Questions for Calvinists

Questions for Calvinists
By David Cox

This post is simply good deep questions for Calvinists, that if they meditate on these questions, they will question their Calvinism.

How are you made one of the elect?

Calvinism teaches that God decided this before he created the world, and you cannot “become elect”. If this is so, then we live in a fatalism that nobody can change their eternal destiny. Is this really what the Bible presents? Does the Bible teach that by having faith (a “thing” that it presumes anybody can generate within themselves) you will be saved? What is the means of being saved? Election or Faith?

Ephesians 2:8:  “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.”

So while grace is a gift given, the Bible teaches that we obtain it by faith. Our faith saves us, not our election.

Luke 7:50: “… Thy faith hath saved thee …”

Salvation is based in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, and not within ourselves. This is totally true. But our belief in that work of Jesus on the cross is what causes us to be saved. If the Bible taught election makes us saved, then Calvinism would be correct. But the Bible teaches faith is what saves men, and therefore Calvinism is teaching “another gospel”, isn’t it?

How do you know you are truly saved (your salvation experience was genuine)?

If faith is what saves us, you know whether you have faith or not. It is what you hang all your hopes and expectations on. But if election is what saves you, then you have no assurance individually and personally that you are saved. How do you know you are not elected to eternal perdition? If faith is the pivotal point around which salvation is entered, then before saving faith one is unsaved, and after he is saved. Is that what the Bible presents? Yes. But if election is what truly saves us, then God in eternity would see us as ever being saved, and God would not speak of one of his elect as unsaved. Paul puts this in perspective when he speaks of his lost and unsaved condition before salvation.

How do we know we are truly saved then?

1John 5:13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

Salvation is known and assured to us by means of the very means we are truly saved, our believing in Jesus as the Christ.

If the faith to believe in Jesus Christ is given through irresistible grace as a gift, why does the Bible command and exhort us to believe in Jesus Christ?  Why give commands that are impossible to obey?

If Christ has already made an efficacious atonement for the sins of an elect person, is that elect person actually lost during the period prior to their being saved?

Calvinists believe the elect must be regenerated before they are given the faith to believe the gospel. But how can they be regenerated through the gospel when they can’t understand the gospel until regenerated?

How can God withhold grace and Christ’s atonement from some of His creatures and then condemn them to the Lake of Fire for all eternity for not accepting what was never offered to them?

By removing personal responsibility and human will in the act of salvation, you remove the individual’s responsibility also. God cannot hold us accountable if we are only acting as per God’s election to salvation or perdition that he has pre-programmed into us. This makes God the wicked one who causes us without remedy to refuse his will.

Deuteronomy 30:19:  “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore CHOOSE LIFE, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

Isaiah 55:6-9 “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so our my ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your  thoughts.”

Doesn’t God set a choice before us? Salvation or perdition? Doesn’t the Bible present God as acting on what we do with Jesus Christ?

How can Christ be just, loving, compassionate, and merciful if He chose to die on the cross for some when He could have easily died on the cross for everyone?

If repentance is a gift only given to the elect, what did Jesus mean when He said that some of the people in hell would have repented if they had had the same opportunity as the people to whom He preached?

The Infectious Errors of Calvinism

Refuting what Calvinists believe with what they know
(http://www.johnstonfamilyministry.com/article/refuting-what-calvinists-believe-what-calvinists-know)

The Subtle Errors of Covenant/Calvinist Theology