Post by Dr James Ach on Jan 13, 2015 21:56:36 GMT 3
Part of the Calvinist doctrine of election is that God hates the unelect. Although many Calvinists will deny the accusation that they affirm God doesn't love everybody (which they attribute to merely different KINDS of love), Calvinist election ultimately ends up with God hating the unelected person BEFORE the foundation of the world. An infralapsarian Calvinist will likely complain "that's 'hyper' Calvinism", but again, even if the infras view is meted out to its uttermost logical conclusion, it still holds to the same view of God hating the unelect as a prior position before time.
I could post quote after quote of Calvinists to prove this (for the naive Calvinists who don't think this is a bona fide Calvinist view often heard in "Calvinists don't believe that") but most Calvinists GET this point, and merely play a game of semantics in trying to dodge the implications. But we are going to show you how this view of God is destroyed in ONE verse...Deuteronomy 7:10:
Now, if I agreed to pay you for an item, and I have never paid you for it before, I am simply PAYING you for the product. However, if you give me the money for the product, and just tell me to pay you back, then I am RE-paying you. When I RE-pay you, it is because what I am giving you NOW did not exist BEFORE I had the currency with the ability and means to pay you back.
In Deut 7:10, the hatred of God is RE-PAYED to the sinner who hates Him. However, notice as in the above analogy, THE SINNER'S HATRED OF GOD COMES BEFORE GOD'S PAYBACK! Not only is their destruction conditioned upon their hatred of Him, but it is also reactionary and responsive. IN other words, the condition of the hater did not exist as a result of God hating the hater first. God is reacting to the sinner's hatred of Him, which is hardly a possibility if God's hatred is supposed to be based on an eternal election that occurred before that sinner was even born.
TO speak of God REACTING to anything is a complete contradiction in terms to the Calvinist compatibilist model of freedom. Reaction implies a condition to be met first in time in order that is both actually and logically prior to the event that is the subject of the reaction. God is not reacting to events that have not taken place, thus His decision to hate this person could not have been based on any eternal decree of reprobation or even of a "passing over" (we have addressed the futility of the "passing over" argument on our website in an article "Would God Reprobate Perfect Human Beings?" because "passing over" requires God to cause Adam's sin in order to bring His decree to fruition, which means Calvinist election MUST be based on deliberate choosing of the elect as well as the unelect, not simply choosing an elect and passing over the rest passively).
Thus, Deuteronomy 7:10 proves that God never hated anyone without cause, or based on an uncaused cause, nor was it prior to the sinners hatred of God. To say that God caused the sinner's hatred is absurd given God's reaction to the sinner's hatred-God could not rightly RE-pay a sinner for his hatred because that would show that the necessary element of the sinner's hatred was an apriori facto and therefore God's REaction would not be responsive but a planned reaction (there's a huge difference between a predictable reaction and a planned reaction lest the Calvinist raise the ridiculous objection that God wouldn't know of this future event unless He planned on reacting to the sinner by causing their hatred and then reacting to it).
Had God hated these persons eternally before time, God would simply be PAYING this person for his rebellion and hatred against God, not RE-PAYING them for their hatred.
I could post quote after quote of Calvinists to prove this (for the naive Calvinists who don't think this is a bona fide Calvinist view often heard in "Calvinists don't believe that") but most Calvinists GET this point, and merely play a game of semantics in trying to dodge the implications. But we are going to show you how this view of God is destroyed in ONE verse...Deuteronomy 7:10:
"And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face."
Now, if I agreed to pay you for an item, and I have never paid you for it before, I am simply PAYING you for the product. However, if you give me the money for the product, and just tell me to pay you back, then I am RE-paying you. When I RE-pay you, it is because what I am giving you NOW did not exist BEFORE I had the currency with the ability and means to pay you back.
In Deut 7:10, the hatred of God is RE-PAYED to the sinner who hates Him. However, notice as in the above analogy, THE SINNER'S HATRED OF GOD COMES BEFORE GOD'S PAYBACK! Not only is their destruction conditioned upon their hatred of Him, but it is also reactionary and responsive. IN other words, the condition of the hater did not exist as a result of God hating the hater first. God is reacting to the sinner's hatred of Him, which is hardly a possibility if God's hatred is supposed to be based on an eternal election that occurred before that sinner was even born.
TO speak of God REACTING to anything is a complete contradiction in terms to the Calvinist compatibilist model of freedom. Reaction implies a condition to be met first in time in order that is both actually and logically prior to the event that is the subject of the reaction. God is not reacting to events that have not taken place, thus His decision to hate this person could not have been based on any eternal decree of reprobation or even of a "passing over" (we have addressed the futility of the "passing over" argument on our website in an article "Would God Reprobate Perfect Human Beings?" because "passing over" requires God to cause Adam's sin in order to bring His decree to fruition, which means Calvinist election MUST be based on deliberate choosing of the elect as well as the unelect, not simply choosing an elect and passing over the rest passively).
Thus, Deuteronomy 7:10 proves that God never hated anyone without cause, or based on an uncaused cause, nor was it prior to the sinners hatred of God. To say that God caused the sinner's hatred is absurd given God's reaction to the sinner's hatred-God could not rightly RE-pay a sinner for his hatred because that would show that the necessary element of the sinner's hatred was an apriori facto and therefore God's REaction would not be responsive but a planned reaction (there's a huge difference between a predictable reaction and a planned reaction lest the Calvinist raise the ridiculous objection that God wouldn't know of this future event unless He planned on reacting to the sinner by causing their hatred and then reacting to it).
Had God hated these persons eternally before time, God would simply be PAYING this person for his rebellion and hatred against God, not RE-PAYING them for their hatred.