God hasn’t revealed every detail about *anything* to us. The Scriptures give us essential info: who God is, the necessity of obeying Him, a very brief history of Jesus’ time on earth, & sufficient theology to keep us on the right track, providing we receive it in the way that God intended.
Left out of what we know is an infinite amount. We are finite beings. Our minds are exceedingly limited. God is infinite, & omniscient. The world wouldn’t hold a fraction of the books that could be filled with His wisdom, & we’d get lost trying to read even a few of them. From Isaiah 55:
8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
I used to think we could out-mercy God. That’s because His mercy must be tempered by justice & righteousness, while we, being infinitely less just & righteous than He is, could focus on mercy alone, or nearly alone.
I was wrong. We cannot out-mercy God. This is because His single most definitive trait is love, agape. From 1 John 4:
“8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
God is many things, but nowhere else in the Bible will you find Him defined by any other single trait in this grammatical construction. Iow, John is revealing to us God’s most defining essence.
It is this trait of God’s that most highlights the tragedy of Calvin’s error. He imagined that a God whose essence is love could create sentient beings—humans in His own image, who could feel agony & despair—for the sole purpose of ‘eternally punishing’ them. No greater contradiction to God’s nature could be postulated. God is no Sadistic ghoul. He created mankind, & from the beginning He revealed Himself to us & called us to obedience. Using the gift of free will with which He has endowed us, some respond in faith while others reject him.
Consider this image. From Isaiah 65:
1 “I permitted Myself to be sought by those who did not ask for Me;
I permitted Myself to be found by those who did not seek Me.
I said, ‘Here am I, here am I,’
To a nation which did not call on My name.
2 “I have spread out My hands all day long to a rebellious people,
Who walk in the way which is not good, following their own thoughts,”
This is one of the most poignant passages in the Bible. It depicts a God who, despite our rebellion, spreads out His hands toward us all day long. We don’t seek Him, but He importunes us to come to Him. How amazing.
Yet this passage makes no sense to a Calvinist. Why would God spread out His hands ‘all day long’ to anyone? If grace is irresistible, the people will come without this beseeching gesture. If the people are too depraved to come, then God is both wasting His time & mocking them, by importuning them to do what He has created them incapable of doing.
But back to your question. Jimmyray, we do not know all the details. We’ve been given a very limited amount of info. Two things we know. (1) God actively seeks each soul, & places us in the best possible circumstances to come to Him. From Acts 17:
26 “and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’”
From this we see that God placed each & every individual into optimal circumstances to seek Him.
The second thing we know is that those who rebel against God without specific knowledge of His commandments will be punished much more lightly than those who have full knowledge & yet rebel. I won’t quote the passage again, but it is Biblical, & it is from the mouth of Jesus Himself.
Now if you think Calvinistically, that a one-size-fits-all ‘eternal punishment’ is in store for all the non-elect, you can’t fit the concept of ‘degrees of punishment’ into the picture. It doesn’t make sense. But if, on the other hand, you take God at His word, then you see that even in judgment He is merciful. A light punishment awaits those who sinned outside of a specific knowledge of God’s commandments.
More details than that we do not have. All we can do is thank God for his love & mercy, & leave the rest to Him.
Next stop, purgatory...
How do you reconcile your interpretation of that passage with:
Romans 3:10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless;
I would assert, that if you think Biblically, you would see that, even if there are degrees of punishment, as you assert (which I don not contest, incidentally), the destination of all who are unbelievers is the same. They will all be cast into the lake of fire.
John 3: 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
Luke 13:5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
Matt 18:8 If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.
Matt 25:41 Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Rev 20:14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.