Clearly, God's mercy as Calvin understood it was very limited. He majors upon God's justice; and there is no disputing that God would be just in damning the entire human race. The real question, however, which we will come to in its own time, is whether God who is love would neglect to make salvation available to anyone. We believe that the Bible clearly declares God's love for all mankind and His desire that all should be saved. It is in defense of God's love and character that we propose to test Calvinism against God's Word.
According to Calvin, salvation had nothing to do with whether or not a person believed the gospel. No one could believe unto salvation without God regenerating and then producing the faith to believe in those whom He had chosen. This conclusion followed logically from Calvin's extreme view of human depravity, which he laid out in his first writings:
The mind of man is so completely alienated from the righteousness of God that it
conceives, desires, and undertakes everything that is impious, perverse, base, impure,
and flagitious. His heart is so thoroughly infected by the poison of sin that it cannot
produce anything but what is corrupt; and if at any time men do anything apparently
good, yet the mind always remains involved in hypocrisy and deceit, and the heart
enslaved by its inward perversity. [Calvin, Institutes, III: xxi-xxii]
By Total Depravity Calvin means total inability: if left to themselves, all men not only do not seek God but are totally unable to seek Him, much less to believe in Jesus Christ to the saving of their souls. He then declares that as a consequence of this total inability on man's part (some Calvinists define inability not as incapacity but as unwillingness), God causes some men to believe just as He causes all to sin. We must then conclude that God, who is love, doesn't love all men enough to rescue them from eternal punishment but reserves His love for a select few called the elect. This evident lack of love Calvin attempted to explain away by pleading the mystery of God's good pleasure, eternal purpose or will.
Some Calvinists, embarrassed by this teaching, attempt to deny that Calvin taught that God decreed the damnation of the lost from whom He withheld the Irresistible Grace which He bestowed upon the elect. Instead, they say that He simply "leaves the nonelect in his just judgment to their own wickedness and obduracy." [Canons of Dort (Dordrecht, Holland, 1619), 1, 6]
Like Augustine, Calvin says it both ways. Obviously, however, to allow anyone whom God could rescue to go to hell (no matter how much they deserved it) is the same as consigning them to that fate, a consignment which Calvin called "reprobation." Nor is there any question that, through what Calvinists call Irresistible Grace, their God could save the entire human race if He desired to do so. Surely Infinite Love would not allow those loved to suffer eternal torment - yet God, according to Calvinism, is pleased to damn billions. Such teaching misrepresents the God of the Bible, as the following pages document from Scripture.
In the final analysis, no rationalization can explain away the bluntness of Calvin's language, that it is God's "pleasure to doom to destruction" those whom He "by his eternal providence . . . before their birth doomed to perpetual destruction . . . ." This sovereign consigning of some to bliss and others to torment was a display of God's power that would, according to Calvin's way of thinking, "promote our admiration of His glory." [Calvin, Institutes, III: xxi, 1]
Here is an astounding doctrine, but there is no question that Calvin taught it. God is glorified in predestinating some to salvation and others to damnation, though there is no difference in merit between the saved and lost. That God would leave anyone to eternal torment who could be rescued, however, would demean God, since to do so is repugnant to the conscience and compassion which God himself has placed within all mankind!
At the same time that he dogmatically pronounced this doctrine, Calvin himself admitted that it was repulsive to intelligent reason. As in Roman Catholicism, Calvin sought to escape the obvious contradictions in his system by pleading "mystery":
Paul . . . rising to the sublime mystery of predestination . . . . [Calvin, Institutes, III: xii, 5]
. . . how sinful it is to insist on knowing the causes of the divine will, since it is itself, and justly ought to be, the cause of all that exists . . . . Therefore, when it is asked why the Lord did so, we must answer, Because he pleased . . . . Of this no other cause can be adduced than reprobation, which is hidden in the secret counsel of God. [Calvin, Institutes, xxiii, 2,4]
Calvin claims to derive the teaching from the Bible that God, to His glory, predestined vast multitudes to eternal damnation without allowing them any choice. In fact, while he was still a Roman Catholic he had doubtless already come to such a conclusion from his immersion in the writings of Augustine and the official (and badly corrupted) Roman Catholic Bible, the Latin Vulgate.
Spurgeon, though a Calvinist (whom Calvinists love to quote in their support) who at times confirmed Limited Atonement, was unable to escape his God-given conscience. His evangelist's heart often betrayed itself in the statements expressing a compassion for the lost and a desire for their salvation-a compassion that contradicted the Calvinism he preached at other times. For example:
As it is my wish [and] your wish...so it is God's wish that all men should be saved...he is no less benevolent than we are. [C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 26: 49-52]
It is impossible to reconcile that statement with the doctrine of Limited Atonement, which Spurgeon at other times affirmed. It is irrational to say that God sincerely desires the salvation of all, yet sent His Son to die for only some. But this, as we shall see, is just one of the many contradictions in which Calvinism traps is adherents.
Just as it is impossible to reconcile Limited Atonement with a loving God, it is also impossible to reconcile Total Depravity with Unlimited Atonement.
