The Bible says that God wills to save everyone
Another objection to the doctrine of election is that it contradicts certain passages of Scripture that say that God wills for all to be saved. Paul writes of God our Savior, "who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4). And Peter says, "The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should teach repentance" (2 peter 3:9). Do not these passages contradict the idea that God has only chosen certain people to be saved?
One common to the solution to this question (from the Reformed perspective advocated in this book) is to say that these verses speak of God's revealed will (telling us what we should do), not his hidden will (his eternal plans for what will happen) The verses simply tell us that God invites and commands every person to repent and come to Christ for salvation, but they do not tell us anything about God's secret decrees regarding who will be saved.
The Arminian theologian Clark Pinnock objects to the idea that God has a secret and a revealed will - he calls it "the exceedingly paradoxical notion of two divine wills regarding salvation" [Clark Pinnock, "Introduction," in Grace Unlimited, p. 13]. but Pinnock never really answers the question of why all are not saved (from an Arminian perspective). Ultimately Arminians also must say that God wills something more strongly than he wills the salvation of all people, for in fact all are not saved. Arminians claim that the reason why all are not saved is that God wills to preserve the free will of man more than he wills to save everyone. But is this not also making a distinction in two aspects of the will of God? On the one hand God wills that all be saved (1 Tim. 2:5-6; 2 Peter 3:9). But on the other hand he wills to preserve man's absolutely free choice. In fact, he wills the second thing more than the first. But this means that Arminians also must say that 1 Timothy 2:5-6 and 2 Peter 3:9 do not say that God wills the salvation of everyone in an absolute or unqualified way - they too must say that the verses only refer to one kind or one aspect of God's will.
Here the difference betwen the Reformed and the Arminian conception of God's will is clearly seen. Both Calvinists and Arminians agree that God's commands in Scripture reveal to us what he wants us to do, and both agree that the commands in Scripture invite us to repent and trust in Christ for salvation. Therefore, in one sense both agree that God wills that we will be saved - it is the will that he reveals to us explicitly in the gospel invitation.
But both sides must also say that there is something else that God deems more important than saving everyone. Reformed theologians say that God deems his own glory more important than saving everyone, and that (according to Romans 9) God's glory is also furthered by the fact that some are not saved. Arminian theologians also say that something else is more important to God than the salvation of all people, namely, the preservation of man's free will. So in a Reformed system God's highest value is his own glory, and in an Arminian system God's highest value is the free will of man. These are two distincly different conceptions of the nature of God, and it seems that the Reformed position has much more explicit biblical support than the Arminian position does on this question. (*)
* See chapter 15, pp. 271-73, and chapter 21, pp. 440-41, on the fact that God created us and the whole universe for his own glory. An Arminian may object to putting the difference this way, and may say that God is more glorified when we choose him out of an absolutely free will, but this is simply a doubtful assumption based on intuition or human analogy, and has no specific support from Scripture. Moreover, to be consistent it seems the Arminian would also have to take account of the millions who do not choose God, and would have to say that God is also more glorified by the free choices of the millions who freely decide against God - otherwise, why would God allow them to persist in this free choice of rebellion?
