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Hellbound Because God Willed It? (vs. Allie Beth Stuckey)

Hellbound Because God Willed It? (vs. Allie Beth Stuckey)

Last updated on: June 13, 2026 at 1:10 pm by Dave Armstrong

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Hellbound Because God Willed It? (vs. Allie Beth Stuckey) 2026-06-13T13:10:08-04:00 Dave Armstrong

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This is the transcript of the initial presentation of the video, “Allie Beth Stuckey on Predestination to Hell: Biblical Catholic Takedown” (Catholic Bible Highlights with Kenny Burchard, 1-23-26). Allie’s words from her video will be in blue.

*****

Allie Beth Stuckey is a Reformed Baptist mostly known as a conservative political commentator. Her YouTube channel has 702,000 subscribers. Today, we’re replying to her video entitled, **“**Predestined to Hell? Calvinism Explained” (12-3-25). She covers many topics, but we will be specifically critiquing the belief that God predestines those who end up in hell from all eternity. Here’s how Allie introduces the topic:

[Allie — 40:18] he predestined before our time began who was going to be saved and who was going to not be saved, who was going to spend eternity in hell. And like this is tough for me. Like this is really tough for me because and so like I will just tell you because I understand the reaction to that. The reaction that I had when I was 12. I fully understand and still sympathize with that because what father or mother would create a child knowing that their soul will be spent in torment forever and ever? And how is it possible to say that person deserves that wrath and deserves that punishment if they did not have any contribution to being created?

I appreciate the fact that Allie is honest about how she struggles with this belief of Calvinism. There are many things as Christians that we don’t fully understand; some that we never will, this side of heaven. This is considered by many to be the most mysterious belief in Christianity, and every take on it has its difficulties. The big historical debate has to do with how and why God decrees that a person will end up in hell. Does He take into account their free will rebellion against Him and His moral commands or not? Could they have chosen otherwise?

Calvinism ultimately denies – when we closely examine it — that they had the free will to do so. Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and most Protestants, on the other hand, believe that God, being outside of time, knows from all eternity how men will respond to His grace, and that He predestines the reprobate or non-elect to hell because of or in light of their foreseen sins and rebellion against Him. St. Augustine summed these things up in the following way:

God is good; God is just. He can deliver some men not meriting good, because He is good. He cannot condemn any man not deserving evil, because He is just. (Against Julian, Book III, ch. 18, sec. 35; translated by Matthew A. Schumacher, New York, Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1957, p. 140; available in its entirety at Internet Archive)

Allie then goes on to read several Bible passages about the elect. But Catholics have no disagreement about that. Catholics fully agree that God predestines the elect. We disagree that He wills for the reprobate to go to hell without any consideration whatsoever of their behavior towards Him and other human beings. So how does she defend the Calvinist view of unconditional predestination of the damned to hell? She really doesn’t. Rather, she appeals to mystery, as these clips demonstrate:

[Allie — 45:55] There is the belief that okay if God predestined people to go to hell then he can’t be just he can’t be merciful. He can’t be kind. Um he can’t be loving and uh therefore it must not be true. We must have some kind of contribution to our salvation. Calvinists would say look God can do what he wants to do . . .

[Allie — 47:22] Calvinists would say it’s not up to us to say how God should accomplish his will. We are simply to obey.

This is no defense. Yeah, God can do what He wants to do. He’s all-powerful. No one disputes that. We disagree with the view that God would damn a person to hell without the slightest consideration of what he or she did in their life. That’s not a merciful or loving or fair God. The Bible tells us what God is like. We obey and love Him precisely because He is Who He is, and is utterly worthy to be praised. He’s love itself, as the Bible says. No one is trying to tell God what to do. We’re simply noting what the Bible states about God; what He is like. Here is how the Bible describes Him:

1 Timothy 2:3-6 . . . God our Savior, [4] who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. [5] . . . Christ Jesus, [6] . . . gave himself as a ransom for all, . . .

2 Peter 3:9 The Lord . . . is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

That’s not consistent with the idea that God, from all eternity, decreed that so many human beings would go to hell without any consideration of how they acted; what they did with their life. They never had a chance to do otherwise or to be saved, no matter what they did, because God had decreed from all eternity that it was not to be. But such a decree cannot be squared with the two Bible passages above. Jesus proclaimed in sorrow:

Matthew 23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!”

Note how His desire was that they come to Him and follow Him, but they don’t. And what was the reason? Was it because Jesus had decided long before that they would not, because they were in the box of the reprobate? No! It was because they “would not.” In other words, that was their free will choice. If that weren’t the case, then Jesus here would be upset about the decree that He Himself had made, and that’s not possible for God. He was upset because He wanted them to be saved, but they rebelled. The same sort of emphasis on the free will human rebellion occurs several other times in the Bible:

Deuteronomy 1:21, 26 Behold, the LORD your God has set the land before you; go up, take possession, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has told you; do not fear or be dismayed.’ . . . [26] Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the LORD your God;

Deuteronomy 8:19-20 And if you forget the LORD your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you this day that you shall surely perish. [20] Like the nations that the LORD makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God.

Jeremiah 29:18-19 I will pursue them with sword, famine, and pestilence, and will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, a terror, a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them, [19] because they did not heed my words, says the LORD, which I persistently sent to you by my servants the prophets, but you would not listen, says the LORD.’ –

The Bible is consistent. People go to hell because of what they did; because they disobeyed and spurned God; not because He decreed from all eternity that they could never be saved no matter what. The Bible’s very clear about this:

Matthew 7:19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Matthew 25: 41-42, 46 Then he will say to those at his left hand, `Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; [42] for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, . . . [46] And they will go away into eternal punishment, . . .

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 . . . neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, [10] nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21 Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, [20] idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, [21] envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Ephesians 5:5 Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure man, or one who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

Revelation 21:27 But nothing unclean shall enter it, nor any one who practices abomination or falsehood, . . .

Revelation 22:15 Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and every one who loves and practices falsehood.

Allie did bring up Romans 9, which is probably Calvinists’ favorite Bible passage. On the face of it, it seems to support the view here critiqued. But when examined more closely, I submit that it doesn’t. It’s too involved of a discussion, so we will link to a recent in-depth article of mine about it.

If Calvinist unconditional predestination to hell is true, God and the Bible would be playing games with us, because over and over the Bible states that it’s our sin and rebellion that cause us to go to hell! Calvinism makes God the author of sin as well, which is a huge problem. They deny this, but I don’t see how they can get out of it. Instead of sin being part of His permissive will, that He allows so that men are to freely choose to follow Him or not, it becomes part of His perfect will. Here’s another excerpt from Allie:

[Allie — 47:22] Wayne Grudum in his book systematic theology, he talks about this doctrine of concurrence, which says that two things can be concurrently true. that God is totally in charge. He is completely sovereign. That nothing escapes his will. That even what Satan does is allowed by God in his power. And also that humans have a real responsibility. That we are actually held accountable for our actions. That we actually bear the weight of our sin. These two things are concurrently true.

That’s the Catholic view, not the Calvinist view. Let’s listen to an analysis by Protestant historian Alister McGrath, who published a biography of Calvin in 1990:

Predestination, for Augustine, refers only to the divine decision to redeem, not to the act of abandoning the remainder of fallen humanity.

For Calvin, logical rigour demands that God actively chooses to redeem or to damn. God cannot be thought of as doing something by default: he is active and sovereign in his actions. Therefore God actively wills the salvation of those who will be saved and the damnation of those who will not. (Reformation Thought, 2nd edition., Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1993, 125)

Salvation thus lies outside the control of the individual, who is powerless to alter the situation. (p. 127)

Francois Wendel, biographer of Calvin, says basically the same:

Calvin was never content with the statement that God, in his goodness, elected to salvation a certain number of men taken from the mass of sinners; he thought that those who had not been chosen had also been the object of a special decree, that of reprobation . . . on this particular point Calvin diverges from St. Augustine, for whom the elect alone are the object of a special decision which withdraws them from the ‘massa perditionis,’ while the reprobate are simply abandoned by God to the ruin they have incurred by their sins (De correptione et gratia, 7,12, M.L. xliv, 923). (Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, tr. Philip Mairet, New York: Harper & Row, 1963, 264, 280)

Likewise, another Calvin scholar, Fred H. Klooster, chimes in:

Calvin emphatically contended that sinful works are not the cause or basis for God’s eternal decree of reprobation . . .

What is the cause of God’s decree of reprobation? Calvin’s answer is, the sovereign good pleasure of God. No cause other than His sovereign will can be adduced . . . (Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination, 2nd ed., Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1977, 61, 63)

And here’s what John Calvin himself says:

Whence does it happen that Adam’s fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God? . . . The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess. Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created him, and consequently foreknew because he so ordained by his decree . . . God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his descendants, but also mete it out in accordance with his own decision. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, 23, 7, McNeill / Battles edition, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960, Vol. 2, 955-956)

Now, the majority of Calvinists are infralapsarians: a fancy word meaning that God decided to positively consign to hell so many people, in light of the fall of man, as opposed to ordaining the fall itself, which is called supralapsarianism, which, I have argued, was Calvin’s own position (as I think the above quotation indicates). But the result works out the same for those who are damned. They have no free will choice in the matter, because saving grace is irresistible (therefore God didn’t will to give it to them).

Calvinist opinions in this regard, we submit, contradict the Bible I many different ways, as I think we have demonstrated.

Related Book

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (Oct. 2010, 187 pages) [115 pages (seven chapters) devoted specifically to a critique of Calvinism and “TULIP”]

Related Articles

Romans 9: Unanswerable Calvinist Prooftext? [12-28-25]

Predestination & the Ingenious “Solution” of Fr. Most [4-22-06]

Catholic Teaching: Predestination of the Elect (Ludwig Ott) [1996]

Related Web Pages

John Calvin: Catholic Appraisal

Calvinism & General Protestantism: Catholic Critique

***

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Summary: Does God predestine certain people to hell from all eternity, no matter what they do? That’s the Calvinist claim that Allie Beth Stuckey defends. We critique it from the Bible.

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