Would we be more pious than Jesus? – “I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given Me” – Jn 17:9

During the course of our conversation on the implications of the thought expressed above I come up with the following logical argument for God’s loving the whole world as opposed to a small segment of it per reformed theology.

Per the ontological argument: We can never be more pious than Jesus.

Since love for the whole world is better than love for a particular “favored” group (per Jesus’s own admonition that it is more admirable to love one’s enemy than it is to merely love one’s friend).

We can see that it logically follows that God must love the whole world and not merely a segment of it since failure to do so would entail the illogical conclusion that we are, per the initial comment, “more pious” than the God who is the very definition of good.

No, it’s not very polished and I invite comments and thoughts on it, but I figured its a pretty good start!

UPDATE:
A friend of mine pointed out that I should probabally post a little more showing my thought process and why I think my arguement fits in with “ontology” in general.

Ontology is the study of “being” and the sense I’m using it in here is along the lines of the ontological argument for God’s existence specifically Descartes’ formula:

1. Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be contained in the idea of something is true of that thing.
2. I clearly and distinctly perceive that necessary existence is contained in the idea of God.
3. Therefore, God exists.

Here, though, I’m attempting to show that God does indeed love the whole world in opposition to the Calvinistic doctrine that God only “effectively” loves a small subset known as the elect.

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