Does unconditional election suggest God hates those who he has not
chosen for salvation?
Some forms of Christianity are feared because they teach that God sends some
people to Heaven forever and the rest to Hell to suffer forever and that he does
this randomly for he does not care what good they do. This is the
notorious Calvinist doctrine of Predestination. God just then makes people
to use some as an example of his justice and others as an example of his
merciful love. There is no love if people are just made to make a point.
The doctrine is fearful and discouraging and only haters of humankind could
preach it.
The Catholic version of Predestination is that God chooses those who choose him freely and those who are put in Hell put themselves there not by their sins but by their refusal to respond to the help God gives to go to Heaven. So you are not destined to Heaven because of your works but because you choose God and the other side of that is that you will have to go to Hell forever should you reject God. It is not about works but about how you respond to God.
The doctrine of unconditional election says that God chooses some people for
eternal salvation and not others who must suffer from death in Hell for all
eternity. It denies that there is anything you can do about God's decree. The
argument is that God is sovereign and is under no obligation to save anyone for
all deserve Hell. There is a version of unconditional election that argues that
God has a plan to do what is best and as evil exists he has to make some
terrible decisions. The casualties are those who are damned forever. That
contradicts the notion of a truly sovereign God. God is forced to make do with
saving some so he is not sovereign.
If God is sovereign and refuses to save sinners and that refusal is arbitrary
then he must hate them. Those who are chosen for salvation are only saved by a
whim and not by love.
The Bible says that God hates unsaved sinners. It says it so many times that we
know we can be certain it teaches that.
Only three verses in the Bible seem to say that God loves everybody. They are,
the one in which we are told that God so loved the world that he gave his only
son so that anyone who believes in him could have eternal life - John 3:16. And
the one which says that God wants all to be saved and come to the knowledge of
the truth - 1 Timothy 2:4. And the one where we are told that God so loved us
that while we were still sinners he saved us which is Romans 5:8.
The bit in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says we must love our enemies for
God gives earthly blessings even to the wicked refers to enemies who sincerely
mean well but just are against us for the wrong reasons. The Bible is clear that
God hates those who hate him. We are not to love God’s enemies. But all who hate
one another wish that they did not and that the persons would change so they
love in a sense.
Both the first two verses, John 3:16 and 1 Timothy 2:4 speak in terms of God
wishing the damned would change but he refuses to succumb to this wish. It is
because this wish is present that he is able to hate perfectly. The person who
finds it easier to be good to a bad person has a more degrading attitude towards
the enemy than one who finds it hard to be good to a bad person. The former is
kind of rewarding the evil and encouraging it while real love does not encourage
a person to do evil. Jesus was a gift to everybody on earth even the wicked but
in many different ways.
Paul’s disciple in 1 Timothy 2:4 says that God wants all to be saved and know
the truth for there is one mediator who is the only way to God. This means he
means all who can know the mediator and respond to him. It does not refer to all
on earth. Even if it did it would make no difference. God could hate sinners and
love them in the sense that he knows they will change if he saves them from sin
and wants them to change. He hates them in refusing to honour this wish. It is
like how an estranged wife can hate her husband but she hates him because she
loves him. But her hate is real and dangerous. God hates them now.
But some of them will be saved. As for these, he does not let that hate stop him
from making it possible to love them and them to love him, as well, later. The
love for what they will be is the reason he makes their salvation possible now
not the love for what they are. This is the explanation for the Romans 5:8 verse
and it is the only explanation for the persons referred to as being loved are
clearly those who have embraced the gospel in sincerity and have been saved by
it. Many believe that God hates all sinners except sinners he has predestined to
salvation. He loves them in their sins now for he sees they will be saved. In
other words, their sins are paid for unlike those who will never be saved so he
has nothing to hate them for though they are sinners now. But this view is not
in the Bible at all. God could hate you even if your sins are paid for on the
basis that the payment has not been activated yet. It has not been appropriated.
Proverbs 11:20 and Psalm 5:5 and several other places state that God hates
sinners as does Romans 9:13-15. We have more references to God’s hatred for
sinners than we have for his alleged love for them and the latter verses are
misinterpreted so nowhere does the Bible say that God loves sinners in the
proper sense. If it did the minority verses would have to be interpreted in the
context of the majority verses meaning that we would have to take the love
non-literally and the hate literally and not vice-versa as many Christians do.
Christians say that since we do not know who will be saved we have to love
everybody and only God can hate sinners for only he knows who will be saved and
who will not be. But it is a contradiction to say you value a person as a
potential saint. That is valuing what God wants and not the person. It is
putting the qualities before the person to the person being left out if the
equation. It is denying the fundamental principle of real right and wrong in
which field the Bible has no competence whatsoever that the person is the
absolute value.
Please do not object that the Bible says that baptism is necessary for salvation
so salvation can’t be by faith only. It says nothing of the kind.
To say a person is arbitarily chosen for damnation is to say God hates her. And
the Bible not only allows for such a view but commands it.