The Problem of Calvinism

The Problem of Calvinism is a commentary from Pastor David Cox on the problems of Calvinism.

This text is from a commentary on Haldane’s work The Doctrine of the Atonment. I created a theWord module from this text by Haldane, and I added a commentary on Calvinism in general present in this web page.

A Clarification on the Atonement by David Cox

Introduction

For a causal Christian viewer of this work, it may seem very confusing. I do not personally like people who write about other people’s works, commenting on what they have said. It seems like a war between them, a war of ideas, and I would much prefer people presenting one side of an issue, and then the other, and examining the verses used to defend each side. So I am not personally much of a fan of this present work, the entire presentation. But I find people “getting lost” in the arguments of Calvinism as though through many theological words and concepts, they assume they are right.

This present work is dealing with the Calvinist view of the Atonement. The crux of the matter is that Calvinists say that Christ only died for the elect, and not those which end up in hell. If Christ died for them, it is somehow making God powerless if they have the provision made for them, but it “didn’t take hold.” The same thought process can be used in God creating everything and every creature, including Lucifer, declaring all “good”, and then Lucifer broke from obedience to God. Part of God’s creation is that in people, He gave them the option and ability to make their own decisions, and these decisions hurt or bless them in eternity’s view. So this present work is very much at the heart of Calvinism, so I will undertake a brief criticism of Calvinism.

Calvinists are smart, and they are prideful in their “smarts” that they understand things way better than anybody else, any other student of Scripture, and they understand this “thing” of salvation even better than God Himself. Before a fall comes pride.
What Calvinists do is dig themselves a hole (really it is for others to fall into), and that hole is a logistical trap.

1. God is all powerful. God accomplishes His will, and nobody nor anything can frustrate God’s will being done.
2. Some people end up in hell at the end of humanity (up through the end of Revelation).
3. Therefore the logical conclusion is that God destined those unsaved people to hell from before the creation. (The hidden doctrine of Calvinism, perdition, i.e. the eternally lost were predestined to hell without anything they can do to change that destiny at any point of time.)

If you play with logic long enough, presuming you are smart, you will get burned and this is what happens here to the Calvinist.

Points 1 and 2 are true. But even though point 3 seems to follow the logic of 1 and 2, it is false.

I really do not want to enter into a complex explanation, but I have to do so to explain this.
God created time.

God created it for mankind. If you do not understand that time is not a constraint on God, then you can never understand the issues involved here. God has existed, exists, and will exist forever in the future. God inhabits eternity (Isa 57:15). God has a relationship with time in that He stands in (as the present) the entire expanse of time (Psa 90:4). We cannot but live in a single moment at one time, but God encompasses all of eternity in his “present” or “now”. Moreover, we are not to misunderstand that God’s relationship with time is very different from our perception and relationship with time. (2 Peter 3:8; Psa 102:12, 24-27)

God is Eternal

God lives in or inhabits eternity, which is forever is living both in the past and future, like we only live in the present. (Isa 57:15; Psa 90:10) God’s eternal state is bound up by His being a spirit, John 4:24. God made decisions and executed actions outside of the limits of time (creation) 2 Tim 1:9; Titus 1:2; Eph 1:4; 1 Pet 1:20. So God’s eternal actions and decisions are not easily understood for those of us “in time”, bound by living in time.
He is all powerful. But God decided (concept that is difficult to handle if God is outside of linear time) that it is His pleasure to create man, and live in bliss with man for the rest of eternity. God can create a sculpture like a man, and live with that in a grand paradise, with many sculptures. But that does satisfy God. He wants man who is similar to God in that man has a will, and by man’s own voluntary will, he chooses to live with God, and submit to God’s moral character norms and standards.

Verses on God and Time: 2 Pet 3:8-9 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Eccl 3:11 God set eternity into the heart of man, i.e. only man considers his live in relationship to eternity. 2 Cor 6:2 God’s time is a forever now. His salvation is in this same framework. Lamentations 3:25-26 Salvation is a matter of waiting for the time when it completes, or comes into the “now” present. Psa 27:14 Wait for the Lord! (Gal 6:9) 1 John 2:17 Salvation is a “lives forever” because they obey God’s will. (John 3:16) Rom 13:11 “Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation neaerer than when we believed.” Jer 29:11 God’s plans for us are peace not evil, “to give you an expected end,” i.e. God wants us to come to a final good eternal state. John 9:4 Jesus said that there is a “time” (day) in which people act, work, and then there comes (a passage of time) night in which nobody can work. (Col 4:5-6; Eph 5:15-17; Eccl 3:1-8) Lethargy or dullness in relation to the importance of redeeming the time and being active is a problem of mankind. (1 Thess 5:1-3; Pro 6:6-8) Presumption about always having more time is wrong. James 4:13-17; Prov 27:1 No man can predict or make sure that he will have more time in which to take care of the important, therefore everyone should work now, today. Ps 31:15 “My times are in your hands.” Psa 90:12 “Teach us to number our days.”
Life is bound up in the will of that individual.

You cannot separate a live person as apart from their will. Robots are not men. Men can decide to drink coffee one day and tea the next, and it is perfectly “normal”. That is how a live person acts, and it is bound up in their wills. But if we consider God as being bound by time, then God could be surprised or make a mistake or not know something in the past or the future. We would expect that not to happen, but if we consider the greatness, the “largeness” of God; He exists in a larger way than we exist.

Humans (and angels apparently) are bound to the present. I only live in the “now,” the present. I remember my past, and I hope for my future, but in truth, I do not live in my past nor my future. I cannot interact with either except to think about them. We consider time as linear, that is we are always in a present, and we move along a line which has the past behind us (never to be affected, changed, or different because of something “we decide” in the present). As we move along, we confront our future. Our future is a mixture of our aspirations, our expectations, and our hopes. These are forced into the dynamics of our reality, our present “now”. A person dying of cancer can have the best of aspirations, expectations, and hopes, but the reality of their disease makes a collision with their reality, and reality always wins out.

So if we can consider for a moment that God is the center of everything, and God is so great that creation and humans are on a circle around God that is 1 trillion light years from God, what we consider basically a straight line is really a really big circle. We come in on a predetermined part of that “reality” of the world, and continue forever somewhere after that. But God is not on that circle with us. He is within that circle and beyond that circle, because God is larger than we are in His being.

God encompasses the entire circle and much further beyond the circle. I believe that God is timeless. In other words, God is still living the infinite years (before time, when there was no such thing as a year), before creation, and He is living in the future. But God’s present for Him is in all time. Everything is equidistant to God. God encompasses all of that, and more than we can imagine beyond that.

So it is completely wrong to think that God pre-programmed humans to heaven (predestination) and to hell (perdition). That is a time-bound thought, about somebody limited by time. God created all, and everything is totally under His control. But God sees and experiences everything in an eternal “now” for God. He doesn’t need to program some to be saved and others not to be saved. He sees their entire life and eternity after their death from a “now” point of view. God does not give prophecy. God informs us of what He is experiencing in the future as well as in the past. In a sense, all is predetermined, because it is like everything has already “happened”. (Again a time limited word).

But what Calvinists do not understand is not that some few are elected to salvation, the rest to perdition, and they presume that nothing we can do will change that. But God commands us to obey Him, and through our actions, God’s will is accomplished. God does not need our actions to accomplish His will, but God has decided to share His glory with us, certain of mankind, in that they are the hands of God in accomplishing His will. For a die-hard Calvinist, he resists witnessing, prayer, and missions because he has a fatalist view of life. Nothing he can do will change what is God’s will. But can he say that nothing that he does will not be used by God to accomplish God’s perfect will? That is exactly the point. God uses the obedience and passion of His people to accomplish His will. The Calvinist’s system of TULIP causing fatalism, and inactivity. Moreover, not only not being the tool that God uses, it completely drains God’s ministers and children from any real passion in doing that will of God. Calvinism is a system against God and God’s will. It is a hidden virus which destroys the will of God going forward through God’s servants.

So the Bible does use the word “election”. What does “election” mean though? I would suggest the example that David “elected” or selected 5 stones from a brook to use against Goliath. What made those 5 stones special to David? Probably because they were smooth and would fly straight. So there was something about the stones, some element or characteristic that made them special and therefore elect. In reality, both salvation and being a tool for God to use hinge on one fact, that person obeying the will of God. While we have to maintain that there is no merit that a sinful person can do to gain heaven, we cannot go beyond what the Bible presents us, i.e. God’s inspired words to us. Election speaks of what we are to be. God has selected His children to be the tools which He uses to accomplish His will.

Jacob and Esau versus Cain and Abel

Calvinists love to examine Jacob and Esau. God loved Jacob and hated Esau. But let’s consider for a minute Cain and Able. Why did God reject Cain? Because Cain didn’t offer his sacrifice the way God wanted. That wasn’t an accident on his part, but it was the outworking of his sinful spirit of disobedience.

Genesis 4:7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
What I see in this is that even though God is Creator of all, and God maintains and controls all things, God has made man and angels to have a part of God in them, in that they both have personal wills. What they decide to “do” is limited by God, but God does not prohibit them from disobeying God. But when they do disobey God, God judges them one day for their decisions. Their souls are affected going forward and into eternity but their personality. This cannot be detached from the responsibility of the individual and assigned to be God is at fault because of predestination or perdition. We cannot separate this from the person in specific, essentially his moral character (a relationship towards God’s moral character). One person does not decide the eternal destiny of another. Each person has the consequences of their own decisions (their will) “lying at their own feet”. They are judged by God for their own life. Nobody in hell can complain against God that they had no choice. Exactly the point. They did have a choice and they chose incorrectly.
Romans 2:6 Who will render to every man according to his deeds: Romans 2:16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel. Ecclesiastes 12:14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

So God is not an evil dictator, that kills, punishes, and tortures people just because he wants to hurt them, i.e playing with people’s lives as a child would play with dolls. God’s character is on display always, and it is without imperfection. At the essence of God’s character, God is love. God desires good for everyone. But God wants the individual to experience good because they will to do so, not because God forces them to do so.

But if the Calvinist scheme of things is biblical, is true, then God is responsible for predestinating the unconverted to hell before the world began. How is that a just judge? A judge says to a woman, “your child will do something to break the law in the future, so as soon as it is born, so we will put it in a prison forever the moment it is born.”

Life is bound up in our spirit.

Our spirits are our desires influenced and defined by our emotions (heart) and mind (intellect), and that passes through our morality (our spiritual character). The Bible presents basically what is God’s morality, and has exhortations for us to copy the image of God (Eph 5:1), specifically Christ came to earth to provide us with that image. We are to imitate Christ or walk in Christ (1 John 2:6; 2 Cor 3:18; 1 Pet 2:21; ). Our ministers are local examples of Christ (1 Cor 11:1; Phil 3:17; 1 Thess 1:6).

God created us in His image, and that is specifically that He breathed into us life (Gen 2:7; Job 33:4). The very word “spirit” comes from “a flowing of air”. If a car hits a person on the road, first responders want to see signs of life, and they want to see if the person is breathing air in and out. “Wind” is a synonymous translation of the words in Greek and Hebrew for “spirit.” If you catch wind and stop it, it is no longer wind. It is just air, air without power and without life.

God does not exist in time, but God does respect time. In other words, God waits to see how a person decides and acts, and only after the fact that they have sinned, God judges that person. Their lives are a product of what God has made them, as well as other influences from other humans, even Satan influences us, but we cannot separate our personal responsibility from what influences us. It is ever “at our feet”. We never see the Bible referring to unsaved people as the elect. They “become” (a time related concept) elect when they accept the Savior. Whether they were elect (having that quality) beforehand, they did not fulfill that quality of being elect UNTIL THEY RECEIVED CHRIST. It cannot be any other way. Election is always a doctrine for those who are already believers, and it is not for the unconverted.

A person is saved by hearing the gospel, not election

I challenge the Calvinist, the “smart ones,” to show me where Jesus or any man of God preaching before the unsaved where they speak of election to unsaved people? Even if Jesus did preach that instead of the Gospel, would a Calvinist agree that an unsaved man can understand election? Most of those claiming to be saved don’t understand it well. Calvinism rips regeneration out of being a consequence (a grace or gift from being saved) of accepting Christ, and they insist it happens BEFORE the person is saved. Why? Because of this very point, unsaved people do not understand election. Election is not and cannot be the door or entrance into salvation. It has to be a gift from God to his child, after they receive Christ as their Savior.

God’s preachers ALWAYS speak of the Gospel (without including election in the gospel), and they ALWAYS present the gospel as both their eternal destiny (heaven or hell) which is a always personal decision. If Calvinists were correct in the point that God preprogrammed every human being with a heavenly or hellish destiny, would not that make all the offers and exhortations to decide for the Savior hypocrisy?

John 1:12 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:

Isaiah 45:22 Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.

Without a doubt God knows and knew from before creation what each individual person would decide in the final review of their lives. But that does not remove the responsibility of actions (both good or evil) from the individual’s soul. But the point is that God knows, influences (calls), and brings the saved into salvation. God works from eternity, seeing the entire span of time in a single moment. For God, the total sum of those saved and those lost are captured in a single view. But time works its way through history, and for us “living in time”, everything is not done and cannot be changed (which is fatalism). The Calvinist takes the point of view that nobody can change anything that is predestined of God. Why did Jesus come then? Why didn’t Jesus just stay in heaven, and the end product would be the same? Why did Satan tempt Christ? These events changed the “status quo” at those times. Acts change the course of what is happening eternally. Calvinism is to be satisfied in being left out of God’s work. They are not part of God’s work of evangelism, but they are extremely active in spreading the fatalism of Calvinism.

Every Man’s Responsibility

The Bible is consistent in placing the “responsibility” of a person’s salvation or their perdition in that person’s response to God’s call. The offer is to turn from sin and back to God your Creator in order to have blessing and eternal life. That offer is not varied into an understanding or recognition that the person is elect. Now Calvinists love to second guess these things, and they say that no man can save himself. That is true. But the fact of life is that many end up in hell, and God is not to blame for them making the wrong choice in life, each individual is responsible for not accepting and believing in that salvation offered to them by God (this is the gospel). No person in hell will be able to accuse God of having predestined that person to be there. They are there despite the great price that Jesus paid to keep them out of there. Everything has to revolve back to God, and man’s problems are because they did not choose to obey God, but because they disobeyed God’s will. Their own personal will is to blame.

In Luke 16, Jesus presented a “parable” of two men, one saved, the other unsaved. If we study meticulously what the Bible speaks of in eternity, we find that the “saved” Old Testament persons actually did not go to heaven when they died, but to a compartment of death with was called “Abraham’s bosom” or “paradise”. (Proverbs 7:27 Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. “Death” is Sheol, hell, which the plural of chambers implies more than one.) The rich man could see from where he was Lazarus living in bliss. He wanted part of that, even a drop of water on his tongue, and there was a great chasm between them to “cement hell’s suffering” with no chance of being alleviated.

Any alleviation would be mercy, which is a concept of God not Satan, and every person in hell has thrown off God’s character (i.e. mercy, compassion, help, alleviating misery and suffering), so they get what they wanted in life. Jesus died and went to that “Abraham’s bosom,” and in his resurrection, apparently took those saved people back to earth (Matthew 27:52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose), and then on to heaven. Why? Because salvation had not “happened” (in time), and so God did not allow those people who had faith in the Messiah actually into the presence of God the Father until “it was time.” God is not bound by time, but He does respect time for humans. So we cannot second guess what God is doing as far as electing and affecting our lives. He deals with us as though He is in time. We cannot change what we decided wrongly in the past.

See https://www.gotquestions.org/Old-Testament-believers.html

So the entire premise of Calvinism is that some how John Calvin didn’t live during the time of Christ, nor was he tasked with writing any inspired book of the Bible, but his understanding surpasses anything in the Bible, or really anything any biblical preacher, theologian, or minister has said, and we see Calvin explaining Christ as though Christ didn’t understand or explain the TULIP very well. Christ did explain salvation and the gospel perfectly, but those explanations didn’t suffice John Calvin. Strange isn’t it? Isn’t this the exact same line as Joseph Smith, Rutherford of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.? The teachings of Calvin are not so clearly seen in the pages of the New Testament. You have to read Calvin and Calvinists in order to understand Calvinism.

Christ Died for the World (to atone the sins of the entirety of humanity)

1 John 2:2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

The verse is clear. Calvinism has to twist “world” to mean something other than what it normally would mean. But if the Calvinists want to change “world” to mean “saints”, why didn’t John just use “saints” to begin with? Do Calvinists undermine the doctrine of inspiration? Again we see the Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, twist verses to mean what is in agreement with their unbiblical doctrines. The practice is well recognized for true Christians, because all true Christians who fight against falsehood know this tactic very well. Only with Calvinism is it assumed to be right and just interpretation of Scripture when it suits them.

John’s contrast, or comparison, of the sins of the world with “our” sins, that of the saved, makes the meaning crystal clear.

Total Depravity

Here we have to separate to totally separate ideas or concepts, which the Calvinist always wants to make one thing. These two concepts is what a person does to obtain salvation, and what a saved person does after salvation to please God. In order to obtain salvation, there is no merit or good thing that a person can do to obtain that salvation. While declaring that, we note that the action or action(s) which occur to produce salvation in a person (not good works), is always “faith in Jesus Christ as that person’s Savior”. In the Old Testament, it was summed up in a single word, Joshua, or Jehovah is salvation. In the New Testament, that word is translated as “Jesus”. At the same time that this is a decision or act of the individual, it is not considered a work by that individual. It is a trust or confidence that is invested in the Savior, in the actual work that He did in his incarnation, death, and resurrection.

What so many preachers miss is that faith is a complex activity. It is as a coin which has two sides or faces. Faith is a clinging to something, while it is also a leaving off something as your hope for good. That leaving off is sin, what is not God’s will, and the thing the person is clinging onto now is faith as defined above. The “leaving off” is repentance, which is not necessarily any particular outward action, except it is a ceasing from sinning, personal holiness. But moral change is salvation. It is not part of, it is not a consequence of, but moral change is the very fabric and essence of salvation.

John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

So, in order to enter salvation, nobody can offer God any merit that God will respect. But once saved, a saved person can please God. If we can grasp that both of these things are what the Bible teaches, we can prevent contradictions. I will leave the many verses that we are sinners with no hope of God accepting our sinful lives to the Calvinist. But what I will make a point of contention with the Calvinist is this, if nothing anybody ever does is accepted before God, then why did God do the following (approve the lives of these people)? Noah (Genesis 6:9 “was a righteous man and perfect”), Enoch (Genesis 5:22, 24), Abraham (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:1-22; Gal 3:6-9; Hebrews 11:8-10), David (1 Kings 5:5; 1 Sam 13:14; Acts 13:22 ), etc.

Were each of these men sinners? Yes. In the cases of most of these men, their sins are factually presented in Scripture as part of their lives. So they were all sinners in need of salvation. But you cannot separate their righteousness, their decision to live righteous lives before God from their persons. They are examples to us. But Calvinism contradicts itself when they proclaim that no human (other than Jesus) has ever done anything that is approved before God. They lived righteousness, God sees that and approves of them, and commends them to all believers to imitate.

So perhaps we can say that they were not saved because of their righteous lives, but because of their living faith (not dead faith like James mentions James 2:14-26). But notice how this righteous living dovetails with faith. It is very hard to say that a person can be saved without moral change being at the foundation and as the cause of that salvation. Among the Calvinists that I have personally known, it is an observation that they are hypocrites. Some were pastors who had lovers outside of their wife, they gambled, they drank alcohol, etc. Their theology “allows” them that. Perseverance means to them that no matter how sinful they are “as an elect Christian”, God will persevere until their death and save them no matter what. So Calvinists shy away from eternal security and prefer “perseverance of the saints.” This is to excuse their not living righteously. But all the elect in Scripture that we above mentioned lived righteous lives, and this is that “smoothness” that caused David to choose them, and as well, it is the characteristic that makes God approve of their life in general. It is not the perfection of Arminianism. David murdered after being saved, but it was his always returning to serve God, worship God by the actions of his life that made God like David.

Irresistible Grace

This is the predicament that Calvinists have gotten themselves into. If God’s will is that all men be saved, and some are not saved, therefore, those who are not saved were elected to perdition, and the rest to salvation, therefore no elect person can resist the grace of God. But why isn’t God’s goodness also extended to wicked?

Matthew 5:43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. Matthew 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; Matthew 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

The point is that God does send His grace on the unjust and wicked. That is because God does extend his goodness to everybody. The Calvinist cannot accept this. Examining this verse, God loves His enemies? Unsaved man? Absolutely.

Acts 17:30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

If God has predestinated some men to hell, then to fulfill their calling, God would let them wallow in their sins. But God calls all men every where to repent. That is not logical. God wants men to repent or fulfill their destiny of going to hell? To repent. That is the biblical representation of God.

Proverbs 8:4 Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. It would appear that sons of man is mankind, all of it.

Matthew 9:13 But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

The Calvinist presents that all men who are elect, are in a sense “saved” from eternity past, and they are born and continue until they realize that salvation. But when God calls a person to be saved, he is unrighteous, and he is just a sinner. He is not an elect to salvation sinner, he is just a sinner. The point that Christ makes is that nobody has merit nor a hidden election that makes them saved. They have to confess, i.e. admit that they are sinners, and then repent, and then have faith. All in a single action that “is their salvation”.
Matthew 22:14 For many are called, but few are chosen. The point here is that God calls MORE PEOPLE than just those who are elect. So if the Calvinist wants to say “God’s will has to come to pass no matter what”, and some people are not saved, the “those who are not saved were not called”. That point is perdition in Calvinism, and it “fits” with the TULIP, the doctrines of Grace. But it is totally contrary to Matt 22:14.

John 12:32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

So the logic here is simply, Jesus was lifted up, and so Jesus (God) draws all men unto the Savior. It is difficult to slice and dice the calling of God saying that God’s calling is irresistible when it is present on a person, and not everyone is called (a false premise from this verse), so God has predetermined all the unsaved to not be called, not fall under the injunction and calling of God.