Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Some problems with Unconditional Election

Dave Burke offered the following rather cogent argument about some of the problems of Unconditional Election (the "U" of TULIP):

U: 'UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION'

This doctrine asserts that God has already chosen those whom He intends to save. This choice is not made on the basis of individual merit or even faith, but is instead an arbitrary decision by God to extend mercy to some and withhold it from others.
Such a belief raises the question: how can individual Christians know that they are the ones whom God has chosen to save? The official answer from Calvinism boils down to 'Strictlyspeaking, they can't: but if you want to be on the safe side, exercising the fruits of the Spirit is probably a good idea.'

Lacking any objective means of confirming their assurance of salvation in this present life, Calvinists tend to identify the unsaved retrospectively, citing I John 2:19 whenever a former Christian turns from his faith:

--They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us, because if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But they went out from us to demonstrate that all of them do not belong to us.


For obvious reasons, this argument is vulnerable to the accusation that it relies on the 'No true Scotsman' fallacy