Thomas D. Hawkes on John Calvin’s (1509–1564) View of God’s General Love to All People

4. God’s Love Is Seen in General to All People

If it should be asked, Does God love all people in general? Calvin answers with a broad yes. “The Heavenly Father loves the human race, and wishes that they should not perish.”³⁸ This love is seen in the general disposition of the will of God, who “wills not the death of a sinner,” but calling all to repentance promises to receive them, “if they only seriously repent.”³⁹ Indeed, even providence is evidence of this love, for it reveals “his concern for the whole human race.”⁴⁰

Dekker argues, following Berkhof, that for Calvin, God’s love is not actually two different kinds of loves—one for the elect and another for the reprobate. Rather, God’s love is of one essence, but it has two different effects—in the elect and in the reprobate.⁴¹ “Some of the effects of the one love of God reach all men alike, while other effects get through only to the elect.”⁴² While there is a general fatherly love in creation, providence, and the offering of the gospel, the effective embrace of fatherly love is only given to the elect. “God embraces in fatherly love none but his children, whom he has regenerated with the Spirit of adoption.”⁴³

Therefore, while God does love all humanity, the fatherly embrace, or the effectiveness of God’s love, is realized only in his chosen. Those who are not predestined to life, while loved in a true sense, reject the offer of salvation, apart from which they cannot naturally deduce that God is a loving Father, even though he has supplied ample evidence of his love. “We cannot by contemplating the universe infer that he is father.”⁴⁴

Just as the knowledge of God available to humanity through the sensus divinitatis cannot lead one to salvation, but serves to render humanity without excuse for its ingratitude, the knowledge of God’s Creator-love serves a similar purpose. “Proofs of the love of God towards the whole human race exist innumerable, all of which demonstrate the ingratitude of those who perish.”⁴⁵ Humanity should be able to see God as loving Father, giving his many proofs, but due to their own willful sin, they will not, and so are all the more culpable.

As we further contemplate the question of God’s love for the reprobate, it is helpful to define certain aspects of God’s love more precisely. A failure to do so leads one to concur with McMahon, who argues that Calvin has gone too far in asserting that God has a fatherly love for the reprobate. “This writer disagrees with Calvin in his use of terms. The Bible does not ascribe ‘fatherly kindness’ to anyone but the Christian.”⁴⁶

When we understand that God’s love, while of one essence, has various aspects, we can begin to untangle this particular Gordian knot. D. A. Carson has helpfully distinguished five aspects of God’s love:

(1) God’s intra-Trinitarian love, (2) God’s love displayed in His providential care, (3) God’s yearning warning and invitation to all human beings as He invites and commands them to repent and believe, (4) God’s special love toward the elect, and (5) God’s conditional love toward His covenant people as He speaks in the language of discipline.⁴⁷

If we consider meanings 2 and 3—providential love and yearning love inviting all to repent—we begin to more properly distinguish what Calvin does, and does not, imply when he speaks of God’s love for the reprobate. Commenting on Ezek 18:23, “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” Calvin finds an affirmation of Carson’s third type of love, a yearning for repentance. “God desires nothing more earnestly than that those who were perishing and rushing to destruction should return into the way of safety.”⁴⁸ Similarly, Calvin comments that when Jesus looked with love upon the rich young ruler who refused to repent, this was real love.

But God is sometimes said to love those whom he does not approve or justify.… Thus the question is answered, How was it possible that Christ should love a man who was proud and a hypocrite, while nothing is more hateful to God than these two vices? For it is not inconsistent that the good seed, which God has implanted in some natures, shall be loved by Him, and yet that He should reject their persons and their works on account of corruption.⁴⁹

This love of God for even the reprobate, can be asserted because, while God’s wrath is circumstantial—dependent upon the particular sin that God’s justice must rightly condemn—his love is intrinsic to his very nature as he looks upon his creation, even those parts of it which are fallen in rebellion. “Where there is no sin, there is no wrath, but there will always be love in God.”⁵⁰ “There is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed toward the same individual or people at once. God in His perfections must be wrathful against His rebel image-bearers, for they have offended Him; God in His perfections must be loving toward His rebel image-bearers, for He is that kind of God.”⁵¹

While clearly asserting that God does really love the reprobate, Calvin admits that our efforts to understand exactly how God does so may lead us into a confusing labyrinth.⁵² Although we cannot precisely understand the mystery of how God loves even the reprobate, we must accept it, for “it is not surprising that our eyes should be blinded by intense light.”⁵³
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38 Com. John 3:16.
39 Com. Ezek 18:23.
40 Inst. 1.17.1.
41 Harold Dekker, “God’s Love to Sinners: One or Two?,” Reformed Journal 13 (1963): 12–16, esp. 15.
42 Ibid., 12.
43 Com. Mark 10:21.
44 Inst. 2.6.1.
45 John Calvin, Defense of the Secret Providence of God, in Calvin’s Calvinism, ed. and trans. H. Cole (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 268.
46 C. Matthew McMahon, John Calvin’s View of God’s Love and the Doctrine of Reprobation (Crossville, TN: Puritan, 2015), Kindle edition, location 721.
47 D. A. Carson, “God’s Love and God’s Wrath,” BibSac 156 (1999): 387–98, esp. 393.
48 Com. Ezek 18:23.
49 Com. Mark 10:21.
50 Carson, “God’s Love and God’s Wrath,” 388.
51 Ibid., 389.
52 Com. John 15:9.
53 Com. Ezek 18:23.

Thomas D. Hawkes, “John Calvin: Prophet of God’s Love,” Westminster Theological Journal 82, no. 1 (2020): 43–45. 

Bio:

Thomas D. Hawkes, PhD, is founding pastor of Uptown Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is director of the new Center for Church Planting at Reformed Theological Seminary-Charlotte. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church of America.