Losing Patience With Micro-Predestinationists

I saw an online friend being pressured by the advocates of arbitrarily forced predestination. They are the ones who will accuse us of denying God's omnipotence if we venture to disagree with them on HOW GOD USES that omnipotence. But I refuse to be browbeaten by this false accusation. I happen to worship a God Who doesn't revel in plain raw power so totally as to leave no space for mercy or love. 

Calvinists always claim that everything in their doctrinal system is "just what's right there in Scripture." What this means in actual fact is that they READ CALVINISM INTO Scripture, then claim to have "discovered" it there. The prooftexts they lean on most heavily, actually DON'T support their position.

For instance, we know from Scripture that God hardened Pharaoh's heart during the time of the plagues hitting Egypt. Micro-predestinationists love this one. But stating that Pharaoh's heart was hardened AT THAT TIME is not an absolute statement that Pharaoh COULD NOT POSSIBLY have come to repentance and salvation at some later point. Mind you, I don't think it's likely that he ever repented, but this is not the same thing as it being inherently impossible for him to have repented before he died. Calvinism requires Pharaoh's destiny to be hermetically sealed, externally controlled all the way without Pharoah ever having any say-so; but that's what Calvinism requires, not what the Bible requires.

Likewise, it was declared before Esau was born that he would have to serve his younger brother, and micro-predestinationists want this to support a contention that Esau was damned to Hell in advance. But Calvinist language is the only language in which "having to serve your younger brother" is synonymous with "being damned in advance, with no possibiity of being saved ever." And any honest person who understands the way God speaks about nations in the Old Testament, knows that "Esau I have hated" is talking about EDOM, the nation Esau FOUNDED.

Calvinists claim to be piously concerned for God's glory, anxious that His sovereignty be recognized. That's what they say for public consumption. But in reality, what they're anxious for is the emotional security of believing that everything everywhere is controlled and scheduled and mapped out and boxed in. If they didn't have this insecurity problem, they could easily see what so-called "Arminians" can easily see: the common-sense fact that God's sovereignty does not DEPEND on damning people for literally no reason. God can give His creatures real free will, the power of meaningful choice, without losing even the least little bit of His sovereignty, because, well duh, it's Himself sovereignly CHOOSING TO GIVE that gift of choice. Being infinitely wise, He can work around it and still achieve His purposes. If humans cannot at any point make a decision which is THEIR decision and which does have a bearing on whether they are saved, then they are passive recipients of arbitrary outside action, and are playing no part in the chain of cause and effect. 

Which would mean that damning them is literally done FOR NO REASON-- just because God happened to feel like it.

Given this view of divine justice, there is a humorless absurdity in the way Calvinists define "mercy." They say it's mercy when God allows doomed "non-elect" sinners to live their lives for a while, AS IF there might be hope, when all the time He's planning to spring the terrible surprise on them, without ever giving them any chance to be converted. This IS NOT mercy, it's a cruel cat-and-mouse game, in which hellfire will utterly negate the pretense of mercy.

Calvinists are the only people I know who have any interest in using the word "Arminian" as a valid group label. They do this to trivialize and marginalize every non-liturgical Christian (sometimes liturgical ones too) who takes at face value the countless appeals the Bible makes to human choice. But I do not hold even one conviction, on any detail of any subject, which depends even slightly on the writings of James Arminius. I can TRUTHFULLY say that it's right there in the Bible.

I mean, come ON already: at the end of the Book of Joshua, does it say "God will FORCE YOU to choose whom you will serve"? In Revelation, does Jesus say, "Behold, I am smashing your door off its hinges"? Well, as for that, I've known a Calvinist to argue with a straight face that Jesus in Revelation DID mean He would in effect break in the door by force and MAKE the person inside submit to Him. But the truth is simply too obvious. Every time any version of the sowing-and-reaping principle is presented in God's Word, our own causal connection to our destiny is being confirmed. Because if we don't have some volitional say in what we are sowing, then WE'RE NOT sowing anything. Rather, something is BEING sown without our consent; our presence in the general vicinity of the field is a coincidence, having nothing to do with action by us. In which case, there IS NO moral factor in our existence. We have merely been plunked down into a situation over which we never had any influence; and God might as well punish molecules for containing electrons, as punish us for anything.

Here is where Calvinists will choose to think that I'm denying human sinfulness. I'm not. But the only way my argument could be refuted would be if all the Calvinist prooftexts DID mean what Calvinists want the prooftexts to mean, and they don't. I know quite well that people are sinners; but I also know that the spiritual situation IS NOT about God making us plastic toys which can't DO anything, then raging at us for BEING what we could never have avoided being.

What Calvinists pigeonhole as "Arminianism" is in reality the more complete understanding of Scripture. For understanding that God can FIT the element of real free will INTO His plans does not at all diminish His ever-so-emphasized-by-Calvinists sovereignty. God's actions don't need to be meaningless, to be sovereign.

I have never said that our being given the power to refuse or accept salvation made us WORTHY OF salvation; still less have I said that we have any power to produce our salvation. But granting us the freedom of response to His initiative gives a greater legitimacy to God's judgment than "Might makes right." Recognizing the screamingly obvious Biblical truth of human choice takes nothing away from God; but absolute externally-imposed predestination, by making judgment meaningless, takes ALL OF GOD'S GOODNESS away from Him, leaving nothing but "I can do this because I want to and you can't stop Me."

Now, THAT'S a matter of genuine concern for God's glory, instead of the Calvinist insecurity which can't rest easy unless everything is chained  up and clamped in a vise.

Calvinists, ever eager to have the last word, will retort with attempted Gotcha's like quoting "For all have sinned." They will be hoping no one notices that their standard prooftext barrage IS NOT ANSWERING the points I've made. Again, I have not denied God's sovereignty; I've merely argued that His USE of His sovereignty conforms to His love and kindness, rather than being an exercise in cruelty which drains the word "grace" of any meaning.