Does God love everyone ?

Well, maybe God HAS limited His love for fallen man.




Let's try looking semi-unbiased, shall we?
Calvinists readily acknowledge that God loves EVERYONE. God sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.
But we believe God doesn't SALVIFICALLY love everyone. There are different kinds of love. We acknowledge that for humans, why not for God?

Seriously, I have mixed feelings about your side constantly misrepresenting what we believe, especially since you should KNOW better. I honestly believe it's going to destroy your credibility to the lurkers, when they see you doing it over and over. And I'm kind of OK with that.



Again, you're not being reasonable. We're not the ones "limiting" God. We simply observe and recognize that GOD is limiting Himself. And it's perfectly okay for Him to do that.



Where does the Bible speak of the gospel as an "invitation"?
And where do you see the phrase, "all men without exception"?
So easy to understand. Thanks for reiterating. However those who have an obsession with self cannot fathom the truth in what you wrote.
 
The eyes of the whole world were not opened and neither were the eyes of my family members.
Exactly. In order not to lose face, some will go to any lengths to protect self, even denying the sovereignty of God in election. They pretend that the doctrine of election does not exist
 
Hello ST,
I have come to understand that in reality there is no could have or should have with a perfectly omniscient God.
I disagree here. Jesus example of Sodom, they would have repented had they seen his miracles. This implies necessarily there are "could haves".
There is plan A.
It is perfect, with no doubt, or second guessing.
GOD IS GOD.
This part I agree with, but it doesn't follow from this that there are no "could haves".
 
I disagree here. Jesus example of Sodom, they would have repented had they seen his miracles. This implies necessarily there are "could haves".

This part I agree with, but it doesn't follow from this that there are no "could haves".
I understand what you are saying. I think that was Jesus teaching those He was speaking to.
 
He didn't need a Bible to save anyone. We can always ask why.

The Bible doesn't save us. In the Garden before the fall, Adam received verbal instructions. Afterwards God provided prophets and teachers.

2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God a may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
 
The Bible doesn't save us. In the Garden before the fall, Adam received verbal instructions. Afterwards God provided prophets and teachers.

2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God a may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Amen glad you agree.
 
Because of the close connection between the love of God and the atonement, to limit the atonement is to limit God’s love for fallen man. Consistent Calvinists even state that God does not love everyone. Only the “elect”. And He only opens the eyes of the elect so they alone can actually exercise faith and believe. Thats limiting what God can do and who He can love.

God shows Himself to be reconciled to the whole world, when he invites all men without exception to the faith of Christ, which is nothing else than an entrance into life. For Christ is made known and held out to the view of all. Not to the elect alone but all whose eyes he opens, that they may seek him by faith or reject Him.
👆👆👆👆👆👆👆All of it coming from someone with the username name “Predestined”.
 
Or, she chose to accept Jesus Christ as her lord and her siblings chose to reject Jesus.

There are several points on which there is confusion about what is meant by free will. Some have said that it refers to the ability to desire. But a better definition is that it is the ability to decide between alternatives. Desire is a passion, an emotion; but will is a choice between two or more desires. Also, some think that to be free means that there can be no limitation of alternatives—one must be able to do whatever he wants. But the opposite of freedom is not fewer alternatives, it is being forced to choose one thing and not another. Freedom is not in unlimited options, but in unfettered choice between whatever options there are. As long as the choosing comes from the individual rather than an outside force, the decision is made freely. Free will means the ability to make an unforced decision between two or more alternatives (Geisler & Brooks 1990:63).
Ditto
 
Because of the close connection between the love of God and the atonement, to limit the atonement is to limit God’s love for fallen man. Consistent Calvinists even state that God does not love everyone. Only the “elect”. And He only opens the eyes of the elect so they alone can actually exercise faith and believe. Thats limiting what God can do and who He can love.

God shows Himself to be reconciled to the whole world, when he invites all men without exception to the faith of Christ, which is nothing else than an entrance into life. For Christ is made known and held out to the view of all. Not to the elect alone but all whose eyes he opens, that they may seek him by faith or reject Him.
Amen brother
 
Or, she chose to accept Jesus Christ as her lord and her siblings chose to reject Jesus.

There are several points on which there is confusion about what is meant by free will. Some have said that it refers to the ability to desire. But a better definition is that it is the ability to decide between alternatives. Desire is a passion, an emotion; but will is a choice between two or more desires. Also, some think that to be free means that there can be no limitation of alternatives—one must be able to do whatever he wants. But the opposite of freedom is not fewer alternatives, it is being forced to choose one thing and not another. Freedom is not in unlimited options, but in unfettered choice between whatever options there are. As long as the choosing comes from the individual rather than an outside force, the decision is made freely. Free will means the ability to make an unforced decision between two or more alternatives (Geisler & Brooks 1990:63).
If you are talking about me and my siblings instead of talking to me:

I was four when God gave me opportunity to learn how to pray. Four of my siblings didn't have that opportunity. My barely older sister rejected the opportunity. If God cared enough for my other siblings He would have given them or will yet give those who living the opportunity He gave me. Apparently you and Geisler believe we all have equal opportunities. My brother closest in age to me was lectured by my father at age 13-14 about the so-called logical reasons for atheism. My mother didn't think it mattered what a person believed. So if God was willing to convince Jonah to do His will, He ought to have convinced others to believe. Arminians apparently believe that God's grace is resistable, but humans respond differently because of what?

Paul said that sharing the gospel isn't what converts a person because God does the converting. Jesus said that Peter had a revelation from God that He, Jesus, was God's Son. If understanding truth depends on something God does, who misunderstands and by whose choice does that person misunderstand? Which Christian converted Saul/Paul?
 
All unbelievers are sinners under Gods wrath , no exceptions . All are under sin and condemnation. As Ephesians 2 says we were all children of wrath at one time just like the rest of the sinners .
I agree but He chose to show mercy on some who don't deserve His mercy. Paul was an example.
 
All unbelievers are sinners under Gods wrath , no exceptions . All are under sin and condemnation. As Ephesians 2 says we were all children of wrath at one time just like the rest of the sinners .
ditto all are under Gods wrath as rebellious sinners until they repent of their sins and God loves all sinners , all the world and made propitiation for their sins as per John 3:16 and 1 John 2:2.

hope this helps !!!
 
Because of the close connection between the love of God and the atonement, to limit the atonement is to limit God’s love for fallen man. Consistent Calvinists even state that God does not love everyone. Only the “elect”. And He only opens the eyes of the elect so they alone can actually exercise faith and believe. Thats limiting what God can do and who He can love.

God shows Himself to be reconciled to the whole world, when he invites all men without exception to the faith of Christ, which is nothing else than an entrance into life. For Christ is made known and held out to the view of all. Not to the elect alone but all whose eyes he opens, that they may seek him by faith or reject Him.
Well said brother !

Yours Truly, Team Truth !

hope this helps !!!
 
In the past two decades have witnessed a resurgence of Calvinism among American evangelicals. This resurgence is especially evident within the Southern Baptist Convention, which historically has been and still is divided over the issue. However, it has also made its presence felt in Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God, which do not have historic ties to Calvinism.


By Calvinism, I mean specifically the doctrine of salvation that is commonly explained by means of the acronym, TULIP:


  • T = Total depravity
  • U = Unconditional election
  • L = Limited atonement
  • I = Irresistible grace
  • P = Perseverance of the saints

In the seventeenth century, Jacob Arminius—a Dutch Reformed theologian—set forth a different understanding of salvation that has been called Arminianism after him. It is sometimes explained by means of the acronym, FACTS:


  • F = Freed by grace to believe
  • A = Atonement for all
  • C = Conditional election
  • T = Total depravity
  • S = Security in Christ

In Does God Love Everyone? Jerry L. Walls—an evangelical philosopher—outlines an argument against Calvinism and for Arminianism. Its strength is that it focuses on the central point of the disagreement between them. Walls writes:


The deepest issue that divides Arminians and Calvinists is not the sovereignty of God, predestination, or the authority of the Bible. The deepest difference pertains to how we understand the character of God. Is God good in the sense that he deeply and sincerely loves all people?


According to Walls, the answer of Arminianism is “Yes.” The answer of Calvinism is “No.” As Calvinist author Arthur W. Pink put it in The Sovereignty of God: “When we say that God is sovereign in the exercise of His love, we mean that He loves whom he chooses. God does not love everybody…” Walls argues that Pink’s statement is characteristic of Calvinism, even if it’s stated with a bluntness uncharacteristic of most Calvinists.


A god who can save all but chooses not to is not the God whom the Bible reveals.​


To see why this is so, consider the argument Walls makes:


  1. God truly loves all persons.
  2. Not all persons will be saved.
  3. Truly to love someone is to desire their well-being and to promote their true flourishing as much as you properly can.
  4. The well-being and true flourishing of all persons is to be found in a right relationship with God, a saving relationship in which we love and obey him.
  5. God could give all persons “irresistible grace” and thereby determine all persons to freely accept a right relationship with himself and be saved.
  6. Therefore, all persons will be saved.

Clearly, this set of propositions contains a contradiction between 2 and 6. Both Calvinists and Arminians affirm 2, however. They’re not universalists, in other words. Similarly, both affirm 4.


So, how do they resolve the contradiction? Arminians do so by denying 5. They deny, in other words, that grace is irresistible.


Irresistible grace is part and parcel of Calvinism, however. It’s the I in TULIP. That means Calvinists must deny either 1 or 3. That is, they must deny either that “God truly loves all persons” or that “Truly to love someone is to desire their well-being and to promote their true flourishing as much as you properly can.” As noted above, Arthur W. Pink clearly denied 1. (Walls quotes Calvin himself to similar effect.)


Contemporary Calvinists rarely deny 1, however. Instead, they affirm that God truly loves all persons. For example, D. A. Carson affirms that God loves everyone in the sense that He exercises “providential love over all that he has made” and adopts a “salvific stance toward his fallen world.” However, Carson denies that God gives everyone the “particular, effective, selecting love toward his elect.” It’s hard to square this “love” for “all persons” with the definition of love in 3. A God who could but chooses not to bestow “particular, effective, selecting love” on everyone does not “truly” love them because He does not seek their eternal “well-being” and “true flourishing.”


Walls suggests one further wrinkle when he discusses John Piper, probably the best known Baptist Calvinist. Walls argues that Piper denies 5, not by ditching “irresistible grace” but by suggesting that God has a “greater value” than salvation. Such as what? Piper writes, “The answer the Reformed give is that the greater value is the manifestation of the full range of God’s glory in wrath and mercy (Rom. 9:21–23) and the humbling of man so he enjoys giving all credit to God for his salvation (1 Cor. 1:29).” Because of this “greater value,” it seems that Piper denies God “could give all persons ‘irresistible grace’ [to be saved].” Some evidently must be condemned for God’s glory.

In order to maintain God’s sovereignty in election then, or to promote God’s glory, Calvinism denies that God loves everyone in the truest sense. Like Walls, I find this denial difficult to swallow. A god who can save all but chooses not to is not the God whom the Bible reveals, a God who is love (1 John 4:8).

Walls’ book is a brief outline of a much larger argument. Those looking for a more detailed argument should pick up his Why I Am Not a Calvinist, coauthored with Joseph R. Dongell. But that argument, even in outline form here, is difficult to rebut, as far as I am concerned.

Book Reviewed: Jerry L. Walls, Does God Love Everyone? The Heart of What Is Wrong with Calvinism (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2016).
I failed to mention that Calvin in his monumental work never mentions the 1 John passages that God is Love- 1 John 4:8, 16.

Its not wonder since he conflates hate/love below.

“…individuals are born, who are doomed from the womb to certain death, and are to glorify him by their destruction.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 6)
From Book 3, Dreadful and without a remedy:

“Again I ask: whence does it happen that Adam’s fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God? The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 7)

Yours Truly, Team Truth !

hope this helps !!!
 
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