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A New Alternative List to the Points of Calvinism (Part Two)
Almost required in the world of theology is coming down for one or the other, and only one or the other, Calvinism or Arminianism. I oppose this requirement. Because such a requirement exists, people invent and label a new position such as Provisionism. Or, they dredge up an older, rarely mentioned one, like Amyraldism, very difficult to explain or understand. Such as these seem to attempt to fill a gap between the two poles of Calvinism and Arminianism. Some people will just say, Biblicism, declaring that neither pole represents the Bible. We should admit that everyone thinks they’re taking a biblical position.
For myself, I listen, I hope, through a biblical grid. I want to believe one position or the other is the truth, but I also desire biblical persuading. When I give ear to Calvinism, I’ve got problems, even when I’m trying hard to believe it. When I hear the points of Calvinism, an alternative arises in my mind from biblical exegesis. I’m calling the first point. . . .
1. EACH PERSON’S SPIRITUAL BANKRUPTCY
Another alternative arises in my mind with the second point,
UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION
I’m calling this second point. . . . .
2. GOD’S ELECTION ACCORDING TO HIS FOREKNOWLEDGE
Chosen through Belief in the Truth
Unconditional election doesn’t conform to the Bible. A great verse that expresses the condition is 2 Thessalonians 2:13:
But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.
Paul writes that God from the beginning has chosen to salvation through belief of the truth. Belief of the truth is the condition. God chooses or elects from the beginning and “before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4). Ephesians 1:4 also says “elect in him.” That’s another condition. God doesn’t choose those out of him, but in him. 2 Timothy 1:9 says;
Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.
Before the world began, according to His grace God called those in Christ Jesus. 1 Peter 1:2 says:
Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.
Election According to Foreknowledge
God elects according to His foreknowledge. “Foreknowledge” comes from a Greek word, it won’t amaze you, that means, “to know ahead of time.” God knows everything. Nothing occurs to Him.
Among other reasons, God elects before the foundation of the world and from the beginning because (1) He is not bound by time. He exists in what some call “an eternal present,” which is seen in His name, “the I AM.” God just is, and then (2) He is omniscient. He knows everything in eternity past, present, and eternity future.
Who Does God Elect?
Since election is according to God knowing ahead of time who He saves and who He doesn’t, then He can elect before the foundation of the world. This, however, is where the rub comes for Calvinists. God elects whom He foreknows. Who does God elect? Who are the elect?
On this, you should consider Romans 8:29-30:
29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Perhaps you already know this passage. As you work your way through these two verses, you can see that God foreknows whom he justified. Whom does God justify? Those who believe in Jesus Christ. This agrees with 2 Thessalonians 2:13, chosen through belief in the truth. Romans 5:1 says that God justifies by faith. What does God foreknow? He knows who believes in Him before the foundation of the world and those He elects.
What difference does that election make? It secures that person. God knows who will be with Him in heaven forever. That gives security for the believer, the justified person.
The Decider?
What would the Calvinist have as a problem with what I’m writing here? I’ve heard it and read it. Calvinists will say that God is the Decider. They might take that from some place like John 1:12-13:
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.
This is a place that says faith precedes regeneration. God gave power to become the sons of God to those who receive and believe on Jesus Christ. Calvinists will say that man deciding is “the will of the flesh or the will of man.” They also say that God isn’t sovereign if man is decider and not God.
Nowhere does scripture make an issue over who is the decider. The way scripture reads, man does decide. The Calvinist very often would equate that to salvation by works. They make the decision a work. Faith is not a work and faith is the deciding factor.
Even with a man deciding by faith in Jesus Christ, God still also decides in advance, because He elects before the foundation of the world. God has also worked much in the life of the person who receives and believes on Jesus Christ through many different scriptural means without which God wouldn’t save him.
Men Made Up Unconditional Election
Men made up unconditional election. It isn’t in the Bible anywhere. I understand that Calvinists will say that God predetermines who He will save. I like to call this, picking people out of the pot of humanity. Scripture doesn’t present salvation like that. God elects those in Christ. He chooses people with a standing in grace. They believe first, but they can’t believe, like I explained in the first post, without the Word of God. A man gets revelation from God and He believes. God foreknows his faith and everything else about him.
If deciding is believing, then deciding isn’t a problem. And deciding is believing. It could only be “believing” because scripture doesn’t use “decider” in its language. Someone can’t believe without God working in him. God is still sovereign and He still gets all the credit.
More to Come
Calvinism, Unconditional Election and Baptismal Regeneration
Did you know that there is a connection between the heresy of the baptismal regeneration of infants and unconditional election and reprobation in Calvinism? In the chapter “Calvinism is Augstinianism,” by Kenneth Wilson, in the book Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique, ed. David L. Allen & Steve W. Lemke (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2022), Wilson notes:
The major influence on Augustine’s AD 412 reversion to his prior deterministic Manichaean interpretations of Scripture was the arrival of Pelagius and Caelestius near his North African home in late AD 411. Augustine previously admitted (AD 405) he did not know why infant baptism was practiced (Quant.80). But the conflict with Caelestius and Pelagius forced him to rethink the church’s infant baptismal tradition and precipitated his reversion to his pagan DUPED [Divine Unilateral Predetermination of Eternal Destinies, that is, unconditional election].26 Caelestius had argued that infants did not receive baptism for salvation from sin but only for inheritance of the kingdom. Augustine’s polemical response to Caelestius in AD 412 was logical: (1) Infants are baptized by church tradition; (2) water baptism is for forgiveness of sin and reception of the Holy Spirit; (3) some dying infants are rushed by their Christian parents to the bishop for baptism but die before baptism occurs, while other infants born of prostitutes are found abandoned on the streets by a church virgin who rushes them to the baptismal font where the bishop baptizes them; (4) these infants have no “will” and no control over whether or not they are baptized to receive the Holy Spirit to become Christians. Therefore, God must unilaterally and unconditionally predetermine which infants are saved by baptism and which are eternally damned without baptism (unconditional election).27 God’s election must be unconditional since infants have no personal sin, no merit, no good works, no functioning free will (incognizant due to the inability to understand at their age), and therefore, no choice.
In his next work that same year, Augustine concluded if this is true for infants, then unbaptized adults also have no choice or free will (Sp. et litt.54–56). The Holy Spirit was received in water baptism, transforming the person into a Christian with a free will. Since humans have no free will before baptism, God must unilaterally choose who will be saved and infuse faith into those persons. Augustine taught even when “ministers prepared for giving baptism to the infants, it still is not given, because God does not choose [those infants for salvation]” (persev.31). Infant baptism became the impetus for Augustine’s novel theology when he reinterpreted that church tradition and reached a logical conclusion. By doing this he abandoned over three hundred years of church teaching on free will. According to the famous scholar Jaroslav Pelikan, Augustine departed from traditional Christian theology by incorporating his prior pagan teachings and thereby developed inconsistencies in his new anthropology and theology of grace, especially his “idiosyncratic theory of predestination.”28[1]
So the Calvinist doctrine of unconditional election and reprobation is connected to Augustine’s doctrine of baptismal regeneration of infants and the damnation of all infants who are not regenerated in baptism. Since the infants cannot choose whether or not they will be baptized and receive forgiveness through baptism, their eternal salvation and damnation is by God’s will alone; they have no free will to receive Christ or reject Him, as in the large majority of modern Calvinists who follow Jonathan Edwards in his work against the freedom of the will. The infants that are tormented forever because they never were baptized are unconditionally reprobated, and the infants in paradise because they were baptized are the unconditionally elect. Since this is (allegedly) true for infants, it must be true for everyone else as well—eternal salvation and damnation is by God’s unconditional choice alone—an Augustinian innovation in Christendom which was reproduced by John Calvin and the Reformed tradition. (Of course, John Calvin also believed in baptismal regeneration.)
Let me add that the book Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique, ed. David L. Allen and Steve W. Lemke is valuable for mature Christians and church leaders, and it contains many valuable and Biblically sound criticisms of Calvinism. However, there are a diversity of viewpoints represented in the book, including not just non-Calvinist Baptists who still believe in eternal security, for example, but full-blown actual Arminians such as Wesleyans who affirm the terrible false teaching that true believers can be eternally lost. Because some chapters in the book are written by actual Arminians, I would not recommend the book for new Christians who might over-react against Calvinism and adopt Arminian heresies. Pastors or other mature Christians who are simply not going to become Arminian can gain a good deal of profit from the book.
–TDR
26 Wilson, 285. See also Chadwick, Early Christian Thought, 110–11.
27 Augustine, Pecc.mer.1.29–30. In contrast, ca. AD 200, Tertullian had rejected infant baptism, stating one should wait until personal faith was possible (De bapt.18).
28 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 278–327, quotation at 325.
[1] Kenneth Wilson, “Calvinism Is Augustinianism,” in Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique, ed. David L. Allen and Steve W. Lemke (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2022), 222–223.
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