Common Grace Objections Against Calvinism Answered Briefly

The debate between the semi-Arminian Calvinists or neo-Calvinists and classical Calvinism is an ongoing one.  Someone on Facebook raised the following objections to the eternal purposes of God in regards to common grace.  I will answer each objection in brief.

1.  Is God's love always salvific?

1.  Is love always salvific?  Answer?  Yes.  Since what is at issue is God's decree to election and reprobation, the first decree in the logical order of the eternal decrees, God's love of the elect is always an eternally unchanging decree to save the elect.  Justification is an eternal decree although it is not applied to the elect in temporal time until after they are regenerated and converted.  The proof texts for this would be Romans 9:11-13; Revelation 13:8.  KJV or NKJV versions.   God knows the end from the beginning and God's eternal purposes are eternally unchanging and immutable.  Isaiah 46:9-11; 53:10-11.

2.  Did God hate Adam before the fall?

No.  That's because Adam was an elect man.  We know this because God gave Adam and Eve animals skins to cover their shame and their sinfulness.  Animal skins indicate the sacrifice of animals and the shedding of blood which points forward in time to Christ's sacrifice on the cross.  Genesis 3:7, 21; Leviticus 17:11; Hebrews 9:22.


3. Does God love the reprobate angels?

No.  That's because God foreordained the fall of the angels and His eternal purpose for reprobate angels was always to condemn them to eternal punishment in the lake of fire.  Some of these fallen angels are held in Tartarus until the final judgment.  2 Peter 2:4; Jude 1:6, 13; Matthew 25:41; Revelation 20:10.  Once again, God's eternal decrees and purposes are eternally immutable:  Isaiah 14:24; Job 23:13; Acts 4:28.

4.  If love is always Salvific then God the Father never loved Jesus from all eternity.

This objection is easy to answer since it is obvious that God's plan from all eternity was that Jesus would die for all the sins of all the elect.  So God's love for the elect was His eternal purpose before creation of time and the universe.  So God's love for the elect is made providentially manifest by Christ's sacrifice on the cross 2,016 years ago on Golgotha.  Revelation 13:8 KJV.   Revelation 3:5; 17:8; Matthew 25:34; Revelation 3:10.  In short, God's love for the elect is always salvific because it was an eternal decree.  God is eternally self existent and none of His plans or purposes change.  Once again, God knows the end from the beginning.  Isaiah 46:9-11; Psalm 90:1-3; Malachi 3:6.

5. So according to Hyper-Calvinism, what KIND OF LOVE DOES GOD HAVE FOR HIS CREATURES WHO NEVER SINNED?

Well, since I am not a hyper-Calvinist I will answer the question from the Calvinist perspective.  The kind of love God has for His creatures who never sinned, namely the elect angels, is an everlasting love, an eternally immutable and unchanging love.  God never changes.  His thoughts are eternally unchanging.  Man's thoughts change from one second to the next in sequence.  Man's thoughts are discursive while God's thoughts are omniscient.  God never learns anything new so it follows that God knows everything at once.  How would God think temporally when God is an eternal being?  Psalm 90:2; Job 15:7; Psalm 93:2; Psalm 139:1-17.

It should also be noted that the incarnation of Christ does not make him a creature except in His human nature and His human soul or person.  Jesus Christ before creation and His incarnation on earth was and is the eternal Logos, the second person of the Trinity.  John 1:1-3, 1:18, 3:16; 1 Timothy 3:16; Colossians 1:19, 2:9; 2 Peter 1:1; Titus 2:13.  God planned to save the elect in eternity:  Isaiah 53:10-11.

Finally, simply making the charge of hyper-Calvinism and calling one's opponent a hyper-Calvinist does not make it so.  The term needs a precise definition.  From the indications of our opponent it would appear that he or she thinks Calvinism itself is hyper-Calvinist.