Calvinism's Systematic Theology (and how to fend it off)
(This is not an official part of the "Calvi-cult" series, but I'll include it anyways because it fits. And I think I'm gonna take a month or so off from writing, returning in the fall sometime. Have a great rest of your summer!)
Here's a very insightful comment from Malaclypsell in the Reddit Reformed post The System in Systematic Theology:
"Systematic theology strives to give an orderly, coherent account of Scripture, such that the entire system of belief could potentially be explained, so to speak, in a power point presentation of sufficient length. And all the points in all the slides would be seen to connect and reinforce each other and be textually grounded, as much as possible... the goal is to clear up ambiguity wherever possible.
As I reflect on this, and on the Scriptures, I can't help but notice, the procedure of Scripture is very different. Scripture teaches primarily through narrative. It also contains other genres, like prophecy, instruction, poetry, legislation, letters of exhortation, etc., and in places like Romans there is extended theological reflection. Just the same, the main business of Scripture is to relate a narrative of what happened, and what those happenings mean.
So, the Bible is not like a treatise in philosophy, or in science, where everything is clarified as much as possible. It is not, in other words, systematic. Moreover, attempts to make it systematic, where the plain text just isn't, seem to incentivize forced readings, of the kind, 'we must suppose it was really meant, X,' because the other parts of the system rely on that 'X' for support, and it makes sense in a general sort of way, that 'X' - notwithstanding, the text simply does not say 'X.' It says something else, if we really look closely at it. So a system can easily be imposed rather than derived.
What do you think?"
What do I think?
I think "You're absolutely correct! Well said!"
I believe Calvinists do not read, understand, or teach the Bible in context, as it should be read, understood, and taught, but they impose their own ideas onto Scripture. (I've said this before and I'll say it again: If a verse is not kept in context, then it's a con text).
In fact, many of us do this without realizing it, reading various passages the way we've been taught to read them, with built-in presuppositions or assumptions, not realizing that there may be a different way to read it. And it takes a conscious decision to read it with fresh eyes (as much as possible), as it is written, in context, without our presuppositions tainting our interpretation.
It's just that while most people usually do it with an idea or two, a verse or two, Calvinism has made an art form out of it (and taken over the Church with it) by creating a whole, huge, thorough, complex web of theological ideas (which were all built on a few incorrect foundational ideas) that shapes the way people read the entire Bible and how they understand God's character and the gospel, leading them in a completely wrong direction - away from, and in opposition to, any plain, simple, commonsense, in-context interpretation - as they're trained to interpret the Bible in a twisted, out-of-context, non-commonsense, non-face-value way (this is why there's so much "mystery" and contradiction in Calvinism).
And how does this happen?
Systematic Theology! It has trained them to read Calvinism into the text, to redefine words and interpret verses in purely-Calvinist ways.
You see, every Calvinist idea is built on the previous one, naturally flowing from one to the next, necessitating each link along the way. "If X is true, then it must mean Y is also true." But the thing is, X is an incorrect Calvinist presupposition or definition, and neither X nor Y are clearly stated in any verse in the Bible but they only appear to be in the Bible when various verses are taken out of context (with words redefined Calvinisticly) and pieced back together in a systematic Calvinist order... and then, abracadabra, the Bible teaches Calvinism!
If you read their theology books and articles, you can see that Calvinism is absolutely overflowing with this - one idea creating the next, one presupposition necessitating the next presupposition - as they slowly nibble their way lost, bit by bit, through a long string of unbiblical ideas all founded on the previous unbiblical idea.
[I've only found one verse in the whole Bible that truly fits Calvinism (😉): "[The Pharisees] replied, 'You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out." (John 9:34) That is Calvinism in one verse: "You're all wicked, depraved sinners from birth. Don't you dare question what we teach you. And get out of the Church if you disagree with us!" (I guess we can find Calvinism in the Bible after all!)]
And because their foundational presuppositions and definitions and verse-interpretations are wrong, Systematic Theology ends up being a whole web of unbiblical doctrines, teachings, and ideas. And then, because we can all tell that it doesn't fit the plain, commonsense interpretation of Scripture, Calvinists must also employ and resort to all sorts of manipulative and shaming tactics to get people to accept it, to not question it too much or examine it too closely (such as bad analogies, false dichotomies, accusations of being unhumble and dishonoring God if we don't agree, etc.)
And so Calvinism's Systematic Theology ends up being not a way to understand the "deeper truths" of the Bible (as Calvinists like to say), but rather a cult-like tool that shapes people's thinking and manipulates them right into the deepest, darkest Calvinist-conclusions. Unbiblical conclusions.
For example: If Calvinists took the Bible at face-value, in a commonsense way, they would trust that when God says "Seek Me, repent, believe," it means that we are able to obey Him, to seek Him and repent and believe, that He gave us the option to do it and the responsibility to decide between doing it and not doing it, and that He will hold us accountable for what we freely choose to do. That's the commonsense way to view God's commands and justice.
But Calvinism's non-commonsensical way to view it is that when God says "seek Me, repent, believe," He really means that we cannot do these things, that He must cause people to do it and that He will only cause certain prechosen people to do it, and that He will punish everyone else for not doing it, those whom He created unable to do it in the first place because He predestined them to hell for His glory.
Only a Calvinist thinks that way.
Why? Because of Systematic Theology - one unbiblical idea built on the previous unbiblical idea built on the previous unbiblical idea built on an unbiblical foundation of ideas and definitions that they don't even realize are incorrect. (Of course, it's "biblical" as far as it's based on the Bible, but it's "unbiblical" because it's based on an incorrect interpretation of the Bible, resulting in doctrines that the Bible doesn't teach.)
Most Calvinists can't see that Calvi-glasses have been strapped to their heads - that they've been trained to read the Bible in Calvinist ways, through Calvinist lenses - and so it's nearly impossible for them to do anything about it or to even know that anything is wrong, that they need to question the way they're seeing things.
After you step through the theological looking-glass to the wrong side - the incorrect, backwards, upside-down side (but not realizing you've stepped into the wrong side) - you'll accept every incorrect, backwards, upside-down teaching on that side as "biblical." And you won't even realize that you need to question it - and you'll resist any attempts by those on the other side to correct you - because you'll be convinced that your side is right-side-up and that it's the other side that's upside-down.
And it's scary how shockingly easy it is for Calvinists to get us to take that first step through the theological looking-glass to the wrong side. In fact, all it takes is getting us to accept just their first couple of (unbiblical) Calvinist ideas, definitions, or verse-interpretations (while simultaneously convincing us to let them "help" us understand the Bible, shaming us into feeling bad if we disagree with or question them, and gaslighting us into believing that our doubts, concerns, and red flags aren't real or valid).
Once we accept those first couple Calvinist ideas, we'll inevitably accept it all -trapped in Calvinism's web- as we're strategically and systematically reeled into the next point and the next point and the next point... until we're full-blown Calvinists who've been manipulated to believe that we're being good, humble, God-honoring Christians for accepting (and celebrating/worshiping God for/promoting the idea) that God ordains/orchestrates/causes all sin, evil, and unbelief, for our good and His pleasure and glory.
John Piper ("Pastoral Thoughts on the Doctrine of Election")"... [the doctrine of election] is one of the best ways to test whether we have reversed roles with God... The doctrine of election is one very effective test of whether you are being delivered from the indigenous ocean of arrogance in the modern world, or are still drenched to the bone." [Translation: "You're arrogant and playing God if you disagree with Calvinism."]
John MacArthur, "Why does God allow so much suffering?": "You either believe in the God who is in complete control of evil, or you believe evil is in control of God..." ["If you don't see it my way, you're denying God's sovereignty and power." But this is a false dichotomy meant to reel people into Calvinism, saying that God must control (preplan/orchestrate/cause) evil, or else evil would control Him, as if those are the only two possible options.]
Vincent Cheung ("The Problem of Evil"): "... One who thinks that God's glory is not worth the death and suffering of billions of people has too high an opinion of himself and humanity... Christians should have no trouble affirming all of this, and those who find it difficult to accept what Scripture explicitly teaches should reconsider their spiritual commitment, to see if they are truly in the faith.” ["You're unhumble and probably not even a Christian if you have a problem with what I'm teaching." And "explicitly teaches?" Where? If he can find even one verse that explicitly teaches that God created people to be non-elect and predestined them to hell so that He could get glory for damning them, then maybe I won't think Calvinists are totally backwards.]
R.C. Sproul (start at the 4:45-minute mark in the Idol Killer video "James White Responds - Infant Salvation?"): "Don't you know that when you're in heaven, you'll be so sanctified that you'll be able to see your own mother in hell and rejoice in that, knowing that God's perfect justice is being carried out."
My ex-pastor, July 2018: "The Bible teaches that God sovereignly chooses some and not others... The first question when it comes to Bible study is not 'Do I like this?'... The first question is "WHAT DOES THE TEXT SAY?" If this is not your first question, your first burden, there is concern if you really know Christ as Lord and if you honor Him. If all you accept is the stuff you like and what is convenient for you and emotionally comfortable for you, then there is a real question whether you know Christ, if His Spirit lives in you." ["If you reject my view of predestination, you're denying Scripture, letting your emotions control you, and probably not even a Christian."]
And two more sermons (quoted at length, with my comments) from my ex-pastor that show how unbiblical and manipulative Calvinism is and what Systematic Theology resorts to and relies on to get people to accept it, to help it spread:
From his August 16, 2015 sermon on predestination: “We call that the doctrine of internal depravity, inherited depravity… human beings are born infected and absolutely contaminated by sin on every level… We are under the power of sin… The unsaved person, outside of Christ - because they are slaves to depravity, every one of us born that way - is not able to seek God. Not only don’t they, they can’t… unwilling and unable... ["Unable" is not biblical, but it's a Calvinist presupposition based on their incorrect understanding of depravity/spiritual death, and it's often one of the very first steps of indoctrinating people into Calvinism.]
... Once you begin to understand [how wicked we are], the question is not ‘Why aren’t more people elect? Why isn’t everyone going to heaven?’ What’s the real question? ‘Why is anybody elect? Why is anybody going to heaven?’ [Deflection. And these questions wrongly presuppose that election means God chooses who goes to heaven and who doesn't.]
... Why do some sinners believe and some don’t?... This is going to make people in Western culture where choice is supreme, it’s going to make us uneasy [manipulative-shaming]. Why do some rebellious, enslaved-to-sin sinners repent and others stay hardened? The answer from the Apostle Paul through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is one phrase: Because of God’s sovereign predestination, His sovereign election [where sovereign, predestination, and election have all been defined in an unbiblical, purely-Calvinist way].
It’s a doctrine of grace, a doctrine of mercy [for some people, but it's damnation for the rest]… God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden [an unbiblical understanding of and application of "hardens"]. That’s a difficult verse in American culture. [It's only "difficult" because they misinterpret it so badly.] But I tell you where it’s not difficult: Christians in the Middle East don’t struggle with this nearly as much. Muslims don’t struggle with this concept nearly as much as Christians. [Of course, because Calvi-god is very similar to Islam's Allah.]
… But in America – where ‘Have it your way’ is our national slogan and 'choice' always comes out on top of every survey of national values - freedom of choice is the air we breathe. ["Shame on anyone who believes in free-will choice!"] We’re blind to how much it seeps in and is part of us. You read a verse like this, and it absolutely almost has a visceral reaction. ["If you disagree with me, it's just because you're having an emotional reaction to things you don't like hearing and can't accept."]
The definition of election, predestination, is that it's the Bible's teaching that as God looks out on rebellious, sinful humanity, He chooses to have mercy on some sinners and not others. [If he can find that definition clearly stated that way in the Bible, I'll give him a little more credit. And "mercy on some sinners and not others"? Is that what the Bible says? See Romans 11:32. Also see this 11-minute Soteriology 101 video - Provisionists believe in Predestination and Election - for a different explanation of predestination, one that actually makes sense, fits all of Scripture, and upholds God's loving, righteous, just, gracious, merciful, trustworthy character.]
… In other words, He’s not an equal opportunity convicter. [See John 16:8 about the Holy Spirit convicting the world and Romans 2:15 about God's law being written on our hearts and consciences.]
We can’t make ‘What do I feel [about this]?’ our first response… it has to be ‘What does Scripture say?’ [Yeah, but Scripture doesn't say what Calvinism says it says.]
If it wasn’t for predestination, election, nobody would go to heaven [well sure, if you don't count the ability God gives everyone to choose to believe in Jesus and accept the offer of salvation He extends to all people] because we’re born slaves to sin, in bondage to sin, under the wrath and judgment of God, no one seeking Him… Dead people don’t choose. Dead people can’t choose anything. If you went to the cemetery today with a stack of menus and passed them out among the tombstones and said ‘Dinner’s on me. What do you choose?’, what would happen?... I can guarantee you that zero would order anything because dead people can’t pick. Dead people can’t choose anything [except, of course, to sin and reject Calvi-god] unless a miracle happens. And so therefore election is based on nothing we do... It’s why He sovereignly elects and gives grace and mercy to some. [Spiritual death is not the same thing as physical death. But this bad analogy works, tricking a lot of people into buying their Calvi-nonsense.]
… [But some people object and say] 'Doesn’t election make God look bad?' Honestly, a lot of our visceral reactions to this stuff are emotional reactions, based on family and friends who aren’t saved. [Gaslighting - making us feel like our concerns aren't valid, as if any problem we have with Calvinism is because of our emotions and not his theology.]
… But on the contrary, election does not make God look bad; it makes God look good [If you say so😒]. In fact, election and even its opposite - hardening - both glorify God. God is equally glorified in the salvation of sinners as He is in the damnation of sinners [which should scare Calvinists, not elicit their praise, especially considering Calvinism's evanescent grace where Calvi-god tricks some non-Calv-elect people into being totally confident that they're one of the Calv-elect, when they're really not].
… The elect get mercy. The unelect get justice. Nobody is treated unfairly. [Calvinists have unique understandings of "justice" and "unfairly."] So remember that everything God does is for His glory. Everything. We want to get God off the hook on this one, but God puts Himself right back on the hook on this one. ["So shut up, don't question me, fall in line with everyone else, and accept what I'm teaching you, or else you're a bad Christian who dishonors and opposes God!"]
... [About the “mystery” of God saying He wants all to be saved while simultaneously predestining people to hell:] God is infinitely complex, and if God doesn’t give you a headache at times, you’re worshipping the wrong God. If you think you’ve got Him all figured out, you’re worshipping a God of your own imagination. [This is gaslighting meant to get you to shut up and accept what he's teaching, to distrust your own judgment that it sounds very wrong and unbiblical, and to feel ashamed about your desire and efforts to make sense of it, to examine it deeper to figure out if it's actually biblical and if God is really the way he's presenting Him. "You shouldn't be able to understand God or these contradictions anyway. If you could, it's because you made up your own God and a theology that you like better. Your confusion and distress about what I'm teaching is proof that it's biblical. So set aside your doubts and humbly accept what I'm teaching, like a good little Christian." (Do you know how cults operate?)]
… Election is designed not for theological debate. It is designed to drive God’s people to their knees in humble thanksgiving and praise to their Maker. ["Only bad Christians resist what I'm teaching and refuse to worship God for predestining some people to heaven and not others."]
… So why does God still blame us if He elects some and not others? The answer from Paul is ‘Who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?’ [Romans 9 has nothing to do with the Calvinist doctrine of election.]
… You know what the problem is with the question ‘Why does God blame us if no one can resist His will’? [Yeah, the problem is the fact that Calvinists think God's Will is something He always forces to happen and that everything that happens is His Will.] The problem is that embedded in that question is an accusation that somehow God isn’t good because He elects some and not others. [And the problem here, once again, is that Calvinists think election is about predestining people to heaven. When Calvinism's presuppositions, bad definitions, or incorrect verse-interpretations are embedded into a question or idea, it will be wrong from the very beginning and be totally unanswerable in a biblical way without first exposing and tossing the Calvinist presupposition, bad definition, or incorrect verse-interpretation. If you let Calvinist definitions/interpretations stand, you give them home-court advantage and will be arguing from their foundational ideas, which means you'll be in a losing position right out of the gate.]
… There are 3 typical responses whenever the doctrine of predestination is preached:
#1: Anger/agitation - Because it goes against everything we are and breathe in American Western culture, in a liberal secular democracy where choice is everything, to be told that God is actually the one who makes the choice. ["You bad prideful Americans who believe in choice and free-will!"]
… #2: Avoidance - But let’s call that what it is: sin. If it’s taught in the Bible, no matter what it is, we need to take a good hard look at it. There’s a reason it’s there. God is not apologetic about it. He’s not embarrassed by [it]… So don’t avoid this doctrine.
… #3: And the third response is acceptance.
[No disagreement allowed, apparently.]
… When we see God in His glory in election and predestination, it’s actually a God-entrenched theology that exalts who God is and makes God the center of the universe and not us [manipulative-shaming].… One of the best books to recommend to you about this is Chosen by God by R.C. Sproul." [Of course! As always, ending with a recommendation of a Calvinist book!]
[The fact that Calvinists have to use this much shaming, manipulation, and gaslighting to get people to fall in line, accept Calvinism, ignore our alarm bells and red flags, and not examine it too closely should tell us that something's very wrong with it and that it's not nearly as "clearly taught in the Bible" as Calvinists say it is!]
And from his August 23, 2015 sermon about God "ordaining" suffering: "God is all powerful and He doesn't owe us explanations ["So shut up, all you who don't like what I'm teaching!"]... [Some people] say that evil and suffering are the result of [free-will choices]... [But] the most famous American theologian in our history, Jonathan Edwards [so "famous" equals "godly and infallible"?], spent a lot of time thinking about suffering and God's sovereignty and came up with two inescapable conclusions that are worth thinking on, enumerating on, and chewing on again and again.
As you think about the tragedies that have struck your life and shaken your world, Jonathan Edwards said that #1, we have to conclude that God is in full control of every detail of the universe, including the suffering, evil, and tragedy in our lives. God is in full control of everything that happens to us. [In Calvinism, "in full control" doesn't just mean that God is in authority over all things, but that He preplans, causes, orchestrates, and actively and meticulously controls all things, even sin and evil and unbelief - an unbiblical understanding of "in control/sovereign/omnipotence"]
And #2, God is good and that whatever He does, He does for His own glory and for the advancement of His name among the nations [Calvinists can't just say that everything Calvi-god does is good because he is good and whatever he does is for his glory, even if he does evil - because the very fact that Calvi-god does evil (ordains it, orchestrates it, causes it, controls it, but punishes us for it) would make him not good, not glorious.]
... The Puritans remind us that we don't need to get God off the hook when it comes to evil and suffering... [We] rush to get God off the hook for human suffering [by saying things like] 'Well, this is not what He really intended; this is not really Plan A.'... And every time we do that, God puts Himself back on the hook and says, 'I am in charge, thank you, and I will run the universe as I see fit, and I don't owe you an explanation.' [So all sin, evil, and suffering is God's Plan A, exactly what He intended to happen!?!😕 (But if sin, evil, and suffering was His "Plan A," then why did He create a good, flawless, sin-free, pain-free world in the beginning, in the garden of Eden? Wasn't that actually His "Plan A" - a plan that we ruined with our sin and rebellion, opening the door to evil and decay and Satan's attacks/destruction, bringing curses on ourselves and the world which have trickled down through the generations and negatively affected everything?)]
... Are you trusting God in the midst of your past, present, and future in whatever He has ordained and appointed for you as far as suffering, tragedy, abuse or trials or difficulties or illness or disease or betrayal?... Or are you murmuring against Him?... You may get an answer someday about why you were abused or why you lost a child or why a spouse walked away. ["You may get an answer why" means "God might someday tell you why He deliberately decreed, orchestrated, and caused your abuse, your child's death, and your divorce/spouse's affair."]
But, friends, answers at the end of the day don't provide a whole lot of comfort. What provides comfort are promises from God's Word. [Would you trust a god who preplans and causes moral evils he commands us not to do and who then punishes us for doing what he "ordained" us to do? Would you seek comfort from Calvi-god about the suffering you're experiencing from all the evils and tragedies in your life... when he's the very one who decreed and caused them in the first place? Should you? Would you trust that Calvi-god ordained all this suffering for his glory and for your good and to help you grow in faith... when he's also the one who's responsible when people have the opposite reaction of losing faith, ordaining them to turn their backs on him, also for his glory? Can you trust and find comfort in the promises of a god like that!?!😕]
... Do you perhaps need to repent of your murmuring and the chip on your shoulder against God, and surrender today and say 'Lord, I don't understand the way You run the universe, and I don't necessarily like it, but You're God and You're good.' It'll make all the difference in your path to healing. All the difference.
... Some of our hearts this morning are breaking. Find refuge and hope in a good and holy God who says 'I have all things under My control. Everything that's going on in your life, or has gone on in your life, or will, I know about and have ordained for you. And you can find comfort and hope and trust Me.'
But this kind of manipulation, shaming, gaslighting, deflection, and underhanded cult-like tactics are what's required when a theology does not understand or teach the Bible in a commonsense and face-value way, when it's trying to systematically train you to see it in a Calvinist way even though it seems to say something else entirely, and when it has too many contradictions, disturbing teachings, and God-damaging ideas that it can't adequately fix, rationalize, or justify.
And even Calvinists know this: That Calvinism is not clearly, obviously, thoroughly taught in any place in Scripture, that its contradictions and most disturbing doctrines are not fully explained or adequately solved anywhere in the Bible, and that we would have a hard time finding Calvinism in the Bible without their "help"... which is why we common Christians need Calvinist experts to help us "understand the Bible properly" (because we apparently can't do it on our own) as they piece together carefully-chosen verses (out-of-context and redefined/interpreted Calvinisticly) so that the Bible appears to teach the Calvinism that they believe is in there.
A.W. Pink, Doctrine of Election: "Unless we are privileged to sit under the ministry of some Spirit-taught servant of God, who presents the truth [the doctrine of election] to us systematically, great pains and diligence are called for in the searching of the Scriptures, so that we may collect and tabulate their scattered statements on this subject. It has not pleased the Holy Spirit to give us one complete and orderly setting forth of the doctrine of election, but instead 'here a little, there a little'... No novice is competent to present this subject in its scriptural perspective and proportions."
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, pg 331: "... we confess that we do not understand how it is that God can ordain that we carry out evil deeds and yet hold us accountable for them and not be blamed himself.... Scripture does not tell us...how it can be that God holds us accountable for what he ordains to come to pass." [Well don't you think you better figure that out! Because it's a huge thing to claim that God ordains our evil but holds us responsible for it. And I don't think that saying "Well, the Bible doesn't explain it, but let's believe it and teach it anyways" is going to suffice.]
Do you know how cults operate?
The article "What is a Cult? 10 Warning Signs" (VeryWell Mind) says that a cult is "an organized group whose purpose is to dominate cult members through psychological manipulation and pressure strategies... usually headed by a powerful leader... they typically rely on deceptive and authoritarian practices to make members dependent on and obedient to the group." And it lists these "warning sings" of a cult (among others): "Zero tolerance for criticism or questions... A belief that former followers are always wrong for leaving [that those who disagree are always wrong]... A belief that the leader is right at all times... A belief that the leader is the exclusive means of knowing 'truth' or giving validation."
The article "10 things to know about the psychology of cults" adds that "Cults satisfy the human desire for absolute answers... Many people join cults because they believe they’re being offered solid, absolute answers for questions such as good vs. evil, religion, the meaning of life, politics, etc." And "When a cult is offering a unique religious movement that feels safe but also a way to find their inner worth, they are likely to believe every word they are being told."
And The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's article "How do cults differ from Christianity?" lists these as characteristics of a religious cult (my paraphrase): "Cults reject the basic beliefs of the Chistian faith. They act like they alone have the truth and that we must come to them to get it. They have their own writings which they add to the Bible or replace the Bible with. They have a strong leader who demands obedience and claims to speak for God."
In general, I think that, yes, Calvinism falls into the "religious cult" realm. Of course, Calvinists don't reject the basic beliefs of the Christian faith, but they have redefined and altered them until they are something completely different, filtering the Bible through the beliefs of Calvinist/Reformed theologians. And they present themselves as the absolute "spiritual authority" who can't be questioned, challenged, or disagreed with, believing that they are the only ones who properly understand Scripture, making us feel like we need their help and their theology books to understand it too, especially the "mysteries" and "deeper truths" that they think us common people can't see or understand on our own.
You know, if the average Christian cannot find Calvinism in the Bible or understand Calvinism's "mysteries/deeper truths" on our own, without the help of Calvinist experts teaching it to us through months of study alongside their Systematic Theology books, then the most likely reason is because the Bible doesn't actually teach these things!
Is God and His Word so unclear that He needed the help of Calvinist/Reformed theologians to explain it, theologians who came along hundreds of years after the Scriptures were written?
Something is very wrong, very unbiblical, with Calvinism - and the fact that Calvinists have to spread it in such systematic, manipulative, cult-like ways proves it, because that's not how the God of the Bible acts.
But we all know who does act that way, right?
Starting point of Systematic Theology:
Briefly, if Calvinists can get us to naively agree with their unbiblical understandings of just a few things - like "God's sovereignty" and "total depravity/spiritual death" and "predestination/election" and Romans 9 - then they've already got us trapped, because the rest of their theological views will naturally fall into place after that. And they know this, which is why they are so careful to start with these things, especially total depravity (defined as "total inability").
R.C. Sproul (Total Depravity part 1): "... if a person really embraces the doctrine of total depravity, the other four points in this five-point system more or less fall in line. They become corollaries of this first point."
Nick Batzig (Ligonier Ministries, "What is Unconditional Election?"): "The first doctrine represented in the acronym TULIP sets the logical course for this subsequent doctrine of unconditional election. The doctrine of total depravity (perhaps better termed pervasive depravity) necessitates unconditional election." [You can see this at work in my ex-pastor's August 16, 2015 sermon above where he hammered home our total depravity before effortlessly sliding into the ideas of unconditional election and irresistible grace.]
Dr. Mayhue (Election and Predestination: The Sovereignty of God in Salvation): "If you don't start with the total depravity of mankind, and understand that we are dead in our sins and trespasses, you'll never get unconditional election..." [Hmm, so he's admitting that without Calvinism's doctrine of "total depravity/spiritual death," the whole Calvinist TULIP was shatter. So then, because Calvinists have a faulty definition of depravity and spiritual death, it means their whole TULIP is faulty and unbiblical, too. Because, as they admit, it all rests on "depravity/spiritual death."]
From the "church reform" article from Founders Ministry: "... We speak first of all of the doctrines of grace [that's code for Calvinism]. Teach your people that they are utterly depraved and dead in their sins without God. Teach them that God chose the elect for salvation from the foundation of time out of his own mercy and desire..."
Got Questions (What are the Doctrines of Grace?): "Because man is dead in sin, he is unable (and stubbornly unwilling) to initiate a saving response to God. In light of this, God, from eternity past, mercifully elected a particular people unto salvation." [Non-Calvinists don't believe we "initiate" salvation either. God does, by revealing Himself to people and calling all people to believe. We just choose how we will respond to Him.]
[See how they build each idea on the previous one. And so when the first idea is bad - such as their unbiblical understanding of depravity as "inability" - then it's all bad, with errors all down the line.]
Pastor Johnson, Election and Predestination: The Sovereignty of God in salvation": "... all this hinges on and stems from the doctrine of total depravity... [depraved people are] not capable of loving God or pleasing Him or even obeying Him. They cannot do it. It's impossible for them, because their hearts are so fixed against Him... And so he changes that animosity that we are born with towards God into a love for Him. That's what we mean by irresistible grace. That's another—that's the I in the tulip...."
John Piper ("Total Depravity - Unconditional Election"): "Total depravity means that apart from any enabling grace from God, our hardness and rebellion against God is total... Our inability to submit to God or reform ourselves is total, and we are therefore totally deserving of eternal punishment. [😕 "Totally deserving of eternal punishment" for being unable to submit to God!?!😕 That's like the total opposite of "totally deserving punishment!"]... But if we humble ourselves under this terrible truth of our total depravity, we will be in a position to see and appreciate the glory and wonder of the work of God discussed in the other four points... Let’s turn now to the doctrine of unconditional election. This is a hope-filled doctrine for those who feel totally depraved and utterly without hope and help [which is exactly how Calvinist pastors want to make you feel so that you will more easily accept their TULIP.]..."
Loraine Boettner ("The Five Points of Calvinism"): "These are technically known as 'The Five Points of Calvinism,' and they are the main pillars upon which the superstructure rests... Furthermore, these are not isolated and independent doctrines but are so inter-related that they form a simple, harmonious, self-consistent system; and the way in which they fit together as component parts of a well-ordered whole has won the admiration of thinking men of all creeds [and has deceived many into thinking it's "sound doctrine."]. Prove any one of them true and all the others will follow as logical and necessary parts of the system... They are found to dovetail perfectly one into the other."
This is why their theology appears rock-solid, consistent, and logical - because each idea births the next, with all points flowing from the previous one and into the next one, which locks it all together into a tightly-knit web as each point proves, requires, and supports all the other ones.
And it's so tightly-woven and internally-supportive - each link in the chain is absolutely necessary to make it all work, and you must accept the next point if you accept the previous point - that all they have to do is get us to accept the very first link, to swallow the very first bite, and then we'll already be trapped in the whole thing, inevitably on our way to being a full-blown Calvinist.
Unless, that is, we wake up, step outside the echo chamber, and examine Scripture for ourselves, double-checking the pastor's teachings against the Bible in context.
But, sadly, most Christians don't even realize that they're in a Calvinist echo-chamber, that they're reading the Bible through Calvi-lenses, and that they're getting help to understand the Bible from those who don't accurately understand the Bible, who have flipped the Bible on its head.
And, even more than that, many don't even know that their pastor is stealthily teaching them a controversial and particular brand of theology called Calvinism. Instead, they took their pastor's word for it that he's just teaching them "biblical Christianity, what the Bible clearly teaches," when he's actually been strategically teaching them Calvinism on the sly, under their radar. And so they have no clue that they even need to double-check the pastor, to compare what he tells them the Bible teaches against what the Bible actually says.
Most Christians would rather just trust their pastors and be good, little, humble, submissive, non-divisive Christians who willingly eat whatever they're spoon-fed, who don't question the "spiritual authorities," who don't appear to doubt Scripture or dishonor God, and who don't appear defiant or biblically-illiterate to everyone else around them who seems to be able to grasp all the disturbing Calvinist doctrines without any hesitation. And so they don't even allow themselves to entertain their doubts and concerns, to heed their red flags and alarm bells, especially if their church makes up most of their social circle.
There is no way to help someone get out of a cult when they have no idea that they are in a cult and when they trust the cult and want to stay there. There is no way to help someone understand the true teachings of Scripture when they believe that they already understand the true teachings of Scripture - that their Calvinism is the true teachings of Scripture - and they refuse to look into it deeper or to listen to any warnings or alarm bells.
Most Christians will be locked into Calvinism the moment they decide to swallow the first bite of it without really examining it for themselves.
And before they know it, they'll end up here...
Ending Point of Systematic Theology (two examples):
#1. My summation of Calvinism's teachings, its nonsensical, Alice-in-Wonderland-like gibberish:
"God predestines all evil, but He's not the author of evil. God preplans/orchestrates/causes all evil, but He Himself is not evil or responsible for evil. God's not happy when we sin, but He orchestrates/causes all sin for His pleasure and glory.
Satan fights against God, but God ordained/causes Satan to fight against Him. Satan wants people to sin and reject God and go to hell, but so does God (and God preplans, orchestrates, controls, causes everything Satan does)... but Satan is bad and can't be trusted, while God is good and can be trusted.
You need to repent and believe in the gospel to be saved, but you can only repent and believe if you were already saved in eternity past and were born again before repenting, believing, or even hearing the gospel.
We're free, but we're not free. We choose, but we don't choose. When we sin, it's because God decreed that we disobey His decrees. God predestines all our sins and unbelief, but then He commands that we obey and believe, and then He orchestrates/causes our sins and makes sure certain people can't believe, and then He punishes us for doing what He predestined because we "deserve" it, because we disobeyed Him even though He decreed our disobedience for His glory... and all of this is okay because He's "sovereign."
God ordains sin for His glory, but He also ordains that we fight against/resist sin for His glory. God is equally pleased by and glorified by belief and unbelief, by good and evil, by obedience and disobedience, but we should still prefer that people believe, do good, and obey, for some reason, even though God's glory should be our top/only priority because that's all He cares about anyway.
You must fully submit to God's sovereign control, but God sovereignly controls whether you submit or not. We need to pray for God's Will to get done and seek to do God's Will - even though God's Will is the only thing that ever happens, and so it's God's Will whenever someone doesn't pray or do His Will. Prayer affects things, but everything's been predestined and can't change. God predestines who will believe, but we still need to evangelize.
What looks like evil/injustice to us (predestining people to sin and reject Him but holding them responsible for it) is really good/justice in God's eyes because He sees things differently than we do - and yet even though we can't recognize or tell the difference between true justice and injustice, between true good and evil, we must administer "justice" and seek to do "good," like the Bible tells us to.[😕]
God says one thing but means another, and so we can't take the Bible at face-value because there's a hidden, deeper layer to all the things God says, and so we need to spend months with Calvinist books and teachers to learn what God really meant to say, underneath the surface.
Yes, Calvinism is full of contradictions that appear to destroy God's character and Jesus's sacrificial death, but it's a 'mystery' that 'humble' Christians simply accept anyway, no matter how bad it sounds... and God is still good and so we can trust Him, even when He sounds terrible and untrustworthy. Besides, God is sovereign and can do whatever He wants, and so who are you, O man, to talk back to Him?
Etc. Etc. Etc."
And yet Calvinists can't understand why we "can't understand" Calvinism.
#2: Yes, I've shared this many times before, but it really is Calvinism, the inevitable conclusion of Calvinism's Systematic Theology that you will reach, too, if you keep eating whatever they spoon-feed you:
Mark Talbot/John Piper (editor) (from Suffering and the Sovereignty of God): "It isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those that love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects… This includes God’s having even brought about the Nazi’s brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Nadar and even the sexual abuse of a young child... God's foreordination is the ultimate reason why everything comes about, including the existence of all evil persons and things and the occurrence of any evil acts or events. And so it is not inappropriate to take God to be the creator, the sender, the permitter, and sometimes even the instigator of evil.
... In summary, this means that we should affirm the age-old Christian doctrine of God’s complete providence over all. God has sovereignly ordained, from before the world began, everything that happens in our world... It should be beyond all doubt that no one suffers anything at anyone else’s hand without God having ordained that suffering.
During his first hour or so in Birkenau, Elie Wiesel saw the notorious Joseph Mengele...casually directing [people] either to his left, so that they went immediately to the gas chambers, or to his right to the forced-labor camp. In seeing Mengele, Wiesel was seeing a very evil man whom, nevertheless, God was actively sustaining and governing, nanosecond by nanosecond, through his evil existence. And we can be sure that, from before time began, God had ordained that at that place those moments would be filled with just those persons, doing and suffering exactly as they did... that he actually brought the whole situation about, guiding and governing and carrying it by his all-powerful and ever-effectual word to where it would accomplish exactly what he wanted it to do.
[Footnote: Mengele was a medical doctor who was nicknamed 'The Angel of Death.' He carried out unspeakable experiments on some of his prisoners, including injecting chemicals into children's eyes in an attempt to change their eye color from brown to the preferred Aryan blue. He would visit the children, acting kindly and bringing them candy and clothing in order to keep them calm and happy, and then transport them in what looked like a Red Cross truck or in his personal vehicle to his laboratory beside the crematoria where he would perform his horrible experiments and then burn their bodies. He specialized in experiments involving identical twins. He was intrigued to see if he could make them differ genetically by, among other horrors, performing sex-change operations on one of them or removing one twin’s limbs or organs in macabre surgical procedures that were performed without the use of anesthesia and that had no scientific basis or value.]
... Even though he ordains all of our free sinful choices ["Free" that's not free is not free. Duh!], those sinful choices still 'count' and we are held responsible for them.... In ordaining the evil works of others, he himself does no wrong, 'upright and just is he.'... We can be sure, as Scripture confirms, that God has made everything for its purpose, even evil persons like Joseph Mengele or Dennis Rader. We can be sure that God has made our lives’ most evil moments as well as their best....
... I myself find it very difficult to understand how [God can ordain evil for our good] with some of the worst things that human beings do, like sexually abusing young children or raping or torturing someone mercilessly.
And, of course, something much less horrible than these sorts of things can happen to us and still leave us wondering how God could be ordaining it for our good. I have seen marriages break apart after thirty-five years and felt to some degree the grief and utter discombobulation of the abandoned spouse. I have watched tragedies unfold that seem to remove all chance for any more earthly happiness.... Many of us have tasted such grief....Yet these griefs have been God’s gifts.... [And in the end, when we see Jesus face-to-face] we will see that God has indeed done all that he pleased and has done it all perfectly, both for his glory and our good..."
How to fend off Calvinism's Systematic Theology
Alternative title: "Destroying Calvinism in 28 Easy Steps"
[Of course, I don't really think that there's anything truly easy about destroying/debating Calvinism (it's an immense tangled-web of error and cult-ish tactics) or getting Calvinists to realize their theological errors, to realize that they're reading the Bible through faulty Calvi-lenses (they're so convinced it's "biblical Christianity" that they don't even know they should question it or doublecheck it, and they're manipulated into feeling ashamed if they did).]
Here are 28 semi-brief examples (I added some after publishing the original post) of Calvinism's foundational errors that will trap us if we don't question them... and reasons why we should resist them, showing how badly Calvinists misunderstand Scripture. I've already covered these a lot in various other posts, so I'll only present the basic conclusions here, as briefly as I can. (Yes, this is the brief version, sorry. The Calvinist-theology web is so huge, interwoven, and convoluted that it takes a lot of time to explain and oppose even a little piece of it.) And so if you want to test them further or find more Bible verses to support them, you'll have to dig into them deeper for yourselves. (FYI, I'll try to write a super-short version soon, and/or maybe I'll break this into smaller pieces in future posts.)
If you can understand just a few of these (and if you can recognize the gaslighting and manipulation Calvinists do, that Calvinism survives and thrives on, which is why I share long quotes from Calvinists with you to point it all out), you're on your way to resisting the cult-like vice-grip that Calvinism's Systematic Theology has gotten on the Church and on so many good Christians' minds:
1. Predestination/election: Calvinists always define these as being about God predestining certain individuals for heaven. But biblically, God predestines what happens to those who accept Jesus as Lord and Savior - the general path all believers will take, the end they will reach, and the inheritance they will receive because they put their faith in Jesus - but He does not predestine who believes and who doesn't, as Calvinists wrongly think.
The word predestined is only mentioned 4 times in the Bible (two times in two different passages).
In Ephesians 1:5, 11-12, you'll note that the good old KJV says that believers were predestined "unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself… In him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated..." In this passage, in the KJV, what's been predestined is the inheritance believers get in the end and the "adoption" of all believers, which Romans 8:23 NIV words as “adoption as sons,” and it clarifies that this adoption is the "redemption of our bodies." It's not about God choosing who believes, but about God promising an inheritance and a glorified body to all believers. Very different.
Also of note is that Strong's concordance with Vine's Expository Dictionary says that "adoption" is NOT about being brought into God's family by spiritual birth, but about God promising to "adopt" anyone who believes into His family. Anyone who believes in Jesus, who accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior - and this offer is open to all, and anyone can believe - is predestined to be brought into His family and to experience the dignity/full benefits of being His child, being fully realized at the redemption of their bodies.
And in Romans 8:29-30 (KJV), you'll note that what's been predestined is that believers - those whom God foreknows (but be warned that Calvinists change the definition of "foreknows" to include fore-planning/fore-choosing) will be "conformed to the image of his Son" and will ultimately be "glorified.” (And my Bible lists Philippians 3:21 as a cross reference for Romans 8:29, echoing the idea of the bodies of believers being transformed.)
Predestined is never about God predetermining who believes, but it's about God predetermining what happens to anyone who chooses to believe in Jesus.
And Calvinists define election in the same wrong way as predestination, thinking that they're both the same thing. But they're wrong. Biblically, election is about God's choice about how to use people and their self-chosen obedience or disobedience in His plans, which roles/blessings/tasks to give them. It has nothing to do with God choosing individual people for heaven. God elects people and nations to service, to certain roles in His plans, not to salvation.
Dr. Tony Evans, whom I think is one of the most accurate theologians/pastors out there, defines "election" not as God predetermining who goes to heaven and who doesn't (as Calvinists do), but he defines it this way in his Tony Evans Bible Commentary on page 15: "The sovereign prerogative of God to choose individuals, families, groups, and nations to serve his kingdom purposes as he so wills. Election is specifically related to service, usefulness, and blessings - not individual salvation. Jesus died for all human beings without exception and desires for all to be saved."
And he says this about Ephesians 1:5-6: "... The focus of the book of Ephesians is on the corporate church, not on individual Christian salvation... Therefore, the choosing and election to which Paul refers is not for individuals to eternal life but regards God's choice to establish a group of people (that is, the body of Christ) in the Beloved One whose purpose is to live godly lives and reflect his holy character in a sinful world. This election defines the corporate identity believers share because of their relationship to Christ... Election is for service and spiritual benefit, not for individual, personal salvation."
[Everyone should have Dr. Evans Bible commentary, along with the books I recommend near the end of this post.]
Similarly, Calvinists also take verses about Jesus or God "choosing" other things, like who will be a disciple or who will perform a certain job, and they use it to try to prove that God chooses who believes in Him. And then they point to any and every verse with "choose" or "election" or "predestined" in it and claim "See, Calvinism's doctrine of election is taught all throughout the Bible." But none of these verses are support for Calvinism because none of them are about God choosing who believes. (Just because Jesus did something like choose His disciples doesn't mean that God chooses who gets saved. That's a huge unbiblical leap Calvinists make.)
Neither election, predestination, nor "chosen" are about God predetermining who goes to heaven and who doesn't. But if you let Calvinists convince you that they are, you will become a Calvinist.
2. Romans 9: Calvinists think this also is about God choosing who goes to heaven and who doesn't. But Romans 9 is not at all about God predetermining the salvation or damnation of individuals. It's about God choosing Israel to be the nation that brings Jesus and the gospel to the world. But they rejected Jesus, and so God turned His attention to the Gentiles and offered them the salvation that the Jews rejected and gave them the job of sharing the gospel with the world. And yet the Jews cried "It's not fair" because they didn't think God would or should punish Jews because they thought they were His favored people. And they didn't think God should extend grace, mercy, and salvation to the Gentiles or give them the special job He first gave to the Jews. And Romans 9 is God's response to the Jews who cried "it's not fair." God is saying that He can punish anyone, even Jews, if they reject Him and that He can extend salvation/blessings to anyone, even Gentiles, if they accept Him and will obey Him. That's what Romans 9 is about. But if you let Calvinists convince you it's about God choosing which individuals are saved and which are unsaved, you will become a Calvinist.
3. Hardens: Calvinists think this means that God decides who doesn't believe in Him and that He hardens them to make sure they can't believe in Him so that they go to hell just like He predestined. But according to the concordance (Strong's Concordance with Vine's Expository Dictionary), hardens is a retributive hardening, a punishment for first choosing to harden your own heart against God and to resist His patient, longsuffering dealings with you, His many attempts to call you to repent.
Such as, Pharoah first hardened his own heart in the first several plagues... and then God hardened it, giving Pharoah what he wanted, permanently, as punishment.
Being hardened is the response to our self-chosen unbelief/resistance, not the cause of our unbelief/resistance (as Calvinists wrongly think).
Calvinists always - ALWAYS - use the Romans 9 verse about God "having mercy on whomever He wants and hardening whomever He wants" to support their theology, to teach their TULIP. But, as I said, Romans 9 has nothing to do with God predestining individuals to salvation or to damnation - and so any and every verse they use from this chapter to support or defend Calvinism has been misinterpreted, taken out of context, and misapplied.
4. Likewise are the verses about Jacob and Esau: Calvinists believe that God "choosing Jacob and hating Esau" means that God chooses whom to save and whom not to save. But this passage - as all of Romans 9 - is not about God choosing certain people for salvation at all. It's about God choosing how to use people in His plans, specifically whom to use in His plan to bring the Messiah and the gospel to the world. God chose that Jacob, not Esau, would be Jesus's bloodline.
From Dr. Evans commentary on Romans 9:10-13: "God's election is not for personal, eternal salvation, but for blessing, service, and usefulness. Abraham was called not so that God would save him, but because God would use him to bless all the families of the earth (see Gen. 12:3). That line of blessing skipped over Isaac's older son Esau, even though he had not been born yet, passing to the younger, Jacob. Why? Not because they had 'done anything good or bad, but that God's purpose according to election might stand' (9:11). By withholding the blessing from Esau, God effectively 'hated Esau' (9:13) - not out of preference or from an emotional motivation, but in order to display his sovereignty in going against the cultural norms so that 'the older [would] serve the younger' (9:12). Paul clearly states that this election was about service, not eternal salvation. Jacob - not Esau - was chosen to be the Messiah's ancestor even though both were Abraham's descendants.... The concepts of love and hate refer to God's decision to bestow inheritance, blessings, and kingdom responsibility on Jacob's descendants rather than Esau's... God has the sovereign right to choose whom he will use to accomplish his kingdom purposes."
Romans 9, election, mercy/hardening, Jacob and Esau, "who are you, O man, to talk back to God," etc. are not about God's right to decide who gets saved and who doesn't, because this is not a chapter about personal salvation at all.
It's about God's right to use different people in different ways, for different purposes, to further His kingdom plans. God decides how to use people/nations in His plans - which jobs, roles, responsibilities, blessings to give them, to elect them for. And He decides how to incorporate our self-made decisions into His plans. And He can change His plans for us based on how we respond to Him and His commands, setting aside those who resist Him while blessing those who are willing to follow Him - and no one can say that He's unfair for doing this, for how He uses us or how He blesses or punishes us, because He's simply responding to our self-chosen decisions, incorporating our free-will decisions into His plans.
Whereas, in Calvinism, Calvi-god preplans, decrees, causes, orchestrates our decisions but then he punishes us for it, for the sins, disobedience, and unbelief he predestined and caused us to do. This is a huge difference, and it totally destroys God's character.
[Sidenote: One significant example to bring up here is how God uses Assyria to punish Israel but then He turns around and punishes Assyria for their wickedness and violence, which Calvinists use to try to prove that God decrees/orchestrates/causes sin and evil but punishes people for it and that it's okay because "He is a sovereign God and can do whatever He wants for His purposes and glory."
But I believe the best way to understand this is not that God caused Assyria to be wicked, but that He simply used their self-chosen wickedness, incorporating it into His plans by directing it towards Israel to punish them for their sins. And so because God didn't cause their wickedness, but they themselves chose to be evil and violent - He just put it to good use first - He could then turn around and punish them for being the wicked people they chose to be.
This is a better, more biblical way to look at it, one that actually makes people responsible for their sins and not God, which then makes it deserved punishment/justice when God punishes them for their wickedness. Whereas, in Calvinism, any punishment we receive for our sins - sins which were decreed, orchestrated, caused by Calvi-god; sins we had no ability to resist doing - would be totally unjust. Calvi-god and the God of the Bible are very different Gods.
(Note: I moved the Dr. Evans' book recommendations to the end of the post.)]
5. Faith: Calvinists believe that faith is the gift in Ephesians 2:8-9 and that God decides whom to give it to, and only those He gives it to can believe, while everyone else remains unable to believe so that they go to hell just like He predestined. But faith in not the gift. (And even if it was, gifts can be accepted or rejected. It's not a "gift" if someone forces it on you.)
In the Greek, words have genders, and when certain words refer to another word, it must match its gender. "Faith" and "grace" are both female, but "this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God" is neuter, which means that the "this/gift" cannot be referring to either faith or grace specifically. So what it is referring to is the whole idea as one: the offer of salvation by grace through faith. Eternal life. (Which is confirmed in Romans 6:23.)
Faith is not the gift, not something that God forces into prechosen people to cause them to believe, as Calvinists wrongly think. But salvation/eternal life is the gift that God offers graciously to all, to be accepted by faith - and we choose whether to accept it or reject it; to put our faith in Jesus or to reject/ignore Him.
[Note: The spiritual gift of faith in 1 Cor. 12:9 is not about the kind of faith that leads to salvation. It's not about the Holy Spirit giving someone the ability to believe in Jesus, faith before belief, faith leading to belief.
That passage is about spiritual gifts that are given to believers - after they believe - to help them do kingdom work. So this is not about faith being given to help unbelievers believe, but it's about faith being given to certain believers to help them trust God so much that they can step out and do the hard things for His kingdom. And not every believer has this kind of radical "do the hardest work, do the wildest things, do the impossible" kind of faith.
(Think about it: If it did mean the faith to believe, to be saved, then note that 1 Cor. 12:9 says that God only gives it to some believers. How would that make sense?)]
6. Believe and Receive: Contrary to Calvinism, the word "believe" in verses like Romans 10:4 and Ephesians 1:13 does not mean something like “to believe through God's work of causing you to believe, with no effort or thought on your part; to passively have faith injected into you” (my paraphrase).
According to Strong's Concordance with Vine's Expository Dictionary, “believes” is active, not passive. It's not about God injecting faith into us, but it involves a conscious and willing action on our part. It's about being persuaded by something, choosing to commit to it, and placing our confidence and our faith in it. And we can only be "persuaded" by something, commit to it, and place our confidence in it if we have the ability to think and determine things, to reason through them, to choose one option over the others. Biblically, "believe" is something we do, not something God does to us while we passively absorb it.
And similar to this is the word "receive" in other verses about belief and salvation, like Romans 1:5, 5:11, and 5:17. Strong's-and-Vine's says that the word “receive” involves the idea of deliberately grabbing ahold of something, of consciously accepting what is offered. Like the word “believe,” it’s active, not passive. It's intentionally reaching out and grabbing something, as opposed to passively acquiring something. There is a responsibility on our parts to grab ahold of the grace and salvation God offers us, to not let it pass us by.
The gift of eternal life is offered to all, but we choose to accept it or to reject it. It is active on our parts, not passive. And this is why no one will have an excuse for why they didn’t turn to God (Romans 1:20) - because God has made Himself clear to all, in His creation and deep down in our hearts, and has given us all the ability and option to respond to it, to believe and receive the truth, the gospel. And we will be held responsible for how we respond to it, for whether we believe and receive it or whether we ignore, resist, reject it.
7. Similarly: Ignorance and Blindness
“They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.” (Ephesians 4:18-19)
Calvinism teaches that God causes people to be ignorant by hardening their hearts, that He “forces” them to remain blind to Him because they were predestined to hell.
But, actually, the word in the concordance is not “hardening” of heart but “blindness” of heart. And according to the concordance, “blindness” in this passage involves the idea of being callous toward something, and it comes from a word which is used of the Israelites who deliberately refused God’s ways and His Will.
It’s not that God chose to harden their hearts and make them ignorant; it’s that they chose to be callous toward Him, to deliberately refuse Him. The people hardened themselves against God and it led to their ignorance, their darkened understanding, their insensitivity to God, and to them giving themselves over to sin. God did not make them that way; they made themselves that way by choosing to reject God.
And “ignorance” is not just “not knowing” or “being unaware,” as if God never revealed Himself to them, never gave them a chance. According to the concordance, it is a deliberate, willful decision to be blind.
Deliberately refusing God’s way. Willfully blind.
When we choose to be willfully blind to God, to refuse Him and His ways, and to choose our own selves and own ways instead, we become darkened in our understanding, insensitive to God, and depraved in our behavior.
It all starts with our choice. We choose to either submit to the truth or to be blind to it, to turn toward God or away from God, to obey God or disobey God - and that’s why we can justly be held accountable for our unbelief, for our ignorance, blindness, and resistance to God. Because it was our choice!
(This is far different than what happens in Calvinism, where Calvi-god holds us accountable for what he ordained/orchestrated/caused us to do, for being the unbelievers and sinners he predestined us to be, for doing the sinful things we had no choice about and no ability to resist doing. This is the absolute opposite of "justice/just punishment," regardless of how often Calvinists deceptively call it that, living in cognitive dissonance and self-deception.)
8. God's Will: Calvinists wrongly think that God's Will is everything that happens, that everything He wills happens, and that everything that happens does so exactly as He willed, preplanned, orchestrated, and caused, even sin, evil, and unbelief.
[And so to explain how sin happens, how people disobey God's commands, Calvinists came up with the unbiblical concept of "the two Wills of God," claiming that God has a spoken Will (His verbal commands) but also an unspoken Will (whatever happens; the things He causes us to do in opposition to His verbal commands). They say that both are His Will: His commands and His causation of our disobedience to His commands.
But, hmm, we all know what the Bible says about a double-minded man, a city divided against itself, and how God is not the author of confusion, right?😕 And yet we're supposed to believe that it's okay for God to say/command one thing but cause the opposite? Hogwash! A god like that cannot be trusted.
If both obedience and disobedience are his Will (if black is white and white is black), then there's no reason to trust his Word or to ever obey any command he gives because he might actually really want/cause the opposite to happen. Which Will do we obey: what he commanded or what we feel like doing/feel like he's causing us to do, even if it goes against what he commanded? Why should we obey his commands if it might not really be his real Will for us, if his real Will might be that we break his commands?
In Calvinism, everyone is aways doing Calvi-god's Will no matter what, whether we obey or disobey, sin or don't sin, do evil or do good, believe in him or reject him. Hogwash. When everything (even sin and evil) is his good and pleasing Will, then nothing (not even good or righteous things) is his good and pleasing Will. Because there is no difference. It's all the same. It's all equally caused by him and equally pleasing to him.
Hogwash.]
But biblically, according to the concordance, God's Will is about His preferred plans for us, what He wants us to do and wants for us and from us. But He has given us the choice of whether we follow Him in His best plans and obey His Will... or whether we reject His best plans, disobey His Will, and go our own way instead.
God's Will doesn't always happen and not everything that happens is God's Will - because He has given us free-will, the right and responsibility to choose between obeying Him or disobeying Him, between following Him or ignoring/rejecting/resisting Him.
Make no mistake, He can work whatever we choose - our obedience or disobedience - into His plans and bring good out of it, but that doesn't mean that our disobedience was His Will or that it was destined to happen. It just means that we freely chose to resist His Will when we could've chosen obedience to His Will instead. He lets us decide... and then He lets us face the consequences that go with our choice.
9. Total depravity/spiritual death: Calvinists believe that total depravity and spiritual death are about "total inability," that people are so dead and depraved inside that they are unable to - that they cannot even want to - want/seek/believe in God or even want to be saved unless He causes them to (and, of course, He will only cause the Calv-elect to).
But inability is unbiblical, going far beyond what Scripture teaches. Biblically and simply, depravity/spiritual death simply mean that sin has separated mankind from God and that we cannot close that gap on our own... and so we needed Jesus to make salvation possible for us because we could not work our way to heaven ourselves... and so Jesus died to pay the ransom for our sins so that we didn't have to live eternally in spiritual death... and if we accept His sacrifice on our behalf (and anyone can) - His free gift of salvation, accepting Him as Lord and Savior - we will be saved.
But turning these things into "total inability" completely changes the gospel and inevitably leads you right into Calvinism.
A little closer look at this because it's critical to their whole systematic theology... and yet it's ultimately a grievous error:
Calvinism's TULIP hinges on defining total depravity as total inability - because without total inability, you don't have Unconditional Election or a Limited Atonement or Irresistible Grace or Perseverance of the Saints.
R.C. Sproul (Total Depravity part 1): "... if a person really embraces the doctrine of total depravity, the other four points in this five-point system more or less fall in line. They become corollaries of this first point."
This is why they hammer on total depravity/total inability so much. It's the key to sucking people fully and inevitably into Calvinism (along with, I'd say, their wrong definition of God's sovereignty).
But Calvinists not only misunderstand the idea of depravity as inability - leading to a flawed theology from the very beginning - but they also completely overemphasize depravity, unintentionally messing up the gospel and the way to salvation by insisting that people must acknowledge how utterly terrible they are before they can come to the Lord in repentance.
As my ex-pastor says in his July 2018 sermon on the "doctrine of sovereign election": "God is not unjust to have mercy on some and not others - because of the wickedness, depravity, and innate rebellion of mankind.... He's dealing with a planet of rebellious, sinful, wicked human beings.... [Here he goes on and on about how wicked, depraved, and rebellious humans are.] Once you grasp the...wickedness, evil, corruption, rebellion of the human heart, the real question is not 'Why didn't God elect everybody?' The real question is 'Why does He elect anybody?' [deflection]... God hardens whom He wants to harden and has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy [a total misuse and misinterpretation of Romans 9]... Who are you, adult; who are you, teenager; who are you, kid; who are you, a mere human being, to talk back to God? [manipulative-shaming and a misuse of Romans 9]
... If you are saved, thank God for His mercy on you, that He turned your stone heart - your hard heart - around, and gave you a new heart to chase after Him.
... And if you're unsure if you're saved, if you're elect, ask yourself some questions. [Here he lists some signs that you're Calv-elect, but then he ends by saying to ask yourself this:] 'Am I the worst sinner I know?' If you're saved, the answer is 'Yes, you're the worst sinner you know.'"
And from a February 2016 sermon: "All people, all cultures, all generations are universally evil, spiritually ignorant, rebellious, wayward, worthless, morally corrupt, evil-mouthed, deceitful, full of bitterness, violent, miserable, and have no fear of God in their eyes... We're dead in sin, slaves to sin, unable and unwilling to seek God ["unable and unwilling" are Calvinist additions to Scripture and to the ideas of depravity and spiritual death] ... No one is righteous... We are depraved down to the core... utterly saturated, permeated, and consumed by corruption... No one is righteous. [Wow, we're terrible, aren't we? Bad, bad people. Worthless, no-good worms.]... Why does nobody seek God? Because no one is able to seek God on their own and the reason goes back to total depravity... We are born slaves to sin, wickedness, depravity.... You don't understand the gospel until you realize you're the worst sinner you know."
"You don't understand the gospel until you realize you're the worst sinner you know."
So in order to understand the gospel and be saved (which, in Calvinism, means that in order for Calv-elect people to wake up to the fact that they're Calv-elect, that they were always saved from before the beginning of time, and to realize that Calvi-god gave them saving faith to make them believe, without them ever having to make their own decision about it), they must first see themselves as the worst sinner they know - and they can't come to God until they do.
The Founders Ministries article The Depth of Depravity says this about total depravity, obviously in agreement with the theologians it quotes (thanks to Sallie at A Quiet Simple Life for bringing this article to my attention in her post A Calvinist Couple Explains Salvation to Their Children. I took out the references to Bible verses to save space.):
"There is a third aspect that is not discussed as often. It is what may be termed the depth of depravity. The Bible describes sinners as far more evil than they realize. Just as Calvinism portrays a higher [and totally wrong] view of the sovereignty of God than other theologies, so it presents a far lower view of the sinful state of fallen mankind. [Yeah, we know. Hooray for you.] In sum, fallen man is corrupt through and through, rotten to the core, and in desperate need of salvation.
... Fallen men are dead trees that deserve to be cut down and thrown into the fire. They are useful only as firewood for hell. The lifeless stump of fallen man is rotten.... Fallen man is a maggot that feeds on filth and dead bodies... Men are worms whose hunger is never satisfied, as Jonathan Edwards said, 'They are like a filthy worm that never feeds so sweetly as when feeding on carrion or never has its nature so suited as when crawling in the most abominable filth.'... [Man is] a filthy and disgusting sinner.
... [Man is] Worse than animals... because of sin, man is worse than any beast... Thomas Watson said, 'The sinner is a swine with a man’s head,' a kind of half-man half-beast like a centaur. George Whitefield popularized the analogy of man as half-beast and half-devil. Spurgeon said that analogy is an insult to beasts and devils. We are worse than both.
... Sinners are mad dogs foaming at the mouth with spiritual rabies... Worse still, we are like disgusting vermin. Calvin said we are worse than 'worms, flies, lice and vermin. For there is more worth in all the world’s vermin than there is in man.' The worst, vilest animal is an angel compared with the best man.
... Calvin said, 'To hear us tell it, we are angels, but if someone looks closely, he will find we are worse than devils.'... Jonathan Edwards preached that there is a 'mutual loathing' between God and man. Calvin said we deserve to have the angels spit on us... Man is bad—very bad. And God is mad—very mad [about what he decreed and caused!?!😕].
... The Bible is a mirror that shows how evil we really are by nature. We must hold it up to lost sinners so they will be convinced and convicted."
(Does this sound biblical to you?)
So Calvi-sinners must realize and admit that they're absolutely wretched, evil, disgusting, worthless, violent, miserable, worse-than-vermin worms before they can be convinced, convicted, understand the gospel, and be saved. (Does this sound biblical to you? And just because Calvinists have reference verses doesn't mean they're using or interpreting those verses correctly. In fact, when it comes to their Calvinist theology, they are almost always using/interpreting them wrong.)
[As I said, Calvinist pastors/theologians constantly hammer on total depravity because it's the linchpin for Calvinism, the foundation of it all. And I think that it works partly for this reason: It breaks us down until we feel so terrible about ourselves that we no longer trust our own judgment, thoughts, logic/reasoning capabilities, level of humility, or our ability to understand the Bible for ourselves. (Do you know how religious cults operate?) And so, instead, we put our trust in the Calvinist pastors and theologians to teach us - to tell us what to think, how to interpret the Bible, how to understand God, etc. - as we gobble up all the "deeper biblical truths/wisdom" they lavish on us lowly sheep. (Do you know how religious cults operate?) The thing is, Calvinism needs tactics like shaming, manipulation, gaslighting, denial, deflection, cognitive dissonance, constant depravity beatings, etc., in order to survive and spread - because without all these things, most people would reject it right away or at least allow themselves to entertain their doubts and concerns about it, to heed their red flags and alarm bells, to doublecheck their pastor's teachings. (The fact that Calvinists have to resort to shaming, gaslighting, manipulation, etc., to get us to accept their theology is very telling - because people don't have to use these kinds of manipulative tactics if they're preaching something that we all recognize clearly as biblical truth.)]
But here's the problem (and it happens a lot in Calvinism): Calvinists take a biblical truth and stretch it to such extremes that it's not biblical anymore, going above and beyond what Scripture teaches.
You see, according to Scripture, all it takes is one sin to keep us out of heaven, to make us sinners: James 2:10: "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it."
Biblically, all it takes is one sin to be a sinner, to become separated from God, to be spiritually dead - and so all it takes to be saved is to understand and admit that we're sinners because of at least one sin and that we need Jesus. It has nothing to do with the depth of our depravity, as Calvinists make it out to be. And any honest person would admit that they sinned at least once.
But Calvinism raises the bar and flips truth on its head by insisting that people recognize and admit how extremely wretched, depraved, evil, worthless, violent, and God-hating they are before they can understand the gospel, feel convicted, and be saved. And what normal person in their right mind would admit to such extreme things?
"The Bible is a mirror that shows how evil we really are by nature. We must hold it up to lost sinners so they will be convinced and convicted."
I understand the value of using hyperbole sometimes, but this is what Calvinists teach about the gospel, about how God sees us, about the value of people, about how we respond to the gospel, etc. And there's no place for such disgusting, overly-pious, Pharisaic, virtue-signaly hyperbole in that. And yet Calvinists hammer on it over and over again, ad nauseum, going far beyond what Scripture does, what God does. And so, essentially, what it demands of us is that we lie about ourselves and engage in extreme false humility before we can supposedly understand the gospel and be saved. [And yet, the Calv-elect were already saved in eternity past and predestined to understand/respond to the gospel even before they realized or admitted how worthless and depraved they are.😕] Strange.
Think about it: If you ran a soup kitchen, how many people would come in and eat if you said "All you have to do to get a free meal is to admit that you're hungry and need my help, and then I'll feed you"?
But now how many would come in if you said "All you have to do to get a free meal is to admit that you're a worthless, wretched, no-good, total-failure of a loser who hates me and resists me, who can't decide anything for yourself or seek my help unless I cause you to do it, and who had to be forced by me to admit you were hungry and needed help getting food. And then I'll feed you."?
No wonder there are so many atheists out there and so many Calvinists deconstructing from their faith - if this is what they're told Christianity actually is, what God is actually like, how He actually sees us, and what He actually expects out of us to be saved.
[Sidenote: Contradictorily, my ex-pastor also said this (as all Calvinists do) in an August 2015 sermon on predestination: “How many sins does it take to be a sinner? The answer is zero because we’re born steeped in sin, because we inherit it from Adam and Eve and their rebellion. We call that the doctrine of internal depravity, inherited depravity." So in one place, total depravity/deserving hell/needing salvation is about being the worst, most wretched, terrible, worthless sinner we know. But in another place, it's about not even sinning once. So which is it? Are we barred from heaven - in need of salvation - because we're the worst sinner we know... or is it because we're born into inherited sin/inherited guilt even if we never sin at all for ourselves? Make up your mind - because these are total opposites.]
Biblically, our need for salvation and the conditions for responding to the gospel have nothing to do with the depth of our depravity, but it's simply about admitting we're sinners who need Jesus.
The person standing one foot outside a building will get rained on just as much as the person standing one hundred feet outside. It doesn't matter how far we are from the building; it only matters that we're all outside the building and all need to find shelter in the building. And the only thing we all have to do - no matter our level of depravity - is walk through the door that God opens for us, opening up our hands and accepting the free gift of salvation that Jesus made possible for us and offers to us all, the gift of eternal life that we could never buy or earn for ourselves but can only accept in gratitude.
And so although we are not all on the most extreme level of wickedness, rottenness, and depravity (and it doesn't matter whether we are or not, because it's not about the level of depravity we're at)... we are all on the same level of being separated from God because of sin, at least one sin, regardless of how bad or how many our sins are... and so we all need a Savior. And all we need to do to be saved is to admit that we're sinners if we sinned even once and that we need Jesus, need forgiveness, regardless of how "depraved" we are or aren't.
How little God asks us to admit about ourselves in order to be saved!
But, oh, how much Calvinism does! Raising the bar that God set, repelling more people than it wins.
(And I wonder who's behind a switch like this, who's behind raising or lowering the bars God sets, switching the goalposts, contradicting/twisting what God clearly said?)
[Does anyone else feel like crying right now? 'Cuz I feel like crying.]
10. "Only evil all the time"(but what about evanescent grace?): To support their view of total depravity/total inability - that we're totally wretchedly evil all the time, with nothing good at all in us that would make us want to seek God on our own and so He has to cause the Calv-elect to do it by regenerating them first - Calvinists refer to Genesis 6:5 "And the Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time."
"See, only evil all the time," they say. "Unable to believe in God unless He regenerates us to make us want to and able to believe in Him."
But, in context, this is not a generalized statement about humans (and it doesn't necessarily imply inability, as Calvinists wrongly think). It's about the people of Noah's day, a mixed human-demon hybrid of people who were so wicked that God had to flood the earth to start over again. (But Noah was spared because his bloodline was pure, uncorrupted by demonic genes.) This extreme historical situation cannot be used to prove Calvinism's doctrine of "total inability." That's reading something into the text that isn't there.
Sidenote: As I said, Calvinists constantly bring up the idea of depravity (because they need to get us to accept their idea of depravity/inability in order to get us to accept the rest of their theology), just like R.C. Sproul does in this interview when he says that human hearts are "only wicked continually."
Hmm, this makes me wonder: If their hearts are "only wicked continually" - and if Calvi-god gives some reprobates "evanescent grace" - then how can any Calvinist ever trust their Calv-election, their Calvi-regeneration? Can a Calvinist ever be sure that their heart isn't deceiving them into thinking that they're Calv-elect when they're really not? Isn't that exactly what an "only wicked continually" heart would do: trick people into thinking they're saved when they're not? Is there really any security of salvation in Calvinism? Or is it just the luck of the draw, but you won't know whether you got saving grace or evanescent grace until you're dead?
John Calvin: "... the reprobate are sometimes affected in a way so similar to the elect, that even in their own judgment there is no difference between them... by Christ himself a temporary faith, is ascribed to them... the Lord, the better to convict them, and leave them without excuse, instills into their minds such a sense of his goodness as can be felt without the Spirit of adoption... impressed for a time with a fading faith... which afterwards proves evanescent."
More from Calvin: "... [there are] those whom he enlightens only for a time, and whom afterwards, in just punishment for their ingratitude, he abandons and smites with greater blindness."
Scared yet?
How about A.W. Pink: "There are those who have a faith which is so like that which is saving as they themselves may take it to be the very same... people may possess a faith which is one of the Holy Spirit, and yet which is a non-saving one ... Now a man may have both illumination and inclination from heaven, and yet not be regenerated... It is impossible to say how far a non-saving faith may go, and how very closely it may resemble that faith which is saving. Saving faith has Christ for its object; so has a non-saving faith... Saving faith is wrought by the Holy Spirit; so is a non-saving faith... Saving faith is produced by the Word of God; so also is a non-saving faith... Saving faith will make a man prepare for the coming of the Lord, so also will a non-saving... Saving faith is accompanied with joy: so also is a non-saving faith... Perhaps some readers are ready to say, all of this is very unsettling, and if really heeded, most distressing [duh!]... If there be such a thing (and there is) as a faith in Christ which does not save, then how easy it is to be deceived about my faith!"
Calvinists literally say that a saving faith and non-saving faith both come from Calvi-god and that they can look and feel exactly the same and that we ourselves can't tell which one we got. Wow! [And yet Calvinists accept this as biblical truth and how God really is, viewing Calvi-god and their "doctrines of grace" as beautiful, encouraging, and trustworthy. Ugh. If that's beautiful, encouraging, and trustworthy, then what does ugly, discouraging, and deceitful look like!?!]
Of course, in non-Calvinism, people can trick and deceive themselves into thinking they're saved when they're not. But in Calvinism, it's Calvi-god who does the tricking, the deceiving. Big difference. Big problem. (And how can a god like that be trusted?)
And another big difference is this:
In non-Calvinism, at least the people who tricked themselves can decide at any time to change their minds and believe the truth, because Jesus still died for them and the offer of salvation is always open to them.
But in Calvinism, the people Calvi-god tricks can never, at any time, change their minds or believe the truth because Calvi-god predestined them for hell, gave them fake faith, Calvi-Jeus never died for them, and they never had any ability to accept the offer of salvation because it was never intended for them... and there's nothing they can do about it.
And in non-Calvinism, we can have assurance of salvation because we trust God's promise to save anyone who puts their faith in Jesus. The God of the Bible is trustworthy because He means what He says and says what He means, and so we can trust that He will keep His promises. If we do what He said we need to do to be saved - believe in Jesus (and anyone can) - then we can trust that God will do His part to save us, make us born again, seal us with the Holy Spirit, and bring us to heaven in the end.
But in Calvinism, only the Calv-elect can have assurance of salvation because salvation is only for them. But, ironically, there's no way of knowing if they are truly one of the Calv-elect or not, until they die. And so there really is no assurance of salvation in Calvinism. And there's no way to trust the promises of a Calvi-god who gives evanescent grace, who tricks some people into thinking they're saved when they're not, who commands one thing but causes the opposite, who says one thing but means something totally different than what it seems, who is just as pleased to create most people for hell as he is to create some people for heaven, and who is just as glorified either way.
(Is Calvi-god the same being as the God of the Bible? Are these two theologies really one and the same? Can they coexist in the Church peacefully? Should they?)
11. "No one seeks"/Romans 3: Calvinists also insert "inability" into Romans 3:11 ("There is no one who seeks God"), using it to support their idea that people are totally unable to seek God unless and until He regenerates them to cause them to. But the verse doesn't say "no one can seek God" or "we are unable to seek God unless He causes us to." It just says that we don't.
And the important thing to know is that Romans 3:10-18 is a reference to Old Testament verses, such as Psalms 14 and 53. And these Psalms clearly explain why people don't seek God: Because they have turned away from Him and claimed that there is no God.
"The fool says in his heart 'There is no God.'... All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one." (Psalm 14:1,3).
And Romans 3:12 echoes it: "All have turned away."
Those who turn away from God and cling to their wickedness won't seek Him and can't understand spiritual things. They have rejected Him and chosen to ignore His truth, and so their spiritual eyes and ears have become worthless. So it's not that we can't seek God, but it's that people who choose their sin over God become corrupt, hard-hearted, and spiritually blind, and so they won't seek Him. God didn't cause or predestine them to be the way they are; they chose it.
As Psalm 10:4 says: "In his pride the wicked does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God."
Their prideful decision to reject God and essentially worship themselves leads to their inability to see Him, seek Him, and believe in Him - not the other way around, as Calvinism teaches. No one is prevented from being able to find God or believe in Him, except by their own choice and their first step away from Him.
Romans 3 is not about inability, as Calvinists teach. But, in context, it's about Paul teaching the Jews that everyone is separated from God by sin (Gentiles and Jews)... that everyone needs Jesus because no one can work their way to heaven on their own (even Jews)... that God is just in punishing everyone (even Jews) for their sins and unrighteousness... that no one will be declared righteous just because of their bloodline, good works, or law-keeping (Jewish people don't get a free pass just because they're Jewish and follow the Jewish Law), and that the Jewish people can't hoard God and salvation for themselves because God is the God of all people, and salvation is offered to all people, and that anyone who believes will be saved, even Gentiles.
But if you let Calvinists convince you that "no one seeks" and Romans 3 are about "total inability/total depravity" and that God causes preselected people to believe in Him, you will become a Calvinist.
12. Lydia: To "prove" Calvinist election and irresistible grace, Calvinists quote Acts 16:14 - "The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message" - and then they say "See, God opened Lydia's heart to believe the gospel. God predestines who believes and then causes them to believe."
But first off, the text does not say that God opened her heart "to believe." "To believe" is an assumption, added by Calvinists. And it does not say that Paul's message was the gospel message. In fact, it doesn't say what the message was. And so it very easily could have been - as I believe it is - a message about the need for believers to be baptized... because that's the very next thing she does in the next verse. (And this is the same thing that happened in Acts 19 when Paul preached to believers about the need to be baptized in the name of the Lord instead of just in John the Baptist's "baptism of repentance.")
Given that Lydia was already "a worshiper of God" before God "opened her heart to respond to Paul's message", this is not a case of God causing certain unbelievers to believe, but it's about God leading a believer to know the next step of obedience they need to take, which in Lydia's case was baptism.
[See this quick answer about Lydia and this post about Acts 16:14/total depravity for more. And, fyi, the idea of God softening hearts - which Calvinists always use to "prove" that God causes people to believe/gives some people saving faith - is similar to Lydia's story where God helped a believer know the next step to take. God doesn't change/soften preselected unbelievers' hearts to make them want Him and believe in Him, but He further softens the heart of anyone who has first softened their heart towards Him and who desires Him and His Truth, to help lead them closer to Him and His Truth and/or farther along the path of obedience. Whenever anyone takes the first turn towards Him, the first step, He responds by softening and drawing them even more on the path they have chosen. Just like, on the flip-side, if someone chooses to resist/reject/ignore Him, He can further harden their hearts in their self-chosen decision to turn away from Him and to live in their rebellion. We choose first, and then God gives us what we chose.]
13. Works: Calvinists think that having the free-will ability to choose to believe in Jesus should be considered a "working for our salvation" thing. And so since we all know we can't work our way to heaven, they convince us that it means that we cannot believe on our own either, because that would be "works."
But biblically, God does not define belief as works. In fact, He makes a distinction between faith/belief that saves and the righteous things we do to try to work our way to heaven that don't save.
"Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.' Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to a man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:" (Romans 4:3-6, underlining added)
God is contrasting Abraham's belief/faith/trust in Him with those who "work" for their justification and righteousness, who try to earn their salvation and work their way to Him. He's saying that "belief/faith" is not the same thing as "working for your salvation," and that belief/faith is what we must do to be saved.
God has done all the work to make salvation possible for us, and all He asks - all He requires - is that we accept it, that we open up our hands and receive it and say "Thank you. I believe." This is simply accepting the work that someone else (Jesus) did for us to get us into heaven, the gift Jesus bought for us with His blood. And in no way is this "working for our salvation"... unless you're a Calvinist.
And, besides, even if you wanted to call belief a "work," it's still the one "work" God says we must do to be saved, our one responsibility, the one job He gave us to do:
John 6:28-29: "Then they asked him, 'What must we do to do the works God requires?' Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent [Jesus].'"
Acts 16:31: “… Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved …”
14. Born again/regeneration/belief: Calvinists treat being born again/regenerated the same as belief, teaching that if the Holy Spirit makes us born again/regenerated then it must also mean that He makes us believe, too. And they believe that the Holy Spirit regenerates people first - makes them born again first - so that they can and will believe. In Calvinism, regeneration results in belief. (More on this in #27)
But biblically, it is our responsibility and choice (of our own free-will) to believe in Jesus (or reject Him) - and if and when we choose to believe in Jesus (our part), the Holy Spirit then does His part and regenerates us and makes us born again, in response to our free-will belief.
In the Bible, our free-will belief comes first, resulting in the Holy Spirit regenerating us and making us born again.
But in Calvinism, the Holy Spirit regenerates/makes born again the Calv-elect, resulting in Him making them believe.
Big difference. Reversed order. Different way to be saved.
[And when John 3:8 talks about spiritual birth by the Spirit being like the invisible wind going wherever it wants to, it doesn't mean (as Calvinists teach) that the Holy Spirit chooses whom to regenerate. But it means that spiritual birth is an invisible thing that happens on the inside, contrasted with physical birth which we can see on the outside. That's all it's saying - that it's a spiritual heart-thing instead of a physical thing - not that God picks who to save and who to not save. A total Calvinist corruption of another verse.]
15. Foundations of the world: Calvinists believe that God decided before the foundation of the world who would believe and who wouldn't and that He causes it to work out the way He planned.
But this is based on a mistranslation/misunderstanding of Revelation 13:8, usually from Calvinists' favored translation, the ESV, which says "... everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain."
"Names written before the foundation of the world." Sounds very Calvinist-predestinationy, right?
But here's the King James, which I think is the most reliable and most accurate version: "... whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Very different, isn't it?
And two possible ways to understand it according to the KJV are:
1) "From the beginning" could refer to the Lamb being slain. If so, I would suggest it means that Jesus was foreordained to be slain for our sins from the very beginning. This would be confirmed by 1 Peter 1:19-20 and Acts 2:23.
2) Or if "from the beginning" really does refer to names being written in the Book of Life, notice that it's "from" in the KJV, not "before." This would mean that names started being added to the Book of Life from the beginning, meaning that new names are added as each new person comes to Christ, which would be confirmed in Rev. 17:8 and Eph. 1:13. (Or maybe it's about the Book of Life itself being created from the beginning.)
Either way, it contradicts Calvinism.
And, furthermore, Calvinists also misunderstand Ephesians 1:4 (NIV): “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight …”
Calvinists think this means that God chose which individual people would be saved, before the creation of the world. But that's not what it says or means. Basically and biblically, Ephesians is not saying that God predestined which individuals to save, but it's saying that God planned from the beginning that there would be an "in Him" group and that anyone who becomes “in Him” (through our free-will belief, Ephesians 1:13) will be saved, will become "holy and blameless" in His sight, and will get the benefits and blessings He planned to give all those who are "in Him." [See this post for more on this.]
Neither Ephesians 1:4 nor Revelation 13:8 - nor any other verse - teaches Calvinism's predestination of individuals to salvation.
16. "Sinful at birth": Calvinists always use Psalm 51:5 - "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." (NIV) - to "prove" their idea of "total depravity," that from birth we are all wicked, rebellious, God-haters who could never come to God unless God makes us do it.
But here's the KJV: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." It does not say that David was sinful from birth but that he was conceived in sin. It is not a comment about our "total depravity from birth," but it's about David's mother's sin which led to his conception (or at least his belief that she sinned) or about the sin-filled world that babies are born into. Big difference!
(My husband read of an old belief people used to have back in the day, which was that people were born on the same day of the week that they were conceived. And so if a baby was born on the Sabbath, it meant the parents conceived the baby on a Sabbath, which meant they would have violated Sabbath rules about not having sex on the Sabbath. Who knows, but maybe David is referring to a "sin" along those lines. It's an interesting thought.)
17. Potter and the clay: Calvinists use Romans 9:21 ("Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?") to support Calvinist predestination, to "prove" that God has the right to create some people for heaven and some for hell.
But that's not about Calvinist predestination because that's not what Paul is talking about in Romans 9. That verse/passage is about how God chooses to use people, not save people. Once again, what Paul is telling the Jews in Romans 9 is that although God chose the Jews to have a special role in bringing Jesus and the gospel to the world (the gospel was given to the Jews first so that they would spread it to the world), He has decided to take that special evangelizing role from them because they rejected Jesus/gospel and to give it to the Gentiles instead because they wanted it. God opened up the door of salvation to the Gentiles and transferred to them the job of spreading the gospel because the Jews rejected it (until the Tribulation, when God will again turn His attention back to the Jews so that they will become His focus and main missionaries again. God's promises and plans don't fail; He just adjusts them as He needs to, incorporating our decisions along the way.).
And, as I said, the Jews essentially cried "But that's not fair! How could God choose to pass over, to punish, natural-born Jews and to favor Gentiles instead? How could He give them the promises and blessings that belonged to us?"
And Romans 9 is about Paul's answer to that, telling the Jews that God can use people the way He wants to for His plans, based on their choices - that if the Gentiles were willing to receive the gospel and obey Him but the Jews weren't, then God can shift the blessings and promises to the Gentiles and adopt them into His family, giving them the special role that was supposed to be for the Jews (spreading the gospel).
God has the right to give some people noble jobs and to give others common jobs, based on how we live, on whether we obey or disobey, whether we follow Him or reject Him. It's our decision to obey or disobey Him, but it's His decision on how to use/incorporate our decisions in His plans and which roles to give us because of our decisions - and we have no right to say that He's wrong or unfair, because He's just responding to what we chose first.
And don't forget that there are at least two other places in the Bible that talk about the potter and the clay or about vessels for noble or ignoble use - and neither have to do with God predestining someone's salvation. Let's see what we learn from them:
Jeremiah 18: God shows Jeremiah a potter who was shaping a pot, but the clay was marred (notice that the potter didn't mar the clay) and so he shaped it into a different pot that would better fit the clay's condition. Likewise, God says that He can plan something for people, but then He can change His plans for people based on what they do or don't do. This is contrary to Calvinism which teaches that God preplans everything to happen the way it does, that He predetermines what we are like and what we will do, that we can't decide for ourselves, and that God doesn't base His decisions on our decisions.
2 Timothy 2:20-21: Like Romans 9:21, this also talks about some vessels in a house being for noble purposes and some being for ignoble purposes. Not only is this also not about salvation but about God using people for different purposes/jobs, based on what kind of people they are, but it also contradicts Calvinism in that it says that "If a man cleanses himself from [being ignoble], he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy..." This shows that the decision to be how we are - to be fit for noble or ignoble purposes - lies with us, not with God. We choose how we will be and how we will respond to God's calls/laws, and then He will use us accordingly.
He does not make us be one way or other, but we choose which way to be and then He finds a way to use us in His plans. And so if we want to be sinful, rebellious people, He lets us be that way and finds a way to work it into His plans. But if we want to be fit for "noble purposes," we must make decisions to live in such a way that God will use us for noble purposes. We affect whether or not we are used for noble purposes or for ignoble purposes, based on whether or not we cleanse ourselves from being “ignoble.” God doesn’t do it for us and hasn’t pre-decided it. He responds according to our choices.
18. "Fitted to destruction": Calvinists also use Romans 9:22 to teach Calvinist predestination/the doctrine of election (NIV): “What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath – prepared for destruction?”
They use this to "prove" that God predetermined who would go the hell, that He prepared certain people for destruction from the beginning of time.
But in the King James, the word is not “prepared” but “fitted.” And according to Strong's concordance with Vine's Expository dictionary, “fitted” indicates a strong correlation between someone’s character and their destiny, and it’s written in such a way as to imply that the objects of wrath prepared themselves for destruction. So it’s not that God made them that way; it’s that they made themselves that way by how they chose to live and be. We fit ourselves for destruction by how we choose to live and be, by choosing to live/believe the way that leads to destruction. (This goes along with the potter and clay verses above.)
Romans 9:22 is not saying that God creates some people for hell, but it's saying that God deals patiently with those who willingly choose to resist/reject Him because He can still use them to carry out His plans to bless others - which, in the case of Romans, it's about God dealing patiently with the Jews who reject Him because He can use them to help bring Jesus, the gospel, and salvation to the Gentiles, to the world. Romans 9 is not a Calvinist chapter!
19. Salvation belongs to the Lord: Calvinists always use Jonah 2:9's "salvation belongs to/comes from the Lord" to support their idea that God determines who gets salvation and who doesn't. But according to Strong's-and-Vine's, "salvation" in the Old Testament never refers to eternal soul salvation from sin, but it refers to God delivering people from any earthly evil, enemy, distress, or trouble that they need deliverance from. I'm just sayin'.
20. God removes hearts of stone and replaces them with hearts of flesh: Calvinists also use this verse (Ezekiel 36:26) to try to prove that God causes people to believe (and that He chooses who believes). But what they fail to realize is that God doesn't do this arbitrarily, but He does it after they choose to repent and turn to Him, in response to their repentance. This is what they are required to do in order to get the new heart God promises. (And of course, in context, this is a prophetic verse about Israel in the end times, not about the predestined salvation of random individuals in the Church age.)
As Ezekiel 18:30-32 confirms: "Therefore, O house of Israel. I will judge you, each one according to his ways, says the Sovereign Lord. Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourself of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord Repent and live!"
Calvinists say that God alone decides whom to give a new heart to and whom to seal in their sin/predestined damnation...
... but the Bible tells us to get ourselves a new heart and a new spirit, and it even tells us how to do this so that we can avoid judgment.
21. Likewise is Remnant People: Calvinists would say that God chooses (basically arbitrarily) whom to save out of a wicked nation/wicked humanity - remnant people - without any choice from them, with no relation to anything they did or did not do. They believe God chooses people before the beginning of time, before they ever even chose to do anything good or bad. [But, as we saw, the Romans 9 verse about Jacob/Esau/"before they did anything good or bad" has nothing to do with being chosen or not chosen for individual salvation. And the Calvinist interpretation of "before the foundation of the world" is wrong, too, having nothing to do with God pre-choosing who gets saved and who doesn't.]
In fact, in Calvinism, people's decisions don't determine whether Calvi-god picks them or not, but Calvi-god's choice of people determines people's decisions, whether they do good or bad, whether they accept him or reject him, obey him or disobey him.
But this is a reversal of what the Bible teaches - because God says that He chooses remnant people based on what the people choose, on whether they choose to turn to Him or away from Him:
Ezekiel 9:4: "... 'Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.'"
Romans 11:4-5 "... 'I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.' So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace."
First, the people chose how they lived and whom they worshiped, and then God chose those who grieved over sin and didn't bow to Baal.
We see this pattern over and over again in God's Word: We do our part first - we make our decision, choose what we seek after, set our mind on something, pick our course - and then the Lord responds accordingly, giving us what we chose.
22. Foreknowledge/"God allows our free-will choice": Calvinists will deceptively say things like "God foreknows what we will choose to do. He allows us to freely choose to make our decisions to sin and reject Him. We choose of our own free-will to follow our desire to sin and reject Him, and so God doesn't have to force anyone to do these things. We choose to do them because we want to do them, and so we are responsible for it and deserve to be punished for it/deserve hell."
But what they really mean by this is something very different from what it sounds like (which fools and traps many unsuspecting Christians). Because what they really mean is that Calvi-god only foreknows what will happen and then allows it because he first preplanned/orchestrates/causes it to happen (and nothing different could have happened). That's how he "foreknows" it and why he "allows" it.
But this is going beyond the real and proper definitions of foreknowledge (which is just "to know beforehand") and allows (which does not include preplanning). But, nonetheless, Calvinists insert the idea of God's preplanning/causation into these ideas - twisting concepts, reading things into Scripture that aren't there, mangling God's clear and commonsense Word.
And so when they say things like "we freely choose of our own free-will to sin and reject Him, and so we deserve to be punished," they don't actually mean it the way it seems, that we had any real choice about it.
Because, in Calvinism, Calvi-god predetermined which nature/Will everyone got and the desires that were built into those natures/Wills. The Calv-elect get the regenerated nature/Will that contains the desires to repent and believe in him, but the non-Calv-elect were created with the unregenerated nature/Will that contains only the desires to sin and reject him. And so because those are the only desires we have - and we have no ability to change or resist them, no ability to even want to do anything different - we will/must inevitably obey those desires, doing exactly what Calvi-god predestined us to do.
And so everyone who was created with the unregenerated nature/Will must definitely sin and reject him because those are the only desires Calvi-god created them with and allows them to have. They will "freely choose, of their own Will" (the only Will Calvi-god created them with and lets them have) to sin and reject him, because that's what they "want" to do (the only thing they can want to do, by Calvi-god's decree and design). And that's why Calvi-god doesn't have to "force" them to sin and reject him - because the nature/Will/desire he created them with will do the forcing for him, causing them to do exactly what he predestined them to do. But because they "wanted to sin" and "chose of their own free-will to sin," they "deserve" to be "justly punished" for it.
Pathetic hogwash! No one but Calvinists would call this "free-will choice" or "justice/deserving the punishment." (This is just putting extra steps between sin and the cause of sin - extra links in the chain - to make it seem like Calvi-god is not really the cause of sin when he really is.)
True "foreknowledge" is just knowing beforehand, not preplanning beforehand. True "allows" means letting something happen, letting people make their own decisions, not preplanning/causing their decisions and actions. True "free-will" necessarily implies that we got to determine what we wanted to do and chose to do. True "choice" necessarily involves the idea of being able to pick between two or more option. And true "justice/deserving the punishment" necessarily involves the idea that we made our own real decisions, that we could have chosen to obey God and believe in Him, but we chose to sin and reject Him instead. It's only a real decision and a just punishment if we had the real choice to decide, if we could've chosen to do the right thing but chose to do the wrong thing instead.
But in Calvinism, we can only do - and only want to do - the one thing Calvi-god predestined us to do, which means it's not real "free-will" or true "choice" or "justice/deserving just punishment" at all.
So don't be fooled by Calvinism's deceptive use of language. They don't mean things the way it seems, the way they want it to seem as they try to lure us into their systematic theology.
23. Bad Analogies: Another thing to watch out for (besides Calvinism's deceptive and unbiblical use of words) are the bad analogies they use which are very effective at tricking and trapping unsuspecting Christians into Calvinism.
Here's a bad analogy from my Calvinist ex-pastor to try to support Calvinism's idea that it's okay for God to predestine some people to heaven and the rest to hell: "If a wealthy person went into the inner city and said 'I’m gonna pick 25 young, poor people, and I’m gonna bless them with a full ride to any Ivy League university’… could we say he was being unfair to the people he didn’t give that gift to? The answer is: No. He has a right to bless whomever he wants to, and he’s good and grace-full for doing it."
It makes God sounds gracious, right? Good-hearted? Generous?
But what most people don't realize is that this is a very bad analogy because it doesn't accurately reflect what really happens in Calvinism. In Calvinism, God first created all the people to be in inner-city poverty, giving them only the desire to be in poverty and with no ability to get out of poverty themselves even though He commands them all to get out of poverty... and then He comes in and acts like He's "so gracious" to at least rescue a few, leaving everyone else in the inner-city poverty with no ability or desire to get out... and then when His chosen ones are safely in their Ivy League dorm rooms, He blows up the inner city with a nuclear bomb to kill everyone He didn't save because He decided from the very beginning to hate them and to get glory by destroying them.
Now that's a more accurate Calvinist analogy!
[If and when Calvinism sounds good, it's because Calvinists are presenting only part of it - the good-sounding/biblical-sounding surface parts, or the parts that relate to only the Calv-elect, not the non-Calv-elect.]
This is similar to the analogy they use most, the classic "100 people on death row" analogy: "There are 100 people on death row for murder, and God graciously chooses to save 10 of them, but He lets the other 90 go to their punishment. Was He unjust to save some but not others? No. None of them deserves to be saved. They all deserve to be punished. So it's not unjust to rescue some but let others pay the penalty they deserve. God predestines the non-elect to hell to show His justice in punishing sin (and to get glory for it), and He predestines the elect to heaven to show His grace and mercy."
At first, it seems to fit, to make sense, to be fair and just, right?
Wrong!
Because the critical, inherent flaw in their "100 murderers on death row" analogy is that those people are only on death row in the first place because Calvi-god "ordained" their crimes and created them to have their murderous desires, desires they did not get to choose and had no ability to resist or change. He preplanned, orchestrated, directed, caused them to want to/choose to commit those crimes - crimes he predetermined - giving them no option or ability to do anything differently or to resist doing the crimes, but then he punishes them for it. That's not justice or deserving the punishment at all! Not unless you're a Calvinist.
24. False Dichotomies/Strawmen Arguments/Unfair Accusations: Other tricks meant to trap people in Calvinism.
False Dichotomies are when Calvinists present you with a choice between two possibilities: The Calvinist one meant to lead you deeper into Calvinism and an obviously-wrong one that you will inevitably reject, forcing you to side with the Calvinist one.
The problem here is that they make it seem like these are the only two options, that it must be one or the other, forcing you into the Calvinist option (while tricking you into thinking that it's the Christian/biblical option).
Some common False Dichotomies in Calvinism:
"Either God is sovereign or you (or Satan) are sovereign." [But what we don't realize is that they have an unbiblical definition of sovereign.]
"Either He is in control or you are." [But we fail to realize that when they say "God is in control," they don't just mean that He is in a position of authority over all, but that He actively preplans, controls, orchestrates, causes all things, even sin and unbelief.]
"Either He controls everything or He controls nothing." [This is to make you feel like if you believe God gives people true free-will - that He doesn't control all our decisions but lets us decide - then you're saying that He controls nothing. So it's all or nothing, in Calvinism. (But a God who is truly "in control" over all can decide to give people true free-will if He wants to. He can be "in control" without controlling all.)]
"Either He fully saves us or we save ourselves." [But this is based on Calvinism's faulty idea that having the free-will ability to choose to believe would be "working for salvation."]
And Strawmen Arguments/False Accusations are essentially when Calvinists accuse you of saying things you're not saying in an effort to tear down your side or discredit you, to force you onto their side. Examples:
"If you say that there's one thing He doesn't control - even one piece of dust moving freely on its own - then you're saying there are things He can't control, and then you're calling Him powerless. If you say that we can make choices on our own, then you're saying that there's something outside of God's control, that He's not fully sovereign." [No! I'm saying there are things He chooses to not actively control even though He could if He wanted to. And I'm saying that your definition of "sovereign" is wrong and unbiblical. And I'm saying that it's you Calvinists - not those who believe in free-will - who limit God, by thinking that He couldn't still be in control, couldn't still be God, and couldn't work any of His plans out if He gave people free-will and let people make their own decisions and let nature move on its own to a certain degree. A Calvi-god who could and would be dethroned by one free-will decision, one free-floating piece of dust, is no God at all! (If Calvi-god controls every movement of every molecule and creature, then why does he give Satan limits on how much he could attack Job (in Job 1), and why would he need to set boundaries for the seas (Job 38:8-11, Ps. 104:9, Prov. 8:29, Jer. 5:22)? Limits and boundaries are only needed if there is freedom to move within those boundaries. Limits and boundaries are not needed for a Calvi-god who preplans, controls, orchestrates, directs/causes the movement of every molecule, every person, every angel/demon. In that case, he's really just putting limits on himself then, isn't he? I mean, think about it, really.)]
"If you say that God doesn't elect certain people to save then you're saying that God has to save everybody. But clearly everybody isn't saved, so it must be that God chooses to save certain people." [Bad reasoning - because it's clearly based on Calvinism's faulty belief that God chooses whom to save, with the only three options being "everybody," "nobody," or "only some specific people." And so, of course, it's clearly not everybody and nobody, so it must be - surprise, surprise - Calvinism's "only some specific people." This has Calvinism's faulty doctrine of election baked right into it, which is based on their faulty definition of election. But biblically, God does not choose whom to save - and election is not about choosing people for salvation - but He offers salvation to all and then allows us to decide to accept it or reject it.]
"If you disagree with Calvinism then you are disagreeing with God and the Bible." [No! I am disagreeing with your interpretation of the Bible. Big difference!]
These false dichotomies, strawmen arguments, and false accusations are built on Calvinism's own faulty ideas and philosophical reasoning, NOT on a proper understanding of Scripture - but they are what lures many good naive Christians into accepting the Calvinist way of thinking, their bad logic.
And every time a Calvinist can get you to embrace or agree with one of their ideas, definitions, analogies, dichotomies, strawmen accusations, etc. - or if they can get you to argue from their perspective, their bad foundational definitions, their out-of-context verse interpretations (giving them homecourt advantage and control over the language) - they reel you one step deeper into Calvinism. And often without your awareness.
25. Sovereign/Omnipotent: Another fundamentally-bad idea of Calvinism (which taints their whole theology) is their belief that sovereignty and omnipotence necessarily mean that God always uses His power all the time to preplan/control/orchestrate/cause everything that happens, making it all happen just as He planned, even all sin, evil, and unbelief.
But contrary to Calvinist presuppositions, sovereignty is not about how God must use His power and authority, but it's simply about God being in the highest position of power and authority that there is. And as such, He gets to decide how to use His power and authority, even if it means He chooses to voluntarily restrain His ability to preplan/cause everything that happens by giving people the free-will ability to make their own decisions.
"Yeah, but," says the Calvinist, "doesn't the Bible say that God ordains (preplans, controls, causes) everything that happens, even down to ordaining the length of our lives, the amount of days we each live?"
Does it?
I think this is another case of bad Bible translation.
Here's Psalm 139:16 in the NIV: "Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." And the ESV words part of it "... the days that were formed for me..."
It sounds very Calvinist, right? Like God ordained/preplanned the length of our lives, every day of our lives, which would support Calvinism's idea that everything in our lives was preplanned by God from the beginning, right?
But here it is in the KJV: "Thine eyes did see my substance [my body as it was being formed in the womb], yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned [or "what days they should be fashioned"], when as yet there was none of them."
This is very different. It's not saying that God preplanned/ordained/controls all the days of our lives from the beginning, but it's saying that God planned the days of how the body forms in the womb, the stages of growth of a baby, which is what the whole section is about. This is very different. Psalm 139:16 does not support Calvinism or their view of God's sovereignty like Calvinists think it does. (You'll find this out time and time again the more you research the verses they use to support Calvinism. Their proof-texts fall one at a time until they have nothing left to stand on.)
And in other translations like the NIV, it's used mostly in a title like "the Sovereign Lord"... King Jesus. But nowhere does it define sovereignty as God decreeing, ordaining, predetermining, controlling, orchestrating, or causing all things. It's a title referring to God's position of authority over all, not a description about how God must actively control all.
As I said earlier, Calvinists wrongly think that if God is "in control over all things" (biblical), it must mean that He is always preplanning/controlling all things (unbiblical; Calvinist). This is an unbiblical leap that Calvinists make. One of many.
[And just because God does preplan/control some things doesn't mean He preplans/control all things - another unbiblical leap Calvinists make. And another one is when they decide that since God caused/controlled some natural "evils" in the Bible like storms or illnesses, it must also mean that He causes/controls all moral evils too, like sin, murder, abuse, etc. But causing a natural "evil" does not violate a command He gave, whereas causing a moral evil does. And so He can cause a natural "evil" and still be a good and righteous God, but He cannot cause a moral evil and still be a good and righteous God. Don't let Calvinists take you with them on their unbiblical leaps. Look before you leap.]
Question: If Calvinists are correct that sovereignty means that God preplans and controls all things that happen, then why are these verses in the Bible and what do they really mean?
Hosea 8:4: "They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval." [How could God preplan, orchestrate, cause that all kings are in power but then not "consent" to them being in power? How could the people choose kings without Calvi-god's approval when he's the very one who caused them to choose those kings?]
Isaiah 30:1: "'Woe to the obstinate children,' declares the Lord, 'to those who carry out plans that are not mine...'" [All plans are Calvi-god's plans - everything happens just as he planned it to happen, and every plan a man makes is exactly what Calvi-god predestined/moved him to make. So then what does this verse mean? It's nonsense in Calvinism.]
1 Kings 20:42: "He said to the king, 'This is what the Lord says: 'You have set free a man I had determined should die.''" [If everything Calvi-god decrees happens, how could Calvi-god determine a man should die without it happening? Why would Calvi-god determine a man should die but then cause people to let the man go instead? Calvinists believe that they lift up God's extreme power/authority/sovereignty... when what they're really doing is making Him weak, ineffective, and schizophrenic/multiple personality disordered, turning Him into a God who causes the opposite of what He decrees, who works to thwart Himself and His own plans. Playing both sides of the chessboard. Being not only the fireman but also the arsonist who started the fire.😕]
Jeremiah 19:5: "They have built the high places to Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal - something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind." [How can Calvi-god decree the sin of child-sacrifice while, at the same time, never commanding it or thinking about making it a requirement (and, in fact, He makes commands against it)?]
Ezekiel 13:22 (CSB): "Because you have disheartened the righteous person with lies (when I intended no distress)..." [So Calvi-god intended no distress while, at the same time, causing the people to cause distress for the righteous person?😕 How do Calvinists square that circle?]
Calvinists have no good answers for these, nor do they factor them into their systematic theology.
And here's something else to consider: These are verses where God Himself is talking, telling us about Himself. Yet Calvinists do not form their theology around verses like these. They do not take God at His Word when it comes to His own revelation about Himself.
But instead, they form their theology around verses where a person is talking about God, sharing their feelings/thoughts about God and faith, maybe even just a song or a wise saying about God and faith (see #26 below).
Calvinists filter verses where God talks about Himself through verses where someone else talks about God, interpreting God-spoken revelation through man-spoken ideas/laments/songs, interpreting clear verse according to unclear ones.
And don't forget that just because the Bible records someone's words, ideas, or actions doesn't mean it's God-approved, hard-core, theological truth. It doesn't mean it's what God would say or that it truly reflects His view of Himself. It just means that it's what the person said and felt about God. So be discerning, and don't let people's words supersede what God says about Himself.
[On a different but related-to-sovereignty note, Richard Blaylock, in The doctrine of reprobation says this: "Reprobation is God’s eternal decree whereby he foreordained that (1) certain persons would be excluded from the number of those saved by grace, and that (2) those same persons would instead experience his just wrath [calling it "just wrath" doesn't make it truly just]... The doctrine of reprobation is most clearly grounded in the biblical text in the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in the exodus narrative and in Paul’s argument throughout Romans 9. Reprobation is also logically implied by the doctrines of unconditional election and the sovereignty of God."
And so because (as we've seen throughout this post) Calvinists get everything wrong - from the hardening of Pharoah's heart (he hardened his own heart first, and then God made what Pharoah chose permanent, as punishment) to Romans 9 (it's not at all about God choosing people for heaven or hell) to election (God doesn't elect people/nations to salvation, but to service) to sovereignty (it isn't about God using His authority and power all the time to control everything, but it's about the position of authority and power He is in, and He is still in that position even if He chooses to voluntarily restrain His use of power in order to give people free-will), then clearly there is absolutely no biblical basis for Calvinism's doctrine of reprobation.
This "doctrine" is not clearly in the Bible anywhere - just like all their other doctrines - but it's only inferred (and wrongly so) from all of Calvinism's other wrong doctrines, ideas, definitions, and verse interpretations. All of Calvinism's bad ideas are built on and feed into the others - their "systematic theology" - systematically leading you from one of their bad ideas to another. And so if you pull out one Calvinist thread, the whole thing unravels.]
26. Proverbs and Psalms: Calvinists often use Proverbs or Psalms to try to support/prove Calvinism, such as (for one example) Proverbs 21:1: “the kings’ heart is in the hand of the Lord, he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.” They quote it as if it's literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology in order to prove that sovereignty means God controls our thoughts, desires, actions, and eternal destinies.
But what they fail to realize is that Proverbs are wise sayings, not literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology. Proverbs are general principles, not absolute promises. And Psalms are songs, prayers, some prophecy, and the desperate cries of a hurting heart.
And so the next time a Calvinist quotes a Psalm or Proverb to try to support/prove Calvinism, tell them that if they are going to take a Psalm or Proverb as literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology or as absolute promises, then they can't pick and choose which Psalm or Proverb to do that with but must do it with all Psalms and Proverbs, including:
Proverbs 21:9: "Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife." [Do you ever see any Calvinist doing this?]
Prov. 12:21: "No harm befalls the righteous" [So no righteous Calvinist will ever face harm?]
Prov. 23:2: "and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony." [Well, the Bible literally says it, so I guess we have to take it literally, right?]
Prov. 23:14: "Punish [your child] with the rod and save his soul from death." [So, taken literally, salvation can come through Jesus or beating your child with a rod, right?]
Prov. 16:7: "When a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, He makes even his enemies live at peace with him." [A hard-core promise?]
Prov. 16:31: "Gray hair is... attained by a righteous life." [Really? Always?]
Psalm 6:6: "You made [man] ruler over the works of Your hands; You put everything under his feet." [So then, if taken literally, man has been given God's sovereign position over everything but God. Man rules, not God.]
Likewise, Psalm 115:16: "The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He has given to man."
Psalm 115:17: "It is not the dead who praise the Lord, those who go down in silence." [So no dead person ever praises God? Then what about all those around the throne in Revelation?]
Psalm 73:13: "Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence." [Really? No good or blessing comes from keeping yourself pure and innocent?]
Ask the Calvinist if they would take these Psalms and Proverbs as literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology or absolute promises? Would they filter the rest of the Bible and their view of God through Psalms or Proverbs like these, using them as the foundation of their whole theological system?
No?
Then why would they do it with Proverbs 21:1?
[For more on this, see "Piper's Problematic Perspective on Proverbs."]
And if they still want to insist that Proverbs 21:1 is literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology so that they can cling to their idea that God controls everything we think and do, then tell them "Okay, but then notice that the verse literally specifies that the king’s heart is in the Lord’s hand. And no one else’s."
27. Mercy, grace, justice, and wrath: Calvinists believe that Calvi-god extends saving mercy/grace/love to only the Calv-elect, that he predestines the non-Calv-elect to hell (they sin and reject Calvi-god because he created them as slaves to sin/depravity, unable to resist it or change it) so that he can get glory when he shows off his justice and wrath against their sin and unbelief... but, of course, he does show the non-Calv-elect a little temporary non-saving grace/"love" by giving them food and water while they're alive, to show them a little kindness.
But the Bible contradicts all of this.
Because it says that God's saving mercy, grace, and love is for all people (but we decide to accept it or reject it): "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all" (Romans 11:32)... "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." (Titus 2:11)... "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men..." (1 Timothy 2:3-5)... "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8. Aren't we all sinners?)... "For God so love 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)
It doesn't say, as Calvinists teach, that God creates reprobates so that He could show His justice and get glory when He punishes them, but it says that He shows His justice and gets glory by sending Jesus to the cross 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 to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:25-26)... And Jesus said "Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!" (John 12:27-28)
And it says that the real reason God is kind to wicked, resistant, depraved people is not to supposedly show them a little non-saving grace/"love" before they are sent to their predestined damnation, but... "Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?" (Romans 2:4, emphasis added)
And it does not say that people were created as slaves to sin/depravity, unable to change it or resist it, but it says that we become slaves to sin when we yield ourselves to sin, but we can become slaves to righteousness if we choose to yield ourselves to righteousness, to Christ: "... to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness. But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness." (Romans 6:16-18, KJV)... "... they themselves are slaves of depravity - for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him." (2 Peter 2:19)
And, as I said, Calvinism teaches that God was full of wrath and justice from the very beginning and that He needed to be able to demonstrate it for His glory, and so He created sinful reprobates so that He had someone to punish, someone to pour out His wrath and justice on. (So Calvi-Jesus's death was not enough, not sufficient to satisfy Calvi-god's wrath and fulfill justice? Calvi-god also needed multitudes of reprobates to punish?)
But I believe this puts the cart before the horse, reversing the order of cause and effect - because the Bible shows that our sin and unbelief precedes, causes, results in God's wrath and justice, that His wrath and justice are His responses to our self-chosen sin, not that His wrath and justice are the precursor to and cause of our sin and unbelief, as Calvinism teaches it.
Ephesians 5:6: "... for because of such things [sin] God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient."
John 3:36, KJV: "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." (Rejecting Christ results in God's wrath. God's wrath does not result in people rejecting Christ.)
Romans 1:18,2:5-8: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness... But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed... To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger." (If we stubbornly reject the truth, we invite wrath. Sin and evil result in the need for wrath, for judgment, for justice, not the other way around as Calvinism teaches.)
Deut. 29:24-28: "All the nations will ask: 'Why has the Lord done this to this land? Why this fierce, burning anger?' And the answer will be: 'It is because this people has abandoned the covenant of the Lord... They went off and worshiped other gods... Therefore the Lord's anger burned against this land, so that he brought on it all the curses written in this book. In furious anger and in great wrath the Lord uprooted them from their land and thrust them into another land, as it is now.'" (God did not decide their destiny and then cause them to reject Him so that He could pour out wrath on them, but they chose first to reject Him and this lead to Him reacting to them in wrath.)
Calvinism has created a very different god - a god who was full of wrath and justice before there was ever anything to be wrathful about or to have justice on, a god so full of wrath that he had to create people to be unrepentant sinners just so he could punish their sin and unbelief (which he decreed), to demonstrate a sick backwards sense of justice, for his sick need for more glory. As if he wasn't glorious enough before sin and reprobates were created. As if his glory and "god-ness" is dependent on and proportional to sin and sinners.
Calvi-god sacrifices most people for himself, for his need for glory.
But the God of the Bible sacrificed Himself for all people, out of love, so that whoever believes in Him will be saved.
Calvinism has messed up everything, creating a massive, tangled web of nonsense, contradiction, and biblical errors. This is why it takes so long and so much energy and nit-pickiness to dismantle it. What a mess!
28. And finally, The Gospel:
Although it seems like Calvinists believe in and spread the same gospel as non-Calvinists, they don't.
Non-Calvinists would say "Repent and believe in Jesus in order to be saved and born again - and anyone can, because Jesus died for everyone, and God wants everyone to be saved, and He offers the free gift of eternal life to everyone, but it's up to us if we accept it or reject it." This is why we share the gospel and plead with people to believe it - because it's for everyone, and anyone can believe it and be saved.
And, sure, Calvinists constantly try to seem like they're saying that, but what Calvinism really teaches is "You don't repent and believe in order to be saved and born again, but you repent and believe if you are already saved and born again. And no one gets a choice about it because God has predetermined whom He will save and regenerate, and everyone else is predestined to hell and can't do anything about it. Oh, and by the way, Jesus died only for those predestined to heaven."
R.C. Sproul (Chosen by God, pg 10,72): "The Reformed view…teaches that before a person can choose Christ…he must be born again… one does not first believe and then become reborn.… A cardinal doctrine of Reformed theology is the maxim, 'Regeneration precedes faith'.”
Edwin Palmer (The Five Points of Calvinism, pg 18-19): "Then, once he is born again, he can for the first time turn to Jesus, expressing sorrow for his sins and asking Jesus to save him."
Tom Wells (Faith: The Gift of God, pg 58): "A man must be born again in order to exercise faith."
My ex-pastor, September 10, 2017: "And the evidence that someone is believing is evidence that they have already been converted. So once again, this new birth precedes the ability to have saving faith."
My ex-pastor, October 2014: "God elected, God chose, God drew, God opens your eyes, God saved, and because He did all that, you were able to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and repent."
My ex-pastor, February 2024: "the unmistakable sign that someone has been born again is that they have the ability to repent and believe the gospel."
Notice the Calvinist order: First the Calv-elect are chosen for salvation, then they are regenerated/born again... and then, lastly, they are able to hear/understand/respond to the gospel, repent, and believe in Jesus. (And yet the Bible says time and time again that when we repent and believe, then we are saved, sealed with the Spirit, and born again.)
And so, therefore, belief in Calvi-Jesus and the Calvi-gospel does not save - it cannot save; it has no effect on whether someone is saved or not - because it is the result of already having been saved... meaning that, in Calvinism, people are saved by election, not by faith in Jesus or the gospel.
Loraine Boettner (The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination): "A man is not saved because he believes in Christ; he believes in Christ because he is saved."
My ex-pastor, June 2024: "We're not His sheep because we follow Him; we follow Him because we are already His sheep."
Arthur Pink (The Sovereignty of God): "A man is not regenerated because he has first believed in Christ, but he believes in Christ because has been regenerated."
And so when Calvinists share their gospel, it's not really to reach everyone, but it's merely to make the Calv-elect realize that they were always Calv-elect, that they were already saved in eternity past without making any decision and that all they have to do is wake up one day and realize it.
But Calvinists preach it to all people because they don't know who the Calv-elect are.
John MacArthur (Answering Big Questions About the Sovereignty of God): "Since we don’t know who [the elect] are, we are called to fulfill the Great Commission and to proclaim the gospel to every creature."
And MacArthur again at the 2010 Shepherd's conference (see in the first video here, starting at 8:20): "... God loves the world, the specific people in the world, the specific human beings. I don't know who they are. Spurgeon said 'if you'll pull up their shirts and show me an 'E' stamped on their back and I know the elect, then I'll limit my work to them.' But since there is no such stamp, I am committed to obey the command to preach the gospel to every creature."
And so by preaching the Calvi-gospel to everyone (making it seem like it's for everyone when it's really not), Calvinists are not trying to save all people, anyone and everyone, but they are simply helping Calvi-god's decree happen: Saving the Calv-elect, while sealing the non-Calv-elect in their predestined damnation when they inevitably reject it just as Calvi-god decreed. (See this post for more about Calvangelism.)
From "If God predestines people, why evangelize?": "If God is Sovereign, Our Evangelism Has a 100% Success Rate... Because God is the Author of salvation (and not our evangelistic proficiency or presentation), our faithful proclamation of the Gospel will yield the exact result the Lord has willed."
Heidelberg Theological Seminary ("The Doctrine of Limited Atonement..."): "It is inaccurate to say that we 'offer' salvation to all men... The non-elect person will never have ears to hear this and obey. Yet, the call of the gospel must be sincerely given, allowing God to gather his people by the power of His Holy Spirit. ["The gospel is only for the Calv-elect."]
... It is precisely through this preaching of the gospel that God has determined to save His elect for whom Christ died.... God will also use the preaching of the gospel to condemn those who reject it and continue in their unbelief [by Calvi-god's decree]. The success of preaching is guaranteed, for none of the sheep will be lost... Others do not hear the voice of Jesus and will not believe, because they are not His sheep whom He died for... Success is not determined by how many become Christians, but it is a matter of faithfulness in bringing the true gospel of salvation to the ends of the earth.
... When we say that we 'freely proclaim' the gospel we must not think that all men are equally capable of receiving it in faith... It should be remembered the purpose of preaching the gospel is two-fold. It is a message of salvation to all who believe, and a message of condemnation to all who reject it. But all men need to hear it..."
If this doesn't make you righteously angry, then (I wish I didn't have to say this, but I do) it has to be because you don't really understand the gospel or the biblical order of salvation or what Jesus accomplished on the cross or how people are saved - and so you can't see how wrong Calvinism is and how its reversal of the order slams the door of heaven on most people, denying most people the ability to believe, the chance to be saved.
Steven Lawson ("Salvation is of the Lord"): "... Jesus died a substitutionary death in the place of God’s elect.... Jesus’ death did not merely make all mankind potentially savable. Nor did His death simply achieve a hypothetical benefit that may or may not be accepted. Neither did His death merely make all mankind redeemable. Instead, Jesus actually redeemed a specific people through His death, securing and guaranteeing their salvation. Not a drop of Jesus’ blood was shed in vain. He truly saved all for whom He died... With oneness of purpose, the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit into the world to apply this salvation to those chosen and redeemed."
Translation: "Jesus, the gospel, and salvation are only for the Calv-elect. Jesus wouldn't waste His blood on those predestined to reject Him."
John MacArthur (The Doctrine of Actual Atonement, Part 1): "God did not intend to save everyone... God does limit the atonement.... I just can’t bring myself to believe that hell is full of millions of people whose sins were paid for in full by Christ on the cross.… I don’t feel very special if you say to me, 'Christ died for you, He loves you just like He died for the millions in hell.' That doesn’t make me feel very special.
And so although Calvinists claim that "salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone," what they're really teaching is that faith (belief in Jesus) is by salvation alone, that being saved comes before and leads to belief in Jesus. And that it's only intended for some prechosen people, the only ones Calvi-Jesus died for.
[And this is why the Calvinist ESV translates 2 Peter 3:9 so differently. In the KJV, it says, "... [He] is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." God wants all people to come to repentance.
But the ESV ends it this way: "... not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." Of the commonly-used "word-for-word" translations, the ESV is the only one that says "reach" instead of "come to." Why is this?
This may seem like a minor, inconsequential distinction, but it's not. (And I think it's another attempt to make the Bible more Calvinist.) And here's why: Because the only people who can reach something - a goal, a destination - are the ones who are aiming for it and already headed towards it.
The person who "reaches" a year of sobriety is the alcoholic who gave up alcohol and pursued sobriety, not the person who never struggled with alcohol to begin with. The person who "reaches" their dream of playing professional baseball is the one who trained for years with that as their goal, their focus, not the person who just played some backyard baseball occasionally or the one who never cared about baseball at all. The only people who can "reach" Alaksa are the ones specifically traveling to Alaska, not the ones headed in any other direction.
To say "God wants everyone to come to repentance" is an invitation to all people to come to repentance, no matter where they are, who they are, or where they're going. It's an open invitation to anyone who wants to respond.
But to say "God wants everyone to reach repentance" clearly implies that He's only talking about those who are already headed to repentance - the Calv-elect predestined for repentance/salvation - because no one can reach something unless they were already specifically aiming for it.
The ESV is not inviting all people to come to repentance. It's just stating its confidence that all those whom Calvi-god predestined to salvation will reach repentance, and only them.
(And interestingly enough, in none of the other verses where this Greek word is used do the ESV translators change it to "reach." Only in this verse. Hmm, suspicious.😕)]
I hate to say it (because most Calvinists are very good, humble, well-meaning, Jesus-loving, God-fearing Christians, at least the ones I know), but it needs to be said:
Calvinists have a very different gospel and god, a very different way of salvation and goal of evangelizing, and a very different reason for/result of Jesus's sacrificial death. They are not believing, teaching, or spreading the same gospel as non-Calvinists, as the Bible when read in context and in a commonsense, consistent way. They are believing, teaching, and spreading something very different, but something that's been dressed up to appear like it's right from the Bible, like it's consistent with the Bible, while utterly flipping it on its head and destroying God's character, Jesus's sacrifice, the good news of the gospel, and people's hope, faith, confidence in God, and chance for salvation. So sneaky, stealthy, deceptive, and destructive - just like Calvinism's author.
"For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve." (2 Corinthians 11:13-15)
Is it any wonder, then, why those of us who understand what Calvinism really teaches fight against it so hard?
These are just some of Calvinism's foundational errors and how it traps people. And if you can understand just these few, you are well on your way to fending off the powerful, hypnotic pull of Calvinism's Systematic Theology!
Recommendations:
Book recommendations from Dr. Tony Evans (in addition to his Bible commentary):
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, commonsense teachings and upholds God's good, righteous, just, 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 [This is the book that helped me realize I was on the right track to keep questioning the preaching of our Calvinist pastor, that helped me realize I was understanding the commonsense teaching of Scripture just fine and that the pastor was teaching something completely different. You see, when the pastor began teaching his stealth Calvinism and I began getting very confused and disturbed, I took lots of time to figure out what I thought the Bible said before I looked up what other pastors/theologians said the Bible said. I wanted to understand it for myself first. But then when I finally began looking up what theologians said, I was horrified to see that all of them - every single one - sounded just like my pastor, saying the same things, teaching the same garbage. And so I began to worry that maybe I was the problem, that I had been misunderstanding God's Word all along, that I was unable to understand Scripture on my own - and it made me doubt my ability to think clearly, to understand Scripture and truth, to judge right and wrong. And this made me terrified that my only two choices were to accept the Calvinist god as god, to accept confusing and contradictory Calvinism as truth... or give up my faith because I couldn't trust a god like that. But then as a last resort - the absolutely final pastor/theologian I would research before I gave in to Calvinism or gave up my faith - I read Totally Saved by Dr. Tony Evans... and for the first time in years, I felt my soul relax. I breathed a sigh of relief. Because he was saying things the same way I always understood them, the plain commonsense understanding of God's Word and God's character. And it gave me the hope and encouragement I desperately needed to keep going, to keep doubting and questioning my pastor's teachings and to find out what the truth really is, what the Bible really says, and how different and wrong my pastor's theology was. This book is a major reason for why my blog even exists, for why I'm not a Calvinist or an apostate today.]
And I also totally recommend Just Give Me Jesus by Anne Graham Lotz, which was very healing to my soul, too. It was just what I needed when I really needed it.
Videos from Soteriology 101, with Leighton Flowers:
And here are some videos I recommend from Soteriology 101 (taken from my post Calvinism for Beginners) to help you understand even more what's wrong with Calvinism and what the biblical truth really is:
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)
[Final Footnote: Oh, and there's one more ending point for Calvinism's Systematic Theology, shown in stories like these which I've shared time and time again:
"My parents used to say 'even the cutest baby is a dirty rotten sinner.'... I’m turning 30 this year and I still have trouble turning down the volume on this narrative about myself. It has led to issues in my friendships, with my partner, and now, with my parents... I have deconstructed to the [point] of agnosticism... This has crippled my emotional growth as an adult in ways..." (foreverlanding)
"The [Calvinist] concept of total depravity is so completely toxic.... The system is designed to make you feel like a POS [piece of sh*t] just for being a human. I'm 37 now and am agnostic after trying really hard to believe until about 2ish years ago. I feel more hopeful and free without the church." (eab1728)
"Agreed. Total Depravity isn't the "Good News" espoused in Reformed circles... it robbed me of dignity and replaced it with constant, grating guilt. And it's utterly worthless in the face of real hardship... I am a universalist now, which couldn't be further from Reformed doctrine. And honestly, what a relief." (come_heroine)
"I'm so angry that I was taught that I was completely bad, simply by being human, and I deserved to be tortured by the Creator for all of eternity, AND I COULD DO NOTHING ABOUT IT. All I could do was pray to God and hope that he had mercy on such a miserable, worthless, depraved wretch such as twelve-year-old me. I lived with a phobia of hell until the cage of my mind opened when I was 22, and I could finally think for the first time in my life..." (why-homo-sapien)
"A few years ago I was wondering why my self-esteem was so crap and then suddenly realised that the people who taught me to hate myself were my parents, through the medium of calvinism :)" (pktechboi)
From the Reddit post "Verily verily I say unto thee, f*ck this sh*t!": "...When I realized our own judicial system treats us better than this sadistic god, I was out. 30 years of my life. Sure, there were good memories. But the weight of it all sure took a toll on me eventually. Thankful I can breath a bit more easy now not worrying if I have committed the unpardonable sin. I’m certain I have 100x over. ;) ..." (Miss_an100)
And, most heartbreaking, from the reddit post Election and Suicide: "I have recently discovered the doctrine of election and I believe that I am not elect. I don't have any spiritual fruit and I hate God with all my heart. My question is, at this point is it right to want to die? Might as well go to hell now instead of later. I do not want to kill myself (I never will hopefully) but I cant see a reason to live when my end destiny will be the same." (from "deleted")
If you are raising kids in a Calvinist church, take all of this very seriously, because this could be them someday.
You know, I'm not sure which one's worse: The person whose faith and self-esteem has been totally destroyed because of Calvinism... or the person who gets so trapped in Calvinism that they start to sound just like the Talbot and Piper quote above. They're both just so tragic!😞]
