TULIP (Calvinism)

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:

Alex Sorin DEBOONK’s Total Depravity (TULIP, Part One)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Calvinism is cooked. The top Calvinist apologists consistently blunder online. They don’t even debate Calvinism anymore. When they do, they get pwned by Orthodox Christians like ‪@JayDyer‬ and ‪@PatristicFaith‬, or by open theists like ‪@IdolKiller‬.

Since Calvinist apologetics are falling apart online, I figured I’d try to help speed along the process by adding some of my own gasoline to the fire with a series deboonking the TULIP doctrines. Starting with today’s episode on the doctrine of total depravity, we’re going letter-by-letter through TULIP to show why those doctrines can’t withstand even basic scrutiny.

In doing so, my hope is to help bring the truth of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Orthodox Church to all. Glory to God for all things.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction
1:01 Neo-Calvinists have lost it
2:11 They’re running
4:09 Roadmap
4:59 What is TD?
9:59 TD violates the Bible
11:09 Not vipers in diapers
12:50 Bible presupposes synergy
14:43 Incoherent epistemology
16:40 Impossible Christology
18:38 Orthodox anthropology
19:51 Psalm 51:5
21:01 Ephesians 2
21:40 Romans 5:12
23:25 Conclusion

The Fatal Error of Calvinists | Augustine

Published by Papa Giorgio

AN EXCERPT FROM:

Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique,
by David L. Allen (Editor), Steve W Lemke (Editor),
CHAPTER 6 by Ken Wilson — pages 230-237.

The Fatal Error of Calvinists

A Critique of Augustine’s Reversion to Pagan Concepts

When he redefined Christian terms and concepts, Augustine misrepresented earlier Christian authors. Lewis Ayres politely noted, “Augustine was an attentive reader of his forebears, but one whose interpretations of them were frequently very much his own.”44 As a result, Luther and Calvin mistakenly believed that Augustine was merely teaching what all of the earlier church fathers had taught.45 But in fact, Augustine himself admitted that he had tried but failed to continue in the Christian doctrine of free will of the first four centuries. He consistently utilized the same Christian terms but inserted new meanings into those terms.46 Roger Haight wrote, “Grace for Augustine was delight in the good, a new form of liberty that required an internal modification of the human will. No one [Christian] prior to Augustine had really asserted anything like this need for an inner working of God within human freedom.”47 Augustine redefined free will, utilizing Stoic concepts, deformed original sin with Manichaean dualism, and mutilated faith into a divine gift to match Gnostic and Manichaean unilateral election.48 Augustinian scholar Eugene TeSelle noted:

Augustine always reacted vigorously to the suggestion that he taught what amounted to a doctrine of fate. Now it is undeniable that he did hold to something like what is usually meant by fate. . . . To him fate meant something precise: the doctrine that external occurrences, bodily actions, even thoughts and decisions are determined by the position of the heavenly bodies [C. dua ep Pel., II,6,12] or more broadly, universal material determinism [C. dua ep Pel. II, 6,12; De Civ. Dei. IV.33, V.1,8].49

Augustine said if anyone “calls the will of God or the power of God itself by the name of fate, let him keep his opinion but correct his language” (C. dua ep. Pel.1.2.4). Over a thousand years later, Augustine’s novel and syncretistic reinterpretations of Christian Scripture (TULIP) would be faithfully replicated by Calvin and his followers.

Similarly, modern Calvinists (such as the contributing authors of Whomever He Wills) vehemently defend their theology using Scripture. But they refuse to admit their own interpretations are based on the pagan philosophies and Manichaean religion deeply imbedded into their current syncretistic scriptural interpretations by Augustine.50 God as micromanager of the universe (Stoic sovereignty) stands foremost and paramount: total depravity (Manichaean) follows logically from it (using the same pagan arguments).51 For Calvinists like Andrew Davis, “Romans 9:11–13 is the mortal wound for conditional election.”52 This replicates the “biblical” arguments by Gnostics and Manichaeans for unconditional election (determinism); but all pre-Augustinian Christian writings opposed this pagan doctrine. Thomas Schreiner claimed all Christians will inevitably persevere. This assumes the perfect divine gift of faith unilaterally infused by (the Gnostic/Manichaean) God cannot fail, because ultimate salvation requires perseverance—faith plus works (i.e., not our own but fruit God produces, per Augustine). This includes Schreiner’s appeal to Phil 1:6, repeating Augustine’s tortured interpretation.53 Bruce Ware’s chapter on the compatibility of determinism and freedom could have been argued by a Stoic or Manichaean who was familiar with Scripture. His argument for compatibility was unnecessary in pre-Augustinian Christian theology.54 Likewise, Stephen Wellum repeated Augustine’s appeal to “mystery” that was not required until his Stoic god unilaterally desired, predetermined, and ordained all things, including monstrous evils (such as genocide, rape, torture, and child sacrifice).55 Matthew Barrett’s “The Scriptural Affirmation of Monergism” would have shocked all pre-Augustinian Christians, while making the ancient monergistic Manichaeans proud.56

For Calvinists, the only reasonable theological choice must be Calvinism, since in Arminianism, “God is robbed of his glory at the expense of demanding libertarian freedom.”57 This false disjunction (limited to two poor choices of Calvinism and Arminianism) ignores the centuries of unanimous pre-Augustinian Christian theology on human free will and God’s general sovereignty. Calvinism’s God is puny. Calvinism limits God’s sovereignty.

Calvinists must either ignore these facts or attempt to marginalize them. The vast majority of Christianity—Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, and other Christian groups—have been unsuccessful in using these facts to convince Calvinists of their errors. We cannot seem to break through the resilient barrier of indoctrinated self-deception to reach adherents of modern Calvinism. In Calvinism, tradition has triumphed over truth.

Conclusion

Augustine of Hippo subverted Christian theology in AD 412 by incorporating his prior Stoic view of meticulous providence and his prior Manichaean doctrine of Divine Unilateral Predetermination of Eternal Destinies (DUPED). All prior Christians had fought against Stoic meticulous providence and Gnostic/Manichaean DUPED. They taught the Christian God is relational and exercises general (not specific) sovereignty for the purpose of allowing human freedom. The Christian God chooses persons for salvation based upon his foreknowledge of their free choices. Augustine reverted to his Manichaean deterministic interpretations of Scripture when attempting to explain infant baptism against the Pelagians. For twenty-five years he had refuted those interpretations as heresy.

After AD 411, Augustine’s final eighteen years of theology was DUPED as the Manicheans had claimed—monergistic, to the glory of Augustine’s new inscrutable sovereign God who creates then damns innocent babies to hell.58 He confessed, “I cannot find a satisfactory and worthy explanation— because I can’t find one, not because there isn’t one” (Serm.294.7). After 1,600 years, no philosopher or theologian has found a “satisfactory and worthy explanation” to salvage Augustine’s syncretism of pagan ideas into Christianity that damns innocent babies to hell. It will forever remain a “mystery.”

Cicero (ca. 50 BC), one of Augustine’s favorite authors, had argued for the in-compatibility between divine omniscience and human free will. Augustine’s final answer was to claim that divine foreknowledge of the future occurs only through God’s unilateral predetermination and ordaining of every event, both good and evil (Civ.5). By this move he departed from all prior Christian teaching and syncretized a concept common in Stoicism: “God foreordains human wills.”59 The Stoic scholar John Rist concluded that Augustine’s novel Christian determinism produced “a theology which fails to do justice to his own theory of God’s love.”60 In contrast, Jerome succeeded in refuting the Pelagians without adopting the extremes of Augustinianism (Against the Pelagians 3) and retained the traditional Christian beliefs in God’s general sovereignty, grace, and free will.61

Harry Wolfson, historian and philosopher at Harvard University’s Judaic Studies Center, concluded, “Augustine’s doctrine of grace is only a Christianization of the Stoic doctrine of fate.”62 Because of Augustine’s AD 412 reversion to pagan ideas, the exalted justice of the relational Christian God (used to combat pagan philosophies and heresies) was instantly transformed into inscrutable theology—deformed theology. Augustine overtly wrote of God’s predestination of the ones he purposefully created for damnation in eternal torment (“double predestination”; Nat. orig.1.14, Civ.14.26, 15.1; Serm.229S, Serm.260D.1; An.et or.4.16).63 Augustine borrowed his prior Neoplatonic inscrutable mystery as his defense for this horrendous divine injustice (Serm.D.29.10 and Serm.294.7). Neoplatonism (ca. AD 250) had invented this crucial theodicy by appealing to the inscrutable secret counsels of God, who is fair by definition, regardless of whatever apparent evils he desires and ordains. Prior Christians had never required this implausible and disingenuous attempt at a defense for their God.

Modern Calvinists teach Augustine’s theology. Calvinists appeal to the same deterministic interpretations of the same Scripture passages taught by Manichaeans. Calvinism’s historical foundation is dangerously unstable. Its foundation relies on the Manichaean interpretations of Scripture by a single man in the ancient church who rejected three hundred years of unanimous church teaching of free will, a teaching that had refuted Stoic and Gnostic/Manichaean determinism. This man was indoctrinated for decades in extremely deterministic pagan philosophies and heretical Manichaeism. Augustine admitted he changed his theology regarding free will: he abandoned the Christian rule of faith regarding free choice. “In the solution of this question I struggled in behalf of free choice of the will, but the grace of God won out” (Retr.2.1).

But the grace that “won out” was not Christian grace: it was Manichaean grace. According to Augustine (Conf.7.5), he only escaped the philosophical prison of Manichaean DUPED by accepting Christian free choice. This freed him from viewing God as punishing unjustly. But ironically, after finally escaping, Augustine’s later “inscrutable justice” of Christianized pagan DUPED reimprisoned both himself and his followers.

In contrast, the prior nearly unanimous Christian teaching (that God offers his grace to every human equally) persisted throughout the Patristic period into the eighth century with John of Damascus (d. ca. AD 760): “We ought to understand that while God knows all things beforehand, yet He does not predetermine all things. . . . So that predetermination is the work of the divine command based on foreknowledge” (Exp. fid.44). Eleonore Stump astutely concluded, “Unless Augustine is willing to accept that God’s giving of grace is responsive to something in human beings, even if that something is not good or worthy of merit, I don’t see how he can be saved from the imputation of theological determinism with all its infelicitous consequences.”64

A willingness to return to the universal Christian theology that God gives grace as a response to human choice would never come for Augustine. The famous rhetorician never looked back in his resolve to win his debate against the Pelagians at all costs. William Frend explained, “Augustine could not concede a single point to his adversaries and this was his undoing.”65 Augustine died eighteen years after reverting to his pagan monergistic determinism, still trusting in his self-crafted syncretistic theology.

As we observed in the introduction, Calvinists address the blatant absence of their theology in the pre-Augustinian centuries in one of two possible ways. The less scholarly Calvinists invent proto-Calvinists among early Christian authors. Scholarly Calvinists claim Augustine was the first theologian since the apostle Paul to interpret Scripture correctly. Benjamin Warfield opined Augustine’s “doctrine was not new” but was lost for four centuries between the time the apostle Paul wrote it and Augustine “ recovered” it for the church (the Calvinist Gap Theory).66 These scholars appear oblivious to the enormous chasm separating Paul from Augustine. This formidable chasm is Augustine’s Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and Manichaeism. It separates Paul from Augustine by hundreds of years and thousands of miles. Calvinists attempt to bridge this insurmountable gap by using the “hermeneutical” lens of Augustine’s Manichaeism to reinterpret Pauline (and other) Scriptures within their own paradigm.

Calvinism’s alleged “biblical foundation” rests on Augustine’s deterministic interpretations of Scripture from his decade of Gnostic/Manichaean training (John 6:44–66; 14:6; Rom 9–11; Eph 2:1–3, 8–9; Phil 2:13; etc.). Such a dangerous foundation requires a precarious “faith” in Augustine’s “Sovereign God,” caricatured through syncretism with Stoic and Neoplatonic philosophy and the heretical Manichaean religion.67 He baptized his prior pagan philosophies and religion into Christianity, resulting in an unrecognizable doctrinal conglomeration. Calvinism is Augustinianism. Augustinianism is Christian theology scrambled with Gnostic/Manichaean theology and Stoic/Neoplatonic philosophy. As John Rist concluded, Augustinianism is “Ancient [pagan] Thought Baptized.”68

Nevertheless, these serious syncretistic errors did not make Augustine a heretic or a non-Christian. Augustine still embraced the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. Modern Calvinists also embrace the major tenets of Christianity regarding Jesus Christ as God in the flesh and Savior from sin. Despite their divergent views (sovereignty, total depravity/inability, and DUPED determinism) imported from Augustine’s paganism, Calvinists remain Christian brothers and sisters worthy of respect, love, and fellowship —contrary to the opinion of one extreme evangelical sect.69 In this anti-Christian period of history, Christians of all persuasions must be unified, despite our internal disagreements.

NOTES

44 Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 86.

45 See Martin Luther, “To George Spalatin—Wittenberg, October 19, 1516,” in Luther’s Works, 48:23 (see chap. 5, n. 13); Luther, “Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia,” in Luther’s Works, vol. 25; Calvin, Institutes, trans. Battles, 1:158–59 (I.xiii.29) (see chap. 4, n. 85); Harry Wolfson, Religious Philosophy: A Group of Essays (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961), 158– 76, in which he explained the centuries-old traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of free will (despite the sinful inclination) that persisted until the “later Augustine” introduced Stoic ideas into Judeo-Christian theology, and especially Augustine’s misunderstanding of concupiscentia in his Latin translation of Wisdom of Solomon 8:21.

46 This included the terms original sin, grace, predestination, free will, and so forth. “For example, in the early patristic writers we find references to the origin of sin, to a fall, and to the inheritance of sin, but what is meant is often different from the meaning given to those terms in the later classical tradition influenced by Augustine.” Tatha Wiley, Original Sin: Origins, Developments, Contemporary Meanings (New York: Paulist Press, 2002), 53; italics in the original; Ralph Mathiesen, “For Specialists Only: The Reception of Augustine and His Teachings in the Fifth Century Gaul” in Collectanea Augustina: Presbyter Factus Sum, ed. Joseph Lienhard, Earl Muller, and Roland Teske (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 30–31; Rebecca Weaver, s.v. “Predestination,” in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2nd ed., ed. Everett Ferguson (New York: Garland, 1998): “The now centuries-old characterization of the human being as capable of free choice and thus accountable at the last judgment had been retained, but the meaning of its elements had been considerably altered”; Peter J. Leithart, “Review of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent” by Elaine Pagels, Westminster Theological Seminary Journal 51, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 186. “Augustine’s concept of free will certainly differs from that of earlier theologians.”

47 Roger Haight, The Experience of Language of Grace (New York: Paulist, 1979), 36.

48 In Stoicism, fate controls every minute occurrence in the universe (Cicero, Div.1, 125–26), and although a person has no possibility of actuating an opportunity, “free will” remains solely by definition (Cicero, Fat.12–15). See Margaret Reesor, “Fate and Possibility in Early Stoic Philosophy,” Phoenix 19, no. 4 (1965): 285–97, esp. 201; Stoics, “took elaborate precautions to protect their system from rigid determinism.” Neoplatonists did the same.

49 TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian, 313; emphasis in the original.

50 Barrett and Nettles, Whomever He Wills (see intro., n. 22).

51 Steven Lawson, “Our Sovereign Savior,” 3–15; and Mark DeVine, “Total Depravity,” 16–36, in Whomever He Wills.

52 Andrew Davis, “Unconditional Election: A Biblical and God-Glorifying Doctrine,” in Whomever He Wills, 51.

53 Thomas Schreiner, “Promises of Preservation and Exhortations to Persevere,” in Whomever He Wills, 188–211, esp. 192. His “biblical” arguments all rest on those pagan assumptions inherited from Augustine. Distinguishing works as necessary fruit for final salvation but not the basis of it mimics Roman Catholicism’s theology. Calvinists merely replace (Faith + Works ➡ Salvation) with (Faith ➡ Works ➡ Salvation). Neither Roman Catholics nor Calvinists believe in faith alone for salvation—both require good works.

54 Bruce Ware, “The Compatibility of Determinism and Human Freedom,” in Whomever He Wills, 212–30. There was no Christian tension between general sovereignty and free will for centuries before Augustine; Fergusson, s.v. “Predestination,” Oxford Companion.

55 Stephen Wellum, “God’s Sovereignty over Evil,” in Barrett and Nettles, Whomever He Wills, 256.

56 Barrett, “Monergism,” 120–87 (see intro., n. 22).

57 Barrett and Nettles, introduction to Whomever He Wills, xxvi.

58 See Augustine, Serm.294.7: “Here too I like to exclaim with Paul, Oh the depths of the riches! (Rom 11:33). Unbaptized infants go to damnation; they are like the apostles’ words, after all: From one to condemnation (Rom 5:16). I cannot find a satisfactory and worthy explanation . . . [he cited all of Rom 11:33–36].” See The Works of Saint Augustine, III/8, 196n8, with Hill’s comments: “Babies who die unbaptized therefore go to hell. . . . It is precisely this assumption that renders his whole argument weak, and his conclusion highly questionable.”

59 Christopher Kirwan, Augustine, The Arguments of the Philosophers (New York: Routledge, 1989), 98–103.

60 John Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 307.

61 See Vít Hušek, “Human Freedom According to the Earliest Latin Commentaries on Paul’s Letters,” Studia Patristica 44 (2010): 385–90.

62 Harry Wolfson, Religious Philosophy: A Group of Essays (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961), 176. See also Michael Frede and Halszka Osmolska, A Free Will: Origins of the Notion in Ancient Thought (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), especially 153–174, “Chapter Nine—Augustine: A Radically New Notion of a Free Will?”

63 Gerard O’Daly, “Predestination and Freedom in Augustine’s Ethics,” in The Philosophy in Christianity, ed. Godfrey Vesey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 90.

64 Eleonore Stump, “Augustine on Free Will,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 124–147 at 142.

65 William H. C. Frend, “Doctrine of Man in the Early Church: An Historical Approach,” Modern Churchman 45, no. 3 (1955): 227.

66 Warfield, Tertullian and Augustine, 129.

67 Wilson, Foundation of Augustinian-Calvinism, 97–103. Translated into Spanish—Fundación del Calvinismo Agustiniano; into German—War Augustin der erste Calvinist?; and into Portuguese —Fundamento do Calvinismo-Agostiniano.

68 See note 60. Rist’s focus was pagan Stoicism.

69 Some Christian groups can press anti-Calvinism too far, so much that they themselves violate the limits of historical orthodoxy. See, e.g., Kenneth Wilson, Heresy of the Grace Evangelical Society: Become a Christian without Faith in Jesus as God and Savior (Montgomery, TX: Regula Fidei Press, 2020). Bob Wilkin and his Grace Evangelical Society teach “assurance is of the essence of saving faith.” Calvinists cannot have assurance of their own eternal security because Calvinists teach perseverance in faith and works until physical death is required for final salvation. Therefore, Calvinists are not Christians. This GES heresy requires absolute assurance in Jesus’s promise of personal eternal security to become a Christian, yet does not require faith in Jesus as God and Savior.

Never does the Bible say, ‘Be saved in order to believe’ | Geisler

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is an excerpt from page 77 of Ronnie Rogers book, “Reflections of a Disenchanted Calvinist.”

Jesus continually called on people to believe so that they would not die in their sins. “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24). The obvious conclusion to draw from this statement is that they need to believe and can believe in order not to die in their sins; rather than the Calvinist secret that while it is true, that if one does not believe he will die in his sins, the other truth is that Jesus is telling them what to do but knows they cannot unless they are the elect; therefore, Calvinism transmogrifies this merciful plea into an academic recitation. This is a disquieting reality.

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.'”80

80. Geisler, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, 129

Here is an extended section from Geisler’s Systematic (PDF):

Loss of Fellowship

Not only did Adam lose his relationship with God, he also lost his fellowship with Him. Adam no longer wanted to talk with his Creator but instead hid from Him in the Garden. John reminds us:

If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:6–7)

The Effects of Sin on Relationship With Other Human Beings

Along with the loss of relationship (and fellowship) with God, the relationship between Adam and other people was also disturbed; sin has a horizontal as well as vertical effect, which is evident in two events that followed.

First, Adam blamed Eve for his situation. Responding to God’s questioning about the forbidden fruit, he said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it” (Gen. 3:12).

Second, sibling relationship was disrupted by sin when, because of anger, Cain killed his brother Abel (Gen. 4:1–8).

The Effects of Sin on Relationship With the Environment

Adam’s sin affected his relationship with God, other human beings, and the environment. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve were told to “subdue” the earth (Gen. 1:28); they were to “work” and “take care of” the Garden (Gen. 2:15), not destroy it; to rule over it, not ruin it; to cultivate it, not pollute it.

However, after the Fall, Adam’s connection with his environment was disrupted. Thorns and thistles appeared. He had to work by the sweat of his brow. Death became a fact of life. Indeed, everything, because of his sin, was put under bondage. Paul writes:

The creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. (Rom. 8:20–21)

The Volitional Effects of Adam’s Sin

In addition to Adam’s sin affecting his relationship with God, other human beings, and the environment, it also had an effect on his will.

Free Will Before the Fall

The power of free choice is part of humankind having been created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). Adam and Eve were commanded to multiply their kind (1:28) and to refrain from eating the forbidden fruit (2:16–17). Both of these responsibilities imply the ability to respond. As noted above, the fact that they ought to do these things implied that they could do them.

The text narrates their choice, saying, “She took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” (Gen. 3:6). God’s condemnation of their actions makes it evident that they were morally free to choose (Gen. 3:11, 13).

The New Testament references to Adam’s action make it plain that he made a free choice for which he was responsible. Again, Romans 5 calls it “sin” (v. 16); a “trespass” (v. 15); and “disobedience” (v. 19). First Timothy 2:14 (RSV) refers to Eve as a “transgressor,” pointedly implying culpability.

Free Will After the Fall

Even after Adam sinned and became spiritually “dead”22 (Gen. 2:17; cf. Eph. 2:1) and thus, a sinner because of “[his] sinful nature” (Eph. 2:3), he was not so completely depraved that it was impossible for him to hear the voice of God or make a free response: “The LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I Fhid’ ” (Gen. 3:9–10).23 As already noted, God’s image in Adam was effaced but not erased by the Fall; it was corrupted (damaged) but not eliminated (annihilated). Indeed, the image of God (which includes free will) is still in human beings—this is why the murder or cursing of anyone, Christian or non-Christian, is sin, “for in the image of God has God made man” (Gen. 9:6).24

Fallen Descendants of Adam Have Free Will

Both Scripture and good reason inform us that depraved human beings have the power of free will. The Bible says that fallen humans are ignorant, depraved, and slaves of sin—all involving choice. Peter speaks of depraved ignorance as being “willingly” ignorant (2 Peter 3:5 KJV). Paul teaches that unsaved people perceive the truth, but they willfully “suppress” it (Rom. 1:18–19),25 so that they are, as a result, “without excuse” (v. 20). He adds, “Don’t you know that when you offer your selves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey?” (Rom. 6:16). Even our spiritual blindness is a result of the choice not to believe.

With respect to initiating or attaining salvation, both Martin Luther and John Calvin were right—fallen humans are not free with regard to “things above.”26 Salvation is received by a free act of faith (John 1:12; Eph. 2:8–9), yet it does not find its source in our will but in God (John 1:13; Rom. 9:16). With respect to the freedom of accepting God’s gift of salvation, the Bible is clear: fallen beings have the ability to so do, since God’s Word repeatedly calls upon us to receive salvation by exercising our faith (cf. Acts 16:31; 17:30; 20:21).

Thus, the free will of fallen human beings is both “horizontal” (social) with respect to this world and “vertical” (spiritual) with respect to God. The horizontal freedom is evident, for instance, in our choice of a mate: “If her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:39). This freedom is described as having “no constraint,” a freedom where one has “authority over his own will” and where one “has decided this in his own heart” (v. 37 NASB). This is also described in an act of giving “entirely on their own” (2 Cor. 8:3) as well as being “spontaneous and not forced” (Philem. 14).

The vertical freedom to believe is everywhere implied in the gospel call (e.g., cf. John 3:16; Acts 16:31; 17:30). That is, humans are offered salvation as a gift (Rom. 6:23) and called upon to believe it and accept it (John 1:12). Never does the Bible say, “Be saved in order to believe”; instead, repeatedly, it commands,

“Believe in order to be saved.”27 Peter describes what is meant by free choice in saying that it is “not under compulsion” but “voluntarily” (1 Peter 5:2 NASB). Paul depicts the nature of freedom as an act where one “purposed in his heart” and does not act “under compulsion” (2 Cor. 9:7 NASB). In Philemon 14 he also says that choice is an act of “consent” and should “not be … by compulsion, but of your own free will” (NASB).

Unsaved people have a free choice regarding the reception or rejection of God’s gift of salvation (Rom. 6:23). Jesus lamented the state of those who rejected Him: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem … how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matt. 23:37). John affirmed, “All who received him [Christ], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). Indeed, as we have frequently observed, God desires that all unsaved people will change their mind (i.e., repent), for “he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Like the alternatives of life and death that Moses gave to Israel, God says, “Choose life” (cf. Deut. 30:19). Joshua said to his people: “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (Josh. 24:15). God sets morally and spiritually responsible alternatives before human beings, leaving the choice and responsibility to them. Jesus said to the unbelievers of His day: “If you do not believe that I am … you will indeed die in your sins” (John 8:24), which implies they could have and should have believed.

Over and over, “belief” is declared to be something we are accountable to embrace: “We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:69); “Who is he, sir?… Tell me so that I may believe in him” (John 9:36); “Then the man said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him” (John 9:38); “Jesus answered, ‘I did tell you, but you do not believe’ ” (John 10:25). This is why Jesus said, “Whoever believes in [me] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:18).

NOTES

22 Again, spiritual death in the Bible does not mean “annihilation” but “separation”: “Your iniquities have separated you from your God” (Isa. 59:2). Likewise, the “second death” (Rev. 20:14; cf. 19:20; 20:10) is not permanent non-existence but eternal conscious separation from God.

23 See chapter 4.

24 Note that Genesis 9 is post-Fall; see also James 3:9.

25 That is, they willfully “hold it down.”

26 See Luther, Bondage of the Will, especially 75–76; 126–28; 198; 216; 316–18 and Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, especially 1.1.15; 1.1.18; 1.2.4.

27 See chapters 12 and 16.

Norman L. Geisler, Systematic Theology, Volume Three: Sin, Salvation (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2004), 127-130.

The non-Christian can still respond to such things as:

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.

From the authors glossary in the book

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!”

Total Depravity Defined (Soteriology 101)

Published by Papa Giorgio

What you will find below:

The long debate [which I won’t replicate here] from Soteriology 101 Discussion’s Facebook Page, is over — essentially — this portion of Leighton Flower’s’ book, “Drawn by Jesus.” BUT FIRST, what I will reproduce is the extent of the debate summed up in these two back-n-forths:

ROGER H. responds to Jason R.

[Jason R said] “This is a clear logical impasse you are confronted with…“

What is the logical impasse? A person is born with no ability to choose God. This requires that the person be regenerated. Once regenerated, a person can desire God and can choose God.

[Jason R said] “and there is no compatibilism that can harmonize this faulty logic.”

Once a person is regenerated, he has new desires. He can choose according to his greatest desire.

I don’t see a problem.

JASON R. responds to ROGER H.

it is fascinating to observe how you see no problem with the fact that God ultimately judges the majority of humanity for not receiving Christ when He determined that they never could do so in the first place. You seem content to accept that God can judge someone for their sin of non-repentance even though they have no way of repenting. This is blatantly unjust. You admit that God necessarily has to regenerate someone so that they can believe which equates to conceding that man cannot choose God unless God first chooses and changes them. Man is born into a hopeless state of inability and you cannot see a problem with God judging and condemning man for this inability when he has no way of escaping its pre-determined inevitabilities. I have never heard a sound defense against this Achilles heel of Calvinism… only concessions such as yours.

The entire discussion is enlightening, as it is a real working out of the issue. But this is the portion that Roger H. started out with, mistakenly saying it was from chapter 3:

Chapter 5

The Calvinistic Presupposition of Total Inability

A presupposition is “a thing tacitly assumed beforehand at the beginning of a line of argument.”23 We all have presuppositions. Some of them are right, but others are wrong. Wrong presuppos­itions brought to a passage can influence people to draw erroneous conclusions about the meaning of the text in question. This is why objectively evaluating our presuppositions is so important when any passage is in dispute between well-intending brethren.

Your theological opponents have every right to challenge your presuppositions. After all, wrong presuppositions lead to bad exe­gesis. And assuming your presuppositions are correct is just a falla­cious game of question-begging. Unfortunately, this has been James White’s bread and butter. When non-Calvinists have challenged one of his presuppositions in the past, he accuses us of either “changing the topic,” “running off to other scriptures,” or “doing improper exe­gesis.” This is ironic, given that proper exegesis requires biblically correct presuppositions.

Calvinism’s underlying premise is that God decreed for all people since the Fall to be born morally unable to believe what He Himself teaches, so unless you were unconditionally chosen before you were born and irresistibly regenerated into a new creation by a supernat­ural intervening work of God, you will never be morally capable of believing in Him.24 Needless to say, that premise will greatly influence how you understand the Bible regardless of the hermeneutical methodologies, grammatical nuances, contextual considerations, or semantic word studies. A wrong premise skews everything and, therefore, must be evaluated objectively prior to getting into the other pertinent matters. So, let’s start by looking at these three major presuppositions White brings into John 6 based primarily upon his Calvinistic interpretation of Paul.25

Total Inability26

The entire sixth chapter in White’s book on the topic, titled “Human Inability,” sets out to establish this doctrine. Based on his in­terpretation of other scripture, White presupposes that God decreed for all people (since the Fall) to be born unable to believe His own teachings, but God still punishes all who do not believe. Therefore, when White reads John 6 through those presuppositional lenses, he understands the phrase “no one can come” to mean that the natural condition of everyone from birth is such that they cannot under­stand and believe what God teaches.27 For instance, White wrote,

In response to the crowd’s disbelief, Jesus also gives forth a clear explanation of their inability to understand and their inability to come to Him as the one and only source of spiritual life.

Notice that White assumes that the reason the crowds cannot come to Christ is due to a universal inherent condition in which they were born, something God Himself decreed and the individuals had absolutely no control over. In other words, in White’s view, the crowd remains in unbelief because they were born inherently blinded to divinely revealed truth, and God has not intervened to irresistibly change their inherent “default” condition. This is the root of what is known as theistic determinism, a primarily philosophical commitment to the idea that God unchangeably brings to pass (or deter­mines) every meticulous detail, including all moral evil.28

NOTES

23 Oxford Languages Online Dictionary (Oxford University Press)

24 This represents the T,U and I of the Calvinistic TULIP, which will be ex­plored further in the following pages.

25 White wrote, “When the doctrine of election is discussed, most people think immediately of the discussions provided by the Apostle Paul in such great passages as Romans 8-9 and Ephesians 1.” James R. White, The Sovereign Grace of God (New York: Great Christian Books, 2003), 68.

26 White wrote, “Some Reformed writers like others names for this doctrine. One of the best alternatives is `total inability.” Ibid., 48.

27 White wrote, “[Man] is utterly… incapable of coming to Christ, incapable of accepting and understanding spiritual things…” Ibid., 59. Given that White also affirms the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, we know that he affirms God’s universal exhaustive decree of whatsoever comes to pass, which must necessarily include mankind’s innate “default” inability to believe.

28 White wrote, “God’s knowledge of the future is related to His role as Creator —He knows the future because He ordained the future! The course of the future is certain because God created it.” Ibid., 68. Vicens wrote, “We might, for instance, take Feinberg’s definition of an `unconditional’ decree as one `based on nothing out­side of God that move[s] Him to choose one thing or another’ (2001, p. 527) and then characterize theological determinism as the view that God unconditionally decrees every event that occurs in the history of the world. Such a view would ex­clude the possibility that God merely permits some events which He foresees will happen in some circumstances but which He does not Himself determine.” Leigh Vicens, Theological Determinism (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource) accessed online on 12/19/2023. [RPT: 1/29/2026]

Leighton [Charles] Flowers, Drawn By Jesus (Trinity Academic Press, 2024), 47-49.

ROMANS 3:11

A common verse I hear from my fellow believers is “…there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.” – Romans 3:11

SOTERIOLOGY 101 posts combined are from:

In an effort to demonstrate that all people have fallen short of the glory of God and broken His law, Paul quotes from Psalm 14:2-3, which says:

“The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

There are basically two theological approaches for interpreting this passage:

(1) Calvinistic Approach: Apart from a Divine irresistible work of regeneration (by which God changes a chosen individual’s nature and desires), mankind cannot willingly seek to know, understand, or follow God.
(2) Non-Calvinistic (Traditionalist) Approach: Apart from God’s gracious initiative in bringing His Son, the Holy Spirit, and the inspired gospel appeal, no one can merit salvation or consistently seek to obey God in a way that will attain his own righteousness.

The contrast between these two perspectives can be illustrated by this simple question: Does proof that I am incapable of calling the president on the telephone also prove that I am incapable of answering the telephone if the president were to call me? Of course not, yet that is essentially the principle a Calvinist is assuming in their theological approach to this text.

Calvinists read this text to mean that our lack of initiative somehow proves our inability to respond positively to His initiative. They presume that God’s work in sending His Son, the Holy Spirit, and the inspired gospel, calling for all to be reconciled through faith in Christ, is insufficient to enable the lost to respond in faith. But the text simply never says this.

In Romans chapter 3:10-20 the apostle is seeking to prove that no one can attain righteousness by means of the law. But in verse 21 he shifts to reveal a righteousness that can be obtained by means of grace through faith in Christ.

Calvinists seem to think that because mankind is unable to attain righteousness by means of the law that they must equally be unable to obtain righteousness by means of grace through faith in Christ. This, however, is never established anywhere in the pages of Scripture.

Of course, we all can affirm that no one is righteous with regard to the demands of the law. But there have been many throughout the pages of Scripture who have been declared righteous by means of grace through faith.

Calvinists wrongly assume that because mankind is unable to fully keep the demands of the law that they are equally unable to admit their inability to keep those demands and trust in the One who has. Again, this is simply never established in the Bible. HERE>

THE “HERE>” EXCERPT

… If I told my son to clean up his room it would strongly imply that I believed it was within his abilities to do so, especially if I punished him for failure to do so. No decent parent would tell their two day old infant to clean up a mess and then punish them for not doing so. Such an action would expose the parent as insane or completely immoral.

This is basic common sense, but is it applicable to how God deals with humanity? Is the implication in scripture of “you should” mean that “you could?” I think we can all agree that “ought” strongly implies moral ability for all practical purposes, but is that a biblical reality? Sometimes the Bible defies our practical sensibilities and turns our reality up on its ear. Is that the case here? Do God’s expressions of what we SHOULD do imply that we actually COULD do it.[1]

Could the “Rich Young Ruler” have willingly given up his wealth to follow Christ as Zacchaeus does in the very next chapter? Or was Zacchaeus granted an ability that was withheld from the Rich Young Ruler? (Note: I’m speaking of man’s moral/spiritual abilities to repent in faith, not their physical ability or mental assent, so please don’t try to rebut this article with the all too often “catch all” phrase of, “He is able but not willing.”)

Calvinists would agree with the Traditionalists that both Zacchaeus and Rich Young Ruler SHOULD have given up everything to follow Christ, but only the Traditionalist maintains that both of them COULD have willingly done so.

Why do Calvinists insist that COULD doesn’t imply SHOULD when it comes to the Biblical revelation?

Dr. Wayne Grudem, a Calvinistic scholar, explains the issue in this manner:

“Advocates of the Arminian position draw attention to the frequency of the free offer of the gospel in the New Testament. They would say that these invitations to people to repent and come to Christ for salvation, if bona fide, must imply the ability to respond to them. Thus, all people without exception have the ability to respond, not just those who have been sovereignly given that ability by God in a special way.” [2]

Grudem, like John Hendryx of mongerism.com, rebuts this perspective by making arguments such as:

“What the Scriptures say we ‘ought’ to do does not necessarily imply what we ‘can’ do. The Ten Commandments, likewise, speak of what we ought to do but they do not imply that we have the moral ability to carry them out. The law of God was given so that we would be stripped of having any hope from ourselves. Even faith itself is a divine command that we cannot fulfill without the application of God’s regenerative grace by the Holy Spirit.”[3]

Are you following the Calvinistic argument? Here it is put very simply:

  1. God tells man they SHOULD keep all the commandments.
  2. Man CANNOT keep all the commandments.
  3. God also tells man they SHOULD believe and repent for breaking commandments.
  4. Therefore man also CANNOT believe and repent for breaking commandments.[4]

If the fallacy in this argument is not obvious to you, please allow me to explain in this way:

Back when my kids were younger we did a family activity that our church had suggested. I stood at the top of the stairs with my four children at the bottom.

I said to them, “Here are the rules. You must get from the bottom of the stairs to the top of the stairs without touching any of the railing, the wall or even the stairs. Ready, go!”

My kids looked at me and then each other and then back at their mother. With bewilderment in their eyes, they immediately began to whine and complain saying, “Dad, that is impossible!”

I told them to stop whining and figure it out.

The youngest stood at the bottom and started trying to jump, slamming himself into the steps over and over. The more creative one of the bunch began looking for tools to help build some kind of contraption. Another set down on the floor while loudly declaring, “This is just stupid, no one can do that!”

Finally, in exasperation one of the kids yelled out, “Dad, why don’t you just help us?” I raised my eyebrows as if to give them a clue that they may be on the right track. The eldest caught on quickly.

“Can you help us dad?” he shouted.

I replied quietly, “No one even asked me.”

“Can you carry us up the stairs?” he asked.

“I will if you ask me,” I said.

And one by one, I carried each child to the top after they simply asked.

Then, we sat down and talked about salvation. We talked about how it is impossible for us to get to heaven by our own efforts, but if we ask Christ for help then He will carry us. It was a great visual lesson of God’s grace in contrast with man’s works.

But suppose that my children’s inability to get to the top the stairs also meant they were incapable of asking me for help. Imagine how this story would’ve played out if it was impossible for my children not only to get to the top of the stairs but equally impossible for them to recognize that inability and request help when it was offered.

This illustrates the mistake of Calvinism. Let’s go back to their fallacy above as it relates to my story:

  1. Dad tells his kids they SHOULD get to the top of stairs.
  2. Kids CANNOT complete this task as requested.
  3. Dad also tells the kids they SHOULD ask for help.
  4. Therefore the kids CANNOT ask for help.

Do you see the problem now? The whole purpose of presenting my kids with that dilemma was to help them to discover their need for help. To suggest that they cannot realize their need and ask for help on the basis that they cannot get to the top of stairs completely undermines the very purpose of the giving them that dilemma. ….

George C. Scott Explains Calvinism

A scene from the 1979 movie Hardcore, in which an old Calvinist elder goes to find his runaway daughter in the porn underbelly of Los Angeles. This scene with George C. Scott inspired Richard Mouw’s book “Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport.” HEADS UP: there’s some saucy language. And the rest of the film is what you’d expect from a movie about the porn industry in the 70’s.

And here is that promised chapter:

DISHENCHANTED CALVINIST

Chapter 9, GRACE (PDF)

  1. I affirm that the grace of God can be and is at times resisted, and this includes but is not limited to the genuine offer of salvation and resisting the Holy Spirit. The Bible says in 2 Thessalonians 2:10 that reprobates “perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” (italics added) Of course, I am rejecting the Calvinist and compatibilist answer that a person refuses because, as a sinner, that is all that he can do. It seems crystal clear in reading the passage without Calvinist spectacles on that the context and language clearly imply that they “should not have refused” and therefore could have believed which entails the idea of otherwise choice, exactly what Calvinism denies.

Further, I affirm that the ability of man to accept or to resist God’s genuine offer of salvation is a part of God’s plan and redounds to His glory; moreover, this genuine offer of the gospel is more than “a good faith offer” as taught by the Calvinist. It is an actual offer from God through His chosen medium, which can be accepted by faith or rejected unto damnation. Finally, this includes the reality that God has given the gift of repentance, and that the clear call of Scripture is for everyone everywhere (Acts 17:30) to repent and be saved, which implies that those called upon to repent can, by the grace of God, repent (Matthew 3:2, 4:17, 11:20; Mark 6:12; Luke 5:32, 13:3, 13:5, 24:47; Acts 2:38, 3:19, 5:31, 11:18, 20:21, 26:20; Romans 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9).

Jesus pronounced woe upon all the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida because they did not repent, obviously indicating He believed they had the capacity to repent (see Matthew 11:21). The book of Revelation leaves believers stunned that unregenerate people refuse to repent even when they are suffering from the wrath of God (see Revelation 9:20-21, 16:9, 11). Acts 17:30 reminds us that the call of God to repent is for everyone. Paul said, “and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:10). The implication obviously means that they could have received the love of the truth and been saved.

In like manner, Stephen preached, “You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did”(Acts 7:51). The writer of Hebrews said of those who draw back unto destruction, “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace”? (Hebrews 10:29, italics added). In Noah’s day, God said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever” (Genesis 6:3), clearly implying that He was then. Also why did God bring judgment upon leaders and Jews so they could not hear and see and return if that in fact was their state already? (Isaiah 6:9-10 and Matthew 13:10-17).

Lastly, I affirm the biblical doctrines of grace. Calvinists refer to their beliefs as “The Doctrines of Grace,” which is fine, but it actually does not tell us much. That is to say, the doctrines of any Biblicist are all “doctrines of Grace.” There simply are no other kinds. It is similar to the Calvinist’s continual reference to the sovereignty of God. It tells us nothing since all believers with any biblical fidelity and understanding of God believe in His sovereignty. Further, disavowal of the Calvinist’s definition of the doctrines of grace and sovereignty is not a denial or undermining of the doctrines of grace or the sovereignty of God, but it is what it is, a denial of Calvinism’s definition.

  1. I disaffirm that the Bible teaches that God carries out His salvation plan through selective “irresistible grace.” John Piper describes irresistible grace thusly, “When a person hears a preacher call for repentance he can resist that call. But if God gives him repentance he cannot resist because the gift is the removal of the resistance. Not being willing to repent is the same as resisting the Holy Spirit. So if God gives repentance it is the same as taking away the resistance. This is why we call this work of God “irresistible grace.”63 Note that those who receive this act of grace against their will can only believe and those who don’t receive this cannot be saved; therefore, any talk from a Calvinist that God loves people, the lost, hurting, etc., is double-talk because He, according to Calvinism, actually only loves some lost and hurting people enough to offer help. This is a disquieting reality.

Piper says also, “The doctrine of irresistible grace means that God is sovereign and can overcome all resistance when he wills.”” I would note that the Calvinist, as well as Piper’s position, is actually stronger than this in that, not only does the doctrine of irresistible grace mean that God can overcome, but it actually means He will or must. Further, I disaffirm that all verses that say, teach, or imply that man can resist are merely reiterating the position of compatibilism—sure they resist salvation because that is all, according to their nature, that they can do. Moreover, I disaffirm that an offer of salvation through proclamation of the gospel by anyone who views salvation through the grid of Calvinism constitutes a real offer of salvation from God if it can be resisted; because according to Calvinism and compatibilism the real offer of salvation, in any meaningful sense to the person, cannot be resisted because the real offer of salvation from God always results in regeneration. This is a disquieting reality. An example of my point is, in what sense can a person be said to be offered a job if it is impossible for him to accept it, and not only is there no intent to actually give it to him, but in reality there was a predetermined unalterable decision by the CEO not to give it to him; this is in spite of the personnel manager’s sincerity in offering the job. The answer seems obvious, NONE!

Let me elucidate this further. Calvinists seek to emphasize the positive of irresistible grace, e.g., God saves some unworthy sinners who otherwise would perish in hell. But the dark side of irresistible grace is that although the “good faith offer” of a Calvinist seems to exonerate him from being guilty of making an artificial offer of salvation (as long as he is careful not to say specifically to someone things like “God loves you or God cares about you or God wants you to go to heaven”) to sinners who cannot, according to Calvinism, really repent, believe, and be saved, because the Calvinist can never be sure who God has selected to regenerate. However, even if the Calvinist is vindicated, it does not exonerate God from using language, commands, parables, etc., which clearly picture God as wanting all to be saved even though, according to Calvinism, He is the sole determiner and only reason they cannot be saved. Therefore, Calvinism’s irresistible grace makes God the sole determiner of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell because He could have saved everyone. This truth is dramatically contrary to the picture of God and His offer of salvation as drawn in Scripture, a disquieting reality.

We all seek to emphasize what we deem to be the positives of our message or position. However, it is morally incumbent upon every messenger to quest for full disclosure and to shun any appearance of obscuring the negative or harsher teachings of our position. The Calvinist emphasis that irresistible grace assures salvation for some, while minimizing the truth that irresistible grace just as assuredly and irrevocably destines some to eternal torment in hell, reminds me of the Darwinist obsession with the beauty of natural selection’s determination that the strong and healthy survive, while they seldom with the same clarity and enthusiasm speak of the dark side of natural selection that requires the brutal and merciless elimination of the weak.

Consequently, the insurmountable obstacle to irresistible grace determining who receives eternal salvation—besides the fact that it is not taught in Scripture—is that it puts God the Father, the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in the position of appearing to offer deliverance from the wrath to come to all who cry for mercy while, actually, God has no intention of doing so. For, according to Calvinism, He predetermined, contrary to what the gospel and the Scriptures say, to offer salvation to only a few. In other words, it makes God the CEO who allows, yea commands, and says He wants all to be hired, but He has in reality predetermined long ago that they cannot ever be hired even though his personnel managers continue to offer jobs to them. This is a disquieting reality. In order to sustain the idea of irresistible grace, it appears that we must turn common language upon its head, take the obvious and simple meaning of language as seen in Scripture and used in everyday life, and subject it to biblically unnecessary restrictions and meanings, which is one of the pervasive problems in Calvinism. This is a disquieting reality.

For example, Christ felt love for the rich young ruler and out of that love told him how to receive salvation, but the young man refused; after which Jesus noted how difficult it was for a rich person to “enter the kingdom of heaven.” The passage clearly indicates that the young man could have been saved if he had chosen to follow Christ, and part of the reason that he chose not to follow Christ was that he was rich (Mark 10:21-23). From the standpoint of Calvinism, whether he was rich or poor had no bearing on whether he would come or not because the draw is irresistible. Christ’s encounter with this young man also demonstrates that Christ loves the lost and loves them enough to tell them how to have eternal life. By every normal meaning, those words meant he could have received salvation at that time had he chosen to believe. The idea of a “good faith offer” may relieve the human Calvinist of malicious deception, but it cannot be so of Jesus or the Trinity. The statement that “all things are possible with God” is exactly my point and in no way proves Calvinism true, but is actually contrary to their system. This is a disquieting reality. Therefore, I absolutely disaffirm that the Scripture teaches or logic demands that God’s sovereignty is undermined or minimized when He grants the opportunity to resist His genuine offer of salvation because He sovereignly chose to grant that choice.

Finally, I disaffirm that the doctrine of irresistible grace applied to some in salvation is what the Scriptures teach, or that it is consistent with what God reveals about Himself. The truth is that God revealed Himself in Scripture as actually loving the world—human race—so much that He sent His own Son to die for them (John 3:16), thereby providing for their salvation. And any human can receive this salvation if he will obey God’s command and repent and believe, which he can do by God’s grace. I do not believe that God offers what cannot be accepted or what He has no intention of providing. Nor do I believe that God condemns people for rejecting what He predetermined that they could not accept.

NOTES

  1. John Piper, “Irresistible Grace” in What We Believe About the Five Points of Calvinism, copyright Desiring God.org, revised March 1998.
  2. J. Piper and the Bethlehem Baptist Church staff, “What We Believe About the
    Five Points of Calvinism,” #Grace