Double-Predestination: Does God Elect People to Hell?

This will (hopefully) be my last post before getting back into the "Speak up" and "What I believe" series which I left hanging.

Believe it or not, the internet abounds with anti-Calvinist memes and pictures like this one

In this post I'll be talking about the notion of double-predestination: that God elects some people to heaven, and some people to hell. We'll specifically be looking at it from the point of view that it is an attack on Calvinism, since Calvinists are often charged with holding this view. Perhaps a later post will go over why the idea is unbiblical.

This objection has several problems in common with the claim that  "Calvinists believe that babies go to hell," which we went over in a previous post:

First of all, it is an emotional attack, meant to discredit rather than to disprove the Doctrines of Grace. It makes you go "Whoa, Calvinists believe that? I don't want to have anything to do with Calvinism!" Instead of pointing to scripture and saying "Here's how Calvinism is unbiblical, and therefore, wrong." This is a problem for those pushing this particular objection.

Secondly, it once again unfairly paints all Calvinists with the same brush. Yes, some Calvinists do believe in double-predestination (if I'm not mistaken, my old pastor in Florida is among them), but some don't (such as my family and many others). This is because...

Thirdly, the doctrine of double-predestination is NOT a specifically Calvinistic idea. Like last time, when we see a claim such as "X Calvinist believes X doctrine" we need to ask ourselves if X doctrine really comes from TULIP or from somewhere else. Double-predestination is not found in TULIP, though it can be made to fit with it.

Those are the three flaws that this argument shares with the last one (Calvinists hate babies), and I will not go into them in any more detail here since I already did there.

On to the argument itself. As is the case with many objections to Calvinism, the claim that Calvinism teaches double-predestination stems from misunderstanding. In this case, a misunderstanding of the Calvinistic Doctrine of Unconditional Election, as well as a misunderstanding of how God judges man.

The doctrine of Unconditional Election does not teach that God elects some people to hell and some people to heaven. UE deals specifically with God Electing people to Salvation, not Damnation.

But some would argue that God not electing people to heaven is basically the same as God electing those people to hell, and that on Judgement day, the condemned sinner cold use the excuse "But God, you didn't elect me!" But that's just not how it works.

God does not predestine people to hell. People destine themselves to hell by sinning. We had our chance in the garden, and we screwed up (Genesis 3). Adam's fall brought sin into the world, and all men, being descendants of Adam, are part of that sin (Romans 5:12). The wages of sin is death (romans 6:23), and thus, ALL men are condemned to Hell, not by any of God's doing, but by Adam's and by their own.

As for the "you didn't elect me" excuse, the reason it fails is that it misunderstands how judgement and atonement works. On Judgement day, God won't choose who goes to heaven and who goes to hell based on whether a person has been elected or not. Revelation 20:12-13 says:

"And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works." (Emphasis mine)

It is our works by which we will be judged and condemned. And if that's the case, then we all deserve to go to hell because we're all sinners. This is where election comes in. I like the way the Baptist Catechism puts it:

Question 24: Did God leave all mankind to perish in the condition of sin and misery?

Answer: God, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, having chosen a people to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the condition of sin and misery, and to bring them into a condition of salvation, by a Redeemer. (Ephesians 1:3-4; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; Romans 5:21; 8:29-30; 9:11-12; 11:5-7; Acts 13:48; Jeremiah 31:33)

So let's look at that non-elect sinner's excuse in light of what we know about judgment day. Yes, it is true that God didn't elect the person, but they couldn't use that as an excuse to get out of the punishment of hell. Why? Because they sinned, and the wages of sin is death.

As for the elect person, he has sinned too, and so is condemned to hell as well... BUT! "Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified..." Because Jesus took their sin and punishment upon Himself, the elect man has been Justified.
"...and whom He justified, these He also glorified." (Romans 8:30, emphasis mine) Such will be the case for all of God's elect on Judgement day, and I hope by His Grace that you are among them, dear reader.