Exposing Calvinism: My Reply to Roland

(FYI: I'm going to start adding new posts on Fridays, with ones posted in between maybe occasionally, maybe links to songs or other random things, for fun.  And I have put a bunch of posts on the schedule already, which will post automatically, up to the end of the year.  So if the rapture happens before the end of the year - Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! - don't think that I'm still here just because these posts keep popping up every Friday.  I'm just sayin'.  And after the end of the year, I may not write for awhile.  I need a good, long break.)

Here are two more comments I left on the Soteriology 101 post "Frustrated by the state of the world?" 

Roland (Calvinist) made various comments in reply to my "Calvinist Twist" comment, including informing me that he wanted actual names and quotes of specific Calvinists who twist Scripture, not just the common ways they twist Scripture.

Here is my reply:

Roland, You’ll have to excuse me for misunderstanding what you were asking.  The way you wrote it sounded to me like you were asking about the typical ways Calvinists twist scripture, not for specific people who have done so.  Yet, what I wrote are things I’ve read or heard from Calvinists time and time again, and so I’d say that if you want names of Calvinists who twist Scripture, the most complete answer I can give is “All of them.”  Because it’s the Calvinism itself that’s twisted.

Since I am pressed for time, I will only respond to a few things you wrote:

1. Roland replied with “Right away it leads me to believe that I am wasting my time" when I said "Calvinists won’t agree with me, of course, and they will cite various other unrelated Scriptures to support their twisted views." 

My reply: If you are wasting your time, Roland, it’s because God [Calvinism's god] ordained it and it brings Him glory.  So would it really be wasted?  And are you claiming that you (as a Calvinist) really have control over what you do with your time?

2. Roland says: “The basic reasoning [of non-Calvinists] is this: Since God calls everyone to believe, then we must all be able to believe because that would be vain of God to do so.  That’s the non-Calvinist response, at least what I have encountered.”

My reply: I’ll grant you that the “whosoever believes” verses don’t clearly say that all can believe.  But I don’t think it should have to, because offering salvation to all people implies that they can accept that offer.  Or else it wouldn’t be a real offer.  It would be a pointless, meaningless, cruel joke.  I think God’s character demonstrates that He wouldn’t command all people to believe while making it impossible for most to do so.

To believe that “If God calls all to believe then it means that all are able to believe” is the best way to understand it, especially if we want to uphold God’s character.  Because for God to act like He’s offering salvation to all people while at the same time causing most people to be unable to accept it makes Him a liar and untrustworthy.  For Him to punish people for not believing when He made them be unbelievers, making it impossible for them to believe (because He wants them in hell, for His glory and pleasure), makes Him unjust and cruel.  A monster.  The Calvinist god is no better than Satan.  In fact, the Calvinist god is worse than Satan because we at least expect this kind of stuff from Satan.  We expect him to be a cruel, untrustworthy, unjust, deceitful liar who delights in seeing people go to hell.  But we wouldn’t expect that from God.  Therefore, Calvi-god’s duplicitous nature – Satan on the inside, but “God” on the outside – is far worse.

[Note, not in my comment: The commonsense understanding of verses like these are that if God offers something to people (salvation) and commands us to do something (to believe) then it means that these are real offers and commands that we can respond to and do.  Commonsense would tell us that no one – especially not a trustworthy, loving, honest God – would offer something to someone knowing it was impossible for them to accept it or command them to do something knowing it was impossible for them to obey.  If a man with no arms or legs was drowning in the ocean and someone threw him a life-ring (100 feet away from where he was drowning) and told him, “I'm offering you a life-ring to save your life, but if you don’t grab it then you choose to drown,” would anyone in their right mind call that a real offer?  If we commanded our kids to clean their room and told them we’d punish them if they didn’t, but then we locked them out of their room so that they couldn’t get in, would anyone call those genuine commands?  Would it be fair or reasonable to punish them for not cleaning their room when we prevented them from being able to do so?  Or would it all be a big, cruel joke!?!  The burden of proof is on the Calvinist to prove that God makes “fake offers,” that He offers something to someone even though He created them to be unable to accept it and that He commands us to do things He made impossible for us to do, causing us to do the opposite.  The God of the Bible is not a big, cruel, cosmic joke, but Calvi-god is!]

3. Roland quotes “Acts 17:14: Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us.  She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God.  The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul."  And then he comments: "The Lord opened Lydia’s heart!  In your understanding of Scripture, it should not read that the Lord opened her heart but that Lydia allowed or permitted the Lord to open her heart or Lydia opened her own heart.  Do you deny God opening Lydia’s heart?  If you do, then you are denying Scripture.”

My reply: I don’t deny that God opened her heart.  What I have a problem with is that Calvinists read into it that God opened her heart "to believe the gospel."  That is nowhere in the verse.  (If it is, could you please find the verse for me?)  All we know is that she was already a worshipper of God, that Paul preached something to her, and that God opened her heart.

I would say that the best way to understand this verse is to compare it to something Paul told other believers just a few chapters later in Acts 19.  In this passage, he is not preaching the salvation message to them but telling them about the need to get baptized into the Holy Spirit.  (Notice that these men were disciples who hadn’t yet gotten the Spirit.  This contradicts a Calvinist’s view that we need to get the Holy Spirit first in order to believe.)  They were baptized immediately after hearing this.

This is the same thing that happened to Lydia after hearing whatever message Paul preached to her.  She got her family baptized.  So I would venture to say that the best way to understand the Lydia passage, since we know she already worships God, is to say that Paul’s message was probably about the need for believers to be baptized, not about the need for sinners to believe.  God helped her to see the importance of baptism.  The way I see it, in Scripture God helps those who are seeking, who are sensitive to Him, to find Him and see Him more clearly.  But they had to want it first.  But if someone wants to be hard-hearted, He lets them be, sometimes even handing them over to their hardness more.  But it’s what they chose first.  Lydia was already a worshipper of God, believing in Him, seeking Him.  And He helped her on the journey to see the next step: baptism.

If Calvinism is true, though, how could Lydia be a worshipper of God before God caused her to believe?  If He hadn’t yet regenerated her, then she was a “totally depraved, wicked, rebellious sinner” (as Calvinists call the unregenerated) who was worshipping God.  My Calvinist pastor brilliantly explained it this way: “Yeah, it says that she was a worshipper of God, but she wasn’t saved yet.”  Once again, this is nowhere in the verse.  He (pathetically) read into it something that wasn’t there so that he could say that she wasn’t a believer yet and that God caused her to believe.

Also, if Calvinism is true, how could the disciples in Acts 19 be believers without having yet gotten the Holy Spirit?  How could they have repented before getting the Holy Spirit?  (It says they already went through John’s baptism of repentance.)  That would mean they were “totally depraved, wicked, rebellious sinners” who were disciples who had already repented.  How does Calvinism makes sense of that?  Can you find a verse that says that Lydia or those disciples were unbelievers?  Or that Paul preached the salvation message?  Or that the disciples got the Holy Spirit first, before repenting and believing?

Calvinism itself twists Scripture to fit its views.  Therefore, all those who adhere to it twist Scripture too.  They have to, in order to maintain their Calvinism.  And now I’ll let you have the last word.  I’ve spent enough time typing today.  (And I won’t even know if you reply because I don’t get notifications of replies. It’s one way I protect my time.)  Blessings to you!

Also, in the comment section, the Calvinists claim that they are the ones who read Scripture plainly and clearly, while we are the ones who read into it.  And so finally, I left this comment, to no one in particular:

Non-Calvinists (like those here) don’t think we need a special type of theologian to tell us what God meant in His Word.  Yes, there are some confusing parts, but we think anyone can understand the basic gospel message just by reading the Word for themselves.

It’s the Calvinists who need Calvinist theologians and Calvinists books and Calvinists classes to spend months figuring out what God “meant” to say in His Word, all the “hidden, deeper messages” that are underneath (and that contradict) what He said.  This alone should be really telling about who is reading scripture plainly and who isn’t.

And at least we are trying to defend the idea that God speaks clearly, that He means what He says and says what He means, that He doesn’t make fake offers or deceive us about what’s possible, that He can be trusted (when He gives a command, He means it, without having a secondary, hidden plan where He wants us to disobey His spoken command), that He loves all people, that He really wants everyone in heaven, that He doesn’t punish people for sins He caused them to do, etc.

While the Calvinists are trying to defend the idea that God has hidden layers and secondary meanings for the things He says, that He says one thing but means another, that He commands one thing but really wants the opposite to happen, that He gives fake offers and makes people think they have a choice and an effect on what happens when they really don’t, that He hates most people and wants most people in hell, that He’s glorified by sin and evil, that He punishes people for sins that He caused and that they had no control over or choice about, etc.

That ought to tell us something about how sick and twisted their theology and Calvi-god is (and about who is behind it)!