Calvin makes no effort to deceive either us or himself that there is some deeper kindness in the doctrine he proclaims, hidden from our sinful eyes only by our own depravity. He proclaims that God hates the damned, and in fact created them to be the objects of his hatred (see his commentaries on the epistles of John). For him, the true unadorned essence of the whole story is nothing more than sheer absolute power exercising itself for power’s sake, which therefore necessarily manifests itself in boundless cruelty no less than in boundless generosity. Calvinists, of course, will object to my
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