Calvinism? Really?
(A response to a friend)
I’m an Augustinian.
The essence of Calvinism is that the effective cause of the salvation of the sinner is the Grace of God, mercifully given in Jesus Christ, and not some pre-existing good found in the sinner apart from God. I appreciate your taking the time to give a little analysis of Calvinism, but you might be missing the real center of the whole idea.
Does God save sinners? Or do sinners save themselves and God just makes their atonement for sin a hypothetical possibility? And with many of the verses you quote, the fact that if a sinner continues in their rejection of Christ it is their own choice and decision, and so their own moral responsibility, is exactly what Calvinism teaches, so to not explain that and just quote verses that Calvinists wholly agree with in meaning might be an unintended misrepresentation.
The Calvinist question might be, but when someone does turn to God, is it because of their own goodness? Because some people are just better or smarter than others? Or the grace of God alone? The Calvinist says that when someone rejects God it is their own willful decision, but when someone turns to God it is the effectual grace of God that is the cause. This is a pretty important point so I thought I would drop it in here.
All the best,
Christopher Neiswonger
Interesting blog, and thoughts. I am a 3 point calvanist although I have to laugh because all I really am is a sinner mercifully saved by Christ! I love Christ and am baffled by His sacrifice for me. Anyways interesting blog.
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tim kurek
3 points? Is that allowed? I don’t know if that’s in the Calvinist’s handbook.
You know the whole ‘points’ thing is kind of funny. Calvin never had five points. While I really think he would have agreed with them, his was mainly an exegetical way of looking at what he thought scripture was saying about some very important things. I think that if he had been approached and asked how many points there should be he would have been aghast. Are these things really to reducible in that way?
Still, the T.U.L.I.P. is a helpful little acronym for measuring the battle lines in the in-house debate between Arminian and Calvinist Christians. It was the Arminians that formulated the five points. I know you already know this stuff but I’ll write it for the mildly interested.
The five points of Arminianism:
Represented by the acronym P.R.U.N.I.
Partial Sinfulness
Relative Destination
Universal Atonement
Negatable Grace
Insecurity of the Saints
1. Man is not affected by sin in all of his faculties and is still capable of good even while sinful.
2. God’s choosing of certain people to receive His grace is based upon conditions that they themselves must fulfill.
3. The death of Christ did actually atone for the sins of all people, even those without faith or that never repent.
4. The work of God’s grace in salvation is able to be resisted and thwarted by the intended recipient.
5. Those who have received the grace of God and are truly regenerated to new life can and sometimes do, become unregenerate and absent the salvific grace of God given to them.
So, those pesky five points of Calvinism were formulated a hundred years or so after Calvin died to respond to these.
That’s’ how we ended up with T.U.L.I.P
Total Depravity
Unconditional Predestination
Limited Atonement
Irresistible Grace
Perseverance of the Saints
The Calvinist system goes like this:
1. While not being ‘abjectly’ depraved, every aspect of the human person has been effected by sin.
2. God places no conditions on the gift of His grace. It is freely given apart from any good in the recipient.
3. The benefits of Christ in the atonement for sin apply only to those that have faith, and while there may be benefits of Christ’s work that fall upon the unrepentant, atonement for sin is not one of them.
4. The grace of God being an actual work of the Spirit of God in the soul is always given to those not inclined to receive it, and thus succeeds because it is the power of God, and is not stoppable by men.
5. Those who have truly believed in Christ unto salvation, and filled with the Spirit through faith, will be kept by Spirit of God throughout their lives, and so cannot by any means finally fall away.
So it all comes down to whether you think the Bible teaches TULIP, or PRUNI…
Christopher Neiswonger
http://christiantheology.wordpress.com/2007/09/18/the-five-points-of-calvinism/
You have given us a good explanation, one that many opponents of Calvinism don’t understand. It still doesn’t explain why God chooses some and not others, or rather why he would choose some for destruction. That is left to the inscrutable, hidden, mysterious will of God. Barth pointed out the problem with that, is that it leaves some aspect of the will of God unrevealed by Christ.
I do think Calvinists sometimes misunderstand Arminians (or other non-Augustinian/Calvinists). The motivation is not pride, an attempt to attribute some part of our salvation to our self-effort. The motivation is the desire to uphold the universal, unlimited, unconditional love of God.
The debate continues because neither side wants to accept the only other alternative, which would be universalism. Exegetically universalism is hard to defend: the Scriptures clearly warn against a final and definitive rejection of the grace of God. As a strictly hypothetical matter, though, I wonder why universalism is objectionable. If no one deserves salvation, then if God (hypothetically) chose to redeem all of his creation (if not in this life, then at some point in the future), no one could fault him for that, could we?
Hey Mark,
Thanks for the response. My response to your response got involved and ended up a blog post. Happens to me a lot I guess.
http://christiantheology.wordpress.com/2007/09/19/the-five-points-of-calvinism-part-two/
Are you the same Neiswonger from Apologetics.com?
Is that a trick question?
For some reason I never prior saw the huge “Apologetics.com Neiswonger” across the top prior to now. I listened to a podcast of yours this morning on dialogue with Catholics and Protestants and was like “hmmm … wonder if it is the same guy?” Oh well.