Some Good Posts Against Calvinism

Here are a few good, random articles against Calvinism (I'm still reading through them, but they all seem basically on-track so far.  If I find things I disagree with as I read more, I'll add notes.):

The Modern-Day Pharisees: Calvinists  [Notice what the Calvinist he quoted says about how the elect were never on their way to hell because they were elect for heaven from the very beginning, and that this is why they need to hear the good news of their salvation - so that they can believe it, rejoice in it, and profit from it.  The Calvinist says that the Gospel doesn't make their salvation true, but it's that their salvation was already true and the Gospel just declares it.  Basically, the Gospel just makes the elect aware of the salvation they already have.  

Do you really hear what this is saying about salvation?  

It's saying that the elect have no responsibility to do anything to be saved because they enter the world already saved and just need to realize it.  It's like a tiger who doesn't know he's a tiger.  But one day when he walks up to a lake to get a drink of water, he sees his reflection in the water and realizes that he's a tiger and that he's always been a tiger.  Nothing changed and he did nothing at all ... other than that he suddenly realized what's always been the case.  That he's always been a  tiger.  

THIS is the way to Calvinist salvation: You don't do anything to get it or to make it more real; you just have to wake up one day and realize that you are saved and always have been.  (They bury this idea under "You have to repent and turn to God and believe in Jesus."  But the thing is that, in Calvinism, you have no control over if this happens or not.  It's already been predestined for you by Calvi-god.  So if you are predestined for heaven, he will make you wake up and realize it and believe in him.  But if you are predestined for hell, you will never be able to do these things.  It's all been preplanned for you, and you have no control or influence over what happens, over if you believe or not.  So a Calvinist telling people to repent and believe is hollow and false - because they believe you don't have any control over this anyway and that only the elect can and will repent/believe and only because Calvi-god causes it to happen.)

Do you see how dangerous this is?  

The Bible says that we are responsible for our response to God's offer of salvation, an offer He makes to everyone.  We have to choose to accept it, to believe.  But Calvinism essentially teaches that we cannot choose to believe, that it only happens to us if God has predestined that we will believe.  

If Calvinism teaches that we are not responsible to do and cannot do the one thing that God told us we are supposed to do to be saved, then how can anyone be saved the Calvinist way!?!

(And this makes me wonder:  If the tiger was always a tiger and always will be a tiger, then does it really matter if he realizes it or not?  Will his realization really change anything?  If the elect are already saved and always will be, even before they realize they are saved, does their realization really matter or affect anything?)  

What a satanically-brilliant theology - convincing people that you cannot choose to believe in Jesus, that believing in Jesus will just happen to you if you are one of the elect, that the way we get saved is that God causes it to happen and that we will just wake up one day and realize we are saved!    

Satanically-brilliant!  

Doing away with personal responsibility, the need for the Gospel, the need to evangelize, most people's hope of being saved, and a believer's assurance of their own salvation ("Am I truly one of the elect?  I can't accept salvation for myself, so did God really pick me to be saved?") in one fell swoop!]


John Calvin: Heresy Hunter with an Axe to Grind


Born Again Prior to Faith?  John Piper says "Yes."  Scripture Says "No"


On Assurance of Salvation and Calvin's "Evanescent Grace" 


Weaknesses of Calvinism 


God hates Calvinism 


Why I Am Not A Calvinist: How Reformed Theology Contradicts Scripture  (FYI: I disagree with him about believers being able to lose their salvation.  I think true believers can lose their rewards but not their salvation.)


The Five Points of Calvinism: Weighed and Found Wanting  (This is very long, and I haven't read carefully through it all yet.  I do not like to link to things I haven't thoroughly read yet, but it seems quite on-track from my quick perusal of it.  So I will add the link now, but if I find problems with it when I read it deeper, I may remove it later.  But I don't think I'll have to.)

Most Popular Posts Of The Month:

List of Calvinist Preachers, Authors, Theologians, Websites, etc.

I  found a lot more names to add to my list of known Calvinists (found in my various "How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist" posts).  [FYI: I added a note at the bottom of this post on May 5, 2021.]    And so here it is, a "master list" of known Calvinists to help you be careful and discerning about who you listen to and where you get your theology from.  There are plenty more Calvinists out there, but these are just the names that I ran across the most.   These are either definite, self-professed Calvinists or "most likely Calvinists," in my estimation.  (I haven't heard of most of them, but it's good to know their theology before I do.)   After finding these names in various places online, I looked up each person to see if they are Calvinist.  If they did not self-identify as a Calvinist, I tried to figure it out based on the statements of faith of the groups/churches they belong to, the books they write, the t...
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Is The ESV (English Standard Version) a Calvinist Bible?

Just in case anyone missed this post (the longer title made it easy to miss the "ESV" part) ... "A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And "Is The ESV a Calvinist Bible?") In that post, I write about a bunch of verses that I believe were intentionally translated to be more Calvinistic or based on manuscripts that were too corrupt to be trusted (click on it to see the verses).   And why would I think that the translators of this Bible version would do that? (From that post...) The ESV and ESV Study Bible are majorly preferred by Calvinists.  In fact, it's often considered "The Calvinist Bible."   Why?  And why would translators of a Bible make these kinds of Calvinist tweaks to Scripture? Wayne Grudem and J.I. Packer were editors on the  ESV Study Bible   (this is for the ESV Global Study Bible).  Grudem and Packer are both popular, strong, dogmatic Calvinists.  Very Big Names in the world of Calvinism.  Grudem in the General E...
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Why Is Calvinism So Dangerous? (re-updated)

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Because it  appears  to teach biblical truth while actually teaching  the opposite  - while using  manipulation and cult-like tactics to suck you in!  And it's spreading.  Stealthily, fast, aggressively. (We watched it happen firsthand in our church, which is why I wrote this blog.  See  "What's the best way to make people agree with your Calvinist views?"    Sadly, we ended up  leaving that church , a place we attended almost 20 years.) [ I updated this November 2022 to try to shorten it.  I failed.  But I hope it's more readable and streamlined at least.   If you only read one anti-Calvinism post of mine, I think it should be this one.  But I'm warning you, this post is long.  Very long.  So pack a lunch and bring a sleeping bag.  But it has to be long because Calvinism is so deceptively convoluted that it takes time to peel off the layers so that you can see it for what it really is.  ...
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When Calvinists say "But predestination!" (shorter, basic version)

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[Finally, the much-shorter version - I said shorter, not short😉 - of my "But predestination!" series.  The longer version - full of many more Calvinist comments, my Calvinist ex-pastor's sermons, and my replies to them - can be found by  starting here .  But in this simplified version, I'm simply sharing the basics.  And I'll do a tiny version soon too, cutting out almost all quotes and memes.  But, oh, they add so much that it's hard to cut them out. ] At the heart of Calvinism is predestination and God's sovereignty (among other things, like "total depravity"), which according to Calvinism essentially amounts to: "God preplans and controls everything, even sin and evil and all our decisions, and so He pre-picks who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.  He causes the 'elect' to believe in Him and be saved, but He made sure the 'non-elect' have no chance or ability to believe and be saved because He predetermined they'd ...
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"But Calvinists don't say God causes sin and evil!"

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If you point out to Calvinists that Calvinism's view of sovereignty - that God fore-ordains and orchestrates everything that happens and we had no ability to do anything differently - makes God the cause (and truly the only  voluntary cause) of all sin and evil, they'll probably respond with something like "That's not what we're saying.  You're putting words in our mouths.  And you don't understand Calvinism."   When they do that, show them a few of these quotes -  Ca lvinists' own words about their beliefs of God's sovereignty and how He preplans, will, ordains, orchestrates, directs (code words for "causes")  everything  that happens.  And then ask them if they still think you're really misunderstanding them.  (Bold emphasis added) [And before reading the quotes, here's a great, satirical 4-minute video that I think everyone should see:  Hitler and Calvinism .  Awesome!] 1. R.C. Sproul Jr.  ( Almighty Over All) :  ...
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A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And "Is The ESV a Calvinist Bible?")

(For just the "Is the ESV a Calvinist Bible" part of this post, click here .) In my normal Bible reading today, I came across a verse about "singleness vs. marriage" that destroys Calvinism in a few short words: "But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no compulsion but who has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin - this man also does the right thing."   ( 1 Corinthians 7:37, NIV ) When you get past all the layers Calvinism wraps itself in to disguise the bad parts, it ultimately teaches - at the heart of it all - that God causes/controls  everything , even controlling our wills and causing our sins.  (But He then punishes  us  for the things He caused us to do, which would make Him unjust, no matter how much Calvinists try to deny it and cover it up.  See  this post  for some links about that.)  Calvinism ultimately teaches that everything we do is because God p...
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How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist (simplified version)

(For the extended version of this post, which I recommend, click here .  It is loaded with lots more information.  This simplified one is just the highlights.  And feel free to copy this and share it with others, to help them learn to identify Calvinism when they see it.  Just make sure to share the link to this blog so that they can find the original post.  Thank you.  New : For the super-short version, click here .  And FYI: I found a couple times when the Calvinist author of an article I linked to changed their article after I linked to it.  So if their article doesn't seem to match what I said about it, it may be because they altered it. ) We just left our church of almost 20 years because of the dogmatic Calvinist pastor who recently came on board.  ( Read my "Letter to Our Elders Regarding Calvinism Growing in Our Church" here.)   And I was thinking about what precautions I might take to make sure we didn't end up in another...
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When Calvinism Infiltrates Your Church

A note I recently added to my posts on "How to tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist" : On a personal note : After having seen firsthand how Calvinism stealthily infiltrates and takes over a church, I want to share with you something that Kevin from Beyond the Fundamentals said in the video   "Stealth Calvinism in Oklahoma"  (my paraphrase): "By the time you realize what's going on and start looking up information about Calvinism online, it's too late."   Calvinist pastors who set out to take over non-Calvinist churches are banking on the fact that most people don't know what Calvinism is, giving the pastors plenty of time to weave in Calvinism in sneaky, subtle, tricksy ways before people catch on to (and research) the red flags.  (*See note at bottom about deceptive pastors.)  By that time, too many people in the church have been suckered into Calvinism (without realizing it's called Calvinism), believing that they're just...
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Leaving Calvinism: Comments from Ex-Calvinists #11

Here is the last of the ex-Calvinist testimonies.  The first one is from this post:  X-Calvinist Corner .   (It's an Arminian website, but I am not Arminian.)  I am going to highlight some of the comments that stood out to me the most.  If you want to read everything that everyone said, click on the link above: Dana Steele writes: I grew up in a Calvinistic Baptist church from age 11.  The 5-points of Calvinism (TULIP) were taught regularly with great enthusiasm ... But it wasn’t until college that I began to understand and embrace the “Doctrines of Grace” and TULIP more fully....  I also learned to love the doctrine of election because it meant that God loved me personally and specifically in a unique way.  Though it made me a little embarrassed to think that God did not love everyone this way, I was content to leave this as a mystery.  Who am I to question God?  I was just glad I was one of the lucky (I mean chosen) ones. ... [As ...
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The Cult of Calvinism

Here are links to a few posts that reveal the cult-like side of Calvinism: "Why Calvinism is a Cult" "Calvinism is a Counterfeit Christian Cult" "Calvinism, Cults, and Control" I left a comment at Hoppers Crossing Christian Church about their post "Calvinism, Cults, and Control."  I will also print my comment here for your information: I was reading your post "Calvinism, Cults, and Control" (2/02/20) and so much of what you said fits the Calvinist church we recently left.  Here are some of the cult-like things that happened after a Calvinist pastor took over our non-Calvinist church: 1.   From the beginning, he started laying the groundwork that disagreement with him (about his Calvinist view of predestination and God's sovereignty, in particular) was not allowed and that anyone who did disagree with him was unhumble and disagreeing with God.   Things like (paraphrases): "Humble people have no problem with God's sovereignty...
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