Before I go any further on this topic, two points.
First, this issue is a very personal one for me. Calvinism calls into question, in my mind, the very character of God. As much as I have tried over the years to leave this question in the realm of "mystery", one of those unanswerable questions we'll understand someday in the sweet bye and bye, I find I cannot. I keep finding myself confronted with Calvinist assumptions that most evangelicals don't think much about and don't follow through to their conclusions. Most lay evangelicals accept Calvinist ideas regarding eternal security and total depravity and at the same time argue that evil exists because of the free-will of man. They are Cal-minian, even though that is, according to many Calvinists, not logically permissible.
Second, I want to be fair. I have Calvinist friends. (Maybe not many after this series of ramblings). It is my impression that most serious folks in the Reformed tradition find themselves there because they believe the Scripures require them to be. And they are not insensitive to the objections critics raise. So the question comes up as to whether critics of Calvinism misrepresent what Calvinists actually believe. Primarily, this falls into the area of whether God is responsible for evil and whether God arbitrarily creates some expressly to be condemned for all eternity.
So before I go further, I need to document why I believe Calvinism opens itself up to criticism, not on the basis of Arminian characatures, but from particular statements of faith in the Reformed tradition.
First, does God foreordain before the foundation of the world every event in human history?
According to the Westminster Confession, 5, 1. "God the great Creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will, to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy."
And in 3, 2: "Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly; yet, by the same providence, He ordereth them to fall out, according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently."
Or 3, 4: "The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so far manifest themselves in His providence, that it extendeth itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men; and that not by a bare permission, but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering, and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to His own holy ends; yet so, as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin."
Reformed teachers are careful to insist that God ordains sinful acts by "secondary causes", so that God is not the "author or approver of sin". This is most difficult to comprehend, how God can "direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least", can "decree...(that) all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly" that his Providence "...extendeth itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men." and yet God can have not responsibility for the evil he decreed men and angels would do. This is what we are asked to believe. How can God "ordain" the "first fall" and "all other sins" and not be in any way responsible for sin? (There are answers that are put forward, but at this point I am simply pointing out the questions.)
The other difficult question is not just whether God decreed that evil would occur, but whether he then holds men accountable for doing the very things he decreed they would do. Does God, according to Calvinism, predestine men for eternal destruction?
Calvin, in his Institutes, states: "In conformity, therefore, to the clear doctrine of the Scripture, we assert, that by an eternal and immutable counsel, God has once for all determined, both whom he would admit to salvation, and whom he would condemn to destruction. We affirm that this counsel, as far as concerns the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of human merit; but that to those whom he devotes to condemnation, the gate of life is closed by a just and irreprehensible, but incomprehensible, judgment."
Or in the Westminster Confession, 3, 3: "By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death."
And again in 3, 6. "As for those wicked and ungodly men whom God, as a righteous Judge, for former sins, doth blind and harden, from them He not only withholdeth His grace whereby they might have been enlightened in their understandings, and wrought upon in their hearts; but sometimes also withdraweth the gifts which they had, and exposeth them to such objects as their corruption make occasion of sin; and, withal, gives them over to their own lusts, the temptations of the world, and the power of Satan, whereby it comes to pass that they harden themselves, even under those means which God useth for the softening of others."
I grant that in this quotation, God's action in judgment is, shall we say, passive. He withholds grace from sinful men, who, according to Reformed teaching, are then judged for their own sinfulness. But this seems to me to be a shell game. In the end, if salvation is totally up to the decree and "mercy" of God, and if human free will has absolutely no role whatsoever in the eternal destiny of men, then God's choice to save some in spite of their sin while choosing to condemn others remains hard to fathom. He condemns certain of his creatures when it is completely within his power to save them in exactly the same way he saves others.
Again in 3, 7. "The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or witholdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice."
And in the Canon of Dort, Article 6, regarding the eternal decree of God: "According to which decree, He graciously softens the hearts of the elect, however obstinate, and inclines them to believe, while He leaves the non-elect in His just judgment to their own wickedness and obduracy."
It seems to me, no matter how the deck is sliced, no matter how the mental and philosophical pretzels are twisted, we are left with a real concern. The concern is that God has pre-ordained all events and actions, including the sinful acts of men and angels, and that He then holds them accountable for the very things he predetermined they would do. While Calvinists would certainly object to things being phrased in that way, this is the heart of the controversy. (And it has been raging for centuries, long before Calvin and Luther and the Synod of Dort).
But as an armchair theologian who cares about truth, these are the main points which nearly destroyed my own faith, for the very reason that the God I had believed in for many years, a God who I had always assumed desires the salvation of all men, might in fact be a God who predestined millions for eternal damnation. Such a God was, for me, a different God than the one I had come to believe in, and Christianity, if Calvinism were true, would be a totally different faith.
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