Photo Cred: (1) | Updated: 5/21/2019

 In the first installment of my “Why I Am” series, I will be giving three brief reasons as to why I do not adhere to the Judeo-Christian school of thought known as Calvinism. As I have studied and read about Calvinism, there have been many sources I have used to write this blog-post. Some of these sources were Norman Geisler’s sermon called “Why I Am Not a 5 Point Calvinist” (2), George L. Bryson’s book on Calvinism (3), and Tim Stratton’s 4-part series “The Petals Drop” on his website (4). There were other resources, but these were the main three that inspired me to write this blog-post.

So what is Calvinism exactly? Calvinism is a type of Christian doctrine created in the 16th Century by the French Theologian John Calvin to answer how God’s Sovereignty and Humanity’s Free Will coexist together. There are five main parts to Calvinism. According to gotquestions.org (5), Calvinism can be summarized by the acronym TULIP and is defined as the following:

1. Total Depravity: “Every aspect of humanity is tainted by sin; therefore, human beings are unable to come to God on their own accord.”
2. Unconditional Election: “God elects individuals to salvation based entirely on His will, not on anything inherently worthy in the individual.”
3. Limited Atonement: “Jesus only died for the elect.”
4. Irresistible Grace: “When God calls a person to salvation, that person will inevitably come to salvation.”
5. Perseverance of the Saints: “A person who is elected by God will persevere in faith and will not permanently deny Christ or turn away from Him.”

In other words, a Calvinist is a Christian that sees everything with an over-emphasis on God’s Sovereignty, which entails either a deterministic or compatibilistic philosopical view of the world. Here is a quick illustration that I made to put into perspective where Calvinism stands in the grand spectrum of the issue of God’s Sovereignty vs. Humanity’s Free Will within Christianity:

One last thing is that when I refer to a Calvinist or Calvinism, I am referring to a 5-Point Calvinist. Not those that claim to be any combination that is short of a 5-Point Calvinist like a 4-Point Calvinist or a 2-Point Calvinist. But the whole point of the 5 points of Calvinism is that they are supposed to work together like the pillars to a building. By removing one point you fracture the legitimacy of the other four points and the foundation of Calvinism in general because they were designed by John Calvin to work together, not to work independently of each other. With that said, let’s look at my objections and see why I am not a Calvinist.

1) Calvinism is Great Exegesis Without Hermeneutics

In general, with the Calvinistic perspective on Scripture, there are massive misinterpretations of certain passages within the Bible. Most notably, Scriptures such as Romans chapters 9-11, John chapter 6, Ephesians 1:1-4, and the list goes on. In contrast, there are Scriptures like 1 John 2:2, Romans 1:16-17, or 1 Timothy 2:3-6 that explicitly go against Calvinism. Put simply, context is key and exegesis without context is like a madman with a sword.

2) Calvinism Makes Sharing the Gospel Logically Incoherent

If you think about the Gospel from the Calvinist perspective, Jesus only came to save the elect, only the elect will go to Heaven, and only the elect will get saved. So then sharing the Gospel becomes useless and pointless because those who are predestined to go to Heaven will go to Heaven and those who are predestined to go to Hell will go to Hell, while at the same time you have no say in the matter.  As Bryson put it in his book, The Five Points of Calvinism, “You will be saved or damned for all eternity because you were saved or damned from all eternity.” (Bryson, 121). Although some of the most prominent preachers have been Calvinists like Charles Spurgeon, their actions are not logically consistent with determinism. It is the equivalent of preaching to tombstones because no matter what some people are just doomed to damnation because it somehow glorifies God.

3) Calvinism Makes God the Author of Evil

If God is completely sovereign, then from the Calvinistic perspective God is the author of evil because He brought it into existence. This goes against everything that characterizes God as worthy of worship and completely good. How can a perfect being bring about imperfection? Only through the Calvinistic perspective is this possible because God is the cause of everything that exists including evil, instead of Eve and Lucifer bringing sin into God’s creation by going against God in their own free will. Philosopher William Lane Craig on the subject of Calvinism once said “according to this view (causal determinism and compatibilism), the way in which God sovereignly controls everything that happens is by causing it to happen, and freedom is re-interpreted to be consistent with being causally determined by factors outside oneself (6).”

So since God is ultimately the first cause of everything, God is therefore the author of evil and good. Something that is completely contradictory to the Bible and Judeo-Christianity as a whole. There are even Calvinist’s that affirm that God is the author of evil. People like R.C. Sproul Jr. affirm this idea of God being the author of evil several times throughout his book (7) that deals with this issue.

Now these are just 3 of many objections I have to Calvinism and are just reasons as to why I do not affirm to be Calvinist. Other objections I have include sin being excusable or God lying to people in the Bible, but that would take awhile to explain every objection I have to Calvinism, so for the sake of time I only chose 3 objections. Hopefully, this helps you with understanding this issue and maybe one day you can decide where you stand on the issue of how God’s Sovereignty and Humanity’s Free Will interact together. My advice for those of you do not understand this issue quite yet is to just believe what the Bible affirms: 1) that God is Sovereign and 2) that humans have Free Will. This is the safest stance concerning this issue because it is strictly Biblical avoids the gridlock nature of philosophical schools of thought like Calvinism among others. With that, Godspeed and Jesus bless!

Footnotes

1. https://restorethegospel.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/a-conversation-about-calvinism-and-arminianism/
2. https://youtu.be/fPpkSiO1Ci
3. The Five Points of Calvinism, George L. Bryson
4. http://freethinkingministries.com/the-petals-drop-why-calvinism-is-impossible/
5. https://www.gotquestions.org/Calvinism-vs-Arminianism.html
6. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/molinism-vs-calvinism
7. http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2008/09/taking-calvinism-too-far-rc-sproul-jr%E2%80%99s-evil-creating-deity/; http://amzn.to/2xM4F1Q
8. Disclaimer