Back to Chapter 5 – The Nature and Scope of the Calvinist Difficulties
1. Calvinism amounts to a universal divine causal determinism.
Calvinists define divine sovereignty as God having ordained from eternity past “whatsoever comes to pass.” God has actively willed that all things, down to the minutest detail, occur as they do. Therefore, God ultimately causes all things to occur as they do. For the reasons given below, the Bible does not support the universal divine causal determinism of Calvinism.
2. As a universal divine causal determinism, Calvinism misconceives the sovereignty of God.
God’s sovereignty is defined as his rule or reign over all that he has made to bring about his plans and purposes. His ability to do this involves his many attributes: wisdom, foreknowledge, love, justice, mercy, compassion, holiness, etc. It is important to understand that all these divine characteristics are involved in God’s rule over all his creation, including his rule over his human creatures. God’s sovereignty entails him doing as he pleases, not that he is pleased to dictate “whatsoever comes to pass.” This puts God in a dynamic relationship with human persons. God’s sovereignty entails him doing as he pleases, but whatever he does cannot be inconsistent with or contrary to his divine nature. He is not – in thought or act – arbitrary, as if, all things being equal, no reasons can be known for what he does for one person but not another. Neither does he act with respect to human persons as if their genuine choices and responses do not, in some significant ways and at some significant times, determine their relationship to God. People’s choices and responses do affect their relationship with God. This would include their salvation and eternal destiny. A deterministic definition of divine sovereignty is a misunderstanding of the biblical data on the sovereignty of God.
3. Sovereignty is not an essential divine attribute.
Divine sovereignty arises from God’s other essential attributes once God freely decides to create a universe. Once he created a universe, including this world and human creatures in his image, he then, by virtue of all that he is with respect to his divine nature and as Creator of all things, became its sovereign ruler. Nothing can change that, even if he sovereignly decrees to create beings in his own image with wills that are substantially, but not absolutely, free.
4. Being a theistic determinism, Calvinism is incoherent with the giving of the moral law.
God’s moral law expresses God’s moral nature. In that it provides assurance to us of God’s moral character, we can then determine that Scripture is being misinterpreted when an interpretation requires us to turn our moral sense upside-down with respect to understanding God. Calvinist interpretations of divine decrees and sovereignty as universal divine causal determinisms require the reversal of our moral sense and reasoning. In having God predetermining all evil, Calvinism makes him the author and cause of all evil and therefore evil himself. This is an incoherent interpretation of the biblical text. Theistic determinism results in God acting contrary to his own moral law. Other doctrines inconsistent with God’s moral character as revealed to us in his moral law are unconditional election and reprobation. To act in such an unloving manner to the non-elect persons is not only an arbitrary “justice” but to hate a multitude of his human creatures. These are evil things that God condemns in us as moral agents. We can therefore be confident that he does not think, will, or act in such evil ways himself.
Another entailment of the giving of a moral law is the necessity of free will. Philosopher C. A. Campbell observes the mutually coherent and necessary relationship between the biblical truths that God is the creator and source of the moral law, that man the creature exists in a relationship of dependence upon God, and that in light of the existence and promulgation of the moral law, God in his freedom did create a creature with a degree of genuine independence or “free will.” He writes,
“When we reflect on the fact that the supreme being is the source of man’s existence and of the moral law binding upon him, and when we further appreciate that a moral law is completely meaningless for beings who are not free agents, we come to see that man’s relation of ‘dependence’ upon the supreme being must be of a very remarkable sort. It must be somehow at once an absolute dependence, and yet carry with it a genuine independence. Now there would seem to be only one way in which we can think a relationship of this kind, and that is as a relationship of creature to creator, where the creator had endowed the creature with a ‘free will’”.[15]
What we need to observe here is that in attempting to construct a proper understanding of Scripture, Campbell operates based on a hermeneutic of coherence. For instance, his reasoning that “a moral law is completely meaningless for beings who are not free agents” is a statement born of coherence. A moral law given from the Creator to his human creatures entails that those creatures are substantively free moral agents. It would not be coherent to give a moral law to creatures whose every thought, attitude, belief, desire, and action is determined by the law-giver. A moral law entails freedom of the will.
5. A significant degree of self-freedom or genuine volition is inherent in any meaningful definition of genuine love.
Theistic determinism precludes any self-freedom or genuine volition and therefore leads to an incoherent concept of love. Any meaningful sense of love for God, whether as a reciprocal response of his love for us or the command to love him, makes no sense when the person is predetermined by God himself to love him or despise him.
- Calvinist soteriology is dictated by the Calvinist’s theistic determinism.
God has, apart from any conditions other than his own will, predetermined who is to be saved and who is to be eternally damned. Calvin gives expression to this Reformed doctrine of predestination when he states,
“We call predestination God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death.” [16]
As such, Calvinism inherits many of the logical and moral problems of any deterministic system.
Calvinists will assure us that God is loving and gracious to all people. But any talk about how God loves or grants “common grace” to the non-elect through temporal, physical blessings is ultimately negated by their eternal damnation. It is precisely in that they are damned, and that for eternity, that the Calvinist’s assurance of God’s love and grace to the non-elect is vacuous. Given such an end, the boast of temporal blessings, graces, and comforts is not only trivial but also a mockery. There is no way to comprehend God as being loving or gracious to a person that he has predestined to eternal damnation.
- On Calvinism, the claim that “God is good” is incoherent.
Inherent in Calvinist unconditional election is the belief that whatever God wills and commands is morally good solely because God wills and commands it. For the Calvinist, merely God’s inscrutable will issuing forth in his command defines what is morally good and obligatory. For instance, the Calvinist maintains that God has assigned a multitude of persons to spend eternity in hell merely because he wills it to be so. If he has reasons for doing so, they are beyond our understanding. The Calvinist asserts that we are obliged to believe this because Scripture teaches it. But this is contrary to what is considered foundational to our moral intuitions and what we know from those same scriptures of God’s character as good, just, and loving. The point is that Calvinism inevitably places an absolutely ‘sovereign’ divine will over and against an absolutely immutable divine character of love and justice. Such “goodness” is not beyond our moral understanding but against it.
Regarding the logical entailment of unconditional election, which is unconditional reprobation, philosophers David Baggett and Jerry Walls observe,
“For if God’s command renders something obligatory, and there’s nothing higher than God’s will, then there’s nothing in principle preventing God from commanding the torture of children for fun. His command would render such behavior not just morally permissible, but morally obligatory! If the Calvinists counter that God never would command such a thing, they are implicating themselves in an inconsistency, for they have already accorded primacy to God’s will over his character. That maneuver of gesturing toward God’s character, right as it is, is not available to them any more; their appeal to God’s nature stands at odds with classical Calvinism’s exclusive focus on God’s will…Unconditional reprobation…already constitutes an example of something we are unable to square with anything remotely recognizable as goodness and love.”[17]
It is important to note that the Calvinist makes God’s will the determining factor in unconditional election and reprobation, and they therefore are left to merely assert that he is good, compassionate, and loving, even though he wills the salvation of some persons unconditionally and the eternal damnation of myriads of others. But, again, this is a mere assertion. It is incoherent with what we know of goodness, compassion, and love as Scripture talks about these in reference to God and what we intuitively know and experience of these qualities in and among ourselves. Therefore, Calvinism removes from us any reliable knowledge of what God is truly like. C. S. Lewis summarizes the issue well when he writes,
“…if God’s moral judgment differs from ours so that our “black” may be His “white,” we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say “God is good,” while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say “God is we know not what.” And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying him. If He is not (in our sense) “good” we shall obey, if at all, only through fear – and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity – when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing – may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil worship.
…Beyond all doubt, His idea of “goodness” differs from ours; but you need have no fear that, as you approach it, you will be asked simply to reverse your moral standard…This doctrine is presupposed in Scripture. Christ calls men to repent – a call which would be meaningless if God’s standard were sheerly different from that which they already knew and failed to practice. He appeals to our existing moral judgment – ‘Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?’ (Luke 12:57)”[18]
As Lewis struggled with the nature of God’s goodness in light of the death of his wife Joy, he made these observations,
“Or could one seriously introduce the idea of a bad God, as it were by the back door, through a sort of extreme Calvinism? You could say we are fallen and depraved. We are so depraved that our ideas of goodness count for nothing; or worse than nothing – the very fact that we think something good is presumptive evidence that it is really bad. Now God has in fact – our worst fears are true – all the characteristics we regard as bad: unreasonableness, vanity, vindictiveness, injustice, cruelty. But all these blacks (as they seem to us) are really whites. It’s only our depravity that makes them look black to us.
And so what? This, for all practical (and speculative) purposes sponges God off the slate. The word good, applied to Him, becomes meaningless: like abracadabra. We have no motive for obeying him. Not even fear. It is true we have his threats and promises. But why should we believe them? If cruelty is from his point of view “good,” telling lies may be “good” too. Even if they are true, what then? If His ideas of good are so very different from ours, what he calls “Heaven” might be what we should call Hell, and vice-versa. Finally, if reality at its roots is so meaningless to us – or, putting it the other way round, if we are such total imbeciles – what is the point of trying to think either about God or about anything else? This knot comes undone when you try to pull it tight.”[19]
Baggett and Walls affirm that,
“…God’s goodness must be recognizable. Otherwise we’re using the word “good” to refer to something that isn’t recognizably good, and that sort of equivocation is irrational.”[20]
Arminian scholar Roger Olson writes,
“If God’s goodness is so mysterious that it is compatible with willing and actively rendering certain the Fall and every other evil (even if only by withdrawing the power necessary to avoid sinning) of human history, it is meaningless. A concept that is compatible with anything and everything is empty.”[21]
- Calvinism restricts God’s freedom to ordain that salvation be conditioned upon faith.
Scripture portrays faith as a sinner’s decision to believe, and for which they are responsible, given the content of the gospel message, which calls them to believe in God and Jesus. Faith is characterized by humility, surrender, trust, and reciprocal love towards God for his saving grace shown to them in Christ.
The Calvinist feels it is his special task to safeguard the concept of “divine sovereignty” defined deterministically, by removing faith as a genuine decision and response of the sinner to God’s grace in Christ. Calvinists state that because we are all sinners who are “dead in trespasses and sins,” therefore, faith is an impossibility. No one can believe from the exercise of their own will. Faith needs to be bestowed by God, and that, only on those he has predestined to salvation, that is, only upon those he has already regenerated so that they may believe. Regeneration comes first, belief follows. In that this reverses the biblical order of salvation with faith first and then regeneration, we must ask whether this amounts to the Calvinist’s own personal spiritual predilection to protect and exalt God’s sovereignty as the Calvinist understands it, or whether it is an accurate interpretation of both the nature of divine sovereignty and the nature of faith.
We also need to ask how or why it is that the exercise of such freedom on God’s part, both to create humans with free agency and to condition salvation upon their response of faith in God and Christ, is somehow a threat to God’s sovereignty, which it would not be if understood non-deterministically. Why would faith require divine determinism, and how does divine determinism affect the nature of faith? We would also have to ask why being a sinner entails a “total inability” to respond to God and Christ when that same God and Christ both adjure sinners to humble themselves, believe the gospel, and be saved. “Total depravity,” or our pervasively sinful condition, obviously doesn’t preclude us as sinners from coming to Christ to have our sins forgiven. More on this below.
- Scripture nowhere speaks of a person being predestined to faith or belief.
Sinners themselves are responsible for their eternal condemnation because they refuse to believe. (Jn. 3:16-18.)
- Calvinism’s claim that faith is granted by God only to a limited number of elect persons predestined to salvation contradicts the biblical testimony to the nature of faith as an open issue involving a genuine personal response to God, Jesus, and the gospel message.
- Calvinism’s claim that faith is granted by God only to a limited number of elect persons predestined to salvation is inconsistent with the content of the biblical gospel and its nature as a call, command, invitation, and challenge to believe, etc., that goes out to all individuals.
- Calvinism’s claim that faith is a gift of God bestowed upon a limited number of elect persons predestined to salvation and can only be exercised once the sinner is first regenerated makes the call to believe irrelevant and a redundant element in salvation. It reverses the biblical order; faith is prior to regeneration.
- The Calvinists’ claim that the response of faith comes after regeneration is without biblical support.
Many Calvinists, due to their view of total depravity or total inability, claim that man cannot respond to the gospel message; therefore, God must regenerate the elect before they can believe. Regeneration must precede faith. Faith must be after regeneration.
But first, this seems to contradict the Reformation tenet that salvation, that is, regeneration, is by faith alone – sola fide. What could this mean if it is the case that regeneration occurs first and faith follows? How can salvation be coherently described as “by faith alone” if regeneration, which just is salvation, must precede faith? On Calvinism, salvation “resulting in” faith would be the more accurate and truthful description – something like “salvation is evidenced by faith alone.”
Secondly, what is the nature of faith if, as the Calvinist claims, regeneration occurs first, then one is irresistibly caused to believe as the result of God having predetermined such belief? If God is the cause of regeneration, which irresistibly issues forth in faith, then faith seems to lose its meaning and become a redundancy. It becomes an adjective to describe those predestined to salvation, not a verb that tells the sinner what they must do to be saved.
For the Calvinist, the sinner is caused by God to both be regenerated and believe. But the biblical dynamic and order is believe and be saved, with one’s regeneration and salvation being dependent upon their believing.
Every sinner who is “dead in trespasses and sins” who hears the gospel is enabled to respond to God and the gospel, precisely because the Spirit attends the gospel message, which, by virtue of its definition (“good news”), its content (“God loves you and Jesus died for you”) and its call to salvation (“Come to Christ, put your faith and trust in him for your salvation and be saved”) indicates that salvation is inclusive, not exclusive as in Calvinist predestination and unconditional election.
- The Calvinist understanding of faith destroys individual personhood in the dynamic of salvation.
God interacts with us as persons, and responding freely to God is essential to personhood. Therefore, faith is everywhere in Scripture spoken of as the responsibility of the sinner and the only appropriate response to God’s saving work on their behalf.
- The purpose of the nature of faith is to make salvation accessible to each and every sinner.
Faith is humble trust and surrender to God’s work of salvation in Jesus Christ on behalf of all sinners as proclaimed in the “good news” of the gospel message. In that salvation is appropriated by simple faith, God is expressing his universal salvific will. Precisely because salvation is by faith, by God’s design, it allows for that salvation to be obtained by any and all sinners.
- Calvinists misconceive the response of faith as a meritorious “work.”
Faith is trust in the work of Christ on one’s behalf. Driven by the assumption that their doctrine of total inability is correct, Calvinists think that if faith is actually a response to the gospel message that sinful people can have of their own accord, then they are “working” for their salvation. That is, if you believe that upon hearing the gospel in which the Holy Spirit is present to work according to the content and purpose of that message of “good news,” sinners themselves may and should exercise their own will to believe that message, then the Calvinist protests that this amounts to man contributing to or assisting God in the work of salvation. But what the Calvinist is doing is reading their presupposed doctrine of “total inability” into the text. It must be noted that when Paul writes about “works of the law” as referring to earning one’s salvation by obediently performing what the law requires, Paul always sets faith in contrast to “works,” thereby disassociating faith from works with respect to earning a righteous standing with God or as far as the person contributing to their salvation. Faith is not included within “works” or considered a “work” as if a sinner’s free response of faith would amount to contributing to or meriting their salvation. The Bible never treats the ability and responsibility of the sinner to believe in Christ as meritorious. As Dr. Leighton Flowers puts it, “By saying I can’t merit salvation, the Calvinist thinks that itself is a merit.”[22]
- Calvinism asserts an unbiblical definition of grace regarding salvation.
Calvinist soteriology defines “grace” as God’s decision to unconditionally save a limited number of elect persons who are undeserving of that salvation. In contrast, the biblical witness to God’s grace is the kind disposition of God to do for us what we did not deserve and could not do for ourselves in sending Jesus to die so that we could be saved by faith. There is no limitation on this grace as is imposed upon the concept by the Calvinist deterministic “doctrines of grace.”
Grace, biblically understood, is not an eternal divine decision to unconditionally save some out of all who are undeserving of salvation while, for reasons unknown to us, “passing over” all others for the express purpose of assigning them to eternal damnation. Rather, God’s grace is his disposition to favor all sinners – none of whom deserve or can merit such favor – with salvation in Christ. Therefore, because God’s grace is found “in Christ,” all sinners have access to this divine grace and favor through faith (Rom. 5:1-2). God’s grace is therefore universally extended, that is, available to all sinners, precisely because it is found “in Christ” who is proclaimed in the gospel message. As such, it cannot be defined as an unknowable decision of God made in eternity past to predestine a limited number of elect persons to salvation (Jn. 1:14-18).
- Calvinists misconstrue the word “free” in “free grace”.
The “free” in the Calvinist phrase “free grace” is incorrectly construed to mean that nothing outside of God moves him to unconditionally elect some persons to salvation and pass by all others. If there are reasons, they remain unknown to us and are taken from within himself.
This raises again the moral and epistemological problems of being sure about what God is really like with respect to his nature. Rather, free grace should be thought of as God’s love and salvation that is offered to all sinners “without cost.” It is not earned grace or deserved favor. Apart from a response of humble trust in God himself, God’s grace does not depend upon anything that a person might think has influence with God or puts God in their debt. It is “free” in the sense that it is not contingent upon human works, status, privilege, etc. It is of God’s nature to be gracious, indeed, beyond human expectations (Matt. 20:1-16). Therefore, grace being free in this sense includes it being offered to and obtainable by all (Rom. 5:1-2; Titus 2:11, 3:4; 1 Tim. 2:4-5, 4:10).
- Calvinist soteriology is Christologically deficient.
To reduce the historical revelation of God’s salvation plan in Christ to the mere implementation of the decree of God regarding the salvation of a predetermined, limited, unconditionally elect number of people is a deficient Christology. The Bible does not teach that there are “two wills” in God – the revealed will of God’s love and salvation publicly demonstrated “in Christ” to whom the sinner is adjured to look to for salvation by faith, as opposed to a secret will of God which unalterably decreed in eternity past the eternal destiny of every individual. The latter is inconsistent with the former and renders the former a disingenuous falsehood as spoken to the non-elect.
Because Jesus is a historical person who is the foundation and manifestation of the message of the “good news” of salvation, there is no limit to his saving work and to whom it applies. Precisely because “in Christ” we have the salvific will of God revealed to every individual, there is no secret, unknowable will of God whereby he has predetermined to save some and not others. If “in Christ” we have the salvific will of God revealed to every individual, then every individual is encompassed in the saving work. God means what he says when he speaks the message of salvation through Christ on the cross. The historic crucifixion is a public proclamation of the saving work of God in Christ Jesus. As such, the salvation Christ accomplished on that cross is for all who hear of this “good news” and look to that cross. It is there that the salvific will of God is to be found. God is not duplicitous. Jesus Christ and the message of the gospel are both public declarations of the work and grace of God, and therefore, that work and grace are of the nature of a universal call to repentance and faith. The full and complete expression of the will of God regarding the salvation of every individual sinner is found “in Christ.” This is the essence of the gospel. In the historical person and work of Jesus of Nazareth we see and know the expression of God’s love and desire to save (Rom. 5:8; Jn. 3:16). In that an historical Savior – Jesus of Nazareth – is presented to all sinners, therefore the full expression of God’s salvific will and the way of salvation for all persons is revealed. Each and every sinner has access to the historical Jesus and thereby has access to the grace of God and his positive salvific will for each and every sinner. Since Jesus, who was full of grace and truth, came and dwelt among us and showed us the Father’s love, in other words, precisely because he is God incarnate, anyone may therefore know God’s love as true for them and that salvation is also for them. Any sinner can be saved by faith in what Christ did on the cross for them. The way one knows that God loves them and is kindly disposed towards them is found “in Christ.” God’s love and salvation are therefore accessible to all who look to Christ and respond to him in faith. God’s salvific will and expression of love to all is demonstrated “in Christ,” and as such, it is a gift that is there for the receiving. (Rom. 5:2, 8ff.)
- There is nothing either in God’s nature or in sinners themselves, since we are all sinners by nature and equally under the condemnation of God, whereby we would expect God to differentiate an elect class of mankind from a non-elect class, except by each person’s response to the “good news” of the gospel.
The Scripture teaches that it is at the point of the gospel message and the sinner’s response of faith to that message or their rejection of it that God differentiates between sinners as to their eternal destiny.
- Calvinism is incoherent with man being made in the image of God.
Precisely because all persons are created in God’s image, we deem it theologically sound to think that God loves and cares for all human persons equally and genuinely and therefore does not desire that any “perish” but that all have “everlasting life.” Hence, because God has created every person in His own image, He has not predetermined any person to eternal separation from Himself. Sinners themselves do that by their rejection of the gospel.
- Calvinism is incoherent with the providential care of God for all persons.
Precisely because God’s providential care is exhibited towards all mankind – that he provides everyone with all good things and that his “rain falls on the just and the unjust” – we deem it theologically sound to think that God loves and cares for all human persons equally and therefore does not desire that they “perish” but have “everlasting life.” We think it incoherent to believe that God would show his kindness and provision to all persons in this temporal life, only to also will to condemn and alienate many from himself in the next life for all of eternity. In the grand scheme of a person’s life, no matter how blessed by God the non-elect person might be, it is one’s eternal destiny that matters most. Therefore, this divine providential care or “love” shown to the non-elect holds no weight in a Calvinist defense of God’s goodness and love.
- That there is one God who is God over all mankind is incoherent with Calvinism.
Since there is one God, and He is the God of all mankind (biblically speaking, Jews and Gentiles), we think it theologically sound to believe that He has designed the way of salvation for both Jews and Gentiles, that is, all individuals (Rom 3:28-30). The God who is the God of all men desires all sinners to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4-5).
- Calvinist determinism and unconditional election are incompatible with…
(1) the biblical definition of the gospel as “good news,” and
(2) the content of the “good news” that “God loves you and Jesus died for you,” and
(3) the call to salvation which goes out to all people, implying that salvation is for all who hear this “good news.” No one is excluded by God. Everyone may respond in faith and appropriate the offered salvation for themselves.
As to (1), there is no good news in the Calvinist doctrine of unconditional election. There is merely ‘news’ that God has unconditionally, irresistibly, and unalterably chosen an unknown limited number of specific people to be saved and has passed over, or not elected, all the rest. For these non-elect or reprobate persons, there is no possibility of salvation. This obviously is not the “good news” of the gospel.
As to (2), the content of the gospel message includes the proclamation to all individuals of the love God has for them “in Christ” and about Jesus’s death on their behalf. God means what he says. He cannot lie. The message of God’s love and salvation in Christ, as spoken to all, applies to all. The Calvinist cannot proclaim this message with theological consistency or ontological and existential assurance of salvation.
As to (3), there is a call to respond in faith, the command to repent and believe, the offer of forgiveness, the element of invitation, the metaphor of salvation as a “gift” to be received, the exhortations to “come” to Christ, and the warnings for remaining in unbelief. All these presuppose God’s universal love and affirm substantial human freedom of the will, which is incoherent with theistic determinism.
As such, Calvinism’s theistic determinism is inconsistent with the definition, content, and call of the gospel. Calvinism is not the gospel, but rather, antithetical to it. The Calvinist doctrines cannot be employed in a truly evangelical, gospel ministry.
- Calvinist soteriology cannot provide an assurance of salvation.
Calvinism teaches that every person’s eternal state is the result of a hidden, eternal, divine decree that is not known by anyone. Therefore, Calvinist soteriology cannot provide an assurance of salvation. In that one’s eternal destiny rests upon an unknowable decree of election that is unconditional as far as the sinner is concerned, and not the basis of Christ’s person and work on behalf of each and every individual to be received by faith, one cannot be assured of their unconditional election to salvation. In that this election is unconditional, it cannot be assuredly known by any evidence nor based on Christ’s death on the cross on the person’s behalf. And if it is not known based on the latter, it cannot be known. One’s hearing and acceptance of the “doctrines of grace” or present spiritual experiences are no sure indicators of either one’s election or non-election. Note that “manifest evidences” or one’s Christian spirituality are not reliable indications of one’s unconditional election. In the Westminster Confession of Faith, article 10, “Of Effectual Calling,” in section 4, we read,
“Others not elected, although they may be called by the ministry of the word, and may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet never truly come unto Christ, and therefore cannot be saved.”
Calvin also writes,
“There is the general call, by which God invites all equally to himself through the outward preaching of the word – even those to whom he holds it out as a savor of death [cf. 2 Cor. 2:16], and as the occasion of severer condemnation. The other kind of call is special, which he deigns for the most part to give to the believer alone, which by the inward illumination of his Spirit he causes the preached Word to dwell in their hearts. Yet, sometimes he also causes those whom he illumined only for a time to partake of it; then he justly forsakes them on account of their ungratefulness and strikes them with even greater blindness.”[23]
The Calvinist doctrine of unconditional election fosters the pretension of one’s election, not the assurance of one’s salvation. In that it fails to usher the sinner to the foot of the cross of Christ to find salvation there and not to an unknowable decision of God made in eternity past regarding their eternal destiny, Calvinism is empty of assurance.
- Calvinist soteriology divorces the biblical meaning of election from its Old Testament historical context and paradigm.
Rather than the Calvinists’ theistic determinism, biblical election involves the historical out-working of God’s eternal plan of salvation via divine selection(s) and decisive actions to demonstrate that salvation is to be provided solely through the means and on the basis that God deems best, that is, through the promise of Christ’s death on the cross and appropriated by faith. God’s electing decisions serve the purpose of disclosing that a saving relation to God would be by God’s promise of grace in Christ to those who will believe and not by any national privilege (being a child of Abraham) or performing “works of the law” (adhering to the Mosaic covenant). Neither would it be by any social, economic, or intellectual status, or by any other fleshly mode, human reasoning, contrivance, means, or invention (“the will of man” in Jn. 1:13). The “elect” are those who believe, just as “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring.” (Rom. 9:6, 7) Believers are deemed to be among “the elect” because by faith (as Abraham’s faith was counted to him righteous, Gen. 15:6), they are placed by God “in Christ” the “Elect One.” (See Ephesians 1 and 1 Pet. 2:6) “The elect,” i.e., believers, or “those who love God” (Rom. 8:28), are foreknown, even as defined in Calvinism, that is, God places his love upon them as his special children. But he did not predestine them to salvation or predetermine that they should believe. God loves those who put their trust in him. They are, as a group, designated “the elect,” as Israel was the “elect.” They are now “the people of God” in the way that believing Israel constituted “the people of God.”
“Election,” therefore, is both a corporate and individual concept with respect to service for God and salvation, but also has special reference to unique individual cases (e.g., Saul/Paul) and especially with reference to Jesus Christ himself, who in the sight of God is chosen and precious (1 Pet. 2:4-10). Therefore, to be among the “elect” does not refer to God’s premundane predestination of a limited number of particular persons to salvation out of the mass of humanity as in Calvinism. It is to be among those who believe in the one God has sent to be the savior of the world.
- Predestination does not refer to a limited number of particular individuals whom God preordained to save while passing over all others.[24]
Predestination refers to the working out of God’s unfailing promises that were divinely determined from before the foundation of the world for those who believe. Believers are predestined to be “holy and blameless before him” (Eph. 1:4), “for adoption through Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1:5), to receive “an inheritance” (Eph. 1:11, 13) and “to be conformed to the image of His Son.” (Rom. 8:28)
- Calvinism perceives foreknowledge redundantly by equating it with foreordination.
Calvinists state that it is because God has foreordained all things that he therefore foreknows all things. Rather, God can foreknow the free will decisions of free creatures. Divine foreknowledge of a free choice or event does not determine or cause the thing foreknown to occur as it does.
- God’s wrath is not an inherent, essential attribute of God.
Calvinists state that the purpose of having the reprobate or the non-elect is for God to be fully glorified in demonstrating his attribute of wrath upon sinners. They say that divine wrath is essential to the nature of God and that in salvation God must express his various attributes. But ‘wrath,’ in and of itself, is not a divine attribute, nor is it essential to his nature. Rather, God’s wrath is a reaction to sin rooted in his nature as holy and just. It is an expression of his holiness and justice. As such, God’s wrath doesn’t need to be expressed by God predestining persons – the reprobate – to eternal damnation for him to be fully glorified. Moreover, the concept of the “reprobate,” that is, those whom God has not chosen to save so that he might exercise his wrath upon them, is christologically deficient in that Christ took the wrath of God that was due to all of us as sinners upon himself on the cross. Calvinism also fails to coherently account for the biblical teaching on the just expression of God’s holiness and justice, i.e., his wrath, that will someday be brought upon those who, as a result of their rejection of the salvation offered them in Christ, will suffer this wrath.
30. The Calvinist’s doctrine of “total inability” cannot coherently take into account the biblical teaching on the “hardening of the heart.”
The “hardening of the heart” is meaningless in the context of Calvinist total inability, in which the heart is already completely unresponsive to God. What could a “hardening of the heart” mean except that there is a human freedom of the will to respond to God positively or negatively? To do so negatively leads to a “hardening of the heart.” When God hardens a person’s heart, it is implied that there is the freedom and the responsibility to have responded differently to God.
- Calvinism misconceives that God is glorified in unconditionally electing certain individuals to salvation and predestinating the reprobate to eternal damnation.
Rather, God is glorified in the person and work of his Son – Jesus Christ – and the proclamation of salvation to all in his name. God is not glorified in predetermining the damnation of his human creatures. When the “good news” of the gospel is preached and Christ is “lifted up,” it is then that God is glorified (Jn. 12:27-28; 13:31-32; 14:13; 17:1-5).
- Calvinist theistic determinism inevitably makes God responsible for evil, sin, and all human sinning – including the sin of unbelief.
This is the logical, and therefore the inevitable result of universal divine causal determinism. It makes God responsible for all the evil that occurs. It impugns the character of God. Calvinism is incoherent with the call that goes out to all people as sinners to believe and be saved. God causes unbelief while calling for faith and trust. Calvinism makes God out to be duplicitous and evil.
For the reasons given in this section and the others in this chapter, I submit to you that Calvinist theology is to be rejected because it is a biblically illegitimate theology.
Go to the next section: Ethical and Moral Concerns
Back to Chapter 5 – The Nature and Scope of the Calvinist Difficulties
The Truth of the Gospel 