Fending Off Calvinism
[I'm still taking a short break from writing until September, but - for easier reference - here's the last part of the previous post: Calvinism's Systematic Theology (and how to fend it off).]
How to fend off Calvinism's Systematic Theology
Here are 22 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. 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.)
If you can understand just a few of these (and can recognize the gaslighting and manipulation they do, 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 so many good Christians' minds:
1. Predestination/election: Calvinists always define these are being about God predestining individuals for heaven or hell. 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. And election is not the same as predestination, as Calvinists wrongly think. But biblically, election is about God's choice about how to use people in His plans (their self-chosen obedience or disobedience), which roles/blessings/tasks to give them. It has nothing to do with God choosing individual people for heaven or hell. God elects people and nations to service, to certain roles in His plans, not to salvation.
(Similarly, Calvinists also misapply verses about Jesus "choosing" His disciples, making it about God choosing who believes in Him... when it should not be interpreted that way because that's not what it's about. Just because Jesus chose His disciples doesn't mean God chooses who gets saved.)
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. 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, 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 hardened his own heart first in the first several plagues, and then God hardened it, giving Pharoah what he wanted, permanently, as punishment.
Being hardened is the response to self-chosen unbelief/resistance, not the cause of unbelief/resistance (as Calvinists wrongly think).
(And, not to mention, but Calvinists often use the verse from Romans 9 about God "having mercy on whomever He wants and hardening whomever He wants" to support their theology. But since, as I said, Romans 9 has nothing to do with God predestining individuals to salvation or to damnation, any verse from this chapter that Calvinists use to support or defend Calvinism - which are a lot, including the "hardens whomever He wants" one - has been misinterpreted, taken out of context, and misapplied.)
4. Faith: Calvinists believe that this 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. (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. Salvation/eternal life is offered to all as a gift, 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. Faith is not the gift, not something that God forces into prechosen people to cause them to believe, as Calvinists wrongly think.
5. Total depravity/spiritual death: Calvinists believe these teach "total inability," that people are so dead/depraved inside that they are unable to - that they cannot even want to - seek/believe in God or 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.
6. 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. But biblically, according to the concordance, His 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 to obey Him or disobey Him, to follow Him or ignore/reject/resist 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.
7. "Only evil all the time": 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: 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... 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 so we ourselves can't tell which one we got. Wow!
And yet Calvinists accept this as biblical truth and how God really is, viewing 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!?!)
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 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.
In non-Calvinism, we can have assurance of salvation because we trust God's promise to save anyone who puts their faith in Jesus. If we do our part to believe, God will do His part to save us and seal us with the Holy Spirit.
But in Calvinism, only the Calv-elect can have assurance of salvation because salvation is only for them... but there's no way of knowing if they are truly one of the Calv-elect or not until they die. This amounts to no assurance of salvation. And how could they trust the promises of a Calvi-god who gives evanescent grace anyway?
(Are these two theologies really one and the same? Can they coexist in the Church peacefully? Should they?)]
8. "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.
9. 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 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. 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.]
10. 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)
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." And that's not "working for 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 …”
11. 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.
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 the Bible, our free-will belief comes first, resulting in the Holy Spirit regenerating us and making us born again.
[And when John 3:8 talks about spiritual birth being like the invisible wind going wherever it wants to, it doesn't mean the Holy Spirit chooses whom to regenerate, but it means that spiritual birth is an invisible thing, a heart-thing, that happens on the inside, contrasted with physical birth which we can see on the outside. That's all it's saying, not that God picks who to save and who to not save.]
12. 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."
"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.
13. "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.)
14. 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 and that He 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 (this is not about salvation but about God using people for different purposes/jobs, based on what kind of people they are). This passage 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.
15. "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. It’s written in such a way 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!
16. 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 concordance with Vine's Expository Dictionary, "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 they need deliverance from. I'm just sayin'.
17. 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 verse about Israel in the end times, not about the predestined salvation of random individuals in the Church age.)
As Ezekiel 18:30-32 says: "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.
18. Foreknowledge/"God allows our free-will choice": Calvinists will say that God foreknows what we will choose to do and that He allows us to freely choose to make our decisions to sin and reject Him, that 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, but we choose to do them because we wanted 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 that's how he "foreknows" it and why he allows it.
[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 and causation into these concepts, reading things into Scripture that aren't there.]
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 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 because those are the only desires we have - and because 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 gets the unregenerated nature/Will must definitely sin and reject him because those are the only desires Calvi-god created them with. They will "freely choose, of their own Will" 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.
No one but Calvinists would call this "free-will choice" and "justice/deserving the punishment."
"Free-will" necessarily implies that we got to determine what we wanted to do and chose to do. And "choice" necessarily involves the idea of being able to pick between two or more option. And "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.
19. 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, sure. But what most people don't realize is that this is a 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.
20. False Dichotomies/Strawmen Arguments: 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 (Calvinism) or nothing. (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 are essentially unfair accusations, when Calvinists accuse you of saying things you're not saying in an effort to tear down your side or discredit you. 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, 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 Calvinist god who preplans, controls, orchestrates, causes every molecule, every person, every angel/demon. In that case, he's just putting limits on himself then. 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 choose 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 two options being "everybody" or "only some specific people." This has Calvinism's faulty doctrine of election baked right into it, which necessarily includes 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 are false dichotomies and strawmen arguments/false accusations - built on Calvinism's own faulty ideas and philosophical reasoning, NOT on a proper understanding of Scripture - meant to lure you into accepting their 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.
21. 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 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.
And did you know that the word "sovereign/sovereignty" isn't even in the King James Bible anywhere, despite the fact that Calvinists build their whole theology around their definition of it? (I think the KJV is the most reliable, least corrupted translation.)
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.]
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 they lift up God's extreme power while, at the same time, making Him weak, ineffective, and schizophrenic/multiple personality disordered for making decrees against His decrees/playing both sides of the chessboard/being the arsonist and the fireman.😕]
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?]
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 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/faith, maybe even just a song or a wise saying about God/faith (see #19 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.
(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 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 related but different 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 ideas to another - and so when you pull out one Calvinist thread, the whole thing unravels.]
22. And finally, 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, and heart cries (as are many of the things Job says, which Calvinists also quote to support Calvinism).
[Not that there isn't biblical truth/theology/prophecy in these books. But Calvinists go above and beyond Scripture, taking verses too far, taking them out of context, and reading into them things that aren't there. And they use the wrong verses to make their theological foundation (verses that can be twisted to be Calvinist), and then they filter all the other verses through them, completely changing verses with clear commonsense meanings into unclear and contradictory Calvinist verses.]
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 or use 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."
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!