Dave Hunt ... Who could God save?

In the Q&A section of Dave Hunt's website (www.thebereancall.org), Dave responds to a question regarding the lack of footnotes providing a reference which identifies "some scholars" who feel that the first 15 chapters of Acts were actually written in Hebrew. I'm not going to get into the problems with this statement, as James R. White has already sufficiently addressed it on his blog.

What I want to make mention of, however, is a statement that Dave Hunt makes in his response. Dave says the following:

"White claims to go by all of Scripture, but he repeatedly cites the same few texts….Pointing to God’s sovereignty as justification for His predestination of multitudes to damnation whom He could save, White refuses to consider the hundreds of scriptures in which God pleads with Israel and all mankind to repent and turn to Him."

I want to highlight the following: "Pointing to God’s sovereignty as justification for His predestination of multitudes to damnation whom He could save ..." (emphasis mine). As is often the case in Calvinist/non-Calvinist debates, the non-Calvinist suffers the same (or greater) force of the very argument he or she is levelling against Calvinism.

If Dave thinks it is a problem that in the Calvinist's worldview, God could save certain persons, but instead chooses to predestine them to damnation, does he not realize he also suffers from the same problem? Putting aside the obvious fact that the "just" response from God to man's sinfulness and rebellion would be to do just that - predestine them to hell, Dave apparently doesn't see that his position suffers as well.

In the non-Calvinist's worldview, is God not fully aware of who will and will not choose to accept him? Is it not His sovereignty which gives Him the "right" to allow these individuals to be born into this world anyway? Could not God save these people, if he wanted to, even if they "freely" chose to deny him? Can't God overcome the will of people if he really wanted to, even in the non-Calvinist's worldview?

If God is omnipotent, then the answer is obviously yes. Yet God has decided that some will come into this world who will not repent of their sins and call him Lord. Whether God has decreed this state of affairs (the Calvinistic view), or has simply allowed it (the non-Calvnistic view), God could save these people, if he wanted to, in either the Calvinistic or the non-Calvinistic worldview. Apparently Dave doesn't realize his own argument (if it had any merit at all) condemns his position, too.

-- BK