbitrarily chosen member of the set of elect, x, is an arbitrary choice having no reason at all. From this: [1] God’s reason for […]
Mom’s wooden spoon and God’s arbitrary love
Alex Jordan responded to my last post on the arbitrariness of God’s love for his elect creatures in Calvinism. Here is an excerpt from his response: ” “though God has not revealed why He sets His love on some unworthy objects rather than others, we do not not need to call this love arbitrary. The […]
How Calvinism decimates the divine love
Most Christians accept that God is omnibenevolent or maximally loving. And thus they believe the statement “God loves you” is true where “you” refers to any human person. Calvinists reject the divine omnibenevolence. Instead they are of two different opinions. To begin with, some argue that while God loves all people and thus “God loves […]
Calvinism and the ice cream man
Within Calvinism God wills that some people choose to reject him eternally. He does this so that others, those that God wills to accept him eternally, will have a richer experience of his sovereign majesty because they will simultaneously experience his love and mercy as well as his wrath and justice, albeit with the latter […]
Is God the ultimate utilitarian?
This is a sequel to “The great implausibility of Calvinistic Damnation Part 1. In that discussion we considered an argument for why God, on the Calvinistic view, opts to damn some people. According to that view the reason is because God necessarily always acts to manifest his glory most fully and it so happens that the […]
The great implausibility of Calvinistic damnation (Part 1)
Walter: “I don’t see how people being tormented for eternity with no chance of parole can ever be seen as a good thing. To claim that it is good if God chooses to do it simply reduces the word ‘good’ to meaningless gibberish.” Well, perhaps not quite gibberish. If you’re a good Calvinist* you recognize that […]
