WHEN ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING IS DECREED IN ADVANCE...

What sends a soul to hell?

While doing some garage work this afternoon, I listened to one of my favorite Christian YouTubers, Kevin Thompson. His channel is called Beyond the Fundamentals and he is unlike any other Christian thinker on the internet. He's a good old boy from Louisiana with a mind like a steel trap. His approach to Scripture is fresh and I often come away from his videos thinking, "How did I never see that before?"

He's also a former Calvinist who now has a deep understanding of the flaws in that theological system. 

Thompson pointed out something today that I had never pondered: In Calvinism, if you are "sent to hell" as one of those who were not fortunate enough to be among "The Elect", it ultimately has nothing to do with sin.

That's because everything you think and say and do in this life was decreed long before your existence. And that includes your final destination. The final judgment against you was predetermined from eternity past - it is not contingent on your sin.

If your theology holds, as the Westminster Confession puts it, that:

"God hath decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably, all things, whatsoever comes to pass"

Then, that includes the predestination of each of the Elect to salvation (Which the Calvinist likes to highlight)

AND that includes the predestination of each of the Non-Elect to eternal damnation (Which is a bit problematic for the Calvinist).

I mean, it's widely known that Calvinism has a major vulnerability to being accused of "unfairness" in God's saving grace not being offered to all. 

But when you stop to consider that billions of souls were decreed by God to eternity in hell before the world was even created and certainly, then, before they sinned even the smallest of sins ...

Well, that's monstrous.

And yet, the Westminster Confession goes on to explain God does this in such a way "as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established."

I'm sorry, that that bit of nonsensical writing should have been shot down the day after it was written.