Calvinism for Beginners
How do you help someone understand the errors, dangers, and cult-like tactics of Calvinism when they aren't even really sure yet what it is or what it teaches? Where do you start?
My kids know that my husband and I believe Calvinism is a corruption of God's truth and character. They know because we left our church over it in 2019 - the church they grew up in for many years - and because we haven't stopped researching and talking... venting?... lamenting?... complaining?... about it since.
They know we want them to avoid it. But I'm not sure how much they really understand for themselves what it is and why it's wrong... or if they would know how to recognize it if they encountered it unexpectedly in a church or book, if we weren't there to point it out and explain it.
And so to help them (teenagers right now) understand for themselves what it teaches and why it's wrong, we recommended that they watch some Soteriology 101 videos about it. But then after clicking on a few, I realized how overwhelming it could be to try to find clear, concise videos that would help a beginner understand the basics in a simplified, easy-to-understand-yet-comprehensive way. Many videos about Calvinism online seem to jump right into the middle of it, assuming that you already know something about it, about its teachings, errors, use of terms/Bible verses, tactics, about what Scripture really teaches, etc.
So I've been looking for some "just the basics, for beginners" videos, ones I'd recommend to those just starting to learn about it... and to those who don't recognize the Calvinism in their church or understand why it matters; those who think their Calvinist pastor is such a biblically-sound preacher because he preaches all sorts of other good biblical things (especially about morality and the need to repent, believe, and obey); those who - because of their pastor's good sermons about other things - let the Calvinism slide; those who don't think it's such a big and critical issue and so they say "Can't we all just be unified? We shouldn't let Calvinism divide us. It's just a secondary, minor issue anyway."
And to those people, I'd say:
Imagine your pastor gave many good biblical sermons about all kinds of issues: the need for personal holiness and obedience, missions work, the need for all people to repent and believe, marriage, biblical morality and standards of conduct, etc.
But every so often, he preaches (but not this honestly and forthrightly) that "God really only loves blondes, Jesus only died for blondes, and only blondes can believe and be saved. And all non-blondes are predestined by God to reject Jesus, but He will hold them responsible for rejecting Jesus, even though they had no ability or option to choose otherwise. And if you are a non-blonde, you cannot choose to become a blonde, because God made that decision for you before the beginning of time. In fact, He made sure you would never even have the desire to become a blond. Oh, and God preplans and orchestrates every sin and evil thing we think and do, for His glory, but we will be punished for it, even though we couldn't choose not to do it. And if you don't agree with this, you're just having bad emotional reactions to things you don't like hearing... and putting man above God... and wanting to be in control, fighting God's sovereignty, and denying the Word... etc. After all, if God wants to 'ordain' sin and predestine non-blondes to hell for His glory, who are you, tiny insignificant human, to question His right to do that and to deny Him the glory He gets for doing it!?! Just humbly accept what I teach you because only bad Christians oppose it."
Would you not react violently against something like this? Wouldn't it massively throw into question God's character and Word? Wouldn't it cast a much different light onto (and make a mockery of) all the pastor's sermons about how God commands all of us - blondes and non-blondes alike - to repent and believe in Jesus in order to be saved and how we should glorify God by obeying Him and living holy lives? Wouldn't every other good thing he preached pale in comparison to this critical teaching?
But this is Calvinism in a nutshell, just substitute the word "elect" for blondes and "non-elect" for non-blondes. To me, anything else Calvinist preachers get right pales in comparison to the massive, critical, fundamental things they get wrong, the things that obliterate God's character, His trustworthiness, His Word, Jesus's sacrifice on the cross, and people's chance for salvation.
Calvi-god sacrifices most people for himself, for his glory, giving them no chance to be saved.
But the God of the Bible - Jesus - sacrificed Himself for all people, out of love, giving everyone the chance to be saved.
These are two very different Gods!
And this is why Calvinism is such a big, critical issue, one worth fighting against.
Someone in a comment section of a Soteriology 101 post (can't remember which one though) once said: “If God destines something to an end or permits it and sustains it to the same end, what is the difference?”
He couldn't understand the difference it made in whether God preplans/causes our sin and unbelief or whether God just allows us to choose to sin and reject Jesus. He didn't see what difference it made since whatever happens still happened.
And so I replied:
"What’s the difference between a God who allows someone to make their own decision to rape and kill, and who punishes them for their choice … and a God who causes someone to rape and kill, with no option to do anything different, but who then punishes that person for raping and killing?
What’s the difference between a God who genuinely offers salvation to all people, who lets us make our choice about if we want Him in our lives or not, and allows us to face the consequences of our choice … and a God who predestines our eternities and choices, who causes unbelievers to be unbelievers, who never gives unbelievers a chance to seek/find Him or to find salvation, and who then punishes unbelievers in hell for being the unbelievers He caused them to be?
If you can’t see a difference, what does that say about your view of God and the Gospel? Either that, or you’re just not thinking about it carefully enough."
Calvi-god preplans, causes, controls all sin and evil, for his glory - sin and evil he commands us not to do - but he punishes us for it.
But the God of the Bible commands us not to sin and He gives us the option and ability to choose between obeying or disobeying, and then He holds us accountable for the choice we made.
Two very different Gods!
Calvinism's errors are severe. So severe that a few good sermons about other biblical things cannot make up for the damage it does to God's character, Word, and trustworthiness!
I think there are many church members who are asleep in the pews, tolerating Calvinism because their pastor says some other good things and letting Calvinism spread and take over the Church because they don't realize what's really at stake, the damage it's doing. Calvinism is slowly destroying the Church from the inside out. And I think those asleep in the pews could benefit from videos like this too.
[And FYI, to help you be discerning: Calvinists will criticize "hyper-Calvinism," as if it's unbiblical and different from normal Calvinism. But hyper-Calvinism is just regular Calvinism carried out to its natural, logical conclusions and applied fully - whereas regular Calvinism tries to soften, sugarcoat, or obscure the harsher conclusions of Calvinism that hyper-Calvinists are honest enough to admit to and live by. (Question: As seen in one of the videos below, regular Calvinists say that God wills/ordains everything that happens - and so, therefore, clearly Calvi-god "ordained" that some Calvinists would be hyper-Calvinists, that they would fall for bad theology. Why would Calvi-god do that to his "elect" people? And if Calvi-god created hyper-Calvinism for his glory, why would Calvinists call it out as wrong and bad? Doesn't make sense.)
And some Calvinists will claim "Compatibilism" to sound more free-will than they are. But Calvinist Compatibilism is really just meticulous divine determinism dressed up in "free-will" language, made to sound like it truly believes people make real decisions on their own that they can justly be held accountable for - when in reality, Calvi-god preplans our desires and orchestrates everything we do, even our sins and evils, and we couldn't have chosen to do anything differently. In Calvinist Compatibilism, we are "free" to follow our greatest desires, which - lo and behold - are exactly the desires that Calvi-god preplanned for us to have so that we would do exactly what he preplanned for us to do. But since we "wanted" to do it, he holds us accountable for it as if we truly made those choices for ourselves or could've chosen something different.
And "ordains" in Calvinism really just means that God preplans, causes, orchestrates, directs, controls everything that happens, even sin and evil, and nothing different could have happened. All the words Calvinists use like "ordains, allows, decrees, foreknows, etc." always comes back to "God preplanned it and caused it to happen that way, even sin." But they don't want to admit it, so they use "softer" and more obscure words like "ordains.
Ask enough questions about what they really believe - ask the right questions - and you'll see what I mean!)]
Since I was already compiling this list for my boys, I figured I'd post it for other people too. I'll try to add more as I find them. I'm only just now beginning this project, but here are some good places to start.
From Soteriology 101 with Leighton Flowers:
Sovereignty: In Control or Controlling (2 minutes long)
Sovereignty de-Calvinized (11 minutes)
The gospel is for everyone (9 minutes)
I was a Calvinist until... (13 minutes)
How Calvinists get God's sovereignty wrong (11 minutes - and I just gotta say, the pastor in the clip looks like what you'd get if Matt Walsh from The Daily Wire and Eddie Munster from The Munsters had a baby. I'm just sayin'.)
Provisionists believe in Predestination and Election (11 minutes)
What Calvinist reprobation actually entails (17 minutes)
The damaging effects of theistic determinism (8 minutes)
The reason we continue to push back against Calvinism? (11 minutes)
How John Piper gets God's sovereignty wrong (31 minutes)
How John Piper's Calvinism implicates God in sin (32 minutes)
Total depravity proof-text dismantled in 10 minutes (13 minutes)
John Piper attempts to comfort a grieving woman with determinism (18 minutes)
Does God decree whatsoever comes to pass? (80 minutes)
Calvinism vs. Determinism: Is there a difference? (25 minutes)
How sovereignty impacts our daily lives? Responding to John Piper (49 minutes)
Why reject Calvinism? (with Jordan Hatfield) (110 minutes)
Is God sovereign or do we have free will? Yes! (77 minutes)
(a bit more in-depth) "Rebutting Calvinist proof texts" (91 minutes)
And "Provisionism: A brief overview" (15 minutes) and "Calvinism, Arminianism and Provisionism defined" (18 minutes)
Here are some other good videos, not from Soteriology 101:
Greg Boyd - Calvinism Refuted in 10 Minutes - Excellent! MUST WATCH!!! And he makes a great point about how Calvi-god is basically worse than the devil because at least the devil is honest about who he is, and so you know what you're getting with him! But not so with Calvi-god!
Man Saved Out Of Calvinism Gives Testimony (5 minutes long)
Why I'm Not A Calvinist (14 minutes long) [This guy makes a great point, which I'll expand: The Bible says Jesus came to save the lost. But the elect in Calvinism were never really lost. They were always headed to heaven because they were created predestined to salvation, to heaven, from the beginning of time. And so therefore, in Calvinism, since Jesus died to save the elect only, He didn't come for the lost but only for those already predestined to be saved. Calvi-Jesus came for the saved only. In Calvinism, no lost sinner is ever rescued from hell because the elect were never headed to hell, never even at risk of hell, never lost... and the non-elect (those who truly are lost, eternally) can never be saved from hell because they were created predestined to hell. Therefore, in Calvinism, the Bible lies to say that Jesus came to save the lost and that His death redeemed people from hell.]
Dave Hunt: "What Love is This?" (80 minutes long)
And just for fun: Hitler and Calvinism and "The Candid Calvinist" and "Jesus Died for Me Me Me" [In that last one, notice what Calvinist Tyler Vela says about God's love: essentially that a generalized, all-encompassing love for mankind isn't good, isn't meaningful, but that it's so much better for God to have a specific, focused love on only a few people. And notice how he throws out the accusation of "universalist" if we believe Jesus died for all. You see, Calvinists believe that people cannot choose to reject the offer of salvation with our free-will - and so, according to them, if Jesus died for you, you WILL BE saved. And so, in Calvinism, Jesus died only for those who are saved, for "the elect." And so if we say Jesus died for all people, they hear us saying "Jesus saves all; all will go to heaven," making us "universalists." But we don't believe Jesus's death automatically saves all people, but we believe that Jesus's death for all people gives the offer of salvation to all people - but God allows us to decide to accept or reject that offer. Update: Not too long ago, Tyler Vela renounced his faith in Christ. Sadly, it seems that many public Christians who've recently left the faith were Calvinists. Coincidence?]
My posts:
For those interested, here are the posts on my blog that I would recommend to beginners (the more comprehensive, basic "overview" kind of posts):
And you might enjoy "The 9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult", to help you understand and identify how it spreads and takes over so easily. (Here are links to the smaller versions and the series.)
Dr. Tony Evans, pastor and theologian
And here are a couple sermons from Dr. Tony Evans (my favorite, most trusted pastor) that are worth listening to. (Here's his YouTube channel.) He doesn't preach directly against Calvinism per se. He just preaches a plain, commonsense understanding of Scripture, and that in itself contradicts Calvinism. Listening to his sermons totally resonates as truth with your spirit because it fits a simple understanding of the Bible. And so there's no need to talk yourself into believing it or to manipulate yourself into accepting it (as we do with Calvinism - silencing our red flags, assuming we're just having emotional reactions to what we're hearing, convincing ourselves that we must "be humble and just accept what we're told because 'who are we to talk back to God,'" running to Calvinist theologians to help us resolve the apparent contradictions that their teachings create and then accepting the contradictions as "mysteries we were never meant to resolve anyway," etc.)
Here are two sermons to help you get a better, biblical idea of how God acts and what He expects from people, such as:
1. "How to get your prayers answered" - where he teaches a biblical view of God's "two Wills," unlike Calvinism's contradictory "two Wills." In Calvinism, God says He wills one thing, but then He has a secret, unspoken Will that really wants and predestined the opposite thing. Such as, Calvi-god's spoken Will is that he wants all people to not sin and to be saved, but his unspoken Will is that he wants/predestines all sin and that most people will be unbelievers who go to hell. But Dr. Evans teaches a biblical view of "two Wills": God has an Unconditional Will about some things (the things He decided to do regardless of us, such as create the world, renew the world in the end, send Jesus to the cross, etc.), and He has a Conditional Will about other things (the things He decided to do but only in response to what we choose, only if we do our part first). The reason this makes sense is because it's two different kinds of Wills about two different situations, so there's no opposition or contradiction. And this is far different than Calvinism's "two Wills" where Calvi-god has two different, opposing wills about the same situation or issue, which makes him duplicitous, two-faced, deceptive, untrustworthy, schizophrenic, self-contradicting, and self-sabotaging, working against himself and his own plans.
And here's what Scripture says about such people:
James 1:8: "A double-minded man [is] unstable in all he does."
Matthew 12:25: "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand."
And don't forget that 1 Cor. 14:33 (KJV) says that "God is not the author of confusion." Yet that's what Calvinism is full of: confusion, double-messages, and contradictions (relabeled as "mysteries" to placate you).
Can you not see what Calvinism does to God's character? How could you ever trust a god like Calvi-god to mean what he says and say what he means?
2. And "Connecting with God for a breakthrough" - about how important prayer (and obedience) is because God doesn't always intervene in our circumstances unless we want Him to and call on Him. God has set certain natural laws in motion in the world and has given mankind a certain level of dominion and autonomy - and though God can intervene any time He wants to, He doesn't always, or even often, intervene unless called upon. This totally contradicts the Calvinist idea that God meticulously controls everything and that everything happens exactly as God preplanned it to. Compared to Calvinism, Dr. Evans' views and teachings square much more with a simple, plain, commonsense understanding of the Bible and God's character. That's why I like and trust him so much.
I also totally recommend any and every book by him, especially these basic ones:
Theology You Can Count On (A must read for all the basics! Everyone should have this one as their basic theology book. It's easy to read, practical, and - trust me - when you read it, you'll go "Wow, that makes sense and reflects the Bible's plain, clear teachings and upholds God's good, trustworthy character.")
Our God is Awesome: Encountering the Greatness of our God (This one was really healing to my soul after feeling it suffocating for 6 years under Calvinism.)
The Promise: Experiencing God’s Greatest Gift – The Holy Spirit
The Battle is the Lord’s: Waging Victorious Spiritual Warfare
Totally Saved: Understanding, Experiencing, and Enjoying the Greatness of Your Salvation (the book that helped my soul start breathing again when escaping from our Calvinist church)
