Exposing Calvinism: Calvi-god, Calvi-Jesus, and Calvi-faith

Some comments from the Soteriology 101 post, The Good News of God’s Choice (small corrections added for clarity, my notes are in gray):

Graceadict (non-Calvinist) says:

The more I studied Calvinism, the more I understood the root of determinism and the root of a continually wrathful God who desires wrath and judgment more than Love, Grace, and Mercy.

On balance, the Calvinist systematic sees God as primarily a devouring, wrathful being who desperately needs to be continually expressing His wrath, condemnation, and judgment to be most fulfilled and glorified.  [My note: As my pastor’s Calvinist adult son said it (paraphrased): “Why would God create people for hell?  Because He wanted to show off His justice and because His greatest priority is self-worship.  He wanted to worship Himself for how just He is, and so He needed sinners to punish so that He could get glory for punishing sin.”  (But how anyone could think it's "justice" for God to create/cause people to be unbelieving sinners but then punish them for being unbelieving sinners is beyond me!  It’s insane!  Thank God my pastor's son never became a judge!)  And contrary to Calvinism's demonic lie that God predestined people to hell to show off His justice, Romans 3:25-26 tells us how God chose to demonstrate His justice.  And it's not by sending people to hell for sin; it's by sending Jesus to the cross to pay for our sins: “God presented [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood.  He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished- he did it [sent Jesus to the cross for our sins] to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”  God doesn't sacrifice people for Himself; He sacrificed Himself for all people.  How heart-breaking and evil for Calvinism to destroy this amazing truth!  (If we end up in hell, it's because we rejected God's offer of salvation, not because God predestined us to go there.)]    

Scripture, on the other hand, would show God as reluctantly expressing His wrath and judgment, and as showing love, grace and mercy to all of His creation.  [My note: I heard something similar to this once (probably at Soteriology 101 or Beyond the Fundamentals): Calvinism teaches us to be absolutely flabbergasted that God would dare to love even one sinner, that He would give grace to anyone at all, that He “graciously” spares a few people from the eternal hell that He wants everyone else in; whereas the Bible shows us a God who is truly generous and big-hearted, overflowing with compassion, love, and grace for all people, who pleads with all people to be saved and who gives everyone the chance/ability to accept His free gift of salvation because He wants as many people with Him in heaven as possible.  The God of the Bible shocks us with how abundant His love and grace is, while Calvinists are perpetually shocked that their Calvi-god loves anyone at all.  I wonder how much it breaks God's heart - after all He went through to demonstrate His amazing love for us on the cross - to be portrayed by Calvinists as a God who is so incredibly stingy with His love and His grace!]  

In their system, I came to realize, God on purpose and irresistibly created only a few people to be LOVED by Him, but in stark contrast He irresistibly created a vast multitude to be the objects of His HATRED, with NEVER an option to be LOVED by Him.

This HATRED of man is NOT an outcome of man’s free choice.  It is totally by God’s purposeful and deliberate design; man had nothing to do with this.  All of this was decided by God alone in eternity past before any man existed.

Yes, a few are created to be Loved, BUT many, many more people are on purpose created to be HATED by God and have always been HATED by Him.  In Calvinism, He already hates them in eternity past before He fashions them into objects of wrath.  He created this vast majority for no other purpose except damnation, judgment, and wrath.

[My note: "But God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8)  And last I checked, we are all sinners: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).  Therefore, Jesus died for all people.  And if that isn't clear enough: "He is the atoning sacrifice for all sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2).  Where is there room for misunderstanding here?  How is this not clear?  "For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).]

In Calvinism, God deliberately created and designed these two groups.  They were irresistibly created differently by God: one group was ALWAYS created to be “special” and the other group was ALWAYS created to be “despised and hated”.  Once again, it is important to understand that God’s eternal hatred of this vast multitude of mankind is NOT an OUTCOME of man’s free choice; it is totally by God’s purposeful, deliberate, and Sovereign design alone.  In Calvinism, this is what it means for God to be Sovereign.  In Calvinism, this is what it means for God to be Glorified.  He needs vast multitudes on which He can continually pour out His wrath and judgment.  This is the God of Calvinism, but not the God of the Bible.

[My note: Calvi-god sacrifices most people for himself, but the God of the Bible sacrificed Himself for all people.  Calvi-god created most people to burn in hell for eternity, but the God of the Bible died on the cross to save people from hell, to make salvation available to all people.  Calvi-god lies when he says in the Bible that he doesn't want anyone to perish, that he loves all and wants all to be saved, that Calvi-Jesus died for all sins, and that we must choose whom we will worship (because he predestined if we go to heaven or hell and we can have no influence on it, he created most people so he could hate them and send them to hell for his pleasure and glory, and Calvi-Jesus died for only the elect because he didn't want to waste his precious blood on those he predestined to reject him).  

But the God of the Bible means it when He says He doesn't want anyone to perish, that He wants all people to be saved, that He loves all people, that we must choose whom we will worship, and that "whosoever" may believe in Him and have eternal life (because God truly loves all people so much that He sent Jesus to die in our place, for all sins of all people, making salvation available to all, and He pleads with us to accept His gift of salvation so that we can be saved).  

Which God would you rather have?  Which one would you trust more?  Which one deserves glory and worship and honor?  (And which one sounds more like Satan in disguise?)]

Simon Peter Sutherland (non-Calvinist) says:

To say that He died only for individuals who were predestined and elected before the earth was made is to make the cross of Christ of no effect.  It makes individual predestination and election our saviour rather than Christ.  It denies the power of the cross to save.

[My Note: If you really think about it, this is true.  (But Calvinists aren't encouraged to think on their own; they're taught to eat the garbage they're spoon-fed without any push-back, to put on Calvinist glasses before reading scripture so that they can see the Calvinism they're told is there.)  The “elect” were chosen to be saved, promised to be saved, from before time began.  Their salvation was secured before they were born, and so it’s not a response to the cross or a result of their belief in Jesus.  The elect are not saved because they believe in Jesus; they believe in Jesus because they are saved.  (And that's a famous Calvinist quote, but I can't remember who said it.)  Therefore, Jesus’s death is a side-note, coming after our fates have already been sealed.  His death on the cross can’t change anyone’s destiny, mind, or heart because our destinies have already been predetermined by God (we can’t even control our own thoughts about Jesus’s death because those have been predetermined too and are controlled by God).  In Calvinism, the cross doesn’t and can’t lead anyone to salvation.  All it does in Calvinism, I think, is “secure” the salvation of those who were already saved from the beginning of time.]

TS00 (non-Calvinist) replies to SPS:

This was the realization that smacked me in the face one afternoon while talking with my then (Calvinist) pastor.  It wasn’t even directly related to what he was saying, but all of a sudden it hit me like a ton of bricks:

If God selected who was to be saved and who was not, then the cross was a sham.  If Calvinism were true, I could not be saved by believing that Jesus lived, died, and rose again for my sake.  I could be saved if, and only if, I was one of the lucky chosen few; cross or no cross.  If Jesus did not die for me – and all men – there is nothing for the ‘nonbeliever’ to not believe.  How can anyone be condemned for not believing in what God did not offer them?  Calvinism was not a ‘possible’ truth that I personally could not yet accept; it was the antithesis to everything scripture declares about God, Jesus, and salvation!

My journey away from Calvinism was a long and often painful one, and continues yet, but it began with that eye-opening revelation out of the blue.  Calvinism negates the gospel message of the cross.

Graceadict replies:

Your post was so well written. You are so correct: In Calvinism, the important thing is NOT Jesus Christ and Him crucified or even Faith.  The ONLY thing that REALLY matters is … “Were you one of the lucky few!?!”  In Calvinism, preaching the gospel and exhorting people to believe is simply pretending that something else matters.  It is simply trying to LOOK like an In-determinist.  As BR.D likes to say: “A Calvinist is a determinist wearing a mask of IN-determinism.”  NOTHING beyond the question of “Are you one of the ones chosen for salvation or are you one of the ones chosen for Hell?” actually matters.  Everything else is 100% irrelevant if one understands what Calvinism actually teaches.

[My note: True!  A Calvinist's security of salvation rests on their belief – their hope – that they are truly one of the few that God chose for salvation ... and that God isn’t tricking them into thinking they are saved when they aren’t.  That’s a thing in Calvinism.  It’s called “evanescent grace.”  Look it up or read about it in this post.  And while Calvinists might think this is just an "old time" Calvinist belief, it totally fits with Calvinism.  Because a Calvinist's assurance of salvation has to rest on their belief that God chose them for salvation - because they think they have no ability to choose God, that they can't do anything to be saved, not even making up their own mind to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior.  They have no influence over whether they have faith or not, and so they have to trust that God truly picked them to be saved, waiting and watching until the end of their lives to see if God kept them in the faith, proving that they were truly one of the elect.  Because if they fell away or backslid at some point, it could be a sign that they weren't really chosen at all.  And so this means they would have been given, by God, something that felt like true faith but wasn't: evanescent grace.  A grace/faith that came and went.  So while Calvinists might not use this term, it's inherent in their theology, whether they know it or not.  

What kind of security is that!?!  Having to wonder till the end of your life if you really are one of the “chosen ones” or not!?!  All because you think your salvation is completely out of your hands, that it’s all up to God, that you can’t do anything to affect whether you are saved or not, that you don’t even have control over your own thoughts and so you can’t choose to believe in Jesus, that God has to choose you and cause you to believe.  

If you really think about it ... in Calvinism, no one "becomes" saved or puts their faith in Jesus.  It’s just that those who were saved from the beginning of time come to realize that they were saved all along.  I think it's Kevin Thompson from Beyond the Fundamentals that explains Calvinist salvation this way: It's like a tiger who doesn't know he's a tiger until the day he goes to get a drink from a lake.  And when he sees his reflection, he realizes "Oh, wow, I'm a tiger!"  Nothing changed.  He didn't do anything differently.  He just realized what was true all along, that he was a tiger.  That's how Calvinist salvation is.  The elect are always saved but just don't realize it until the day someone shares the gospel with them and Calvi-god gives them faith to believe it, and they go, "Oh, wow, I'm one of the elect."  But nothing really changed.  And they didn't really do anything to "become" saved.  They already were saved; they just didn't know it.  The elect don't really "believe" or "have faith" or "put their faith in Jesus"; they acquire belief and faith from Calvi-god.  It's nothing they do; it's something that happens to them.  And we, whether we are elect or non-elect, can't do anything about it.

And in case you're thinking, "Calvinists don't really think that.  You're just putting words in their mouths," here is a comment from Rhutchin (a strong Calvinist who regularly comments at Soteriology 101), found in this post: "The work of the Holy Spirit to give a person a new birth could be likened to giving a person a drug.  In both cases, the person is changed, and the change is irresistibly wrought on the person.  The person has no idea what happened – all he knows is that one minute he hates God and the next minute he doesn’t…. The new birth is accomplished by the Holy Spirit without the knowledge of the person, so it is irresistible."  In Calvinism, you don't do anything to become saved.  You don't love God because you chose to or wanted to, or because of the gospel, or out of gratitude for what He did for us or how much He loves us.  It just happens to you, without your decision or cooperation or even your knowledge.  Wow!  Just ... wow!

What a wicked thing it is for Calvinism to teach that all we have to do - all we can do - to be saved is just wait for God to drug us, to give us faith to believe (as long as we're one of the elect, that is), and that we can’t do – that we have no control over - the one thing God told us to do to be saved: To choose to believe, to put our faith in Jesus, to choose Him as our Lord and Savior!  

If God says "Choose whom you will serve," but Calvinism says "We can't choose because only God can make the choice for us," then how many people can truly be saved the Calvinist way?  

There are good reasons why I call Calvinism “hogwash”!]

Rhutchin (Calvinist) replies:

GraceAdict writes, “In Calvinism, preaching the gospel and exhorting people to believe is simply pretending that something else matters.  It is simply trying to LOOK like an In-determinist.”

In the absence of faith, any exhortation to believe the gospel would be fruitless.  In the presence of faith, the preaching of the gospel results in salvation.

[My note: This Calvinist confirms Calvinism’s teaching that you need to have faith first before you can hear, understand, and believe the gospel.  And in Calvinism, only the elect will get the faith to believe.  Everyone else will be denied the chance of having faith, of being saved, because they won't be given faith.  So in Calvinism, they (the few elect people) got chosen for salvation way back before the beginning of time (meaning that everyone else was created for hell), they were given faith first in order to understand the gospel, and then they heard the gospel and believed it like they were predestined/caused to.]  

However (from a previous post of mine), to show you Calvinist nonsense in action, here are some of Rhutchin's other Calvinist comments (keep in mind that Rhutchin has proven himself to be a very educated, hard-core Calvinist, so he is sharing real Calvinist ideas):

“The gospel is the source of faith and that faith then exercises belief in the gospel.  We have no faith without the hearing of the gospel.  The gospel produces faith.  That faith is then fueled by the hearing of the gospel to believe in Christ.”  

This is a doozy!  Notice that he's saying that you can’t have faith without the gospel, that the gospel comes before – and leads to - faith.  (Which I agree with.  However, I do believe those who never heard of Jesus, never had the chance to hear of Jesus, can be saved too, if they respond to the revelation God gave them of Himself, through nature and in their hearts.  Everyone has the chance to believe and be saved.  See this post for more on that.)  

But he also says in the exact same sentences that faith has to come before - that it leads to - belief in the gospel: "faith then exercises belief in the gospel" and "That faith is then fueled by the hearing of the gospel..." (in order for faith to be fueled by something, it has to be there first).  And he says it in the previous comment too: "In the presence of faith, the preaching of the gospel results in salvation."   

So let me get this straight: In Calvinism, faith is needed for believing the gospel and the gospel is needed for having faith!?!  Yep, makes perfect sense, Calvinist!

Rhutchin also says: “The gospel is the means by which a person is born again, receives faith, and believes.”  

So he says here that the gospel comes before - and leads to - being born again and having faith.  But this is a clear contradiction of what he has said (what Calvinism teaches) in previous comments at Soteriology 101 about how we have to be born again first, before we can hear the gospel and have faith: “The new birth makes it possible for a person to hear the gospel” and “Calvinists actually say that faith results from a work performed by God in the heart of the individual (i.e. the new birth or regeneration)...”  

So let me get this straight: In Calvinism, you need to hear the gospel to be born again and you need to be born again to hear the gospel!?!  Yep, makes perfect sense, Calvinist!

(And yet Calvinists wonder why we don’t don’t trust what they say and hate debating them!)

In the Bible, the gospel leads to faith, Romans 10:17: "Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ."  And faith leads to being saved.  If we put our faith in Jesus, if we believe in Him as Lord and Savior, if we accept His sacrificial death on the cross in our place, we will be saved.  John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."  Romans 10:9: "That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.... Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."  Acts 16:31: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved -"  Mark 16:16: "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved."  

But in Calvinism, despite their agreement at times (when it's convenient) that the gospel leads to faith, saving faith is a gift Calvi-god gives to the elect so that they can believe the gospel.  Faith leads to believing the gospel; believing the gospel does not lead to faith.  (Therefore, the gospel is superfluous because it has no effect on whether you were predestined for salvation or not.  The elect were already prechosen for salvation before ever hearing the gospel, and Calvi-god gave them the faith to believe the gospel.  But the non-elect can never believe it because they weren’t chosen and won’t be given faith by Calvi-god.  So in Calvinism, what good is the gospel really, if it can't affect whether anyone is saved or not?  When I asked this question in a post at Soteriology 101, Rhutchin replied with "Calvinists understand that God uses the preaching of the gospel to draw his elect out of the world."  He is basically saying just what I said.  That, in Calvinism, the gospel doesn't save anyone; it just makes the elect realize they are elect.)

And, in Calvinism, having faith does not lead to being saved; being saved leads to having faith.  The elect are not saved because they have faith or because they chose to respond to the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross for us; they will have faith in Jesus because they were chosen for salvation.  In Calvinism, you don’t get saved because of your response to the cross, because you believed in the cross; Calvi-god causes you to believe in Jesus's work on the cross because He predestined you to be saved.  (Therefore, faith is superfluous because you are chosen for salvation before you had faith.  Calvi-faith does not lead to salvation; it's the result of salvation.  And the cross is superfluous because salvation was already promised to you before the beginning of time.  Your salvation has nothing to do with your response to the cross; your response to the cross is caused by your predestined salvation.  You have no control over or influence over your response because that's controlled by Calvi-god too.  You cannot affect your life or eternity in any way whatsoever.  You are merely a helpless, brainless puppet acting out the role Calvi-god wrote for you.  Nothing affects what's already been predetermined.  Which, ultimately, makes this lifetime superfluous too.  Unnecessary, meaningless, and pointless.  Because it will all end the same way anyway and because you truly have no effect on how it all plays out.)  

How cruel Calvi-god must be to not only create most people for eternal hell, but also to force them to pointlessly go through an earthly lifetime full of pain, distress, confusion, etc., tricking them into thinking that they have the option of being saved when they really don't!  Cruel and heartless indeed!  But that's the "doctrines of grace" for you!  

And leave it to Satan to come up with a theology that uses the gospel to destroy the gospel, that uses faith to destroy the work of the cross, and that makes it sound so close to the truth (but so far away) that so many good, well-meaning Christians can't tell the difference and end up so taken in by it that they fiercely defend it and spread it to others, thinking it's the most "God-glorifying" theology out there.  Satanically-brilliant!

If someone has to go engage in such mental gymnastics, flip-flopping, and word-games to explain how their views fit with the Bible ... it's because their views don't fit with the Bible!  

The true gospel is not this hard to figure out and the Bible is very clear about it: God loves you.  Jesus died for you.  God wants you to be saved.  And you can be saved if you choose to put your faith in Jesus, to make Him your Lord and Savior!

There!  Now that wasn't so hard, was it!