Calvinist christology speaks of Christ’s sacrifice as being “efficacious,” that is, it is “effective” and relevant only to the limited number of people God decided to save. The Calvinist views the effect of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross as pertaining only to the elect as they define them. But I submit this fails to properly represent the biblical presentation of nature of salvation as centered in Christ’s public death on the cross as a demonstration of God’s love. The limiting and exclusionary ramiffications of the Calvinist doctrine of unconditional election fails to account for the fact that there is saving power in the cross itself and since Jesus was publicly crucified, that crucifixion, when it is publicly proclaimed today, still has that same saving power and relevance to all who hear it. Therefore, salvation or condemnation is not something God decided or predestined for each of us in eternity past. Rather, salvation is found at the cross of Christ. This is a crucial point to grasp. If this is so, then a person’s salvation is not hidden in a predestinarian decision made by God in eternity past. If the cross is a public salvific event and the cross is proclaimed publically to all people, then salvation was accomplished there, and that means sinners can find it there. Hence, salvation can be had by anyone who looks to the cross to be saved. (Jn. 3:14-15; 12:32, cf. Num. 21:4-9) It is there that salvation is made available. Jesus’ death on the cross was a public display, and as it has been continually proclaimed, it’s saving grace is thereby made available to all. The saving efficacy of the crucifixion is not limited to a preordained number chosen out of the mass of humanity. The saving efficacy of the crucifixion resides in the “lifting up” of Jesus as publicly displayed and as publicly broadcast today in the gospel message. This is what it means to have a fully Christ-centered Christology and soteriology. In contrast to Calvinism’s unconditional election and limited atonement, Jesus’ death on the cross is the center of God’s redeeming work which means that everyone who looks to the cross is actually being confronted with the spiritual effects and benefits of the death of Jesus. It contained the power of salvation to all who were eyewitnesses of the crucifixion, and it has the same power today for all those who hear about the cross through the gospel message. No one is excluded. Those who bring the message of the cross here and now are telling of God’s desire that the hearer be saved. Paul clearly states this to Timothy and gives the theological basis for this universal salvation. After charging Timothy that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for those in authority so that “our common life may be lived in peace and quiet, with a proper sense of God and of our responsibility to him for what we do with our lives” (1 Tim. 2:1-2, JBP), Paul grounds this instruction and practice by affirming that,
“In the sight of God our saviour this is undoubtedly the right thing to pray for; for his purpose is that all men should be saved and come to realise the truth. And that is, that there is only one God, and only one intermediary between God and men, Jesus Christ the man. He gave himself as a ransom for us all—an act of redemption which happened once, but which stands for all times as a witness to what he is.” (J1 Tim. 2:3-6, JBP)
In addition, those who bring the message of the cross bring a message that contains the power to be saved. Paul states in Rom. 1:16-17 that
“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. I see it as the very power of God working for the salvation of everyone who believes it, both Jew and Greek. I see in it God’s plan for imparting righteousness to men, a process begun and continued by their faith. For, as the scripture says: ‘The just shall live by faith’.” (JBP)
This is the Christ-centered event that is short-changed by the doctrines of total inability, limited atonement, and unconditional election. We acknowledge that the Calvinist holds that the salvation of the elect is accomplished in the death of Christ, but the full meaning and effective power and purpose of this event is not reflected in the limiting doctrines of Calvinism. The Calvinist’s theology of the cross is limited to the decision God made in eternity past as to who will benefit from the cross of Christ. But this is a deterministically driven and deterministically centered theology, whereas a biblical Christology has the cross as the place where salvation is made available and can be found. On Calvinism, one’s eternal destiny in found centered in the decision of God made in eternity past as to how he would treat each of us. Either he has decided to save us, in which case the cross serves its saving purpose, or he has decided to send us to hell, in which case the cross has no positive, saving efficacy or application to us.
Therefore, I submit that the Calvinist’s Christology is deficient because it fails to see that salvation is actually made available and can be found and obtained at the cross of Christ. Hence, when the cross of Christ is preached, salvation is really being offered there and can actually be found there. Faith is the response by which that salvation is appropriated to the individual. This is what it means to have a Christologically centered soteriology. There is a real existential presence of God’s desire to save in the preaching of the cross. The gospel message is “good news,” and thereby it is for the salvation of all who hear it. Hence, the salvific purpose of the cross has universal reach. This means that the salvific will and love of God is accessible to all at the cross and therefore intended for all because of the cross. Contrary to the Calvinist’s limiting doctrine of unconditional election, in the cross is found the saving work of God and therefore in the preaching of the cross all sinners have access to that salvation by faith (Jn. 3:14-18).
In conjunction with this public death of Christ on the cross which continues to contain a universal salvific purpose and power when proclaimed, the Bible everywhere presents faith as the only appropriate response to this work of God in Christ. The Bible also presents faith as a contingent response from the sinner. It is spoken of as involving the will and decision and as a possibility for everyone. It speaks of the possibility of faith because God makes it possible. The possibility issues from the cross to the sinner as the saving message that comes from God. When God commands or invites one to believe, it is presupposed that the sinner is able to respond. The cross does not veil a secret, hidden decree that predestined specific individuals to salvation. Rather, in the cross there issues forth the salvific will of God and therefore all who are confronted with the cross are confronted with God’s saving disposition, plans, and purposes for them. As such, a genuine response from any hearer of the gospel message is a possibility. That is the intent of God’s salvation via the cross.
What then is faith for the Calvinist? It is simply a predetermined effect caused by God in the elect. Then what purpose does faith serve? On Calvinism I can see none that accords with the biblical testimony. And it seems to make the calls to faith throughout the Bible to be at best a redundancy and at worst a mockery if faith is produced by God. A “faith” caused by God is meaningless in that the person has nothing to do with it. This renders the biblical truth that we are “saved by grace through faith” meaningless, for it reduces the phrase to “a salvation granted by God to the elect with the evidence of believing.” One is saved by the decision of God to save them, a salvation which Christ merely implements on the cross and which God causes to take effect in the elect only by causing them to believe. “Faith” is reduced simply to a “manifest evidence” that one might possibly be among the elect; that one may have been regenerated by God. William MacDonald is correct,
“It does not glorify the grace of God to predicate it [faith] more than the biblical revelation itself claims. Such ambiguity ultimately undermines the whole divine-human encounter.” 1
In light of God’s eternal decree, deterministic sovereignty, and unconditional election, man is totally removed from the picture as a personal being. Again, MacDonald is correct,
“To treat subjective faith (fiducia) as “a gift of God” demands the explication that God “believed” for you, as if your soul were nonexistent, and you were totally insignificant, over and beyond all your sinfulness.” 2
Calvinism presses the biblical truth of the sinful nature of man to the point of the annihilation of man as a responsive, personal being called upon by God to believe. Not only is this inconsistent with the definition of the gospel as “good news” and its proclamation as a command or invitation to come to Christ and be saved, but the very concept of what it means to be a person is swallowed up in insignificance. But does sin annihilate the acting personal self that God created in his own image? A biblical view of faith does not teach this extreme view of “total depravity” or “total inability.”
Given all that we have learned above, let’s examine several real-life case-studies to see how Calvinism distorts the biblical teaching on the nature of faith. We’ll look at Martin Luther, Phillip Ryken, and Harold Camping.
1 William G. MacDonald, “The Spirit of Grace” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 88.
2 Ibid. 88-89.
The Truth of the Gospel 