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