Exposing Calvinism: My Comment on Calvinist Twists

Here is another comment I left on the Soteriology 101 post "Frustrated by the state of the world?".  I had left a comment saying that Calvinists twist Scripture.  Roland (Calvinist) then asks: "Can you give me an example where Calvinist twist Scripture?"


My reply:

Calvinists won’t agree with me, of course, and they will cite various other unrelated Scriptures to support their twisted views, but for starters …

1.  John 3:16: “For God so loved the world …”  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “Oh, yeah, but ‘the world’ doesn’t mean all people.  It means all the elect (or ‘the cosmos,’ as my Calvinist pastor said).”  Or “Yeah, God loves the world, but He has two different kinds of love: a saving one for the elect and a ‘gives you food and sunshine’ one for the non-elect.”  Or “God saves those He loves, so if He doesn’t save the non-elect, it means He didn’t love them.  So He doesn’t mean ‘all people’ here, just all kinds of people.”  (They start from their own presuppositions and interpret Scripture according to it.)


2.  John 3:16: “that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”  And Romans 10:13: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “Yes, God commands all people to believe in Him and tells us that whoever believes will be saved, but this doesn’t mean that anyone can believe in Him and be saved.  He just means that all the elect will believe in Him and be saved.”

     [Note: Calvinists will say "anyone can believe/be saved," but they don't mean that everyone has the ability/opportunity to believe and be saved, just that "anyone can believe and be saved IF God wants them to and causes them to, which will be only the elect."  And they mean that people from any nationality can believe and be saved, but not that any individual person can.  Big difference!]


3.  The Bible says “Seek me and live (Amos 5:4) … You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart (Jeremiah 29:13) … Choose this day whom you will serve (Joshua 24:15).”  (And there’s many more “seek/choose” verses not listed here.)  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “Yes, God says to seek Him, but He doesn’t mean you actually can seek Him, until and unless He causes you to seek Him.  And He will only cause the elect to do this, after He gives them new life.”

     [Note: In Calvinism, being born-again comes first, before the elect are able to seek God, to understand/respond to the gospel, or to repent/have faith.  In fact, being born-again is what leads to those things, what makes those things possible.  And so if you are not born-again first, you have no ability to seek God, to understand the gospel, or to have faith.  And so, in Calvinism … I mean, think about this, really … the elect are born-again (saved) without ever seeking/finding God, hearing or responding to the gospel, or repenting/having faith.  Wow!  Just wow!  In Calvinism, those things are the result of being born-again, not what leads to being born-again.  So backwards!  So demonic!]


4.  The Bible says Jesus died for all people, all sins (Romans 5:18, 1 Timothy 2:6, 1 Timothy 4:10, Titus 2:11). 

     CALVINIST TWIST: “Yes, but Jesus wouldn’t waste His blood on those who are predestined for hell, so Jesus really didn’t die for all people, just all kinds of people, all the elect.”  (Once again, starting from their own presuppositions.)


5.  Romans 3:11 talks about the general condition of mankind when left to ourselves, that no one seeks God.  This is why God didn’t leave us to ourselves.  He wants us to seek Him and find Him.  And so He created people (Acts 17:27) and put evidence of Himself in nature (Romans 1:20) and put eternity in our hearts (Ecc. 3:11) and speaks to our hearts, drawing (calling, inviting) all men to him (John 16:8, John 12:32) – to lead us to know He’s real so that we can seek Him.  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “‘No one seeks God’ means that no one can seek God, that it’s impossible for man to seek God unless God makes him do it.  And He will only cause the elect to do this.  No one else can seek God or think about God or even want God.  And sure, the Bible says God calls ‘all men,’ but He has two different kinds of calls: an irresistible one for the elect that they have to respond to and a resistible one for the non-elect that they cannot respond to because God created them to resist it.”


6.  The Bible says that we get the Holy Spirit as a result of turning to God in faith. Acts 2:38: “Repent and be baptized … and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “Oh no, we need the Holy Spirit to make us born again before we can repent and turn to God in faith.  And this only happens to the elect.”  (In some cases, Calvinists don’t twist verses; they just flat-out ignore, deny, or defy them.)


7.  James 1:13-15 says God does not tempt anyone to sin.  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “Yeah, He doesn’t ‘tempt’ anyone to sin, but He doesn’t have to because we do it 'willingly' on our own …. because He gave us the sin-nature that comes only with the built-in desires to sin, never the desire to do good, and we can only make the choices that these built-in desires tell us to make, which for the non-elect means that they can only choose to sin and reject God because that’s the only desires that come with the unregenerated nature that God created them to have.  God predestined their sins and rebellion from the beginning and orchestrates it all so that it works out just like He planned, but He doesn’t ‘force’ us to sin.  He just gives us the nature that makes us ‘want’ to sin, and only to sin, all on our own.  And we can’t choose anything else.  Because if God wasn’t in control of all sin and evil – preplanning it, causing it – then He wouldn’t be God.”  [Are Calvinists even listening to themselves!?!  To me, the fierce loyalty of Calvinists to such convoluted, twisted, contradictory, theological-garbage shows that this can only be demonic in origin.]


8.  Romans 5:8 says that God demonstrates His love for sinners by sending Jesus to die for us.  Romans 3:23 says we are all sinners.  Therefore, God sent Jesus to die for all of us (as confirmed in other verses).  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “Yes, but God meant there are two kinds of sinners, the elected ones and the non-elected ones.  And so Romans 5:8 must be only about the elected ones because Jesus wouldn’t die for non-elected people; it would be a waste of His blood.”  

     [Note: One of the Calvinist commenters replied that Calvinists don't say there are two types of sinners.  And he's right.  They don't say it.  But their theology essentially teaches it, even if they don't say it or realize it.  Because God's Word says that we are all sinners and that Jesus died for sinners, and so for Calvinists to say that Jesus only died for some sinners means that there are two classes of sinners: those God truly loved enough to die for and those He didn't.]


9.  Romans 3:25-26 says that God demonstrates His justice by sending Jesus to the cross to punish sin.  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “No, God created most people to be sinners so that He could show off His justice by punishing them in hell for sinning.”


10.  Romans 10:17 says that faith comes from hearing the Word of God.  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “That’s right, faith comes from hearing.  But (contradictorily), God has to give the elect faith first so that they can understand and respond to the Gospel.”


11.  Romans 2:4 says that God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance.  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “Yes, but the non-elect can never repent, and so God’s kindness to them is just His way of showing a non-saving type of love to them, before sending them to hell for eternity for being the unbelievers He predestined them to be.”


12.  The Bible says there are things God never wanted or planned, that people made their own decisions contrary to what God wanted (Hosea 8:4, Isaiah 30:1, Jeremiah 19:4-5, 1 Kings 20:42, Acts 14:16, Matthew 23:37, Isaiah 65:12).  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “God preplans and causes and controls everything (for His pleasure and glory)!  Or else He can’t be God.”

     [Note: Calvinists say that God even decrees that people disobey His decrees.  Think about that for a moment, about what it does to God’s character, His Word, His commands.  If this is true, then how can you ever trust any command He gives us, if His real plan is that we do the opposite?  Isn’t disobeying His command then just a form of obedience, to His “other” decree?  And then which one is His “real” decree/command: the thing He said He wanted us to do in the first place or the thing He made us do (breaking His command)?  What a theological mess!  And yet how do Calvinists solve it?  “God is mysterious and sovereign, and so He can do whatever He wants, and we don’t have to understand it or like it.  We just have to accept it.”  Once again, that’s not gonna hold up when they stand before God giving an account for what they taught others about Him!]


13.  2 Peter 3:9 says that God is not willing that any should perish.  And 1 Timothy 2:4 says that God desires all men to be saved.  

     CALVINIST TWIST: “Yes, but He only means He wants all the elect to be saved.”  Or “Yes, He ‘desires’ all people to be saved but He has a secondary, greater desire than that: To show off His justice by punishing sin so that He can get glory and worship for it.  And so He needed sinners to punish, and so He predestined many people to be unrepentant sinners so that He could put them in hell.  He still ‘wants’ them to be saved.  It makes Him sad to put them in hell.  But even though He wants them in heaven, He wanted glory/worship for punishing sin even more.”


I could go on, but you get the picture.

Calvinists trade in a clear, plain understanding of Scripture for their own twisted, contradictory version.  They are upside-down but think they’re right-side up because they’ve been trained to see it that way.  But if they have to add “Yes, but …” to all easily-understood verses, then it’s because they are trying too hard to make the Bible fit into their twisted theology.  It would be so much easier and make so much more sense if they ditched their twisted theology and their Calvinist presuppositions and Calvinist teachers … and just read the Bible in the plain, easily understood, consistent way it was written.  Then they wouldn’t have the horrible contradictions and distortions that they have to work so hard to try to fix.

I’ve said this before, but … If someone can’t see the damage Calvinism does to God’s Word and God’s character, then they either don’t really understand Calvinism or they don’t really understand God’s Word and character.


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