1. Isn’t it incoherent to say that “God IS love” and how we are commanded to love as He loves and yet say He does not love the majority of mankind?
2. If God is selective with His love and redemption how are we supposed to love our enemies when He does not?
3. If God is only saving a minute number called the elect why did God say that He “so loved the world” and that He is the “Savior of the world”? Why did He not say, “For God so loved the elect of the world?”
4. If someone is considered elected or chosen are they not elected for some purpose, ie., other people? For whom are we chosen and for what purpose?
5. Was not Abraham chosen to be blessed in order to bless all nations?
6. If the summation of the law is “love your neighbor as yourself” does God love us as Himself? In other words does He lay His life down for all of us His “neighbors”? Or does He answer, “Ah, but the question is, ‘who is really My neighbor? To Me it is actually just a few elect.’“
7. Is not Calvinism a form of determinism that predestines certain people to a “caste” relegated to God’s bin of “throwaways.” To say that most people are born into a condition without hope is not in line with the overall Story of God and the trajectory of love, hope, grace and restoration. How do you reconcile this?
8. If a God who predestines only a few to eternal life doesn’t sound like “good news” then how can it be “The Good News of the Gospel” for the world?
9. Why does Calvin contradict himself in his commentary on I John regarding “God is love”? How can he get away with saying that this verse “does not speak of the essence of God, but only shows what He is found to be by us [ie., the elect]” immediately after he had just introduced the passage by stating that I John “takes for granted a general principle or truth, that God is love, that is, it is God’s nature to love men”? [emphasis mine] Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, pg 239
10. Why does the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s definition of God not include love?:
“God is a spirit; infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.”
11. Why do the adherents of the “doctrines of grace” have a general reputation for being proud, arrogant and unteachable especially the leaders of the neo-Calvinist movement? If this doctrine is so pure and protects God’s holiness then why are many of its leaders not so holy, struggling with pride and often failing to love?