The problem begins with the salvation appeal itself. The Calvinist tells the unbeliever, “You must believe and repent,” but then explains that the unbeliever cannot believe, cannot repent, and cannot come to Christ unless God first regenerates him. The person is therefore commanded to do what, by the system’s own definition, he is incapable of doing unless God first performs a work in him. The command remains, but the ability to fulfill the command does not.
This creates a serious tension concerning responsibility. The sinner is held responsible for his unbelief, yet he is told that he cannot overcome that unbelief unless God first gives him the ability to believe. In the exchange above, Derek Murrell from Irresistible Truth initially resists the conclusion that the unbeliever’s condemnation has anything to do with what God did or did not do. Yet when pressed, he acknowledges that the person cannot repent without God, cannot believe without God’s work, and finally agrees with fundementalist Christian turned atheist, Douglas Letkeman’s conclusion:
“every single person in hell today is in hell today… because of what God didn’t do.” His answer? “Correct.”
This is where John Hendryx’s admission becomes particularly important.
Hendryx explains that theologians use “compatibilism” to reconcile God’s sovereignty with human responsibility, but he explicitly acknowledges that “compatibilism is a form of determinism” and is “no less deterministic than hard determinism.” The Calvinist answer, therefore, is not to deny that God determines human choices, but to argue that a person can still be morally responsible for a choice that God has determined him to make. In other words, compatibilism doesn’t solve the determinism problem by denying that human choices are determined; it attempts to reconcile determinism with human responsibility by insisting that a determined choice can still be considered the person’s responsible choice.
And that is precisely where the problem arises. If God determines that one person will believe and another will remain in unbelief—and the latter cannot believe unless God first regenerates him—then what does “responsibility” actually mean? The Calvinist can say the unbeliever willingly rejects Christ, but the deeper question remains: could he have done otherwise without God first giving him the ability to do otherwise? If the answer is no, then simply calling him “responsible” does not explain how responsibility works; it merely asserts it.
John MacArthur, however, shows why that distinction raises a profound problem. He argues that if God is the primary cause and humans are merely secondary causes moved by that primary cause, then the determinism ultimately extends to the secondary cause as well. God is the one who ultimately “decided,” “compelled,” and “coerced” the action. In other words, the human being remains the immediate or secondary cause of the action, but that secondary cause itself is also determined by the primary cause. God remains the ultimate determining cause behind both the action and the secondary cause through which that action occurs.
Put these pieces together, and the tension becomes difficult to escape.
Hendryx acknowledges that compatibilism is determinism.
MacArthur highlights the problem that arises when the primary cause determines the secondary cause.
And the salvation conversation puts that problem into practical terms. The sinner is commanded to believe and repent, yet is told that he cannot believe or repent unless God first regenerates him. If God must provide that ability before the sinner can respond, and God chooses to provide it to some while passing over others, then the one who is passed over remains unable to produce the very response God requires of him.
The issue, then, is not whether Calvinism uses the word “responsibility.” It clearly does. The real question is whether calling a person responsible resolves the problem of his inability. If the sinner cannot believe, cannot repent, and cannot come to Christ unless God first acts upon him, then the decisive difference between the one who believes and the one who remains in unbelief is ultimately the prior work—or lack of work—of God. The sinner may willingly reject Christ, but according to this system, he cannot will himself out of that condition unless God first gives him the ability to do so.
And that brings us back to the most striking moment in the conversation. The conclusion is essentially this:
if God has to do something in me in order for me not to go to hell, and He chooses not to do it, what could I possibly do about it?
When that implication is put directly to Derek Murrell, his answer is simply: “Correct.” At that point, the question is no longer whether man is called responsible. The question is whether the decisive difference between salvation and condemnation ultimately rests in the sinner’s response—or in God’s sovereign determination to give or withhold the ability to respond.
GOSPEL COALITION article summary
One-Paragraph Summary
The article defends the Reformed doctrine of double predestination/reprobation, arguing that God’s eternal decree includes both the unconditional election of some individuals to salvation and the passing over of others, who are ultimately condemned according to divine justice. It appeals particularly to Pharaoh and Romans 9, arguing that God actively hardened Pharaoh and raised him up to display His glory, and that Paul’s “vessels of mercy” and “vessels of wrath” describe God’s sovereign distinction between individuals. The article further argues that reprobation logically follows from unconditional election: if God unconditionally chooses some but not all for salvation, then the others are necessarily excluded from that saving choice. It distinguishes preterition, God’s withholding of saving grace, from predamnation, God’s determination to judge the non-elect according to justice. Although Reformed theology maintains an asymmetry between election and reprobation, the article nevertheless places both salvation and condemnation within God’s eternal sovereign decree rather than treating the damnation of the non-elect as merely something God foreknows or passively permits.
The article is a defense of the Augustinian/Reformed doctrine of reprobation, which teaches that God’s eternal decree concerns not only those whom He chooses to save, but also those whom He does not choose to save. In the author’s formulation, reprobation involves God eternally withholding saving grace from certain individuals and determining to judge them according to divine justice. The author therefore understands reprobation as more than God’s foreknowledge that certain people will reject Him; their exclusion from saving grace and ultimate condemnation fall within God’s sovereign eternal decree.
The article develops this position in three primary ways.
Scripture Teaches Reprobation
The author argues that Scripture directly supports reprobation, with Pharaoh and Romans 9 serving as the principal examples. In the Exodus account, the author rejects the interpretation that God hardened Pharaoh merely as a response to Pharaoh’s prior self-hardening. Instead, the article argues that God announced beforehand that He would harden Pharaoh and raised him up for the purpose of displaying His power and glory.
Romans 9 is presented as the clearest New Testament explanation of this principle. The author interprets Paul’s discussion of the “vessels of mercy” and “vessels of wrath” as teaching that God sovereignly distinguishes between individuals, preparing some for mercy and enduring others who are prepared for destruction. The purpose is ultimately God’s glory: His mercy and grace are displayed toward the elect while His wrath and power are displayed toward those destined for destruction.
Reprobation Logically Follows From Unconditional Election
This is one of the article’s most important arguments.
If salvation depends upon God’s unconditional choice of particular individuals, and God does not choose everyone, then there must necessarily be individuals whom God does not choose for salvation.
The author therefore argues that unconditional election necessarily entails reprobation. Simply calling the position “single predestination”—God predestines some to salvation but does not predestine anyone to condemnation—does not resolve the problem. According to the article, such a view leaves the destiny of the non-elect outside God’s purposeful decree, which the author considers inconsistent with God’s comprehensive sovereignty.
The argument is therefore:
Unconditional election → some are chosen → others are not chosen →
their exclusion from saving grace falls within God’s sovereign decree.
God’s sovereignty extends over salvation and human choices
The article’s argument does not stop with election. It presents God’s sovereignty as extending over everything that comes to pass, including human choices. Consequently, the distinction between those who believe and those who reject Christ ultimately falls under God’s sovereign will.
The doctrine is also presented as spiritually beneficial because it humbles humanity. Rather than viewing humanity as the ultimate reference point, believers are reminded that human beings exist for God’s glory and that God’s purposes, rather than human preferences, determine reality.
The Two Aspects of Reprobation
The article makes an important distinction between two aspects of reprobation:
Preterition — the negative aspect: God eternally chooses not to extend saving grace to particular individuals. The article says this decision is not based on foreseen works, merit, or sin, but on God’s sovereign will.
Predamnation — the positive aspect: God eternally determines to deal with those individuals according to divine justice. Reformed theologians disagree over whether this decree itself is conditioned upon foreseen or actual sin, but the article maintains that the ultimate condemnation of these individuals is included within God’s sovereign purpose.
The article goes further and states that the Augustinian/Reformed tradition agrees that God predestines certain individuals to be justly punished, and that at least some aspect of this reprobation is not based on foreseen sin but on God’s good pleasure, with the purpose of magnifying His justice and grace.
Is This Double Predestination?
In substance, yes. The article is defending a form of double predestination, although it insists that election and reprobation are not perfectly symmetrical. The distinction can be summarized this way:
The author specifically identifies the “asymmetry between election and reprobation” as an important qualification within Reformed theology. Thus, the article is not merely saying that God permits some people to reject Him. Its position is substantially stronger:
God’s eternal decree establishes both who will receive saving grace and who will be passed over, with the non-elect ultimately being condemned according to divine justice.
And the author’s fundamental argument is that this conclusion follows from the combination of unconditional election, God’s exhaustive sovereignty, and the author’s interpretation of passages such as Pharaoh and Romans 9.
R.C. Sproul’s Statement on Predestination (from Chosen by God):
“What predestination means, in its most elementary form, is that our final destination, heaven or hell, is decided by God not only before we get there, but before we are even born. It teaches that our ultimate destiny is in the hands of God. Another way of saying it is this: From all eternity, before we ever live, God decided to save some members of the human race and to let the rest of the human race perish. God made a choice–he chose some individuals to be saved unto everlasting blessedness in heaven and others he chose to pass over, to allow them to follow the consequences of their sins into eternal torment in hell.” (Chosen By God, p.22, emphasis mine)
This is double predestination in practice, even if Sproul calls the active-positive version for reprobation a caricature.
If the elect cannot fail to be saved,
and the reprobate cannot be saved because God withholds the only grace capable of producing faith,
then what practical difference remains between active reprobation and passive reprobation?
Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who works when, and where, and how He pleases: so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.
– Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 10.3
“Holy Spirit can save an infant by changing his heart, giving grace, and applying the merit of Christ to him. The Westminster divines certainly believed that babies can be saved. They did not teach that all infants are necessarily saved; rather, they taught that only an undetermined number of elect infants are saved. Obviously, an elect infant is going to be saved, and any saved infant is elect, but the divines did not speculate on which infants those would be.”
– R.C. Sproul, Truths We Confess: A Systematic Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith (Sanford, FL: Reformation Trust, 2019), 321.
Sproul conforms his support for the ideas in the WCF:
One of the most important confessions of faith ever penned, particularly in the English-speaking world, is the Westminster Confession of Faith. By the confession’s own statements, no confession written by uninspired authors is to be taken as having supreme authority over the believer. Confessions cannot bind the conscience in the manner that the Word of God can and does. At the same time, though human confessions and creeds are penned by fallible people without the benefit of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the profound level of theological and biblical precision manifest in the Westminster Confession of Faith is awe-inspiring. (Ibid., xvii.)
[….]
The Westminster Confession is the most precise and accurate summary of the content of biblical Christianity ever set forth in a creedal form. Creeds such as the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Scots Confession should be highly regarded, but no historic confession surpasses in eloquence, grandeur, and theological accuracy the Westminster Confession of Faith. (Ibid., xix)
Critiquing the matter via CHAT:
The Internal Tension
Sproul writes:
“The Westminster divines certainly believed that babies can be saved. They did not teach that all infants are necessarily saved; rather, they taught that only an undetermined number of elect infants are saved.”
The immediate question is:
If only elect infants are saved, what happens to non-elect infants?
Historically, Westminster does not explicitly answer that question. Critics argue that the silence is revealing. If the Confession intended to teach universal infant salvation, it could have said:
“All infants dying in infancy are saved.”
Instead it says: “Elect infants.” Sproul defends that wording rather than correcting it.
Critique #1: Election Becomes the Ultimate Divider
Sproul affirms:
unconditional election,
total inability,
monergistic regeneration,
and reprobation.
Therefore, infant salvation cannot be based upon:
personal faith,
conscious belief,
repentance,
or moral innocence.
It must ultimately rest on election.
Critics respond:
If election alone determines which infants are saved, then election alone determines which infants are not saved.
Thus the question becomes: Why would God elect some infants and not others?Sproul never provides a clear answer.
Critique #2: Original Guilt Creates the Problem
Sproul consistently taught:
Adam’s guilt is imputed to humanity,
infants are fallen,
infants need Christ’s grace.
Critics agree infants need grace but ask:
Does inherited guilt alone make an infant deserving of eternal punishment?
Many opponents argue Scripture consistently ties judgment to:
knowledge,
personal rebellion,
actual transgression.
Examples often cited:
Deuteronomy 1:39
Isaiah 7:15-16
Jonah 4:11
Romans 4:15
The criticism is:
Sproul imports Augustine’s doctrine of inherited guilt and then must wrestle with implications Augustine himself embraced.
Critique #3: The Moral Character of God
This is probably the most emotionally and philosophically powerful objection.
If:
an infant never consciously sins,
never rejects God,
never suppresses truth,
never commits personal acts of rebellion,
Yet could still be damned, Critics ask:
What meaningful sense of justice remains?
This is where many critics invoke the same concern raised by Juncker regarding determinism:
If moral categories are detached from personal responsibility, words like justice become difficult to understand.
FULLER QUOTE:
“If determinism is true then either God is evil and the author of evil or all talk of good and evil, of praise and blame, of moral responsibility, and of justice is meaningless and incomprehensible with reference to God. That is, if God can cause or determine evil and yet remain good, and if God can punish those who do exactly and only what He has meticulously caused and determined them to do and yet remain just, then we have no idea who God is or what He might or might not do or what Scripture could possibly mean when it calls Him ‘good’ and ‘just.'”
Eternal punishment without personal rebellion appears inconsistent with ordinary moral reasoning and the biblical portrayal of God’s fairness.
Critique #4: Westminster Creates an Unnecessary Problem
Many critics argue Westminster itself created the issue. The Confession says:
“Elect infants.”
Critics ask why not simply say:
“Infants dying in infancy are saved through Christ”?
Mohler, Warfield, and Spurgeon essentially move in that direction. Sproul, however, insists the Westminster divines intentionally did not teach universal infant salvation. Critics argue:
That commitment to confessional precision ends up preserving a theological possibility that Scripture never explicitly teaches.
Critique #5: Sproul’s Loyalty to Westminster
This critique becomes stronger when paired with Sproul’s own statements:
“The Westminster Confession is the most precise and accurate summary of the content of biblical Christianity ever set forth in a creedal form.”
and
“One of the most important confessions of faith ever penned…”
Because Sproul viewed Westminster so highly, critics argue he was reluctant to depart from its language regarding elect infants even when later Reformed theologians moved toward affirming universal infant salvation.
The Strongest One-Sentence Critique
The strongest critique is probably this:
By affirming unconditional election, inherited guilt, and Westminster’s doctrine of “elect infants,” Sproul leaves open the possibility that some infants are not elect and therefore not saved, a conclusion many critics believe is inconsistent with both the justice and goodness of God as revealed in Scripture.
Exhaustive Determinism:
Sproul affirms that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass (echoing Westminster):
He knows all things that will happen because he ordains everything that does happen. This is crucial to our understanding of God’s omniscience. He does not know what will happen by virtue of exceedingly good guesswork about future events. He knows it with certainty because he has decreed it.
The Westminster Confession avers: “God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. . . .”
This statement refers to God’s eternal and immutable decretive will. It applies to everything that happens. Does this mean that everything that happens is the will of God? Yes. Augustine qualified this answer by adding the words, “in a certain sense.” That is, God ordains “in some sense” everything that happens. Nothing that takes place is beyond the scope of his sovereign will. The movement of every molecule, the actions of every plant, the falling of every star, the choices of every volitional creature, all of these are subject to his sovereign will. No maverick molecules run loose in the universe, beyond the control of the Creator. If one such molecule existed, it could be the critical fly in the eternal ointment. As one grain of sand in the kidney of Oliver Cromwell changed the course of English history, so one maverick molecule could destroy every promise God has ever made about the outcome of history.
— What Is Reformed Theology, p. 172
Sproul’s view functionally equivalent to Calvin’s broader decretive will, even if he rejects “equal ultimacy” (symmetrical positive-positive reprobation where God actively works sin in the reprobate the same way He works faith in the elect). Sproul’s inconsistency is “too embarrassed to follow Calvinism to its logical extreme” and pleading ignorance/mystery on hard questions (e.g., the fall of Adam/Eve).
Calvin (Institutes 3.21.5): Explicitly symmetric language —
“some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation… created for one or the other of these ends.”
Sproul: Rejects the symmetrical mode (equal ultimacy / positive-positive) as sub-Calvinist or a caricature that makes God the author of sin. He prefers asymmetric (positive election + negative reprobation/preterition: God passes over the non-elect, leaving them in their sin). Yet critics [like myself] argue this is rhetorical softening — because Sproul still affirms:
God’s decree covers all events.
Reprobation is part of the eternal decree before creation.
The non-elect are chosen to be passed over before birth.
Sproul’s distinctions, while rhetorically softer than Calvin’s, do not ultimately escape the force of double predestination or exhaustive determinism.
… The issue here seems to be how one defines “ordains” or “foreordains.” Calvinists I debate on the internet consistently argue that “ordain” means to decree. I ask them, “Did God decree the Holocaust?” “Did God decree the killing fields of Cambodia?” “Did God decree every act of rape, torture and murder that has ever taken place?” And they say yes! Unbelievable.
What about Calvin on this issue? You deny he was supralapsarian, claiming God’s positive-positive, double-predestination, but excerpts from his writings strongly suggest that was his position. Calvin was quite straightforward on saying God decreed the Fall, writing:
…whence does it happen that Adam’s fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God?…The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess. Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created him, and consequently foreknew because he so ordained by his decree…God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his descendants, but also meted it out in accordance with his own decision.” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.23.7)
That seems to go beyond mere “permission.” He also wrote:
The predestination by which God adopts some to the hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no man who would be thought pious ventures simply to deny….By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death (Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.21.5).
We also read:
From this it is easy to conclude how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be not by [God’s] will, but merely by his permission. Of course, so far as they are evils, which men perpetrate with their evil mind, as I shall show in greater detail shortly, I admit that they are not pleasing to God. But it is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely [= idly] permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing but the author of them…Who does not tremble at these judgments with which God works in the hearts of even the wicked whatever He will, rewarding them nonetheless according to desert. Again, it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their will just as he will, whether to good for his mercy’s sake, or to evil according to their merits.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, 177)
Other famous Calvinists say, for example,
“The Sovereignty of God over all, and his independency, clearly shew, that whatever is done in time is according to his decrees in eternity.” (John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, p. 173)
Or
“As a builder draws his plan before he begins to build, so the great Architect predestined everything before a single creature was called into existence.” (Arthur Pink, The Doctrines of Election and Justification, p.9)
Or
“Surely if God had not willed the fall, He could, and no doubt would, have prevented it; but he did not prevent it: ergo, He willed it. And if He willed it, He certainly decreed it.” (Jerome Zanchius, The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination, p. 88)
So, by claiming supralapsarianism is “anti-Calvinism,” you are dismissing not only prominent Calvinists from the past, but also Calvin himself. …
[T]heological compatibilists [RPT: like Grudem, Sproul, MacArthur, and the like] often make claims and engage in rhetoric that naturally lead people to conclude that God loves them and desires their salvation in ways that are surely misleading to all but those trained in the subtleties of Reformed rhetoric. . . . Such language loses all meaning, not to mention all rhetorical force, when we remember that on compatibilist premises God could determine the impenitent to freely repent, but has chosen instead to determine things in such a way that they freely persist in their sins.
Why No Classical Theist – Let Alone Orthodox Christian – Should Ever Be a Compatibilist (PDF)
God’s refusal to determine the repentance of sinners when it is within his power to do so can be called nothing other than immoral. Damning certain people by withholding something freely given to others is not glorious.
Sproul and Calvin say it is indeed a horrible decree. Sproul’s honesty at this point would be refreshing if his conclusions weren’t so disturbing:
“The nasty problem for the Calvinist [is] . . . . If God can and does choose to insure the salvation of some, why then does he not insure the salvation of all? . . . The only answer I can give to this question is that I don’t know. . . . One thing I do know. If it pleases God to save some and not all, there is nothing wrong with that.” On the contrary, it is the very definition of wrong.” (Fuller Quote)
Here is Sproul’s chapter 58 from his book, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, I will add some emphasis:
PREDESTINATION AND REPROBATION
Every coin has a flip side. There is also a flip side to the doctrine of election. Election refers to only one aspect of the broader question of predestination. The other side of the coin is the question of reprobation.
God declared that He loved Jacob but hated Esau. How are we to understand this reference to divine hatred?
Predestination is double. The only way to avoid the doctrine of double predestination is to either affirm that God predestinates everybody to election or that He predestinates no one to either election or reprobation.
Since the Bible clearly teaches predestination to election and denies universal salvation, we must conclude that predestination is double. It includes both election and reprobation. Double predestination is unavoidable if we take Scripture seriously. What is crucial, however, is how double predestination is understood.
Some have viewed double predestination as a matter of equal causation, where God is equally responsible for causing the reprobate not to believe as He is for causing the elect to believe. We call this a positive-positive view of predestination.
The positive-positive view of predestination teaches that God positively and actively intervenes in the lives of the elect to work grace in their hearts and bring them to faith. Likewise, in the case of the reprobates, He works evil in the hearts of the reprobate and actively prevents them from coming to faith. This view has often been called “hyper-Calvinism” because it goes beyond the view of Calvin, Luther, and the other Reformers.
The Reformed view of double predestination follows a positive-negative schema. In the case of the elect, God intervenes to positively and actively work grace in their souls and bring them to saving faith. He unilaterally regenerates the elect and insures their salvation. In the case of the reprobate He does not work evil in them or prevent them from coming to faith. Rather, He passes over them, leaving them to their own sinful devices. In this view there is no symmetry of divine action. God’s activity is asymmetrical between the elect and the reprobate. There is, however, a kind of equal ultimacy. The reprobate, who are passed over by God, are ultimately doomed, and their damnation is as certain and sure as the ultimate salvation of the elect.
The problem is linked to biblical statements such as those regarding God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. That the Bible says God hardened Pharaoh’s heart is beyond dispute. The question remains, how did God harden Pharaoh? Luther argued for a passive rather than an active hardening. That is, God did not create fresh evil in Pharaoh’s heart. There was already enough evil present in Pharaoh’s heart to incline him to resist the will of God at every turn. All God ever has to do to harden anybody is to remove His restraining grace from them and give them over to their own evil impulses. This is precisely what God does to the damned in hell. He abandons them to their own wickedness.
In what sense did God “hate” Esau? Two different explanations are offered to solve this problem. The first explains it by defining hate not as a negative passion directed toward Esau but as simply the absence of redemptive love. That God “loved” Jacob simply means that He made Jacob the recipient of His unmerited grace. He gave Jacob a benefit that Jacob did not deserve. Esau did not receive the same benefit and in that sense was hated by God.
The first explanation sounds a bit like special pleading to get God off the hook for hating somebody. The second explanation gives more strength to the word hate. It says simply that God did in fact hate Esau. Esau was odious in the sight of God. There was nothing in Esau for God to love.
Esau was a vessel fit for destruction and altogether worthy of God’s wrath and holy hatred. Let the reader decide.
Summary
Predestination is double; it has two sides to it.
Some teach that God is equally responsible for election and reprobation. This is characteristic of hyper-Calvinism.
The Reformed view of double predestination reflects a positive-negative schema.
God passively, not actively, hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
God hated Esau in the sense of failing to give him a blessing of grace or in the sense of abhorring him as a vessel fit for destruction.
In other words, as The Encyclopedia of The Reformed Faith (page 144), and later the The Westminster Handbook to Reformed Theology (page 87) clearly says:
The Reformed approach to divine freedom is nowhere more apparent than in the doctrine of the eternal decrees: God freely wills the existence and preservation of the created order and freely determines the eternal destiny of all creatures, solely on the ground of God’s goodness and solely for the sake of God’s ultimate glory. In creation and providence, God encounters no barriers to the exercise of God’s will, and in the work of redemption God acts utterly graciously, apart from any merit belonging to the creature.
[….]
Reformed theology has followed an Augustinian paradigm in its understanding of human freedom…
Donald K. McKim and David F. Wright, eds., Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 144,146.
JOHN 6:44
Steve Lemke
R. C. Sproul argued at great length that John 6:44 (“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” [HCSB]) does not refer merely to the necessity that God “woo or entice men to Christ,” such that humans can “resist this wooing” and “refuse the enticement.”11 In philosophical language, Sproul said, this wooing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for salvation “because the wooing does not, in fact, guarantee that we will come to Christ.”12 Sproul stated that such an interpretation is “incorrect” and “does violence to the text of Scripture.”13
Instead, Sproul insists, the term “draw” is “a much more forceful concept than to woo” and means “to compel by irresistible superiority.”14 However, in discussing irresistible grace, Sproul tells of a student who, hearing a lecture on predestination by John Gerstner, rejected it. When Gerstner asked the student how he defined Calvinism, the student described it as the perspective that “God forces some people to choose Christ and prevents other people from choosing Christ.” Gerstner then said, “If that is what a Calvinist is, then you can be sure that I am not a Calvinist either.”15What is the difference between compelling “by irresistible superiority” and “forcing” people to do something? Sproul likewise chastised a Presbyterian seminary president for rejecting the Calvinist doctrine that “God brings some people, kicking and screaming against their wills, into the kingdom.” Sproul described this Presbyterian theologian’s view as “a gross misconception of his own church’s theology,” as a “caricature,” and “as far away from Calvinism as one could possibly get.”16 So which way is it? If God compels people with “irresistible superiority,” in what way is it inaccurate to say that God forces people to choose Christ? The Synod of Dort insisted that such attempts at moral persuasion of unsaved persons was wasted time. The irresistibility of God’s grace (and not merely the use of strong moral persuasion) was precisely what the Synod of Dort rejected and the Remonstrants affirmed. While the Remonstrants affirmed that the compelling grace of God persuades the lost to receive Christ as Lord and Savior, the Synod of Dort insisted that this was not going far enough. Note their explicit denial that a person can “resist” God. The language used in the Synod of Dort describes God’s omnipotence as being such that God can “potently and infallibly bend man’s will to faith and conversion.”17
Bending the will of a fallible being by an omnipotent Being powerfully and unfailingly is not merely sweet persuasion. It is forcing one to change one’s mind against one’s will. Calvinists often describe their position as monergism as opposed to synergism. In monergism, God works entirely alone, apart from any human role.18
11. Sproul, Chosen by God, 69–70 (see chap. 1, n. 106). 12. Sproul, 69. 13. Sproul, 69. 14. Sproul, 69. 15. Sproul, 122. 16. Sproul, 122. 17. Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 4:143 (III–IV, Rejection of Errors, par. 8).
John Wagner’s Letter to Sproul
… Let me deal next with the issue of your concept and use of the Greek word helkō, commonly translated “draws” in John 6:44. Even if you reject everything else I write here, please accept this one. You really did not get this right. And Calvinists who have read CBG have passed on this incorrect information. You quoted Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, and claim because that word means “drag” or “compel” in a physical context such as Acts 16:19 and James 2:6, that therefore it means “drag” or “compel” in the spiritual context of John 6:44.
The evidence indicates it doesn’t. I assume you are aware that a Greek word can have more than one meaning. I looked at Kittel and I see for helkō in regard to John (i.e. 6:44, 12:32) it means, “a beneficent ‘drawing of God…of drawing to oneself in love. This usage is distinctively developed by Jn., perhaps with some influence of Gnosticism. Force or magic may be discounted, but not the supernatural element.” The abridged version of Kittel says, “There is no thought here of force or magic. The term figuratively expresses the supernatural power of the love of God or Christ which goes out to all (12:32) but without which no one can come.”
Did you get that? Both summaries dismiss force, which would be consistent with “drag” or “compel” (though I agree that would be accurate when the word is used in a physical context). Just wondering why you didn’t mention that! Let’s put your position to rest with more citations:
BDAG: has helkō in John 6:44 as “draw, attract.”
Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament by William Mounce says helkō means “to draw mentally and morally, John 6:44; 12:32.”
The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible by Calvinist Spiro Zodhiates: “Helko is used of Jesus on the cross drawing by love, not force” (Jn. 6:44; 12:32).
A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament by Ethelbert W. Bullinger, p. 235: Helko means “to draw, esp. implying a certain attraction mentally or morally; also to draw to a certain point.” This source also mentions surō as a word more consistent with how Calvinists interpret helkō. Surō generally implies a violent dragging. This source defines it as “to draw, drag or trail along as a net; esp. with the notion of force and sometimes with violence.”
The Renaissance New Testament by Randolph Yeager, says about helkō:
It does not necessarily involve coercion, though it does involve persuasion and motivation–John 6:44; 12:32…. [Helkō] does not imply coercion in the two places where it is applied to the elect [the two just-mentioned verses]. Swords, fish nets and political prisoners (John 18:10; 21:6, 11: Acts 16:19) may resist, but the element of resistance is not implicit in the word itself….
Greek and English Lexicon of the New Testament by Edward Robinson, say helkō means “to draw by a moral influence, John 6:44, 12:32.”
Please notice that none of these sources indicate that helkō means drag or compel in John 6:44. And your version is especially problematic for John 12:32. Do you believe God drags all men to himself? So it’s kind of funny that the Arminian professor you debated didn’t need to cite some “obscure Greek poet.” The info is clear in many lexicons and similar sources. And by the way, contrary to what you experienced, in the formal 1999 debate I was in against a Calvinist pastor, he repeated your argument on helkō and I nailed him on this point.
And that ties into the issue of the nature of unsaved man. You write, “If a person who is still in the flesh, who is not reborn by the power of the Holy Spirit, can incline or dispose himself to Christ, what good is rebirth?” This is another strawman. Classical Arminians do not believe man can “incline or dispose himself ” all by himself. Arminius wrote strongly of man being depraved and dead and that man needs the heavy convicting and drawing of the Holy Spirit. However, he completely rejected irresistible grace, the biggest oxymoron I can think of. And as for rebirth, that comes after faith, not before.
You slightly acknowledge the idea of prevenient grace and then ask “If so, where” does the Bible teach this concept? Did you even make any effort toward finding an answer for this? Well, John 6:44, which I have proven is not about “dragging,” is one. Furthermore, let’s recall John 16:8, saying that the paraclete “will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment in regard to sin because men do not believe in me.”
The Greek for “convict” is elenchō, and has the connotation of a trial attorney making a legal and moral argument to a jury. In this case, the Holy Spirit conducts that function in the human heart—but not in irresistible manner. Other verses include John 1:9: “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.” Also, John 12:32, in which Christ says, “When I am lifted up from the earth. I will draw (helkō) all men to myself.” But this is also not irresistible.
Describing prevenient grace, Thomas C. Oden writes:
Prevenient grace antecedes human responsiveness so as to prepare the soul for the effective hearing of the redeeming Word. This preceding grace draws persons closer to God, lessens their blindness to divine remedies, strengthens their will to accept revealed truth, and enables repentance. Only when sinners are assisted by prevenient grace can they begin to yield their hearts to cooperation with subsequent forms of grace….
Does scripture teach the concept of prevenient grace? There is no one passage that lays out a systematic definition of it, however, the concept becomes apparent throughout the overall tenor of scripture. Here are some passages that refer to the different aspects of prevenient grace:
Prevenient Grace Draws:
John 6:44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.
John 12:32 And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself. Prevenient Grace is Universal:
Titus 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. John 1:9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
John 16:7-8 But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment:
Romans 1:18-19 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
Prevenient Grace Convicts the Non-Believer:
Acts 16:14 One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.
Acts 16:29-30 The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
Prevenient Grace Works in Combination with the Hearing of the Word:
Acts 2:37 When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
Romans 10:17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
Prevenient Grace is Given Generously:
Romans 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?
Romans 2:4 Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?
Acts 17:26-27 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
Prevenient Grace Can be Rejected:
Matt. 23:37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.
John 5:34,39,40 Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved…You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
Acts 7:51 You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!
Heb 4:2 For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.
Heb 10:29 How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
Prevenient Grace Results in Saving Grace when it is Accepted:
Ephesians 5:14 For it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Ephesians 2:8-9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
There are actually three very good books on this issue of prevenient grace: The Transforming Power of Grace by Thomas C. Oden, Prevenient Grace by W. Brian Shelton, and Streams of Mercy by J. Gregory Crofford. …
BTW, I prefer pastor Rogers understanding vs a straight Arminian:
Within the Non-Calvinist camp, there are at least two nuanced views on how God allows sinners to respond in faith. The first view is the Arminian view — which says that God’s work of grace (prevenient grace) for all people is needed to enable any sinner to freely choose to respond in faith to the Gospel message. The second view is the Provisionist View — which says that the Gospel message itself [see more below] is God’s work of grace so that when it is preached to all people, any sinner can freely choose to respond in faith. The proclamation of the Gospel is powerfully sufficient enough to bring salvation to those who will believe. While the Arminian and the Provisionist each have a different take on why all humans can respond to God’s offer, these two views both affirm the importance of God’s initiative of grace to invite all sinners to salvation. (from the book Grace For All: Understanding God’s Plan of Salvation).
— Michael R. Cariño
The “More Below”
Grace Enablements
Includes but are not limited to: God’s salvific love for all (John 3:16), God’s manifestation of his power so that all may know he is the Sovereign (Isa 45:21–22) and Creator (Rom 1:18–20), which assures that everyone has opportunity to know about him. Christ paying for all sins (John 1:29), conviction of the Holy Spirit (John 16:7–11), working of the Holy Spirit (Heb 6:1–6), enlightening of the Son (John 1:9), God’s teaching (John 6:45), God opening minds and hearts (Luke 24:45; Acts 16:14; 26:17–18;), and the power of the gospel (Rom 1:16), without such redemptive grace, no one seeks or comes to God (Rom 3:11).
Because of these gracious provisions and workings of God, man can choose to seek and find God (Jer 29:13; Acts 17:11–12). Moreover, no one can come to God without God calling (Acts 2:39), drawing (John 6:44), and that God is drawing all individuals (John 12:32). The same Greek word for draw, helkuō, is used in both verses. “About 115 passages condition salvation on believing alone, and about 35 simply on faith.” Other grace enablements may include providential workings in and through other people, situations, and timing or circumstances that are a part of grace to provide an opportunity for every individual to choose to follow Christ.
These are grace enablements in at least three ways; first, they are provided by God’s grace rather than deserved by mankind; second, the necessary components for each and every individual to have a genuine opportunity to believe unto salvation are provided or restored by God; third, they are provided by God without respect to whether the individual will believe or reject, which response God knew in eternity past.
The offer of the gospel is unconditional, but God sovereignly determined to condition the reception of the offer upon grace-enabled faith; therefore, faith is not reflective of a work or virtue of man, but of God’s sovereign plan of salvation by grace through faith (Eph 2:8). This indicates faith is the means to being regenerated and saved, not the reason for being saved. This truth of Scripture does not imply God is held captive to the choice of man, but rather it demonstrates God in eternity coextensively determined to create man with otherwise choice and provide a genuine offer of salvation, which can be accepted by grace-enabled faith or rejected. Additionally, to fulfill this plan, God is not obligated to disseminate the gospel to people he knows have rejected the light he has given them (Rom 1:18–23) and will also reject the gospel; although he may still send the gospel to them.
Sproul continues his thinking is an audio message I have audio of here. In it he says:
Augustine said, I still, in my fallenness, have the ability to choose what I want, but in my heart there’s no desire for God. I have lost any desire for the things of God. If I’m left to myself, the desires of my heart are only wicked continuously. My heart and my soul are dead to the things of God.
I can listen to preaching, I can hear hymns, I can see — I can do all those things and see other people weeping and in ecstasy and all moved by all kinds of religious overtones and consideration.
It leaves me cold.
My heart has calluses on it. It’s recalcitrant.
My neck is stiff.
I’m not moved by anything that has anything to do with God. That’s our natural state. The Bible says that we are dead to the things of God in our fallen condition. Original sin deadens the soul to the things of God.
God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth should not perish, but have everlasting life. And I have people quote that to me, to say man is not fallen to such a degree that he’s lost his power to choose Christ, because that verse says that whosoever believeth will not perish, but have everlasting life.
Now, what does that verse teach us about the extent of the fall of man? Absolutely nothing. It doesn’t say who will believe in Christ. All it says is, if you do A, if you believe, you will not perish, and you will have everlasting — you will live forever.
But the question still is left, Why does one person believe and another person not believe?
Augustine said, Now, you’re dead in your sins and trespasses. You don’t have any desire for Christ, and the only way you will ever choose Christ is if God melts your heart, if God softens that stone-cold, recalcitrant heart, if God the Holy Spirit rapes your soul and puts in you a desire for Christ.
That’s what has to happen.
According to Augustine.
And many try to do away with this control of God through what is called “compatibilism”, but as MacArthur notes, this is fictitious in the end:
In order to understand this better theologians have come up with the term “compatibilism” to describe the concurrence of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. Compatibilism is a form of determinism, and it should be noted that this position is no less deterministic than hard determinism.
John Hendryx (John Hendryx is the creator and editor of Monergism . com)
And then this is John MacArthur:
So free will trumps evil on God’s value scale, so God had to allow for the possibility of evil in order to protect the more highly prized autonomy; and He had to protect autonomy to protect Himself from this bad press, being responsible for evil. Humans then must have self-determination, freedom to act. If God acted as the primary cause and humans only as a secondary cause moved by the primary cause, then God being the primary cause is responsible; and people are not free, and therefore God decided and God compelled and God coerced, and God actually overturned human will. Then God is responsible for all the evil and all the divine judgment and the determination of eternal punishment. This is a God that some people just can’t live with; they’ve got to get Him off the hook.
This passage is John MacArthur directly describing (and strongly rejecting) the popular “free will defense” theodicy. He uses it to contrast with his own high Calvinist / compatibilist view of God’s sovereignty.
Some AI convo:
Yes. If we define determinism as:
Every human choice is ultimately rendered certain by God’s decree and providential causation, such that no person could ultimately do otherwise than what God ordained,
then John MacArthur is unquestionably on the deterministic side of the spectrum.
The important thing is that MacArthur would almost certainly reject the label “fatalist”, and he would likely prefer “compatibilist” or “Reformed”, but philosophically speaking, compatibilism is a species of determinism. Hendryx is correct on that point.
The key question is:
Does MacArthur believe humans possess libertarian freedom (the ability to choose A or not-A under identical circumstances)?
The answer is no.
The MacArthur Quote You Posted
The fascinating thing about that quotation is that MacArthur is not denying determinism.
He is describing what he believes his opponents fear determinism entails.
Notice the structure:
“If God acted as the primary cause…“
“If God compelled…“
“If God actually overturned human will…“
“Then God is responsible…“
MacArthur is setting up the objection.
The question becomes:
Does MacArthur believe God does these things?
Elsewhere he clearly teaches:
Total inability
Unconditional election
Irresistible grace
Monergistic regeneration
God’s exhaustive sovereignty
Those doctrines require that God determine who will believe.
Compare MacArthur to Sproul
Sproul says:
“The only way you will ever choose Christ is if God melts your heart.”
Then he quotes Augustine:
“God the Holy Spirit rapes your soul and puts in you a desire for Christ.”
Sproul is being more explicit.
MacArthur teaches the same monergistic regeneration, but usually with softer language.
Both affirm:
Fallen man cannot come.
God must first regenerate.
Regeneration guarantees faith.
Those not regenerated remain unable.
That is deterministic in the relevant philosophical sense.
The Real Tell: MacArthur on Election
MacArthur repeatedly teaches:
God chose the elect before creation.
The elect will certainly come.
The non-elect will not come.
Faith itself is a gift from God.
Once those propositions are accepted, the outcome is fixed.
That is why Hendryx says:
“Compatibilism is a form of determinism.”
Because the certainty of the outcome remains intact.
The Important Distinction
A lot of Calvinists hear:
“determinism”
and immediately think:
“atheistic hard determinism.”
But philosophers don’t define determinism that way.
Determinism simply means:
Given the causes and conditions, only one outcome is possible.
MacArthur’s theology appears to satisfy that definition.
Why Your Argument Finds Tension Here
What’s interesting is that the quotation you cited almost sounds like MacArthur is describing your objection:
If God is the primary cause and humans are merely secondary causes moved by Him, then God becomes responsible.
The difficulty is that Calvin, Sproul, Piper, and many Reformed theologians frequently describe God as:
determining wills,
inclining hearts,
ordaining evil events,
governing every detail,
and ensuring outcomes.
So critics ask:
If God determines the desires, determines the will, determines the outcome, and determines who receives regenerating grace, how is He not functioning as the primary determining cause?
That is the exact issue your series has been exploring.
In Short
If by determinism you mean:
Human choices are rendered certain by God’s eternal decree and providential governance, with no ultimate ability to do otherwise,
then:
Calvin = Determinist
Edwards = Determinist
Sproul = Determinist
Piper = Determinist
MacArthur = Determinist
Hendryx explicitly admits compatibilism is determinism
The real debate is not whether these men are deterministic.
The real debate is whether compatibilist determinism can preserve meaningful moral responsibility, justice, and divine goodness.
That’s where the battle shifts from historical theology into philosophy.
This video is long, but has turned into one of my favorites!
Calvinist’s Fatal Flaw: Guilty Babies
Dr. Leighton Flowers plays a clip from Jeremiah Notier, aka The Apologetic Dog, in which he accuses Dr. Flowers of being a “Pelagian” because I do not affirm the concept that all babies are born guilty and deserving of Hell.
GOSPEL COALITION article summary
One-Paragraph Summary
The article defends the Reformed doctrine of double predestination/reprobation, arguing that God’s eternal decree includes both the unconditional election of some individuals to salvation and the passing over of others, who are ultimately condemned according to divine justice. It appeals particularly to Pharaoh and Romans 9, arguing that God actively hardened Pharaoh and raised him up to display His glory, and that Paul’s “vessels of mercy” and “vessels of wrath” describe God’s sovereign distinction between individuals. The article further argues that reprobation logically follows from unconditional election: if God unconditionally chooses some but not all for salvation, then the others are necessarily excluded from that saving choice. It distinguishes preterition, God’s withholding of saving grace, from predamnation, God’s determination to judge the non-elect according to justice. Although Reformed theology maintains an asymmetry between election and reprobation, the article nevertheless places both salvation and condemnation within God’s eternal sovereign decree rather than treating the damnation of the non-elect as merely something God foreknows or passively permits.
The article is a defense of the Augustinian/Reformed doctrine of reprobation, which teaches that God’s eternal decree concerns not only those whom He chooses to save, but also those whom He does not choose to save. In the author’s formulation, reprobation involves God eternally withholding saving grace from certain individuals and determining to judge them according to divine justice. The author therefore understands reprobation as more than God’s foreknowledge that certain people will reject Him; their exclusion from saving grace and ultimate condemnation fall within God’s sovereign eternal decree.
The article develops this position in three primary ways.
Scripture Teaches Reprobation
The author argues that Scripture directly supports reprobation, with Pharaoh and Romans 9 serving as the principal examples. In the Exodus account, the author rejects the interpretation that God hardened Pharaoh merely as a response to Pharaoh’s prior self-hardening. Instead, the article argues that God announced beforehand that He would harden Pharaoh and raised him up for the purpose of displaying His power and glory.
Romans 9 is presented as the clearest New Testament explanation of this principle. The author interprets Paul’s discussion of the “vessels of mercy” and “vessels of wrath” as teaching that God sovereignly distinguishes between individuals, preparing some for mercy and enduring others who are prepared for destruction. The purpose is ultimately God’s glory: His mercy and grace are displayed toward the elect while His wrath and power are displayed toward those destined for destruction.
Reprobation Logically Follows From Unconditional Election
This is one of the article’s most important arguments.
If salvation depends upon God’s unconditional choice of particular individuals, and God does not choose everyone, then there must necessarily be individuals whom God does not choose for salvation.
The author therefore argues that unconditional election necessarily entails reprobation. Simply calling the position “single predestination”—God predestines some to salvation but does not predestine anyone to condemnation—does not resolve the problem. According to the article, such a view leaves the destiny of the non-elect outside God’s purposeful decree, which the author considers inconsistent with God’s comprehensive sovereignty.
The argument is therefore:
Unconditional election → some are chosen → others are not chosen →
their exclusion from saving grace falls within God’s sovereign decree.
God’s sovereignty extends over salvation and human choices
The article’s argument does not stop with election. It presents God’s sovereignty as extending over everything that comes to pass, including human choices. Consequently, the distinction between those who believe and those who reject Christ ultimately falls under God’s sovereign will.
The doctrine is also presented as spiritually beneficial because it humbles humanity. Rather than viewing humanity as the ultimate reference point, believers are reminded that human beings exist for God’s glory and that God’s purposes, rather than human preferences, determine reality.
The Two Aspects of Reprobation
The article makes an important distinction between two aspects of reprobation:
Preterition — the negative aspect: God eternally chooses not to extend saving grace to particular individuals. The article says this decision is not based on foreseen works, merit, or sin, but on God’s sovereign will.
Predamnation — the positive aspect: God eternally determines to deal with those individuals according to divine justice. Reformed theologians disagree over whether this decree itself is conditioned upon foreseen or actual sin, but the article maintains that the ultimate condemnation of these individuals is included within God’s sovereign purpose.
The article goes further and states that the Augustinian/Reformed tradition agrees that God predestines certain individuals to be justly punished, and that at least some aspect of this reprobation is not based on foreseen sin but on God’s good pleasure, with the purpose of magnifying His justice and grace.
Is This Double Predestination?
In substance, yes. The article is defending a form of double predestination, although it insists that election and reprobation are not perfectly symmetrical. The distinction can be summarized this way:
The author specifically identifies the “asymmetry between election and reprobation” as an important qualification within Reformed theology. Thus, the article is not merely saying that God permits some people to reject Him. Its position is substantially stronger:
God’s eternal decree establishes both who will receive saving grace and who will be passed over, with the non-elect ultimately being condemned according to divine justice.
And the author’s fundamental argument is that this conclusion follows from the combination of unconditional election, God’s exhaustive sovereignty, and the author’s interpretation of passages such as Pharaoh and Romans 9.
BABIES DESTINED TO HELL
Mind you, I am not the biggest fan of Faith On Fire, but once in a while there is really good stuff. It is 10-minutes long, here is his description:
Christianity is under attack more today than ever, and a big part of that attack comes from Calvinists. Did God create billons of people that God never wanted? Calvinism teaches that God did exactly. Calvinists want people to believe that the God of the Bible has predestined billions of people to hell before they were ever born. They think God has kept any hope of salvation from most people on purpose for His own glory and so God can demonstrate His wrath on them because God ordained and decreed their eternal punishment before the foundation of the world. They believe God reserves salvation for only some preselected elect people who are saved unconditionally by God’s grace.
According to Calvinism, Satan wants all people to join him in hell and the lake of fire, and they think God wants only most people to join Satan in hell and the lake of fire, and Satan doesn’t even have much of anything to do with any of it because it was all meticulously and divinely determined by God before Creation anyway.
TULIP or the 5 points of Calvinism are doctrines of salvation unique and distinctive to Calvinism, not Biblical Christianity. Those Calvinistic doctrines are from Satan and I expose the implications of them and the dangerous errors of that theology.
KINDA THE SUMMARY OF THE ABOVE [added to by RPT]
The Argument
Heaven is infinitely better than earthly life. If a person dies in infancy and is therefore guaranteed eternal joy with God, then death produces an infinitely greater outcome than continued earthly existence. If that same child survives, however, the outcome is no longer certain. The child may eventually believe and be saved—or reject Christ and be lost.
On the assumption that all infants who die are saved, death in infancy cannot result in hell. The theological premise establishes a guaranteed positive eternal outcome. The child loses earthly life, but does not lose salvation. Indeed, the child is removed from the possibility of later rejecting Christ and experiencing eternal condemnation.
Continued life therefore introduces a risk that did not previously exist. The infant who dies remains within the category of guaranteed salvation. The infant who survives eventually becomes a morally accountable person whose eternal destiny, under the same theological system, is no longer universally guaranteed. Poverty, abuse, family circumstances, unbelieving parents, cultural influences, and personal rejection of the gospel can all become factors in that person’s earthly and spiritual history.
This creates an uncomfortable asymmetry. If universal infant salvation is true, then preserving an infant’s earthly life simultaneously preserves the possibility of that person’s eternal salvation and the possibility of eternal loss. Death removes the second possibility entirely. Thus, within the stated theological premises, earthly life is not an unqualified spiritual benefit; it is also an exposure to the possibility of damnation.
The argument cannot simply appeal to the value of earthly life without addressing the theological premise. If the decisive consideration is that every human life must be preserved because earthly life is intrinsically preferable to death, then that principle needs to be reconciled with the claim that death in infancy results in guaranteed eternal happiness. Likewise, saying that humans must never interfere with God’s timing does not by itself resolve the underlying question: Why is death unquestionably tragic if the death of an infant guarantees the very heavenly outcome that the believer regards as infinitely superior to earthly existence?
The same reasoning raises a broader question about moral consistency. If the theological argument works because infants who die are guaranteed salvation, one must explain why that principle stops at infancy. If accountability is the relevant dividing line, then the argument necessarily raises questions about children who have not yet reached that threshold. If the argument does not extend beyond infancy, then the theological basis for making infancy the decisive boundary must be identified.
The central A→B problem is therefore this:
A: Every infant who dies is guaranteed eternal salvation.
B: Continued earthly life introduces the possibility that the child will eventually reject Christ and be eternally lost.
Question: Why should earthly preservation be treated as an unequivocal spiritual good when, according to A and B, preserving earthly life also preserves the possibility of eternal damnation?
The force of the argument is not that abortion is thereby proven morally permissible. Rather, it exposes a tension within the theological premises themselves. If universal infant salvation is asserted, then the believer must explain why preventing the loss of earthly life is necessarily more important than preventing the possibility of eternal loss. Simply saying that earthly life is valuable does not answer the theological question; it changes the question from
“What happens eternally to this child?”
to
“Is earthly life intrinsically valuable even when it introduces the possibility of eternal damnation?”
Eric Hankins, “Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism: Toward a Baptist Soteriology,”
Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry 8, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 87–100.
Beyond Calvinism And Arminianism Toward A Baptist Soteriology (PDF)
Eric Hankins, Ph.D.
Dr. Hankins is the Pastor of First Baptist Church in Oxford, Mississippi.
The Claim
After four hundred years, Calvinism and Arminianism remain at an impasse. The strengths and weaknesses of both systems are well-documented, and their proponents vociferously aver each system’s mutual exclusivity. This paper is based on the observation that these two theological programs have had sufficient time to demonstrate their superiority over the other and have failed to do so. The time has come, therefore, to look beyond them for a paradigm that gives a better account of the biblical and theological data. Indeed, the stalemate itself is related not so much to the unique features of each system but to a set of erroneous presuppositions upon which both are constructed. As the fault lines in these foundational concepts are exposed, it will become clear that the Baptist vision for soteriology, which has always resisted absolute fidelity to either system, has been the correct instinct all along. Baptist theology must be willing to articulate this vision in a compelling and comprehensive manner.
The following four presuppositions shared by Calvinism and Arminianism demonstrate the degree to which a new approach to soteriology is needed. One presupposition is primarily biblical, one is primarily philosophical, one is primarily theological, and one is primarily anthropological, although each is intertwined with the others. Having established the need for a new approach to soteriology and the Baptist vision for such an approach, the paper will conclude with a brief description of a way forward.
The Biblical Presupposition:
Individual Election
The idea that God, in eternity past, elected certain individuals to salvation is a fundamental tenet of Calvinism and Arminianism. The interpretation of this biblical concept needs to be revised. Quite simply, when the Bible speaks of election in the context of God’s saving action, it is always referring to corporate election, God’s decision to have a people for Himself. When the election of individuals is raised in Scripture, it is always election to a purpose or calling within Gods plans for His people as a whole. In the OT, the writers understood election to be God’s choice of Israel, yet they also clearly taught that the benefits of corporate election could only be experienced by the individual Israelite (or the particular generation of Israelites) who responded faithfully to the covenant that had been offered to the whole nation.[1] This trajectory within the OT is unassailable. It is reinforced in the intertestamental literature and is the basis for the way election is treated in the NT.[2] The Bible, therefore, does not speak of God’s choice of certain individuals and not others for salvation.[3] When the Bible does speak of the salvation of individuals, its central concept is “faith,” never “election.”
Take away individual election, and the key components of Calvinism and Arminianism disappear.[4] God does not elect individuals to salvation on the basis of His hidden councils, nor does He elect them on the basis of His foreknowledge of their future faith. Simply put, God does not “elect” individuals to salvation. He has elected an eschatological people whom He has determined to have for Himself. This group will be populated by individuals who have responded in faith to the gracious, free offer of the gospel. The group, “the Elect,” is comprised of individuals who are “saved by faith,” not “saved by election.” This being the case, there is no longer any need for the theological maneuvering required to explain how God elects individuals without respect to their response (which evacuates the biblical concept of “faith” of all its meaning) or how He elects individuals based on foreseen faith (which evacuates the biblical concept of “election” of all its meaning).
Asserting that “individual election” should be abandoned is striking, to say the least. It is the foundation on which evangelical soteriology is often constructed.[5] It is painful to consider the enormous investment of time and energy that has been spent trying to reconcile how God chooses individuals and, at the same time, how individuals choose God, only to discover that the whole endeavor has been based on a misreading of Scripture. Nevertheless, most Baptists have never felt fully comfortable with either Calvinist or Arminian understandings of election because neither comport well with the whole counsel of God. The reason is clear. The Scriptures lead to the conclusion that Augustine, Calvin, and Arminius were simply wrong in their construction of individual election. Baptists have never been theologically or confessionally committed to these august theologians, and the time has come to move beyond them.
The Philosophical Presupposition:
The “Problem” of Determinism and Free-Will
Like Calvinism and Arminianism, the 2,500-year-old debate concerning the “problem” of determinism and free-will has also reached an impasse. This is because absolute causal determinism is untenable.[6] Put simply, the “problem” is not a problem because the paradigm for causation in the Western philosophical tradition is wrong. The whole of reality cannot be explained in terms of uni-directional causation from a single first-principle. The universe does not work that way. Causation is complex, hierarchical, and interdependent. God sits sovereignly and non-contingently atop a hierarchy that owes its existence to the functioning of the levels below it, levels that include the fully operational free-will of humans.[7] Opposing God’s sovereign guidance of the universe and the operation of free-will within that universe is a false dichotomy based on reductionistic metaphysical assumptions. God has made a free and sovereign decision to have a universe in which human free-will plays a decisive role. Human agency is one force among many that God has created to accomplish His cosmic purposes.
Free-will plays a unique role within God’s purposes for the universe because it is the unique power of human beings freely to enter into and maintain covenant relationships, especially a covenant relationship with God. This makes human willing fundamentally moral. Under certain circumstances, God, in His freedom, contravenes free-will, just as He is free to contravene any other force in nature, but this is not His normal modus operandi. Because God is God, He knows all of the free acts of humans from eternity, but this knowledge does not cause these acts nor does it make Him responsible for them. Moreover, the existence of these acts in no way impinges upon either His freedom or His ability to bring about His ultimate purposes. The ability of humans “to do otherwise” does not call God’s sovereignty into question; it actually establishes and ratifies His sovereignty over the particular universe that was His good pleasure to create. Opposing free-will and sovereignty is, from a philosophical perspective, nonsensical.[8]
Calvinism’s desire to protect God’s divine status from the infringement of human free-will by denying it completely or reducing it to some form of “soft-determinism”[9] is unnecessary. God’s corporate elective purposes are accomplished by individual free acts of faith. Arminianism’s need to inject ideas such as God’s election of individuals based on their future free acts is also a move designed to maintain both a strong view of God’s sovereignty and the free choice of individuals. Unfortunately, this move is made at the expense of any regular understanding of biblical election, which is unilateral. God does not choose Israel because He knows she will choose Him in return. He chooses her even though He knows that her history will be one of rebellion and failure. Moreover, Arminianism’s desire to protect the inviolability of free-will to the degree that God cannot keep His promise to seal a believer’s free response fails to take seriously the totality of the biblical concept of faith.
Many Baptists have tended to opt for what they think is a “compatibilist” understanding of determinism and free-will in salvation: God chooses individuals unconditionally, and individuals choose God by faith.[10] Unfortunately, compatibilism demands a deterministic view of both God and free-will with which those same Baptists would be very uncomfortable. What these Baptists really want to say is that a “determinist” view of God is compatible with a “libertarian” view of free-will, but this is philosophically impermissible. Another typical strategy of Baptists, at this point, is to appeal to “mystery” or “paradox:” We don’t know how God chooses individuals, and, at the same time, individuals choose God. But, like other complex doctrines such as the Trinity or the hypostatic union, it is still true. To say, however, that God chooses individuals unconditionally and that He does not choose individuals unconditionally is not to affirm a mystery; it is to assert a logical contradiction. Baptists need to abandon the language of compatibilism and “mystery,” which do not adequately reflect what they believe about God and salvation, and embrace the concept that a robust (soft-) libertarian free-will is the actualization of God’s sovereign direction of His universe.
The Theological Presupposition:
Federal Theology
Both Arminians and Calvinists assume a “Covenant of Works” between Adam and God in the Garden of Eden, even though there is no biblical basis for such.[11]The Covenant of Works, they assert, was a deal God made with Adam whereby Adam would be rewarded with eternal life if he could remain morally perfect through a probationary period. Failure would bring about guilt and “spiritual death,” which includes the loss of his capacity for a good will toward God. Adam’s success or failure, in turn, would be credited to his posterity. This “Federal Theology” imputes Adam’s guilt and total depravity to every human.[12] In Calvinism, actual guilt and total depravity are the plight of every person. Free-will with respect to salvation is, by definition, impossible, and with it, the possibility of a free response to God’s offer of covenant through the gospel. The only hope for salvation for any individual is the elective activity of God. In Calvinist soteriology, election is privileged above faith because regeneration must be prior to conversion. In Arminianism, the effects of Federal Theology and the Covenant of Works must be countermanded by further speculative adjustments like “prevenient grace” and election based on “foreseen faith,” a faith which is only possible because prevenient grace overcomes the depravity and guilt of the whole human race due to Adam’s failure. All this strays far beyond the biblical data. Such speculation does not emerge from clear inferences from the Bible, but is actually a priori argumentation designed to buttress Augustine, not Paul.
God’s gracious action in Christ is not “Plan B,” a “Covenant of Grace,” executed in response to Adam’s failure at “Plan A,” the “Covenant of Works.” The pre-existent Son has always been the center-point of creation and covenant. Adam was not created and placed in the Garden for the purpose of demonstrating moral perfection through his own efforts.[13]
This original “works righteousness” was read into the Garden by Pelagius and assumed by Augustine. Adam was not being called to moral perfection; he was being called into world-changing covenant relationship. The command not to eat of the tree was simply a negative construal of God’s offer for Adam to know Him and be satisfied in Him and His plan alone. It was a specific instantiation of the covenant offered to Adam and Eve in Gen. 1:26-28: In a blessed relationship with God, they were to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over it.[14]In the Garden, Adam was being asked to do what Noah, Abraham, Moses, Israel, David, and, ultimately, everyone would be asked to do: trust and accept the gracious covenant offer of God in Christ for the purpose of bringing the created order to its intended conclusion. Adam and Eve were to respond to God in faith. The sensual temptation of the fruit itself came after the temptation to question God’s character and His covenant plan. It was in Adam’s rejection of God’s covenant offer that he failed to be moral. In Christ, God re-offers the covenant through successive renewals, culminating in His final offer of the gospel revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of the Incarnate Son. Adam was asked to believe God and bless the whole world, as were Noah, Abraham, Israel, David, and ultimately Christ, who succeeded where all others failed. His victory is extended to all those who put their faith in Him, just like Abraham, the father of the faithful did.[15] Covenant in Christ by faith is not “Plan B;” it is the point of the Bible.
Once again, speculation such as a Covenant of Works, Federal Theology, prevenient grace, etc. are little more than theological “fudge factors” designed to make the Augustinian synthesis work. They do not emerge from the biblical text but are a priori arguments pressed into the service of a fifth century Catholic bishop, not the authors of the Scriptures, and Baptists have never been comfortable with them. These adjustments mitigate the centrality, power, and immediacy of the biblical concept of “covenant” which has, at its heart, God’s desire for a relationship with His people through a real response of faith to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the nexus of Baptist soteriology.
The Anthropological Presupposition:
Total Depravity
The Scriptures clearly affirm that all people are sinners. Because of sin, humans are in a disastrous state, unable to alter the trajectory of their rebellion against God, unable to clear their debt of sin against Him, unable to work their way back to Him through their best efforts. This situation is one of their own creating and for which they are ultimately responsible.[16]
About these realities, there is little debate in evangelical theology. What is at issue is what being a sinner means when it comes to responding to God’s offer of covenant relationship through the power of the gospel.
Both Calvinism and Arminianism affirm that the Fall resulted in “total depravity,” the complete incapacitation of humanity’s free response to God’s gracious offer of covenant relationship.[17]In Calvinism, the only remedies for this state-of-affairs are the “doctrines of grace” in which the free response of individuals is not decisive. For Arminianism, total depravity, which is purely speculative, is corrected by prevenient grace, which is even more speculative, and makes total depravity ultimately meaningless because God never allows it to have any effect on any person.
Nothing in Scripture indicates that humans have been rendered “totally depraved” through Adam’s sin. Genesis 3 gives an extensive account of the consequences of Adam’s sin, but nowhere is there the idea that Adam or his progeny lost the ability to respond to God in faith, a condition which then required some sort of restoration by regeneration or prevenient grace. In fact, just the opposite appears to be the case. The story of God’s relationship with humankind is fraught with frustration, sadness, and wrath on God’s part, not because humans are incapable of a faith response, but because they are capable of it, yet reject God’s offer of covenant relationship anyway. To be sure, they are not capable of responding in faith without God’s special revelation of Himself through Christ and His Spirit’s drawing. Any morally responsible person, however, who encounters the gospel in the power of the Spirit (even though he has a will so damaged by sin that he is incapable of having a relationship with God without the gospel) is able to respond to that “well-meant offer.”
Therefore, the time has come once again for Baptists to reject another dichotomy mediated by the Calvinist/Arminian debate: monergism and synergism. Monergism insists that salvation is all of God. Monergists conclude that faith emerging from a decision within the will of the believer is a “work” that makes salvation meritorious, but this idea demands a theologically objectionable determinism. As a technical theological concept, synergism[18] still operates off of a framework that views sovereignty and free-will as problematic, often forcing too fine a distinction between “what God does” and “what man does.” Synergism tends to put “faith” in the category of performance, rather than an attitude of surrender. This has led some Arminian theology into over-speculation concerning the nature of the act of faith, psychologizing and sensationalizing the “moment of decision,” so that one’s experience becomes the basis of his assurance. Synergism also tends to demand further acts in order to receive further blessing and opens the door to the possibility that, if a person fails to act faithfully subsequent to the experience of salvation, God will cease to save.
Baptists must get off of this grid.[19]We have preferred terms like “trust,” “surrender,” and “relationship” to “monergism” or “synergism” when we reflect on God’s offer and our response. These terms secure the affirmation both that individuals can do nothing to save themselves, yet their salvation cannot occur against their wills or without a response of faith that belongs to them alone.
The Baptist Vision
So, what would a biblically-sound, Christ-centered, grace-filled soteriology look like without appeals to individual election, determinism, Federal Theology, or total depravity? What would it look like if it were free from the presuppositions of Calvinism and Arminianism? It would look exactly like what most Baptists have believed instinctively all along. Baptists have consistently resisted the impulse to embrace completely either Calvinism or Arminianism. We simply posit that we are “neither.”[20]The basis for this resistance to the two systems is our aversion to theological speculation beyond the clear sense of Scripture and our willingness to go our own way when Scripture and conscience demand. The way forward is basically backward, a massive simplification, a walking out of the convoluted labyrinth that evangelical soteriology has become in the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism. It is a move not dissimilar to the basic impulse of Luther at the birth of the Reformation, which was to reject the Medieval scholasticism that had turned the gloriously simple gospel of grace into its absolute antithesis. For Luther, the solution was to start over with the Scriptures (and Augustine), no matter what the implications. Baptists need to apply the Reformation principles of sola scriptura and semper reformanda to Luther himself. Augustine’s soteriology and the bulwark constructed subsequently to defend it must be removed.
Baptists believe in the clarity and simplicity of the Bible. We search in vain for decrees, a Covenants of Works, the distinction between a “general call” and an “effectual call,” hidden wills, and prevenient grace. We react with consternation to the ideas that God regenerates before He converts, that He hates sinners, that reprobation without respect to a response of faith brings Him the greatest glory, or that the truly converted can lose their salvation. Baptists have felt free to agree with certain emphases within Calvinism and Arminianism, while rejecting those that offend our commitments to the possibility of salvation for all and to the eternal security of that salvation based exclusively on faith in the covenant promises of God. The free offer of an eternal, life-changing covenant with the Father through the Son by the Spirit to all sinners by the free exercise of personal faith alone has been the simple, non-speculative but inviolable core of Baptist soteriological belief and practice. Baptist soteriology (specifically including the doctrines of the sovereign, elective purposes of God, the sinfulness of all humans, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, salvation by grace alone through faith alone, and the security of the believer) is not in jeopardy and does not need to be reinforced by Calvinism or Arminianism. It can be successfully taught, maintained, and defended without resorting to either system.
It has been typical of Baptists to believe that anyone who reaches the point of moral responsibility has the capacity to respond to the gospel. While all persons are radically sinful and totally unable to save themselves, their ability to “choose otherwise” defines human existence, including the ability to respond to the gospel in faith or reject it in rebellion. God initiates the process; He imbues it with His Spirit’s enabling. When people respond in faith, God acts according to His promises to seal that relationship for eternity, welding the will of the believer to His own, setting the believer free by His sovereign embrace. Our assurance of salvation comes not from a “sense” that we are elect or from our persistence in holy living. Assurance comes from the simple, surrendered faith that God keeps every one of His promises in Christ Jesus.
Baptists’ historical insistence on believer’s baptism is a solid indicator of our soteriological instinct. Historically, neither Calvinism nor Arminianism had a correct word for infant baptism because both were burdened with the justification for total depravity, original sin, and individual election. For many Arminians (like those in the Wesleyan tradition), infant baptism functions with reference to original sin and prevenient grace and plays a role in the faith that God “foresees.”[21]For many Calvinists, infant baptism has become an extremely odd vehicle by which they deal with the fate of infants, an issue that is illustrative of the fundamental inadequacy of the system. If Calvinism is true, then its own logic demands that at least some infants who die before reaching the point of moral responsibility spend eternity in hell.[22] By and large, Calvinists do not want to say this and will go to great lengths to avoid doing so.[23] Covenant Theology and infant baptism have been the preferred method for assuring (at least Christian) parents that they can believe in original guilt and total depravity and still know that their children who die in infancy will be with them in heaven. While Baptist Calvinists and Arminians do not allow for infant baptism, the fact that their systems allow for and even advocate it is telling.
Prevenient grace and Covenant Theology have never played a role in Baptist theology. This frees us to deal biblically with the issue of infant baptism: it is simply a popular vestige of Roman Catholic sacramentalism that the Magisterial Reformers did not have either the courage or theological acuity to address. Privileging election necessarily diminishes the significance of the individual response of faith for salvation, thus creating room for infant baptism and its theological justification. But with faith as the proper center of Baptist soteriology, infant baptism has never made any sense. Our distinctive understanding of the ordinance of baptism celebrates the centrality of the individual’s actual response of faith to the free offer of the gospel.
Finally, Baptists’ historic passion for evangelism and missions is underdetermined by Calvinism and Arminianism. For Calvinism, if the decision about who is saved and who is not has already been made by God, then the actual sharing of the gospel with the lost does not matter. The vast majority of Calvinists strenuously object to this charge, employing a variety of tactics to obviate what is, unfortunately, the only logical conclusion of their system. Saying that God elects the “means” of salvation as well as the individuals who are saved demands a determinism that is theologically unacceptable and philosophically unsustainable. Insisting that evangelism is still necessary because it “glorifies God” and demonstrates obedience to the Scriptures is simply a variation of that same determinism. The historical struggles of Calvinism with doctrinal and attitudinal opposition to missions and the “promiscuous preaching of the gospel” is evidence of the weakness of their system. Insisting on a “well-meant offer” while at the same time insisting that not all are able to respond is not the affirmation of a “mystery;” it is stubborn fidelity to a logical contradiction. For Arminianism, if election is based on foreseen faith, then it must be assumed that every person will receive enough of the gospel to trust or reject Christ. We know that billions still have not heard the gospel. This privileges the effort of the faith-capacity of people over the power of the gospel alone to save. If all people have the ability to figure out some form of faith in Christ, why worry overmuch about evangelism? It is this sort of weakness that lends itself to the frequent liberal trend in Arminianism.
Baptist anthropology affirms that, because of personal sinfulness, no one is capable of coming to faith in Christ without the proclamation of the gospel in the power of the Spirit. While there are certainly unique instances of individuals receiving the gospel through dreams and non-human proclamation, this is not God’s normal manner of working and those instances of salvation still require both a proclamation of Jesus as Lord and a response of faith. Baptists believe that the proclamation of the gospel is necessary for a faith response to Christ. Those who do not hear will not be saved. Everyone who does hear has the opportunity to respond to Christ in faith or persist in unbelief. This is the only proper biblical motivation for the urgent proclamation of the gospel. Baptists have excelled in evangelism and missions because we believe it really matters.
It is safe to say that Federal Theology, Eternal Decrees, Covenants of Works, Grace, and Redemption, and prevenient grace have played essentially no major role in the expansion of the Baptist witness, especially among Southern Baptists, from the late nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries. This is not because ordinary Baptists are unintelligent or simplistic in their beliefs; it is because ordinary Baptists have played a significant role in the direction of denominational identity, and they have been serious about what the Bible plainly does and does not say. In the older Baptist confessions and in the writings of older Baptist heroes like Spurgeon, Fuller, and Carey, echoes of the doctrinal speculation above can be heard, but they sit uncomfortably with the strong affirmations of the opportunity of everyone to respond in faith to the preaching of the gospel and the inability of any believer to fall away. In the Baptist Faith and Message, such problematic speculation disappears completely.[24] Baptists have known that these things were unnecessary for the articulation of God’s unstoppable plan to redeem the whole world through the bold proclamation of salvation in Christ alone by faith alone. From the beginning, the work of Christ in creation and redemption for the purpose of covenant relationship with humankind has always been the center of the biblical narrative. There is no need for an alternate metanarrative of secret decrees and hidden covenants to sort out the history of redemption. The plot of God’s purpose for humankind can be found right on the surface of the text from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, all summed up succinctly in John 3:16.[25]
Without committing to either Calvinism or Arminianism, Baptists have evangelized millions, planted thousands of churches, and reached literally around the globe the with life-changing, world-changing message of salvation by grace through faith. When either system has come to the forefront in debate or dispute, the outcome has rarely been positive for kingdom work through us. Baptists have been well-served by a simpler, less-speculative, less metaphysical approach to soteriology. As we move into a new millennium, a more constructive, positive statement of our soteriology based on this heritage of simplicity and faith-focus will sharpen us as to what is essential to the message and motivation of the gospel for all who stand in desperate need of it.
A Baptist Soteriology
So, what would a soteriology based on the Baptist vision look like? The four presuppositions discussed above, indeed, provide a sound framework upon which the Baptist vision could be set. Around the core biblical principle of faith, the philosophical principle of God’s purpose for human free-will, the theological principle of “covenant in Christ alone,” and the anthropological principle of the sinfulness and salvability of every person could be arranged. It is interesting that, in actual practice, these key concepts are identical with the emphases in the most widely used personal evangelism tools in Baptist life. F.A.I.T.H. Evangelism, Continuing Witness Training, Evangelism Explosion, The Four Spiritual Laws, and Share Jesus without Fear all highlight (1) faith in Christ, unpacking such faith as (2) the absolute necessity of a personal, individual response of repentance and trust, (3) an entry into God’s holy and loving, eternal purposes in the person and work of Christ alone, and (4) available for anyone who will admit his radical sinfulness and inability to save himself.[26]In none of these gospel presentations is there even a hint of the issues of election, determinism, Federal Theology, or total depravity. In such gospel witness, the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi is a helpful reminder that our actual evangelistic practices are crucial indicators of what we truly believe about soteriology.
The Biblical Presupposition:
Individual Faith
The central biblical presupposition for a Baptist soteriology is, therefore, “faith” (Eph. 2.89). “Election” is a term that belongs properly in the Doctrine of God. Faith captures the fundamentally relational nature of NT soteriology. “Justification by faith,” which lies at the center of Protestant soteriological identity, speaks of the initiating and sustaining activity of God in bringing an individual into right relationship with Himself and the necessity of the individual’s response for God’s justifying work to be actualized in his life. While the totality of justification has numerous aspects (past, present, future, spiritual, physical, individual, moral, social, ecclesiological, cosmic, etc.), it does not happen without personal faith. Faith has a variety of nuances as well, but, ultimately, it is an act of the will that belongs to the believer. It is not a “gift” God gives to some and not others. When we call people to salvation, we emphasize the biblical concept of faith, not election.
The Philosophical Presupposition:
The Freedom of God and the Free-Will of People
The manner in which biblical faith functions in creation is this: God sovereignly and freely made a universe in which the free-will of humans plays a decisive role in His ultimate purposes for that universe (Rom. 10:9-10). Without free-will, there is no mechanism for the defeat of sin and evil, no mechanism for covenant relationship, no mechanism for a world-changing, world-completing partnership between God and His people. For Baptists, faith has never been something that occurs without our willing. We deny that people’s eternal destinies have been fixed without respect to a free-response of repentance and faith. We preach that the decision of each individual is both possible and necessary for salvation.
The Theological Presupposition:
Covenant in Christ
In a Baptist soteriology, Christ is the central object of belief. He is believed as the mediator of covenant relationship, the full expression of the kingdom of God, eternal life, God’s ultimate purpose for everyone and for the cosmos (John 3:16). We have no interest in a series of extra-biblical covenants created to bolster a soteriology that does not take seriously the necessity of personal faith as an expression of free-will. In our preaching, we do not burden people with the calculus of covenants of works, grace, and redemption. We do not invite people to believe in Calvinism or Arminianism. We offer Christ alone, the only hope of Adam, Noah, Abraham, the Patriarchs, Moses, David, Israel, and the whole of humankind. His perfect life, substitutionary death, and victorious resurrection comprise the object of confession and belief that is sufficient to save (John 14:6, Rom. 10.9-10).
The Anthropological Presupposition:
The Sinfulness and Salvability of Everyone
Finally, the anthropological presupposition is that no one can save himself, but anyone can be saved (Rom. 3:23). No person ever takes the first step toward God. Humankind’s history is broken; its destiny is death; it’s context darkness; its reality is rebellion. This sinfulness has put us out of fellowship with God and under the verdict of eternal separation (Rom. 6.23). Through the person and work of Christ, which is proclaimed through the gospel, God reaches out His hand of “first love,” providing a ground of salvation to which any one can respond in faith. If people do not hear and respond to this gospel, they will not be saved. So, we preach the gospel broadly, regularly, and passionately. We offer an invitation every time we preach because we believe every unbeliever, no matter how sinful and broken, can respond, and no matter how moral and self-righteous, must respond (Rev. 3:20).
These four pillars are the super-structure of the soteriology that has driven Baptist preaching, evangelism, and missions. It is the basis for life in Christ and the way of discipleship. Into this matrix, the totality of biblical soteriological language can be fed, but no other single concept can be allowed to dominate doctrinal development to such a degree that one or more of these emphases are abandoned or effectively neutralized. From these fixed-points of Baptist soteriology, such issues as the effects of the Fall, the order of salvation in its various dimensions, and other important implications can be discussed in full. In this construction, election is an important but tangential and transitional concept, connecting the borders of soteriology, ecclesiology, eschatology, and theology proper. Faith, however, must stand at the center of Baptist soteriology, so that we might proclaim to all with firm conviction: “Believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).
FOOTNOTES
[1]See, for instance, Deut. 29:14-21. Israel is reaffirming the covenant promised to the patriarchs and to future generations. However, if there is an individual man or woman who boasts, “I have peace with God though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart,” the Lord will “single him out” from the people for destruction (vv. 18-21, NASB). Although the covenant is for the whole community, the individual must respond in faith in order to benefit from those corporate covenant promises.
[2]Critics of the corporate view of election will quickly raise Rom. 8:29-30 and 9-11 (among others) in defense of their position, but the pre-temporal election of individuals is not Paul’s purpose there. Rom. 8:29-30 is setting up Paul’s point in chapters 9-11 about two groups: Jews and Gentiles. The end of Romans 8 crescendos with the greatness of salvation in Christ. Verses 29-30 articulate God’s actions toward His people from beginning to end in order to bring about His ultimate “purpose” (28): God knew He was going to have a people; He determined to bring them into existence in Christ; He actualized that people in history through His call; He justified them by faith; He has determined to bring them into resurrection glory. In light of this incredible plan to have this kind of people for Himself, Paul is heartbroken at the beginning of Romans 9 that his Jewish brothers have responded to the gospel with unbelief. The Jews appear to be “out,” and the Gentiles appear to be “in.” But God works in unexpected ways. Jews are “out” now so that the Gentiles can come “in.” But the Gentiles coming “in” will ultimately cause the Jews to come “in” at the proper time. That is why Paul will continue to preach the gospel to Jews as a part of his mission to the whole world, looking forward to the response of a remnant by faith. One thing is certain: Romans 9-11 is not teaching the election of some individuals and the reprobation of others without respect to their genuine response of faith. Ephesians 1:4, 5, and 11 function in Ephesians 2 the same way that Rom. 8:29-30 functions in Romans 9-11.
[3]See William W. Klein, The New Chosen People: A Corporate View of Election (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 257–63 for an extended exegetical analysis of all the relevant biblical data concerning the concept of “corporate election.” Klein argues that there is not a single verse or overarching tendency in the Scriptures in support of the idea that God chooses certain individuals for salvation.
[4]Indeed, if “individual election” is what the writers of the NT meant, then Calvinism and Arminianism really are the only options, and Baptists should pick one and move on to other matters. It is significant that we have been unwilling to do so.
[5]For example, if individual election to salvation were removed from Millard Erickson’s massive systematic theology, there would be essentially nothing left in his chapters on “God’s Plan” and those in the whole section on “Salvation.” See Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998).
[6] Kenneth Keathley, Salvation and Sovereignty: A Molinist Approach (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2010), 93–99.
[7]Nancey Murphy, “Introduction and Overview,” in Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will, ed. Nancey Murphy, George F. R. Ellis, and Timothy O’Connor (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2009), 2–3.
I change up footnote 8 a bit. I add the fuller quote from Lewis as well as a bit of a summary of it
[8] C. S. Lewis, Yours, Jack: Spiritual Directions from C. S. Lewis, ed. Paul Ford (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 186. Lewis provides a helpful perspective on the traditional debate between divine sovereignty and human freedom. He writes:
“All that Calvinist question—Free-Will and Predestination, is to my mind undiscussable, insoluble. Of course (say us) if a man repents God will accept him. Ah yes, (say they) but the fact of his repenting shows that God has already moved him to do so. This at any rate leaves us with the fact that in any concrete case the question never arrives as a practical one. But I suspect it is really a meaningless question. The difference between Freedom and Necessity is fairly clear on the bodily level: we know the difference between making our teeth chatter on purpose and just finding them chattering with cold. It begins to be less clear when we talk of human love (leaving out the erotic kind). ‘Do I like him because I choose or because I must?’—there are cases where this has an answer, but others where it seems to me to mean nothing. When we carry it up to relations between God and Man, has the distinction perhaps become nonsensical? After all, when we are most free, it is only with a freedom God has given us: and when our will is most influenced by Grace, it is still our will. And if what our will does is not ‘voluntary,’ and if ‘voluntary’ does not mean ‘free,’ what are we talking about? I’d leave it all alone. Blessings.”
RPT SUMMARY: Lewis is not attempting here to construct a systematic doctrine of free will or to resolve the Calvinist-Arminian controversy. Rather, his point is that the categories of “freedom” and “necessity,” while relatively clear when applied to physical actions, become increasingly difficult to apply to human willing and ultimately to the relationship between God and humanity. Divine influence upon the human will does not necessarily make the resulting action something other than the person’s own voluntary action; indeed, Lewis insists that even when the will is most influenced by grace, “it is still our will.” Thus, the attempt to force divine grace and human freedom into a simple opposition between “necessity” and “freedom” may itself rest upon a category mistake.
This observation is consistent with Lewis’s broader treatment of divine goodness and human wickedness in The Problem of Pain. In chapter 3, “Divine Goodness,” Lewis argues that God’s goodness cannot be defined as merely the human notion of kindness or as something wholly unrelated to the moral categories available to human beings. God’s goodness is greater and more complete than ours, but it is not its opposite. He therefore maintains that God’s purposes may involve painful correction and transformation without ceasing to be expressions of divine love. In chapter 4, “Human Wickedness,” Lewis grounds the need for such divine correction in humanity’s misuse of free will: human beings have “used [their] free will to become very bad,” and the Christian message begins with the recognition that humanity requires moral and spiritual healing.
This makes Lewis’s language in Yours, Jack especially significant. Lewis himself says he “suspect[s]” that the question is “meaningless” and asks whether the distinction between freedom and necessity has “perhaps become nonsensical.” The qualified language is important. He is not making an unqualified declaration that the Calvinist-Arminian debate is meaningless, nor is he presenting a systematic argument for libertarian free will. Rather, he is questioning whether the philosophical categories being used are adequate to describe the relationship between God’s grace and a genuinely willing human response. His larger theology in The Problem of Pain nevertheless treats human beings as morally responsible agents who have genuinely misused their freedom and therefore genuinely require transformation. Divine influence and human willing are consequently not presented as simple opposites. Lewis provides philosophical support for distinguishing God’s gracious influence from coercion, without necessarily settling the larger question of exactly how divine sovereignty and human freedom relate
[9]“Soft-determinism” is the view that humans are free to do what they desire most, but they are not free to choose what they desire. Since, “the good” is off the table as an object of desire (because of the Fall), “evil” is the only option left, and therefore, humans always “choose” to do evil because they cannot do otherwise. “Soft-libertarianism” (mentioned below) is the view that human freedom, while limited in many aspects by environment and prior choices, is still characterized by the ability, often at crucial moments, to choose between two live options for which the agent is responsible. For a more full discussion, see Keathley, Salvation and Sovereignty, 63–79.
[10]This often expressed in the old saw that “Whosoever will may come” is written over the entry into heaven, but, once inside, the verse over the door reads, “you did not choose Me, but I have chosen you.”
[11]William J. Dumbrell, Covenant and Creation: A Theology of Old Testament Covenants (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009), 44–6, Reprint.
[12]The principle text for Federal Theology is Rom. 5.12-21, but the evidence within this text and its place within the argument of Romans speaks against such an interpretation. The strict parallelism between Adam and “all” demands a strict parallelism between Christ and “all,” necessitating universalism, which is not possible theologically and not the point exegetically. Paul’s focus in the passage is clearly on physical death and eternal life, not the imputation of Adam’s guilt to all people (the same is true for Eph. 2:1-7 and 1 Cor. 15:20-28). Paul’s point: Adam’s sin brought in the condemnation of death for all people. All people demonstrate that they deserve such condemnation by their own sin. Christ, the sinless one, has overthrown that condemnation by receiving it undeservedly into Himself, which is the ultimate act of obedience, and rising again. All who ratify Christ’s obedient life, death, and resurrection with their faith in Him will have eternal life.
[13] This is not to say that perfect obedience was not the standard; it was just not the point. True obedience is the expression of covenant faithfulness and utter dependence on God.
[14]Eugene H. Merrill, Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006), 17.
[15]In Gal. 3:8, Paul states quite clearly and without any need for further explanation that “The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, ‘ALL THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU.’” This single covenant in Christ is also in view in 1 Cor. 10:4: “. . . and all [Israel] drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ.”
[16] Paul’s point in Rom. 1-3, the locus classicus of human sinfulness, is not that people cannot respond to God, but that they will not, even though the results lead to their utter ruin.
[17]Ephesians 2:1 and 5 are frequently cited in support of this view, with a focus on the phrase “dead in your trespasses.” “Dead” here is taken to mean “spiritually” dead, utterly unresponsive to spiritual things. This reading, however, does not work exegetically. Paul’s point in 2.1-7 is that Jews and Gentiles alike were in the same sorry situation and in need of the resurrected and ascended Christ. If Paul means that everyone was “spiritually” dead, then he must also mean that everyone was made “spiritually” alive “with Him.” Does this mean that Jesus was, at some point, incapable of a response to God? Is Paul’s point that Jesus is now “spiritually” alive, responsive to God? Are we now “spiritually” raised and seated with Him in heavenly places? What could this possibly mean? Clearly, Paul is speaking eschatologically here: “Before we trusted Christ our destiny was the condemnation of death. Our behavior confirmed that we were deserving of that sentence. But now our destiny is bound up with His destiny so that ‘in ages to come’ the inclusion of sinners like us will put God’s unbelievable grace on display. How did we come to belong to Christ? By faith.” Paul’s point is not that we are incapable of faith without “regeneration.” His point is that Christ has made a way for those deserving of death to have eternal life, no matter what their ethnicity or level of religious effort. Moreover, if Paul thought that Adam’s sin resulted in spiritual death/total depravity for everyone else, how could he write in Rom. 7:9: “I was once alive apart from the Law”?
[18]“Synergism,” to be sure, would be the category to which the soteriological viewpoint of this paper belongs, if we persist in using these categories, because monergism, in the true sense of the term, in untenable. Unfortunately, this word has theological associations that Baptists reject. Synergism is often considered to be the functional equivalent of semi-Pelagianism, which throws the whole discussion back into abstruse arguments about “operative” and “cooperative” grace, “general” and “effectual” calling, facere quod in se est, etc. forcing us to approach soteriology from Augustinian and medieval Roman Catholic categories rather than biblical ones. Monergism and synergism have simply outlived their usefulness.
[19]See Keathley, Salvation and Sovereignty, 101–8. After thoroughly dismantling the determinism of Calvinism, Keathley, a Baptist theologian, still wants to retain the term “monergism,” qualifying it with his assertion that people can still refuse God’s grace. But if one’s refusal matters, then salvation is not monergistic. Any Calvinist worth his salt would agree. Persisting in the use of the term “monergism” and in defending the logically contradictory concept that “what man does matters and what man does doesn’t matter” is unhelpful.
[20]Malcolm yarnell, Neither Calvinists Nor Arminians but Baptists, White Paper 36 (Ft. Worth, TX: Center for Theological Research, 2010), 7.
[21]The question remains, however, concerning how God foresees faith in the child that dies in infancy. Now God is making decisions based on possibilities rather than actualities, which is extremely problematic. In Arminian traditions that do not practice infant baptism, the tendency toward belief in baptismal regeneration or subsequent Spirit-baptism over-emphasizes human effort in the understanding of free-will over against God’s sovereignty.
[22]Adam Harwood, The Spiritual Condition of Infants: A Biblical-Historical Survey and Systematic Proposal (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011), 23.
[23]R. Albert Mohler, Jr. and Daniel L. Akin, “The Salvation of the ‘Little Ones:’ Do Infants Who Die Go to Heaven?” [article on-line]; June 16, 2009 AlbertMohler.com; Mohler and Akin’s argument is that all infants who die are elect. It is an astounding display of a priori reasoning that runs like this: Since Calvinism is true and since we don’t want to say that some infants go to hell, all infants who die must be elect (even though there is no biblical basis for such a claim).
[24]Malcolm yarnell, “The TULIP of Calvinism in Light of History and the Baptist Faith and Message,” SBC Life, April 2006.
[25] Jerry Vines, “Sermon on John 3:16,” in Whosoever Will, ed. David L. Allen and Steve W. Lemke (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2010), 13–15.
[26] The scriptural basis for each soteriological presupposition discussed below is drawn from the scripture references most common to these gospel presentations.
The audio at the start from Jeff Durbin is bad… so one has to put up with it a little when the initial audio is played. But the same arguments against atheistic determinism can be used against Augustinian/Calvinistic [theistic] determinism:
Dr. Braxton Hunter, President of Trinity Seminary and host of Trinity Radio, joins Dr. Flowers to talk about how the main arguments against naturalistic determinism can apply against theistic determinism, as held by Compatibilistic Calvinists. They demonstrate this by engaging a clip from Apologia Studios with Jeff Durbin which references a quote from Calvinistic apologist, Greg Bahnsen.
Justin Brierley drives this point home in his article:
…Atheist Determinism
Calvinistic Christians have more in common with many atheists than they may realize. Determinism has also become a very popular philosophy among their godless counterparts. For some time, prominent voices in atheist circles have also been announcing that the notion of free will is past its sellby date.
Popular atheist author Sam Harris wrote a book titled Free will (Free Press) which, drawing on research in neuroscience, argued that our innate sense of freedom is merely an illusion foisted on us by nature. None of us is actually in control of what we do. So far so Calvinist. But rather than believing God has predestined us, atheists like Harris say the universe is responsible.
Atheist determinism springs from a ‘materialist’ worldview. All that exists is the ‘material’ stuff of the universe. Everything about us and the world we live in can ultimately be explained by the physics of atoms, electrons, quarks and neutrons, interacting according to the predictable regularity of natural laws.
Think of it like this: the skill of the snooker player is in predicting as accurately as possible how the balls will ricochet off each other in order to find the pockets on the table. But, theoretically, if a snooker player lined up their very first shot with perfect precision and perfect force, they could clear the table in one shot. The universe is like that, but on a much bigger scale.
Every single physical event, from the movements of electrons to the orbits of the planets, follows predictable laws of cause and effect. Therefore, the way the universe is now is a direct result of the way it was when it first began. If you rewound the clock by 13 billion years to the exact same physical state of affairs, things would roll out in exactly the same way they already have.
But, in such a universe, the idea that we have any measure of free will evaporates. Every aspect of our existence was predestined by a cosmos blindly following the laws of cause and effect. …
You cannot have LOVE with people made into dolls with a pull string that say, “I love you.” This is evidence that Calvinists/”Reformed” make Calvary useless.
Here is a favored adapted combination of mine:
One of the most intriguing aspects mentioned by Ravi Zacharias of a lecture he attended entitled “Determinism – Is Man a Slave or the Master of His Fate,” given by Stephen Hawking, who is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, Isaac Newton’s chair, was this admission by Dr. Hawking’s, was Hawking’s admission that if “we are the random products of chance, and hence, not free, or whether God had designed these laws within which we are free.”[1] In other words, do we have the ability to make choices, or do we simply follow a chemical reaction induced by millions of mutational collisions of free atoms? Michael Polyni mentions that this “reduction of the world to its atomic elements acting blindly in terms of equilibrations of forces,” a belief that has prevailed “since the birth of modern science, has made any sort of teleological view of the cosmos seem unscientific…. [to] the contemporary mind.”[2]
[1] Ravi Zacharias, The Real Face of Atheism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), 118, 119.
[2] Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning (Chicago, IL: Chicago university Press, 1977), 162.
This is one of the biggest reasons I [about half-a-year-ago] have rejected the 5-Points of Calvinism. Which is, determinism. I have written, posted, and debated this with atheists for years on the WWW., and when I saw that people like Al Mohler refute the atheist versions of this but does not apply the same thinking to his position — my apologetic bug was brought alive. Here is the video that started this rabbit trail:
The subversion of moral responsibility is one of the most significant developments of recent decades. Though this subversion was originally philosophical, more recent efforts have been based in biology and psychology. Various theorists have argued that our decisions and actions are determined by genetics, environmental factors, or other forces. Now, Scientific American is out with a report on a study linking determinism and moral responsibility.
The diverse theories of determinism propose that our choices and decisions are not an exercise of the will, but simply the inevitable outcome of factors outside our control. As Scientific American explains, determinists argue that “everything that happens is determined by what happened before — our actions are inevitable consequences of the events leading up to the action.”
In other words, free will doesn’t exist. Used in this sense, free will means the exercise of authentic moral choice and agency. We choose to take one action rather than the other, and must then take responsibility for that choice.
This link between moral choice and moral responsibility is virtually instinctive to humans. As a matter of fact, it is basic to our understanding of what it means to be human. We hold each other responsible for actions and choices. But if all of our choices are illusory — and everything is merely the “inevitable consequence” of something beyond our control, moral responsibility is an exercise in delusion.
Scientific American reports on a study performed by psychologists Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler. The psychologists found that individuals who were told that their moral choices were determined, rather than free, were also more likely to cheat on an experimental examination.
As Shaun Nichols reports:
The Western conception idea of free will seems bound up with our sense of moral responsibility, guilt for misdeads and pride in accomplishment. We hold ourselves responsible precisely when we think that our actions come from free will. In this light, it’s not surprising that people behave less morally as they become skeptical of free will. Further, the Vohs and Schooler result fits with the idea that people will behave less responsibly if they regard their actions as beyond their control. If I think that there’s no point in trying to be good, then I’m less likely to try.
Even if giving up on free will does have these deleterious effects, one might wonder how far they go. One question is whether the effects extend across the moral domain. Cheating in a psychology experiment doesn’t seem too terrible. Presumably the experiment didn’t also lead to a rash of criminal activity among those who read the anti-free will passage. Our moral revulsion at killing and hurting others is likely too strong to be dismantled by reflections about determinism. It might well turn out that other kinds of immoral behavior, like cheating in school, would be affected by the rejection of free will, however.
There are limitations to this kind of research, of course, but the report is both revealing and unsurprising. If we are not responsible for our actions, they why would people do the right thing? The most immediate result of such thinking is the subversion of moral accountability.
Of course, this pattern of thought also renders human existence irrational. How can we understand ourselves, our children, our spouses, our friends, or our neighbors if moral responsibility is undermined by determinism. Our legal system would completely collapse, as would the entire experience of relating to other human beings.
Shaun Nichols explains that “the Western conception of free will seems bound up with our sense of moral responsibility.” That “Western conception” is a product of the Christian inheritance and the biblical worldview. The Bible clearly presents human beings as morally responsible. Christians of virtually all theological traditions — including Reformed theology, Arminianism, and Catholicism — affirm moral and spiritual responsibility and the authenticity of the experience of choice.
As a matter of fact, this capacity and accountability is rooted in the biblical concept of the imago Dei — the image of God. Our Creator made us as moral creatures and planted within us the capacity of conscience. All this refutes the concept of moral determinism.
In its most modern forms, determinism is a product of naturalism — the belief that everything must be explained in purely natural terms. Naturalism explains the human mind (including the experience of moral choice) as a matter of chemical reactions in the brain, and nothing more.
Determinism is implied by naturalism and relieves human beings of moral responsibility. There is no moral revolt against the Creator, no Fall, and no need for the Gospel. This subversion of moral responsibility is both a delusion and a trap. And, as the Scientific American report indicates, even those who say they believe in moral determinism are unable to live consistently with this assumption. We know we are responsible.
SOME QUOTES CONNECTING THIS IDEA MORE
ATHEISTS:
THEISTS:
If Mohler applies that to his own theological determinism, he would have to reject it.
MORE:
RIGHT CLICK AND “OPEN LINK IN NEW TAB” TO GET BIGGEST VERSION
THERE IS NO GOSPEL IN TULIP
In other words, a person accepts Christ’s death and Resurrection as secondary to being ELECTED.
Here is more on this via this excerpt of an article and short video:
Calvinist:“That is why Christ said that you must be born again in order to even see the kingdom of God. The new nature must come before faith. God making us willing is not mind control in the sense that you describe it but giving us a new nature and a new mind. Of course the analogy isn’t perfect but it does illustrate the fact that we can be made to love without it being against our will.”
Me: “No it doesn’t. If we were God haters that wanted nothing to do with Christ prior to His irresistible act of “giving us a new heart” that “makes us willing”, then it was certainly “against our will” because our will was to hate and reject God prior to His irresistible working in us. It would be like a man meeting a girl at a bar and the girl doesn’t like him and wants nothing to do with him. In fact, she finds him repulsive. So the man slips a pill in her drink that removes her inhibitions and causes her to begin to find him attractive, even to the point of “making her willing” to sleep with him. Now if this incident was brought before the court, would the court say that the man is not liable for violating the woman against her will, since the pill he put in her drink “made her willing”? Of course not. Nobody would say that she freely chose to be with the man under such circumstances, and no one would say that her will was not violated.”
“As distasteful as this illustration might be, it illustrates the exact same principle behind your claims that while God “makes us willing” this making us willing by “giving us a new heart” is not a violation of the person’s will. Instead of dropping a pill into our drink, God drops a “new heart” into our God hating chest. The only difference would be that in your view of how God works, the “effects” of the “drug” would never wear off. But that doesn’t change the fact that a person’s will has been obviously violated in the process.”
“It really is pretty simple. If God’s working faith into us is not resistible, but irresistible, then it certainly violates freedom and the will. That is so obvious, it shouldn’t even need to be pointed out. If you want to say that God irresistibly brings sinners to faith and love and devotion to Him (by irresistibly removing their “hate God heart” and putting in a “love God heart”) because you think the Bible teaches that, then fine. But trying to then claim that God does this in such a way that we freely come to him in such a way that our wills are not violated is clearly incoherent. You can’t have it both ways. Sorry.”
Dr. Leighton Flowers talk about martyrs who stood against the Calvinists of their day and what happened to them.
The central problem is that W. G. T. Shedd [(1820–1894) was a prominent 19th-century American Presbyterian theologian and professor, best known for his rigorous defense of Reformed theology and divine sovereignty] attempts to hold together exhaustive divine determination and a genuinely self-determining human will without first showing that those claims are logically compatible in the same respect.
This critique is therefore directed first at Shedd’s formulation and only secondarily at Calvinism insofar as Calvinistic compatibilism supplies the framework that creates the tension.
“The Westminster Standards, in common with the Calvinistic creeds generally, begin with affirming the universal sovereignty of God over his entire universe: over heaven, earth, and hell; and comprehend all beings and all events under his dominion. Nothing comes to pass contrary to his decree. Nothing happens by chance. Even moral evil, which he abhors and forbids, occurs by ‘the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God;’ and yet occurs through the agency of the unforced and self-determining will of man as the efficient.”[1]
Shedd is therefore making three claims:
A. Nothing happens contrary to God’s decree.
B. God’s decree encompasses even moral evil.
C. Moral evil nevertheless occurs through the “unforced and self-determining will of man.”
And this is where the law of non-contradiction becomes relevant.
The law of non-contradiction is one of the foundational principles of rational thought. As Ted Honderich’s Oxford Companion to Philosophy explains, “a theory in which this law fails…is an inconsistent theory.”[2]Manuel Velasquez likewise describes the law as “the foundation of logical reasoning.”[3]
William S. Sahakian and Mabel Lewis Sahakian make the implication especially clear when discussing contradictory premises. They explain that when an argument contains premises that contradict one another, “one premise cancels out the other.” It may be possible for one proposition or the other to be true, but contradictory propositions cannot be true simultaneously.[4]
J.P. Moreland makes this principle especially useful by showing how a proposition can also undermine itself. As he puts it, “When a statement fails to satisfy itself (i.e., to conform to its own criteria of validity or acceptability), it is self-refuting…,” in other words, “A” cannot be both “non-A” and “A” at the same time.[5] His examples include statements such as “I cannot say a word in English” when spoken in English, “I do not exist,” and “there are no truths.” In each case, the statement defeats itself because its truth would require the very thing it denies.
This distinction is important because the problem under consideration is not merely that Shedd’s formulation is difficult to understand. The question is whether the propositions themselves are logically compatible.
The appeal to mystery cannot resolve the issue unless the relevant terms are first stabilized: “determines” must identify the factor that makes one outcome certain rather than merely foreknown, “self-determining” must clarify whether the will ultimately settles between alternatives, “ultimate determiner” must distinguish the immediate agent from the decisive causal source, and “permission” must explain whether God merely allows an outcome or decrees the conditions that render it certain.
That principle matters here.
The question is not whether we can place Shedd’s statements together in the same paragraph. Obviously, we can. The question is whether they can all be true in the same sense at the same time.
If “self-determining” means that the human will genuinely determines which choice it will make, then God’s exhaustive decree cannot simultaneously be the determining cause of that same choice. But if God’s decree determines which choice the person will inevitably make, then the person may be the immediate agent of that choice, but calling his will “self-determining” becomes problematic.
So consider the two propositions at the heart of Shedd’s formulation:
God’s decree determines that this particular human action will occur.
And:
The human will is itself self-determining with respect to this particular action.
If “self-determining” means only that the person acts voluntarily according to desire, Shedd may be describing compatibilist freedom; if it means that the person could ultimately determine otherwise under the same conditions, he is invoking libertarian freedom, and the two uses cannot be treated as interchangeable.
The person can be the immediate agent who chooses and can act willingly without external compulsion, but agency and voluntariness do not by themselves establish that the will is the ultimate determiner of the action.
That distinction brings us to the real philosophical question:
Could the person have determined otherwise?
If God’s decree has made one particular outcome certain, then the important question isn’t merely whether the person wanted to do it. The question is whether he possessed the genuine ability to determine an alternative outcome.
And that is why simply calling the will “unforced” does not settle the question. Nor does calling it “self-determining.” Those terms themselves require definition. If “unforced” merely means that nobody externally coerced the person, there is no contradiction in saying that he acted willingly.
But if “self-determining” means that the person’s will ultimately determined which of genuinely available alternatives would occur, then exhaustive divine determination presents a serious logical problem.
The issue, then, is not whether God can know something we do not understand. The issue is whether two mutually exclusive descriptions of the same human choice can both be true in the same sense.
Mystery, Contradiction, and the Limits of the Calvinist Reconciliation
It is important at the outset to distinguish between a mystery and a contradiction. Christianity unquestionably contains truths whose full explanation exceeds human comprehension. The existence of mystery, therefore, is not itself problematic. The more precise question is whether an appeal to mystery acknowledges the limits of human understanding concerning truths revealed in Scripture, or whether it is being employed to reconcile propositions that are themselves incompatible.
This framework now applies directly to the Calvinist appeal to mystery. Wayne Grudem recognizes that Christianity contains truths that exceed full human comprehension, but he also insists that Scripture does not require belief in contradiction.
But it should also be said that Scripture does not ask us to believe in a contradiction. A contradiction would be “There is one God and there is not one God,” or “God is three persons and God is not three persons,” or even (which is similar to the previous statement) “God is three persons and God is one person.” But to say that “God is three persons and there is one God” is not a contradiction.[6]
The significance of Grudem’s observation is not that mystery is illegitimate, but that mystery cannot simply be invoked as a substitute for theological coherence. Doctrine may transcend our comprehension without being contradictory.
Rogers advances the argument by moving the issue from general logical coherence to the source of the alleged mystery: if the difficulty arises only after Calvinistic premises are added, then the burden rests on those premises rather than on biblical mystery itself.
This distinction is especially significant in William G. T. Shedd’s treatment of the origin of sin. Shedd acknowledges that the relationship between God’s permissive decree and the entrance of sin presents an “inscrutable mystery.”
Yet Rogers argues that the mystery arises precisely because Calvinism combines divine determinism with compatibilism. Within compatibilism, the creature freely acts according to his strongest desire, but that desire itself is determined by antecedent conditions. Consequently, the creature’s choice is free in the compatibilist sense while, given the identical antecedent conditions, he could not actually have chosen otherwise.
Compatibilism is therefore not an escape from determinism but a particular account of freedom within determinism. John Hendryx explicitly acknowledges that “compatibilism is a form of determinism,” adding that it is “no less deterministic than hard determinism,” so the key question becomes whether responsibility and voluntariness are enough to justify calling the will self-determining.
MacArthur sharpens the causal issue by framing God as the primary cause and human beings as secondary causes “moved by the primary cause.” Even if MacArthur rejects the conclusion that God is morally responsible for evil, his formulation confirms the analytical question: can a will moved by a determining primary cause also be called the ultimate determiner of its own choice?
This creates a significant difficulty for Shedd’s appeal to divine permission. Shedd can distinguish God’s permission from direct efficiency and can affirm that the creature freely apostatized. But if God sovereignly established the nature and antecedent conditions from which the creature’s desires necessarily arose, then describing the fall as something God merely permitted does not by itself explain how the fall was not also encompassed within the determinative structure of God’s decree. Rogers therefore observes that Shedd’s language concerning the unfallen will possessing the power to remain holy, while simultaneously acknowledging that its apostasy became certain through a permissive decree, exposes rather than resolves the underlying tension. Shedd himself concludes that the manner in which a non-efficient permissive decree makes the fall certain is an “inscrutable mystery.”[7]
The same pattern becomes even more conspicuous when the issue moves from the origin of sin to God’s salvific will.
Here the testimony of David Engelsma is particularly significant precisely because Engelsma is not attempting to soften the implications of historic Calvinism. He states:
“That God is gracious only to some in predestination, but gracious to all in the gospel, and that God wills only some to be saved in predestination but wills all to be saved by the gospel, is flat, irreconcilable contradiction. It is not paradox, but contradiction. I speak reverently: God Himself cannot reconcile these teachings.”[8]
Engelsma then makes an observation that is particularly important to the common appeal to the Trinity as an analogy for this problem. The Trinity is mysterious, but it is not contradictory, because God is one in being and three in persons—not one and three in the same respect. That distinction is crucial. The Christian does not say:
God is one person and three persons.
Nor does he say:
God is one being and three beings.
The apparent numerical conflict disappears because the predicates are being asserted in different respects.
Consequently, to call every difficult Calvinistic reconciliation a “mystery” does not establish that the reconciliation is legitimate. One must first demonstrate that the propositions are compatible.
Indeed, Engelsma goes further. He rejects the attempt to resolve the difficulty through an appeal to different kinds of grace:
“There is no relief for the sheer contradiction … in the doctrine of ‘common grace,’ as though the grace of predestination were a different kind of grace from that revealed in the gospel.”
His argument is that the gospel offer itself is presented as saving grace directed toward those who hear it. If predestination simultaneously teaches that God has eternally determined that only some will receive saving grace, then the distinction between God’s grace in the gospel and God’s grace in predestination cannot simply be introduced as a terminological escape hatch.
And this is where Engelsma becomes especially valuable for our treatment of Shedd. The question is no longer merely:
Can we understand how these things work?
It becomes:
Are the things being asserted actually compatible?
That is a much more fundamental question.
Rogers then shows that the same pattern recurs across Calvinist treatments of compatibilism, the origin of sin, unconditional election, reprobation, the two wills of God, and the “good-faith offer.” Each mechanism—compatibilistic freedom, permissive decree, two wills, hypothetical otherwise-choice, and finally “mystery”—must be evaluated by whether it clarifies the propositions or merely relocates the contradiction.
Importantly, Rogers does not argue that every Calvinist who employs such language is intentionally deceptive. He explicitly says his use of “double talk” is not a charge of malicious intent. Rather, he uses the expression for language that obscures or elides the determinative implications of the system, allowing Calvinists to speak of genuine human choice, divine universal desire, or God’s hatred of sin in ways that may sound libertarian or non-deterministic while the underlying theological definitions remain compatibilistic and decretal.
Thus the issue with Shedd’s appeal to “inscrutable mystery” should not be caricatured as an objection to mystery itself. The issue is whether mystery has actually explained anything. If Shedd’s premises entail that God could have created a world without sin, that God determined the conditions under which the creature would freely choose sin, and that the creature could not have chosen otherwise given those same conditions, then calling the relationship between God’s decree and the certain occurrence of sin an “inscrutable mystery” does not remove those entailments. It merely marks the point at which the system can no longer provide an account that satisfies its own competing assertions.
And that brings us to the crucial distinction:
A mystery tells us that we do not know how two truths that Scripture teaches fit together. A contradiction occurs when two propositions cannot both be true in the same respect and at the same time. The former is a limitation upon our knowledge; the latter is a problem in the propositions themselves.
Consequently, the appeal to mystery must come after the compatibility of the propositions has been established, not before.
The issue, therefore, is not whether Christianity contains mysteries; it unquestionably does.
Nor is the issue whether finite human beings can comprehend every truth concerning the infinite God; they cannot.
The issue is whether “mystery” is being used to acknowledge the limits of human knowledge concerning what Scripture reveals, or to protect a theological deduction from the consequences that follow from its own premises.
A mystery may transcend comprehension without violating coherence. But when propositions asserted in the same respect cannot be reconciled, calling the resulting contradiction a “mystery” does not resolve it. It merely gives the contradiction a theological name.
We should not call something a “mystery” merely because we have not yet demonstrated that the propositions are compatible. Before mystery can be invoked, the terms must first be shown to be logically coherent.
That is the point at which Shedd’s formulation deserves scrutiny: unless he can define divine determination, human self-determination, and divine permission in non-equivocal terms, the appeal to mystery does not answer the logical objection but marks the place where the system has stopped explaining itself.
[1] W. G. T. Shedd, Calvinism: Mixed and Pure: A Defence of the Westminster Standards (1893), 37.
[2] Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 625.
[3] Manuel Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text with Readings (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001), 51.
[4] William S. Sahakian and Mabel Lewis Sahakian, Ideas of the Great Philosophers (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966), 23, under “Contradictory Premises.”
Contradictory Premises – Self-Contradictions are necessarily false; consequently, when an argument contains premises which contradict each other, no conclusion is possible. Any conclusion would involve the fallacy of contradictory premises; that is, it would constitute a self-contradiction. When contradictory premises are present in an argument, one premise cancels out the other. It is possible for one or the other of the two premises to be true, but not for both to be simultaneously true. Note the contradictory premises in the following questions: “If God is all-powerful, can he put himself out of existence, then come to life with twice the power he had originally?” “Can God make a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?” “Can God make a round square?” “What would happen if an irresistible force met an immovable object?” (page 23)
[5] J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1987), 92.
[6] Wayne Grudem, Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999), 168.
[7] Ronnie W. Rogers, Does God Love All or Some? Comparing Biblical Extensivism and Calvinism’s Exclusivism (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2019), 54–60.
[8] David J. Engelsma, “Is the Denial of the ‘Well-Meant Offer’ Hyper-Calvinism?,” Protestant Reformed Theological Journal 23, no. 2 (April 1990): 60. (Fuller quote from this “high Calvinist”):
It is part of our defence of the denial of the offer that we take the offensive against the offer. We charge that the offer involves a Calvinist in sheer contradiction. That God is gracious only to some in predestination, but gracious to all in the gospel, and that God wills only some to be saved in predestination but wills all to be saved by the gospel, is flat, irreconcilable contradiction. It is not paradox, but contradiction. I speak reverently: God Himself cannot reconcile these teachings. Nor is there any similarity between this contradiction and the truth of the Trinity that surpasses our understanding. The truth of the Trinity is not contradictory, for it holds that God is one in being and three in persons, not, therefore, one and three in the very same respects.
There is no relief for the sheer contradiction in which the offer involves a Calvinist in the doctrine of “common grace,” as though the grace of predestination were a different kind of grace from that revealed in the gospel. For the offer exactly teaches that the grace of God for all is grace shown in the preaching of the gospel. This grace is not some non-saving favour directed towards a prosperous earthly life, but saving grace, the grace of God in His dear Son, a grace that desires eternal salvation for all who hear the gospel. The offer proposes universal saving grace—precisely that which is denied by predestination.
Nor is there any relief from this absolute, intolerable contradiction in a distinction between God’s hidden will and God’s revealed will. This is attempted as some kind of explanation and mitigation of the contradiction: The desire to save all (of the offer) is God’s revealed will; the will to save only some (of predestination) is His hidden will. But this effort to relieve the tension of the contradiction in which the offer involves Calvinists gets us nowhere. For one thing, the will of God to save only some and not all is not hidden, but revealed. It is found on every page of Scripture. It is Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 22:14: God has eternally chosen only some (“few”) to be saved, in distinction from the others (“many”). For another thing, the distinction leaves us right where we were before the distinction was invented: God has two, diametrically opposite, conflicting wills.
Such teaching is destructive of truth and fatal to knowledge of truth. Such teaching thrusts confusion and strife into the very being of God: Does God, or does He not, desire every human to be saved? Is God, or is He not, in His own being, gracious in Jesus to every human? I make bold to suggest that the god of the offer had a very peculiar way of displaying his grace to all and of carrying out his will to save all in the time of the old covenant, when he showed his word unto Jacob, but did not deal so with any nation (cf. Psalm 147:19-20). Is it presumptuous humbly to request of the offer-god worshipped by professing Calvinists that he make up his mind between the alternatives of the offer (the will to save all) and of predestination (the will to damn some)?
It is a sovereign decision that is part of God’s eternal decree, but Reformed theologians deliberately describe it as passive / negative rather than active in the same way election is active.
ELECTION Equels
God positively acts (chooses, regenerates, grants faith).
PASSING OVER / REPROBATION Equels
God withholds that positive action and leaves the person in their fallen state.
So Calvinists say it is not “as active” as election.
I disagree, under exhaustive sovereignty, the decision not to elect is still a deliberate, decisive choice by God. Calling it “passing over” changes the verb but does not remove the determination. In that sense, yes — it is still an active choice of the decree, even if executed by omission.
IS COMPATIBILISM DETERMINISTIC?
Yes.
Compatibilism is a form of determinism (specifically soft determinism). It affirms that every event, including every human choice, is determined by prior causes (ultimately God’s decree). It simply defines “freedom” as acting according to one’s own desires/nature without external coercion. John Hendryx’s statement is accurate: compatibilism is no less deterministic than hard determinism; the difference lies only in whether that determinism is considered compatible with moral responsibility.
Bottom line in the MacArthur / Reformed framework:
God’s decree determines both the salvation of the elect and the non-salvation of the reprobate. The elect are saved by God’s active, effectual intervention; the non-elect are left in their sin by God’s sovereign decision to pass them over. Compatibilism is the philosophical tool that allows Calvinists to call both outcomes determined while still affirming that people make real, responsible choices according to their natures.
“Does calvinism leave room for genuine choice?” but “If exhaustive divine determinism determines our beliefs and reasoning, what grounds do we have for trusting the theological conclusions we reach—including Calvinism itself?”
JOHNNY MAC’s TRANSCRIPT
You say, well, in a world of multiple religions, how can there only be two choices? Because you either choose the way that leads to heaven or you choose a way that does not. And while there may be varieties of that, it’s the same thing. It ends up in the same place. There really are only two religions in the world. There is the religion of human achievement, and that’s all religion in the world that offers heaven for good works, morality, religious ceremonies, rituals. On the other hand, there’s the religion of divine accomplishment which offers heaven to those who admit there is nothing they can do to earn it. One comes the way of works and flesh and merit and ceremony and ritual and ends up in hell, whatever its label. And the true way is by faith and grace and the Holy Spirit. The first way involves what we do and the true way involves what God did.
The Free-Thinking Argument is especially useful here because it explicitly applies the problem to exhaustive divine determinism. (PDF)
MacArthur’s distinction between the “religion of human achievement” and the “religion of divine accomplishment” sounds compelling, but it creates a problem for his own theology. No one who believes salvation is by grace through faith is claiming that a person’s decision to trust Christ is a meritorious contribution to Christ’s saving work.
Faith does not compete with divine accomplishment.
Christ accomplishes salvation;
faith receives what Christ has accomplished.
The person who trusts Christ is not saying, “I helped save myself.” He is saying, “I could not save myself; I am trusting the One who did.” To equate the exercise of faith with “human achievement” is therefore a category error. The disagreement is not over whether salvation is God’s accomplishment. It is over whether God must first determine the individual’s response in order for that response to be genuine faith.
The deeper problem arises when MacArthur’s “two religions” argument is placed alongside his Calvinistic doctrine of sovereign determination. If God unconditionally determines who will be saved, and effectually gives the elect the faith and repentance necessary for salvation, then the elect do not independently determine that outcome. Their faith is the result of God’s prior determination, not the cause of it. But the same logic necessarily applies to those who remain lost. If God sovereignly chooses not to give them that saving grace—what Calvinists call “passing over”—then their unbelief and eventual condemnation are likewise the inevitable result of God’s sovereign decision.
Calling one side “active election” and the other “passive passing over” does not remove the divine determination from the second side. It changes the description of how God brings about the two outcomes, but it does not change the fact that both outcomes are ultimately grounded in God’s decree. As George Bryson documents, even the Reformed distinction between a “positive” decree and a “negative” decree leaves reprobation ultimately connected to the divine decree.
This makes MacArthur’s “Make your choice” language particularly difficult. The issue is not whether people make choices—they obviously do. The issue is whether they ultimately determine which choice they will make. Calvinistic compatibilism answers that the person makes a real choice, but that choice is itself determined by God’s sovereign decree and the person’s God-determined nature and desires. That may be called “freedom” within a compatibilist framework, but it is not self-determination in the ordinary sense. And this is where MacArthur’s own argument about evil becomes relevant. MacArthur has argued that if God is the primary cause and human beings are merely secondary causes “moved by the primary cause,” then people are not free and God would be responsible for their actions. Yet in his soteriology, God’s sovereign determination of the human will is precisely what guarantees the saving response of the elect.
If divine determination of the will destroys meaningful freedom when explaining evil, why does that same determination preserve meaningful freedom when explaining salvation?
There is an even deeper epistemological problem. If exhaustive divine determinism means that God determines not merely what we choose, but our desires, thoughts, evaluations, judgments, and beliefs, then the problem extends beyond salvation and free will to our ability to know that our beliefs are true in the first place. Timothy Stratton and J. P. Moreland’s “Free-Thinking Argument” specifically defines exhaustive divine determinism as the view that God necessitates all events, including human “desires, thoughts, intuitions, beliefs, actions, behaviors, evaluations, and judgments.”
They argue that if our beliefs are exhaustively determined, and we know that human beings sometimes believe false things, then we have a serious epistemic problem: if something or someone else determines us to affirm a falsehood, what gives us confidence that we could have arrived at a better or true belief in the same circumstances?
That raises a devastating question for theological determinism: If God determines every belief, including false theological beliefs held by Christians, how do I know that my belief that Calvinism is true is not simply another belief God has determined me to hold? I cannot appeal to my reasoning process as an independent check if God also determined the reasoning process, the premises I find persuasive, the conclusions I draw, and even my confidence that I have reasoned correctly.
The Free-Thinking Argument presses precisely this concern:under exhaustive determinism, if something or someone else determines our thoughts, there is no obvious basis for claiming epistemic responsibility for those thoughts; and if our cognitive faculties are not reliably aimed at truth, our conclusions—including our conclusions about determinism—are themselves subject to rational doubt.
Under Calvinistic determinism, the problem extends beyond our choices to our theological beliefs themselves. If God exhaustively determines every thought, desire, judgment, and belief, then He necessarily determines not only true theological beliefs but also the false theological beliefs people hold. A Calvinist who rejects the Trinity, misunderstands Scripture, embraces Islam, or simply arrives at a false interpretation of a biblical passage does so because God sovereignly determined the cognitive circumstances and beliefs that led him there.
The obvious epistemological question follows:if God determines both true and false beliefs, what makes my belief that Calvinism is true trustworthy? I may sincerely believe that I have arrived at Calvinism through careful exegesis and sound reasoning—but if God also determined my reasoning, premises, intuitions, and conclusion, sincerity and rational confidence cannot by themselves demonstrate that my conclusion is actually true. The problem is not that truth ceases to exist; it is that exhaustive determinism seems to undermine our ability to know that our determined beliefs correspond to it.
This is the concern I have explored elsewhere in “If God Determines Every Belief, Why Trust Yours?”: exhaustive divine determinism does not necessarily deny that objective truth exists, but it raises the question of how a determined creature can reliably distinguish truth from divinely determined error.
That brings us back to MacArthur’s “two religions.” Within his system, the elect are sovereignly determined to receive divine accomplishment, while the reprobate are sovereignly determined to remain without it. One person believes because God sovereignly grants the necessary grace; another remains unbelieving because God sovereignly passes him over. And if God also determines the beliefs and reasoning processes by which we arrive at our theological conclusions, then even the Calvinist who concludes, “Calvinism is true because Scripture teaches it,” must acknowledge that his interpretation of Scripture is itself the product of the same divine determination.
The question therefore becomes unavoidable:What makes his conclusion a genuine discovery of truth rather than simply the belief God determined him to hold?
This is why the issue cannot be dismissed by saying, “But people still make choices.” Of course they do. A determined person can experience deliberation, make choices, form beliefs, and sincerely believe he has reasoned correctly. The question is whether he is the ultimate rational agent directing that process or merely the endpoint of a causal chain he did not originate. Stratton and Moreland describe the alternatives starkly: are we genuinely responsible agents “steering the ship,” or are we passive passengers waiting to see where the antecedent causal chain takes us?
If MacArthur wants to insist that human beings possess genuine self-determination because otherwise God becomes responsible for their evil, then he needs to explain why that same self-determination disappears when discussing salvation, while the resulting determination of beliefs and choices somehow remains sufficient for genuine epistemic responsibility.
So the problem with MacArthur’s two-religion illustration is not that it distinguishes works from grace. We [non-Calvinists] agree with that distinction. The problem is that his illustration presents salvation as though two genuinely available alternatives stand before the individual—“human achievement” or “divine accomplishment”—while his theological determinism ultimately makes the individual’s choice itself the product of God’s prior determination. The non-Calvinist does not believe that trusting Christ earns salvation, contributes merit to the cross, or makes Christ’s accomplishment possible.
We believe Christ accomplished salvation and that the sinner is genuinely called to trust Him. Faith receives; it does not merit. And unlike exhaustive determinism, this preserves something essential not only to moral responsibility but to rational responsibility: the human being is an active agent capable of responding to reasons, evaluating evidence, rejecting error, and genuinely trusting the truth rather than merely being determined to believe whatever God has decreed him to believe.
BOTTOM LINE:
MacArthur says there are “two religions,” but exhaustive Calvinistic determinism ultimately leaves us with only one determining power: God. There may be two religious outcomes, two paths, and two destinations, but there are not two ultimately autonomous alternatives. God determines who believes, what they believe, which path they take, and where they finally arrive. The apparent dualism disappears. There aren’t two competing religions ultimately determining human destiny. There is one sovereign decree determining two outcomes.
JOHNNY MAC’s TRANSCRIPT 2.0
You say, “In a world of multiple religions, how can there only be two choices?” Because ultimately there are only two destinations: heaven or hell. There may be thousands of religious labels and countless variations, but every person will end up on one of those two paths.
There really are only two religions in the world. There is the religion of human achievement—every system that looks to works, morality, religious ceremonies, rituals, merit, or human effort as the basis for acceptance with God. That is the way of the flesh, and it ends in condemnation, whatever name the religion bears.
On the other hand, there is the religion of divine accomplishment. Salvation is entirely God’s work. The elect do not contribute anything to their salvation; God chose them before the foundation of the world, regenerated them, granted them faith and repentance, and brought them irresistibly to Christ. Their believing is not what ultimately distinguishes them from the unbelieving; God’s sovereign choice does. Their faith is the result of God’s saving determination, not the determining cause of it.
And that means the two paths are not ultimately two independently available choices that determine one’s eternal destiny. The elect believe because God sovereignly determined to save them and effectually gave them the grace to believe. The non-elect do not believe because God did not choose to give them that saving grace. He “passes them over,” leaving them in their fallen condition. Thus, one person arrives at heaven because God sovereignly determined to give him saving grace, while another arrives at hell because God sovereignly determined not to give him that grace.
So the first way involves what God has determined to leave the sinner to, while the true way involves what God has sovereignly determined to accomplish. The decisive difference is not ultimately the sinner’s choice; it is God’s decree. The sinner certainly chooses, but even that choice is the result of the nature, desires, and grace God sovereignly determined for him.
Therefore, when I say, “Make your choice,” I do not mean that the sinner possesses an autonomous ability to determine which eternal destiny he will choose. I mean that God has sovereignly ordained both the destination and the means by which each person will arrive there. The elect will choose Christ because God determined to give them the grace to choose Christ; the reprobate will reject Christ because God determined to pass them over.
There are therefore two roads—but within exhaustive divine determinism, God ultimately determines who walks each road.
If God determines the belief, the reasoning, and the moral judgment by which I conclude that God is good, what makes that conclusion trustworthy?
In putting together this post the CS LEWIS illumination from his The Problem of Pain and my posts on it
Lewis’s point becomes especially relevant when applied to exhaustive theological determinism. If God determines not only what we choose, but also what we believe, how we reason, what we judge, and even what we call “good,” then God necessarily determines both true and false theological conclusions. If our moral and rational faculties are sufficiently corrupted that we cannot trust them, while God simultaneously determines the beliefs we arrive at through those faculties, what independent basis do we have for knowing that our conception of God’s goodness is actually good—or that our theology is actually true? We don’t need human judgment to be infallible, but we do need it to be sufficiently connected to truth that we can recognize when we are wrong.
This is where Lewis’s argument cuts against the claim that God’s morality can simply be “beyond” ours. If “God is good” could mean that God calls good what we rightly recognize as evil, then the statement “God is good” becomes practically meaningless; we could just as easily obey an omnipotent fiend. Lewis is not arguing for human moral autonomy—he allows that our moral judgments can be corrected and brought into greater conformity with God’s. His point is that God’s goodness transcends our moral understanding without becoming its opposite or becoming unintelligible. Likewise, if Calvinistic determinism makes God the ultimate determiner of our reasoning, beliefs, and moral judgments, then the Calvinist needs to explain what makes his determined conclusion about God’s goodness—and his theology generally—trustworthy. Otherwise, both “God is good” and “Calvinism is true” risk becoming assertions without a meaningful epistemic standard by which we can know either one is actually true.
A theological system should be judged not only by the verses it cites, but by the world it creates when all of its doctrines are held together.
The Consequences of Exhaustive Divine Determinism
One of the least discussed aspects of Calvinism is its commitment to compatibilism—the view that God’s exhaustive sovereignty and man’s moral responsibility are compatible because people freely choose according to the desires God has ordained. Compatibilism is not an alternative to determinism; it is a particular form of determinism. As John Hendryx explains, compatibilism is no less deterministic than hard determinism; it simply attempts to reconcile exhaustive divine causation with human accountability.[1]
Ironically, John MacArthur has articulated what many critics see as the central problem with determinism. He argues that if God is the primary cause who compels and determines every human action, then God—not man—would ultimately bear responsibility for evil, divine judgment, and eternal punishment. He concludes that this is a view of God many people simply cannot accept.[2]
Yet many leading Reformed theologians openly affirm that God’s eternal decree extends to every event, including the Fall itself.
Loraine Boettner writes:
“Even the fall of Adam, and through him the fall of the race, was not by chance or accident, but was so ordained in the secret counsels of God.”[3]
Jerome Zanchius is even more explicit:
“Surely, if God had not willed the fall, He could, and no doubt would, have prevented it; but He did not prevent it: ergo He willed it. And if He willed it, He certainly decreed it.”[4]
Arthur W. Pink likewise rejects the idea that God merely permitted sin:
“Plainly it was God’s will that sin should enter this world, otherwise it would not have entered, for nothing happens except what God has eternally decreed. Moreover, there was more than a simple permission, for God only permits things that fulfill His purpose.”[5]
Pink continues:
“Not only did God have a perfect foreknowledge of the outcome of Adam’s trial; not only did His omniscient eye see Adam eating of the forbidden fruit, but He decreed beforehand that he should do so.”[6]
Contemporary Calvinist philosopher Vincent Cheung states the conclusion without qualification:
“I would not say that God permitted Adam to fall, but that God caused it.”[7]
John Calvin himself wrote:
“God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at His own pleasure arranged it…. Though their perdition depends on the predestination of God, the cause and matter of it is in themselves…. Man therefore falls, divine providence so ordaining, but he falls by his own fault.”[8]
Likewise, Gordon H. Clark argued:
“I wish very frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do so…. In Ephesians 1:11, Paul tells us that God works all things, not some things only, after the counsel of his own will.”[9]
John Piper and Justin Taylor likewise argue that God does not merely permit evil but actively brings it about according to His sovereign purpose. They write:
“…he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory…. This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz, as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child.”[10]
These quotations are not drawn from obscure hyper-Calvinists. They represent respected voices within the Reformed tradition and reveal a consistent theological principle: the Fall was not merely foreknown or permitted—it was specifically decreed.
That conclusion raises an unavoidable theological question. Scripture opens by declaring:
“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed.” (Genesis 1:31, CSB)
Yet if Adam’s sin was eternally decreed before creation, then humanity was declared “very good” while already destined by divine decree to rebel. Scripture also records God condemning the burning of children to Molech:
“…something I never commanded or mentioned; I never entertained the thought.” (Jeremiah 19:5) (CSB)
Those words appear difficult to reconcile with the claim that every evil act was specifically ordained from eternity. Which leads to the central question:
If God eternally decreed every sin—including Adam’s fall, every murder, every rape, and every atrocity—then isn’t the cross ultimately saving humanity from the consequences of God’s own decree?
Or stated another way:
If the Fall was not merely permitted but specifically decreed as part of God’s eternal plan, in what meaningful sense is humanity being saved from anything other than the consequences of God’s own decree?
C.S. Lewis recognized the danger of resolving this tension by redefining God’s goodness. He observed that if God’s moral standard bears no meaningful resemblance to ours, then calling Him “good” becomes an empty statement. We could no longer distinguish the God of Scripture from an omnipotent tyrant. Lewis warned that when the doctrine of total depravity is extended to mean that mankind’s understanding of good is entirely worthless, Christianity risks collapsing into a form of what he called “devil-worship.”[11]
The issue, then, is not whether God is sovereign. Critics of exhaustive divine determinism [Calvinism] do not deny God’s sovereignty. The issue has never been whether God determines some events. Scripture plainly teaches He does. The question is whether Scripture teaches that God determines every thought, desire, and sinful act. The issue, then, is what kind of sovereignty Scripture actually teaches.
Does God’s sovereignty require that He eternally decree every evil act in order to accomplish His purposes? Or is God’s wisdom, power, and providence so great that He can infallibly accomplish His redemptive plan without specifically decreeing every sin that made redemption necessary?
Clay Jones notes: Paul promises that with every temptation God provides “the way of escape” (1 Cor. 10:13). If every sinful choice has already been eternally determined, from what exactly is the believer escaping? No one can escape what God has decreed must occur.
Every theological system must harmonize difficult passages. The question is whether our theology is being shaped by Scripture, or whether Scripture is continually being reshaped to preserve the system. When the plain meaning of passage after passage must be qualified, restricted, redefined, or explained away to fit a prior theological commitment—when ordinary words such as “all,” “world,” “whoever,” or “desires” are repeatedly given specialized meanings, or when distinctions such as God’s “decretive” will and “preceptive” will are invoked to reconcile texts that appear to conflict—it is worth asking whether these interpretive moves arise naturally from the biblical text or from the theological framework brought to it.
At some point, the question is no longer whether Scripture is shaping our theology, but whether our theology is reshaping Scripture.
[1] John MacArthur, “Why Doesn’t God Save Everyone?” Grace to You. (Insert the exact sermon or transcript citation once verified.)
[2] John Hendryx, “What Is Compatibilism?” Monergism.
[3] Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1932), 234.
[4] Jerome Zanchius, The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination, chap. 2, sec. 2, para. 4.
[5] Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1930), 162.
As far as the Scripture is concerned, it is very clear that faith and believing come first and the new birth follows. The Scripture is replete, lucid, and compelling in teaching that the order is faith prior to regeneration, and faith is a gift that God endowed man with in creation not in selective regeneration; moreover, God is working in order to give men and women a real chance to trust Him unto salvation (John 16:8). Salvation is offered as a free gift (Romans 6:23) to all who are in need of forgiveness (Romans 5:15, 18), and people are summoned to act upon the offer by accepting the gift by—grace-enabled—faith (John 1:12). “Never does the Bible say, ‘Be saved in order to believe; instead, repeatedly, it commands, ‘Believe in order to be saved.’” (GEISLER)
If God has decided in eternity past which individuals he will not save, then those individuals cannot be thought of either as being truly loved by God or as being the objects of his saving intentions. Calvinists protest that it is simply a mystery as to how God loves people he wills to condemn before they are ever born. Some assert that God has two wills, one “hidden” and one “revealed,”108 or two kinds of love,109 but most Southern Baptists view these answers as having neither a biblical nor logical basis. Moreover, Calvinists’ affirmation of “single predestination” over against “double predestination” as a method for absolving God of the charge of actively causing the lost to spend eternity in hell is unconvincing. To say that God merely passes over the lost rather than actively causing their perdition is both a distinction without a difference110 and a flat refusal to own the implications of the Calvinist system.111
110. If I have the ability and opportunity to rescue someone who is drowning, then I have an obligation to render aid. If I simply stand aside and let them die, then I am morally culpable. Calvinist objections that the sinner is already dead will not suffice. If I have the ability and opportunity to regenerate a spiritually dead person but do not, then my culpability is the same.
111. Keathley, Salvation and Sovereignty, 148–49.
This statement by MacArthur is “anti-Gospel.”
It negates the power of the Word.
In the end this is what MacArthur is saying if you take into account his Calvinism:
God by means of divine decree determines all peoples decisions/actions
Potter by means of molding determines all pots decisions,actions,shapes, etc…
Programmer by means of preprogramming determines the Avatars/Robots decisions and actions
Puppeteer by means of strings determines all the puppets movements, actions, decisions
Author by means of writing a story determines all characters decisions, actions
This life in Calvinism has everything completely and fully scripted with every thought, action, deed. Welcome to the world of the avatar. The world of make belief – sounds much like the world of Walt Disney.
The “gospel” according to Calvinists is akin to a “cosmic lottery” then.
In a post detailing misreading’s of Scripture, I end with this:
TO SUMMARIZE:
If the “T” is correct, there is no rebellion against God’s will. Add the “U” and the “I,” the Gospel is rendered meaningless. It is sad, but it is a logical outgrowth of those. The Word of God, the Gospel message sent to a dying and sick world is secondary, Calvary becomes moot. Your hope can only be in if you won the cosmic lottery.
So when the unbeliever stands before God and Romans 1:19-20 is in the thought of our Holy God, when the words come out of said unbelievers mouth,
“I could not believe in your salvific offer because of my nature which you ensured. I suspect you won’t torture a cow [cows are biologically designed to eat grass] for eternity because your command was to eat meat, but ensured their nature was vegetarian.
What should God’s response be?
Are We PRE-PROGRAMMED To Reject The Gospel? Dr. Leighton Flowers | John MacArthur | Calvinism
Dr. Leighton Flowers, Director of Evangelism and Apologetics for Texas Baptists, responds to John MacArthur on whether we are pre-programmed to reject the Gospel or not. Check out the full video here:
Not only does this “pre-programming” dilute Scripture and it’s clear teaching, but it dilutes truth as well!
Preprogrammed definition: (of instructions or data) programmed into an electronic device to control future action. “the drones are designed to follow a preprogrammed route at the push of a button” (Berean Apologetics)
(Adapted from another comment) This is why Christians need to put on the whole armor of God to protect us against becoming infected By malware. We need to put on the Girdle of Truth! May we stand firm in the truth of Your Word so we will not be a victim of Satan’s lies.
RONNIE ROGERS completes the idea simply with the two views compared:
Compatibilism Determinism and moral responsibility are compatible; hence, the name. This compatibility is not achieved by compatibilism being less deterministic than hard determinism. Rather, it is achieved by defining free choice to mean as long as a person chooses according to his greatest desire, he can be considered to have made a free choice for which he is morally responsible; even though given the same past, he cannot choose differently in the moral moment of decision.
Consequently, the difference between compatibilism (soft determinism) and hard determinism is not to be found in the levels of the deterministic nature of each because they are the same. Rather, the difference is compatibilism contends people are morally responsible for their choices if they are made according to their greatest desire, and hard determinism says they are not.
Therefore, moral responsibility is the product of defining free choice as a person acting in accordance with his greatest desire even though the desire is determined. I frequently find Calvinists who affirm soft determinism and disavow hard determinism because they think soft determinism is not as unflinchingly deterministic as hard determinism. That kind of thinking is based upon a misunderstanding of compatibilism.
Libertarianism Man is not determined. He has the actual ability to choose between accessible options, at least in some scenarios. Libertarians contend determinism is not compatible with moral responsibility. Man possesses actual otherwise choice and can, therefore, act or refrain in the moral moment of decision even with the same past within a given range of options. Extensivism contends God endowed man with this ability, which is an aspect of being created in the image of God. [2] God determines the range of options. Adam’s range of options before the fall was greater than humanity’s options after the fall. The range of options available before the fall was the result of creative grace.
Fallen man can still choose between options. He did not lose his libertarian moral freedom, but the range of options is less than man had before the fall. Since the fall, man has lost the ability to make choices that are inherently righteous or spiritually restorative (making one right with God) based solely on creative grace. To make an inherently righteous or spiritually restorative choice, God had to provision redemptive grace, grace enablements.
For compatibilism to be the biblically reflective approach to understanding Scripture (what the Bible actually portrays and teaches), Calvinists would have to explain why the Bible, from Genesis 2 through Revelation 22, is absolutely permeated with verses, events, challenges, commands, offers, and judgments that clearly reflect that people have libertarian free will. That is to say; they can choose to act one way or differently in a myriad of passages (Gen 2:17-3:24; Josh 24; Jer 32; Mark 10:17-31; Rev 22:17-21).
Libertarian freedom allows for both determined events (events uninfluenced by human choice) and undetermined events (events influenced or caused by human choice) in which people choose between options. And whatever they did choose, they could have chosen differently even with the same past.
Compatibilism, Calvinism, requires that everything is determined, and if there is even one verse (I believe there are hundreds if not thousands that do so) that demonstrates the person had the freedom to choose differently than he chose, in the moral moment of decision, Calvinism and compatibilism collapse into an unbiblical perspective.
Consequently, unless a person can demonstrate the Bible teaches only micro-determinism (every verse that speaks of choosing reflects only a predetermined choosing wherein the appearance of having the freedom to choose differently is an illusion), he should totally and quickly disavow Calvinism. If a person chooses to remain a Calvinist, he is integrity bound to speak consistently with the micro-determinism of his position. In my book, Does God Love All or Some? I demonstrate that Calvinism’s view of moral freedom is absolutely in conflict with the teaching of Scripture when we consider all the Scripture.
What makes the micro-determinism in Calvinism, compatibilism, so difficult to detect is that Calvinists often interpret, talk, and teach the Scripture libertarianly. Meaning, they do so as though there is an undetermined choice involved, i.e., man can choose among the options available in the passage, and whatever he does choose, he could have chosen differently. Now, while that is true to the Scripture, it is in absolute contradiction to compatibilism, Calvinism.
Therefore, if a Calvinist is not going to live, speak, teach, interpret Scripture, and pray in a way that is consistent with micro-determinism so that both the Calvinist and the one whom he engages understands his deterministic perspective, he should disavow Calvinism.
(Emphasis added)
And that is the bottom line. If you adopt the Calvinist “TULIP,” you jettison truth. Truth in Scripture, truth in God, truth in reality, and truth in reason.
I believe I do understand Calvinism very well and that is why I argue that it cannot be put into the service of evangelism because there is no “good news” in the Calvinist soteriological doctrines. As such, Calvinism is not “evangelical,” which means “to bring good news.” When Calvinist’s do evangelism that have to abandon their soteriology and preach a non-Calvinist version of the gospel which is truly “good news,” but inconsistent with their Calvinist “doctrines of grace.” I argue against Calvinism because ultimately the truth of the gospel is at stake. (Source)
A man has just entered heaven and is being given a guided tour by St. Peter. As they walk past a certain group of people, Peter tells him to be extra-quiet and not to disturb them. The man asks why and Peter replies, “They’re the Calvinists. They think they are the only ones here!”
A Calvinist is about to enter heaven. There are two lines, one labelled “Chosen” and the other “Free will”. He decides that the “Chosen” line is the one for him and lines up. When his turn comes, he is asked why he joined that line. He replies that he chose to join it.
“No!” he is told. “This is only for those who do not choose. You have to go to the other line. It’s the one for those who choose.”
So he lines up at the “Free will” line. When he gets to the official at the head of the line, he is asked, “Why did you join this line?”
He replies, “Because I was told to join it.”
“Then,” replies the official, “You’re in the wrong line. This is only for those who choose to join it.”
If nihilism says “brain chemistry determines true and false beliefs,” and exhaustive divine determinism says “God determines true and false beliefs,” then what ultimately grounds confidence that my current belief is true rather than merely determined?
The same kind of self-defeating epistemic concerns raised against naturalistic nihilism can be raised against exhaustive divine determinism, especially concerning rational agency, deliberation, responsibility, and confidence in theological conclusions.
Calvinism doesn’t equal Nihilism, but it mirrors it in many ways.
Here is some conversation with GROK, going from a challenge to my position to getting more information on the issue and seeing the light. I am including the moment it hit me. Here is the audio question/conversation I had with GROK:
RPT
I just thought of a concept. I was doing a study of Calvinism a year ago and I came across an article by Albert Mohler talking about how atheists are determinists. They don’t believe in truth. Because everything is chemically charged in our brain to produce a certain viewpoint. So there is no real truth. And that’s what atheistic naturalistic determinism leads to. So within the studies of Calvinism, there’s a form of theistic determinism. Where everything is determined beforehand by God. And so no matter our choices, it doesn’t lend to actually finding truth. It’s whatever God determines us to believe. So I just heard an interview where a guy became a Christian again after losing faith and becoming a nihilist. And his view of nihilism is that there is no ultimate truth. So is it possible to call Calvinists Christian nihilists? That’s my question.
Grok Responds
No, calling Calvinists “Christian nihilists” doesn’t really hold up. Nihilism says there’s no ultimate truth or meaning at all—everything’s pointless. Calvinism says there is ultimate truth: God’s sovereign will and his revealed word in scripture. They just believe God determines who accepts that truth.
The parallel you’re drawing from Mohler’s critique of atheist determinism is fair as a gotcha—both systems make beliefs the product of forces outside our control, so why trust your brain chemicals or God’s decree more than the other? Critics of Calvinism love pointing that out. But Calvinists dodge it by saying God, being good and all-powerful, ensures the elect believe actual truth, not illusion. It’s circular, sure, but that’s their answer.
The guy who came back from nihilism to Christianity probably found real meaning and truth in the gospel, which Calvinists would say God sovereignly gave him. So they’re on opposite ends there—nihilism is the void, Calvinism claims God’s got the whole map. Interesting thought experiment though.
After some short talk and requests for Grok to go through the transcripts from these videos as well as an article and book.
Arguments From Reason Show that Divine Determinists Have Worse Problems than Naturalists | EPS 2023 (VIDEO)
An Explanation and Defense of the Free-Thinking Argument (JOURNAL ARTICLE)
Here is Grok after the above:
GROK
Core of Their Case (Deity of Deception Argument)
From the transcripts:
Everyone (including Christians) holds some false theological beliefs. This is uncontroversial—no one claims infallibility.
If EDD is true, God determines all of them. Every false belief a Christian holds (about God, salvation, etc.) is ultimately caused/decreed by God.
Therefore, God determines His followers to affirm falsehoods about ultimate reality. This makes Him a “Deity of Deception” (even if for “morally sufficient reasons”). His word/Scripture becomes untrustworthy because the same source inspires truth and plants error.
This leads to epistemic meltdown: You can’t rationally trust any theological belief, including the ones supporting EDD itself (a self-undermining loop, like an adapted Lewis Argument from Reason). It’s not just “we’re wrong sometimes”—it’s that there’s no reliable mechanism for sorting truth from the divinely determined falsehoods.
They contrast this with naturalism: Blind chemistry/evolution also undercuts reason (Darwin’s doubt, Plantinga’s EAAN), but at least it doesn’t involve a personal, truthful God actively determining deception. Divine determinism makes the problems worse because it attributes the unreliability to a supposedly omnibenevolent, truthful God.
Ties to Your “Christian Nihilist” Idea
Nihilism: No ultimate truth/meaning; nothing grounds reliable knowledge.
Atheist naturalism (per Mohler): Determinism via brain chemistry → beliefs are just caused, not truth-tracking → no real truth.
Calvinist EDD: Determinism via God’s decree → same problem, but the cause is God → undermines the gospel’s reliability, God’s trustworthiness, and any claim to “know” Calvinism is true.
Your label captures the functional similarity: Both leave you without independent grounds for confidence in truth. The ex-nihilist in the interview likely escaped by finding grounding in a non-deterministic gospel—free response, genuine relationship, trustworthy revelation—which these Molinist-leaning critics say EDD erodes. Calvinists aren’t nihilists (they affirm God’s truth and meaning), but the view risks collapsing into a practical skepticism about accessing that truth.
Calvinist Counters (and Why Critics Say They Fail)
Calvinists typically respond:
God ensures the elect believe saving truth; errors are compatible with His sovereignty.
Compatibilist freedom: We’re “free” enough in the determined sense.
Scripture teaches determinism (e.g., Eph 1, Rom 9).
Stratton et al. push back hard:
This still makes God the source of deception for all Christians’ false beliefs.
Double effect/morally sufficient reasons don’t work when God could just determine the good without the error (no need for “greater goods” via determined sin/falsehood).
It downgrades views of God (love, truth), man (passive cogs, not agents), sin (no real “missing the mark”), and the gospel (bad news for the non-elect; different from the “good news” of free grace).
They conclude EDD isn’t outright heresy (it gets core orthodoxy like Trinity right, unlike Mormonism), but it’s a flawed, sub-biblical view of God that distorts the gospel enough to warrant strong critique—hence the “different gospel?” title.
Bottom Line for Your Study
This isn’t a gotcha that disproves Calvinism overnight—philosophical theology has deep debates here (Molinism vs. Calvinism, libertarian vs. compatibilist freedom, etc.). But the parallel you spotted is legitimate and echoed by these philosophers. EDD risks turning God into the ultimate determiner of illusion, mirroring the nihilistic/atheistic dead-end Mohler critiques. Provisionist or Molinist frameworks (emphasizing genuine free will/responsibility) avoid this by letting humans be active agents who can be held responsible for error without God authoring it. …
I then asked,
Here is a transcript to detour you on the “‘Moral sufficient reasons’ for decreeing error (e.g., displaying justice, greater goods).”
An provided two more resources:
A Rational Refutation of Divine Determinism (VIDEO)
Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism, Second Edition: A Biblical, Historical, Theological, and Philosophical Analysis (BOOK)
GROK:
Mere Molinism is Stratton’s (and Craig’s, etc.) proposed solution to the exact problems you’ve been wrestling with—the Deity of Deception, epistemic meltdown under exhaustive divine determinism (EDD/Calvinist theological determinism), and the functional similarity to naturalistic determinism that risks practical nihilism about reliable truth-seeking.
Quick Recap of the Tension
From Mohler → atheist brain chemistry determines beliefs (no truth-tracking).
From EDD (per the transcripts) → God determines all beliefs, including false ones among Christians (Deity of Deception).
Result: No independent grounds to trust your reasoning or Scripture, since the determiner (chemistry or God) plants errors as the “normal case.”
“Morally sufficient reasons” don’t fix it if God could just determine the good without the deception (as Stratton and the EPS talks emphasize).
Your “Christian nihilist” label captures the epistemic despair: ultimate truth exists, but accessing it reliably collapses under exhaustive determination.
[….]
Ties to Your Provisionist Lean
Provisionism emphasizes God’s universal salvific will, genuine free will/responsibility, and rejection of determinism that makes God the author of unbelief. Mere Molinism is highly compatible (many Provisionists/Molinists overlap). It avoids Calvinist EDD while affirming strong sovereignty—God isn’t surprised or limited; He knows exactly how free creatures will respond and arranges circumstances accordingly.
Stratton’s personal story (Preface) mirrors many: former 5-point Calvinist whose marriage and faith were strained by EDD implications, transformed by Molinism.
Bottom Line for Your Study
Calling Calvinists “Christian nihilists” is provocative but highlights a legitimate vulnerability in exhaustive determinism. Mere Molinism (or similar libertarian + middle knowledge frameworks) dissolves the Deity of Deception and restores reliable agency/truth-seeking without sacrificing God’s greatness. It’s not the only option (open theism, simple foreknowledge, etc., have their own issues), but Stratton makes a robust cumulative case: biblical, historical (Molina, pre-Reformation surveys), philosophical (FTA, Argument from Reason), and practical (problem of evil, prayer, assurance).
After some back and forth…
… I asked GROK a last question:
Recap not on the positive case for Molinism and how it fixes anything… My position is that Calvinism is close to nihilism and no free will or way to substantiate true positions or trust biblical theology or truths
GROK ANSWERS
Yes, your core position holds: Exhaustive divine determinism (EDD) in Calvinism functionally approximates nihilism regarding reliable access to truth, despite affirming God’s ultimate meaning. It undermines genuine free will in a way that leaves no independent ground for substantiating or trusting true positions—including biblical theology itself. Here’s a tight recap based on the materials and arguments we’ve covered.
The Nihilism Parallel
Atheistic naturalism (Mohler’s point): Blind brain chemistry/evolution determines all beliefs. No rational agent steering toward truth—just caused outputs. Beliefs are not “up to you”; they’re products of non-rational forces. Result: No trustworthy path to objective truth. Skepticism/nihilism about knowledge follows.
Theistic determinism (EDD/compatibilism): God’s decree determines all beliefs, desires, reasoning processes, and conclusions (including false theological ones as the “normal case”). Compatibilist “freedom” (Hendryx: no less deterministic than hard determinism; MacArthur: we act willingly per our determined nature) redefines freedom but doesn’t restore agency. You’re still a determined effect in God’s causal chain—willingly hitting targets God aims, including error.
Both systems make beliefs the inevitable product of forces outside the agent’s ultimate control. The ex-nihilist convert escaped into a gospel with real meaning, responsibility, and truth-tracking. EDD risks pulling back toward functional nihilism: Truth exists (in God), but you have no reliable, non-circular way to access or justify it.
No Genuine Free Will → No Epistemic Responsibility
Under EDD, there are no categorical alternative possibilities. You could not have believed/thought/reasoned otherwise in the exact same circumstances—God determined the desires, deliberations, and outcome.
Deliberation collapses: True deliberation (weighing reasons, estimating arguments, choosing the best—per Webster/Stratton) requires the ability to evaluate and select among options. If God determines the entire process (how and what you think), you’re not deliberating; the process is happening to you. Reasoning becomes illusory.
The Deity of Deception (from the talks): Everyone, including Calvinists/elect, holds false theological beliefs. God determines those too. This isn’t rare pedagogy—it’s systemic. Even “morally sufficient reasons” (greater goods, displaying justice) don’t help: God could determine the good without decreeing the error. The ultimate source of deception is God Himself.
Result: You can’t trust your cognitive faculties for metaphysical/theological truth. Any belief you hold (including EDD, compatibilism, or a specific interpretation of Romans 9) is just what God caused you to affirm. No independent justification.
Inability to Substantiate or Trust Biblical Theology
Transfer of trust problem: Scripture is inspired by the same God who determines false beliefs in His followers. If He determines Christians to misread or affirm errors about His word, why trust any interpretation—including the ones supporting EDD? Every proof-text has an undercutting defeater: “God determined me to see this as true.”
Self-undermining: The belief that EDD is true is itself determined. You can’t rationally affirm it without begging the question (assuming the reliability of a process God may have determined toward error). This is epistemic meltdown—adapted Argument from Reason.
Low view of man and sin: Humans are “passive cogs” or “bags of beliefs” none of which are up to the bag. Sin isn’t genuine missing the mark by a responsible agent—it’s determined. Moral intuitions (and theological reasoning) get undercut.
Gospel implications: The “good news” becomes bad news for the non-elect (determined to reject it with no real alternative). Assurance and trust in Scripture erode when the Author determines widespread theological falsehood.
Compatibilism (MacArthur/Hendryx) doesn’t resolve this. It preserves “willingness” and responsibility language, but the determinism is total. Willing puppets are still puppets when it comes to epistemic accountability. You act according to your determined nature, but that nature (and every belief it produces) traces back to the decree.
This is why critics label it close to nihilism: Ultimate truth and meaning exist in God, but finite knowers are left in a predetermined fog with no reliable flashlight. Your Provisionist emphasis on genuine free will and responsibility directly counters this by preserving active agents who can be held accountable for reasoning and responding to truth—without making God the determiner of deception.
The transcripts and arguments we’ve reviewed (Deity of Deception, FTA applications, etc.) consistently press this as a serious vulnerability in EDD, even if Calvinists find it biblically compelling on sovereignty texts. It’s a live tension worth pressing in your study.
I sent a friend the video of Dr. Theodore Zachariades stating that God wills [causes, not just permits] a man to be unfaithful to his wife.
God works all things after the Council of His will. Even keeping those kings who want to commit adultery from committing so! And when He wants to, he orders those to commit adultery when he wants to! (Video)
My friend dismissed this person as a hyper-Calvinist. But as the video below notes, using his definition of a “hyper Calvinist,” A.W. Pink, John Piper, Jeff Durbin, James White, and many-many more, would thus be considered the same. Because of the age restriction, the video must be watch on YouTube, link in pic.
When I asked him: “Question RW, is Piper, Calvin, White and Durbin hyper-Calvinists?” He simply replied “Fishing Bait.” But this is an interesting phenomena… and after decades of encountering Mormons and J-Dubs, the disconnect is the same. I get links and not actualizing on statements made when challenged. When shown a person who follows to the end the logical conclusion of theistic determinism found in Calvinism, the person who is the Calvinist is dismissed as a “hyper-Calvinist” by their fellow Calvinist’s if they are challenged. When that label is then applied rightly to others for the same reason — meaning, using RW’s definition of what a hyper-Calvinist is — then all these others have said worse; and would be by definition, hyper-Calvinists.
Two quick examples. 1st John Calvin, then, John Piper:
John CALVIN:
… how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission. . . . It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them. . . . Who does not tremble at these judgments with which God works in the hearts of even the wicked whatever He will, rewarding them nonetheless according to desert? Again it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good for His mercy’s sake, or to evil according to their merits.
John Calvin, “The Eternal Predestination of God,” 10:11
John Piper:
Ephesians 1:11 goes even further by declaring that God in Christ
“works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Here the Greek word for “works” is energeø, which indicates that God not merely carries all of the universe’s objects and events to their appointed ends but that he actually brings about all things in accordance with his will. In other words, it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex. 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his people’s good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4). This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child: “The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4, NASB ).14 “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other” (Eccl. 7:14, NIV).
John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds., Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 42. (FULLER QUOTE VIA THIS PDF)
Martin Luther at the time of the Reformation. In his book The Bondage of the Will, written in response to Erasmus’ essay On Free Will, Luther said:
[The] omnipotence and foreknowledge of God, I repeat, utterly destroy the doctrine of “free-will”… Doubtless it gives the greatest possible offence to common sense or natural reason, that God, Who is proclaimed as being full of mercy and goodness, and so on, should of His own mere will abandon, harden and damn men, as though He delighted in the sins and great eternal torments of such poor wretches. It seems an iniquitous, cruel, intolerable thought to think of God; and it is this that has been such a stumbling block to so many great men down through the ages. And who would not stumble at it? I have stumbled at it myself more than once, down to the deepest pit of despair, so that I wished I had never been made a man. (That was before I knew how health-giving that despair was, and how close to grace.)
In this passage Luther seems to be aware that there is a deep moral problem with aspects of his view… [RPT:before redefining “grace” that is – almost like what is, is.]
In a reference in that above book is this paper: “I Believe In Divine Sovereignty,” by Thomas H. McCall in Trinity Journal (TRINJ 29:2 [Fall 2008]), 209-210. Of which I excerpt:
… He [John Piper] works long and hard to illustrate this [theistic determinism] from Rom 9:1-23, which he concludes is about the purposes of God being preserved “by means of the predestination of individuals to their respective eternal destines.”11 And we are not to think that God is righteous in spite of such action—instead we are to see that God is righteous because of this action, for the “heart of Paul’s defense” is this: “in choosing unconditionally those on whom he will have mercy and those whom he will harden God is not unrighteous, for in this ‘electing purpose’ he is acting out of a full allegiance to his name and esteem of his glory.”12
This all-determining action of God notably includes predestination and election, but it extends far beyond—it extends to everything. God determines all events that occur in the universe, including all demonic and satanic action.13 As Mark R. Talbot puts it, God creates, sends, instigates, and moves others to do evil, because “nothing that exists or occurs falls outside God’s ordaining will.”14 Talbot makes the point with relentless and unmistakable clarity:
Nothing, including no evil person or thing or event or deed. God’s foreordination is the ultimate reason why everything comes about, including the existence of all evil persons and things and the occurrence of any evil acts or events.15
Make no mistake: “when even the worst of evils befall us, they do not ultimately come from anywhere other than God’s hand.”16 …
NOTES:
11.John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 218, cf. 56-73.
12. Ibid., 219.
13.On this see John Piper, “Suffering and the Sovereignty of God: Ten Aspects of God’s Sovereignty Over Satan and Satan’s Hand in It,” in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, 19-30. Piper here uses the rather confusing (given his determinism) language of “permission.” By my lights, what he means when he says that God “permits” something is this (a) God determines it to occur and then (b) does not act so as to override his previous ordination. Regarding talk of “permission,” I think that John Calvin’s approach is more consistent, [….] see John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.xviii.1, and John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), 696.
14. Mark R. Talbot, “‘All the Good That Is Ours in Christ: Seeing God’s Gracious Hand in the Hurts Others Do to Us,” in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, 43 (41-43), emphasis original.
15.Ibid., 43-44.
16. lbid., 47.
Dave Hunt is right to say that Calvin uses unbiblical positions in dealing with this Augustinian determinism:
There is yet another question that troubles many: If man is free to choose between options, would that not in itself deny both God’s sovereigntyand His foreknowledge? Luther claimed that this question was the very heart of the Reformation and of the gospel itself. In fact, Luther dogmatically insisted that it was impossible for God to foreknow the future and for man at the same time to be a free agent to act as he wills.
Believing firmly in God’s foreknowledge, Luther wrote an entire book titled The Bondage of the Will, to prove that the very idea of man’s free will is a fallacy and an illusion. Several reasons have already been given as to why Luther was wrong on this point, and that issue will be dealt with further in the next chapter.
Though Calvin took so much from Augustine, like Luther he also rejected the Augustinian belief that God could foreknow the future, while at the same time man could have a free will. According to Calvin, foreknowledge leaves no room whatsoever for free will, because foreknowledge is the same as predestination:
If God merely foresaw human events, and did not also arrange and dispose of them at his pleasure, there might be room for agitating the question [of free will] … but since he foresees the things which are to happen, simply because he has decreed them, they are so to happen, it is vain to debate about prescience. …
If this frigid fiction [of free will] is received, where will be the omnipotence of God, by which, according to his secret counsel on which everything depends, he rules over all? (Calvin, Institutes, III: xxiii, 6–7.)
Calvin repeatedly uses such unbiblical and utterly fallacious reasoning.
The Calvinist assumes a contradiction between sovereignty and free will that doesn’t exist. The fact that God is able to allow man freedom of choice, while still effecting His purposes unhindered, is all the more glorifying to His sovereign wisdom, power, and foreknowledge.
In order to understand this better theologians have come up with the term “compatibilism” to describe the concurrence of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. Compatibilism is a form of determinism and it should be noted that this position is no less deterministic than hard determinism. — John Hendryx (John Hendryx is the creator and editor of Monergism.com | SEE: “We are not Determinists!” for more)
Here is A.W. Tozer’s take of the above:
Here is my view: God sovereignlydecreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, What doest thou? Mans will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.
One of the single strongest philosophical critiques of exhaustive Calvinistic determinism is that it isn’t merely, “God ordaining evil.” That’s been debated for centuries. It’s that once every thought, desire, temptation, deception, warning, and response is exhaustively decreed, enormous portions of Scripture become functionally redundant.
Glen Shellrude makes this point from dozens of New Testament angles—not just Satan, but exhortations, warnings, prayer, false teaching, perseverance, church discipline, evangelism, and moral responsibility.
The Redundancy Problem in Exhaustive Calvinistic Determinism
The Redundancy Argument (TRA)
Theological determinism, as commonly defined within Reformed theology, is the belief that God unconditionally decreed every event in history. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes the position as the view that God determines every event that occurs in the history of the world, whether described as His decree, providential control, or efficacious will. Under this understanding, nothing—including every human decision, temptation, belief, unbelief, deception, repentance, or act of faith—could ever occur differently than God eternally ordained.
This creates what may be called the Redundancy Problem. If mankind is already born morally incapable of responding positively to God’s revelation apart from irresistible grace, then many of Scripture’s mechanisms for explaining unbelief become strangely unnecessary. Why does Satan need to blind minds already born incapable of seeing? Why would God judicially harden people who are supposedly already hardened by nature? Why speak in parables to conceal truth from those who could never understand it anyway? Why send strong delusion upon people who were already unable to believe? These biblical actions make perfect sense as judicial acts against previously resistible rebels, but they appear redundant if Total Inability already guarantees the identical outcome.
The redundancy extends far beyond Satan. Throughout the New Testament believers are warned against false teachers, exhorted to persevere, commanded to resist temptation, urged to pray, rebuked for sin, corrected for doctrinal error, and called to repentance. Yet under exhaustive theological determinism, God not only ordains every warning but also ordains every false doctrine, every deception, every act of apostasy, every sinful choice, and every response to those warnings. As Glen Shellrude observes, if theological determinism is consistently applied, God choreographs both the rise of heresy and the degree to which believers either resist or embrace it. Likewise, God ordains every act of obedience and every act of disobedience, every success and every failure, rendering many of Scripture’s exhortations and warnings functionally descriptive of God’s decree rather than genuine appeals capable of being either accepted or rejected.
The issue is not merely philosophical—it is exegetical. Scripture repeatedly portrays Satan as actively blinding unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4), false teachers as genuinely deceiving the church, and believers as capable of resisting deception through faithful perseverance. Those realities fit naturally within a framework in which people are accountable moral agents who may either receive or suppress God’s revelation. However, if every thought, temptation, deception, rejection, and response has already been immutably determined by divine decree, then Satan’s blinding activity, warnings against apostasy, calls to repentance, and commands to resist error appear to accomplish nothing that had not already been guaranteed from eternity. In that sense, Satan becomes less a genuine adversary than an unnecessary middleman carrying out a script whose outcome could never have been otherwise.
The result is that Scripture’s repeated appeals to “hear,” “repent,” “believe,” “beware,” “stand firm,” “do not be deceived,” and “choose” lose much of their ordinary force. The biblical narrative consistently presents these as meaningful appeals directed toward responsible hearers, whereas exhaustive theological determinism necessarily understands them as elements within an already settled decree. The irony is striking: the very worldview intended to magnify God’s sovereignty can unintentionally render many of Scripture’s warnings, explanations, and even Satan’s own ministry logically redundant.
The Redundancy Argument Against Exhaustive Theological Determinism
P1
If every human thought, desire, temptation, deception, belief, and response is exhaustively determined by God’s eternal decree, then no secondary means can alter or further secure the predetermined outcome.
P2
Scripture presents secondary means—Satan’s blinding, judicial hardening, parables concealing truth, warnings against apostasy, false teachers, exhortations, rebukes, and calls to repentance—as genuine means affecting people’s responses.
P3
If those responses are already exhaustively determined and cannot occur otherwise, these secondary means do not function to change or secure any outcome that was not already guaranteed.
Conclusion
Therefore, under exhaustive theological determinism, many of Scripture’s stated means—including Satan’s blinding ministry—become functionally redundant.
Satan is Exhibit A in a much larger pattern. The same logic applies to:
Satan blinding minds.
God hardening hearts.
Jesus speaking in parables to conceal truth.
Warnings against false teachers.
Commands to repent.
Calls to believe.
Exhortations to persevere.
Church discipline.
Appeals to resist temptation.
This broader framing also aligns well with the point Glen Shellrude develops:
if exhaustive determinism is assumed, many New Testament warnings and appeals become difficult to understand as genuine means of influencing human response because the responses are already fixed by decree.
QUOTE:
Warnings to Believers
Related to the above point are the frequent warnings in the New Testament about embracing erroneous teaching. Jesus warns about false prophets (e.g., Matt. 7:15-20), Paul warns the Philippian church about the dangers of both Judaizers and libertines (Phil. 3:221), and the Colossian church about a theology that is somewhat difficult to reconstruct precisely (Col. 2:16-23). In his letter to the Galatians he rebukes Christians for embracing a Judaizing theology, and in the Johannine epistles, John rebukes those who embrace a theology that again is difficult to reconstruct precisely. When read within the framework of theological determinism, the conclusion is that God choreographed all the details of these heretical theologies as well as the extent to which believers would resist or embrace false teaching or realign themselves with truth when they stumbled.
In Rev. 14:9-13 believers are warned not to compromise when persecuted. Those who fail to heed this warning and deny their faith will come under eschatological judgment, while those who remain faithful to the point of death will “rest from their labor” (i.e. will experience eschatological salvation). Elsewhere Revelation explicitly states that God extends the grace that will enable believers to remain faithful in a tribulation context (e.g., Rev. 7:18; 11:1-2). Revelation 14:9-13 assumes that believers can exercise their grace-empowered libertarian freedom by choosing either to defend their faith or to deny it. However, based on Calvinist assumptions, God is the one who decided “before the foundation of the world” how each believer would choose.
In a similar vein, philosophical determinism (atheism/evolutionary paradigms). In what follows — quote’wise — if this is true fore secular forms of determinism, then so to it applies to THEISTIC DETERMINISM:
Atheists reject evidence as illusory…
Why?
Because they “have to.”
Donald C. Abel in his book, Fifty Readings in Philosophy, asks us to imagine for a moment that you walking along and come to a fork in the road. One street is called Divinity Avenue, the other Oxford Street. Assuming you have to walk down one of them, there is a confrontation of choice. Continuing he says,
Now, I ask you seriously to suppose that this ambiguity of my choice is real; and then to make the impossible hypothesis that the choice is made twice over, and each time falls on a different street. In other words, imagine that I first walk through Divinity Avenue, and then imagine that the powers governing the universe annihilate ten minutes of time with all that it contained, and set me back at the door of this hall just as I was before the choice was made. Imagine then that, everything else being the same, I now make a different choice and traverse Oxford Street. You, as passive spectators, look on and see the two alternative universes; one of them with me walking through Divinity Avenue in it, the other with the same me walking through Oxford Street. Now, if you are determinists, you believe one of these universes eternally impossible, because of the intrinsic irrationality or accidentality somewhere involved in it. However, looking outwardly at these universes, can you say which is the impossible and accidental one, and which the rational and necessary one?
Donald C. Abel, Fifty Readings in Philosophy (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 296.
“He thus acknowledged the need for any theory to allow that humans have genuine freedom to recognize the truth. He (again, correctly) saw that if all thought, belief, feeling, and choice are determined (i.e., forced on humans by outside conditions) then so is the determinists’ acceptance of the theory of determinism forced on them by those same conditions. In that case they could never claim to know their theory is true since the theory making that claim would be self-referentially incoherent. In other words, the theory requires that no belief is ever a free judgment made on the basis of experience or reason, but is always a compulsion over which the believer has no control.”
Roy A. Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2005), 174.
The implications of strict naturalism are grim or even counterintuitive. For example, Bertrand Russell affirmed that any philosophy hoping to stand must ultimately take for granted the (naturalistic) picture of unguided causes and accidental collocations of atoms and must be built on the “firm foundation of unyielding despair.” When it comes to naturalism’s implications for morality, naturalist Kai Nielsen contends that reason can’t bring us to morality; this picture ”is not a pleasant one,” and that reflecting on it ”depresses me.” When it comes to consciousness, naturalist Daniel Dennett considers it an illusion- -something fellow-atheist Thomas Nagel finds utterly confused:
You may well ask how consciousness can be an illusion, since every illusion is itself a conscious experience …. So it cannot appear to me that I am conscious though I am not … the reality of my own consciousness is the one thing I cannot be deluded about …. The view [of Dennett] is so unnatural that it is hard to convey …. Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious. … And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, ”maintaining a thesis at all costs.”
Jaegwon Kim acknowledges the stark picture painted by the naturalistic brush. Naturalism is ”imperialistic; it demands ‘full coverage’ … and exacts a terribly high ontological price.”
Paul Copan and Charles Taliaferro (editors), The Naturalness of Belief: New Essays on Theism’s Rationality (New York, NY: Lexington Books, 2019), viii
I could go on, but you get the point. To fashion the issue for you to see, Jaegwon Kim could have said:
Theistic determinism is ”imperialistic; it demands ‘full coverage’ … and exacts a terribly high ontological price.” (added for emphasis)
What is this price? Here is just one example… God vs. God:
Here is a Facebook post I recently posted:
“What is there for God to harden, provoke, or restrain if not the autonomous will of creatures?”
If God knows the future because He planned the future [Sproul, Piper, MacArthur, etc.], when God hardens, provokes, or restraines…. is He working against Himself?
If the “T” of TULIP [total depravity] is a reality, wouldn’t hardening, provoking, or restraining someone be the same thing as digging up bodies in a cemetery and putting blindfolds on the rotting cadavers?
In other words, does He plan the abuse of a child just to redeem that act in some way to bring glory to Himself? Is Satan superfluous?
Are all the prescriptions in the Bible making God out to be duplicitous – since he has planned our actions thru determinitive means?
You could not argue that “evil” is really “evil.” Eastern philosophies run into the same problems as the atheist’s/evolutionist’s I just noted above. The Calvinist runs into the same issue. And it is a distortion of Christianity (T.U.L.I.P.):
(Eph 1:11) “works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Here the Greek word for “works” is 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑒ø, which indicates that God not merely carries all of the universe’s objects and events to their appointed ends but that he actually 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 all things in accordance with his will. In other words, it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex. 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his people’s good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4). This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child: “The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4, NASB ).14 “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other” (Eccl. 7:14, NIV).
John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds., Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 42.
Or…
Is it more like Tozer notes — which lowers man’s position by making him/her responsible to God’s law; and keeps God’s holiness and glory intact as He truly redeems or judges such actions (is He judging Himself in Calvinism? Working against His own will? Secretly?)
TOZER:
God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, ‘What doest thou?’ Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.
There is an analogy of two chess players. As you walk up on one professional chess player, he is sitting on one side of the bench, and at the end of his move he gets up walks to the other side, sits down, thinks a moment and makes his move. This process is repeated until the game is over and the chess player wins.
Guaranteed.
When you ask him why he is playing chess alone, he says to ensure his victory. Or as Piper notes in his book astonished by God: “…the reason God knows the future is because he plans the future and accomplishes it.”
You wouldn’t think too highly of his skills, would you? As you walk down the road a bit further, you come across another chess master. This time however, there is a line of players, world famous chess players, lined up as far as the eye could see. As you watched, the one chess player was handily beating every player that sat before him. Player after player.
With whom would you be more impressed with?
And it is this perceived contradiction that leads Calvinists to a polluting of God’s character, which A.W. Tozer tackles in his book, Knowledge of the Holy. Here is a excerpt…. I changed a couple words to read better:
… While a complete explanation of the origin of sin eludes us, there are a few things we do know. In His sovereignwisdom God has permitted evil to exist in carefully restricted areas of His creation, a kind of fugitive outlaw whose activities are temporary and limited in scope. In doing this God has acted according to His infinite wisdom and goodness. More than that no one knows at present; and more than that no one needs to know. The name of God is sufficient guarantee of the perfection of His works.
Another real problem created by the doctrine of the divine sovereigntyhas to do with the will of man. If God rules His universe by His sovereigndecrees, how is it possible for man to exercise free choice? And if he cannot exercise freedom of choice, how can he be held responsible for his conduct? Is he not a mere puppet whose actions are determined by a behind-the-scenes God who pulls the strings as it pleases Him?
The attempt to answer these questions has divided the Christian church neatly into two camps which have borne the names of two distinguished theologians, Jacobus Arminius and John Calvin. Most Christians are content to get into one camp or the other and deny either sovereigntyto God or free will to man. It appears possible, however, to reconcile these two positions without doing violence to either, although the effort that follows may prove deficient to partisans of one camp or the other.
Here is my view: God sovereignlydecreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereignwill of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, What doest thou? Mans will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereigncould not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.
Perhaps a homely illustration might help us to understand. An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of sovereignty.
On board the liner are several scores of passengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port.
Both freedom and sovereigntyare present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with mans freedom and the sovereigntyof God. The mighty liner of Gods sovereigndesign keeps its steady course over the sea of history. God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfilment of those eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began. We do not know all that is included in those purposes, but enough has been disclosed to furnish us with a broad outline of things to come and to give us good hope and firm assurance of future well-being.
We know that God will fulfil every promise made to the prophets; we know that sinners will some day be cleansed out of the earth; we know that a ransomed company will enter into the joy of God and that the righteous will shine forth in the kingdom of their Father; we know that Gods perfections will yet receive universal acclamation, that all created intelligences will own Jesus Christ Lord to the glory of God the Father, that the present imperfect order will be done away, and a new heaven and a new earth be established forever.
Toward all this God is moving with infinite wisdom and perfect precision of action. No one can dissuade Him from His purposes; nothing turn Him aside from His plans. Since He is omniscient, there can be no unforeseen circumstances, no accidents. As He is sovereign, there can be no countermanded orders, no breakdown in authority; and as He is omninpotent, there can be no want of power to achieve His chosen ends. God is sufficient unto Himself for all these things.
In the meanwhile things are not as smooth as this quick outline might suggest. The mystery of iniquity doth already work. Within the broad field of Gods sovereign, permissive will the deadly conflict of good with evil continues with increasing fury. God will yet have His way in the whirlwind and the storm, but the storm and the whirlwind are here, and as responsible beings we must make our choice in the present moral situation.
Certain things have been decreed by the free determination of God, and one of these is the law of choice and consequences. God has decreed that all who willingly commit themselves to His Son Jesus Christ in the obedience of faith shall receive eternal life and become sons of God. He has also decreed that all who love darkness and continue in rebellion against the high authority of heaven shall remain in a state of spiritual alienation and suffer eternal death at last.
Reducing the whole matter to individual terms, we arrive at some vital and highly personal conclusions. In the moral conflict now raging around us whoever is on Gods side is on the winning side and cannot lose; whoever is on the other side is on the losing side and cannot win. Here there is no chance, no gamble. There is freedom to choose which side we shall be on but no freedom to negotiate the results of the choice once it is made. By the mercy of God we may repent a wrong choice and alter the consequences by making a new and right choice. Beyond that we cannot go.
The whole matter of moral choice centers around Jesus Christ. Christ stated it plainly: He that is not with me is against me, and No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. The gospel message embodies three distinct elements: an announcement, a command, and a call. It announces the good news of redemption accomplished in mercy; it commands all men everywhere to repent and it calls all men to surrender to the terms of grace by believing on Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
We must all choose whether we will obey the gospel or turn away in unbelief and reject its authority. Our choice is our own, but the consequences of the choice have already been determined by the sovereignwill of God, and from this there is no appeal.
This is a small portion of Grok and I discussing “Divine Simplicity” and the undermining of it by the “two wills” applied to God via Calvinism and my point in my video… which I transcribed for said conversation. However, I will post the conversation leading up to it as well:
Yes, love is presented in Scripture as the attribute that most fundamentally defines or embraces the others—particularly in how God relates to creation.
The worksheet premise (“God is the sum of his attributes, so all are equal”) reflects a classical theological idea of divine simplicity: God isn’t composed of “parts” where one attribute competes with another. All His perfections are fully one in His essence. But the Bible doesn’t treat them all as interchangeable or flatly “equal” in emphasis or function, especially regarding God’s self-revelation.
Key Biblical Emphasis on Love
1 John 4:8 and 4:16 state “God is love” twice—direct identity statements. Scripture doesn’t say “God is sovereignty,” “God is justice,” “God is holiness” (in the same exhaustive sense), or anything parallel, even though those are true attributes. Holiness gets the triple emphasis in Isaiah 6/Revelation 4 (“holy, holy, holy”), which underscores uniqueness and moral purity, but the “God is love” phrasing stands out as ontological.
Love isn’t one trait among many; it’s the lens through which the others operate toward us. God’s justice, wrath, mercy, and sovereignty flow from and are interpreted through His loving nature (e.g., John 3:16; Ephesians 1:4-5; Romans 5:8). Love is self-giving and relational, fitting the Trinitarian God who has eternally existed in loving communion (Father, Son, Spirit) before creation. Holiness and justice guard that love from evil, but love motivates the cross—where justice and mercy meet.
Addressing the Calvinist/Determinist Angle
From a Provisionist (or similar non-deterministic) viewpoint, elevating sovereignty/determinism as equally primary (or functionally overriding) can distort the picture. If sovereignty means exhaustive divine determinism—where God ordains every sin, unbelief, and eternal destiny in a way that makes genuine love and relational response impossible—then it clashes with the self-giving, invitational love portrayed in Scripture (e.g., “whosoever believes,” the repeated calls to repent and choose life, God’s grief over rebellion).
Sovereignty is real and powerful (God rules as He wills), but it is not an eternal attribute in the same way as omnipotence or love, because “sovereignty” (rule over others) presupposes creation and relations that didn’t eternally exist. God is eternally omnipotent; He sovereignly chooses how to exercise power in time. Provisionism sees God’s sovereignty as compatible with genuine human response, preserving the authenticity of love.
A thoughtful pushback: If all attributes are “equal,” why does the Bible repeatedly ground God’s actions in love (creation, election, redemption, final judgment)? Why does Jesus summarize the law in love for God and neighbor? Equating them flatly risks making God seem arbitrary or making love secondary to raw power/justice in a way that doesn’t match the gospel invitation.
Suggested Response Structure for the Worksheet
Affirm divine simplicity: Yes, God is not divided; His attributes cohere perfectly.
But Scripture highlights love as central: Cite 1 John 4 directly. Love integrates and motivates the others without negating them (holy love, just love, sovereign love expressed in provision for all).
Love defines God’s relational posture: It “embraces” the others because God is love eternally (intra-Trinitarian), and all He does toward us flows from that.
Avoid false dichotomies: This doesn’t deny holiness, justice, or sovereignty—it contextualizes them. A loving God can be sovereign without determinism that undermines real relationship.
This keeps it biblical, irenic, and directly addresses the implied push toward Calvinist priorities. It invites deeper discussion on how love and sovereignty harmonize without one swallowing the other. Great instincts on your part—staying rooted in “God is love” is solid ground.
[….]
ME:
Regarding divine simplicity and God not being divided, if Calvinists teach that there are two wills of God, and an example, God wills all people be saved, but at the same time, he wills that not all people be saved, doesn’t that separate God in some sense?
Yeah, it does create real tension with divine simplicity. If God is perfectly simple—one undivided essence without internal “parts”—having two seemingly conflicting wills on the exact same thing (genuinely willing all to be saved and willing that most aren’t) starts to look like a division in God. Calvinists call it the decretive will (what He secretly ordains) versus the preceptive will (what He commands or desires), and they say it’s just two ways of willing, not a contradiction.
From a Provisionist angle, it feels like special pleading. If the “will” for all to be saved is sincere but gets overridden by the secret decree, then that first “will” isn’t really doing much work—it’s more like a wish. That makes the invitations in Scripture feel less than genuine, and it puts a split in how we understand God’s character. Simplicity says all of God is fully what He is, all at once. Two opposing wills on salvation strains that picture.
Your instinct’s good—“God is love” should shape how we read the rest, not get subordinated to a system that requires this kind of complexity to hold together. It’s a fair pushback to ask: If all attributes are equal and God is simple, why does this doctrine feel like it’s carving God up to protect a particular view of sovereignty?
ME:
I have another question for you. Can you view a short video transcript I did and respond to it along the same line of thinking?
Yes, your video transcript captures the core tension very well. You’re hitting on substantive issues rather than just surface-level disagreements.
The Bifurcation Problem
The two wills doctrine (preceptive/desire vs. decretive/secret will) is the biggest flashpoint here. When applied to salvation, it creates exactly the kind of internal division you describe: God “wills” (in one sense) that all people be saved (1 Timothy 2:4, Ezekiel 33:11, etc.), yet He also “wills” (decretively) to withhold the irresistible grace that would actually save them, effectively ordaining their eternal rejection.
This does strain divine simplicity. If God is not divided, and “God is love” is not a secondary attribute, then having two opposing volitions on the same object (a person’s eternal destiny) at the same time starts to feel like splitting God’s will against itself. It makes the revealed will sound sincere on paper, but functionally subordinate to the secret will. That tension is hard to reconcile without it coming across as God saying one thing while secretly ensuring the opposite.
Determinism’s Ripple Effects
You’re right that exhaustive divine determinism (the idea that God ordains everything, including every sin, every false belief, and every instance of unbelief) creates downstream problems:
It makes God’s character harder to square with the consistent biblical portrayal of Him grieving sin, being provoked to anger, and genuinely offering salvation.
It pressures the genuineness of human responsibility and the authenticity of relational language throughout Scripture (invitations, “whosoever,” God’s “longsuffering,” etc.).
Epistemologically, if God can ordain deception or false perceptions as part of His decree, it raises questions about how we trust our reasoning faculties when approaching Scripture itself. Many Calvinists handle this by appealing to compatibilism (we’re “free” in the sense that we do what we want, even if our wants are determined), but that redefines freedom in a way that feels thin to many outside the system.
The “mystery” card gets overplayed here. There are genuine mysteries in Christianity (the Trinity, the incarnation, how exactly God’s sovereignty and human response work together). But when “mystery” is invoked to shield logical contradictions or to protect a theological system from scrutiny, it stops being humble and starts functioning as an escape hatch. Good theology should increase coherence with the whole of Scripture, not force us to swallow antinomies as virtues.
On “Different Gospel” and Heresy Language
Your nuance is helpful: you’re not writing off Calvinists as non-Christians, but you see the system as distorting. That’s a fair posture. Many strong Calvinists love Jesus, trust the Bible, and show real fruit. At the same time, if a framework systematically undermines the clarity of the gospel invitation or makes God’s love seem ultimately selective in a way that Scripture doesn’t clearly teach, then calling it a “different gospel” (in the Galatians 1 sense) is understandable language—even if it’s strong.
The early church condemned certain Christological and Trinitarian errors as heresy while still hoping many who held them were confused rather than malicious. Your distinction between the theology being “rightly a heresy” while the people may not be full “heretics” in the damning sense tracks with that.
Bottom Line
Your approach—studying it as an apologetic issue defending God’s character, the reliability of Scripture, and basic logic—is healthy. Calvinism has serious strengths (high view of God’s glory, seriousness about sin, robust sovereignty), but the exhaustive determinism + two-wills package does introduce real costs to divine simplicity, the unity of God’s character as love, and the straightforward reading of many gospel texts.
Keep pressing on the “God is love” foundation. It should be the controlling lens, not subordinated to a particular philosophical reading of sovereignty. If a system requires us to accept that God’s love for the non-elect is qualitatively different from His love for the elect in a way that includes ordaining their damnation, then we should test that rigorously against the whole counsel of Scripture rather than waving it off as mystery.
Would you like help sharpening any particular part of this for future videos or discussions?
[….]
“Yeah, your video transcript captures the core tension very well. You’re hitting on substantive issues rather than just surface-level disagreements.
The two wills doctrine is the biggest flashpoint here. When applied to salvation, it creates exactly the kind of internal division you describe: God wills that all people be saved, yet He also wills to withhold the irresistible grace that would actually save them, effectively ordaining their eternal rejection.
This does strain divine simplicity. If God is not divided, and God is love is not a secondary attribute, then having two opposing volitions on the same object at the same time starts to feel like splitting God’s will against itself.
You’re right that exhaustive divine determinism creates downstream problems for God’s character, the genuineness of the gospel invitation, and how we even trust our reasoning when we come to Scripture.
The mystery card gets overplayed here. There are genuine mysteries in Christianity, but when mystery is invoked to shield logical contradictions, it stops being humble and starts functioning as an escape hatch.
Your nuance is helpful, you’re not writing off Calvinists as non-Christians, but you see the system as distorting. That’s a fair posture.
Okay, here’s a super simple, dumbed-down explanation of the two articles from Soteriology101 (written by Leighton Flowers, who strongly disagrees with Calvinism). I’ll explain them like I’m talking to a friend who knows nothing about theology debates.
What the articles are basically about
These two posts are part of a series called “The Hunt for a Hyper-Calvinist.” The author is on a mission to find a real “hyper-Calvinist” — someone who believes in Calvinism (a view that says God controls everything about who gets saved, and humans can’t choose it on their own) but takes it to an extreme level. The author says he’s hunting because Calvinists keep blaming problems in their theology on these mysterious “hyper” people, but he thinks they don’t actually exist.
In plain terms: The author is saying, “Calvinists say ‘That’s not real Calvinism — that’s hyper-Calvinism!’ whenever someone points out weird or tough parts of their beliefs. But where are these hyper people? Show me one!”
Part 1: The Hunt Begins (April 9, 2020)
The author looks at popular Calvinist writers (like Tim Challies and Phil Johnson) who list what “hyper-Calvinism” supposedly means. Things like:
Not telling everyone the gospel is for them.
Saying it’s not everyone’s duty to believe and repent.
Denying that God really loves or offers grace to people who aren’t chosen for salvation.
These writers say hyper-Calvinists go too far and hurt evangelism (spreading the gospel) because they think only the “chosen” ones can believe anyway.
But the author points out: No one calls themselves a hyper-Calvinist. There are no churches, books, or famous people proudly saying “I’m hyper!” When critics name possible examples (like some old theologians or small groups like Primitive Baptists), those people usually say “We’re just being true Calvinists.”
His big takeaway: “Hyper-Calvinism” seems like a made-up boogeyman. Calvinists use the label to push away criticism and avoid talking about the hard logical problems in their own normal beliefs (like: If God already decided everything, why bother preaching to everyone?).
He ends by saying the hunt continues — he’s still looking for a real one.
Part 2: Still Hunting (April 16, 2020)
This one keeps going and looks at another big Calvinist teacher (Michael Horton from Ligonier Ministries).
Horton writes an article defending Calvinism against critics who say it makes God the author (cause) of sin/evil or makes the gospel call fake/insincere.
Horton says: “No, that’s not us — that’s a misunderstanding or maybe those hyper-Calvinists over there.”
But again, he doesn’t name any actual hyper-Calvinists or give examples. He just quotes official Calvinist documents (like the Canons of Dort or Westminster Confession) and says “We already answered this.”
The author calls this out as more dodging:
Calvinists invent fancy word categories (like “outward call” vs. “inward call”) to explain why it’s okay to invite everyone to believe even though only some are chosen to respond.
They say tough questions are just “mysteries” we can’t figure out.
But the author says these are tricks to avoid admitting the logic leads to problems (e.g., if God controls everything, how is the gospel offer genuine? How isn’t God behind evil?).
He points to popular Calvinists like John Piper who say God really does control everything (including bad stuff), which sounds a lot like what critics call “hyper.”
Bottom line from both parts: The author thinks “hyper-Calvinism” is mostly a fake target Calvinists point to so they don’t have to defend the full, consistent version of their own theology. No real hyper-Calvinists show up when you actually look — it’s just a way to say “That’s not us!” without fixing the issues critics raise.
In super short: These articles are the author saying, “Calvinists, stop blaming imaginary extremists. Face the hard questions about your beliefs head-on.” He’s basically trolling the idea that there’s some wild fringe group causing all the problems.
The two articles from Soteriology101.com (a site that critiques Calvinism from a non-Calvinist perspective) are basically one long argument split into two parts. The author is saying that the label “Hyper-Calvinist” is mostly a made-up boogeyman that Calvinists use to dodge real criticisms of their own theology.
Here’s a super simple, dumbed-down breakdown of what each part is saying:
Part 1: “The Hunt for a Hyper-Calvinist – Part 1”
The author claims nobody actually is a “Hyper-Calvinist” in real life — there are no churches, no famous leaders, no confessions of faith, and nobody calls themselves that. It’s like hunting for a unicorn.
Calvinists (people who believe in TULIP — Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the saints) sometimes get accused of making evangelism (sharing the gospel) pointless. Why bother telling everyone to believe if God already decided who gets saved?
When critics point that out, many Calvinists say, “Oh, that’s not real Calvinism — that’s Hyper-Calvinism!” Then they define Hyper-Calvinism as going “too far” — things like:
Saying God doesn’t really love everyone or offer salvation to everyone.
Refusing to tell non-believers they should repent and believe (because only the “elect” can).
Denying “common grace” (God’s general kindness to all people).
Not bothering to evangelize at all.
The author says: Those extreme ideas are actually just the logical end of regular Calvinism. If God sovereignly decides everything (including who believes), then the “normal” Calvinist position already weakens the reason to plead with everyone to believe. But instead of admitting the doctrine has that problem, Calvinists blame a fictional “hyper” version and say “we’re not like those guys.”
In short: The “hyper-Calvinist” label is a way for Calvinists to avoid dealing with the tough implications of their own beliefs.
Part 2: “The Hunt for a Hyper-Calvinist – Part 2”
This part looks at a specific article by a well-known Calvinist theologian (Michael Horton) that tries to explain the difference between regular Calvinism and Hyper-Calvinism.
Horton lists some “bad” ideas (like God being the author of sin, or the gospel offer being fake/insincere to the non-elect) and blames them on Hyper-Calvinists.
The author says: Horton never names any actual Hyper-Calvinists. He just attributes the problematic conclusions to this invisible group, then defends “real” Calvinism with complicated explanations like “mystery,” “compatibilism,” or special categories (e.g., the gospel is “sufficient for all, efficient for the elect”).
The author argues these are just word games and dodges. They don’t really solve the logical problems — they just hide them behind “it’s a mystery” or redefine terms.
Again: The real issue is with Calvinism itself (e.g., if God controls everything meticulously, how is the gospel offer genuine to people He never planned to save?). Instead of facing that head-on, Calvinists keep pointing at an imaginary extreme version.
Overall message of both parts combined: The author is basically saying: “Stop blaming ‘Hyper-Calvinists’ for the weird or hard-to-defend parts of Calvinism. Those aren’t separate people — they’re just what happens when you take Calvinist ideas all the way without adding extra explanations or ‘mysteries’ to soften them. The hunt for a real Hyper-Calvinist is endless because they don’t exist; it’s a distraction from the actual debate.”
Denies that the gospel call applies to all who hear OR
Denies that faith is the duty of every sinner OR
Denies that the gospel makes any “offer” of Christ, salvation or mercy to the non-elect (or denies that the offer of divine mercy is free and universal) OR
Denies that there is such a thing as “common grace” OR
Denies that God has any sort of love for the non-elect
#4 I think is a obfuscation of language. All mankind receives “common grace,” AND, all mankind is offered a real choice of “salvific grace.” These people who see God’s attributes in nature prior to the Cross, or even after the cross but where the Gospel had not reached yet. But TULIP denies the ability of man has any option to respond positively to the evidences of God. In other words, God wholly chooses who will be saved. Others like Piper apply that singularity to all aspects of man’s abilities.
