Calvin on Predestination

https://youtu.be/_iLm7Qg0nt0

“Angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it can not be either increased or diminished.” (The Westminster Confession of Faith” in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols., 6th ed., Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker House Books, 1931, 3:608.)

John Calvin explains: “Let no one think that those [who] fall away...were of the predestined, called according to the purpose and truly sons of the promise. For those who appear to live piously may be called sons of God; but since they will eventually live impiously and die in that impiety, God does not call them sons in His foreknowledge. There are sons of God who do not yet appear so to us, but now do so to God; and there are those who, on account of some arrogated or temporal grace, are called so by us, but are not so to God.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.66, emphasis mine)

Calvin adds: “Yet sometimes he also causes those whom he illumines only for a time to partake of it; then he justly forsakes them on account of their ungratefulness and strikes them with even greater blindness.” (Institutes of Christian Religion, 3.24.8, emphasis mine)

I thought the whole point of predestination was faith manifest by ones assurance and confidence of salvation. But, if God confers only a temporal grace for some, or confers His election conditioned upon gratefulness for others; than how can there be any assurance of which type of election a person has been gifted?

Also, can we confidently tell the prospective convert that God loves them?  How can we know which type of election God has pre- determined for them?

On the flip side of predestination, the Bible  teaches that God was ultimately responsible for nailing Christ to the Cross even more than wicked men.  Isaiah even says that it pleased God to sacrifice His Son. However, here is where intent makes all the difference. God determined Christ to be crucified out of righteous, love, and good intent while wicked men crucified Christ with evil intent. 

Isa 53:10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

God actively incentivizes righteousness but passively allows wickedness. On Earth we participate in the work of God for good or evil. And we will each be judged based on the thoughts and intents of our heart.  God’s love is manifest in the giving of the life of His Son.  Even the wicked glorify God in the demonstration of their misery apart from Him. 

I think, “God doesn’t owe us anything” is an unsatisfactory argument for predestination.  The truth is that God is no respecter of persons, He really does deeply desire to save all men without coercion, and really does consider the worth of each and every soul to be great.   The Wesleyans argue that by God’s nature of love, He created the world filled with thinking and feeling beings and, as our Father, has the obligation to care for each of his creations. 

Elder Joseph Fielding Smith stated emphatically that “no person is ever predestined to salvation or damnation. Every person has free agency.” Similarly, the Book of Mormon prophet Jacob taught that “one being is as precious in [God’s] sight as the other.” (Jacob 2:21.)

The problem with the idea of predestination, as C. H. Dodd put it, is that it “sets the ground of a man’s hope of salvation entirely outside himself.” Elder James E. Talmage also denounced the concept of predestination, saying that it makes us merely “automatons,” acting out a predetermined destiny decreed by God. (Eldon R. Taylor, Ensign, Dec. 1990)