Episcopal scholar Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., has done a good job expressing the historic catch-22 of the Calvinist understanding of salvation. Describing Puritans in early America, Shattuck writes:
"Calvinists believed that God would inevitably awaken faith within the hearts of the predestined elect, while those predestined to damnation would simply never experience a conversion. Yet if conversion were solely a divine action, indeed an event foreordained by God before creation itself, there would seem to be little justification for pressing a sinner to repent. To stress the importance of the human will in conversion was not only inappropriate, but might even signal a lack of faith in divine grace."
If the Calvinist understanding of grace and salvation is true, then what could be the need or justification for calling sinners to repent? Why tell people to do something you're convinced they're going to do anyway--and that by divine decree? This inconsistency, and the attempts of Calvinists to remedy the problem or to explain it away, is a major theme of Reformed history. Those who take a higher, dare I say biblical, view of the love of God for all humanity still wait for, but do not expect, a convincing answer to such questions.
Source: Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., "conversion," in The Encyclopedia of American Religious History, eds. Edward L. Queen II, Stephen R. Prothero, and Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., (New York: Facts on File, 1996), 1:161-62.
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