When I listen to a presentation of the points of Calvinism, very often my mind goes to alternative scriptural points to replace them. I think of what the Bible says about the point and I can’t agree with it. Usually I go into a hearing of Calvinist teaching with a desire to agree and believe. Actual scripture gets in the way of my agreeing and believing with the points of Calvinism.
Scripture Challenges Calvinism
Not Biblical
Sure, the points of Calvinism persuade Calvinists. They claim it’s scripture that does it. I don’t see it in scripture, even with my trying to become as persuaded. Calvinism doesn’t do it for me.
What I want to do with this piece is to say aloud what I’m thinking when I hear Calvinism presented. I can’t write everything on it. Hopefully what I’ll do is write down the kind of content I’m thinking when someone espouses Calvinism. My opinion is that Calvinists have their Calvinistic position to defend, much like someone from some religion tries to protect his religion when confronted with scripture. I await presentations that just expose scripture, not read into it.
When I say, the points of Calvinism, I mean what people call, the five points of Calvinism, also known by the acronym, TULIP. All five points of Calvinism interconnect, depend on each other and feed off of each other. I understand when someone says he is one, two, three, or four point, if not five point. To take less than five, someone disconnects one or more from the group. Because of this interconnection, I reject all five points.
Calvinism Unnecessary
I get how someone could question my rejecting every point, since two of them especially make some sense scripturally if taken out of the context of all five points as a group. I mean “total depravity” and “perseverance of the saints.” I could explain those two as the truth, but I don’t believe that Calvinists would agree with that explanation. I’d rather just reject all five points and start over from scratch.
God won’t judge me for not agreeing with a point of Calvin. It’s more important that any one of us believe what God said in His Word about the doctrine of salvation.
Calvinists sometimes attack those who disagree with their position, representing them as not believing certain biblical doctrines. They can easily turn their foes into people who don’t believe in God’s sovereignty or who do believe in some form of salvation by works. I deny these charges. Calvinists often allow these points to define them. The points become consuming and weave into many other of their other doctrines. They often treat those who reject Calvinism as irretrievably messed up in their beliefs.
What should someone make of the points of Calvinism?
TOTAL DEPRAVITY
The Calvinists at Ligonier Ministries say this:
When it comes to total depravity, the inability of which we speak is first and foremost moral inability. In our fallenness, though we have a will and can discern the good, we lack the ability to choose rightly, to exercise our wills in the proper direction of absolute dependence on God and submission to His will.
Total Inability
Total depravity sounds scriptural. The two terms seem right, so what’s wrong? By total depravity though, Calvinists mean, as you can read above, “total inability.”
“Total inability” doesn’t bother me either. It comes down to what Calvinists say about total depravity and then total inability.
Personally I won’t use the words “total inability” because I know Calvinists use them. They are not words from scripture. However, I read lines in the Bible that say the equivalent of total inability. I even like the two words as a description of a lost man’s condition. When Calvinists use those words, they are taking them much further than scripture.
The argument for Calvinists says that men are unable to respond to God for salvation. Men are dead and since they’re dead, they don’t have the capacity at all to receive Jesus Christ. Everything so far I agree with, so what’s the problem? Where Calvinists get into trouble here is their solution to man’s deadness and his inability to respond.
Regeneration Precedes Faith
Many Calvinists teach that God must intervene in the way of regenerating a man so that he then can respond. People have called this, “regeneration precedes faith.” This is not how scripture reads about the doctrine of regeneration. The Bible is clear and plain in many places that the opposite is true. Faith precedes regeneration.
It’s true that men cannot respond. They are dead and they cannot seek after God. Naturally they do not. Something Calvinists get right here is that God must do something to allow or cause someone to believe in Him. Men don’t just on their own stir up their desire to believe in Jesus Christ. God does make the first movement toward man and that’s what scripture teaches. Without God’s working, no one could believe in Jesus Christ.
The other points of Calvinism also describe what Calvinists think of total depravity. A man is so unable to respond to God that God must intervene in the way of what Calvinists call “irresistible grace.” God apparently works in an irresistible way for a man to receive Jesus Christ. These two ideas go together in Calvinism, total depravity and irresistible grace. If God’s grace is irresistible, then also God must unconditionally choose whom He will save and whom He won’t.
God Uses Revelation
The way scripture reads is that even though man is unable to respond to salvation and can’t believe on His own, God does work in his life .God does initiate salvation. Man cannot believe in Jesus Christ without God’s initiation and without His enabling. What God uses is His revelation. He uses man’s conscience, His own providence in history, and the Word of God that is written in man’s heart.
If a person will respond to the general revelation of God, we see in scripture that God ensures he will also get His special revelation, which is God’s Word. Every man is without excuse regarding salvation, because God and His grace appear to all men. Through God’s working through His Word in men’s hearts, they can then respond and receive Jesus Christ. Most do not believe, but the ability from God is available to every man through God’s revelation in order to believe.
An illustration of the power of God that enables a dead man to receive Jesus Christ is Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead. The Word of God is powerful, so the words, Come forth, allowed Lazarus to rise. It allowed for Lazarus to come. This also fits with what Paul wrote in Romans 10:17 that faith comes by hearing the Word of God. Not everyone who hears the Word of God will believe. Yet, a man can believe because of the Word of God.
Salvation Is Of the LORD
You can embrace man’s inability and deadness. It’s true. This does not require a solution of irresistible grace and unconditional election. Jonah was right when he said, “Salvation is of the LORD” (Jonah 2:9). Salvation centers on God. This Calvinistic view of inability does not square with scripture. It is unnecessary for giving God the credit for salvation. I would contend that what scripture actually says is what gives God glory, not an exaggeration or manipulation of what God said.
Evangelists need to preach the Word of God as their spiritual weapon to pull down strongholds (2 Cor 10:3-5). They partly do that because of the inability and deadness of their audience. True preachers proclaim what God said. That’s all that will work for the salvation of men’s souls. It’s like what Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:15:
And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
The Holy Scriptures are able to make thee wise unto salvation, not some mystical regeneration that precedes faith.
Spiritual Emptiness and Bankruptcy
The deadness that Ephesians 2:1 and 5 address might parallel to physical deadness. Someone dead can’t hear. I’ve noticed that when I’ve attended funerals. Men should not turn spiritual death into something so dead that not even the Word of God is powerful enough to allow the dead man to respond unto salvation. Scripture is the way, not an invented mystical and extra-scriptural experience.
God is sovereign. He does it His way. His way is not a novel innovation, which is what this regeneration-precedes-faith is.
Let’s just call it “spiritual deadness,” “spiritual blindness,” or even “spiritually empty or bankrupt” in fitting with Matthew 5:3. I’m fine with “total depravity,” but knowing what Calvinists mean by that, I won’t use those words. This is part of starting from scratch. Everyone sins and falls short of the glory of God. God’s revelation also reaches to those lost souls enabling everyone also to believe, not just those predetermined to do so.
More to Come
Brother Kent,
So, do you teach a form of open theism?
These are some of my presuppositions of what I teach:
The biblical truth of what God knows as it concerns mankind:
• God knows all that can be known, but he does not know the future of mankind’s individual or corporate responsibility and choices since they have yet to be committed (future undetermined). That is an OMNISCIENT God
• As concerning prophecy only as it is written in the scriptures, God has the power to bring it to pass as it is written no matter what choices individuals make in the future! The prophets prophesied “fixed points” rather than exact details. That is an OMNIPOTENT God.
• God’s sovereignty will accomplish what He wills, and mankind’s choices are made freely and willingly without God “necessarily” intervening or standing in His way (He does do it, for some- Balaam).
• As concerning the future only as it is written, God can see and bring to pass what He is going to do, but does not predetermine that upon man. His future effects mankind as written in the scriptures, but that has nothing to do with determining individual or corporate choices of mankind. Men’s individual futures or any group interactions among them are not known until they actually occur, yet God will bring to pass “His future” as written in the scriptures. That is an OMNIPRESENT God.
Tom
Hi Tom,
This is a longer series coming. It would be great if you could comment on the first point. Of course I’m not an open theist. I’ve written nothing for it. I can’t remember if I’ve written against it, but I am.
Hello Tom,
I must confess that I did not take the time to read your comment until now. I apologize for that, but it isn’t unusual for me to give a short answer and then come back. Sometimes then I find that Thomas has written a comment and I might not have to do that.
Now I have read your comment and you do take an open theism position, which I believe is a heretical position. Have you shared this outlook or position you have with other people? Maybe I’ll write more about this, but your position is a very recent theological one, I’m talking the 1980s it arose.
There are no limits on God’s knowledge, that is, He is omniscient. Open theism is not an alternative to denying Calvinism. That’s not what I’m writing either. Your position, like Calvinism, might seem logical in light of the alternative to Calvinism, but it is a different God you espouse that essentially doesn’t know what will happen in the future, is open to finding out Himself. I don’t see that anywhere in the Bible.
here are a couple of articles you could read. Maybe Thomas has written on this and could link to it.
https://tms.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/tmsj12j.pdf
https://tms.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/tmsj12f.pdf
https://tms.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/tmsj12i.pdf
Why must everyone who has disagreement with another brother use the term HERETICAL!! That is simply not true. Instead of engaging in meaningful dialogue, you impugn evil surmissings against a brother without understanding the complexity of the argument.
Please, do not engage in a form of wokeism in attacking a brother by calling him names when you disagree with a position. That is what you did when you called me a heretic. Being a heretic has nothing to do with this argument of how God determines the future.
I took the time to go through the first article which has nothing to do with the understanding of the arguments I posit. It was written in a manner that plainly shows that this brother has very little understanding of what I teach biblically concerning the truths of foreknowledge, election, predestination, etc. in the light of scriptural truth.
For example, did God know beforehand that he would “repent” when Moses gave him the alternative after he “made up his mind” to destroy the Israelites as found in the narrative of Exodus 32?
I am not saying by that position that he did not consider, or not know about that option. What I am saying is that he did NOT determine the future of his “repentance”.
They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind: (Jeremiah 19:5)
Did God know about the high places and what was going on there? Of course he did. But then, what did he then mean by “neither came it into my mind”?
I have 100’s of more examples of those scriptures that expose a misunderstanding of God’s “foreknowledge” and a future that is not completely determined by God as Calvinist teach.
Tom
Tom,
There is a reason open theism arose in the 1980s. It’s a diversion off the truth and the way of truth. it’s better to know it now before it’s too late. Heresy is a faction, it is a diversion off the path. It’s not an insult. I also said the doctrine was a heretical. I didn’t condemn you as a heretic. This obviously opened the open theism can of worms. Did you read the articles to which I linked?
Kent,
He wrote, “Open Theism contends that some things happen that are contrary to God’s intentions and that He took risks in creating a world in which He does not know and control everything.”
As I said, this opening statement in the second document shows the ignorance of his argument. He statement, “control everything” is simply wrong!
Does he know beforehand that you are going to brush you teeth at 10am? Or eat a baloney sandwich at 11:10am? Or take out your wife to a special Italian restaurant Sunday afternoon?
H wrote later, “God has set up the universe so that
“some things go contrary to what God intends and may not turn out completely as God desires.”?
If you believe God intended you to do the things that i wrote above, I say you have very little knowledge of God.
That is pure Calvinistic nonsense.
Tom
Tom, you answered your own question when you said “of course” God “knew” about the high places and what was going on there. SInce He did, the text proves absolutely nothing against the Biblical view of perfect knowledge of the future rejected by open theist heresy.
Do you go to a Baptist church, Tom? Does your pastor know you are an open theist? Yes, Calvinists know God knows the future perfectly, but so do Arminians, all Baptist confessions, all Protestant confessions, and all Roman Catholic confessions. There is no confession of faith by any group in Christianity that holds to the Trinity that has advocated open theism-only non-Trinitarian groups like the Socinians have advocated it.
I strongly urge you to read the resources Bro Brandenburg lovingly gave you, and to reconsider your denial of God’s perfect foreknowledge, as well as your amazing redefinition of omnipresence. This is serious, Tom. Denying God’s knowledge and God’s omnipresence is to create a false god, and Revelation 21:8 warns that idolaters will not inherit the kingdom of God. I trust that you will show that you are regenerate by rejecting and repenting of what you have said here and returning to the true God.
KJB,
To be honest, you do not know anything that I teach. I will ignore all your evil surmising.
I couldn’t care less what ignorance teaches. I read two out of the three docs. Read my comments. All I care is “What saith the scriptures”.
I am one of the elders in our assembly that teaches and preaches the infallible and inerrant text of the King James Bible.
Tom
Dear Bro Brandenburg,
Thanks for the links to those helpful articles.
I have not written on open theism because there are very few people I run into house to house that espouse it and that heresy is a total non-issue among Baptist separatists.
Anyone who reads this blog and believes in open theism should repent and believe in the true God.
Thanks again for your article.
Brother Kent,
What I find with most who oppose Calvinism is a willingness not to teach what the scriptures teach concerning truths such as:
– before the foundation of the world
– predetermination
– before ordained
– that not the potter power over the clay
– predestinate
– what does God know and when does he know it
– foreknow
– dead in trespasses and sins
etc.
Tom
Hello Kent,
This author writes from Doc 2
“So, for example, if God foreknows that one of the readers of this essay will
be run over by a speeding church bus next Sunday, God cannot really intervene.
God foreknew in eternity past that it is going to happen, so it will happen. If He
intervenes and keeps the accident from happening, then He really did not foreknow
this event.”
He never answers the question but continues in some rambling bloviating of classical this or that!
Later he writes:
“In contrast, openness theologians have argued that we should take these
expressions of emotion by God as genuine and literal, not as anthropopathisms. God
really does grieve, regret, and become angry. Gregory Boyd writes, “[L]anguage
about God ‘changing his mind,’ ‘regretting,’ and so on should be taken no less
literally than language about God ‘thinking,’ ‘loving,’ or ‘acting justly.’”
How else are you going to take it except as it is written?? Of course God “changes his mind”, gets angry, weeps, loves, thinks, considers, makes decisions as facts are revealed, studies circumstances, listens to information given to him by angels, Gabriel, Micheal, etc.! He then contemplates on whether he will intervene, in what manner he will intervene (send a prophet, angel, hail, pestilence, etc.), or lets “time and chance” take its course (drunk driver kills a family, woman commits abortion, a shooter kills 50, a bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, etc.). He can do whatever He wants to do and do it whenever He wants to do it without Him having predetermined it “before the foundation of the world”.
I mean, is the author that ignorant?
“Or, did God have to go down to Sodom to find out
what was going on there? Obviously, divine ignorance passages are communicative
devices. They are anthropocentric in nature intended to communicate key points in
the narrative.”
YES HE DID! He went down to see what was going on because He said He did! It is the ignorance of the author to not understand how God works! When Jesus Christ came to earth as a man, are you going to tell me that God “before ordained” the exact steps he was going to take, the exact minute he was going to eat, etc?
If you believe that, you are a pure Calvinist!
What key points was he communicating when Jesus Christ came to Abraham to tell him the following?
And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.
(Genesis 18:20-21)
He came down to do what He said he would do. Did He know about it? NO, since He just told us that he came down to see for Himself. Did you ever consider what the angels are doing? The reason He came down was that “ministering spirits” were evaluating and then they came back and gave the LORD a report. Just as He has done many other times, He came down to see for himself and to visit his faithful servant and dine with him. He also came to personally tell Him about a special child that will be born.
Did He not do that when he finally came down and manifested himself in the flesh as a man?
He did the same in the OT because that is what God wanted to do and show attributes of Himself that He passed down to mankind!
Tom
Hi Tom,
It’s just tough for me to take the time to deal with Open Theism for this series dealing with Calvinism. When I read what you’re writing, lots of scriptural ideas flood my mind and even in a greater way than what they do with the points of Calvinism. If I were to give you one credit here right now, I do think some of the illustrations in the journal articles are less effective.
Let me just take one of what you said. Whatever position we take, we must believe that God knows everything, knowing everything known and all mysteries. I believe He changes His mind because scripture says it, but this doesn’t comport with not knowing. The explanation must follow and harmonize with the nature of God. God in His sovereignty chooses to act in response to what men do, like a cause and effect. It’s no different than, he that believeth hath everlasting life and he that believeth not hath not life. I don’t think we should take it further than what it says. Both can be true and they do harmonize with another. Changing the revealed nature of God based on free will as the overarching and controlling principle is a heresy.
Brother Kent,
You wrote, “Changing the revealed nature of God based on free will as the overarching and controlling principle is a heresy.”
Another way I put it is, (1) God knows what He needs to know anytime he wants to know, (2) The Lord God can do anything He wants to do when he needs to do ir, (3) The Lord God can see anything He wants to see when he desires to see it. All these attributes are always in line with his character (EX: He cannot lie). There is nothing that surprises God, but as I said before, He never violates man’s will.
Brother Kent,
You wrote, “Whatever position we take, we must believe that God knows everything, knowing everything known and all mysteries”
When you say “God knows everything”, then based on your salvation-
When did God know that you will get saved?
Tom,
The God confessed by every Baptist confession of faith, every Protestant confession of faith, and every Catholic and Eastern Orthodox confession of faith–by every Trinitarian confession of faith–is a God who knows everything and is actually everywhere. The god you are arguing for, who has some kind of body and needs to go down to Sodom to find out what is happening there because he can’t know it otherwise, is different from the God of Christianity. Mormons and some other anti-Trinitarians would be delighted, but not Christians. Why pretend that your god with limited knowledge and who is not everywhere present is the God of Christianity? Why would you want to call yourself a brother or identify with those who worship the truly everywhere present and all knowing God? One of these deities is clearly a false god. Why pretend that they are the same?