R.C. Sproul

Sproul’s View of Double Predestination (Logical Consequences)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Jump to the UPDATE inspired by the GOSPEL COALITION.

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.'”

— Günther H. Juncker, “The Dilemma of Theistic Determinism“

The objection becomes:

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. …

(JOHN WAGNER letter to R.C. SPROUL)

Jerry Walls’s observation at this point is apt:

    • [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.

MORE: Is Double Predestination and Active Reprobation, Equal Ultimacy? (good critique of Sproul)

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

  1. Predestination is double; it has two sides to it.
  2. Some teach that God is equally responsible for election and reprobation. This is characteristic of hyper-Calvinism.
  3. The Reformed view of double predestination reflects a positive-negative schema.
  4. God passively, not actively, hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
  5. 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.

Biblical passages for reflection:

Exodus 7:1-5
Proverbs 16:4
Romans 9
Ephesians 1:3-6
Jude 1:4

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.”15 What 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:

  1. BDAG: has helkō in John 6:44 as “draw, attract.”
  2. Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament by William Mounce says helkō means “to draw mentally and morally, John 6:44; 12:32.”
  3. 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).
  4. 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.”
  5. 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….

  1. 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.

(See video to add to the above and Grace To You)

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.

SUMMARY OF THE GOSPEL COALITION ARTICLE: “THE DOCTRINE OF REPROBATION”

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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?
  6. 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?”

JAMES WHITE:

Why Both Atheists and Christians Need to Believe in Free Will

Published by Papa Giorgio

Originally posted December 2025

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. …

READ IT ALL: “Why Both Atheists and Christians Need to Believe in Free Will“

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:

Here is the full Al Mohler article: “So . . . Why Did I Write This? The Delusion of Determinism”

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:

ARMINIAN PERSPECTIVE:

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.

Calvinist’s Hiding Their Dreadful Decree Behind the Good News

Published by Papa Giorgio

This video examines why the doctrine of Calvinistic predestination—particularly double predestination and reprobation—has repeatedly produced intense disagreement within the Christian church. The discussion asks an important historical question: if these doctrines were foundational teachings of the apostles and earliest Christians, why do we find so little evidence of the kind of intense intra-Christian controversy surrounding them before Augustine?

The video looks particularly at Augustine’s role in the development of theological determinism, including his earlier association with Manichaeism and Neoplatonism, and the later development of his views on predestination. It also considers the historical evidence concerning the early church fathers and their opposition to deterministic ideas associated with Gnosticism and other movements.

The discussion then turns to the modern Calvinist debate and the striking divisions that arise when these doctrines are introduced into churches. Are these disagreements simply evidence that the doctrines are difficult truths that Christians must accept by faith, or do they indicate that something fundamentally different from the teaching of the earliest church has been introduced? The video also examines the problem of “double-speak”—the attempt to hold apparently contradictory propositions together by appealing to God’s mysterious or supposedly different logic.

Ultimately, the video asks viewers to consider a larger question: If Calvinistic determinism was truly a foundational doctrine of Christianity, why is its historical emergence and subsequent divisiveness so pronounced? Rather than simply telling the viewer what to believe, the goal is to examine the historical and theological claims and encourage the viewer to “report, you decide.”

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE PDF 

2) The earliest Christian scholars did not teach “Calvinistic” doc­trines.

If Jesus really was teaching TULIP theology so clearly in John chapter 6, as White likes to emphasize, why on earth don’t we see any of these theological concepts expounded upon or even mentioned in the earliest Christian writings? Instead, we have a preponderance of teachings from the early church, which rebut the conclusions that Calvinists have drawn from this and other passages. A widely-accepted notion among biblical scholars and historians is that doc­trines obtained from those who were present at the time they were created are more likely to be accurate. In contrast, the likelihood of errors in doctrine increases as one moves further away from the ori­ginal sources.

Irenaeus (ca. 130-202) was a martyr and influential figure in the early development of Christian theology. He was a student of Poly-carp, who was a disciple of John. In 180 AD, Irenaeus wrote a book called “Against Heresies,” specifically addressing ideas that would later be associated with Calvinistic Theology. These “heresies” being addressed denied free will, as can be seen in the following summar­ies:

Men are possessed of free will and endowed with the faculty of making a choice. It is not true, therefore, that some are by nature good and others bad.

This expression [of our Lord], How often would I have gathered your children together, and you would not, Matthew 23:37 set forth the ancient law of human liberty, because God made man a free [agent] from the beginning, possessing his own power, even as he does his own soul, to obey the behests (ad utendum senten-tia) of God voluntarily, and not by compulsion of God. For there is no coercion with God, but a good will [towards us] is present with Him continually. And therefore does He give good counsel to all. And in man, as well as in angels, He has placed the power of choice (for angels are rational beings) so that those who had yielded obedience might justly possess what is good, given indeed by God, but preserved by themselves. On the other hand, they who have not obeyed shall, with justice, be not found in possession of the good, and shall receive condign punishment: for God did kindly bestow on them what was good, but they themselves did not diligently keep it, nor deem it something precious, but poured contempt upon His super-eminent goodness. Rejecting therefore the good, and as it were spuing it out, they shall all deservedly incur the just judgment of God, which also the Apostle Paul testi­fies in his Epistle to the Romans, where he says, But do you des­pise the riches of His goodness, and patience, and long-suffering, being ignorant that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart, you store to yourself wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. But glory and honour, he says, to everyone that does good. God, therefore, has given that which is good, as the apostle tells us in this Epistle, and they who work it shall receive glory and honour, because they have done that which is good when they had it in their power not to do it; but those who do it not shall receive the just judgment of God, because they did not work good when they had it in their power so to do.

But if some had been made by nature bad, and others good, these latter would not be deserving of praise for being good, for such were they created; nor would the former be reprehensible, for thus they were made [originally]. But since all men are of the same nature, able both to hold fast and to do what is good; and, on the other hand, having also the power to cast it from them and not to do it — some do justly receive praise even among men who are under the control of good laws (and much more from God), and obtain deserved testimony of their choice of good in general, and of persevering therein; but the others are blamed, and receive a just condemnation, because of their rejection of what is fair and good. And therefore the prophets used to exhort men to what was good, to act justly and to work righteousness, as I have so largely demonstrated, because it is in our power so to do, and because by excessive negligence we might become forgetful, and thus stand in need of that good counsel which the good God has given us to know by means of the prophets.43

Justin Martyr, who lived from c. 100/114AD to c. 162/168 AD was a prominent early Christian apologist who defended the faith. He courageously faced martyrdom through beheading. His writings are significant as they are the earliest surviving examples of substantial Christian apologia. He taught:

Man acts by his own free will and not by fate. We have learned from the prophets, and we hold it to be true, that punishments, chastisements, and rewards are rendered according to the merit of each man’s actions. Otherwise, if all things happen by fate, then nothing is in our own power, for if it be predestined that one man be good and another man evil, then the first is not deserving of praise or the other to be blamed. Unless humans have the power to avoid evil and choose good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions-whatever they may be….

For neither would a man be worthy of reward or praise if he did not of himself choose the good but was merely created for that end. Likewise, if a man were evil, he would not deserve punish­ment since he was not evil of himself, being unable to do any­thing else than what he was made for.

But that you may not have a pretext for saying that Christ must have been crucified, and that those who transgressed must have been among your nation, and that the matter could not have been otherwise, I said briefly by anticipation, that God, wishing men and angels to follow His will, resolved to create them free to do righteousness; possessing reason, that they may know by whom they are created, and through whom they, not existing formerly, do now exist; and with a law that they should be judged by Him, if they do anything contrary to right reason: and of ourselves we, men and angels, shall be con­victed of having acted sinfully unless we repent beforehand. But if the word of God foretells that some angels and men shall be certainly punished, it did so because it foreknew that they would be unchangeably wicked, but not because God had created them so.44

Clement of Alexandria, known to have lived from c. 150 to c. 215 AD, was an important figure in early Christianity. He was an influ­ential Christian theologian and philosopher who sought to integrate Greek philosophy with Christian teachings. Despite living in turbu­lent times, Clement remained devoted to defending and promoting the Christian faith. His written works, which have survived to this day, provide valuable insights into the early development of Christian thought, making Clement of Alexandria a notable figure in early Christian apologetics. He wrote:

A man by himself working and toiling at freedom from sinful desires achieves nothing. But if he plainly shows himself to be very eager and earnest about this, he attains it by the add­ition of the power of God. God works together with willing soul­s. But if the person abandons his eagerness, the spirit of God is also restrained. To save the unwilling is the act of one using com­pulsion, but to save the willing, that of one showing grace.

Neither praise nor condemnation, neither rewards nor pun­ishments, are right if the soul does not have the power of choice and avoidance if evil is involuntary.

I could have provided more examples from early church leaders, but the point has been established. To address any concerns about selectively quoting to support my view, let’s consider the viewpoints of unbiased sources like Loraine Boettner, a well-known Calvinist, on the beliefs of early church leaders. Boettner acknowledges that the early church fathers did not endorse the doctrine of predestination:

It may occasion some surprise to discover that the doctrine of Predestination was not made a matter of special study un­til near the end of the fourth century… They, of course, taught that salvation was through Christ, yet they assumed that man had full power to accept or reject the gospel. Some of their writings contain passages in which the sovereignty of God is rec­ognized; yet alongside those are others which teach the absolute freedom of the human will. Since they could not reconcile the two, they would have denied the doctrine of Predestination… They taught a kind of synergism in which there was a cooper­ation between grace and free will…45

Regarding what we now call the doctrine of predestination, Boettner went on to say, “This cardinal truth of Christianity was first clearly seen by Augustine…” Augustine lived from 354 – 430 A.D., well after the church fathers quoted above. However, Boett-ner was not alone in his findings. In 1882, James Morrison wrote in The Extent of Atonement about an English Bishop, John Davenant (1572-1641), who was a Calvinist present at the Synod of Dort in 1618. Bishop Davenant wrote:

It may be truly said before Augustine and Pelagius that there was no question concerning the death of Christ, whether it was to be extended to all mankind or to be confined only to the elect. For the Fathers…not a word (that I know of) occurs among them of the exclusion of any persons by the decree of God. They agree that it is actually beneficial to those only who believe, yet every­where confess that Christ died on behalf of all mankind…

Augustine died in AD 429, and up to his time, at least, there is not the slightest evidence that any Christian ever dreamed of a propitiation for the elect alone. Even after him, the doctrine of limited propitiation was but slowly propagated, and for long but partially received.46

Herman Bavinck, another well-respected Calvinistic scholar, came to virtually the same conclusion:

In the early church, at a time when it had to contend with pagan fatalism and gnostic naturalism, its representatives focused ex­clusively on the moral nature, freedom, and responsibility of hu­mans and could not do justice, therefore, to the teaching of Scrip­ture concerning the counsel of God. Though humans had been more or less corrupted by sin, they remained free and were able to accept the proffered grace of God. The church’s teaching did not include a doctrine of absolute predestination and irresistible grace.47

In their book titled “Why I Am Not An Arminian,” two Calvinis­tic professors of theology at Covenant Theological Seminary, Robert Peterson and Michael Williams, reflect on the same basic historical fact:

The Semi-Pelagians were convinced that Augustine’s monergistic emphasis upon salvation by grace alone represented a signifi­cant departure from the traditional teaching of the church. And a survey of the thoughts of the apostolic fathers shows that the argument is valid… In comparison to Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace, the teachings of the apostolic fathers tended to­ward a synergistic view of redemption.48

Louis Berkhof, who was both President of Calvin Seminary and a professor of Systematic Theology, affirms this “assured fact, a fact knowing no exceptions, and acknowledge by all well versed in the matter:”

Predestination does not form an important subject of discussion in history until the time of Augustine. Earlier Church Fathers al­lude to it, but do not as yet seem to have a very clear conception of it. On the whole, they regard it as the prescience of God with reference to human deeds, on the basis of which He determines their future destiny… Their representations are naturally rather indefinite, imperfect, incomplete, and sometimes even erroneous and self-contradictory. Says Kahnis: “It stands as an assured fact, a fact knowing no exceptions, and acknowledged by all well versed in the matter, that all of the pre-Augustinian Fathers taught that in the appropriation of salvation, there is a co-work­ing of freedom and grace.” 49

Berkhof goes on to admit that “they [the early church scholars] do not hold to an entire corruption of the human will, and consequently adhere to the synergistic theory of regeneration…” In other words, he admits there were no “monergists” before Augustine.50

John Calvin himself even admitted that Augustine was the only early source he could find to validate his views:

Moreover, although the Greek Fathers, above others, and espe­cially Chrysostom, have exceeded due bounds in extolling the powers of the human will, yet all ancient theologians, with the exception of Augustine, are so confused, vacillating, and contra­dictory on this subject, that no certainty can be obtained from their writings.51

I suspect that the reason Calvin singled out his frustration with John Chrysostom (347-407) is probably because Chrysostom linked the Calvinistic interpretation of passages like John 6:44 to their Gnos­tic origin when he wrote:

No man can come unto Me, except the Father which has sent Me draw Him. The Manichaeans spring upon these words, saying that nothing lies in our own power, yet the expression shows that we are masters of our will.52

Augustine was a Manichaean for about a decade of his life before converting to Christianity, so many scholars throughout the ages have suspected that this might have been one significant influence explaining why Augustine’s teachings “represented a significant de­parture from the traditional teaching of the church,” as acknow­ledged by “all well versed in the matter.”53

And we cannot downplay the amount of influence Augustine had, especially on the Calvinistic form of Christianity. R.C. Sproul, a highly esteemed Calvinistic theologian, wrote:

It has been said that all of Western theology is a footnote to the work of Augustine. This is because no other writer, with the ex­ception of the biblical authors, has had more influence on Chris­tendom. When Martin Luther and John Calvin were accused of teaching new doctrine, they pointed to Augustine as an example of one who had taught the things they were teaching.54

On this point, James Leo Garrett, a prominent Baptist theologian and scholar, aptly noted:

From Augustine of Hippo to the twentieth century, Western Christianity has tended to interpret the doctrine of election from the perspective of and with regard to individual human beings. During those same centuries the doctrine has been far less em­phasized and seldom ever controversial in Eastern Orthodoxy. Is it possible that Augustine and later Calvin, with the help of many others, contributed to a hyper-individualization of this doctrine that was hardly warranted by Romans 9-11, Eph. 1, and I Peter 2? Is it not true that the major emphasis in both testaments falls upon an elect people—Israel (OT) and disciples or church (NT)?55

Considering that even Calvinists discourage the teaching of TULIP to skeptical non-believers and the fact that the Christian church in its first 400 years did not interpret the Bible from a Calvin­istic perspective, it seems highly improbable that Jesus intended to introduce this complex and controversial soteriological systematic to a group of grumbling unbelieving Israelites who were superficial fol­lowers looking for a free meal.

Leighton C. Flowers, Drawn by Jesus: A Biblical Defense of God’s Provision for All and a Rebuttal of James White’s Book “Drawn by the Father” on John 6:35–45 (Trinity Academic Press, 2024), 63–77.

SEE ALSO: Did the Early Church Fathers teach Calvinistic Doctrines?

FOOTNOTES:

40. Calvinism is generally known by its unwavering commitment to the soteriology (doctrine of salvation) most popularly represented by the acronym “TULIP” (Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistiblegrace, and Perseverance of the saints), also referenced as “five points.” Some Cal­vinists call themselves “four pointers” (Amyrauldians), because they reject Limited atonement. Others, like White, add additional letters, such as “S” for “sovereignty” which is redefined to mean “theistic determinism,” making the acronym “STULIP.”

41. In a casual poll on X, I posed the question to Calvinists: “Should you teach TULIP to a crowd of unbelievers.” The overwhelming response was, no. Here are a few replies that best represent the consensus: “No. Secondary matters are second­ary.” “No need to get into the deeper things of God, given that they reject milk.” “This is why we sit down and talk to people and find out who they are and where they are. Any system of doctrine is a guard rail. This is not be to preached or evangelized.”

42. On a Dividing Line program titled “Radio Free Geneva: Atheists, William Lane Craig, Warren McGrew,” White responded to a discussion between an Atheist (PineCreekDoug) and a Calvinistic Christian (Derek Murrell) saying, “…there’s no reason to be discussing the sovereign grace of God and things like that with some­one who just doesn’t even believe…”  accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] 

43. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (NEW ADVENT)

44 Justin Martyr, The First Apology (chapter 43), accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (NEW ADVENT).

45. Loraine Boettner, Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (MONERGISM)

46. David Allen, The Synod of Dort and the Extent of the Atonement, accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (DR. DAVID ALLEN)

47. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, vol. 2, God and Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 348. He references Justin Mar­tyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian among the ante-Nicene fathers, and John of Damascus among the later Eastern teachers.

48. Robert Peterson and Michael Williams, Why I Am Not an Arminian (IVP, 2004) 36.

49. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Eerdmans, 1932) 130.

50. The categories of “monergism” versus “synergism” were created by Calvin­ists in order to reframe the discussion over the role of God and man in the process of salvation which is based on a fallacy of conflation. More on this topic can be found here: “Calvinism’s Conflation” (SOTO 101); and “Calvinism’s Conflation | Flowers and Tozer” (RELIGIO-POLITICAL TALK)

51. John Calvin, Institutes, book 2, chapter 2, section 4

52. John Chrysostom, Homily 46 on the Gospel of John, accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (NEW ADVENT)

53. For more on this topic see: Ken Wilson, The Foundation of Augustinian-Calvinism (Mohr Siebeck, 2019).

54. Quote taken from a recommendation for The Works of Saint Augustine: The Confessions. Accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (THE OLD GUYS)

55. James Leo Garrett Jr., Systematic Theology: Biblical Historical, and Evangel­ical, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 500

This stuff is striking a chord with me. Why, part of this year+ journey I left a church where this “two face” theology is preached from the pulpit and something different is discussed behind doors (adult classes and men’s and women’s groups). My past pastor said this:

  • “Make a choice. Choose this day. In fact, you can choose one of the… He’s not saying that he’s happy if you choose the pagan gods, but he says, in fact, pick one of the pagan gods. Do you know that something that God is extremely kind and gracious to us and that he gave us free will? Did you know that? He didn’t force a relationship on us. He gave us free will. Do you remember what he gave Adam and Eve? Free will. You can make a choice. I’m not gonna force it. Hey, you choose, yeah, you, make the choice.”

When I asked an elder if this pastor really believed this statement he made regarding free will from the pulpit, I got an honest answer of “No.” And when discussing the issue the night before I turned in my letter of leaving to the church, this was said via another pastor:

Interestingly enough Josh McDowell’s warning rang very true to me. He writes:

  • A feature of some cultic groups is that they say one thing publicly but internally believe something totally different. Many organizations call themselves Christians when in fact they deny the fundamentals of the faith. . . . One therefore must be on the alert for the organizations that advertise themselves as “Christians” but whose internal teachings disagree with Scripture.

And part of the reason for this “secrecy” is that is is not good news, it is a “dreadful decree”.

Although we cannot know the true intentions of John Calvin’s pursuit in evangelism, for several reasons it seems unlikely that he aimed only to proclaim salvation in Christ. First, his theological view clearly makes evangelism ultimately useless. Second, cult leaders usually seek their own desires, as opposed to the desires of God as revealed in Scripture. Third, John Calvin knew that his missionaries were not spreading good news to anyone whom God would not save. In fact, as Reformation historian Diarmaid MacCulloch writes, “Calvin was perfectly aware that the determinism of predestination was ‘dreadful indeed’ to humanity.”[22]* In fact, his missionaries were spreading nothing but bad news to almost all of those who were supposedly not of the elect. According to MacCulloch, “The most discordant noises came from Basel, where one anonymous pamphlet with bitter sarcasm described the Genevan Church as proclaiming ‘its good news with flames.”[23]

[….]

(4) Why Calvinism’s gospel and other cult theologies are dishonestly presented

When I share the gospel message, either from the pulpit or one-on-one, I have nothing to hide or water down about my beliefs and theology. This may sound very basic, but it must be noted. If I were a people pleaser, I would be tempted to overlook those parts of my theology that might offend a potential believer. Certain aspects of the gospel’s good news, like “personal sin” and “divine judgment,” are not merely a part of understanding one’s need for God’s grace but are imperative to receiving it. Thus, although the prospective convert might not welcome the true notion of his rebellion before God (i.e., his sin) and a time of God’s future judgment, I withhold nothing and keep no secrets in laying out the full gospel.

This is not the case with Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses. This is also not the case with the gospel according to Calvinism. George Bryson writes:

Some Calvinists are not only less than totally up-front, but they are not even being altogether honest with the non-Calvinists whom they are targeting. In the promotion of doctrine, what is held back or not expressed (relative to those doctrines) can be very misleading.[33]

Bryson contends that “some Calvinists do not want non-Calvinists to know the full implications of Calvinism until after they have become committed Calvinists.”[34] It should not be hard to figure out the reasons why a “potential” convert might not want to know intimately the core doctrines of Calvinism from the beginning.

If the forbearer of the Calvinist gospel message cannot or will not be upfront and direct about the doctrines pertaining to salvation (in public or private life), the skeptic must seriously consider why. Furthermore, we should wonder whether Jesus Himself was hiding some important aspects of His messages. Was He withholding the doctrine of double predestination when He called everyone to come and receive the Bread of Life? Did He expect the crowds to understand that when He said “all” or “world” what He really meant was “some” and “elect”? Did He assume that His followers would understand that “grace” could have multiple definitions? Did Jesus expect His apostles to understand that their efforts to evangelize would be ultimately futile? Indeed, Chuck Smith asks, “Why would the God of all truth, who speaks so sternly against lying, send His servants out to promote such a lie?”[35]

Yet, some Calvinists today seem guilty of being dishonest in presenting their particular gospel. One Reformed Southern Baptist pastor, in an article entitled “Instructions for Local Church Reformation,” advises other Calvinist pastors:

Choose a few men who are sincere, teachable and spiritually minded and spend time with them in study and prayer. They will help you to reform. . . . In the pulpit, don’t use theological language that is not found in the Bible. Avoid terms such as Calvinism, reformed, doctrines of grace, particular redemption, etc. Most people will not know what you are talking about. Many that do will become inflamed against you.[36]

We read about dishonesty concerning the gospel early in church history. Certain men came down from Jerusalem teaching the brethren that unless they were “circumcised according to the custom of Moses,” they could “not be saved” (Acts 15:1, NKJV).[37] Because of this threat to the gospel message, the apostles gathered and directly faced the problem. The main reason the apostles opposed this teaching was because of its false message of salvation, which added “works” to the free grace of God and limited those who could be saved to those who were circumcised. Similarly, Calvinism limits salvation to “the elect.” “Certain men” (Calvinists) are teaching the brethren that some people can “not be saved” at all.

Like Paul, the Christian is called to confront those who are “not straightforward about the truth of the gospel.”[38] In Galatians chapter 2, Paul confronted Peter about his hypocrisy. Although the gospel was commanded to be taken to all of humanity, Peter would fellowship only with the Gentiles in the absence of the Jewish elite. Thus, while Peter believed the gospel was for the Gentiles as well as the Jews, his actions differed from his beliefs. He witnessed mainly to the Jewish people who came from Jerusalem. When Paul noticed Peter compromising the truth of the gospel, he said, “Now when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; . . . But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the gospel, I said to Peter before them all . . .”[39] (Galatians 2:11–14, NKJV). Paul then brings Peter’s hypocrisy into the light.

Likewise, those who herald Calvinism today do not practice what they preach. While on the outside, Calvinists claim that their gospel is for all people, their doctrines clearly declare otherwise. To win the minds of those around them, their doctrine of limited atonement is not openly addressed. Calvinists, as with all cultists, are not straightforward about their message. If they were straightforward, there would be no need for Calvin expositors like Pink, White, and Sproul to malign the intended meanings of simple words like “world”; there would be no need for Calvinist teachers to make unfounded distinctions in words like “love,” “grace,” and “calling”; and there would be no need to change the TULIP labels. The following example illustrates how far from straightforward a Calvinist can be.

I recently watched an episode of a sitcom, in which the manager of a paper resale office was offered a promotion in the company, but only if he laid off several of his employees. The manager, though close friends with many of his employees, agreed to take the new position. Not knowing their fate, his staff anxiously sought his decision. When he came out of his office, he said, “I have good news and bad news. I’ll tell you the bad news first. A lot of you will lose your job here or be forced to relocate to Sweden.” At this, the employees were distraught and saddened. But their regional manager was quick to try and raise their spirits by finishing, “And now the good news—I was offered to be head manager over all of the U.K.” As he looked for approval among his employees, they offered him none. After a minute of silence, one of the employees pointed out the stupidity of his ex-manager: “That’s not good news. All you have is bad news and irrelevant news. We’ve just lost our jobs so you could be promoted, and you think we should be happy for you?”[40]

Likewise, the gospel of Calvinism looks into the faces of people whom their god has doomed to eternal fire and expects a joyful response to their fate. In Luke 2:10, the angel of the Lord announces the true gospel of Christ as “good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.” Is one to believe that this angel from God held the same unreasonable logic of the new U.K. branch manager? Did the angel really think that the unfortunate souls would find the news of their damnation as “good tidings and great joy?”

These types of contradictions that plague Calvin’s TULIP make for a confusing and inconsistent theology. Why does it maintain such contradictions? Is it because Christians would not swallow Calvinism if it were not watered down? Is it because Calvinism’s “unveiled” gospel would turn potential new converts away instead of winning them over? Why unbelievers, let alone Christians, would be repulsed by Calvinism’s deterministic form of Christianity should be no surprise, for it must bear a certain fruit in the lives of its followers.

Micah Coate, A Cultish Side of Calvinism (Innovo Publishing, 2011), 263, 267–71.

* Calvin was perfectly aware that the determinism of divine predestination was ‘dreadful indeed’ to humanity. Moreover, like most believers in predestination (Luther and Augustine included), he felt that only a minority would be saved – it was not Calvin but Augustine in one of his savage late anti-Pelagian works who observed that God had arranged this in order to give the elect all the more reason to be grateful for their elect status.38 Calvin was not prepared to put a figure on the proportion of the saved, varying his estimates for artistic effect from his habitual estimate of one in a hundred to one in twenty, or even one in five in more generous moods. He was also very wary of saying that people could be certain of their own election, let alone identify others among the elect.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 244.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] MacCulloch, The Reformation, 244.

[23] Ibid., 245.

[….]

[33] George Bryson, The Dark Side of Calvinism: The Calvinist Caste System (Santa Ana, CA: Calvary Chapel Publishing, 2004), 23.

[34] Ibid., 22.

[35] Smith, Foreword to The Dark Side of Calvinism.

[36] Ernest C. Reisinger and D. Matthew Allen, A Quiet Revolution: A Chronicle of Beginnings of Reformation in the Southern Baptist Convention [online]; accessed by RPT 8/27/2026             

[37] NKJV, Acts 15:1.

[38] NKJV, Galatians 2:14.

[39] NKJV, Galatians 2:11–14.

[40] Ricky Gervais, The Office, Season 1, Disc 2, Episode 6 (BBC Amazon Prime Video)

 

How the Cults Redefine Biblical Terms

Published by Papa Giorgio

i wanted to start with a large excerpt from Walter Martin’s Kingdom of the Cults (6th edition) to get the main idea across… I was reading Micah Coate’s book, “The Cultish Side of Calvinism, and he had some great sections of a chapter that are incredibly important. But first, Walter Martin:

The Riddle of Semantics

The problem of semantics has always played an important part in human affairs, for by its use or abuse, whichever the case may be, entire churches, thrones, and even governments for that matter, have been erected, sustained, or overthrown. The late George Orwell’s stirring novel 1984, in which he points out that the redefinition of common political terms can lead to slavery when it is allowed to pass unchallenged by a lethargic populace, is a classic illustration of the dangers of perverted semantics. It should be of no particular surprise to any student of world history that trick terminology is a powerful propaganda weapon. The communist dictatorship of China, which even the Russian theorists rejected as incalculably brutal and inept, dares to call itself the People’s Republic of China. As history testifies, the people have very little, if any, say in the actual operation of communism, and if democracy is to be understood as the rule of the people, the Chinese communists have canonized the greatest misnomer of all time!

Both the Chinese communists and the Russians have paid a terrible price for not defining terminology, and for listening to the siren song of Marxism without carefully studying and analyzing the atheistic collectivism through which the music came.

Applying this analogy to the field of cults, it is at once evident that a distinct parallel exists between the two systems. For cultism, like communism, plays a type of hypnotic music upon a semantic harp of terminological deception. And there are many who historically have followed these strains down the broad road to spiritual eternal judgment. There is a common denominator then, and it is inextricably connected with language and the precise definition of terminology. It is what we might call the key to understanding cultism.Precisely how to utilize the key that will help unlock the jargon of cult semantics is best illustrated by the following facts, drawn from over thirty years of research and practical fieldwork with cultists of every variety.

The average non-Christian cult owes its very existence to the fact that it has utilized the terminology of Christianity, has borrowed liberally from the Bible (almost always out of context), and sprinkled its format with evangelical clichés and terms wherever possible or advantageous. Up to now this has been a highly successful attempt to represent their respective systems of thought as “Christian.”

On encountering a cultist, then, always remember that you are dealing with a person who is familiar with Christian terminology, and who has carefully redefined it to fit the system of thought he or she now embraces.

A concrete example of a redefinition of terms can be illustrated in the case of almost any of the Gnostic cult systems that emphasize healing and hold in common a pantheistic concept of God (Christian Science, New Thought, Unity, Christ Unity Science, Metaphysics, Religious Science, Divine Science).

In the course of numerous contacts with this type of cultist, the author has had many opportunities to see the semantic maze in full operation, and it is awesome to behold. Such a cult adherent will begin talking at length about God and Christ. He will speak especially about love, tolerance, forgiveness, the Sermon on the Mount, and, as always, the out-of-context perversion of James’s “faith without works is dead.”

It should be noted that hardly ever in their discourses will such cultists discuss the essential problem of evil, the existence of personal sin, or the necessity of the substitutionary atonement of Christ as the sole means of salvation from sin, through the agency of divine grace and the exercise of faith. In fact, they conscientiously avoid such distasteful subjects like the proverbial plague and discuss them only with great reluctance. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but on the average it is safe to assume that reticence will characterize any exploration of these touchy issues. Both Christian Science and Unity talk of God as Trinity; but their real concept of God is a pantheistic abstraction (Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune divine principles—Christian Science).

The historic doctrine of the Trinity is seldom, if ever, considered without careful redefinition. If the reader consults the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, published by the Unity School of Christianity, he will see the masterpiece of redefinition for himself. For in this particular volume, Unity has redefined exhaustively many of the cardinal terms of biblical theology, much as Mary Baker Eddy did in her Glossary of Terms in the book Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures. The reader will be positively amazed to find what has happened to biblical history, the person of Adam, the concept of human sin, spiritual depravity, and eternal judgment. One thing, however, will emerge very clearly from this study: Unity may use the terminology of the Bible, but by no stretch of the imagination can the redefinition be equated with the thing itself.

Another confusing aspect of non-Christian cultists’ approach to semantics is the manner in which they will surprise the Christian with voluminous quotations from no less authority than the Bible, and give the appearance of agreeing with nearly every statement the Christian makes in attempting to evangelize the cultist. Such stock phrases as “We believe that way too; we agree on this point” or the more familiar: “Mrs. Eddy, Mr. or Mrs. Fillmore, Mr. Evans, Dr. Buchman, Joseph Smith, or Brigham Young says exactly the same thing; we are completely in agreement.” All such tactics based upon the juggling of terms usually have the effect of frustrating the average Christian, for he is unable to put his finger on what he knows is error, and is repeatedly tantalized by seeming agreement which, as he knows, does not exist. He is therefore often forced into silence because he is unaware of what the cultist is actually doing. Often, even though he may be aware of this in a limited sense, he hesitates to plunge into a discussion for fear of ridicule because of an inadequate background or a lack of biblical information.

The solution to this perplexing problem is far from simple. The Christian must realize that for every biblical or doctrinal term he mentions, a redefinition light flashes on in the mind of the cultist, and a lightning-fast redefinition is accomplished. Realizing that the cultist will apparently agree with the doctrine under discussion while firmly disagreeing in reality with the historical and biblical concept, the Christian is on his way to dealing effectively with cult terminology. This amazing operation of terminological redefinition works very much like a word association test in psychology.

It is simple for a cultist to spiritualize and redefine the clear meaning of biblical texts and teachings so as to be in apparent harmony with the historic Christian faith. However, such a harmony is at best a surface agreement, based upon double meanings of words that cannot stand the test of biblical context, grammar, or sound exegesis. Language is, to be sure, a complex subject; all are agreed on this. But one thing is beyond dispute, and that is that in context words mean just what they say. Either we admit this or we must be prepared to surrender all the accomplishments of grammar and scholastic progress and return to writing on cave walls with charcoal sticks in the tradition of our alleged stone-age ancestors. To illustrate this point more sharply, the experience of everyday life points out the absurdity of terminological redefinitions in every way of life.

An attorney who is retained by his client must know the laws that govern trial procedure, cross-examination, and evidence. But above all else he must believe in the innocence of his client. A client who tells his attorney that he is guilty of a misdemeanor but not a felony is using the vocabulary of law. But if his attorney finds out that his client has perverted that vocabulary so that the terms are interchangeable, he will either refuse to defend him or will clarify the terminology before the court, because by definition a misdemeanor is a misdemeanor and a felony is a felony. A man who says he stole only ninety dollars (petty theft), but who really means that it was ninety dollars more or less, and in reality knows that it was in excess of five hundred dollars (grand theft), is playing a game that the law will not tolerate. He will most certainly be punished for such perversions of standard legal terms. In the realm of medicine, a doctor who announces that he will perform an open-heart operation, then proceeds in the presence of his colleagues to remove the gall bladder, and then attempts to defend his action by the claim that open-heart surgery actually means removal of the gall bladder in his vocabulary, could not practice medicine for long! Open- heart surgery is delicate repair of the heart muscle. Removal of the gall bladder is, by definition, surgery of another type. In law and in medicine, therefore, terms are what they are by definition. On the business and professional level this also holds true. But to the cultists words do not always mean what they have always meant by definition in specific context. And just as the American Bar Association will not tolerate confusion of terminology in the trial of cases, and as the American Medical Association will not tolerate redefinition of terminology in diagnostic and surgical medicine, so also the Church of Jesus Christ has every right not to tolerate the gross perversions and redefinitions of historical, biblical terminology simply to accommodate a culture and a society that cannot tolerate an absolute standard or criterion of truth, even if it be revealed by God in His Word and through the true witness of His Spirit.

The major cult systems, then, change the definition of historical terms without a quibble. They answer the objections of Christian theologians with the meaningless phrase, “You interpret it your way and I’ll interpret it mine. Let’s be broad-minded. After all, one interpretation is as good as another.”

A quick survey of how cults redefine Christian terminology illustrates this important observation:

Click to enlarger

Is it any wonder, then, that orthodox Christians feel called upon to openly denounce such perversions of clearly defined and historically accepted biblical terminology, and claim that the cults have no rights—scholastically, biblically, or linguistically—to redefine biblical terms as they do?

We ought never to forget for one moment that things are what they are by definition. Any geometric figure whose circumference is 2πr is by definition circular. Any two figures whose congruency can be determined by the application of angle-side-angle, side-angle-side, or side-side-side is, by definition, a triangle. To expand this, we might point out that any formula that expresses hydrogen to be in two parts and oxygen to be in one is water, and hydrogen to be in two parts, sulfur in one part, and oxygen in four parts is sulfuric acid. H2O can never be H2SO4. Nor can the Atonement become at-one-ment as the theology of the Gnostic cults (Christian Science, Unity, New Thought) explains it. It simply cannot be, if language means anything.

To spiritualize texts and doctrines or attempt to explain them away on the basis of the nebulous word interpretation is scholastic dishonesty, and it is not uncommonly found in leading cult literature. Cultists are destined to find out that the power of Christianity is not in its terminology but in the relationship of the individual to the historic Christ of revelation. The divine-human encounter must take place. One must become a new creation in Christ Jesus, and the emptying of Christian terminology of all its historic meanings serves only the purpose of confusion and can never vitiate the force of the Gospel, which is the Person of the Savior performing the historic function of redeeming the sinner by grace.

The Christ of Scripture is an eternal, divine personality who cannot be dismissed by a flip of the cultist’s redefinition switch, regardless of how deftly it is done. The average Christian will do well to remember the basic conflict of terminology that he is certain to encounter when dealing with cultists of practically every variety.

Summary

Whenever a Christian encounters a cultist, certain primary thoughts must be paramount in his mind: (1) he must strive to direct the conversation to the problem of terminology and maneuver the cult adherent into a position where he must define his usage of terms and his authority, if any, for

drastic, unbiblical redefinitions, which are certain to emerge; (2) the Christian must then compare these “definitions” with the various contexts of the verses upon which the cultist draws support of his doctrinal interpretations; (3) he must define the words interpretation and historic orthodoxy, and standard doctrinal phrases such as the new birth, atonement, context, exegesis, eternal judgment, etc., so that no misunderstanding will exist when these things come under discussion, as they inevitably will; (4) the Christian must attempt to lead the cultist to a review of the importance of properly defining terms for all important doctrines involved, particularly the doctrine of personal redemption from sin, which most cult systems define in a markedly unbiblical manner; (5) it is the responsibility of the Christian to present a clear testimony of his own regenerative experience with Jesus Christ in terminology that has been carefully clarified regarding the necessity of such regeneration on the part of the cultist in the light of the certain reality of God’s inevitable justice. It may be necessary also, in the course of discussing terminology and its dishonest recasting by cult systems, to resort to occasional polemic utterances. In such cases, the Christian should be certain that they are tempered with patience and love, so that the cultist appreciates that such tactics are motivated by one’s personal concern for his eternal welfare, and not just to “win the argument.”

Let it never be forgotten that cultists are experts at lifting texts out of their respective contexts without proper concern for the laws of language or the established principles of biblical interpretation. There are those of whom Peter warns us, who “wrest . . . scriptures, unto their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16). This is an accurate picture of the kingdom of the cults in the realm of terminology.

Looking back over the picture of cult semantics, the following facts emerge:

  1. The average cultist knows his own terminology very thoroughly. He also has a historic knowledge of Christian usage and is therefore prepared to discuss many areas of Christian theology intelligently.
  2. The well-trained cultist will carefully avoid definition of terms concerning cardinal doctrines such as the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, the Atonement, the Bodily Resurrection of our Lord, the process of salvation by grace and justification by faith. If pressed in these areas, he will redefine the terms to fit the semantic framework of orthodoxy unless he is forced to define his terms explicitly.
  3. The informed Christian must seek for a point of departure, preferably the authority of the Scriptures, which can become a powerful and useful tool in the hands of the Christian, if properly exercised.
  4. The concerned Christian worker must familiarize himself to some extent with the terminology of the major cult systems if he is to enjoy any measure of success in understanding the cultist’s mind when bearing a witness for Christ.

We have stressed heavily the issue of terminology and a proper definition of terms throughout this entire chapter. It will not have been wasted effort if the reader has come to realize its importance, and will be guided accordingly when approaching the language barrier, which is an extremely formidable obstacle both to evangelizing cultists and to giving a systematic and effective defense of the Christian faith against their perversions.

As an armchair apologist and reading these ideas in the first edition… it made an impact on me. So much so that it is now a basis I incorporate into my understanding of how Calvinist “Reformed” ideology goes astray. In one of the best books I have read yet, there is some great apologetic themes in his critique of Calvinists changing terms that should be simply understood.

I will introduce each excerpt.

Section Introduction — “His Writing”

In this opening section, Coate examines the formative role of John Calvin’s writings—particularly the Institutes of the Christian Religion—in the development and interpretation of Calvinist theology. He argues that Calvin’s writings became more than historical works of theology: they became a framework through which Scripture was subsequently read and understood. Coate traces Calvin’s intellectual influences, his use of Augustine and earlier Reformers, and the continuing influence of Calvin’s commentary traditions, including the Geneva Bible and later Reformed study materials. His central concern is whether a theological system can remain genuinely Scripture-driven when the writings and interpretations of its principal theologian become the lens through which Scripture itself is interpreted.

The question Coate ultimately puts before the reader is simple:

  • Are we allowing Scripture to determine our theology, or are we allowing a theological system to determine how we read Scripture?

His Writing

Calvin goes on from the original Protestant experience of conversion to build a system, to extrapolate, to raise all the dark questions and give without flinching the dark answers.[1]  

—C. S. Lewis, on Calvin’s Institutes

Cult leaders rarely lead without their own writings. Mary Baker Eddie penned her Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures; Joseph Smith wrote The Book of Mormon; Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health; and John Calvin has his famed Institutes. Out of all his writings and commentaries, which by his own words were subordinate to his Institutes, no other writing has so “determined the course of history and changed the face of Europe” as have Calvin’s Institutes.[2] So influential are the Institutes that comparing them to other cultish writings might at first seem absurd.

To refresh our memory, John Calvin was eight years old when Martin Luther penned his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. Born in one of the most tumultuous times in church history, John Calvin grew up in the midst of heavy Roman Catholic influence. Although Calvin officially broke allegiance to the Catholic Church at the age of twenty-five, a majority of his education had been completed under its authority. He studied at the University of Paris and later studied law at the University of Orleans. He wrote the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536 at the age of twenty-seven. Because Calvin was so young, some scholars question his credibility. Dave Hunt states that the Institutes:

. . . could not possibly have come from a deep and fully developed evangelical understanding of Scripture. Instead, they came from an energetic enthusiasm of a recent law graduate and a fervent study of philosophy and religion, a young genius devoted to Augustine and a newly adopted cause.[3]

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It is also important to note that five years after writing the Institutes, the Genevan authorities asked Calvin to draft the Ecclesiastical Ordinances, an outline of church structure and doctrine. “Calvin borrowed Bucer’s assertion that the New Testament indicated four functions of ministry: pastors, doctors, elders, and deacons [but] was himself never ordained as priest or minister in any Church.” Nevertheless, he classified himself as a doctor. “Together the pastors and the senior doctors, who were obviously close to them in ministry, notably Calvin himself, formed a company of Pastors.” [4]

Although people have said that Calvin gave Protestantism its first systemized theology, it can hardly be said that he was the sole mind in formulating it. Calvin was well-read in the works of Reformers before him, and he relied heavily upon Bucer and Luther. However, he referred to no other theologian more than Augustine of Hippo, who is quoted in Calvin’s Institutes over 400 times. Spurgeon, acknowledging Calvin’s use of Augustine’s works, observes, “Perhaps Calvin himself derived it [sotereological system] mainly from the writings of Augustine,” and affirms that “Augustine obtained his views, without doubt, through the Spirit of God, from the diligent studies of the writings of Paul, and Paul received them from the Holy Ghost, from Jesus Christ.”[5]  

If Augustine “without doubt” received his views from the Holy Spirit and Calvin heavily received his views from Augustine, then one could nearly conclude that the Institutes of John Calvin are divinely inspired. Many Calvinists seem to have concluded just that. From the Institutes, Calvinism draws its doctrine, interpretation of Scripture, systemized theology, and distorted view of God. Claiming to be a Calvinist is nothing less than trusting that the Institutes are unparalleled in defining “true” Christianity. After the Institute’s twenty-three years of revisions, it was finally finished in 1559, just five years before Calvin’s death on May 27, 1564.

In most cults, the leader’s writings and doctrines determine the followers’ involvement with and interpretation of the Bible. Instead of plain Scripture leading to doctrine, doctrine leads the interpretation of Scripture. Although we will look at this in more depth in the next chapter, here are two examples: Those who follow The Book of Mormon consider it to be the fullness of the gospel. Thus, they deem it as more authoritative than the Bible itself. Those who follow the doctrines of Charles Taze Russell consider any translation of the Bible other than the New World to be incorrect. Cult members also interpret the Bible to fit the theology of their leader. For example, the audience of Mary Baker Eddie’s Key to the Scriptures interprets the Scripture from a very mystical, nonliteral perspective. The same can be said of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. Likewise, when Calvinists read the Scriptures, they usually do so in the light of John Calvin’s Institutes, confirming the words of Kent R. Rieske:

Calvinists hold John Calvin in such a high esteem that his writings and teachings are studied and quoted in preference to Scripture. His teachings are used by Calvinists to interpret Scripture rather than the sound doctrine of using Scripture to interpret Scripture.[6]  

In Calvin hotbeds, the Institutes is referred to as often as the Bible, and is even studied in the same manner. Latter-day Saints are educated in the book of Mormon just as students at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, can take classes on Calvin’s Institutes and commentaries. Brigham Young founded the Mormon Brigham Young College (BYC) in Logan, Utah, on July 24, 1877, just two years after he founded Brigham Young Academy (Brigham Young University from 1903) in Provo, Utah. In the Mormon schools, students learn theology and read the Scriptures as interpreted by Joseph Smith, just as students in both Calvin Seminary and Calvin College learn the Bible as interpreted by John Calvin. At one school, Joseph Smith is highly esteemed; in the other, John Calvin is greatly revered.

Other than his Institutes, John Calvin offered much commentary in the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible. When England was ruled under Queen Mary I, many Protestant scholars escaped her persecution to Geneva. The city of Geneva was ruled by John Calvin who we know lead both church and civil matters. The Geneva Bible was partially printed in England in 1575 and fully printed a year later. There were over 150 editions made. With John Knox collaborating with Calvin in the new Bible, a law was passed in Scotland in 1579 requiring all houses to purchase a copy if financially possible. The commentary in the Bible’s margins was prized by Calvinists but was not liked by the Church of England nor King James, who later commissioned the “Authorized Version” or King James Version to replace it in 1611. Until the English Civil War, the Geneva Bible was widespread among all Puritans and Calvinists.

Kent Rieske astutely notes the apparent “need” for the Geneva Bible to be full of Calvin’s commentary. He writes, “Calvin’s theology could not be ascertained by the typical student of the Bible without the external study of Calvin’s Institutes . . . Calvin wrote commentary notes in the margin of the Bible to be used as the interpretation of the Scripture.”[7] Although soundly translated from Greek and Hebrew, the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible made it what is was. To its credit, the Geneva Bible was in fact the first “‘Study Bible,’ with extensive commentary notes in the margins.”[8] With Calvin’s commentaries included in its 1599 edition, the Geneva Bible was “the most complete study aide for Biblical scholars and students” at that time; the “extensive collection” of commentary was not a trivial part of the new Bible, for it is still considered the “greatest distinction of the Geneva Bible.”[9] Calvin’s notes comprise nearly 300,000 words, or nearly one-third the length of the Bible itself, and they are justifiably considered “the most complete source of Protestant religious thought available.”[10] As a result, the Geneva Bible became:

. . . the most widely read and influential English Bible of the 16th and 17th centuries. It was continually printed from 1560 to 1644 in over 200 different editions. It was the Bible of choice for many of the greatest writers, thinkers, and historical figures of the Reformation era. [11]

With men such as William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Bunyan, and Oliver Cromwell using the Geneva Bible, we can again see why Calvinism has had a strong foothold on theology.

Despite the wide acceptance of the Geneva Bible, its place in history was relatively short. Although the Geneva translation was accurate, the “not so marginal” notes of John Calvin so angered the Catholic Church, namely King James of England, that it was promptly replaced by the widely known 1611 King James translation, which was published without commentary. From then on, the Geneva Bible has gone mostly unnoticed in Christianity. And now that Calvinism is making a comeback, the new Reformation Study Bible[12] has recently appeared on the scene. Although it uses both the New King James Version and English Standard Version translations, it is full of marginal notes written by leading Calvinists.

One could rightly argue that this fact is unimportant, since most of today’s Calvinists are not even familiar with the Geneva Bible. However, although many Calvinists might not use either the new Reformation Study Bible or old Geneva Bible or hold them in the same light that past Calvinists have, the readers are indeed affected by their adherence to Calvin’s biblical interpretation. This point is made clear by a conversation I had recently with a Jehovah’s Witness as my truck was being fixed. We briefly discussed the New World Translation. (This purposely mistranslated Bible was proved in a court of law to have mangled the original language of the Bible for the intent of substantiating unorthodox views of Jesus and other biblical doctrines that accompany salvation). He was quick to mention that he reads all translations of the Bible. Regardless of this fact, the damage has already been done for him. Whenever this man had read other translations, his views of God, which are based on ideas by Charles Taze Russell, twisted his interpretation of even correctly translated verses that reveal the deity of Jesus.

Ultimately, no matter what translation of the Bible the man may read, his unorthodox views of Jesus will remain unchanged, because he holds to Russell’s teachings. The same can be said of the Mormon. Mormons read orthodox translations of the Bible. Yet, the unorthodoxy from Joseph Smith’s writings has horribly corrupted the sound interpretation found in other Bibles. Likewise, the Key to the Scriptures and Watchtower magazines can pervert the minds of readers and obscure their vision of plain scriptural truth.

This is true for many Calvinists today. They might not have a clue that the footnotes in the Geneva Bibles are unorthodox, but they still understand John 3:16 to mean something other than that Christ died for all of humanity. When one professes to be a Calvinist or a Reformed Christian, the damage has already been done. Calvinists align themselves with John Calvin’s beliefs and his interpretation of selective salvation. They align themselves with all his writings and footnotes—both the orthodox and the unorthodox.

Collin Hansen has recently noted that John Calvin, “appear[s] not to be a major figure among the latest generation to claim the theology he made famous.”[13] How can one not acknowledge John Calvin in Calvinism? Despite the claims from most cultists that they hold their leader’s writings as merely being equal to the Bible, in practice, the Bible usually takes a back seat. The Book of Mormon is blatantly tagged as “the fullness of the gospel.” Ellen G. White, the Seventh-day Adventists’ prophetess, claims that she writes not her own ideas but “what God has opened before me in vision.”[14] Although most Calvinists would never be so bold as to say that the Institutes are as authoritative as Scripture, the outcome of their biblical theology suggests otherwise. As with Joseph Smith, Charles Russell, Ellen White, Mary Eddie, and many other cult leaders, John Calvin’s writings have radically changed the way his followers interpret the Bible.

NOTES

  1. C.S. Lewis, Quote 139, “Calvin, John,” taken from the Introduction to English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, para. 61, p. 42, in The Quotable Lewis, ed. Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1898), 83.
  2. Alister McGrath, A Life of John Calvin (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), xiii, 209.
  3. Hunt, What Love Is This?
  4. MacCulloch, The Reformation, 238.
  5. Charles H. Spurgeon, message delivered at the opening ceremony of the inaugural ceremonies for the new Metropolitan Tabernacle, in “Expositions of the Doctrines of Grace,” sermons 385-388 of The Spurgeon Archive [online]; accessed 28 January 2010; available from; Internet.
  6. Rieske, “Calvinism.”
  7. Rieske, “Calvinism.”
  8. Greatsite Marketing website, [online]; accessed 23 December 2010;
  9. “1599 Geneva Bible,” Introduction from L. L. Brown Publishing [online]; accessed 25 June 2010; available from website, Link.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Ibid.
  12. “Widely considered one of the best tools available for Bible study and previously only available in the New King James translation, The Reformation Study Bible has been updated to the readable and accurate English Standard Version (ESV). This foundational resource was created by more than fifty scholars and features thousands of in-depth study notes, 96 theological articles, 19 in-text maps, colored maps, and 12 charts to help you understand the Bible better.” [online]; accessed 23 December 2010; (LINK)
  13. Hansen, “Young, Restless, Reformed.”
  14. Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church Volume 5, 67 [online]; accessed 2 February 2010; all volumes.

Section Introduction — “Its Twisting of Scripture”

In this section, Coate shifts from the influence of Calvin’s writings to the more specific question of how Scripture is interpreted through a theological system. He argues that the central problem is not necessarily a new translation of the Bible, but the reinterpretation of biblical words, passages, contexts, and even study notes to make them conform to established Calvinist doctrines. Coate compares this approach with other examples of religious movements interpreting Scripture through the lens of their own authorities, then focuses on Calvinist treatments of passages concerning “world,” “all,” “whosoever,” human freedom, God’s desire for salvation, and the atonement.

A recurring theme throughout the section is redefinition: Coate argues that when a biblical passage appears to conflict with TULIP theology, the solution is sometimes found not by changing the doctrine, but by changing the way the biblical language is understood. He summarizes the concern through Norman Geisler’s description of theological “doublespeak” and Kent Rieske’s claim that Calvinism redefines biblical terminology and applies passages in ways that conform them to Calvin’s theological system.

The central question Coate raises in this section is therefore:

  • Are we allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture, or are theological conclusions being used to determine what Scripture is allowed to mean?

Its Twisting of Scripture

    • The fact is, the cults are notorious Scripture-twisters. When dealing with cults, one must keep in mind that they are always built not upon what the Bible teaches but upon what the founders or leaders of the respective cults say the Bible teaches.[1]

—Norman L. Geisler and Ron Rhodes

    • I am deeply troubled over the Reformed version of grace because through it, the precious and scriptural truths concerning grace are so maligned.[2]

—George Bryson

Manipulation of Scripture in order to construe a certain meaning that was not or could not be intended for the reader is the hallmark of a cult. The “Bible Answer Man,” Hank Hanegraaff, writes, “The first mark of a cult is its manipulation of Scripture. The Bible is twisted to fit the leader or group’s interpretation.”[3] Nothing has done more damage in Christianity than the use of unorthodox hermeneutics. As an example, there has been no more flagrant forgery of Scripture than the New World Translation of the Bible. Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that this so-called Bible was translated by Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew scholars and theologians. However, not only did the purported translators lie about having an education in Greek and Hebrew, the entire translation committee was sponsored solely by Jehovah’s Witnesses and composed by members of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

Because Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe that Jesus Christ was God, verses from the Bible that reveal His being more than a man or an angel, were altered to support their heretical belief. Correct words were purposely omitted and false words were intentionally added in order to change an essential doctrine of the Bible— namely, that Jesus is God. Here are some examples of their twisting of Scripture.

The New World Translation (NWT) has exchanged the truth for a lie. In the NWT, Zechariah 12:10 reads, “They will look upon the one whom they have pierced.” Here the Hebrew “. . . look upon me whom they have pierced”—in which God is the speaker—has been altered in order to avoid the implication that the one who is to be pierced (on the cross) is God Himself.

Again, because the cult teaches that Jesus was a created being rather than the Creator God, Colossians 1:15–17 in the NWT reads:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; because by means of him all [other] things were created in the heavens and upon the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, no matter whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All [other] things have been created through him and for him. Also, he is before all [other] things and by means of him all [other] things were made to exist.[4] 

The word “other” has been inserted several times to avoid the deity of Jesus. The first edition of the NWT was printed without brackets.

The NWT version of Hebrews 1:8 reads: “God is your throne forever.”[5] Despite that the translation makes no grammatical or logical sense, it continues to be used in place of the correct translation, which is, “Your throne, O God, is forever.”[6] Again, the text was altered because the original statement is referring to the Christ.

The most famous of the Watchtower mistranslations is found in John 1:1, where one letter, the article “a,” is slipped into the passage with huge theological consequences. The NWT translates John 1:1 as, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.”[7] The correct translation is, “. . . and the Word was God.” The distorted translation of the NWT implies that Jesus was merely an angelic or supernatural being rather than God Himself.

Although the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society has been proven guilty of lies and perjury in an American court of law (March 17, 1913, Russell v. Ross) the incorrect renditions have not been retracted. Because the Jehovah’s Witnesses use the NWT as their scriptures they are continually misled and intellectually compromised, believing unbiblical doctrine. The NWT is a “translation” of the Bible written to fit a particular group’s beliefs by means of deception through the manipulation of God’s revealed words.

Since Mormons adhere to The Book of Mormon more than the Bible, a need to distort the Bible’s message is less essential. When essential contradictions are found between The Book of Mormon and the Bible, Mormons look to The Book of Mormon as their ultimate authority. Therefore, the need for Mormons to alter biblical doctrines is not as great as for Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose doctrine is supposedly derived directly from the Bible itself. Because Jehovah’s Witnesses do not have the option to claim another source of authority, they must make their peculiar doctrine seem as sound as possible. Mormons, nevertheless, do their fair share of mangling Scripture in hopes of passing their theology off as orthodox.

Because the founders of Mormonism were polygamists, Mormon doctrine concludes that a man should practice polygamy in order to enter the highest heaven.[8] This doctrine supposedly came from Joseph Smith’s “revelation.” Today, polygamy is still practiced among various sects of Mormonism even in light of the Bible’s denouncing of it. Mormon theology has purposefully misconstrued many biblical verses showing God’s tolerance of the practice in the Old Testament, for He clearly commanded His people not to “multiply wives” in Exodus 20:14–17. Other like verses include Deuteronomy 17:17; 1 Kings 11:1; and Matthew 19:9. There are also a number of other verses referring to the folly of practicing polygamy that are either ignored or twisted to confuse their intended purpose.

The Catholic Answers Web site also notes the Mormons’ misinterpretation of God’s Word. Concerning Ezekiel 37 they write:

Mormons neglect the plain sense of the words and ignore their true interpretation, given by God—in the very same chapter. The text makes clear, this is a prophecy of national reunification, not about the appearance of hidden scriptures. The Hebrew term translated as “stick” (aits) is never used anywhere in the Old Testament to mean “book,” “scroll,” “writing” or anything similar. It is variously translated as “wood” or “branch,” “timber,” or “tree.” Needless to say, the Book of Mormon was allegedly written on metal plates, not scrolls or sticks.

Only Mormonism can manage to mistake “timber” for “scrolls” and “nations” for “metal plates.”[9]

Mormons also teach that God the Father has a physical body. They pull the doctrine from Genesis 1:26–27, in which God says, “Let Us make man in Our image” (NKJV). From this statement, Mormons conclude that God has a body.[10] This idea contradicts what Jesus says, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth”[11] (John 4:24, NKJV). Jesus also points out that “a spirit has not flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39, NKJV).[12] Mormons choose to disregard any verse that clearly counters their doctrine. More verses distorted or ignored by Mormons about the nature of God include Numbers 23:19; Isaiah 45:12; Hosea 11:9; and Romans 1:22–23.

Likewise, unorthodox “Word Faith” leaders like Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Paul Crouch, and Benny Hinn also misconstrue Genesis 1:26–27. They teach that according to these verses, God’s followers are themselves “little gods.”[13] Although this belief is held at different levels of intensity by Word Faith followers, it is an unbiblical doctrine needing correction. The complete and “purest” meaning of Genesis 1:26–27 can indeed be argued and debated (as with many other verses), but its interpretation cannot fly in the face of other parts of Scripture if it is to be true. The two errant doctrines teaching that Christians are little gods and that God the Father has a physical body arise from poorly interpreted verses and discount others verses relevant to the subject. Despite claiming a biblical foundation for these doctrines, both Mormon and Word Faith teachers set themselves clearly against biblical orthodoxy.

John Calvin’s practice of manipulating Scripture is obvious to those who have taken a careful look at his theology. Although the majority of his commentaries are accurate, he was not afraid to change the words and meanings of certain verses in order to make his particular interpretation work. Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch writes:

Like the mainstream tradition of Judaism, he [Calvin] felt that imagery in relation to the divine was best restricted to words, where it could be extravagant or as startling as he pleased: in one sermon on Deuteronomy preached in 1555–6, for instance, he radically adapted some words of Jesus in order to compare God’s coming in flesh in the birth of Jesus Christ to a hen stooping down to the ground.[14]  

As we remember the words of historian James P. Byrd, Jr. when he states what Roger Williams thought of Calvin’s poor interpretive skills concerning ecclesiastical government over civil affairs, we see the validity of Williams’ claim. Byrd writes, “Williams revered Calvin’s theological genius and considered him a great man, but he attacked Calvin’s biblical interpretation, calling it a dangerous perversion that turned the Holy Word into a bloody instrument of persecution.”[15]

We will see many examples of how Calvin and his followers have misinterpreted portions of Scripture for the sake of TULIP. Calvinists have not invented their own religious books, as have the Mormons, nor have they created a new translation of the Bible, as have the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but they have taken a step in that direction. Although the Geneva Bible was once banned by King James of the Catholic Church, Thomas Nelson Publishing began printing the New Geneva Study Bible, or the Reformation Study Bible (RSB) in 1995 with the English Standard Version (ESV). Leading Calvinist R. C. Sproul gives the introduction, titled “Reformation Truth,” to the RSB with its explanations of Scripture. The Christian must ask: can absolute biblical truth be reformed? Sure, it can . . . but only into something less than absolute biblical truth. Look how clearly we can see this in the following attempts of the Reformation Study Bible to do away with the biblical doctrine of man’s free will and God’s offer of salvation to the whole world.

The ESV correctly translates John 3:16 as, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” However, under the guise of “Reformation Truth,” the RSB footnote interprets the verse to mean something quite different:

Some have insisted that God sent Jesus to die for the purpose of bringing salvation to everyone without exception, but only as a possibility . . . The point made by the “world” is that Christ’s saving work is not limited to one time or place but applies to the elect from all over the world.[16]

Again, knowing that the message of John 3:16 does away with Calvin’s third point of TULIP, Calvinists twist the Scripture at all cost. Leading Calvinist James White says that “whosoever believeth on him should not perish” actually means “in order that everyone believing on him should not perish.”[17] With the addition of a few words, White defends Calvinism by saying that the elect alone believe and thus Christ died for them only. How does this differ from the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ practice of adding words to the text and thereby changing its meaning?

The twisting of Scripture in the Reformation Study Bible is no less devious than that of the New World Translation. Orthodox Christian leaders often speak against Jehovah’s Witnesses for their new interpretation of the Bible while remaining silent regarding Calvinists, who also add words to scriptural texts in order to support their false claims.

First Timothy 2 speaks of God’s concern for all men and women of all classes. We are commanded to pray, intercede for, and give thanks for all people. In the RSB, 1 Timothy 2:1 reads, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, and thanksgivings be made for all people . . .” (ESV). Here, however, a footnote appears, explaining that “all people” really does not “mean ‘every human being’ but rather ‘all types of people,’ whatever their station of life” (RSB).[18]

In verse 1 Timothy 2:3–4, Paul continues his thought: “. . . God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (ESV). Once again, the RSB attempts to “reform” this truth in its footnote:

. . . who desires all people to be saved. This does not mean that God sovereignly wills every human being to be saved . . . It may refer to God’s general benevolence in taking no delight in the death of the wicked, or to God’s desire that all types be saved (i.e., God does not choose His elect from any single group).[19]

With many verses contradicting TULIP theology within the English Standard Version, the RSB must rely on its footnotes to provide some connection between the actual text and its Calvinistic ideas and undertones.

Another example of the Reformation Study Bible’s mutilation of the intended meaning of the Word is in 2 Corinthians 5:14. The ESV reads, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died.” Without reading into the verse’s meaning, we understand that Christ is the “one” who “died” literally “for all.” If Christ died for all, then all—not some—have died. Because this Scripture affirms what the five points of Calvinism deny, the footnote in the RSB reads, “The ones He died for are the same as the ‘all’ who ‘died’ with Him as a result of His death . . .”[20] No. The verse does not say nor give any indication that the ones for whom He died are the “ones who died with Him.” The verse clearly reads that the “one,” who is Christ, “has died for all.” Christ has died for all, regardless of whether or not we who have placed faith in Him undergo the salvific process of dying “with Him as a result of His death.”

This kind of biblical interpretation illuminates Kent R. Rieske’s radical statement that, “Calvinists have typically taught from the margin notes in the Calvinist’s Geneva Bible in preference to the Scriptural text.”[21] Although Calvinists would vehemently disagree, the few examples above show that when a verse clearly contradicts a doctrine of TULIP, it is usually supplemented by a footnote misinterpreting the verse to fit the doctrine. Like most cults, when confronted with scriptural truth that affirms what they deny, the followers are led by the founder’s interpretation.

Biblical footnotes can be very useful, but they can only be trusted when Scripture is interpreting Scripture. Did the above footnotes from the Reformation Study Bible sound like Scripture was being used to interpret Scripture or like Calvin’s TULIP was being used to interpret Scripture? We will answer this question in more detail later.

Many Calvinists praise John Calvin in an unhealthy and unbalanced way, heralding him as the apostle Paul’s “faithful interpreter.”[22] By this selective mentality, a Reformed conscience can be held captive by Calvin’s radical and unorthodox interpretations. Josh McDowell claims that one of the key characteristics of a cult is its offering “new interpretations of the Scripture.” He states, “Some cults make no claim to know truth or extra-biblical revelation, but believe they alone have the key to interpreting the mysteries in the Bible.”[23] Let’s stop here and note that a great mystery found within the Bible is how man’s free will and God’s sovereignty work together. But Calvinism claims to have the answer! This theological system does away with the mystery by doing away with man’s free will. Calvinists believe that, “they alone have the key to interpreting the mysteries in the Bible.”[24]  Reformed Theology, as Calvinist W. Robert Godfrey asserts, even has a “Reformed interpretation of Romans.”[25] Godfrey assumes that non-Reformed churches likely “miss the real meaning of the Word of God,” as well as “the real need of the un-churched—namely, the gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ.” He then concludes that, “To find that real meaning, we must turn from stories to a system.”[26]

Also note that Calvinism has cleverly interpreted the mysteries of the Bible without claiming (as most cults do) to have “new truth” or “extra-biblical revelation.” Instead, as McDowell states:

The scriptures are their only acknowledged source of authority, but . . . are interpreted unreasonably and in a way different from that of orthodox Christianity. They testify that the historic beliefs and interpretations of Scripture are based upon a misunderstanding of the Bible or were pagan in origin.[27]  

Is it a coincidence that leading Calvinists claim that the traditional doctrines of orthodox Christianity are at odds with TULIP theology? Since Calvinists believe that their interpretation is the “true gospel” message (coming on the scene 1500 years after the birth of Christianity), every Christian doctrine before their time must have been somewhat unorthodox. Could this be true?

Were the doctrines of the free will of man, God’s desire for all men to be saved, and Christ’s universal offer of atonement merely man-made teachings, having their roots in humanistic tradition rather than Scripture?

Leading Calvinist James Whites believes that:

If we derive our beliefs from the Bible (rather than assuming them as a tradition . . . ), we will conclude that the phrase, “God is love” does not mean that God has the same kind and level of love for all things, including for each and every single individual human being.[28] [Italics mine.]

He continues:

Surely it is part of the modern evangelical tradition to say, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,” but providing a meaningful biblical basis for this assertion is significantly more difficult. Unfortunately, most are never challenged to think through their traditions.[29] [Italics mine.]

Though the Bible-believing Christian should be challenged to think through traditions, to say that God’s love for humanity stems from tradition rather than “biblical truth” is simply ludicrous—but then again, so are most twisted interpretations of the Bible. Mormons defend their trust in The Book of Mormon by asserting that the Bible has been corrupted, whereas Calvinists defend their trust in TULIP theology by asserting that the mainstream understanding of God’s universal offer of salvation is a man­made tradition and a “denial of biblical truth.”

McDowell concludes that cults reinterpret the Bible:

. . . usually out of context, to justify the peculiar doctrines of a cult. Without an objective and reasonable way to understand what the Bible teaches, the cult member is at the whims of the cult leader.[30]

Again, we see a perfect example of this through John Calvin’s attempt to justify one of his peculiar doctrines concerning his strict ecclesiastical rule over Geneva. Concerning Jesus’ parable of the weeds in Matthew 13, American historian James P. Byrd, Jr. states:

Above all, Calvin believed that the parable of the weeds contained valuable instruction on church discipline. . . . Calvin’s argument that the parable had to do with church discipline rested on his belief that the field signified the church. This presented an embarrassing dilemma because, as Jesus himself explained, “the field is the world (Matt 13:38).” Calvin’s exegesis of the parable therefore seemed to contradict the explanation that Christ gave to his disciples. In treating this delicate problem, Calvin argued that although Christ called the field the world, he intended “to apply” the field “to the Church, about which, after all, he was speaking,”. . . Calvin solved the apparent conflict by not taking literally Jesus’ interpretation of the field as the world. Calvin claimed that Jesus “transfers by synecdoche to the world what is more apt a part of it.” Jesus did not mean that the field was the world itself, but rather the church that existed within the world.[31]

James Byrd concludes that “Calvin rejected a simple reading of the Christ’s interpretation of the field as the world, preferring instead a figural interpretation at this crucial juncture in the parable.”[32] Therefore, Calvin arrogantly altered the actual meaning of Jesus’ words in this parable because they posed a threat to his conscience and his systematic approach to understanding the Bible.

Apart from changing the definitions of biblical words, the main aspect of twisting Scripture is taking a verse out of its immediate context, placing it in a different area of Scripture, and then using it to uphold a false doctrine. Sometimes this is done innocently and sometimes not. As we have seen before, the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead has been used a number of times by Calvinists to support their false doctrine of Total Depravity, as well as other doctrines in TULIP. We also see an example of this in James White’s book, Debating Calvinism. White uses Ezekiel 37:1– 14 to support “man’s inability” to come to Christ. However, Ezekiel 37 narrates a one-time event, experienced by one man, that took place in the Old Covenant, and it is meant to point to the future restoration of the nation and people of Israel. But White moves this passage from its context and places it as central to the salvation of all New Covenant believers, in order to support the belief that regeneration somehow precedes faith.

In responding to James White’s book, The Potter’s Freedom (a refutation of Geisler’s book, Chosen but Free), Norman Geisler states:

“Another technique employed by PF [Potter’s Freedom] to further its position is to redefine terms that cover the harsh reality of a biblically, morally, and rationally indefensible view.”[33] [italics mine]

Geisler also says:

A similar problem emerges when PF [Potter’s Freedom] employs a kind of theological doublespeak to forward its view. For example, it affirms that fallen humans can will, but yet they have no will (192); that grace is irresistible, but yet it is not coercive (161); that depraved humans are dead but are alive enough to hear and reject the gospel (101); that God does not force anyone, but He regenerates them contrary to their will (200). [34]

Calvinists have not produced a whole new book to support their theology as did the Mormons. They need only to explain away those verses that contradict TULIP. As Geisler states above, this is done by redefining terms and theological doublespeak. Kent Rieske also explains how this is accomplished:

Calvinism consists of theological doctrines which use words found in the Bible. However, Calvinism consistently redefines those words, takes them out of context, applies the doctrines inappropriately, exaggerates the meaning of the words to the extreme, or in some other way distorts the Word of God to match the theology written by John Calvin in his book, Institutes of the Christian Religion.[35]

While an orthodox Christian can easily point out the flaws found within the New World Translation, the theology of Calvinism is not so blatantly twisted since there is not a Calvinistic translation of the Bible. In dissecting Calvinism’s TULIP, one must point to the ill interpreted as opposed to ill translated verses. In either case, both pose serious problems with similar consequences. Using twisted footnotes, words, and contexts are all ways to pull unintended meanings from the Bible.

And yet it is under an intellectual guise of spiritual fervency that Calvinism shows just how it’s done.

NOTES

  1. Geisler and Rhodes, Correcting the Cults, 18.
  2. Bryson, The Dark Side of Calvinism, 30.
  3. Hanegraaff, “What Are Some Common Marks of a Cult?”
  4. New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) (New York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 1961).
  5. NWT, Hebrews 1:8.
  6. NKJV, Hebrews 1:8.
  7. NWT, John 1:1.
  8. Smith, Introduction to The Book of Mormon.
  9. Isaiah Bennett, Catholic Answers (San Diego, CA, 1979-2008) [online]; accessed 5 July 2006; available from [Best I could find]
  10. Smith, The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants 130:3.
  11. NKJV, John 4:24.
  12. NKJV, Luke 24:39.
  13. Geisler and Rhodes, Correcting the Cults, 21.
  14. MacCulloch, The Reformation, 249.
  15. Byrd, The Challenges of Roger Williams, 190.
  16. C. Sproul, ed., The Reformation Study Bible (RSB), (Orlando, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2005) p. 1,514.
  17. James White, “Blinded By Tradition: An Open Letter to Dave Hunt Regarding His Newly Published Attack Upon the Reformation, What Love Is This? Calvin’s Misrepresentation of God” [online]; accessed 13 July 2007; (Link).
  18. RSB Footnote, p. 1,752.
  19. RSB Footnote, p. 1,752.
  20. RSB Footnote, p. 1,679.
  21. Rieske, “Calvinism.”
  22. Godfrey, An Unexpected Journey, p. 60
  23. McDowell, Handbook of Today’s Religions, 20.
  24. Ibid.
  25. Godfrey, An Unexpected Journey, 26.
  26. Ibid., 36.
  27. McDowell, Handbook of Today’s Religions, 21.
  28. White, in Debating Calvinism, p. 268.
  29. , 265.
  30. McDowell, Handbook of Today’s Religions, 21.
  31. Byrd, The Challenges of Roger Williams, 94–95; Byrd quotes
  32. Matthew 13:38 and Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, Vol. 2 of Calvin’s Commentaries, 75.
  33. Ibid., 261.
  34. Geisler, Chosen but Free, p. 261.
  35. Ibid.
  36. Rieske, “Calvinism.”

Section Introduction — “Its Ignoring of Scripture”

In this section, Coate moves from the problem of twisting or redefining Scripture to the related problem of selectively ignoring Scripture. His argument is that a theological system can appear consistent when it focuses on the passages that support its conclusions while minimizing, excluding, or reinterpreting passages that create tension with those conclusions. He uses examples from several religious movements before applying the same principle to Calvinism, particularly concerning God’s sovereignty, human freedom, and God’s desire for all people to be saved.

Coate’s central concern is that Scripture must be considered as a whole rather than selectively. He argues that affirming God’s sovereignty does not require ignoring passages concerning human responsibility or God’s universal saving desire. Likewise, affirming human freedom or a universal offer of salvation should not require ignoring passages concerning God’s sovereignty and election.

The section therefore builds on the previous one: where the preceding section examines the reinterpretation of difficult passages, this section examines what happens when passages are simply left out of the theological equation. Coate ultimately argues that both practices can produce the same result—allowing a theological system to determine which biblical data receive controlling weight.

The question Coate places before the reader is:

  • Are we allowing the whole counsel of Scripture to shape our theology, or are we constructing our theology from selected passages and then finding ways to deal with everything else?

Its Ignoring of Scripture

When certain Scripture is ignored, the most ridiculous teachings can easily fool the novice and usher in a tidal wave of theological confusion. Although this practice varies among cults, it is indeed found to some degree in every cult. Radical cults with more glaringly unorthodox doctrines disregard hosts of passages, whereas more conservative cults may choose to overlook only the few passages that obstruct their beliefs. Either way, ignoring parts of Scripture to any degree has huge theological consequences for the cult’s followers.

A tragic example of a cult that excluded a vast majority of Scripture, despite claiming to have a biblical foundation, was the “Children or God” or “The Family” cult. The biblical “foundation” this cult claimed was from Matthew 4:19, in which Jesus says, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Yet in the hands of Children of God leader David Berg, Matthew 4:19 was bizarrely twisted into a justification of religious prostitution. This cult formed in 1974 and ended in 1987 (partially due to the AIDS scare). In David’s theology, being a fisher of men was the call for women to win converts by sexual attraction. These women were called “hookers for Jesus” and their offspring were sadly referred to as “Jesus Babies.” Prostitution was widely used as a means for “converts” or solicitors to donate or raise money for the cult. David’s foul “teaching” of the Scriptures were so perverted they insult and degrade common sense. Yet, internal records of the Children of God indicate that over 223,000 people or “fish” took the bait. These naïve people believed the lie and were sexually loved between 1978 and 1988.[1] The point is made: any doctrine, no matter how absurd, can amass a large cult following by claiming biblical roots and godly motives when Scripture is picked apart and discarded.

A fundamental difference between orthodox Christianity and Calvinism is that one holds two truths equally whereas the other holds one truth to the detriment of the other. The non-Calvinist does not rail against the truth that God is completely sovereign. The Calvinist, however, would have you believe that if you accept that God is sovereign, you cannot also believe that man has a free will. Orthodox Christians hold both to be true.

Think of it this way: If I were to debate a Calvinist, I would never deny the scriptural fact that God is completely sovereign. My opponent could go through a plethora of verses revealing that God is sovereign over creation and has an elect people. I would not argue or debate with these. We are not discussing whether or not God is sovereign. That is a biblical fact. But because the Calvinist ignores the biblical truth that man has a free will and that God offers salvation to all men, he must do one of two things when handling the Bible. Like a typical cultist, he must either falsely interpret any verses that testify to whatever he does not believe in, or more simply, to ignore those portions of Scripture altogether. Again, while the orthodox Christian should hold both truths in equality, Calvinists hold one truth—God’s sovereignty—over the other— man’s free will.

If I were trying to persuade you to believe that God is not sovereign and that there is no such thing as the elect, I would have to ignore that part of Scripture that teaches otherwise. I would only teach and focus on those passages that support my theology—and that would be absurd. Could I make a case that man has free will and that God desires to save all men, without regard to God’s sovereign elect? Of course . . . as long as I ignore the part of Scripture about God’s sovereign elect. Could the Calvinist make a case that God is sovereign and that He has an elect, without regard to man’s free will and God’s desire to save all men? Of course . . . as long as he ignores the part of Scripture about man’s free will.

To ignore means to refuse to notice or pay attention to somebody or something. The word stems from the Latin word ignorant, which means “to not know” or “to be without knowledge.”[2] But to ignore is different than simply not knowing. To ignore is purposefully to disregard. I might understand the reasoning behind Calvinistic theology if its followers withheld those scriptural texts that teach man’s free will and God’s universal offer of salvation to mankind. But no Scripture is withheld from the Calvinist, and they are accountable for purposefully ignoring parts of Scripture.

Dave Hunt argues, in his response to James White’s defense of “man’s inability”:

To support Calvinism’s denial of human ability and responsibility, White gives a few favorite proof texts while ignoring a plethora of passages that present the other side. He offers inferences but not one Scripture that clearly states that unregenerate man is unable to believe the gospel.[3]

In his book, Problems with Evangelical Theology, Ben Witherington notes this particular problem within Calvinism (especially among those who like to debate). He states, “It is perfectly possible to argue consistently and logically about something, but draw the circle of argumentation too narrowly, and so wrongly exclude some of the most important data.”[4] Excluding Scripture, or “important data,” is precisely the error of all cults. In order to practice prostitution and fulfill his own lusts, David Berg paid no attention to the parts of Scripture that deals with sexual purity, monogamy, and marital faithfulness. To uphold his book and writings, Joseph Smith disregarded the part of the Bible that condemned adding to it or subtracting from it. He upheld his book as the “fullness of the gospel” anyway, caring nothing for the words of Paul written to the Galatian believers: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8, NKJV).[5] Likewise, in holding their belief that the apostle Peter was never married (being the supposed first pope), Catholics close their eyes to Matthew 8:14, “Now when Jesus had come into Peter’s house, He saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever.” In believing Jesus to be less than God, Jehovah’s Witnesses choose not to take into account that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God . . . For by Him all things were created . . . All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:15– 17, NKJV).[6] Lastly, to believe that man has no free will and that God does not desire all to be saved, Calvinism simply glosses over verses like John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life,” and 1 Timothy 2:3–4, “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (NKJV). While very few cults would ever admit to purposefully ignoring certain verses, some attempt to get around any verse that appears to threaten the validity of their doctrines by simply redefining the meanings of words. This maneuver is not easy to detect and usually misleads those not familiar with the details of the passage at hand. We see this clearly in Calvinism.

NOTES

  1. http://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Main_Page; Under “Flirty Fishing” (CAUTION: The article under ‘Flirty Fishing’ contains explicit text and/or images that some may find disturbing or offensive.), [online]; accessed 25 June, 2007; Internet. Found it in GROKEPEDIA
  2. Webster’s New World Dictionary, s.v. “Ignorant”.
  3. Hunt, in Debating Calvinism, 75.
  4. Witherington, The Problem with Evangelical Theology, 5.
  5. NKJV, Galatians 2:8.
  6. NKJV, Colossians 1:15 – 17.

Section Introduction — “Its Twisted Terminology”

This is the section where Coate brings the preceding arguments together most directly: theological systems can preserve familiar biblical vocabulary while assigning that vocabulary meanings that serve the system itself. He argues that this makes theological disagreement especially difficult, because two people can use the same words—grace, calling, election, foreknowledge, atonement, world, love, and others—while actually communicating different concepts.

Coate begins with the broader principle that terminology matters. He draws on Hank Hanegraaff, George Bryson, Walter Martin, and others to argue that using orthodox Christian words does not necessarily establish orthodox definitions. He then applies that concern specifically to Calvinist theology, examining distinctions such as external and internal calling, general and particular election, foreknowledge as “forelove,” common and regenerating grace, and various descriptions of the atonement.

The centerpiece of the section is Coate’s examination of words such as “world” and “love.” He argues that the theological significance of these words becomes especially apparent when their ordinary contextual meanings create difficulties for limited atonement or particular redemption. He therefore examines how writers such as A. W. Pink interpret passages containing world and how Calvinist explanations of God’s love distinguish between kinds of divine love.

Coate closes by returning to a principle emphasized by Hanegraaff:

  • biblical interpretation should follow the basic rules of language rather than assuming that ordinary words acquire hidden meanings whenever a theological system requires them to do so.

The central question of this section is perhaps the simplest—and the most important:

  • When two theological systems use the same biblical words, are they actually talking about the same things?

Its Twisted Terminology

[Cults] manipulate the Scriptures to fit their own beliefs. Although they may claim to serve Jesus Christ, and may even use the same terminology orthodox Christians use, their definitions are vastly different.[1]  

—Hank Hanegraaff

Monergism can, however, be defined unscripturally—as it is in Reformed Theology. The same can be said for just about any theological term. In the wrong hands, an otherwise good term can be used to convey a bad concept. So it is with monergism in the hands of a Calvinist.[2]

—George Bryson

Having a proper understanding of a cult’s terminology is paramount in differentiating the orthodox from the unorthodox. The novice might ask:

How does the Latter-day Saint differ from me? They believe that we all need God’s grace, and that we are all sinners. They believe in the Holy Spirit and in the work of Jesus on the cross and redemption.

The key words in the statements above are God, grace, sinners, Holy Spirit, Jesus, and forgiveness. Jonathan Rowe, a critic of Mormonism writes, “There is a lot of Christian terminology on the official [Mormon] website, but upon examination, you come to understand that though the terms are familiar, the meanings of those terms are foreign and heretical.”[3]

Although cults use Christian words, their definitions of them are far from orthodox. Some examples include the following:

The orthodox Christian believes in one God. The Mormon believes in many gods. The orthodox Christian believes that Jesus is the Son of God and Creator of all. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe Jesus was created and that He is not God. The orthodox Christian believes that sin is disobedience to God. Christian Science believes that sin is an illusion and merely an err in humanity. The orthodox Christian believes that salvation is reconciliation to God by Jesus’ death and resurrection. The New Age follower believes that salvation is being one with the universe. The orthodox Christian believes that God desires all of mankind to be saved. The Calvinist must logically believe that God desires a majority of mankind not to be saved but eternally punished in Hell.

In a frustrating argument with a Calvinist, in which no progress was made, Josh McDowell’s warning rang very true to me. He writes:

A feature of some cultic groups is that they say one thing publicly but internally believe something totally different. Many organizations call themselves Christians when in fact they deny the fundamentals of the faith. . . . One therefore must be on the alert for the organizations that advertise themselves as “Christians” but whose internal teachings disagree with Scripture.[4]

Cult leaders form new meanings of passages by redefining the words of the text. When faced with Scripture that seemed contradictory to his own teachings, John Calvin did just that. In his commentary on 1 Timothy 2:1–4, Calvin wrote that the modifier “all” men “doesn’t mean all men but all kinds and races of men.”[5] Dave Hunt writes, “Calvin’s audacity in changing the meaning of Scripture is breathtaking.”[6] He also writes, “For turning all men into all kinds and races of men and ‘princes and foreign nations’ in order to accommodate their system of theology, Calvinists will answer to God.”[7]

In his classic Kingdom of the Cults, Walter Martin challenges the Christian to tolerate absolutely no confusion of Christian terminology. He writes:

And just as the American Bar Association will not tolerate confusion of terminology in the trial of cases, and as the American Medical Association will not tolerate redefinition of terminology of diagnostic and surgical medicine, so also the church of Jesus Christ has every right to not tolerate the gross perversions and redefinitions of historical and Biblical terminology simply to accommodate a culture and a society that cannot tolerate an absolute standard or criterion of truth, even if it is revealed by God in his Word and through the true Witness of His Holy Spirit.[8]

In order to argue effectively and dialogue with a Calvinist, one must know his language. Calvinists often refer to the term regenerational grace (a term nowhere found in the Bible). As we have seen earlier, the terms total depravity of man, and the fall also take on new meanings with the Calvinist, as do the words, grace, atonement, mankind, and race. Concerning the word “grace,” George Bryson notes that, “It cannot be reasonably denied that Calvinists hold to a distinctive definition of grace.”[9] It is when we correctly understand how the Calvinist uses these terms that the playing field of argumentation will be even.

Not only do biblical words referring to salvation have different meanings as Calvinist terminology but the invention of new words and ideas seems to have no end. For example, Sproul’s What Is Reformed Theology? contains numerous terms in both categories, including monergism, synergism, operative grace, cooperative grace, prescient view, external call, internal call, effectual calling, ordo salutis, (order of salvation), pelagianism, semi-pelagianism, moral inability, moral ability, double predestination, reprobation, active decree, antinomianism, civil virtue, common grace, condign merit, congruous merit, consubstantiation, dynamic monarchianism, determinism, decretive will, general revelation, infralapsarianism, modalism, neo-platonism, passive decree, permissive will, pluralism, perceptive will, radical corruption, and utter depravity.[10] Thankfully, he includes a “Glossary of Foreign Terms.”[11] Although some of these words have the potential to clarify biblical theology, some do just the opposite. Again, in order to defend TULIP rather than the message of the Bible, Calvinists have been forced to invent new terms and redefine others. The Bible clearly reveals that God desires all to be saved and thus, calls all to repentance. But because Calvinists hold that God only calls those who will believe, they make a distinction regarding the word “call.” As Sproul says, “In Theology, we distinguish between two kinds of divine calling: the external call and the internal call.”[12] Only the theology of Calvinism and other Christian cults make such distinctions about vital biblical words pertaining to salvation. The Bible does not identify an “internal” and “external” calling, but simply a “calling.” Because the Scriptures were not written only for biblical scholars, the obvious and intended meaning of this “calling” and other words like it, are intended to be straightforward, with no double or hidden meanings.

John Calvin himself redefined the word “election.” Diarmaid MacCulloch explains Calvin’s interpretation of the “elect” within both the Old and New Testament:

Israel was the Old Testament equivalent of the true Church; it had been a covenanted, chosen nation. Everyone in Israel was elect: they enjoyed a “general election.” But not all Israelites followed God’s commandments . . .[13]

Calvin wrote, “We must now add a second, more limited degree of election . . . when from the same race of Abraham God rejected some but showed that he kept others among his sons by cherishing them in the Church.”[14] Yet the Bible does not speak of a “general election” or a “more limited degree of election.” While these terms are not even mentioned in Scripture, John Calvin and his followers have taken the liberty not to only invent them but to establish doctrine on their foundation, as well.

Because many non-Calvinists believe that the doctrine of election is based upon God’s foreknowledge of who will choose to receive Jesus, leading Calvinists have boldly changed the meaning of “foreknew” in Romans 8:28 (“For those whom He foreknew He also predestined . . .”). Steele, Thomas, and Quinn write in their book The Five Points of Calvinism that, “The word ‘foreknew’ as used here is thus understood to be equivalent to ‘foreloved’— those who were the objects of God’s love He marked out for salvation.”[15] This is what Calvinists believe.

This concept of adjusting definitions is also found with the salvific word “grace.” To accurately define the word “grace” in all of its multifaceted relations to mankind and the world is impossible. Nevertheless, Calvinists have meddled with the word to make distinctions like operative grace, cooperative grace, regenerational grace, and common grace, in order to promote Calvin’s TULIP. Titus 2:11 says, “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men . . .” But because this verse and many like it give the idea that God desires all to be saved and has extended His grace to everyone, the word “grace” undergoes a butchering, or in the words of a Calvinist, a “distinction.” George Bryson understands how Calvinists define grace differently than does the Bible, writing, “It cannot be reasonably denied that Calvinists hold to a distinctive definition of grace . . . I am deeply troubled over the Reformed version of grace because through it, the precious and scriptural truths concerning grace are so maligned.”[16] Once again, since Titus 2:11 reads that the “grace of God has appeared to all men,” the Calvinist is compelled to interpret “grace” as meaning common grace, as opposed to regenerational grace. “Common grace” does not lead to salvation and can be resisted, whereas “the grace of regeneration is irresistible.”[17] Again, these words do not appear in Scripture and are not even used consistently by major defenders of Calvinism. Ephesians 2:8 reads that grace is essential to one’s salvation: “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” Calvinism totally distorts this idea by redefining the word “grace.”

Several more words in Calvinism’s dictionary have been born from mere speculative philosophy, such as double predestination and reprobation. Sproul uses twisted and invented terminology both to defend and “sugar coat” the true doctrines of Calvinism. He even goes so far as to label himself not as a Calvinist but as a Reformed theologian. Richard Mouw, however, remains faithful to his Calvinist label, saying that such labels “serve us well when they are informative, when they tell us something important about the person who chooses to use a specific label.”[18] R. C. Sproul, however, seems to shy away from traditional Calvinistic names. Thus, he titled his book: What Is Reformed Theology? not What Is Calvinism? Inside, he goes further in renaming the Five Points of Calvinism “The Five Points of Reformed Theology.” He continues in this vein by revising the name of each point. Total Depravity is changed to “Humanity’s Radical Corruption”; Unconditional Election is “God’s Sovereign Choice”; and Irresistible Grace is the “Spirit’s Effective Call.” No longer is Christ’s atonement “limited” (lest the word “limited” suggest that Jesus died only for a few)—Sproul calls it Purposeful. One specific doctrine in Calvinism that has undergone many different name changes is Limited Atonement. Whether referred to as “limited,” “specific,” “particular,” “effective,” or “definite and personal,” calling Limited Atonement by other names “can never change the fact of what it really is.”[19]

Kent R. Rieske has also noted Calvinism’s modification of words and ideas:

John Calvin defined important doctrinal Bible words differently than the orthodox and historic Christian interpretation. These erroneous definitions are needed to give logical support to Calvin’s blasphemous doctrines. This technique is typical of cults such as Mormons who hold Joseph Smith in high esteem and base their doctrines on his writings. Calvinists are so indoctrinated with these false definitions that they cannot understand the opposition to their doctrines. Naturally Calvinists believe the false doctrines of John Calvin because they believe the false definitions of major doctrinal words.[20]

No other word in the history of Calvinism has been so maligned as the word “world.” How this word is interpreted determines whether Jesus’ atonement was limited or not, and ultimately whether TULIP blooms or dies. Calvinist author Duane Spencer says, “Much of what we think about the atoning death of Christ will be tempered by what we understand the simple word world to mean.”[21] At least he acknowledges that the word is indeed “simple,” but ironically, in the hands of a Calvinist, it is anything but simple. The word, instead, takes on several mysteriously incorrect and inconsistent meanings. In examining the theological weight of this word, Vance rightly states that “everything hinges on the meaning of the word world.”[22] The following verses give light to the fact that the standard meaning of the word “world” poses a great threat to the doctrine of Limited Atonement and TULIP as a whole.

John 1:29: “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’”

John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

John 4:42: “Then they said to the woman, ‘Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.’”

John 6:33: “For the bread of God is He Who comes down from Heaven and gives life to the world.”

John 6:51: “I am the living bread which came down from Heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”

John 12:47: “. . . for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.”

1 John 2:2: “And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”

2 Corinthians 5:19: “. . . God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself . . .”

1 John 4:14: “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.”

In order to remain faithful to TULIP theology, the Calvinist must reinterpret what the word “world” really means.

A.W. Pink, a popular expositor for Calvinism, goes to great lengths to avoid the plain truth of John 1:29 (see above). He changes the meanings of two words in the text: “‘Sin,’ here signifies guilt (condemnation) as in Hebrews 9:26; and ‘the world,’ refers to the world of believers.”[23] The word “sin” in this verse actually has no abnormal implication of guilt or condemnation in the original language and has no connection at all to Hebrews 9:26. Furthermore, saying that “the world” refers to the “world of the elect” is completely speculative and fundamentally changes the meaning of the word, verse, and message of the Bible.

In the example below, the word “world” is again interpreted by the Calvinist as the world of the godly.

In response to John 4:42 (see above), Pink proclaims, “This does not mean that Christ is the Saviour of the human race, but is a general term used in contradistinction from Israel, including all believing Gentiles scattered throughout the earth.”[24]

Another example of how “world” equates to the world of believers is found in the Calvinist’s most feared verse in all the Bible:

1 John 2:2 (see above). Regarding this verse, Pink explains:

. . .when John says, “He is the propitiation for our sins” he can only mean for the sins of Jewish believers. . . . when John added, “And not for ours only, but also for the whole world,” he signified that Christ was the propitiation for the sins of the Gentile believers too, for, as previously shown, “the world” is a term contrasted from Israel.[25]

Similarly, regarding John 6:33 (see above), Pink again writes, “The ‘world’ here does not include the whole human race . . . It is the ‘world’ of believers who are here in view.” [26]

According to Pink’s interpretations, Christ came for the elect only. Christ Himself said, however, that He had come for the sick and sinful, as opposed to the healthy and righteous: “When Jesus heard it, He said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance’” (Mark 2:17, NKJV).

After studying the eighty appearances of the word “world” in the Gospel of John, Vance emphatically concluded: “Not only does the word ‘world’ never denote the elect, it is unequivocally demeaned and condemned by God.”[27] In fact, the word “world” was written over two hundred times in the New Testament and never does it denote or even vaguely imply God’s elect.

The other most misused and incriminating word in Calvinist theology is the word “love.” Recognizing this, Dave Hunt based the title of his book on the question Calvinists have yet to adequately answer: What Love Is This? Calvinism defenders, Doug VanderMeulin and Steve Watkins, have tried to answer the question by confronting Dave Hunt on the grounds that his book inaccurately portrays Calvinism. Though after a two-hour discussion, Doug and Steve might have clarified some nonessentials of their faith, they only solidified the vital claims of Mr. Hunt’s book. When Dave Hunt asked, “Does God love those that he has predestined from eternity past to eternal doom?”[28] They replied, “Yes, He loves them . . . with an ‘agape’ love.”[29] To this, Hunt replied, “And that is why I titled my book, What Love Is This?”[30]

George Bryson also acknowledges the Calvinistic redefinition of the word “love,” stating, “Even those Calvinists who believe God loves all people have redefined that love, in their thinking and theology, to exclude any kind of saving grace for some of the people they say God loves.” [31] We find this to be true in how Calvinists such as Doug VanderMeulin and Steve Watkins justify the assertion that God does indeed love the people He has predestined to eternal doom by giving the definition of “love” a new meaning. Although the Greek language has four words for different kinds of love, not one of them hints of a love that is “salvific” in nature.[32] Not even eros, the most fleshly sort of love, would justify the act of forcing someone to suffer eternal punishment. The kind of love prescribed in Calvinism is well summarized by Hunt: “I’m going to shoot you guys, I’m going to torture you, I’m going to shoot you, but I want to show some love towards you and some mercy towards you, so I’m going to give you a good meal.”[33] 

Norman Geisler has also identified how Calvinist leader James White redefines certain verses in his book The Potter’s Freedom:

Yet PF [Potter’s Freedom] repeatedly reads “some men” into passages that clearly and emphatically say “all men” (140, 142). It insists against the context that 2 Peter 3:9 (where God desires that all men be saved) is not speaking about salvation (146–147) . . . It distorts the word “saves” to “saves himself” (64), and so on. . . . PF [Potter’s Freedom] is permeated with logical fallacies and reveals an inadequate comprehension of the unjustified theological and philosophical underpinnings of extreme Calvinism. . . . PF futilely attempts to make the implausible sound plausible and the unbiblical seem biblical.[34]

Geisler provides another example of problematic Calvinist terminology:

From the time of the later Augustine this text [1 Timothy 2:3–4] has been manhandled by extreme Calvinists. Spurgeon summarizes their attempts to avoid the obvious. He said here is how “our older Calvinistic friends deal with this text. ‘All men,’ say they—‘that is, some men’: as if the Holy Ghost could not have said ‘some men’ if he had meant some men. ‘All men,’ say they; that is, ‘some of all sorts of men’; as if the Lord could not have said ‘All sorts of men’ if he had meant that. The Holy Ghost by the apostle has written ‘all men,’ and unquestionably he means all men.’[35]  

Similarly,

Of this and like passages John Owen [also] offers the dubious view that “all” does not mean “all” here.[36]

In his book, The Apocalypse Code, Hank Hanegraaff writes about how unorthodox views of the Bible can stem from changing the meanings of simple words. He prefaces his argument by stating that we should “interpret the Bible in accordance with the basic rules of language.”[37] He then writes:

Suppose I told my children, “I don’t want you to touch this gingerbread cake, because we are going to have dinner soon!” They wouldn’t need an advanced degree in English from Yale to understand that by “this” I meant this gingerbread cake—not that gingerbread cake, as in a gingerbread cake that would be baked for their twenty-first birthday. Nor are they the least bit confused about the meaning of the “you,” which in context refers to them, not to children of a future generation. “Soon” is equally unambiguous. To say we were going to have dinner “soon” could possibly mean dinner in the distant future. When it comes to interpreting scripture, we should not suppose that the rules of grammar mysteriously change.[38]

Calvinists would do well to reconsider the core tenets of their theology in light of Hanegraaff’s advice. Let’s again ponder closely the words of Walter Martin on the danger of twisting the Bible’s words:

And just as the American Bar Association will not tolerate confusion of terminology in the trial of cases, and as the American Medical Association will not tolerate redefinition of terminology of diagnostic and surgical medicine, so also the church of Jesus Christ has every right to not tolerate the gross perversions and redefinitions of historical and Biblical terminology . . .[39]

Despite Calvinism’s historical and biblical appearance of intellectual orthodoxy, its insistence on maintaining the doctrines of TULIP has led it perilously close to “the kingdom of the cults.”

Most Christians would say that Calvinism is simply a Christian theology based upon John Calvin’s teachings. In my explanation of the five points, I argued that Calvinism is a Christian but cultlike theology that strips humanity of free will. Although descriptions may vary, the essential philosophy of Calvinistic religion has a name—fatalism. As George Bryson writes:

For all practical purposes, Calvinism amounts to Theistic Fatalism. A theist believes in a personal God. A fatalist believes the future (especially regarding the destiny of individuals) is fixed. A Theistic Fatalist believes that a personal God unconditionally determines where individuals go when they die, that is, whether they go to heaven or hell. . . When I say that Calvinism amounts to Theistic Fatalism or that it has a dark side, it is not for the purpose of offending Calvinists, though some will no doubt take offense at my use of these words. I use the label Theistic Fatalism because it perfectly describes Reformed Theology. I use the words dark side, because Calvinism has, as a central tenet, a very dark and disturbing distinctive.[40]

Lawrence Vance, as well, deduces the following:

Although Calvinists go out of their way to distance themselves from fatalism, they are in essence teaching the same thing. When a philosopher believes “what is to be will be” it is called determinism. When a stoic believes “what is to be will be” it is called fate. When a Muslim believes “what is to be will be” it is called fatalism. But when a Calvinist believes “what is to be will be” it is called predestination.[41]

Geisler likewise states that “there is no real difference . . . between the extreme Calvinists and fatalistic Islam,”[42] concluding that:

. . . some Calvinists reject this “double-predestination” in favor of God simply “passing over” the non-elect, but even they must admit that the result is the same: since God did not give them the desire to be saved “they are condemned to eternal misery.”[43]

NOTES

  1. Hanegraaff, “What Are Some Common Marks of a Cult?”
  2. Bryson, The Dark Side of Calvinism, 352.
  3. (This link was dead, so I tracked down the article and PDF’ed it.)
  4. McDowell, Handbook of Today’s Religions, 22-23.
  5. Calvin, Commentary, 1 Timothy 2:3–4, also noted in, [online] accessed 2 February 2010; available from Internet Link.
  6. Hunt, in Debating Calvinism, 316.
  7. Ibid., 317.
  8. Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults, 31.
  9. Bryson, The Dark Side of Calvinism, 28.
  10. Sproul, What Is Reformed Theology?
  11. Ibid., 225.
  12. Ibid., 143.
  13. MacCulloch, The Reformation, 244.
  14. John Calvin, Institutes, vol. 2, ed. John Thomas McNeill (Westminster Press, Louisville Kentucky, 1960, Reprinted in 2006), p. 929.
  15. Steele, Thomas, and Quinn, The Five Points of Calvinism
  16. Bryson, The Dark Side of Calvinism, 28-30.
  17. Sproul, What Is Reformed Theology?
  18. Mouw, Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport, 18–19.
  19. Vance, The Other Side of Calvinism, 407.
  20. Rieske, “Calvinism.”
  21. Duane E. Spencer, Duane E., TULIP, The Five Points of Calvinism in the Light of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1979), 46.
  22. Vance, The Other Side of Calvinism, 435.
  23. W. Pink, Exposition of the Gospel of John, Volume One, John 1–7, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1945), 59.
  24. Ibid., 225.
  25. Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God (I. C. Herenedeen, 1930; Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1984), 259.
  26. Ibid., 325.
  27. Vance, The Other Side of Calvinism, 435.
  28. Dave Hunt, Conversation on Calvinism (Bend, OR: The Berean Call, 2002) [CD-ROM].
  29. Ibid.
  30. Ibid.
  31. Bryson, The Dark Side of Calvinism, 26.
  32. Hunt, Conversation on Calvinism.
  33. Ibid.
  34. Geisler, Chosen but Free, p. 262–63.
  35. ,Ibid. 210; Footnote 19: Cited by Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism, 150–151.
  36. Ibid., 211.
  37. Hanegraaff, Hank, The Apocalypse Code (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2007), 72.
  38. Ibid., 72.
  39. Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults, 31.
  40. Bryson, The Dark Side of Calvinism, 21–22.
  41. Vance, The Other Side of Calvinism, 278.

Section Introduction — “The Calvinist Redefinition of Biblical Language”

This section brings together the terminology Coate examines throughout The Cultish Side of Calvinism and presents it in a more systematic way. Rather than focusing on a single disputed passage, the comparison looks at a broad range of biblical terms and theological concepts—including all, world, whosoever, love, sovereignty, grace, call, election, foreknew, predestination, regeneration, faith, repentance, free will, atonement, propitiation, perseverance, warning, monergism, synergism, common grace, effectual grace, gospel, and exegesis. The purpose is to show how the same biblical vocabulary can take on substantially different meanings within competing theological systems.

The chart is intentionally framed as “Biblical Term / Concept,” “Calvinistic Change / Redefinition as Characterized by the Sources,” and “Biblical / Traditional Reading.” It therefore does not claim that every Calvinist uses every term in exactly the same way. Rather, it identifies recurring definitions, distinctions, and theological usages presented in the sources and contrasts them with the readings argued for by the non-Calvinist sources.

One of the most important patterns is that the issue is not limited to individual words such as “all” or “world.” The same interpretive question extends into larger theological concepts: sovereignty and determinism, grace and regeneration, calling and effectual calling, election and individual selection, foreknowledge and forelove, faith and regeneration, atonement and particular redemption, and perseverance and the interpretation of apostasy warnings.

The chart should therefore be read as a comparative theological vocabulary guide, not as a claim that the English words themselves have only one possible meaning. Context matters. The central question is whether a particular meaning is being drawn from the biblical text and its context—or supplied by a theological system and then brought back to the text.

In short:

  • before debating a doctrine, we need to make sure we are using the same dictionary.
BIBLICAL TERM / CONCEPT CALVINISTIC CHANGE / REDEFINITION AS CHARACTERIZED BY THE SOURCES BIBLICAL / TRADITIONAL READING
All “All” may be restricted to all kinds, classes, or races of people, or to all of the elect, rather than every person under discussion. All means the whole of the group or persons specified by the context. The word itself does not inherently mean “all kinds” or “the elect.”
World “World” can mean the world of the elect, believing Gentiles, or people from every nation rather than humanity generally. World ordinarily refers to the world, humanity, or created order. Its precise scope is determined by context; it does not inherently mean “the elect.”
Whosoever “Whosoever” can effectively become whoever among the elect believes. Whosoever means whoever responds to the stated condition—such as whoever believes. The invitation is genuinely open to anyone who responds.
Love God does not love all people in the same way. His saving love is particularly directed toward the elect; whatever love, mercy, or benevolence He shows toward the non-elect does not entail an intention to save them. God’s love is genuine, benevolent, and not inherently restricted to the elect. Scripture presents God as loving the world, showing mercy and kindness broadly, and desiring the salvation of all rather than limiting His saving concern to a predetermined few.
Sovereignty God’s sovereignty is understood as exhaustive determinism: God has decreed everything that comes to pass, including human decisions and sinful actions. Sovereignty means God’s supreme authority, kingship, and rule. God is sovereign without the word itself meaning that He determines every human choice.
Grace Grace is narrowed into effectual / regenerating grace—God’s sovereign action toward the elect that regenerates them and guarantees their salvation. Grace is God’s unmerited favor and gracious provision. It is proclaimed through the gospel and genuinely offered to humanity.
Call A distinction is made between an external / general call and an internal / effectual call, with only the latter actually bringing the elect to salvation. Call is God’s summons through the gospel, genuinely extended to those who hear it and calling them to respond.
Election Election becomes unconditional individual selection: God chooses particular individuals for salvation before they believe and passes over others. Election means God’s choosing. Scripture speaks of God choosing people and peoples for particular purposes—including Israel and the church. The context determines whether a passage concerns individuals, a people, or a purpose.
Foreknew “Foreknew” is understood essentially as “foreloved”—God’s prior choice or love of particular individuals whom He marks out for salvation. Foreknew means to know beforehand or previously know. Its theological implications must be determined by the passage rather than automatically equating foreknowledge with predestination.
Predestination Predestination becomes God’s eternal determination of the individual destinies of the elect and, in many formulations, the corresponding reprobation of others. Predestination means determining beforehand. Scripture associates it particularly with the destiny and purpose of believers in Christ, such as conformity to Christ and adoption.
Regeneration The new birth is placed before faith, becoming the divine act that makes faith possible. Regeneration / new birth is the spiritual rebirth associated with conversion to Christ. The sources argue that Scripture does not require an unconscious regeneration to occur before a person can believe.
Faith Faith becomes a special supernatural gift given to the elect after regeneration, rather than the human response of believing the gospel. Faith is believing or trusting in Christ and the gospel—the human response to what God has revealed and offered.
Repentance Repentance is understood as a grace or gift irresistibly produced in the elect as the result of regeneration. Repentance is a genuine turning from sin toward God. Scripture commands people to repent and presents repentance as a genuine response to God’s summons.
Sin Sin is understood as an inherited condition so comprehensive that humanity is unable to respond positively to God apart from prior regeneration. Sin is rebellion, disobedience, and transgression against God—something human beings actually commit and for which they are morally responsible.
Dead / Dead in sin “Dead in sin” is interpreted as absolute spiritual inability: the sinner cannot respond to God in faith unless first regenerated. “Dead in sin” describes profound spiritual alienation and enslavement to sin; the term does not by itself establish absolute inability to respond to God’s gracious initiative.
Free Will Human libertarian freedom is rejected; human choices are understood as determined by God’s decree while remaining morally responsible. Free will / choice means that human beings genuinely make choices and are accountable for those choices. Genuine choice does not mean that humans save themselves by works.
Works “Works salvation” may be applied to any doctrine in which a human response or choice has a meaningful role in receiving salvation. Works are human deeds. Salvation is not earned by works, but a response of faith is therefore not automatically equivalent to earning salvation.
Salvation Salvation is narrowed to the elect and organized through a system of justification, regeneration, and sanctification in which the decisive saving act occurs before faith. Salvation is God’s rescue and reconciliation of sinners through Christ, received through faith.
Atonement Christ’s atonement becomes limited / definite / particular / effectual, with its saving intention specifically directed toward securing salvation for the elect. Atonement is Christ’s sacrificial provision for sin. The sources argue that Scripture presents Christ’s provision as extending to all humanity, with its saving benefits received through faith.
Propitiation Passages saying Christ is the propitiation for the “whole world” are restricted to the elect throughout the world. Propitiation refers to Christ’s sacrifice dealing with sin and satisfying God’s righteous judgment. “Whole world” should not automatically be converted into “the elect.”
Righteousness Imputed righteousness is understood as Christ’s righteousness being credited to the believer as the basis of justification. Righteousness concerns conformity to what is right before God. Justification involves God declaring the believer righteous on the basis of Christ.
Sanctification Sanctification is understood as an inevitable progressive work in the elect, with continuing sin expected throughout the Christian life. Sanctification is being set apart to God and growing in holiness through obedience to Him.
Holiness Holiness is understood as compatible with the continuing presence and inevitability of sin in the believer. Holiness means separation from sin and dedication to God; believers are repeatedly commanded to pursue it.
Perseverance “Perseverance of the saints” means that everyone truly regenerated will inevitably persevere to the end; ultimate apostasy demonstrates that a person was never genuinely saved. Perseverance describes continuing faithfully in Christ. Biblical warnings concerning falling away are treated as genuine warnings rather than automatically hypothetical descriptions.
Fall Away / Depart from the Faith Passages describing falling away or departing from the faith are interpreted to mean that the person was never truly saved. “Fall away,” “depart,” and similar expressions should be understood according to their immediate context rather than automatically supplied with “was never saved.”
If Biblical conditional statements may be interpreted as hypothetical descriptions rather than genuine conditions or possibilities. If ordinarily introduces a condition or possibility; its precise force is determined by context.
Warning Biblical warnings to believers can be understood as means God uses to preserve the elect rather than as genuine warnings concerning the danger they describe. Warning is a genuine admonition to avoid a stated danger; the warning should not be emptied of its apparent force.
Justice Divine justice is understood as compatible with God determining a person’s actions and eternal destiny while still holding that person responsible for those actions. Justice means judging rightly and impartially according to what a person does and is responsible for.
Reprobation Reprobation is a theological category describing God’s eternal decision to pass over some individuals and consign them to condemnation. Scripture clearly speaks of judgment and condemnation; whether Scripture teaches an eternal individual decree of reprobation in the specifically Calvinistic sense is a separate theological question.
Double Predestination God eternally determines both the salvation of the elect and the condemnation of the non-elect. The Bible teaches predestination, election, judgment, and condemnation; whether these constitute the Calvinistic doctrine of symmetrical “double predestination” is a separate theological question.
Monergism Salvation is understood as God alone acting, with the human response contributing nothing to the saving process, even as a genuine response. Salvation is entirely dependent upon God’s grace, while Scripture nevertheless calls people to believe, repent, receive Christ, and respond to the gospel.
Synergism Human cooperation with God is treated as compromising divine sovereignty or turning salvation into human works. Cooperation does not necessarily mean earning salvation. Scripture can command a genuine human response while salvation remains entirely dependent upon God’s grace.
Sovereign “Sovereign” becomes virtually synonymous with deterministic control of every event and human decision. Sovereign means supreme ruler—one who possesses supreme authority and the right to govern.
Common Grace “Common grace” becomes a special theological category explaining God’s goodness toward all people while reserving saving / regenerating grace for the elect. Scripture speaks of God’s goodness and grace toward humanity. Whether “common grace” and “saving grace” constitute fundamentally different kinds of grace is a theological distinction rather than a definition inherent in the word “grace.”
Effectual / Irresistible Grace Grace becomes God’s irresistible regeneration of the elect, guaranteeing their response and salvation. Grace is God’s unmerited favor. The gospel calls people to respond, and the sources argue that Scripture portrays people as capable of resisting God’s gracious appeal.
Gospel The gospel invitation can function primarily as the means by which those already determined to be elect are brought to faith rather than as a genuine offer of salvation to everyone who hears. The gospel is the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection and the means by which people are called to believe and be saved.
Evangelism Evangelism becomes the means by which the already-determined elect are brought to faith, while the evangelist does not know who those elect are. Evangelism is genuinely proclaiming the gospel so that people may hear, believe, repent, and be saved.
Context Context can be invoked within a theological system to interpret difficult passages in accordance with established Calvinistic conclusions. Context means interpreting a word or passage according to its surrounding literary, historical, grammatical, and theological setting.
Exegesis Exegesis can become the process of extracting a predetermined Calvinistic conclusion from the biblical text rather than allowing the text to determine the conclusion. Exegesis means drawing the meaning out of the text rather than importing a theological conclusion into it.
Hermeneutics A theological system can establish interpretive principles that consistently produce Calvinistic readings of disputed passages. Hermeneutics is the principles and practice used to interpret Scripture.
Pelagian The term can be used broadly as a label for those who reject Calvinistic doctrines of human inability, unconditional election, or irresistible grace. Pelagian properly refers to the specific theological position associated with Pelagius. Rejecting Calvinism does not automatically make someone Pelagian.
Calvinism Calvinism may be presented as synonymous with biblical Christianity or the gospel itself. Calvinism is a particular historical theological system within Christianity; it is not itself a synonym for Christianity or the gospel.
Reformed “Reformed” can function as a broader theological designation for the Calvinistic system. Reformed is a historical designation associated with the Protestant Reformation and a family of theological traditions; it is not itself a biblical synonym for “Christian.”

Resources for the above

  • Walter Martin — The Kingdom of the Cults, 6th ed.
  • Micah Coate — A Cultish Side of Calvinism
  • Leighton Flowers — The Potter’s Promise: A Biblical Defense of Traditional Soteriology
  • Leighton Flowers — Drawn by Jesus: A Biblical Defense of God’s Provision for All
  • “Language and Calvinism” — supplied PDF/article
  • Kerrigan Skelly — The Calvinism Dictionary (Official)
  • Brian’s Notebook — The Code Words of Calvinism
  • “Calvinism is Stupid: Redefining Words — Exposing the Calvinist Playbook — Part #1” — YouTube video/transcript
  • “War of the Words: How Calvinism Quietly Redefines Theological Terms” — YouTube video/transcript

“Dead Men Don’t Grab” | The Irresistible and Effectual Call

Published by Papa Giorgio

(One almost used Sliding Thumbnail that I rejected, but like. Here is the one I chose to use, just bigger than the slider one.)

A friend on the Effe Bee (Facebook) asked a good question about the premise the graphic you see directly to the right:

  • There’s some truth to Sproul’s finished statement is there not?

(And for those not in the thick of the theological weeds, it may seem a somewhat tenable position.) So I wanted to share a longer response with him as well as discuss some other recent graphics I have made for the larger audience.

I actually agree with the first half of Sproul’s statement. Salvation is entirely dependent upon God’s grace from beginning to end. Where I disagree is with his definition of that grace.

Sproul says I must first be regenerated by an effectual act of the Spirit before I can believe.

Traditional Baptists and Provisionists say God graciously initiates salvation, provides Christ, gives the gospel, convicts and draws the sinner, and enables the response — but the sinner’s faith is genuinely a response that can be either accepted or resisted.

So the disagreement isn’t whether salvation is of the Lord. It’s whether God’s grace determines the response or graciously enables the response.

This is really dealing with the Calvinist’s twisting of Total Depravity into an ontological form of Total Inability. Dr. Leighton Flowers deals with this in this older video titled “The Biblical use of the term ‘DEAD'”

Which brings me to another graphic I made:

Again, this is ripping a 1st century idiom out of context. It is almost “Cultish” in how it is done. Here Micah Coate explains this idea a little:

Despite Calvinism’s highly acclaimed standard of quality exegesis, the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is often used as a textual illustration supporting Calvin’s doctrine of Total Depravity. This is a hermeneutical mistake. The student of the Bible should beware when any doctrine, let alone essential doctrine, is supported from a narrative story that lacks any instruction, especially when a particular belief is set against a number of other clear teachings. This reading of Scripture is comparable to the practice of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who pull a number of erroneous doctrines from the poetic books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.

This way of using Scripture is one of the characteristics of a cult. Josh McDowell writes that cults often claim that:

. . . the Scriptures are their final source of authority; [however,] we find they [cults] consistently misuse the Scriptures to establish their own peculiar beliefs. This is accomplished chiefly by quoting texts out of context while omitting other passages relevant to the subject.

Calvinist R. C. Sproul actually validates McDowell’s statement, in his book What Is Reformed Theology? In the chapter “Monergistic Regeneration,” Sproul fails to cite a single verse showing that the Bible supports this belief. Instead, Sproul gives the reader a class in Latin and Greek terminology with such words as monergism, synergism, operative grace, and cooperative grace. Instead of making a sound case for monergistic regeneration, all Sproul does is pull a heretical doctrine of salvation from the simple story of Lazarus, saying, “Perhaps a good illustration of Monergistic, life-giving power is the raising of Lazarus from the dead.” Sproul tries to provide a biblical foundation for his peculiar belief at the expense of “quoting texts out of context while omitting other passages relevant to the subject.” Because of this hermeneutical mistake, his example and thoughts on the monergistic resurrection are incorrect.

 

The usual argument given in defense of Total Depravity lies in a question: Because the Bible depicts man as being dead apart from God, how can he choose to have faith in the Gospel of Jesus on his own? Although many Calvinist authors pose this question as a foundation for their doctrine, it is not logically or biblically sound. By pulling doctrine from the Lazarus account, Calvinists have dug themselves into a mess of unanswerable theological questions.

The Lazarus Problem:
When a Narrative Becomes a Doctrine

One of the most familiar Calvinist illustrations of Total Depravity and regeneration is the raising of Lazarus in John 11. The argument is easy to understand: Lazarus was physically dead, therefore he could do nothing to contribute to his resurrection. Jesus alone called him from death to life. R.C. Sproul explicitly uses Lazarus in this way, explaining that regeneration is the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit and comparing the effectual call to Jesus’ command, “Lazarus, come out.”

Sproul then gives the Reformed order of salvation as:

effectual calling → regeneration → faith → justification → sanctification → glorification

That is an important distinction because Sproul is not merely saying that Lazarus illustrates God’s power to give life. He is using the Lazarus narrative to illustrate a particular doctrine of the order of salvation. According to this system, the sinner is spiritually dead and therefore cannot believe until God first regenerates him. Regeneration produces the faith by which the person believes. Sproul himself contrasts this with the more common evangelical understanding that a person believes in Christ and is then born again, which I picture here:.

JOHN 11:1-40 (CSB)

LAZARUS DIES AT BETHANY

1 Now a man was sick—Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair, and it was her brother Lazarus who was sick. 3 So the sisters sent a message to him: “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

4 When Jesus heard it, he said, “This sickness will not end in death but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that he was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was. 7 Then after that, he said to the disciples, “Let’s go to Judea again.”

8 “Rabbi,” the disciples told him, “just now the Jews tried to stone you, and you’re going there again?”

9 “Aren’t there twelve hours in a day?” Jesus answered. “If anyone walks during the day, he doesn’t stumble, because he sees the light of this world. 10 But if anyone walks during the night, he does stumble, because the light is not in him.”

11 He said this, and then he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I’m on my way to wake him up.”

12 Then the disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will get well.”

13 Jesus, however, was speaking about his death, but they thought he was speaking about natural sleep. 14 So Jesus then told them plainly, “Lazarus has died. 15 I’m glad for you that I wasn’t there so that you may believe. But let’s go to him.”

16 Then Thomas (called “Twin”) said to his fellow disciples, “Let’s go too so that we may die with him.”

THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE

17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Bethany was near Jerusalem (less than two miles away). 19 Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. 20 As soon as Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, but Mary remained seated in the house.

21 Then Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. 22 Yet even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”

23 “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her.

24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. 26 Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

27 “Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who comes into the world.”

JESUS SHARES THE SORROW OF DEATH

28 Having said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”

29 As soon as Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Jesus had not yet come into the village but was still in the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw that Mary got up quickly and went out. They followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to cry there.

32 As soon as Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and told him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”

33 When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you put him?” he asked.

“Lord,” they told him, “come and see.”

35 Jesus wept.

36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Couldn’t he who opened the blind man’s eyes also have kept this man from dying?”

THE SEVENTH SIGN: RAISING LAZARUS FROM THE DEAD

38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 “Remove the stone,” Jesus said.

Martha, the dead man’s sister, told him, “Lord, there is already a stench because he has been dead four days.”

40 Jesus said to her, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

In other words, the stated emphasis surrounding the miracle is belief. The miracle is presented as a revelation of Christ’s identity and glory that calls people to faith. That is quite different from using the event as a technical illustration that regeneration must occur before anyone can believe. (SOTERIOLOGY 101)

The problem becomes even more apparent when we recognize that Scripture uses “dead” in several different metaphoric contexts. The material in Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique identifies people as spiritually dead, sick, blind, lovers of darkness, and dead, but argues that Scripture does not require “dead” to mean an inability to repent and believe. It specifically points to Adam and Eve hearing and responding to God after their fall, the prodigal son being described as dead and lost while returning to his father, and Jesus’ statement in John 5:24 concerning the spiritually dead who hear and believe.

That brings us directly to the Prodigal Son. Jesus says of the son, “This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” Yet the “dead” son is not portrayed as a motionless corpse. He comes to his senses. He recognizes his condition. He changes his mind. He decides to return. He gets up and goes to his father. Then his father receives him and restores him. The point isn’t that the son saved himself—he didn’t. The father is the one who restores the relationship. But the story certainly doesn’t require us to understand “dead” as meaning incapable of responding.

If you right click with your mouse and “Open Link In New Tab”, that is an expandible graphic.

This is exactly the point made in the Soteriology 101 material. The argument isn’t that “dead doesn’t mean dead.” The argument is that dead is being used idiomatically, and therefore we need to determine what the biblical metaphor means rather than automatically equating spiritual death with a physical corpse. The Prodigal is called “dead/lost” and then “alive/found,” which is presented as an illustration of separation through rebellion rather than innate moral inability. The same article points to Revelation 3, James 1, Romans 7, Ephesians 2, and Colossians 2 as passages that complicate the assumption that “dead” means an inability to respond positively to God. (SOTERIOLOGY 101)

The Colossians passage is particularly interesting. Paul says that believers were “raised up with Him through faith.” The argument drawn from this is that being made alive and faith are not necessarily related in the Calvinist sequence of regeneration → faith. Likewise, the broader biblical material repeatedly commands people to repent and believe. Acts 17:30 says that God “commands all people everywhere to repent.” The critique argues that these commands make better sense as genuine calls to sinners who, through God’s gracious enablement, can respond, rather than as commands that only become possible after an irresistible regeneration that God grants to some and withholds from others.

And this is where the “dead men don’t grab” illustration becomes less decisive than it first appears. Of course a literal corpse cannot grab a life preserver. But nobody is claiming that spiritually dead people are physically dead. The question is what spiritual death means. If “dead” automatically means the total inability to respond to God, then that definition needs to be demonstrated from Scripture rather than simply assumed from the Lazarus story. Ronnie Rogers’ formulation is useful here: God’s sufficient call, together with His grace enablement, is sufficient for anyone to receive salvation. He identifies those enablements as including God’s love, the revelation of His power, Christ’s provision, the conviction of the Holy Spirit, God’s teaching, the gospel, and God’s drawing.

There is also a fascinating internal problem with using Lazarus as the complete picture of the unregenerate sinner. Lazarus did absolutely nothing to help Jesus raise him from the dead—but he also did absolutely nothing to resist Jesus. If Lazarus is the perfect picture of the spiritually dead sinner, then the analogy would seem to demonstrate an inability to do anything in response to God, whether positive or negative. Yet Calvinism simultaneously describes the unregenerate person as actively rebelling against God, loving darkness, following sinful desires, and committing acts that displease Him. The Lazarus analogy therefore cannot, by itself, establish all of the conclusions Calvinism wants to draw from it. The narrative demonstrates Christ’s sovereign power over death; it does not explain every aspect of the sinner’s moral response to God’s grace.

So the real issue isn’t whether God gives life. He does. It isn’t whether salvation is dependent upon God’s grace. It is. And it certainly isn’t whether anyone can save himself. Nobody can. The actual question is much narrower and much more important:

Does “dead in sin” mean that a sinner is incapable of responding to God’s gracious revelation until after regeneration, or does it describe the sinner’s lost, separated, rebellious condition while God’s grace enables him to respond?

That is where the two systems part company.

AGAIN:

The Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique material explicitly frames the distinction as Total Depravity understood as the inability to save oneself versus Total Depravity understood as the inability to repent and believe. To be clear, Calvinists appeal to the doctrine of total depravity to claim that sinners are unable to repent and trust Christ apart from the monergistic work of regeneration.

The distinction is not between believing that humanity is sinful and believing that humanity is not sinful. Both sides affirm the devastating effects of sin and humanity’s absolute dependence upon God’s grace. The real question is what “Total Depravity” means with respect to a person’s response to the gospel. As Adam Harwood explains, the Traditional Statement denies that Adam’s sin resulted in the “incapacitation” of anyone’s free will. It does not claim that sinners can save themselves; rather, it affirms that no sinner can achieve salvation through his own effort and that salvation is received through a response to the Holy Spirit’s drawing through the gospel.

That distinction is critical to the Lazarus argument. Calvinism takes spiritual death to mean that sinners cannot repent and believe until God first regenerates them. The Traditional Baptist position instead understands sinners as genuinely lost and unable to save themselves, while God’s grace calls and enables them to respond. Harwood notes the significance of the Bible’s repeated calls for people to repent and believe: if God calls all people to repent and gives open invitations to respond in faith, the Traditional Statement argues that people must actually be capable of responding. In other words, “dead in sin” does not have to mean “incapable of responding to God’s gracious invitation.” It can describe the sinner’s desperate, lost, and sinful condition while still leaving room for God’s grace to enable a genuine response.

And that is why I think the Lazarus argument deserves much more scrutiny than it usually receives.

Jesus certainly raised Lazarus from the dead.

But Lazarus was not raised to teach us the mechanics of regeneration.

He was raised as a sign revealing who Jesus is, and Jesus explicitly connected the event with belief.

Harwood’s chapter explicitly says the disagreement is not whether salvation is by grace. The Traditional Statement says no sinner is remotely capable of achieving salvation through his own effort. The disagreement is whether God’s grace enables a response or must first regenerate the person so that the response becomes inevitable.

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When we take that narrative and make it the foundation for a doctrine that says regeneration must precede faith, we have moved from what the text says to what a theological system wants the text to illustrate. That is precisely the hermeneutical question raised by Micah Coate’s critique:

  • Are we allowing Scripture to establish the doctrine, or are we taking a narrative and making it carry a doctrine that the narrative itself never teaches?

The issue, then, isn’t whether Lazarus was really dead.

He was.

The issue is whether every spiritually dead person is therefore a spiritual Lazarus—unable to hear, unable to respond, and unable to believe until God first regenerates him.

That conclusion has to come from Scripture. Lazarus doesn’t say it.

You want an example of how a healthy theology uses the Lazarus even? Remember Jesus said:

“This sickness will not end in death but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

“I’m glad for you that I wasn’t there so that you may believe.”

“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

“Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

Here is how the story of Lazarus is used in Professor Harwood’s systematic work:

SIGNS AND MIRACLES

Another means of special revelation attested in Scripture is signs and miracles, which are sometimes called God’s mighty acts or signs and wonders. 18 Signs and miracles were acts of God that occurred outside God’s normative providential care and were meant to testify that God was at work. The Bible is filled with examples of signs and miracles. For example, God intervened to provide children to women such as Sarah, Hannah, and Mary, who otherwise would not have become pregnant. 19 God demonstrated signs through Moses so people would know God had appeared to Moses and was speaking through him (Exod 4:1–9). When Pharaoh refused to listen to Moses despite God’s many signs and wonders, Egypt experienced “mighty acts of judgment” (Exod 7:4).

Signs and wonders characterized the events surrounding Jesus’s conception and birth as well as his public ministry. Mark records an episode that demonstrates a reason for miracles during Jesus’s ministry. While Jesus was teaching in a home crowded with listeners, a paralytic man was lowered through the roof. Jesus declared the man’s sins were forgiven and explained the reason he healed the man was to demonstrate his authority to forgive sin —something only God can do (Mark 2:1–12). This episode of physical healing reveals how the miracle brought more than physical relief and a demonstration of God’s compassion for the individual; the miracle pointed people to a greater truth, that Jesus had the authority to forgive sin. John’s Gospel contains several miracles called “signs” (Grk. sēmeia ), which revealed Jesus’s glory (John 2:11), including turning water to wine (John 2:1–11), healing an official’s son (4:43–54), healing a man at Bethesda (5:1– 15), feeding five thousand (6:1–14), walking on water (6:16–21), restoring a man’s sight (9:1–12), and raising Lazarus (11:1–44). The greatest sign in John’s Gospel, as in the other Gospels, is the resurrection of Jesus from the grave.

[….]

The person and work of Christ can be seen in a variety of ways in John’s Gospel. Jesus is the preexistent and divine Word who became flesh, was rejected by his creation, in whom is life, and who reveals the Father (1:1–18). The Gospel presents eight witnesses to the divinity of Christ: John the Baptist (1:34), the works of Christ (5:36), the Father (v. 37), the Scriptures (v. 39), Christ himself (8:14), the Holy Spirit (15:26), believers (v. 27), and the author of the Gospel (19:35). 15 The seven miracles, also called signs, revealed God’s glory in Jesus and resulted in the disciples trusting him (2:11). The seven signs are changing water into wine (2:1–11), healing the official’s son (4:43–54), healing the man at Bethesda (5:1–15), feeding the five thousand (6:1–14), walking on water (vv. 16–21), healing the man born blind (9:1–12), and raising Lazarus (11:1–44). Jesus identified himself in seven “I am” statements with Yahweh, the covenant name of God: the bread of life (6:35); the light of the world (8:12); the door (10:7); the good shepherd (vv. 11–14); the resurrection and the life (11:25); the way, the truth, and the life (14:6); and the true vine (15:1).

Adam Harwood, Christian Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Systematic (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2022), 88–89, 398.

Professor Harwood used the story as Jesus intended it; R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, James White, and others, did and do not..

More from Professor Flowers book, Drawn by Jesus:

Dead In Sin

Are we born dead like Lazarus, a corpse rotting in the tomb (a link scripture never draws), or are we dead like the Prodigal, a loved one separated due to his own rebellion? Scripture seems to support the latter, not the former (Luke 15:32).

The fact is that the scriptures metaphorically address our condi­tion as a sickness far more than as deadness. (Jer 17:9, 23; Mk 2:17; Lk 5:31; Mt 9:12; Ps 38:3; Is 64:6; etc) And when speaking metaphoric­ally of deadness, it is never described as a morally incapacitated con­dition from birth due to the Fall, but instead as a condition of being separated from God by our own rebellion.

For instance, the Prodigal was “dead” or “lost” then “alive” or “found,” demonstrating that the term “dead” is idiomatic for “separ­ated by rebellion,” not “innate moral inability” (Luke 15:24). Just as our soul is separated from our body when we die so too sinful hu­manity is separated from God by his rebellion. Look what scripture teaches,

When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. (James 1 :1 3-1 5)

Are we born “dead,” according to James? Or is death birthed in those who sin after it is “full grown?” What did Paul say?

What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Never­theless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing the op­portunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment, put me to death. (Romans 7:7-11)

Are we born “dead,” according to Paul? Or was it through the com­mandment, after “sin sprang to life,” that death came? In contrast, the metaphor of illness is quite prevalent throughout the scriptures:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)

The heart is more deceitful than all else. And is desperately sick; Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 1 7:9)

And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. (Mark 2:1 7)

There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your indignation; There is no health in my bones because of my sin. (Psalms 38:3)

For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. (Isaiah 64:6)

We are sick and in need of a Physician. We are cursed and in need of His cure. His life-giving truth is sufficient to accomplish the pur­pose for which He sent it, “…so that you may believe…and by believ­ing may have life in His name” (John 20:31).

Is Not Able By His Own Strength

Given that we cannot draw our next breath if not by the gracious good pleasure of our Sovereign Lord, I’m not sure how this qualifica­tion helps clarify our point of contention. God gives us all we have, including our ability to make choices. In other words, we all affirm that God must enable choice. We do not all agree that such enabling will dictate which choice will be made. As A.W. Tozer so eloquently taught,

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.

To Convert Himself

In response to a doctor’s diagnosis, is recognizing your need for a heart transplant and submitting to the doctor’s will to perform the surgery equal to performing the surgery yourself? Of course not. An Ethiopian cannot change his own skin, nor can a leopard change his own spots (Jeremiah 13:23), but that does not even imply that they cannot recognize and submit to this needed change when confronted by the only One who is able to bring about such change.

Or Prepare Himself Thereunto

Can the powerful, Spirit-wrought truth of God’s inspired Word prepare him thereunto? Does one’s ability to resist such preparation and enabling work somehow negate that the work is sufficient to accomplish its given purpose?

Here is a brief rebuttal of the most common proof texts used by Calvinists to support their teaching on “Total Inability.” Much more could be and has been written on each of these texts from the non-Calvinistic perspective, but for the sake of brevity, here is a summary of the rebuttals:

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

Nothing at all is stated about man’s inability to respond to God’s own revelation. Please read all of Genesis chapter 6 and make a case as to how that supports the Calvinistic premise. Here is just a taste of the context:

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.

As one Calvinist on a recent podcast inquired in response to this passage, “Why didn’t God just elect more people instead of becoming `deeply troubled?'” That is a good question that every Calvinist must deal with when confronted with a text like this. The natural reading simply does not align with deterministic philosophy.

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. (Romans 3:1O-11)

No one is righteous according to the works of the law. No one is able to attain righteousness by law through works. But how does that prove no one is able to obtain righteousness by grace through faith? In verse 21 of this same chapter, Paul introduces the means for man to obtain righteousness, which is separate from the law. Calvin­ists seem to think that proof of our inability to earn righteousness through our own works likewise proves our inability to trust in the imputed righteousness of Christ. Proving that the lost cannot seek God does not prove that they are unable to respond to a God who is ac­tively seeking to save the lost.

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:7-9)

Mankind’s inability to submit to God’s law does not prove their inability to trust in Christ, who fulfilled the law for mankind. Man­kind’s inability to please God while acting in the flesh does not prove mankind’s inability to respond to the spiritual appeal of God so as to receive His Spirit.

If I warn my rebellious son, saying, “You cannot please me by acting selfishly,” does that suggest the child is unable to heed my warning, humble himself, and repent of acting selfishly? Of course not. It only suggests that as long as my child continues to rebel and act according to his pride, he will not please me.

This verse says nothing of our innate inability to respond to God’s powerful truth and appeal to humble ourselves so as to be reconciled. Each individual has the choice to remain in their fleshly pride or respond to the Spirit’s call to humble themselves. If you choose the former, you cannot please God.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

So, the lost man needs someone to spiritually discern the “deep things of God” (vs. 10), right? What are the means God uses to help us discern spiritual truths? Is not the very epistle that Paul is writing to the carnal believers in Corinth a means for “spiritual discernment?” And since the “brethren” in the Corinthian church are “not able to receive” these same “deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 3:1-3), one would be hard-pressed to suggest that Paul intended to teach that no one is able to understand the simple “milk” of the gospel’s appeal for reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Again, this text never suggests that mankind is born unable to respond positively to God’s clearly revealed gospel appeal. It only affirms that the mystery of the gospel must be revealed to us in order for us to understand it, which it has been. As Paul states, “When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Ephesians 3:4).

Neither side of this soteriological debate suggests that lost men can understand the deep spiritual truths of God apart from the means God has chosen to reveal these mysteries. So, the question is whether God’s means of discernment through the apostle’s writings is a sufficient work of discernment that enables those who hear it to understand and respond.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. (John 6:44a)

We all agree with this statement. But what are the means that God draws men to Himself? Even White agrees that God draws them by teaching them. As mentioned earlier, in Romans 10:14-15 Paul asks:

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?

Follow the Order:

God Sends: Who does He send? His apostles, the remnant reserved from Israel to be His inspired messengers (Acts 10:40-41). The rest of the Israelites are being judicially hardened in their rebellion tem­porarily while Christ is on earth (Romans 11:7; 25). Jesus speaks to them in parables so that they cannot understand and repent (Mark 4:11-12). He does this to ensure the crucifixion that He has predeter­mined will come to pass (Acts 2:23). It is not until after Christ is lifted up that he sends out His Spirit-filled messengers to preach the gospel to all peoples (Acts 1:8) in order to draw all men to Himself (John 12:3 2).

Apostles Preach: What do they preach? The powerful gospel ap­peal (Romans 1:16; 10:8; 2 Corinthians 5:20), which is alive, active and able to cut through to the soul of man (Hebrews 4:12). Remem­ber this is the powerful gospel that is being hidden in parables from most of Israel while Christ is on earth in order to prevent them from repenting before the right time (Matthew 13:11; 16:20). Proof that God used persuasive means to convince chosen messengers from Is­rael to go and proclaim His message is not proof that God uses inward irresistible means to convince preselected hearers to believe their message (John 20:30-31).

Hearers Hear: Who are the hearers? Anyone who is not being judicially hardened, like Israel was at that time. Only those who are being blinded from seeing the light are unable to see the light, and that blinding (judicially hardening) is not a condition from birth but a condition unique to Israel at that time as judgment for their rebel­lion.

Hearing is how they can believe: As Paul states in the following verses, “faith comes from hearing the message,” which parallels what John taught in John 20:31: “…these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and that by believing, you may have life in his name.” The only reason that a hearer would not be enabled to respond to the life-giving truth of God’s appeal is if they are being prevented from seeing, hearing, or understanding the mes­sage, a condition of someone being judicially hardened by God (“hid­den from their eyes”).

Believing is how they can call: One who has heard the powerful gospel appeal calling us to repentance and faith is able to believe. The believer is able to call on Christ in repentance in order to find forgive­ness and life. Mankind must repent in order to live! (Ezekiel 18:32)

The historical context of John 6 must be in view to understand the author’s intention. Jesus is purposefully blinding most Israelites, due to their self-righteous rebellion, from the truth of His identity to prevent their repentance for a time. All the while, He is drawing His preselected apostles and genuine believers from Israel to be the foundation for His church. In other words, in Christ’s audience, there are some who are being judicially hardened from Israel for a good reason (unbelief) and others who are being drawn from Israel for a good reason (belief) in order to ensure God’s purpose in electing Israel would be fulfilled.

Support Drawn from Other Passages In John’s Gospel

And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself. (John 12:32)

The differentiation between the Father’s drawing in John 6 and the Son’s drawing in John 12, as expounded upon earlier, is a signifi­cant contextual point that must be considered in this discussion. The emphasis on the Father’s drawing in John 6 highlights the divine ac­tion of God inviting and enabling faithful God-fearing individuals to come to Jesus.

On the other hand, in John 12:32, Jesus emphasizes His own agency in drawing all people to Himself, but only after His res­urrection. This distinction highlights the harmonious collaboration between the Father and the Son in their work of salvation, underscor­ing the unity and purpose within the Godhead given at the proper time. By emphasizing His role in drawing people to Himself, Jesus reinforces His divinity and authority as the central figure in the re­demptive plan of God, offering all people the means to be reconciled with God through His sacrificial death and resurrection.

Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of Me. “But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:25-30)

If we understand “My sheep” to refer to “those I have uncondi­tionally elected for effectual salvation before the foundation of the world,” then this passage might appear to support the Calvinistic doctrine. However, there is nothing in this context to indicate that is what Jesus is referring to by using the analogy of being His “sheep.” The intended audience of Jesus’ words in John 10:26 are Israelites who have become hardened and indifferent to the voice of God. It is because of their refusal to listen and respond to the Father’s voice that they are now unable to recognize and accept the voice of Jesus, who speaks the same truth (John 6:45).

This is not due to an inherent condition from birth that predis­poses them to hate and reject God’s appeals for reconciliation, nor is it because God is withholding the necessary grace for them to believe. On the contrary, the Jews had become calloused through persistent unbelief; otherwise, they could have seen, heard, understood, and turned to God for healing (as demonstrated in John 12:39-40 and Acts 28:23-28). Jesus describes their spiritual condition in this con­text as follows:

You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me. But you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life (John 5:39-40).

It is important to observe the sequence of events here: the Jews chose to reject the Scriptures, resulting in their denial of the oppor­tunity for life. Jesus did not imply, “I have refused to make you alive so that you would be compelled to come to me.” He put the blame solely upon them for their unwillingness to come when they were presented with that opportunity.

During that time, the Jewish people had become stubborn and entrenched in their rebellion, which explains why they were unable to perceive, hear, and respond to their own Messiah. However, those who had not succumbed to this hardening of heart, and instead listened to and learned from the Father (like Cornelius in Acts 10) would believe in the Son and follow Him – recognizing His voice, much like a sheep responds to its shepherd (see also John 6:45).

Prior to Christ’s coming, if someone believed the Father, they would also believe His Son, for the Father and Son are One. Con­versely, if one refused to listen to the Father before the incarnation, they would likewise be unresponsive to the teachings of the Son. The followers of the Father (often referred to as “sheep” during that era) also became followers of the Son. Those who rejected the guidance of the Father were not considered among His sheep, and that is why they refused to follow the Son. This clarifies Jesus’ statement to them, “But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep” (John 10:26).

In essence, Jesus is conveying this message: “Because you have chosen not to follow the Father, you will not follow me, His Son, either.” When Jesus says, “You are not my sheep,” He is essentially saying, “You do not align yourself with God, nor have you listened and learned from Him (as referenced in John 6:45). Hence, you will not heed my calling as the Shepherd sent by Him, who represents the very same truth.” This is reflected in the following statement by Jesus:

If God were your Father, you would love Me, because I came from God and I am here. For I didn’t come on my own, but He sent me (John 8:42).

Jesus is not implying, as the Calvinistic doctrine would suggest, that their unbelief stems from both Him and the Father rejecting them and withholding the necessary grace to believe since before the world was established. This notion contradicts Luke 19:41-42, where

 Jesus weeps over Israel because they are now unable to see the truth of His identity as their Messiah.

Why would God need to conceal the truth of Christ from those who were born unable to believe? Additionally, why would Jesus urge those who were not His followers to ponder the implications of His miracles if they were utterly incapable of accepting the truth?

If I am not doing my Father’s works, don’t believe me. But if I am doing them and you don’t believe me, believe the works. This way, you will know and understand that the Father is in me and I in the Father (John 10:37-38, emphasis added).

God was not withholding some special grace necessary for them to believe. This notion gives them too much credit and portrays them as victims rather than morally accountable rebellious sinners. They reject a loving God who declares, “all day long I have held out my hands” (Romans 10:21) and “wanted to gather your children to­gether, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (Matthew 23:37; Isaiah 30:15).

I came across this first graphic, and this is the “Calvinist ‘front’ story”… I explain the rest of the story behind the scenes with the second one that follows:

Reacting With Faith Is a Work?

Published by Papa Giorgio

Memevangelist’s (FACEBOOK) meme (see here) inspired the above. They have great ideas and thoughts that I love to expand on.

  1. Calvinists Believe Faith Is a Gift from God

Synopsis

This article argues that one of Calvinism’s foundational doctrines is that saving faith is not something sinners exercise on their own but is a supernatural gift sovereignly implanted by God only in the elect. Jeremy Myers surveys numerous Calvinist theologians—including Calvin, Sproul, Piper, MacArthur, White, and others—to demonstrate that this is not merely an isolated belief but a defining feature of Reformed soteriology. He then challenges the common appeal to Ephesians 2:8–9, arguing that the “gift of God” is salvation by grace rather than faith itself, and contends that Scripture consistently portrays faith as the human response to God’s gracious revelation rather than a special endowment given only to certain individuals.

  1. Calvinists Believe Faith Is a Work

Synopsis

Jeremy Myers argues that although Calvinists insist they do not believe faith is a work, their theological system implicitly treats it as one. Because Calvinism reasons that if faith originated with the sinner it would become a meritorious work, Calvinists conclude that God must first create faith in the elect. Myers contends that this reasoning misunderstands the biblical nature of faith, which Scripture repeatedly contrasts with works rather than equating with them. The article documents numerous Calvinist statements showing that their concern is preventing faith from becoming a human contribution to salvation.

  1. Faith Is Not a Work

Synopsis

This article develops the biblical case that faith is fundamentally different from works. Myers examines Romans 4, Ephesians 2, John 6, and other passages to show that faith is the empty hand receiving God’s gift rather than a meritorious act earning salvation. Faith contributes nothing to the accomplishment of redemption; it simply trusts Christ’s finished work. Therefore, allowing sinners to believe freely does not diminish grace or provide grounds for boasting because faith receives rather than accomplishes salvation.

  1. On Faith – The Calvinist Misunderstanding of Faith as a “Work” or “Meritorious”

Synopsis

This article argues that Calvinism’s understanding of total inability and exhaustive divine determinism leads it to redefine faith as something that must be sovereignly caused by God lest it become a human work. The author maintains that this conclusion rests upon a misunderstanding of both human responsibility and the biblical definition of faith. Scripture consistently portrays faith as humble trust and surrender in response to the gospel—not as a meritorious achievement. The article further argues that Ephesians 2:8–9 teaches that salvation is God’s gift, not faith itself, and that holding sinners responsible to believe does not make faith a work or diminish God’s glory.

Calvinism concludes that faith must be irresistibly given because it assumes that if faith originates in the sinner, faith would become a work that contributes to salvation. The article argues this assumption is mistaken because Scripture defines faith as trust, surrender, and reliance upon Christ—not as merit. Christ’s death is the ground of salvation; faith is simply the means by which that completed salvation is received. Therefore, requiring sinners to believe neither diminishes grace nor gives them grounds for boasting.

  1. Faith

Synopsis

This article examines the Calvinistic doctrine of gifted faith by tracing its theological assumptions and comparing them with biblical teaching. It argues that Reformed theology makes regeneration logically precede faith because sinners are viewed as incapable of believing apart from irresistible grace. The author responds that throughout Scripture people are commanded to believe, are held accountable for unbelief, and are never told that faith itself must first be implanted by God. Faith is presented as trusting God’s promises rather than as a supernatural substance infused into the elect.

  1. The Fallacies of Calvinist Apologetics – Fallacy #10: “Wait… Now Faith Is a Work?”

Synopsis

This article critiques the Calvinist claim that allowing sinners to exercise faith would make salvation partly dependent upon human effort. The author argues that this commits a false dilemma by assuming faith must either be God’s unilateral gift or else become a meritorious work. Scripture repeatedly distinguishes faith from works, especially in Romans 4, where Paul intentionally contrasts the two. Therefore, believing God’s promise cannot simultaneously be treated as the sort of work Paul excludes from justification.

  1. What Is Faith?

Synopsis

Jeremy Myers argues that biblical faith is not intellectual assent, mystical certainty, or a supernatural force implanted by God. Instead, faith is relational trust—relying upon the character and promises of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Faith functions like trust in everyday human relationships: it responds to evidence, grows through experience, and involves personal reliance rather than meritorious effort. Understanding faith this way removes the false tension between grace and human responsibility, since faith contributes nothing to salvation except receiving what Christ has already accomplished.

Taken together, these articles advance one central thesis:

  • The Calvinist system concludes that faith must be sovereignly given because, if faith originated with the sinner, it would function as a work or human contribution to salvation.

The authors challenge that premise by arguing instead that:

  • Scripture consistently contrasts faith with works.
  • Faith is trust, not merit.
  • Faith receives salvation rather than earns
  • God commands all people to believe and holds them responsible for unbelief.
  • Therefore, allowing faith to be the sinner’s genuine response to God’s gracious revelation does not compromise salvation by grace alone.

 

Too Depraved To Respond To The Gospel?

Published by Papa Giorgio

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

108. Piper, “Two Wills,” 107–24; Grudem, Systematic Theology, 683–84.

109. MacArthur, “Does God love,” par. 4–5.

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.

(Berean Apologetics)

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)

Calvary becomes moot.

The Gospel becomes moot.

A humorous look into the above via HOPPERS CROSSING:

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.”

RC Sproul’s Hyperbole Doesn’t Explain His Reprobation Views

Published by Papa Giorgio

RONNIE W. ROGERS

John Calvin is unabashed in his defense of his views and says, “Many professing a desire to defend the Deity from an invidious charge admit the doctrine of election, but deny that any one is reprobated. This they do ignorantly, and childishly, since there could be no election without this opposite reprobation. God is said to set apart those whom he adopts for salvation. It were most absurd to say, that he admits others fortuitously, or that they by their industry acquire what election alone confers on a few. Those, therefore, whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children”[1]

As I have maintained, all Calvinists, arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, inevitably believe in double predestination, but most shy from the forthrightness of Calvin. They either believe that God actively predestined some to hell, as Calvin does, or He did so by choosing not to offer what surely would have delivered them from hell to heaven, i.e. selective regeneration. Calvin refers to this cold inescapable reality as “his incomprehensible counsel,” i.e. mystery.[2] I find this to be another disquieting reality of Calvinism.

All of the euphemizing in the world will not purge Calvinism of the harsh reality that people are saved because God desired for them to be, and people are in hell for the same reason. This is true even if some Calvinists continue to resist admitting it because according to Calvinism, if God pleased, not only could everyone have been saved, but they would in fact have been saved, which is disquieting reality.

Calvinism asks us to believe that God chose eternal torment for the vast majority of His creation (Matthew 7:13-14). They want us to rejoice in a God who desires and chooses for the vast majority of his creation to go to hell when He could have redeemed them. That is indeed God according to Calvinism, but not the Scripture. Where is the plethora of Scripture where God expresses His desire for the vast majority of His creation to perish in eternal torment, and this with equal clarity and abundance as those Scriptures that declare His indefatigable, sacrificial love and desire that all repent and be saved? I suggest that they do not exist and for good reason.

[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, pages 225-226.
[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, page 226.

(Via pastor Ronnie Rogers)

Ezekiel 33:11 ESV
Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?

Ezekiel 18:23 ESV
Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?

Ezekiel 18:32 ESV
For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live.”

RC SPROUL

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.

R.C. Sproul, Chosen By God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1986), 22.

“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? [35]

[….]

The only answer I can give to this question is that I don’t know. I have no idea why God saves some but not all. I don’t doubt for a moment that God has the power to save all but I know that he does not choose to save all I don’t know why.

One thing I do know. If it pleases God to save some and not all there is nothing wrong with that. God is not under obligation to save anybody If he chooses to save some, that in no way obligates him to save the rest. Again the Bible insists that it is God’s divine prerogative to have mercy upon whom he will have mercy. [37]

R.C. Sproul, Chosen By God: Know God’s Perfect Plan for His Glory and His Children (Wheaton, IL: Tyndal House Publishers, 1986), 35,37.

Sproul’s hyperbole doesn’t save him from who puts the “mother” in hell. To wit:

ERIC HANKINS

Does Romans 9 teach Calvinistic Reprobation? Guest Dr. Eric Hankins

Eric Hankins, PhD joins Dr. Flowers to discuss Dr. Hankins article recently published at the Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary,

  • There are two places you can read the article being discussed below. One is the PDF extracted piece by Pastor Hankins from the Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry (spring 2018) volume 15, number 1, HERE. Or the reproduction of it over at Soteriology 101, HERE.

WAYNE GRUDEM

“reprobation,” the decision of God to pass over those who will not be saved, and to punish them for their sins. As will be explained below, election and reprobation are different in several important respects, and it is important to distinguish these so that we do not think wrongly about God or his activity.

The term predestination is also frequently used in this discussion. In this textbook, and in Reformed theology generally, predestination is a broader term and includes the two aspects of election (for believers) and reprobation (for unbelievers). However, the term double predestination is not a helpful term because it gives the impression that both election and reprobation are carried out in the same way by God and have no essential differences between them, which is certainly not true. Therefore, the term double predestination is not generally used by Reformed theologians, though it is sometimes used to refer to Reformed teaching by those who criticize it. The term double predestination will not be used in this book to refer to election and reprobation, since it blurs the distinctions between them and does not give an accurate indication of what is actually being taught. [670]

[….]

When we understand election as God’s sovereign choice of some persons to be saved, then there is necessarily another aspect of that choice, namely, God’s sovereign decision to pass over others and not to save them. This decision of God in eternity past is called reprobation. Reprobation is the sovereign decision of God before creation to pass over some persons, in sorrow deciding not to save them, and to punish them for their sins, and thereby to manifest his justice.

In many ways the doctrine of reprobation is the most difficult of all the teachings of Scripture for us to think about and to accept, because it deals with such horrible and eternal consequences for human beings made in the image of God. The love that God gives us for our fellow human beings and the love that he commands us to have toward our neighbor cause us to recoil against this doctrine, and it is right that we feel such dread in contemplating it.

[….]

In spite of the fact that we recoil against this doctrine, we must be careful of our attitude toward God and toward these passages of Scripture. We must never begin to wish that the Bible was written in another way, or that it did not contain these verses.

Moreover, if we are convinced that these verses teach reprobation, then we are obligated both to believe it and accept it as fair and just of God, even though it still causes us to tremble in horror as we think of it. [684-685]

Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Bible Doctrine (Leicester LE17GP, Great Britain: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994; and, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), 670, 684-685.

LORAINE BOETTNER

REPROBATION

The doctrine of absolute Predestination of course logically holds that some are foreordained to death as truly as others are foreordained to life. The very terms “elect” and “election” imply the terms “non-elect” and “reprobation.” When some are chosen out others are left not chosen. The high privileges and glorious destiny of the former are not shared with the latter. This, too, is of God. We believe that from all eternity God has intended to leave some of Adam’s posterity in their sins, and that the decisive factor in the life of each is to be found only in God’s will. As Mozley has said, the whole race after the fall was “one mass of perdition,” and “it pleased God of His sovereign mercy to rescue some and to leave others where they were; to raise some to glory, giving them such grace as necessarily qualified them for it, and abandon the rest, from whom He withheld such grace, to eternal punishments.”50

The chief difficulty with the doctrine of Election of course arises in regard to the unsaved; and the Scriptures have given us no extended explanation of their state. Since the mission of Jesus in the world was to save the world rather than to judge it, this side of the matter is less dwelt upon.

In all of the Reformed creeds in which the doctrine of Reprobation is dealt with at all it is treated as an essential part of the doctrine of Predestination. The Westminster Confession, after stating the doctrine of election, adds: “The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the inscrutable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.”51

Those who hold the doctrine of Election but deny that of Reprobation can lay but little claim to consistency. To affirm the former while denying the latter makes the decree of predestination an illogical and lop-sided decree. The creed which states the former but denies the latter will resemble a wounded eagle attempting to fly with but one wing. In the interests of a “mild Calvinism” some have been inclined to give up the doctrine of Reprobation, and this term (in itself a very innocent term) has been the entering wedge for harmful attacks upon Calvinism pure and simple. “Mild Calvinism” is synonymous with sickly Calvinism, and sickness, if not cured, is the beginning of the end.

Comments by Calvin, Luther, and Warfield

Calvin did not hesitate to base the reprobation of the lost, as well as the election of the saved, on the eternal purpose of God. We have already quoted him to the effect that “not all men are created with a similar destiny but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say, he is predestinated either to life or to death.” And again he says, “There can be no election without its opposite, reprobation.”52 That the latter raises problems which are not easy to solve, he readily admits, but advocates it as the only intelligent and Scriptural explanation of the facts.

Luther also as certainly as Calvin attributes the eternal perdition of the wicked, as well as the eternal salvation of the righteous, to the plan of God. “This mightily offends our rational nature,” he says, “that God should, of His own mere unbiased will, leave some men to themselves, harden them and condemn them; but He gives abundant demonstration, and does continually, that this is really the case; namely, that the sole cause why some are saved, and others perish, proceeds from His willing the salvation of the former, and the perdition of the latter, according to that of St. Paul, ‘He hath mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth.”‘ And again, “It may seem absurd to human wisdom that God should harden, blind, and deliver up some men to a reprobate sense; that He should first deliver them over to evil, and condemn them for that evil; but the believing, spiritual man sees no absurdity at all in this; knowing that God would be never a whit less good, even though He should destroy all men.” He then goes on to say that this must not be understood to mean that God finds men good, wise, obedient, and makes them evil, foolish, and obdurate, but that they are already depraved and fallen and that those who are not regenerated, instead of becoming better under the divine commands and influences, only react to become worse. In reference to Romans IX, X, XI, Luther says that “all things whatever arise from and depend upon the Divine appointment, whereby it was preordained who should receive the word of life and who should disbelieve it, who should be delivered from their sins and who should be hardened in them, who should be justified and who condemned.”53

“The Biblical writers,” says Dr. Warfield, “are as far as possible from obscuring the doctrine of election because of any seemingly unpleasant corollaries that flow from it. On the contrary, they expressly draw the corollaries which have often been so designated, and make them a part of their explicit teaching. Their doctrine of election, they are free to tell us, for example, does certainly involve a corresponding doctrine of preterition. The very term adopted in the New Testament to express it—eklegomai, which, as Meyer justly says (Ephesians 1:4), ‘always has, and must of logical necessity have, a reference to others to whom the chosen would, without the ekloga, still belong’—embodies a declaration of the fact that in their election others are passed by and left without the gift of salvation; the whole presentation of the doctrine is such as either to imply or openly to assert, on its very emergence, the removal of the elect by the pure grace of God, not merely from a state of condemnation, but out of the company of the condemned—a company on whom the grace of God has no saving effect, and who are therefore left without hope in their sins; and the positive just reprobation of the impenitent for their sins is repeatedly explicitly taught in sharp contrast with the gratuitous salvation of the elect despite their sins.”54

And again he says: “The difficulty which is felt by some in following the apostle’s argument here (Romans 11 f), we may suspect, has its roots in part in a shrinking from what appears to them an arbitrary assignment of men to diverse destinies without consideration of their desert. Certainly St. Paul as explicitly affirms the sovereignty of reprobation as election,—if these twin ideas are, indeed, separable even in thought; if he represents God as sovereignly loving Jacob, he represents Him equally as sovereignly hating Esau; if he declares that He has mercy on whom He will, He equally declares that He hardens whom He will. Doubtless the difficulty often felt here is, in part, an outgrowth of an insufficient realization of St. Paul’s basal conception of the state of men at large as condemned sinners before an angry God. It is with a world of lost sinners that he represents God as dealing; and out of that world building up a Kingdom of Grace. Were not all men sinners, there might still be an election, as sovereign as now; and there being an election, there would still be as sovereign a rejection; but the rejection would not be a rejection to punishment, to destruction, to eternal death, but to some other destiny consonant to the state in which those passed by should be left. It is not indeed, then, because men are sinners that men are left unelected; election is free, and its obverse of rejection must be equally free; but it is solely because men are sinners that what they are left to is destruction. And it is in this universalism of ruin rather than in a universalism of salvation that St. Paul really roots his theodicy. When all deserve death it is a marvel of pure grace that any receive life; and who shall gainsay the right of Him who shows this miraculous mercy, to have mercy on whom He will, and whom He will to harden?”55

NOTES

  1. The Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, p. 297.
  2. Ch. III: Sec. 7
  3. Institutes, Book III, Ch. 23.
  4. In Praefat, and Epist. ad Rom., quoted by Zanchius, Predestination, p. 92.
  5. B.B. Warfield, Biblical Doctrines, art. Predestination, p. 64.
  6. Biblical Doctrines. p. 54.

Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1932), 104-108.

Kenneth Keathley

Worse yet, the hidden/revealed wills approach appears to make God out to be hypocritical, which is a fifth problem. God universally offers a salvation that He has no intention for all to receive. Reformed soteriology teaches that the gospel is offered to all, but efficacious grace is given only to the elect.46 The limits of salvation are set by the sovereign and secret choice of God. Numerous times—through the prophets, the Savior, and the apostles—God publicly reveals a desire for Israel’s salvation while secretly seeing to it they will not repent. Calvin, citing Augustine, states that since we do not know who is elect and who is reprobate we should desire the salvation of all.47 Shank retorts, “But why? If this be not God’s desire, why should it be Calvin’s? Why does Calvin wish to be more gracious than God?”48

Which brings us to a sixth and fundamental objection to the hidden/revealed wills paradigm: it fails to face the very problems it was intended to address. It avoids the very dilemma decretal theology creates. Peterson, in his defense of the Reformed position on God’s two wills, states, “God does not save all sinners, for ultimately he does not intend to save all of them. The gift of faith is necessary for salvation, yet for reasons beyond our ken, the gift of faith has not been given to all.”49 But then he concludes, “While God commands all to repent and takes no delight in the death of the sinner, all are not saved because it is not God’s intention to give his redeeming grace to all.”50 I must be candid and confess that to me the last quote makes no sense.

Let us remember that there is no disagreement about human responsibility. Molinists, Calvinists, Arminians, and all other orthodox Christians agree that the lost are lost because of their own sin. But that is not the question at hand. The question is not, “Why are the lost lost?” but “Why aren’t the lost saved?” The nasty, awful, “deep-dark-dirty-little-secret” of Calvinism is that it teaches there is one and only one answer to the second question, and it is that God does not want them saved.51 Molinism is sometimes accused of having similar problems,52 but Reformed theology has the distinction of making this difficulty the foundational cornerstone for its understanding of salvation.

NOTES

  1. See T. R. Schreiner and B. A. Ware, “Introduction” in The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will, 12. They affirm that efficacious grace is given only to the elect: “Our understanding of God’s saving grace is very different. We contend that Scripture does not teach that all people receive grace in equal measure, even though such a democratic notion is attractive today. What Scripture teaches is that God’s saving grace is set only upon some, namely, those whom, in his great love, he elected long ago to save, and that this grace is necessarily effective in turning them to belief.”
  2. J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster, [1559] 1960), 3.23.14.
  3. R. Shank, Elect in the Son (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1989), 166.
  4. R. Peterson and M. Williams, Why I Am Not an Arminian (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 130.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Both the point and the phrase come from Walls and Dongell, Why I Am Not a Calvinist, 186–87. Cf. Daane, The Freedom of God, 184. Both Dort and Westminster warn about preaching decretal theology publicly. Many thoughtful Calvinists concede that the moral and logical problems with the doctrine of reprobation are irresolvable. See P. Jewett, Election and Predestination (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 76–77, 99–100; and T. R. Schreiner, “Does Scripture Teach Prevenient Grace in the Wesleyan Sense?” in Schreiner and Ware, The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will, 381–82.
  7. See J. Walls, “Is Molinism as Bad as Calvinism?” Faith and Philosophy 7 (1990):85–98.

Kenneth Keathley, Salvation and the Sovereignty: A Molinist Approach (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2010), 57-58.

ADAM HARWOOD

A widely—though not universally—accepted view in Protestant theological literature is that God determines all things, including the salvation and reprobation of individuals. 3 For example, Millard Erickson begins his chapter on predestination with this statement: “Predestination is God’s choice of persons for eternal life or eternal death.” 4 Robert Letham writes, “Predestination refers to God’s ordaining this or that immutably from eternity.” Letham adds, “Election is that aspect of predestination that relates to those whom God ordains to salvation in Christ.” 5 Alan Cairns refers to predestination in both wide and narrow senses. In a wide sense, predestination refers to God’s foreordaining of all things; in a narrow sense, it refers to God selecting some individuals for salvation and others for reprobation. 6 This widely accepted understanding of predestination and election can be traced to Augustine.

One of Augustine’s final writings was the short work titled A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints. 7 The African bishop wrote it in 428 or 429 to warn Prosper and Hilary against Pelagian views. 8 Augustine argues that the Lord prepares the will of the elect for faith, and only some people are elected to salvation, which is an act of God’s mercy. Faith is a gift given to only some people, and only some are called by God to be believers. Those elected are called in order to believe. Augustine explains, “He chose them that they might choose Him.” 9 Augustine’s views established a grid for understanding predestination and election that has significantly influenced subsequent interpreters. The Calvinist-Arminian tradition adopted his interpretation (though it modified it at certain points), while others (such as the Eastern Orthodox Church) rejected it. Other Christian groups are composed of some who accept his view and others who reject it. 10 Though some Christians affirm a version of Augustinian predestination, the view has never gained a consensus in the church.11 [580-581]

[….]

Although Augustinian predestination has influenced many Christian interpreters, Paul is addressing in Romans 9 the temporal rejection and hardening of Israel, not the eternal fate of individuals. 62 The hardening of Israel should be interpreted as God rejecting his people for a period of time to bring in the gentiles rather than God’s precreation choice to condemn certain individuals. 63 Reprobation (the view that God decides before creation, whether actively or passively, to condemn certain individuals) was not Paul’s intended meaning in Romans 9 but Augustine’s innovation. 64 [602-603]

NOTES

3 Election, defined as God’s choice of certain individuals for salvation, is either presupposed or explicitly taught in most of the recent Protestant theological literature. See, e.g., Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine , 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2020), 816–41 ; Katherine Sonderdegger, “Election ,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , ed. John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 105–20 ; Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 309–23 ; Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology , 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 841–59 ; John M. Frame, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2013), 163–64 , 206–30 ; Kenneth Keathley, “The Work of God: Salvation ,” in A Theology for the Church , rev. ed., ed. Daniel L. Akin (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2014), 557–70 ; and Robert Letham, Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 405–39 . A notable exception is Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 448–60. He summarizes the Calvinist-Arminian position but prefers Pannenberg’s approach of considering God’s plans for the future rather than past decrees. See also James Leo Garrett Jr., Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical and Evangelical (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 2:453–54. He wonders whether Augustine and Calvin’s views have “contributed to a hyper-individualization of this doctrine.”

4 Erickson, Christian Theology, 841.

5 Letham, Systematic Theology, 173–74 (emphasis original).

6 Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms (Greenville, SC: Ambassador Emerald International, 2002), 335–36: “In the widest sense, predestination ‘is the theological doctrine … that from eternity God has foreordained all things which come to pass’ (Boettner). In this sense it is synonymous with God’s decree. However, it is most frequently used in a narrower sense, ‘as designating only the counsel of God concerning fallen men, including the sovereign election of some and the most righteous reprobation of the rest’ (A. A. Hodge). In this sense, predestination is in two parts, election and reprobation (see Westminster Confession, chap. 3, sec. 3, 7).”

7 Augustine, A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints.

8 For more on Augustine’s views of grace and predestination, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1978), 366–69. For Augustine’s shift from prioritizing human free will in salvation to prioritizing God’s sovereign choice in election, see David Roach, “From Free Choice to God’s Choice: Augustine’s Exegesis of Romans 9 ,” Evangelical Quarterly 80.2 (2008): 129–41 ; Eric L. Jenkins, Free to Say No?: Free Will in Augustine’s Evolving Doctrines of Grace and Election (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012) ; and Kenneth M. Wilson, Augustine’s Conversion from Traditional Free Choice to “Non-free Free Will ,” Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 111 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018).

9 Augustine, Treatise on the Predestination 10–11, 16, 32, 34 ( NPNF 1 5:515).

10 My own theological tradition is composed of some who affirm Augustinian predestination, others who reject it, and still others who suspend judgment on the matter. See E. Ray Clendenen and Brad J. Waggoner, eds., Calvinism: A Southern Baptist Dialogue (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2008) , for a collection of essays representing the two major sides of that discussion from within the same convention of churches. The Abstract of Principles (1858) defines election according to Augustinian predestination, but the BFM (2000) is ambiguous. According to Daniel L. Akin, “the nature and basis of election is not defined” in the confession. Akin, “Article V: God’s Purpose of Grace ,” in Baptist Faith and Message 2000: Critical Issues in America’s Largest Protestant Denomination , ed. Douglas K. Blount and Joseph D. Woodell (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 46.

11 Thomas C. Oden, Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 182–83 , “However great Augustine may have been, his views of predestination were never fully received and often modified, so those particular views can hardly be regarded as having received the consent necessary for being viewed as ancient ecumenical consensual tradition.”

[….]

62 For commentators who argue that Paul is not addressing the eternal fate of individuals in Rom 9, see N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992), 238–39 ; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary , AB 33 (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 563 ; Brendan Byrne, Romans , Sacra Pagina 6 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1996), 299 ; Luke T. Johnson, Reading Romans (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 140 ; Witherington with Hyatt, Paul’s Letter to the Romans , 246–59 ; and Brian J. Abasciano’s three volumes in the Library of New Testament Studies: Paul’s Use of the Old Testament in Romans 9.1–9: An Intertextual and Theological Exegesis (London: T&T Clark, 2005) ; Paul’s Use of the Old Testament in Romans 9:10–18: An Intertextual and Theological Exegesis (London: T&T Clark, 2011) ; and Paul’s Use of the Old Testament in Romans 9:19–24: An Intertextual and Theological Exegesis (London: T&T Clark, forthcoming) . For commentators who argue that Paul is addressing unconditional election to salvation in Rom 9, see Schreiner, “Does Romans 9 Teach,” 89–106; Schreiner, Romans, 2nd ed., BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 460–529; Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996); and John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1–23, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993).

63 The temporary hardening of Israel (Rom 9–11) was for gentile salvation (11:25). See Matthew W. Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 106.

64 See Eric Hankins, “Romans 9 and the Calvinist Doctrine of Reprobation,” JBTM 15.1 (Spring 2018): 62–74.

Adam Harwood, Christian Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Systematic (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2022), 580-581, 602-603.

For his chapters 23 and 24, you can read them here:

How To Pray Like An Honest Calvinist | IDOL KILLER (+RPT)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The 2nd video is Idol Killer’s original, the first is my reimagining it:

Praying Like A Consistent Calvinist | Adapted from Idol Killer >>> I rejiggered it into a better order [IMHO], added some graphics/quotes, and uploaded it a second time finding an edit error on my part.

Not for the faint of heart!

Somewhere outside the city of Geneva, on Earth 1689, it happened that a Calvinist Theologian was praying, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Pastor, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.” and he said to them:

“Oh Sovereign God, whom from all eternity, freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass, I thank you… I know you bring about all things in accordance with your will,… I know the evils of this world have NOT arisen by your mere permission, (or as a result of your patient call to repentance), but that YOU yourself bring about all evils for your glory and good pleasure,…

I thank you for bringing evil into the world. I thank you for the brutality at Birkenau and at Auschwitz.

I thank you for the terrible killings of Dennis Rader.

I thank you for the brutality of war, and the countless widows and orphans it creates. I thank you for the perverse abuse of young children. I know these evil men were perfectly obeying your Sovereign will.

I thank you. I see your gracious hand in the hurts others do to me, (like the Ford Focus that cut me off at the light this afternoon).

I thank you. I thank you for my wife, and the abuse she inflicts upon our children while I’m away from the home. I know you did this to build mine and my children’s character. I thank you that its only been bruises and bloody noses. I know you saw fit to have my boss fire me from my job, during the holiday season, just as I know it was your Sovereign will that he hire Stephanie this past Spring and that we have an affair.

I thank you for giving me an irresistible desire for red heads. Above all, I know it was your Sovereign hand keeping my wife ignorant of our illicit love making, (during our lunch break at the motel six).

I thank you. I know that it was your perfect will that my neighbor got drunk and took his own life this morning, just as it was your perfect will that I was distracted on my cell phone and backed the car over his son last week.

I thank you. I know you’ve regenerated me and elected me unto salvation, and while I’m unsure about my wife and children’s eternal destiny, I thank you. Please bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and bless the hands that prepared it, or don’t. Whatever your Sovereign will is. Thank you, and amen!”

The Origin of Evil… Calvinist’s Say God, Same as the Atheist

Published by Papa Giorgio

CLICK TO ENLARGE

(Below Video Description) Dr. Leighton Flowers plays clips from Drs. James White, RC Sproul and John Piper on the question of the origin of moral evil so as to compare and contrast the various perspectives and the apparent inconsistencies of the Calvinistic worldview.

See my other posts on this topic:

William Lane Craig discusses [below] being a “consistent Calvinist” vs. an “inconsistent Calvinism”

Is the Calvinist God the Author of Evil? w/ William Lane Craig Dr. William Lane Craig explains why he believes that Calvinism is forced to conclude that God is the author of evil.

The below is from my “Challenges To Strict 5-Point Calvinism | Tozer/Winger/Geisler/Lewis“

“Divine Goodness”

Any consideration of the goodness of God at once threat­ens us with the following dilemma.

On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judge­ment must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.

On the other hand, if God’s moral judgement differs from ours so that our ‘black’ may be His ‘white’, we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say ‘God is good’, while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say ‘God is we know not what’. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’ we shall obey, if at all, only through fear—and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity— when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing— may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.

The escape from this dilemma depends on observing what happens, in human relations, when the man of infe­rior moral standards enters the society of those who are better and wiser than he and gradually learns to accept their standards—a process which, as it happens, I can describe fairly accurately, since I have undergone it. When I came first to the University I was as nearly with­out a moral conscience as a boy could be. Some faint dis­taste for cruelty and for meanness about money was my utmost reach—of chastity, truthfulness, and self-sacrifice I thought as a baboon thinks of classical music. By the mercy of God I fell among a set of young men (none of them, by the way, Christians) who were sufficiently close to me in intellect and imagination to secure immediate intimacy, but who knew, and tried to obey, the moral law. Thus their judgement of good and evil was very different from mine. Now what happens in such a case is not in the least like being asked to treat as ‘white’ what was hitherto called black. The new moral judgements never enter the mind as mere reversals (though they do reverse them) of previous judgements but ‘as lords that are certainly expected’. You can have no doubt in which direction you are moving: they are more like good than the little shreds of good you already had, but are, in a sense, continuous with them. But the great test is that the recognition of the new standards is accompanied with the sense of shame and guilt: one is conscious of having blundered into soci­ety that one is unfit for. It is in the light of such experi­ences that we must consider the goodness of God. Beyond all doubt, His idea of ‘goodness’ differs from ours; but you need have no fear that, as you approach it, you will be asked simply to reverse your moral standards. When the relevant difference between the Divine ethics and your own appears to you, you will not, in fact, be in any doubt that the change demanded of you is in the direction you already call ‘better’. The Divine ‘goodness’ differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning.

This doctrine is presupposed in Scripture. Christ calls men to repent—a call which would be meaningless if God’s standards were sheerly different from that which they already knew and failed to practise. He appeals to our existing moral judgement—‘Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?’ (Luke 12:57) God in the Old Testament expostulates with men on the basis of their own concep­tions of gratitude, fidelity, and fair play: and puts Himself, as it were, at the bar before His own creatures—‘What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me?’ (Jeremiah 2:5.) …

CS Lewis | The Problem of Pain (Chapter 3)

“Human Wickedness”

…A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed. We lack the first condition for understanding what He is talking about. And when men attempt to be Christians without this preliminary consciousness of sin, the result is almost bound to be a certain resentment against God as to one always inexplicably angry. Most of us have at times felt a secret sympathy with the dying farmer who replied to the Vicar’s dissertation on repentance by asking ‘What harm have I ever done Him?’ There is the real rub. The worst we have done to God is to leave Him alone—why can’t He return the compliment? Why not live and let live? What call has He, of all beings, to be ‘angry’? It’s easy for Him to be good!

Now at the moment when a man feels real guilt— moments too rare in our lives—all these blasphemies vanish away. Much, we may feel, can be excused to human infirmities: but not this—this incredibly mean and ugly action which none of our friends would have done, which even such a thorough-going little rotter as X would have been ashamed of, which we would not for the world allow to be published. At such a moment we really do know that our character, as revealed in this action, is, and ought to be, hateful to all good men, and, if there are powers above man, to them. A God who did not regard this with unappeasable distaste would not be a good being. We cannot even wish for such a God—it is like wishing that every nose in the universe were abol­ished, that smell of hay or roses or the sea should never again delight any creature, because our own breath hap­pens to stink.

When we merely say that we are bad, the ‘wrath’ of God seems a barbarous doctrine; as soon as we perceive our badness, it appears inevitable, a mere corollary from God’s goodness. To keep ever before us the insight derived from such a moment as I have been describing, to learn to detect the same real inexcusable corruption under more and more of its complex disguises, is therefore indis­pensable to a real understanding of the Christian faith. This is not, of course, a new doctrine. I am attempting nothing very splendid in this chapter. I am merely trying to get my reader (and, still more, myself) over a pons asi-norum—to take the first step out of fools’ paradise and utter illusion. But the illusion has grown, in modern times, so strong, that I must add a few considerations tending to make the reality less incredible.

  1. We are deceived by looking on the outside of things. We suppose ourselves to be roughly not much worse than Y, whom all acknowledge for a decent sort of person, and certainly (though we should not claim it out loud) better than the abominable X. Even on the superficial level we are probably deceived about this. Don’t be too sure that your friends think you as good as Y. The very fact that you selected him for the comparison is suspicious: he is prob­ably head and shoulders above you and your circle. But let us suppose that Y and yourself both appear ‘not bad’. How far Y’s appearance is deceptive, is between Y and God. His may not be deceptive: you know that yours is.

Does this seem to you a mere trick, because I could say the same to Y and so to every man in turn? But that is just the point. Every man, not very holy or very arrogant, has to ‘live up to’ the outward appearance of other men: he knows there is that within him which falls far below even his most careless public behaviour, even his loosest talk. In an instant of time—while your friend hesitates for a word—what things pass through your mind? We have never told the whole truth. We may confess ugly facts— the meanest cowardice or the shabbiest and most prosaic impurity—but the tone is false. The very act of confess-ing—an infinitesimally hypocritical glance—a dash of humour—all this contrives to dissociate the facts from your very self. No one could guess how familiar and, in a sense, congenial to your soul these things were, how much of a piece with all the rest: down there, in the dreaming inner warmth, they struck no such discordant note, were not nearly so odd and detachable from the rest of you, as they seem when they are turned into words. We imply, and often believe, that habitual vices are excep­tional single acts, and make the opposite mistake about our virtues—like the bad tennis player who calls his nor­mal form his ‘bad days’ and mistakes his rare successes for his normal. I do not think it is our fault that we cannot tell the real truth about ourselves; the persistent, life-long, inner murmur of spite, jealousy, prurience, greed and self-complacence, simply will not go into words. But the  important thing is that we should not mistake our inevitably limited utterances for a full account of the worst that is inside.

  1. A reaction—in itself wholesome—is now going on against purely private or domestic conceptions of moral­ity, a reawakening of the social We feel our­selves to be involved in an iniquitous social system and to share a corporate guilt. This is very true: but the enemy can exploit even truths to our deception. Beware lest you are making use of the idea of corporate guilt to distract your attention from those humdrum, old-fashioned guilts of your own which have nothing to do with ‘the system’ and which can be dealt with without waiting for the mil­lennium. For corporate guilt perhaps cannot be, and cer­tainly is not, felt with the same force as personal guilt. For most of us, as we now are, this conception is a mere excuse for evading the real issue. When we have really learned to know our individual corruption, then indeed we can go on to think of the corporate guilt and can hardly think of it too much. But we must learn to walk before we run.
  2. We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble. As for the fact of a sin, is it probable that anything cancels it? All times are eternally present to God. Is it not at least possible that along some one line of His multi-dimensional eternity He sees you forever in the nursery pulling the wings off a fly, forever toadying, lying, and lusting as a schoolboy, forever in that moment of cowardice or insolence as a subaltern? It may be that salvation consists not in the cancelling of these eternal moments but in the perfected humanity that bears the shame forever, rejoicing in the occasion which it fur­nished to God’s compassion and glad that it should be common knowledge to the universe. Perhaps in that eter­nal moment St Peter—he will forgive me if I am wrong— forever denies his Master. If so, it would indeed be true that the joys of Heaven are for most of us, in our present condition, ‘an acquired taste’—and certain ways of life may render the taste impossible of acquisition. Perhaps the lost are those who dare not go to such a public Of course I do not know that this is true; but I think the possibility is worth keeping in mind.
  3. We must guard against the feeling that there is ‘safety in numbers’. It is natural to feel that if all men are as bad as the Christians say, then badness must be very excus­able. If all the boys plough in the examination, surely the papers must have been too hard? And so the masters at that school feel till they learn that there are other schools where ninety per cent of the boys passed on the same papers. Then they begin to suspect that the fault did not lie with the examiners. Again, many of us have had the experience of living in some local pocket of human soci-ety—some particular school, college, regiment or profes­sion where the tone was bad. And inside that pocket certain actions were regarded as merely normal (‘Every­one does it’) and certain others as impracticably virtuous and Quixotic. But when we emerged from that bad soci­ety we made the horrible discovery that in the outer world our ‘normal’ was the kind of thing that no decent person ever dreamed of doing, and our ‘Quixotic’ was taken for granted as the minimum standard of decency. What had seemed to us morbid and fantastic scruples so long as we were in the ‘pocket’ now turned out to be the only moments of sanity we there enjoyed. It is wise to face the possibility that the whole human race (being a small thing in the universe) is, in fact, just such a local pocket of evil—an isolated bad school or regiment inside which minimum decency passes for heroic virtue and utter corruption for pardonable imperfection. But is there any evidence—except Christian doctrine itself—that this is so? I am afraid there is. In the first place, there are those odd people among us who do not accept the local stan­dard, who demonstrate the alarming truth that a quite dif­ferent behaviour is, in fact, possible. Worse still, there is the fact that these people, even when separated widely in space and time, have a suspicious knack of agreeing with one another in the main—almost as if they were in touch with some larger public opinion outside the pocket. What is common to Zarathustra, Jeremiah, Socrates, Gautama, Christ1 and Marcus Aurelius, is something pretty sub­stantial. Thirdly, we find in ourselves even now a theoret­ical approval of this behaviour which no one practises. Even inside the pocket we do not say that justice, mercy, fortitude, and temperance are of no value, but only that the local custom is as just, brave, temperate and merciful as can reasonably be expected. It begins to look as if the neglected school rules even inside this bad school were connected with some larger world—and that when the term ends we might find ourselves facing the public opin­ion of that larger world. But the worst of all is this: we cannot help seeing that only the degree of virtue which we now regard as impracticable can possibly save our race from disaster even on this planet. The standard which seems to have come into the ‘pocket’ from outside, turns out to be terribly relevant to conditions inside the pocket—so relevant that a consistent practice of virtue by the human race even for ten years would fill the earth from pole to pole with peace, plenty, health, merriment, and heartsease, and that nothing else will. It may be the custom, down here, to treat the regimental rules as a dead letter or a counsel of perfection: but even now, everyone who stops to think can see that when we meet the enemy this neglect is going to cost every man of us his life. It is then that we shall envy the ‘morbid’ person, the ‘pedant’ or ‘enthusiast’ who really has taught his company to shoot and dig in and spare their water bottles.

[….]

This chapter will have been misunderstood if anyone describes it as a reinstatement of the doctrine of Total Depravity. I disbelieve that doctrine, partly on the logical ground that if our depravity were total we should not know ourselves to be depraved, and partly because experience shows us much goodness in human nature. Nor am I recommending universal gloom. The emotion of shame has been valued not as an emotion but because of the insight to which it leads. I think that insight should be permanent in each man’s mind: but whether the painful emotions that attend it should also be encouraged, is a technical problem of spiritual direction on which, as a layman, I have little call to speak. My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to ‘rejoice’ as much as by anything else. Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue: it is the high-minded unbeliever, desperately trying in the teeth of repeated disillusions to retain his ‘faith in human nature’, who is really sad. I have been aiming at an intellectual, not an emotional, effect: I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact. Perhaps you have imagined that this humility in the saints is a pious illusion at which God smiles. That is a most dangerous error. It is theoretically dangerous, because it makes you identify a virtue (i.e., a perfection) with an illusion (i.e., an imperfection), which must be nonsense. It is practically dangerous because it encourages a man to mistake his first insights into his own corruption for the first beginnings of a halo round his own silly head. No, depend upon it; when the saints say that they—even they—are vile, they are recording truth with scientific accuracy.

CS Lewis | The Problem of Pain (Chapter 4)

RC Sproul and Adams Fall | Calvinist Obfuscations

Published by Papa Giorgio

(There are only two types of Calvinists/”Reformed” models: consistent and inconsistent. Double predestination is consistent.) In the video that follows these two quotes, you will see the quote by John Calvin… but I wanted to put an old quote by RC Sproul — who — apparently hasn’t read John Calvin:

DO YOU SCHOLAR MUCH RC?

  • Herein lies the problem. Before a person can commit an act of sin he must first have a desire to perform that act. The Bible tells us that evil actions flow from evil desires. But the presence of an evil desire is already sin. We sin because we are sinners. We were born with a sin nature. We are fallen creatures. But Adam and Eve were not created fallen. They had no sin nature. They were good creatures with a free will. Yet they chose to sin. Why ? I don’t know. Nor have I found anyone yet who does know.

RC Sproul, Chosen By God (Wheaton, IL: Thomas Nelson Inc., Publishers, 1986), 30-31

  • “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.”

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.23.7; 3.23.8

What if Calvin was more extreme than most Calvinists today? In this clip, Austin Fischer and Leighton Flowers unpack the forgotten (or ignored) parts of Calvin’s own words—especially around God ordaining the Fall and reprobation. If you’ve ever been told Calvinism is misrepresented, this is the clip you need to see.

MORE:

  • “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.”1
  • “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”2
  • “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.”3
  • “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.”4
  • “Also, Calvinists often affirm that Adam was free before the Fall. But again, I always speak of freedom relative to God, and from this perspective, I would say that Adam had no freedom whatsoever even before the Fall. To be “free” from sin is irrelevant. The issue is whether Adam was free from God to choose to remain free from sin – he was not. In addition, I would not say that God permitted Adam to fall, but that God caused it.”5

1 Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 234

2 Jerome Zanchius, The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination, Ch. II, Sec. II, Par. 4 (Link)

3 A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, p. 162

4 A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, Appendix II, The Case of Adam, p. 283

5 Vicent Cheung, The Author of Sin (WEBSITE), last accessed 7/29/2025.

GENESIS 1:31

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. (Genesis 1:31, CSB)

I just added the below quote from Calvin to Genesis 1:31 in my Bible…. if Calvinism is correct, and the theistic determinism that is its baggage, then God called “good” His creation [man] by nature destined by decree to sin.

  • “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.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.23.7; 3.23.8)

Gordon H. Clark: “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.”

  • They have built high places to Baal on which to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, something I have never commanded or mentioned; I never entertained the thought (Jeremiah 19:5, CSB)

James 1 says every good gift that we get is from God. He doesn’t cause our sin thru 1st or secondary causes.

  • No one undergoing a trial should say, “I am being tempted by God,” since God is not tempted by evil, and he himself doesn’t tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death. Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:13-17, CSB)

Otherwise, He would be redeeming His own decree, a dualistic God of Eastern metaphysics. Even our prayers are rendered useless, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” ~ His will is being done, to the “T”. Which is why when challenged in a lecture about prayer and Reformed ideas, Wayne Grudem said our prayers were even decreed [scripted] before the creation of the time-space-continuum.

MORE: Calvinism’s “Reading Rainbow” | John 11

WORTHWHILE: The “Connective Tissue” Between Islam and Calvinism

Ronnie Rogers zeroes in on the main issue that I will note C.S. Lewis hits first:

LEWIS

Any consideration of the goodness of God at once threat­ens us with the following dilemma.

On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judge­ment must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.

On the other hand, if God’s moral judgement differs from ours so that our ‘black’ may be His ‘white’, we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say ‘God is good’, while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say ‘God is we know not what’. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’ we shall obey, if at all, only through fear—and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity— when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing— may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.

The escape from this dilemma depends on observing what happens, in human relations, when the man of infe­rior moral standards enters the society of those who are better and wiser than he and gradually learns to accept their standards—a process which, as it happens, I can describe fairly accurately, since I have undergone it. When I came first to the University I was as nearly with­out a moral conscience as a boy could be. Some faint dis­taste for cruelty and for meanness about money was my utmost reach—of chastity, truthfulness, and self-sacrifice I thought as a baboon thinks of classical music. By the mercy of God I fell among a set of young men (none of them, by the way, Christians) who were sufficiently close to me in intellect and imagination to secure immediate intimacy, but who knew, and tried to obey, the moral law. Thus their judgement of good and evil was very different from mine. Now what happens in such a case is not in the least like being asked to treat as ‘white’ what was hitherto called black. The new moral judgements never enter the mind as mere reversals (though they do reverse them) of previous judgements but ‘as lords that are certainly expected’. You can have no doubt in which direction you are moving: they are more like good than the little shreds of good you already had, but are, in a sense, continuous with them. But the great test is that the recognition of the new standards is accompanied with the sense of shame and guilt: one is conscious of having blundered into soci­ety that one is unfit for. It is in the light of such experi­ences that we must consider the goodness of God. Beyond all doubt, His idea of ‘goodness’ differs from ours; but you need have no fear that, as you approach it, you will be asked simply to reverse your moral standards. When the relevant difference between the Divine ethics and your own appears to you, you will not, in fact, be in any doubt that the change demanded of you is in the direction you already call ‘better’. The Divine ‘goodness’ differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning. …

(MORE: CS Lewis: Our White Being God’s Black)

ROGERS

Origin of Sin

  1. I affirm that sin and evil are the corruption of God’s good creation; further, this corruption is due to the act of free moral agents making free choices to choose contrary to what is righteous and good when they could have chosen to do otherwise. Libertarian freedom entails the ability to act or refrain. Moreover, I affirm that Lucifer, Adam, and Eve possessed the ability to have exercised their free choice of either obeying God or disobeying Him. ‘Therefore, sin is the result of God’s creatures, as free moral agencies, making choices by exercising free will in the libertarian sense of free will, thereby revealing sin to be deprivation rather than a part of creation. By libertarian, I am not implying that man after the fall is fully free, but rather that before the fall, Lucifer, Adam, and Eve had “otherwise choice.”

As Norman Geisler distinguishes, “Technically, free will is not the efficient cause of a free act …. The efficient cause of a free act is really the free agent, not the free choice. Free choice is simply the power by which the free agent acts …. And once we have arrived at the free agent, it is meaningless to ask what caused its free acts. For if something else caused its actions, then the agent is not the cause of them and thus is not responsible for them. The free moral agent is the cause of free moral actions.”31

  1. I disaffirm that the origin of sin is due to God creating creatures to inevitably sin, withholding grace or ordering circumstances so that man had to sin, or that sin was in any way caused by God.32 Further, I disaffirm that sovereignty precludes Lucifer or man before the first sin from being truly free to sin or not to sin. Moreover, I disaffirm that compatibilism, wherein man is free to act according to his nature or desires, sufficiently answers the origin of the first sin question because Lucifer had no external or internal stimuli to precipitate sin.33 See Chapter 18 for a fuller discussion of this dilemma for Calvinism.

Here again, the distinction between the compatibilist view of free will and the libertarian view is a critical one. See Chapter 17 for a fuller comparison. Compatibilism is the view that moral freedom and determinism are compatible. However, compatibilism does not satisfactorily answer the question of what caused the first sin. In other words, if it is not the product of free choice in the libertarian sense, but only in the compatibilist sense, then did it arise out of the nature of Lucifer, which God directly created, or from overpowering stimuli from Lucifer’s environment, which God also directly created? Furthermore, although the serpent tempted Adam and Eve, there could have been no reason that man would have had to choose sin freely (compatibilism) lest we have what God called “good” being by nature destined to sin, a disquieting reality.

The compatibilist perspective seems to be exactly what Jonathan Edwards meant when he said, “If a person is able to do what he wills or chooses, he is free, no matter how he came to make this choice.”34 This understanding seems further confirmed by his statement regarding the nature of free choice when he says, “the ability to do what we will, or according to our pleasure.”35 Consequently, for the compatibilist, free choice is merely the freedom to choose to do what a person desires to do, even if the range of desires are limited by some preceding event like creation or the fall of man in the garden. As far as original sin, it seems as though he is arguing that man freely chose to eat of the fruit, but then God is the only one who could have given Adam that desire. Thus, Edwards’ compatibilism seems to imply God calling the desire that would ensure the fall and sin “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

I also disaffirm similar contemporary sentiments regarding God’s relation to sin such as R.C. Sproul Jr.’s comment that “Every Bible-believing Christian must conclude at least that God in some sense desired that man would fall into sin… I am not accusing God of sinning; I am suggesting that he created sin.”36 He “describes God as ‘the Culprit’ that caused Eve to sin in the garden.”37 Then there is Gordon Clark’s assessment, “As God cannot sin, so in the next place, God is not responsible for sin, even though he decrees it.”38 Again, Clark in response to Arminians asseverates, “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.”39 Contrary to Clark, Ephesians does not say that God wills—directly causes—everything, but rather that “he works all things after the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11).

God never has desired sin, nor will He ever. God always desires holiness. In creating man to freely love and walk with God without internal or external coercion, God accomplished the impossible. God desired a holy, loving, personal and eternal relationship with man that would glorify Him and be eternal, joyful bliss for man. That type of relationship would require God creating a being in His own image. Therefore, God chose to create man in His image (Genesis 1:26-28.), which necessitated man being created with true ability to choose to follow God or not follow God. God’s unwavering desire and will was and is for man to experience God’s love for eternity and for man to walk in holiness and love for God without ever using his free will to choose sin. God knew that it was an actual impossibility to guarantee that a truly free created person would never freely choose to misuse his freedom. God knew with absolute certainty that man would use his freedom to sin.40

For that reason, God coextensively determined to allow man to sin, provide His Son as the payment for the sins of the first man and woman and their offspring (1 John 2:2), and unconditionally offer salvation to every sinner, conditioning the reception of the offer upon grace-enabled faith (John 3:16; Ephesians 2:8-10). Although God’s desire for holiness never included a desire for man to sin, this plan allowed man to use his freedom to sin, and his grace-enabled freedom to repent and believe, which results in man being born again with a new nature that is created in righteousness and holiness (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:20-22), but now with the experiential knowledge of sin and redemption.

God also coextensively knew that this transformed man, once salvation is completed in glorification (Romans 8:28-30), who now knows sin experientially and its consequences more fully, as well as redemptive love, will freely choose to live eternally in holiness and love with God and never use his freedom to sin again. God knows this because He knows everything (John 21:17). Thus, what mere creation could not accomplish, creation and redemption could. ‘Therefore, redemption was not a plan subsequent to creation, but rather an essential part of the plan of creation.41

When Satan tempted Eve, he said, “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5, italics added). This statement was true. Adam and Eve only knew sin as something forbidden by God, with claimed dire consequences. They did not know sin like God. They did not know it experientially, with all of its heartache, loss, damage, dishonor, depression, separation, and death, and its eternal consequences and corollaries. Satan told them the truth. They would know more about sin, and in that sense they would be more like God; however, he intentionally deceived them by not telling them that in every other way, they would become less like God, and irrevocably so if it were not for the predetermined gracious plan of redemption by God. God knows everything and always has. God has never had a new thought and nothing has ever occurred to God. Therefore, God knows sin experientially, without having ever experienced sin. This is something that cannot be true of a created being like man.

Some things are actual impossibilities, like God ceasing to exist, God sinning, forgiveness without sin’s penalty being borne, and creating a truly free moral being with libertarian free will and guaranteeing that he will not sin. God knew with infinite and invincible certitude that man would use his freedom to sin. He also knew that while it is impossible to create a truly free person without the possibility of him using his freedom to sin, it is not impossible for a completely redeemed and glorified created free being to choose always to walk in holiness. Therefore, what is impossible for man is not impossible for God; albeit, infinitely costly (John 3:16). Further, this is how God could create man while never desiring sin, but only righteousness, and still maintain certitude without Calvinism’s causality. This is the epitome of “God working all things together for good” (Romans 8:28).

Although all earthly analogies are inadequate to illustrate the full orb of eternal truths, they can provide a simple illustration of the eternal truth. A simple analogy of the difference between unfallen man and fallen, redeemed man would be a child having been told not to touch the hot stove. Even with the sternest warnings, cautions and lectures from mom, children are still often drawn to touch the stove; however, if they do touch the burner, and their hands are burned; they are rushed to the hospital and painful treatments, and recuperation are endured over a period of weeks. Once healing is complete, they will not intentionally touch the hot stove again. At this point, they are no longer naive children merely trusting their mother’s caution, but they have experienced the pain of wrong choices and restorative healing.

An illustration of how God could allow sin and yet never desire sin can be found in parents’ desires to have children. When Gina and I decided to have children, our passionate desire was that they would always choose righteousness, and never have to suffer the consequences of their own or someone else’s sin. We desired that they would live the fullest life in fellowship with God that is possible. We desired that they would never choose to act contrary to God’s Word. During the over thirty-four years that our two daughters have been alive, we have remained unequivocally true to those desires. There never has been, nor is there today, a desire to see them sin or be hurt by sin. Yet, we knew enough about the Scripture to know that it would be impossible for them to live the life we desired for them in this life, but that knowledge never altered our desire for righteousness. Furthermore, because God has graciously saved both of our daughters, our desire for them to walk in eternal fellowship with God will be realized.

《《 《《  FOOTNOTES  》》》》

  1. Norman Geisler, Chosen But Free, (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 176.
  2. Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), 413.
  3. Edwards, Freedom, 15.
  4. Edwards, Freedom, 15.
  5. Edwards, Freedom, 11.
  6. David L. Allen and Steve W. Lemke, eds., Whosoever Will: A Biblical-Theological Critique of Five-Point Calvinism, (Nashville, B&H Academic, 2010), 148.
  7. Ibid.
  8. Ibid., 292.
  9. Ibid
  10. The same is true of Lucifer and the fallen angels. However, their creation was different and therefore redemption is not a part of the plan concerning them.
  11. Additionally, the range of options changes without dispossessing one of libertarian freedom. For example, Adam and Eve had a range of options that man presently does not, and heaven will change the range of options from either state of affairs. In this life, the range of options is very different for a toddler, teenager, adult, and an elderly person, but each has libertarian freedom.

In an excellent post, Robin Phillips explains the reasoning behind the “Reformers” positing WHY God HAD TO make mankind fall:

…. As already mentioned, this theory says that God hates evil so much that He must ensure its eternal perpetuation, for if in a trillion years from now there was even a millisecond of time in which God didn’t have a group of sinners to be angry at, then this would be tragic as one whole part of His character (justice) would be unable to be expressed.

As Douglas Wilson once put it on his blog,

In a world without sin, two of God’s most glorious attributes—His justice and His mercy—would go undisplayed. This, obviously, would be horrible … In a world without sin and evil, at least two attributes of God would have gone unrevealed and unmanifested, those attributes being wrath and mercy. Since this is obviously intolerable, God determined to direct our affairs the way that He did.

Jonathan Edwards expressed a similar idea when he wrote:

It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all … Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all. If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired … So evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature’s happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and the sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect.

The same notion is present in the works of Saint Augustine:

…if all had remained condemned to the punishment entailed by just condemnation, then God’s merciful grace would not have been seen at work in anyone, on the other hand, if all had been transferred from darkness to light, the truth of God’s vengeance would not have been made evident. —City of God 21.11

[….]

The problem with Calvinism is that its quest for rationalistic clarity does away with this necessary mystery. Calvinism asserts that evil exists because God wants it to be there—end of story. As Calvin put it in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, “I say with Augustine that the Lord has created those who, as He certainly foreknew, were to go to destruction, and He did so because He so willed,” while later Calvin extends this idea to its consistent corollary, which is that “man by the righteous impulsion of God does that which is unlawful.” In other words, according to Calvin, the sinner sins because God impels him to do so.

Calvin picked up on this same theme later when he wrote that:

[M]an falls, the Providence of God so ordaining …that by the will of God all the sons of Adam fell into the state of wretchedness in which they are now involved … Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say, that 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.

God, in His own pleasure, arranged evil?

These are difficult words, especially since they appear to directly implicate God in all the wickedness of the world. It easily solves the problem of evil, but does so at the expense of other scriptural teaching. For example, Psalm 5:5. In the Septuagint—the Old Testament text quoted by the New Testament writers and the canonical text of the ancient Church—Psalms 5:4 reads “For You are not a God who wills (thelon) lawlessness (anomian).”

In fairness to Calvin, he was able to maintain some degree of dialectical balance that would be lacking in his followers. That is why my critique of Calvinism recognizes that Calvinism is larger than simply the teachings of John Calvin. This was impressed upon me when our former church put on a family camp and invited R.C. Sproul, Jr. to speak. The younger Sproul has taken Calvin’s teachings to such an extreme, going even further than his father—let alone Calvin himself. For example, Sproul took particular delight in describing to us in detail how God desired sin to come about, and how God forced the devil to sin like a man operating a remote control. In his book Almighty Over All, Sproul expands on this point, writing, “I am suggesting that he [God] created sin … Where, I must ask, does the law of God forbid the creation of evil? I would suggest that it just isn’t there.”

This leads to what I consider to be a trivialization of evil.

R.C. Sproul, Jr. posted a Facebook status saying that since God is sovereign, even those things which are not as they ought to be really are just as things ought to be. He went on to say that there are ultimately no “bad” things, since God is completely sovereign. Now if all he means is that even bad things work out ultimately for good, then I have no problem. But there is a great difference between saying, on the one hand, that God works good out of evil, and on the other hand, saying that that since God is the author of all things, evil isn’t really bad (or that everything which happens ought to be).

If, as Sproul maintains, God is the author of evil, then we would have to say that He fosters wickedness in people’s hearts. But if so, then God is sinful by the Biblical definitions of sin and evil. Consider that in the Proverbs, the ones who incite and tempt to evil (like the fool’s friends or the prostitute) are as morally guilty as the simple man who falls prey to those temptations. James says that God does not tempt us, but if God is the author of evil then He is doing a lot more than merely tempting us: He is fostering the evil in our hearts and inciting us to sin.

Under this scheme, the words “God is good” are no longer intelligible, as God is violating His own self-revelation of what constitutes “goodness.” Consequently, if God really is the energizing principle behind both the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, then we would have to conclude that the Biblical categories used to describe God are ultimately non-descriptive. Moreover, it would make a mockery of the antithesis that we find throughout the war-Psalms, if God is the causal force behind both sides.

Moreover, if God is the author of evil, then we would have to conclude that evil is just as much an intrinsic part of God’s character as His goodness. But in that case, we are left without a standard for distinguishing between good and evil. Using God’s character as the standard would then be akin to using a tape measure on which inches and centimeters are all mixed up. God can only be the standard for distinguishing between good and evil if the former and not the latter is fundamental to His character. …

I will finish the thought I have…

GOD NEEDED TO CREATE MAN TO BE WHOLE

… according to Calvinism. A theological “heresy” in my mind at least.

 

Divine Rape | Exhaustive Divine Determinism at It’s “Best”?

Published by Papa Giorgio

R.C. Sproul and his Augustinian view of Irresistible Grace.

TRANSCRIPT:

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.