Commenting on the nature of God’s “love” for the reprobate in Reformed theology, Arminian theologian Leighton Flowers wrote the following:
No Bible believing Christian questions the truth that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). “The Lord is gracious and merciful; Slow to anger and great in loving-kindness. The Lord is good to all, And His mercies are over all His works” (Ps. 145:9). This biblical truth is simply undeniable, which is why some more moderate Calvinists feel the need to offer a rebuttal in defense of God’s common love for all people from the obvious implications of the Calvinistic worldview. But, can one objectively conclude that God’s treatment of the reprobate within the Calvinistic system is truly “loving” according to God’s own definition above?
· Is God patient with the reprobate of Calvinism, who He “hated” and rejected “before he was born or had done anything good or bad?”
· Is God kind to those he destines to torment for all eternity without any regard to their own choices, intentions, or actions?
· Does God honor the non-elect by allowing them to enjoy a little rain and sunlight before they spend an eternity suffering for something with which they had absolutely no control over?
· Is God not easily angered by those who are born under His wrath and without hope of reconciliation?
· Does God keep the record of wrongs committed by reprobates?
· Does the so-called “love” of God for the non-elect fail or does it persevere?
I must ask, as Dave Hunt so succinctly inquired, “what love is this,” and by what measure can it ever be deemed “good news!?” (Leighton Flowers, The Potter’s Promise: A Biblical Defense of Traditional Soteriology [Trinity Academic Press, 2017], 20-21).
In the same volume (p. 120 n. 114), Flowers answered the claim, popular amongst Calvinists, that election and reprobation need not imply double predestination (wherein God is active, not just in election, but reprobation [the “supralapsarian” view as opposed to the “infralapsarian” view wherein God is passive in reprobation—the difference is largely due to differences in the logical order of God’s decree]):
Some Calvinists argue against equal ultimacy (sometimes called “double predestination”). According to R.C. Sproul Sr., Equal ultimacy is the view that: “God works in the same way and same manner with respect to the elect and to the reprobate. That is to say, from all eternity God decreed some to election and by divine initiative works faith in their hearts and brings them actively to salvation. By the same token, from all eternity God decrees some to sin and damnation and actively intervenes to work sin in their lives, bringing them to damnation by divine initiative. In the case of the elect, regeneration is the monergistic work of God. In the case of the reprobate, sin and degeneration are the monergistic work of God. Stated another way, we can establish a parallelism of foreordination and predestination by means of a positive symmetry. We can call this a positive-positive view of predestination. This is, God positively and actively intervenes in the lives of the elect to bring them to salvation. In the same way God positively and actively intervenes in the life of the reprobate to bring him to sin. This distortion of positive-positive predestination clearly makes God the author of sin who punishes a person for doing what God monergistically and irresistibly coerces man to do. Such a view is indeed a monstrous assault on the integrity of God. This is not the Reformed view of predestination, but a gross and inexcusable caricature of the doctrine. Such a view may be identified with what is often loosely described as hyper-Calvinism and involves a radical form of supralapsarianism. Such a view of predestination has been virtually universally and monolithically rejected by Reformed thinkers.” Quote taken from: https://www.the-highway.com/DoublePredestination_Sproul.html [date accessed: 4/26/15].
But a Calvinistic interpretation of Romans 9 would be hard pressed to remain consistent in explaining the active work o God in loving Jacob is not ultimately equal to his hating Esau (vs. 13) given that it was supposedly a monergistic action prior to the twin’s birth. So too, the active work of “mercying” in contrast to hardening as interpreted by many Calvinists in verse 8 certainly appears to meet the “radical form of supralapsarianism” as defined by Sproul above, If mankind’s natural condition of total inability is brought to pass by sovereign decree, which no Calvinist could consistently deny, then how can the charge of equal ultimacy be denied with anything more than a distinction without a difference?
