Leaving Calvinism: Comments from Ex-Calvinists #1
There are a bunch of ex-Calvinist testimonies (and those who never were Calvinists but who came face to face with it) in this post: X-Calvinist Corner. (It's an Arminian website, but I am not Arminian. And to the people who run that website, if they happen to see this post: I couldn't find your email address to ask permission to repost these quotes from your website. And so I hope you are okay with me going ahead and doing it anyway. I will make sure to add a link to your website each time. Thank you and God bless.)
I am going to highlight some of the comments that stood out to me the most. Before I do that, I want to point out that every person (except one) who was a Calvinist and who said how they got into it said that they became a Calvinist through the teachings of other Calvinists, not through Scripture alone. That is very telling! And many of them said that they left Calvinism because they started to read the Bible plainly, as it was written, taking God's Word the way He said it, and they realized how different it was from Calvinism. That is telling too.
Okay, so here are some of the comments that stood out to me the most. I will break these up over several posts (about 11). If I add any comments of my own, it will be [blue and in brackets]. I made minor corrections for better grammar and punctuation. If you want to read everything that everyone said and the ex-Calvinists I didn't include, click on the link above:
Godismyjudge says:
[On how he got sucked into Calvinism]: In high school I was challenged by a Calvinist. He pointed out certain aspects of Romans 9 that I hadn’t noticed before and at the time, I didn’t have a better interpretation of Romans 9 than he did.
[Sometimes, we just don't have enough biblical knowledge to know Calvinism is wrong. And so when someone who seems knowledgeable and has answers (even though they're wrong) comes along, we get sucked in. Calvinism preys on those who don't know better and who will be impressed by how much the Calvinist knows. For a "better interpretation" of Romans 9, see this post from Soteriology 101. And here's a video on it from Beyond the Fundamentals.]
William Birch says:
I had never even heard that there was a debate [between Calvinism and Arminianism] until 1998 when John MacArthur’s Study Bible came out. That’s when I accepted Calvinism ... I swallowed Calvinism hook, line, and sinker ... Mind you, I did not happen upon Calvinism from a careful inductive study of the Bible. I had to be taught the “doctrines of grace.” I had to be taken to this verse, and then to that verse, and then put it all together in a soup called Calvinism. [That's exactly how they get you!] ... Moreover, the ministers whom I looked up to were all Calvinists....
About a year later, after quite a many arguments with my dad over Calvinism, I began to question the system as a whole. Sure, I believed that humanity was fallen and sinful, so “Total Depravity” was not an issue for me. What was an issue for me was the character of God....
How could the same God who claims to love the world and desire its salvation (John 3.16; 1Tim. 2.4) have pre-selected whom He was going to save, and this by a mere decree and not based on His foreknowledge of who would receive Christ Jesus? Something was terribly wrong. What had initially attracted me to Calvinism (focus on the sovereignty of God, deterministically speaking) was now compelling me to run from it. I empathize with Ergun Caner’s notion that the god of Islam and the God of Calvinism share some traits (based on the view of God as extremely deterministic)....
The more I study these issues year after year, the more I am convinced that though Calvinists are sincere (and very dogmatic on their positions), they are sincerely wrong and have missed the mark on the character of God as represented most fully in the life and Person of Christ Jesus.
Adam shares what he thinks is Calvinism's biggest weakness (which is, simply put, that Calvinists want to say God sovereignly controls everything, including the salvation of the elect, but that He doesn't sovereignly control the damnation of the non-elect.]:
Yet if we hold to unconditional election unto salvation, then it seems we must hold to its logical corollary [which Calvinists won't do]: unconditional reprobation unto damnation. Therefore, in same manner, we are apparently saved by God’s grace apart from works and we are damned by God’s condemnation apart from works.
[Yet Calvinists want to insist that God is responsible for the elect being in heaven but that man is responsible for being in hell, even though they define "sovereignty" as "God preplanning, controlling, causing everything, even sin and unbelief." But they can't have it both ways: "God controls all things, but man is responsible for being in hell." It's an irreconcilable oxymoron. Which is why they always resort to "Well, it's a 'mystery' that we're not supposed to understand anyway. So just accept it like a humble Christian."] ...
The first reason why Calvinists reject this argument is by distinguishing the natures of election and reprobation. Reformed Baptist theologian Wayne Grudem says “the cause of election lies in God, and the cause of reprobation lies in the sinner.” Another distinguishing feature between the two categories is “that the ground of election is God’s grace, whereas the ground of reprobation is God’s justice” (Bible Doctrine, 292). This reasoning, however, fails for it seems to say that election is unconditional [not based on man's choices] but reprobation is conditional [based on man's choices, which contradicts the Calvinist idea that God alone "sovereignly" predestines, controls, causes everything] ....
[Also, is it really "justice" to punish people for something they had no control over? Is it justice for Calvi-god to predestine/cause people to be unbelievers and then to punish them for it? If that's justice, then what does injustice look like? And if that's "godly justice," then how good, righteous, and trustworthy can God really be?
But do you know how Calvinists handle this problem? By saying that God's ways are higher than ours and that we can't understand Him anyway and that He gets to decide what's "justice," even though it might look like "injustice" to us. However, if this is true - if injustice can be justice, if we can't tell what real "godly" justice looks like - then how in the world can God instruct people over and over again to practice/seek/administer justice (Micah 6:8, Psalm 106:3, Leviticus 19:15, Isaiah 1:17, Deuteronomy 16:19-20, 27:19. And Proverbs 28:5 says that evil men don't understand justice but those who seek the Lord do, which contradicts the Calvinist's claim that we can't really figure out what godly justice is.)? These calls for justice are meaningless if we have no way of knowing what real justice looks like and no way of differentiating it from injustice.]
... Human freedom, thus, is nothing more than an illusion [in Calvinism] ....
A common misconception of the TULIP is that it is thought that one can affirm one, two, three, or even four of the points and still be a Calvinist. Hence, the phenomenon of “4 point” Calvinists who commonly affirm all but the “L”—limited atonement (who would want to limit the atonement?). But the fact of the matter is they were designed to be an interlocking logical unit where if you deny one, you deny them all....
[This is true. TULIP is consistent within itself (all "petals" support and are supported by the other petals), but not with the Bible. So if you can disprove one point biblically, it all falls. This is why the Calvinist will defend their TULIP construct at all costs, even at the cost of a plain, commonsense reading of Scripture. And for the record, I agree with them that true Christians cannot lose their salvation, but not for the reasons they say.]
[On his journey out of Calvinism]: Unfortunately, these moments of dread [about if he was truly saved or not] would continue for six months and I developed an incredible fear of death. It seemed to me that the only way I could know I was saved was by knowing the status of my eternal election. Was I chosen by God for salvation or was I eternally damned before I had done anything good or bad? To be sure, the Calvinist theologian in me had responses to this question, yet none of them sufficed.... One’s ability to believe the promises of God in a saving manner is conditioned upon God’s eternal decree. Therefore, my Calvinistic theology presented my needs for assurance with an epistemological problem: in order to have assurance I needed to know the status of my election, something that by definition is secret and cannot be known [in Calvinism].
[Regardless of how much assurance Calvinists think they have - that the salvation of the elect is secure because God saves them by His grace and will keep them in the faith all the way till the end - they can have no real assurance that they themselves are truly one of the elect, because who is saved and who isn't is known only to Calvi-god. And so they can't know for sure for themselves if they are really saved until the end of their lives, only after seeing if they persevered in the faith until the end. They cannot fall back on "I chose to believe in Jesus, and God promised to save anyone who believes in Jesus" to assure them of their salvation. All they can fall back on is "I really do hope that God gave me real faith." Calvinists cannot know for sure that God loves them specifically, that Jesus died for them specifically, or that God gave them real faith. Whereas, in non-Calvinist theology (The Bible!), all people can be assured that God loves them, that Jesus died for them, that God wants them to be saved and made it possible for them to be saved, and that anyone who believes in Jesus as Lord and Savior will be saved. This is much more reassuring than the Calvinist's "I really hope God chose me to be one of the elect, but I can't do anything about it if He didn't."]
