Monday, March 28, 2011

Does God love the damned?


I see that the Society of Evangelical Arminians has allowed Thibodaux to repost a response to me that he originally posted on his own blog.

This is deceptive because I posted two subsequent responses to Thibodaux. Yet you wouldn’t know that from the SEA site.

Here they are:



What SEA did is sadly characteristic of what passes for Arminian morality. They love everybody on paper, but they only love their own in practice.

Since I already responded twice over to Thibodaux’s retread, I won’t repeat myself here. However, I might as well take the occasion to make an additional point.

In another recent post at SEA, the contributor made the following claim:

Even from our finite perspective, we know that universalism is not a possibility, because Jesus said that "there are few who find" the narrow gate which leads to life (Matt. 7:13-14). Christ's command to everyone is to enter "through the narrow gate," but only few will -- most people will follow the broad path which leads to hell.


If we combine this interpretation with the classical Arminian doctrine of divine foreknowledge, this means the Arminian God freely and knowingly created most human beings to spend eternity in hell. Put another way, he knowingly made only a few heavenbound sinners.

Assuming (arguendo) the Arminian interpretation of “every,” “all,” and “world,” in what sense does the Arminian God truly love the “world,” or truly love “all” sinners–when he clearly foresaw how the majority of men and women would suffer forever in hell in he made them, yet he went right ahead and made them with that dire outcome in mind even though he was in a position to spare them from that dire outcome?

Put another way, whatever God does, God intends to do. If he freely made the majority of the human race with their hellish future in full view, then he deliberately made them to go to hell. And that’s despite the fact that their hellish future was entirely avoidable.

God could preempt that outcome by never making them in the first place. And that would in no way violate their freedom, since nonentities have no freedom to violate–even if (arguendo) we define freedom in libertarian terms.

So it what sense does he love “everyone” when he dooms most of them to hell by making them? How is God acting in the best interests of “everyone” when most sinners will endure the worst-case scenario at his hands, even though that outcome was both foreseeable and preventable? 

1 comment:

  1. "If we combine this interpretation with the classical Arminian doctrine of divine foreknowledge, this means the Arminian God freely and knowingly created most human beings to spend eternity in hell. Put another way, he knowingly made only a few heavenbound sinners.

    Assuming (arguendo) the Arminian interpretation of “every,” “all,” and “world,” in what sense does the Arminian God truly love the “world,” or truly love “all” sinners–when he clearly foresaw how the majority of men and women would suffer forever in hell in he made them, yet he went right ahead and made them with that dire outcome in mind even though he was in a position to spare them from that dire outcome?

    Put another way, whatever God does, God intends to do. If he freely made the majority of the human race with their hellish future in full view, then he deliberately made them to go to hell. And that’s despite the fact that their hellish future was entirely avoidable.

    God could preempt that outcome by never making them in the first place. ...

    So it what sense does he love “everyone” when he dooms most of them to hell by making them? How is God acting in the best interests of “everyone” when most sinners will endure the worst-case scenario at his hands, even though that outcome was both foreseeable and preventable?"


    Hey Steve!

    I came up with this same argument by myself before!

    The Arminians that I presented this argument to were not happy with it.

    ReplyDelete