I came across the above tweet in my twitter feed this morning and I found myself wanting to respond to this tangled mess. Here is a prime example of false premises being twisted into a logical argument in order to impugn something.
Let’s begin by unraveling all of the propositions in this hot take. I will simply try to take the implied meaning and re-write it into propositional form. You will have to be the judge on if I interpret correctly. Here goes:
“If the elected people on #Calvinism” = p1 There are people on #Calvinism, p2 These people are elect
“have no risk of going to hell” = p3 elect people have no risk of hell
“& reprobates have no hope of avoiding it” = p4 there are people who are not elect, p5 they are all reprobate, p6 reprobate people must go to hell.
Now we hit the rhetorical question, “what’s the purpose of bringing it up” which is meant to conclude that: c1 the reason to speak of hell is for salvation, c2 the bible speaks of hell, therefore major conclusion C1 the Calvinist doesn’t believe the bible.
So what to make of this argument? On the surface it appears sound. Lets start out with p1 and p2. These seem to be true premises. and it doesn’t hurt for us to assume it is true that there are elect people on #Calvinism. There may not be, but it doesn’t affect the argument if there are none. I also will accept p4, p5, and p6.
Here I would like to point out, as an aside, that the author cannot make the claim in p3 that ‘elect people have no risk of hell.’ He assumes that the elect know that they are elect. In other words, when I read the scripture, I look at the passages on hell and just assume they don’t apply to me because I am elect. Conversely, he assumes the reprobate know that they are reprobate. This is a perennial problem with these types of arguments because they are taking a 10,000 foot view of doctrinal teaching and then using examples from within the forest and lost in the trees. Yes God knows who is at ‘risk’ of Hell and who isn’t, but the individual reader doesn’t! This alone shows poor judgment in this argument. Yet, there is an even more potent objection to the tweet author’s line of query. Consider the following from the second half of his argument:
“It [eternal damnation] cannot serve in any meaningful way as a deterrent for rebellion” – C2 The threat of eternal damnation can never deter sin.
“nor a motivator of faith” – C3 The threat of damnation can never motivate faith
“Only fear of a fated destiny” – C4 The threat of damnation only causes fear of a fated destiny
Here are some of the hidden premises: HP1 God only intended the threat of eternal damnation to be a deterrent for rebellion, HP2 God only intended the threat of eternal damnation to motivate faith.
Now we have hit the meat of the problem. Let’s ask the following questions:
Are HP1 and HP2 the same thing? No, but I think in this case the author means the same thing with both hidden premises. I think contextually, he is limiting this to salvation. Does our fear of hell cause us to be saved? No, but our author believes it can. He thinks that there is a causal chain that leads from fear of hell to salvation that may look like this: I am afraid to die and go to hell, Jesus will save me from hell, therefore my fear of hell has caused my faith in Jesus, which in turn saves me. In this way the author can say that it was faith that actually saved, not fear. Now, can any be saved apart from fear of Hell? The author would likely say that they sure could.
So we have a new problem. Why does God use fear to cause faith for some but not all? Why is Hell included, is it merely a part of the net that must be cast that catches some fish but not others? Perhaps the teaching of hell has nothing to do with salvation at all! What if the promise of eternal damnation is not supposed to ‘scare people into faith’ but, rather, is meant to provide restraining grace to a civilization that is soaked in God’s word? What if, in places where the word is preached to everyone, God’s word has the effect of deterring sin in general even if it doesn’t scare someone into being saved? If this is true, then the reason for hell being in scripture might have nothing to do with salvation at all!
So I answer with my Final Conclusion (FC) that: FC the teaching on hell is not only for salvation purposes.
Now the tweet author might protest that I cannot show prooftexts that say that the teaching of hell is not meant only for salvation, but can he provide prooftexts that say the teaching of hell is for salvific purposes only? No. He doesn’t know that for sure.
If HP1 which states that God only intended the threat of eternal damnation to be a deterrent for rebellion (and motivate faith) is true, then FC cannot also be true in the tweet author’s suppositions. If FC is true, then the question is answered satisfactorily.
On a final note, I think it may be helpful to look at the source of salvation as never arising from a specific passage of scripture, or a particular moment of man’s awareness. In other words, when I think of my own conversion, I remember realizing the truth that I was a sinner and that I was doomed for hell. How did I come to realize those truths when previously I had denied them over and over? What made the light bulb go on for me at that moment? Was it my ever-burgeoning intellect which finally grasped the plain truth of scripture? NO. A resounding no. The author of the tweet above thinks there is something inside the human intellect which can grasp any truth of scripture. He is wrong. The teaching of Hell is not effective in saving people without the Holy Spirit first turning on their light bulb. Without that, it’s just another wacky thing those Christians say.
Chairistotle 