The Odds of Calvinism’s Unconditional Election
There was recently a discussion in which common grace vs special (or saving) grace was bandied about. Curiosity got to me and I wondered, as a function of the number of elect persons there are, just how special is God’s saving grace. And so, I looked up some numbers to calculate a ballpark figure. I’ll assume, for argument’s sake, that it’s only the US population of Evangelical Christians who comprise God’s “elect”. There might be a few others throughout the world that are elect. But, it’s also likely that not all of the US elect who think they’re elect are actually elect. Nevertheless, ~25% of the US population of 323M people are Evangelical Christian. The world population is ~7.6B People. So, if my math is right, then; 0.25(323e6) / 7.6e9 = 0.0107. That is, God’s election is only extended to about one percent of the world’s population.
Put another way, for every soul born throughout the world, there is a likelihood of ~99% that the child is NOT of the elect. Well, at least I now know my approximate odds of God having found favor with me before the foundation of the world.
I think I’d consider the rest of the world population as well… How many untold millions in China are “underground” Christians, for example? And what about throughout world history, especially during the times of the early church in which “the whole world was turned upside down?” But, no matter what, “many are called; few are chosen.” This is, indeed, a biblical concept.
Exceedingly few are chosen according to Calvinistic doctrines. Makes me wonder if there’s a particular group from some country with a statistically significant difference with regard to the number of elect persons?