“…This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” - 1 Tim 2: 3, 4
If God desires that all men be saved, but does not actually save all men, some might begin to question to what extent God's desires are genuine. For Him who is omnipotent, everything He desires lies within His power to achieve. This is extremely unlike you and me. I desire my friend's salvation, but I can't make it happen. There's actually very little that I can get through my own power (but this is, of course, where prayer comes in). God, however, can infallibly get everything He desires and accomplish anything He wills, according to His good pleasure. And yet, He doesn't get what He desires. What's the problem? Does His own decretive will overrule His desire? Clearly, He desires me to be more kind and gentle toward my wife. Equally clearly He desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. So, for someone who has the power to obtain His desires, why doesn't God apparently get what He wants? If we say that His desires are subject to (and lesser than) His decretive will, then we may wonder how genuine those desires really are.
Reasoning through the above data, the synergist concludes that the doctrine of unconditional election must be wrong, since this would mean that God has predetermined to graciously save some and leave others in their sin. Instead, if God really desires that all men be saved, the only logical explanation, in their mind, is that election (and therefore God's love) is conditioned on our faith. They further reason that if God desires all mankind's salvation and He doesn't, in fact, save them, even if its within His power, then the God of the Reformers (who teach election and regeneration unto faith) is schizophrenic and proven to be false. Can God genuinely desire AND act in ways that are inharmonious with His determination? Can He desire that my friend be saved and even act in such ways that he/she could be accused of "resisting the Holy Spirit" (1) and, yet at the same time, determine not to save him/her? On a surface level, this actually would appear to be a fairly reasonable argument, but when closely scrutinized, we discover it contains a fatal flaw since it actually turns out to reveal a weakness in the system of the person who raises the issue. In thinking that they have finally defeated the Reformed doctrine of election they actually end up exposing their own Achilles' heel.
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