The concept of Original Sin is insulting enough. To take a condition of unmerited guilt and depravity as man's natural state at birth, to accuse him in his infancy of being an offense to some benign and loving creator, and for nothing worse than having been conceived and born into the world, is revolting; but for the most part, this degrading view of humanity has been redeemed somewhat by the notion of free will, that man, though he is born guilty and depraved, can learn and become sophisticated enough, through faith and deceny and good works, to achieve his creator's grace and love.
The belief in free will is the belief that man can and often does overcome his nature, to achieve communion with God. The concept of divine omniscience doesn't contradict this belief, because foreknowledge doesn't necessarily imply fore-ordination. God might know from the very beginning that you will reject him, but he is cleared, through the gift of free will, of responsibility for that rejection. If man is given a choice, not to mention a rational mind which enables him to conceive of the implications and consequences of his choice, then certainly God can hold him responsible for whatever choice he makes; but Calvinism tells us that God doesn't merely know who will be saved and who will be damned, but that he has fore-ordained, or decreed it, from the moment of creation. Not only does he decree that some will be damned, he holds the damned as having merited their destruction. This destroys any and all purpose religion ever had, makes a mockery of the human race, and makes Original Sin a concept devoid of any possibility of redemption.
Free will doesn't contradict the idea of omnipotence, either. God can do what he likes when he likes, in any manner he chooses, but by granting man free will God willingly withdraws his hand from man's affairs. Man lives and acts as he pleases, and how he lives and acts determines his punishment or his reward. Of what use would a divine law be in a world where no one acts according to thier own will or volition? The act of making a law presupposes man's ability to abide by it, or ignore it. Creating a race of beings, casting them into immutable and predestined roles, with a variety of fore-ordained desires and actions, and then laying down certain laws for them to observe, is nonsensical. The notion of obedience is meaningless outside the context of free will. An entity with no choice of action can neither obey nor disobey, it can only act in the manner in which it has been designed to act. A law is only relevant to an entity that can determine a means of obeying or disobeying that law, of reasons for doing or not doing so, and act upon those determinations. If we claim that man is disobedient by nature, that he is defiant not through an act of will but by an inherent inability to conform, then disobedience and defiance are stripped of any meaning whatsoever.
The presence of anything like a divine law in the Bible is evidence that man has the ability to understand the law and the freedom to choose a course of action in reference to it. But even granting all this, one still finds it difficult to reconcile a loving and benevolent creator with the concept of Hell and damnation. No loving father would consign his own child to an eternity of pain and suffering, no matter how great the crimes that child committed. If I were to be the father of the next Hitler (and it's possible that I could be, being the father of two boys), I might never find it in my heart to forgive him for his actions, but I would never damn him to some interminable and inconceivably horrible existence. I might want him to be punished, but never would I wish him to be conscious and suffering forever.
Where do I get this concept I have of what love means? From God, a theist would tell me. Where else could I have gotten it? But if I get my moral instincts from my creator, how could my instincts be so errant? How could it be possible that my concept of mercy seems, on the whole, more merciful as God's? It can't be so. God's mercy must be infinitely more sophisticated than mine. But as others have said before, there is no reason to believe that God's mercy is so complex that it in fact appears to me as the exact opposite of mercy. What reason could God have for equipping me with a moral sense that determines the quality of mercy to be the exact opposite of his own? Why place such an obstacle between us? Either make me understand the damning of souls to perpetual suffering (souls which were disadvantaged from the start by the inheritance of a guilt they haven't earned, and hobbled with an inborn and automatic inclination toward disobedience) as merciful, or strip me of any moral sense whatsoever, so that my obedience and devotion can be pure, undiluted by my own creaturely conceptions of love and mercy. That we have, as a race, a definite consistency in regard to what constitutes goodness, kindness, love, and forgiveness, should be evidence enough to support the proposition that God invested us with a moral sense that is not contrary to his own, though it may be infantile and basic by comparison.
The laws are useless unless we can comprehend what they mean, and unless we are given a range of choices insofar as we act in relation to them. To love my neighbor presupposes an ability to determine what love is, and since God wants me to love, he must not only give me the ability to understand what he means by it, but also the means to experience love and exercise it according to his wishes, which implies that this must also be in accordance with what I desire, since I am free to either obey or disobey the law. I must desire to obey the law in order to obey it. If I have no will, I have no desire, and therefore no ability to obey; for me to desire to love I must understand what it is that I am desiring. How could I desire to experience something of which I have no conception? I couldn't.
That we have laws is evidence of free will, and that we have any moral sense at all is evidence that God allows us to comprehend what he means by the virtues he compels us to learn and cultivate. It still leaves us in a logical bind, since we cannot reconcile a loving and belevolent being with the creator of Hell and eternal damnation. But leave that to another time.
Some have said that Calvinism equals religion. Religion is Calvinism. To my mind, Calvinism makes religion pointless. Religion is predominantly about how man comprehends and worships his maker. Religions are moral systems which presuppose man as being able to comprehend what is meant by morality, as being competent to live moral lives and, coupled with faith (which is nothing if not a sheer act of will), achieve community with a divine being. Calvinism denies most of this. You do not achieve faith, faith is given to you by virtue of being pre-selected by God for community with him. You had nothing to do with it. Calvin explicitely states that man never merits his salvation, he merely obtains it as a gift from God. By the same token, it should stand to reason that man doesn't actually merit his damnation, but Calvinism insists that he does! God saves some men, not because they deserve it, but because of God's irresistible grace; the rest of humanity he damns, but not out of that which is the opposite of grace, which would be arbitrary cruelty or indifference, but because they have deserved it. God is loving, though his loving is clearly not impartial; and he is just, though he is certainly not fair.
No fair.
The belief in free will is the belief that man can and often does overcome his nature, to achieve communion with God. The concept of divine omniscience doesn't contradict this belief, because foreknowledge doesn't necessarily imply fore-ordination. God might know from the very beginning that you will reject him, but he is cleared, through the gift of free will, of responsibility for that rejection. If man is given a choice, not to mention a rational mind which enables him to conceive of the implications and consequences of his choice, then certainly God can hold him responsible for whatever choice he makes; but Calvinism tells us that God doesn't merely know who will be saved and who will be damned, but that he has fore-ordained, or decreed it, from the moment of creation. Not only does he decree that some will be damned, he holds the damned as having merited their destruction. This destroys any and all purpose religion ever had, makes a mockery of the human race, and makes Original Sin a concept devoid of any possibility of redemption.
Free will doesn't contradict the idea of omnipotence, either. God can do what he likes when he likes, in any manner he chooses, but by granting man free will God willingly withdraws his hand from man's affairs. Man lives and acts as he pleases, and how he lives and acts determines his punishment or his reward. Of what use would a divine law be in a world where no one acts according to thier own will or volition? The act of making a law presupposes man's ability to abide by it, or ignore it. Creating a race of beings, casting them into immutable and predestined roles, with a variety of fore-ordained desires and actions, and then laying down certain laws for them to observe, is nonsensical. The notion of obedience is meaningless outside the context of free will. An entity with no choice of action can neither obey nor disobey, it can only act in the manner in which it has been designed to act. A law is only relevant to an entity that can determine a means of obeying or disobeying that law, of reasons for doing or not doing so, and act upon those determinations. If we claim that man is disobedient by nature, that he is defiant not through an act of will but by an inherent inability to conform, then disobedience and defiance are stripped of any meaning whatsoever.
The presence of anything like a divine law in the Bible is evidence that man has the ability to understand the law and the freedom to choose a course of action in reference to it. But even granting all this, one still finds it difficult to reconcile a loving and benevolent creator with the concept of Hell and damnation. No loving father would consign his own child to an eternity of pain and suffering, no matter how great the crimes that child committed. If I were to be the father of the next Hitler (and it's possible that I could be, being the father of two boys), I might never find it in my heart to forgive him for his actions, but I would never damn him to some interminable and inconceivably horrible existence. I might want him to be punished, but never would I wish him to be conscious and suffering forever.
Where do I get this concept I have of what love means? From God, a theist would tell me. Where else could I have gotten it? But if I get my moral instincts from my creator, how could my instincts be so errant? How could it be possible that my concept of mercy seems, on the whole, more merciful as God's? It can't be so. God's mercy must be infinitely more sophisticated than mine. But as others have said before, there is no reason to believe that God's mercy is so complex that it in fact appears to me as the exact opposite of mercy. What reason could God have for equipping me with a moral sense that determines the quality of mercy to be the exact opposite of his own? Why place such an obstacle between us? Either make me understand the damning of souls to perpetual suffering (souls which were disadvantaged from the start by the inheritance of a guilt they haven't earned, and hobbled with an inborn and automatic inclination toward disobedience) as merciful, or strip me of any moral sense whatsoever, so that my obedience and devotion can be pure, undiluted by my own creaturely conceptions of love and mercy. That we have, as a race, a definite consistency in regard to what constitutes goodness, kindness, love, and forgiveness, should be evidence enough to support the proposition that God invested us with a moral sense that is not contrary to his own, though it may be infantile and basic by comparison.
The laws are useless unless we can comprehend what they mean, and unless we are given a range of choices insofar as we act in relation to them. To love my neighbor presupposes an ability to determine what love is, and since God wants me to love, he must not only give me the ability to understand what he means by it, but also the means to experience love and exercise it according to his wishes, which implies that this must also be in accordance with what I desire, since I am free to either obey or disobey the law. I must desire to obey the law in order to obey it. If I have no will, I have no desire, and therefore no ability to obey; for me to desire to love I must understand what it is that I am desiring. How could I desire to experience something of which I have no conception? I couldn't.
That we have laws is evidence of free will, and that we have any moral sense at all is evidence that God allows us to comprehend what he means by the virtues he compels us to learn and cultivate. It still leaves us in a logical bind, since we cannot reconcile a loving and belevolent being with the creator of Hell and eternal damnation. But leave that to another time.
Some have said that Calvinism equals religion. Religion is Calvinism. To my mind, Calvinism makes religion pointless. Religion is predominantly about how man comprehends and worships his maker. Religions are moral systems which presuppose man as being able to comprehend what is meant by morality, as being competent to live moral lives and, coupled with faith (which is nothing if not a sheer act of will), achieve community with a divine being. Calvinism denies most of this. You do not achieve faith, faith is given to you by virtue of being pre-selected by God for community with him. You had nothing to do with it. Calvin explicitely states that man never merits his salvation, he merely obtains it as a gift from God. By the same token, it should stand to reason that man doesn't actually merit his damnation, but Calvinism insists that he does! God saves some men, not because they deserve it, but because of God's irresistible grace; the rest of humanity he damns, but not out of that which is the opposite of grace, which would be arbitrary cruelty or indifference, but because they have deserved it. God is loving, though his loving is clearly not impartial; and he is just, though he is certainly not fair.
No fair.
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