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A New Alternative List to the Points of Calvinism
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
John 1:9-13 Say That Faith Precedes Regeneration
Salvation is of the Lord (Jonah 2:9), meaning that it is not by works (Titus 3:5-6) It is by grace alone (Ephesians 2:8-9). It is a gift of God (Romans 6:23).
Faith is not a work. The following are my two favorite places that teach that:
Philippians 1:29, “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.”
2 Peter 1:1, “Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”
First, it is given unto you to believe on Christ. Second, people obtain like precious faith. Salvation is by faith, not by works. If faith was a work, that wouldn’t make any sense.
How does someone obtain faith from God? It starts with revelation. What is to be known of God is manifest in people (Romans 1:19) and then clearly seen in creation (Romans 1:20), which is general revelation (Psalm 19:1-6). Next comes special revelation, the Word of God (Psalm 19:7-11). As Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” This fulfills the message of Titus 2:11, “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.” What I’m describing in this paragraph is what precedes faith. Much more could be said on this. The revelation of God is the grace that appears to everyone that gives faith that people obtain to be saved.
With all that said, here is John 1:9-13:
9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Becoming a child of God and regeneration are essentially the same thing. Look at verse 12. Which comes first? Receiving Jesus Christ or becoming a son of God? It’s plain. What comes before receiving Him? Look at verse 9. “The true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” I know that Calvinists or the Reformed, not all of them, but many, say that regeneration precedes faith.
The idea that regeneration precedes faith does not come from scripture. Why is that doctrine taught and believed then? In my opinion, it is a man-centered reaction to salvation by works. A metaphor for this is a pendulum swing. We’re not saved by works like Roman Catholicism and other religion teaches. The light coming, revelation producing faith, that isn’t good enough. They’ve got to go one step further to show how salvation does not depend on man. They are men and they have invented this doctrine though. The doctrine depends on them.
I’m writing on this because I read the article by Andy Naselli, published in the Master’s Seminary Journal, entitled, “Chosen, Born Again, and Believing: How Election, Regeneration, and Faith Relate to Each Other in the Gospel According to John.” Long title. Does Naselli get his position from the passages or does he come to the passages with his presupposition? You can read his section on John 1:9-13, the first one. He comes to the text with assumptions and forces the text into them. Naselli says that this text does not say that faith causes the new birth. He says “being born of God [is] logically prior to receiving Jesus.” Is that what you read?
If faith comes from the light, that means it comes from God. If faith comes from the Word of God, then it comes from God. If faith comes after the knowledge that manifests in people, then it comes from God. Faith does not require or need regeneration in order to be from or of God. Faith does not come by blood, by the will of the flesh, or by the will of man, because faith is given by God and obtained from God. It is not a work.
Naselli doesn’t say it, but I’ve read enough elsewhere to know. Many Calvinists cannot say that faith precedes regeneration, because they see faith as a decision or a choice. You can read that in his article. He says, “The basis of the new birth is not . . . what you desired.” He is equating faith with the “act of a human.” He is saying that faith is our will and since the new birth or regeneration does not come “by the will of man,” then it also cannot come by faith. The problem is that isn’t what the passage point-blank says.
Is the teaching of Naselli and others like him enough to mess up the doctrine of salvation? It is perverting what the passage says. What kind of damage is this teaching doing? It can lead to an extreme where someone does not want to receive Christ, delays receiving Christ, because he is waiting for regeneration. I’ve seen that many times through the years. I’m saying I’ve seen it personally over twenty times with individuals with whom I’ve talked.
I agree with some that this doctrine from Naselli affects what people think of the love of God. God must regenerate to believe. If someone does not believe, then God did not regenerate. This person did not apparently receive irresistible grace, Christ did not atone for him. God foreordained him to Hell. If scripture taught this was the love of God, I would happily believe it. It isn’t what the Bible says is the love of God. It also isn’t what grace is. The grace that saves appears to all men.
Yes, there is a mystery as to why some are saved and some are not. The mystery for the Calvinist is why God chooses some and He rejects others before they were ever born. The mystery for others, like myself, is why some receive Christ and others don’t. The latter at least has some teaching about that. Jesus says that it’s the condition of the soil in Matthew 13. Paul says that the god of this world blinds men’s minds (2 Corinthians 4:4).
Naselli teaches at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minnesota, John Piper’s school. I’ve read John Piper’s explanation of the five points of Calvin. The word “decisive” is a very important word to him. What I’m saying, Piper would say is the sinner, assisted by God, providing the decisive impulse. He would say, I’m saying, that “the decisive cause of faith is self-determination.” Scripture says nothing about “decisive cause.”
As I’ve written about this subject in the past, I’ve said that God is sovereign about His own sovereignty. We can’t make God more sovereign than what He says He is. John 1:9-13 as it reads in its plain meaning does not contradict a scriptural understanding of the sovereignty of God. It does not make salvation by works. Piper adds this layer of “decisive cause,” and in that sense is adding to the teaching of scripture. He speaks where scripture is silent. He reads into the text. This is also what Naselli is doing. Naselli fills in the blank by quoting Calvin, writing:
Faith is not produced by us but is the fruit of spiritual new birth.
Then Naselli fills in this silence even more by quoting Martyn Lloyd-Jones:
The act of regeneration, being God’s act, is something that is outside consciousness.
Do you understand what he’s saying? He’s saying that a person becomes a child of God outside of his own consciousness. Is that what John 1:9-13 say? Of course not.
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I was fine with the ending of this post, especially time-wise. However, since I wrote it, other thoughts came, especially as it related to regeneration outside consciousness. You go evangelizing in obedience to the command of Jesus Christ. You do your best. No one is saved. Why? None of the preaching audience was regenerated outside of their consciousness. Obviously, if God had regenerated any of them outside of their consciousness, they would have believed.
I read a book about evangelizing Mormons, entitled I Love Mormons, and the PhD evangelical who wrote it gives a lot of strategy related to success with Mormons, understanding their culture, knowing their doctrine, taking a proper approach, etc. I’m not saying I even agree with him on all of it, but isn’t the key for success that God arbitrarily regenerates outside of their consciousness? If God does, your Mormon evangelism can’t but succeed. Automatic success. How does loving Mormons affect unconscious regeneration? Not at all, because that would make man a decisive cause of faith. I’m sure many passages come to your mind that do not fit this thinking.
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