Calvinist Corner

Given that the calvinists attribute all sovereignty to God alone over the salvation of a person, it fits quite neatly with the idea of Individual Election resulting in predestined salvation unto eternal life. If God has purposed a chosen generation in his eternal Kingdom, then consistent with their belief that no man can contribute anything to his own salvation, it follows that God would (s)elect this generation for the express purpose of saving them into eternity ie predestining their end well before any factors they may cause necessarily arise.

In the same vein, the calvinists also concede (sometimes too joyfully!) the doctrine of Individual Predestined Reprobation – which is simply the corollary. Just as God selected or chose some to be saved, by implication, He chose the others not to be saved from before the foundation of the world. He had mercy on some, and the others He chose to pour out His Just wrath on.

Arminian Corner

The arminians object to what amounts to a detestable notion – that God chose some individuals to be condemned from before they were even born. No, they say, anyone condemned is on account of their own free-willed choice to reject God’s universal offer of salvation. But in factoring in each one’s free-willed choice in their condemnation, they are compelled to apply it equally in their choice to believe and receive salvation too – therein having to hold that God does not elect individuals nor predestine their salvation from before the foundation of the world.

But the arminians too accept all Scriptural passages about election and predestination. They simply hold Election to be Corporate – more of a placeholder group of people who are predestined to be saved in Christ, the truly chosen ark, but not necessarily denoting particular individuals. Any who, by his own free-will, chooses to believe in Christ is now part of the elect group and if the same ceases to believe, falls away from the elect group.

And predestination is not denoting individuals again, but rather the assured end of Christ ensuring the body of believers He contains are saved, consequent to their free-willed faith. This way, the blame rests squarely on each of the perishing one’s own free-willed choice to reject the Gospel of Christ.

Calvinist Rebuttal

But, the calvinists protest, if it were finally contingent upon man’s freewill, then theoretically there could be a scenario where God has purposed to have a chosen generation for Himself into eternity and that could not have been fulfilled if no man had ever made the right free-willed choices along the way. And to say God would’ve ensured against this by ‘looking ahead’ in His omniscient foreknowledge still doesn’t remove the troubling implication that God is simply not powerful enough to purpose something in Himself first and to have it assuredly fulfilled based on just what He counsels and does and and not based on any other dependent causative factor.

Holding both horns

Again note, there are no objections to the main pillars of either camp – it’s only the corollaries that get implied by these main pillars which are vehemently objected to. If we could show from Scripture that God is completely Sovereign in predestining the salvation of His chosen individuals, completely independent of them, while simultaneously upholding that God does not in any way predestine the condemnation of those who perish but that it was on account of their own self-deterministic choices – then this would begin paving the path to reconciling calvinism and arminianism.