What is calvinism?
Hi! Welcome to Little Lessons.
Today’s question, “What is Calvinism,” is a great question.
Calvinism is a theological belief about how God saves people, that is how he keeps them
out of hell and gets them into heaven.
Calvinists uniquely believe that God has sovereignly selected some to be saved, but not all.
It’s not God’s will for all people to be saved in Calvinistic theology.
He only selected some, in fact, he selected a minority to be saved.
The rest, of course by default, he has selected them not to be saved.
You can’t have one without the other, okay?
Now, you might be surprised about all that, but that’s what Calvinism is all about.
Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t understand Calvinism at all.
More specifically Calvinists can be delineated by their five cardinal doctrines, that happen
to be easily remembered by the acronym TULIP.
It stands for T, total depravity, U, unconditional election, L, limited atonement, I, irresistible
grace and P, perseverance of the saints.
Calvinists, of course, use that easy way to remember their five cardinal doctrines themselves.
Let’s take them one by one.
They’re all really inter-related.
Really if you believe one, you have to believe the others, because they’re completely dependent
upon each other.
In fact, if you knock out one, that would knock out the rest as well.
Let’s start with the T, total depravity.
Now, you don’t have to read much of the Bible to find out that people are sinful;
they fall short of the glory of God, they’re rebels without a cause and they’re in big
trouble because of that rebellion against God.
I think it’s safe to say from the Bible that people are depraved; you can even go
so far as to say they’re totally depraved.
But Calvinists have a unique spin on this: human beings are so totally depraved, that given
the opportunity, they would never, ever repent and turn to Jesus.
Of course, that is partially true, because Jesus did say that no one can come to the
Father, no one can come to Him, unless the Father draws them.
Apart from the Holy Spirit drawing us, none of us would ever come to Christ.
But this leaves out the thousands of other scriptures that indicate that we do have a
free will, and that under the influence of the Holy Spirit and the conviction of the
Holy Spirit, free moral agents can exercise that will and take that little tiny step of
saying, “I am sorry I sinned, and I am going to make my best effort to change.”
Of course, the Holy Spirit goes right to work when you do that.
This is not salvation by human works.
This is salvation by grace through faith.
The Holy Spirit goes right to work in someone who has, under the influence of the Holy Spirit,
begun to take steps of trying to submit.
The Holy Spirit helps that person submit.
Okay, lots more to be said about that.
Then U, unconditional election.
That is, God has elected certain persons from before the foundation of the world,
Before any was created, Calvinists say He selected some to be saved, and then
by default, selected some not to be saved.
It was an unconditional election.
Nothing he foresaw in them, like faith in Jesus, that caused him to select them.
It was unconditional, just by “God’s good pleasure”, some Calvinists say.
Well, the whole phrase “unconditional election” is an oxymoron, right?
All elections are conditional.
You elect political candidates because they meet your conditions.
In fact, all choices are conditional.
If it’s not a conditional choice, then it’s not a choice at all.
It’s just random chance.
If Calvinists would think about this, they’d have to agree that people are saved not by
grace, but they’re saved by chance.
A flip of the coin.
There’s nothing that God saw in anybody that caused him to select them.
He just selected them.
It’s random.
It’s not an election at all.
We ought to pray, “Oh, thank You for the luck that has saved me,” but it’s not
luck at all.
That’s unconditional election.
Of course Scripture does talk about the fact that we’ve been elected, but again, Calvinists
have added the word unconditional before that.
They’ve redefined what an election is and created an election that really isn’t an
election whatsoever.
I believe in a conditional election.
God foresaw those who would, under his gracious influence, repent and make an attempt to believe
in Jesus Christ, and then He went to work for them.
Hurrying along here, L, limited atonement.
Of course, if God has only pre-selected a minority of people to be saved, why would
Jesus die for everyone?
That’s a great question.
In Calvinist theology, Jesus didn’t die for everyone.
He only died for those whom God pre-selected.
Even though the Bible says that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge
of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).
Even though John wrote that Jesus “is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours
only, but also for those of the whole world.”
That’s not what Calvinists subscribe to.
It’s amazing the lengths they go to to undo those scriptures that I’ve just quoted,
and many like it.
Then irresistible grace, that’s the I in TULIP.
Those whom God has pre-selected at his chosen time, he zaps them with a grace that’s irresistible
and that’s what causes them to be born again, against their wills, as it were.
Even though the Bible is a book, practically from cover-to-cover, about people who resist
God, and God lamenting it, and God calling everyone to repentance, and God telling us
to go preach the Gospel to everyone in the whole world, calling everyone to repentance.
You’re not going to do that unless God has pre-selected you and zapped you with some
irresistible grace, according to Calvinists.
Finally, perseverance of the saints.
Obviously if God has pre-selected some people to be saved, those people will be saved.
When they come to faith in Christ and are born again, they’ll never fall away.
They’ll never turn the other way.
Even though the Bible is full of examples and warnings of that very thing happening,
because we’re saved by grace through faith and we have to continue to believing to be saved,
and that is why there are so many admonitions to continue in the faith in the New Testament.
But this is not a possibility in Calvinistic theology.
Where do Calvinists come up with these ideas?
By isolating scriptures from the rest of the Bible.
That’s how all wrong and bad theology is concocted.
You have to harmonize your doctrine with the other 30,000 verses in the Bible.
I could easily take the Calvinistic proof text and harmonize them with the rest of the
Bible and it fits my theology quite well.
Calvinists can not harmonize their proof text, rather their interpretation of their proof
text, with the rest of the Bible.
They love Romans 9, of course taking that out of its context, saying this is how God
chooses someone and doesn’t choose the other, whereas Paul was not talking about people
being individually saved.
He was arguing about the fact that if God wants to, He can sovereignly choose to save
Gentiles by faith, the same way He’s been saving Jews for all that time.
He can save Gentiles by faith if He so desires, and he does desire.
That’s up to God.
Praise the Lord!
Not by works, not because of what the Gentiles did, but because of God’s love and his grace.
I’ve written many articles about Calvinism and all the specifics of it and taken a look
at all their various arguments on my website.
www.DavidServant.com Just search Calvinism there.
I think it will come up with at least seven indepth articles that I've written
to refute your standard calvinistic arguments.
We love Calvinists, but we don’t like their doctrine.
Thanks for joining me.
God bless you.