A rather standard deterministic view of salvation runs something like this:

• Unregenerate humans are unable to desire salvation. The reason for this inability varies, but for the purposes here, it is unimportant.
• God changes an unregenerate person’s heart, so they now desire salvation.
• The person places their faith in Christ, and God gives them salvation.

This article is going to leave all the various enmeshing details to the side, and focus on one issue:[1]

Why does it matter if God changes a person’s heart contrary to their assent?

After all, it seems that God, being God, can freely choose to act against any human’s will any time he likes, in any matter he likes. “isn’t God omnipotent? God can do anything he likes!”

This framing begins by focusing on God’s power, but we should all agree that God’s power does not include the power to do anything unethical or unjust. No matter how powerful God is, God is limited by his own character and logic (as logic itself flows from the character of God). The question of salvation is not, ultimately, about what God can do, but what God has said he will do.

Another common way to frame this is as a technical question about salvation or soteriology. We might ask: “What is the order of salvation (the ordo salutis)?” This framing, however, puts the human in the center of the question, rather than God. We should always start from God when thinking about theology, rather than humans; the Creator rather than the created.

A more helpful framing is this:

Would it be unjust for God to change a person’s heart contrary to their assent?

This places the question in the proper context: God’s character.

Let’s consider four reasons it would, in fact, be unjust for God to change a person’s heart contrary to their assent.

It Violates Moral Agency

First, it is unjust because it violates the moral agency of the person, making the person into a means rather than an end.

A prime example of this concern in the Scriptures is recorded in Mark 2:23–27, where the Disciples are picking and eating heads of grain on the Sabbath. The Pharisees scold Jesus for allowing his Disciples to break the Sabbath, to which Jesus replies: “The Sabbath was made for man, not the man for Sabbath.” Jesus is saying men are the ends of the Law, not the means to fulfilling the Law. This leads Lewis and Demerest, in their Reformed Baptist systematic theology, to argue:

Persons as spiritual beings are not things to be folded, mutilated, or spindled. As self-transcendent spirits humans are self-conscious and self-determining subjects and moral agents.[2]

Changing a person’s heart against their assent is clearly a case of violating the self-determination and moral agency of the person.

Further, we can ask: Why does God change the person’s heart against their assent? The standard answer is: “To show his mercy and his glory.” In this case, the person is not an end to God; they are a means God uses to show something about his own character.

One objection people sometimes give against the assert that it is unjust for God to change a person’s heart against their assent is:

God can do things humans cannot, like changing someone’s heart against their assent, and still be just because he doesn’t “owe” anyone salvation.

This entire objection rests on a single point: The ethical standards God gives to humans are not grounded in his character. Instead, they are arbitrarily chosen and assigned to humans. Once you disconnect God’s character and God’s ethics in this way, capriciousness soon follows. We should not go down this path.

Two more common objections are:

• God changing a person’s heart against their assent for their good is not the same as God doing so for evil.
• God changes a person’s heart out of mercy, rather than to show his own glory.

Two simple answers to these objections are:

• A right thing done in the wrong way is still wrong. Even if God changes someone’s heart against their assent for their good, it can still be an unjust action, just like imprisoning someone to “break and addiction” against their assent can be illegal and unjust.
• According to Calvinism, in particular, God does all things for his glory; including passing over those he chooses not to save. It is hard to see how to sustain this objection in the face of the totality of Calvinist teaching in this area.

There are longer answers to these objections, as well.

It Show Partiality on the Part of God

A second line of answers for the two objections above, and a second reason to see God changing someone’s heart against their assent, is this: It shows partiality on the part of God, in whom we are told there is no partiality in Romans 2:9 (among other places):

For God shows no partiality.

If God selects some for salvation, and others to pass over, for “no reason in or of the person themselves,” this is the very definition of partiality. God has said he will have no part in this kind of behavior.

There is a second ethical problem lurking in this neighborhood, as well. The Parable of the Good Samaritan, found in Luke 10:25ff is perhaps the best place to start to understand this problem. If you’ve not read it in a while, you may want to lay this aside for a moment and do so.

In the narrative, Jesus has been asked about what it takes to inherit eternal life. Jesus refers to the Law, whereupon the questioner states the Law says: “You shall love the Lord your God without all your soul and all your strength and all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

The questioner, a lawyer, does not have a problem with loving the Lord, it seems—but he does want to know about this whole thing with “loving your neighbor.” “Who is my neighbor,” he wants to know?

Jesus answers this question with the familiar parable. We can boil the parable down to:

Any person you encounter who is truly in need and you can help is your neighbor.

Lest we think this is some kind of invention on Jesus’ part, the same definition can be inferred from many different places in the Law. Jesus relies on this in Luke 14:5, saying:

And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?”

The ethical principal Jesus is putting forward here is: If you pass by someone who is truly in need, they are your neighbor; if you can help them, you should.

The Priest and Levite are both condemned by Jesus for being able to help and not doing so. While we are not directly told why they would not help, the story is arranged to infer their lack of help is related to their self-perceived status and importance.

Now consider:

• God can change the heart of any person he chooses so they desire salvation.
• Changing the heart of a person costs God nothing more than he has already paid at the Cross and gains him the worship and glory of another soul saved.
• The person thus changed does not need to assent to the change; in fact, they can resist the change, but God’s power in this regard is absolute and irresistible.
• However, God, figuratively speaking, chooses to pass by some men dying from sin on the other side of the road.

How can this be justified? Other than arguing that God holds himself to different ethical standards than any human, what possible reason can we give for God doing such a thing?

Some might object that the man lying in the road clearly wanted to be helped, and all the humans God passes by on the road of history do not. But this just illustrates the problem more fully—every person God encounters, according to Calvinism, is:

• Is dying from sin
• Does not want salvation, and in fact hates God
• Can be saved by God, because God can change irresistibly change their heart

Every single person is equal in their position and place, and yet God selects some, and leaves others.

How can God justify being partial to some? If God has the power to save all, irresistibly, either God should leave them all, or God should save them all, based on God’s own definition of whom we should love.

“But doesn’t God,” you might say, “show preference to Abraham, and Noah, and Israel, and others throughout history?” In short, yes—but in the matter of service and temporal blessings, not in the matter of salvation.

A key point is that salvation is ethically different from either service or blessings. There are several reasons for this difference, some of which are considered below.

It Runs Counter to God’s Promises

Consider the following thought experiment.

Suppose your manager at work comes to you and says: “You need to finish this project in two weeks.” However, your manager already knows you do not have access to the resources needed to complete the project—perhaps access to a particular file, or a specific tool, or something else. Through those two weeks, you attempt to gain access to the resources you need, but you cannot. Your manager, in fact, is the one who denies you access to what you need to complete the project. At the end of the two weeks, your manager calls you into their office and says: “You didn’t complete the project in the time allotted; you are fired!”

Would you think your manager is just, or unjust? If this happened to a friend, a colleague, a student, or anyone else, would you think they were treated justly, or unjustly?

There is not a single person who would think you, or anyone else so treated, was treated justly.

And yet, listen to what God says:

If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it. Genesis 4:7

… choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. Joshua 24:15

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. Mark 16:16

And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” Acts 16:31

Everywhere, and all the time, God promises to save on the condition of our placing faith in him. Yet, according to Calvinism, God himself determines whether the person hearing these words will believe or not.

How can God be just for condemning a person who cannot fulfill a promise only he can fulfill?

There are two typical objections to this line of argument.

First, that “God does not owe us salvation, so it is not unjust for God to not fulfill a promise only he can cause us to keep.” The problem with this counter begins with the word “owe.” This is not about what God “owes” anyone, but rather about God’s character, which includes God’s truthfulness. If God only controls your ability to fulfill the terms of a promise, God cannot hold you responsible for not fulfilling the terms of that promise.

Second, that God is “not a human,” and hence God can do what he likes in these situations. Here, again, we encounter a “solution” that creates a bigger problem than it solves by detaching God’s character from the ethical code he gives to humans.

It Violates Love

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10

Love is, as Wayne Grudem says, “self-giving for the benefit of others,” and this “attribute of God shows that it is part of his nature to give of himself in order to bring about blessing or good for others.”[3] Virtually everyone agrees that this self-giving nature of God is not praiseworthy if it is not free. As Karl Barth says:

God’s being consists in the fact that He is the One who loves in freedom. In this He is the perfect being: the being which is itself perfection and so the standard of all perfection; the being, that is, which is self-sufficient and thus adequate to meet every real need; the being which suffers no lack in itself and by its very essence fills every real lack.[4]

To this point every theologian agrees. But does God’s love communicate to human love? Are God’s and human love essentially the same, but on different levels? The Scriptures indicate this is so.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 1 John 3:16

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34–35

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. John 15:12

If God’s love is universally acknowledged to be free, and human love is “like” God’s love, then human love must also be free to truly be love.

Carrying this further:

• Salvation is a choice to love God
• Love must be free to truly be love
• Therefore, salvation must be free

Otherwise, the choice to love God, to place one’s faith in God for salvation, is an unjust violation of the very nature of love.

Further Objections

Thus far, four different reasons, and objections to those reasons, have been weighed. In each case, there is a solid line of argument showing that God would be unjust in changing a person’s heart against their assent. There are two further lines of argument often used to support the justness of God changing a person’s heart against their assent.

First, those who hold to this doctrine often make the salvation decision equivalent to all other decisions in life, saying something like:

But doesn’t God override human free will in many other situations? Humans cannot choose the family to which they are born, and God clearly predestines (at least) some humans to specific roles in history.

Insofar as the objection considers God’s power, the objection is sound. The difficulty is predestination to a family, nation, or service is not within the same ethical category as predestination to salvation.

On one side are decisions about life circumstances, which the objector correctly notes we have little control over either way. On the other side, we have a decision about the eternal state of our individual soul. These are different classes of decisions.

On the one side, we have decisions about temporal blessings. On the other, we have a decision about our eternal state. God never—not once—promised material blessing if we do some particular thing, such as placing our faith in him. God has repeatedly promised a particular eternal state, communion with God, if we place our faith in him.

Only one of these two decisions touches directly on God’s character.

Second, those who hold to tis doctrine often make an argument something like:

It is impossible for God to control the ends of creation if God cannot override human will in decisions that impact the flow of history.

This objection confuses two completely different classes of predestination. Predestination to service relates to the time and circumstances of our lives. God has not promised a life free of pain and sorrow. God has not promised us red shoelaces. There is no ethical component to God choosing the time and place of our birth, nor the color of our shoelaces. As explained above, however, there are definite ethical consequences to God choosing whether we will be saved whether we assent to such a thing or not.

Summary

Would it be unjust for God to change a person’s heart against their assent? Four reasons to believe it would have been considered here:

• It violates the moral agency of the human person, touching their dignity, and the very image of God in that person.
• It shows partiality on the part of God in salvation, when God claims he is impartial in this regard.
• It runs counter to God’s promises.
• It violates love.

In each case, we have looked at various objections and determined that because this question touches the very character of God, these objections fail.

An important note at this point: even if, on reading this paper, you disagree with one of these four reasons, or even three of these four reasons, a single argument is enough to call such an action on the part of God unjust.

God would, in fact, be unjust if he changes the heart of a person without their assent.

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[1] Someone will inevitably say: “Calvinism does not teach God changes the person’s heart contrary to their assent; he simply changes their heart.” The problem with this counter is it guts the first and fourth points of the Calvinist acrostic, replacing them with word games. Why must grace be “irresistible” to be effective? Because, on Calvinism, if any person can resist grace, they will, because they are totally depraved. The only escape from this is to declare logic, itself, illogical.

[2] Lewis and Demarest, Integrative Theology, 2:172.

[3] Grudem, Systematic Theology, 198–99.

[4] Barth et al., Church Dogmatics, 322.