TULIP: Is it Biblical?  

The Bible says that none who believe shall be ashamed: "For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed." (Romans 10:11). . .and the Bible also says that none but the holy shall see God: "Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:" (Hebrews 12:14). Some perceive herein a conflict. How do these things fit together? No doubt what may seem to conflict in time harmonizes in eternity, but attempting to harmonize them down here below can lead into a maze. When the Protestant Reformation lifted high the banner of salvation by faith, this was beyond question a return to the Bible. But gaps soon developed, and fissures appeared in their united front. Salvation is by faith, but where does faith itself come from? In some aspects it is spoken of as a gift: "For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only [ου μονον το] to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake; having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me." (Philippians 1:29-30). Is this gift of God offered without possibility of refusal or rejection, or is there some looked-for response of human origin? To the extent that it is a gift, how is this gift distributed? John Calvin, a sixteenth century theologian, crafted a self-consistent system emphasizing God's sovereign choice. How far the popular formula 'TULIP,' invented later, mirrors his views is open to question, though it does aptly summarize what his teachings became in the hands of his followers. Yet for all its impressive internal consistency, is this system, summarized by the mnemonic TULIP, Biblical?

Return to Saved by Faith...

T - Total Depravity

"Depravity, total as to ability and merit."

"If whatever our nature conceives, instigates, undertakes, and attempts is always evil, how can that which is pleasing to God, to whom holiness and righteousness alone are acceptable, even enter our minds?" (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter II, Section 25). Is this Biblical?

Not a Just Man

"Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned..." (Romans 5:12).

"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me." (Psalm 51:5).

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us...If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us." (1 John 1:8-10).

Some commentators distinguish between total depravity and utter depravity, between radical human sinfulness and sinfulness so complete that every lost person is wicked in every way it is possible for a human being to be evil. The Bible teaches the former, but not the latter, at least not since the flood:

See, for example, how the Lord explains that men whom He adjudges "evil" nevertheless are capable of caring for their children:

"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" (Matthew 7:11).

If these people abused or neglected their children, we would blame them for it, because these are certainly moral faults. And so these evil men, though they cannot find favor or win acquittal before God, can nonetheless do something good, namely care for their own children. Thus, absolute or utter depravity fails, by the Bible, and yet all men are sinners, none is righteous in God's sight.

Some Calvinist authors seems to want to have it both ways:

"In Reformed theology, we distinguish between total depravity and utter depravity. We say that fallen humanity is totally depraved, meaning that depravity penetrates the whole of our humanity — our minds, our wills, our hearts, and our bodies. But we are not utterly depraved, in which case we would be as bad as we possibly could be. The reason we are not as bad as we possibly could be is because God has placed restraints on us." (R. C. Sproul, The Promises of God, pp. 96-97).

This would seem to suggest that we will never encounter any natural man at all, only those 'restrained' by God's hypothesized 'common' grace, not otherwise known to the Bible. In other words, absent God's grace, our state would indeed be utter depravity. But since we will never encounter any human being not thus 'restrained,' therefore this theory can never be disconfirmed. Be watchful for the substitution of this unbiblical, never seen 'utter' depravity for the Biblical diagnosis.

To summarize: a.) absolute depravity is not encountered, either in life or in the pages of the Bible, therefore God forbid we should claim absolute or utter depravity b.) however, for purposes of analysis, we will proceed as if absolute depravity were real, because c.) absolute depravity would be real, if not for common grace: "One man does not commit all possible sins. We all violate God's commandments in thought, but not all of them in action. Everybody has hated, for example; but not everyone has murdered. Almost everyone has lusted, but not all have committed actual adultery. The reason for this moderation of sin is that God, through his common grace (that is, grace that is extended to unbelievers), restrains the evil that people would do." (Edwin Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism, p. 13). The Calvinist God is in the business of 'moderating' sin, in order that we may both assume, and also deny, utter depravity, as appropriate. Follow their line of thought and see if you can catch it.

Be Ye Holy

"Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy." (Leviticus 19:2).

The standard to which we are called is no low one! We are depraved, by comparison with what? With God's holiness.

Guilty of All

"For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law." (James 2:10-11).

God does not grade on the curve. When we observe the pagans performing noble acts, we often also observe their motives in so doing are less than noble. For instance, the pagan heroes who threw themselves into the breach to save the city often wanted, and said they wanted, to win a name for themselves, to hear their praises chanted by their people. But this is, by Christian lights, the vice known as vain-glory. Nor does God want grudging obedience, service which is not heart-felt. His children are not to follow His law while they really wish they could be doing something else. Absent the Holy Spirit animating the sinner, none can make the grade.

All have Sinned

God's indictment of straying humanity builds and builds:

"What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: 'There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one...'Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God...For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..." (Romans 3:9-23).

The Bible teaches the radical sinfulness of human nature, that all are lost and in need of a Savior, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. If this were the sum and substance of 'Total Depravity,' any Bible-believer could heartily concur. However, as will be seen, what the Calvinist means by 'Total Depravity' does not stop with the Bible diagnosis.

As we shall see, there is a substitution going on here: we do not ever see the natural man. What we see is masked by 'common grace,' or so they tell us. If we were ever to catch a glimpse of the unvarnished truth, the natural man unassisted by 'common grace,' we would start back in horror, seeing nothing but evil. This we do not see, neither in the Bible nor in common experience. The Calvinists do not so much convince us to see what they see, but rather they explain why we do not see it. But in explaining why we do not see what should be there under their theory, they do not demonstrate that it is there. Nevertheless they move on to the next step as if they had.

Nature of Sin

The civic-minded deeds of a pagan like Camillus, whom Calvin mentions, excite admiration. But they are flawed. Some of the pagan heroes confessed they did their noteworthy deeds in the hope that generations to come would sing their praises: an aspiration known to Christian moralists as the vice of 'vainglory.'

   "By a parity of reason, all works done before justification are not good, in the Christian sense, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ; (though from some kind of faith in God they may spring;) “yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not” (how strange soever it may appear to some) “but they have the nature of sin.”
   "Perhaps those who doubt of this have not duly considered the weighty reason which is here assigned, why no works done before justification can be truly and properly good. The argument plainly runs thus:—-

1. No works are good, which are not done as God hath willed and commanded them.
2. But no works done before justification are done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done:
3. Therefore, no works done before justification are good.

   "The first proposition is self-evident; and the second, that no works done before justification are done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, will appear equally plain and undeniable, if we only consider, God hath willed and commanded that all our works should be done in charity, in love, in that love to God which produces love to all mankind. But none of our works can be done in this love, while the love of the Father (of God as our Father) is not in us; and this love can not be in us till we receive the “Spirit of Adoption, crying in our hearts, Abba, Father.” If, therefore, God doth not justify the ungodly, and him that (in this sense) worketh not, then hath Christ died in vain; then, notwithstanding his death, can no flesh living be justified.
   "But on what terms, then, is he justified who is altogether ungodly, and till that time worketh not? on one alone; which is faith: He “believeth in Him that justifieth the ungodly.” (John Wesley, Sermon 5, Justification by Faith)

While a pagan who throws himself into a chasm to save his country is not acting to glorify God, he is nonetheless acting bravely and selflessly. John Calvin in his Institutes lifts such a pagan out of the realm of human nature and into the realm of grace. He declares such civic-minded pagans recipients of "special graces of God" not otherwise known to the Bible (Institutes, Book II, Chapter III. 4). While it is certain that all good comes from God, what is gained by defining 'nature' away? Human nature is concluded to be totally depraved by defining anything not totally depraved as outside the realm of human nature: begging the question.

The Flood

There is one incident where the Bible does seem to confirm the Calvinist thesis in its most extreme form,

"Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart." (Genesis 6:5-6).

'Only evil continually' is 'utter depravity,' which, as we shall see, disclaimers to the contrary, is the functional Calvinist thesis. But look outside your window, dear reader; do you see water? If there's a big old wave rolling in, your might want to abandon your computer screen and decamp. Head for higher ground. Since "only evil continually" was the state of affairs that triggered the flood, and there is no flood going on right now, is it to be taken as a timeless truth, universally true in all states and conditions of the world? Did this circumstance survive the flood and subsequent Noachide covenant?

The flood cleansed and purified the earth: "Let me give an illustration. When the Creator was minded to purge the earth by water, and determined that the soul should receive a cleansing from its unutterable wrongdoings by washing away and purging out its defilements after the fashion of a sacred purification, He charges the man who proved righteous, who was not swept away by the oncoming of the deluge, to bring into the ark, which was the body or the vessel that contains the soul, 'from among the clean beasts seven, male and female' (Gen. vii. 2). . ." (Philo Judaeus, The Worse Attacks the Better, Chapter XLVI, Loeb edition p. 315). Had the flood lacked any cleansing power, it would be a maladroit emblem of baptism. While the survivors and their descendants remained sinners, fallen children of Adam, it would not be accurate to say that nothing had changed from before to after the flood.

We should not make general statements in the Bible more fine-grained than as written. The Bible says if you're lazy you'll be poor: "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man." (Proverbs 6:10-11). But surely we can all think of exceptions: the heiress who never worked a day in her life, the ne'er-do-well who bought the winning lottery ticket, or a shiftless lazy-bones living in a modern welfare society where people are protected from want no matter what. Proverbs are true as generalizations, they are not intended to be categorical statements which admit no exceptions. A proverb is not invalidated if we can find an isolated exception to the general rule. And our statement here turns out to be less categorical than at first appeared. Keep reading and almost immediately we stumble upon an exception to the rule, "Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God. . .The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth." (Genesis 6:9-12). Certainly Noah's righteousness is not intrinsic but borrowed from the sole source, God, as is all good. "All flesh" were corrupt, except Noah a righteous man; eight souls were saved out of that catastrophe, a righteous remnant, descendants of Adam born into sin but not counted by God with sinners. The Lord's condemnation of "the wickedness of man" fell upon the world, those outside the ark, the drowned; should it be seized as a heritage by the righteous who were saved?

The antediluvian world is a lost world: "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. . ." (2 Peter 3:5-6). It is hard to imagine the kind of corruption then extant, with the cultures of the world ordered toward evil rather than good. Let us see whether its statistics are still applicable. In the Mosaic law, things soiled are cleansed by three means, fire, blood, and water. Peter likens Christian baptism to the flood: "Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. . ." (1 Peter 3:20-21). To Peter, the flood is like baptism. If so, was nothing accomplished by it, nothing cleansed, nothing renovated? A statement which, when uttered, was intended to be true of millions save eight, applicable to a lost world since sanitized, may not be a stable enough foundation upon which to rear such a weighty edifice as total depravity.

The Mean

The Bible teaches we are all sinners unable to look upon a holy God without a mediator. The Bible does not teach, though, that all of us sinners are wicked in every way it is possible for a human being to be wicked. Not only does the Bible not teach this, it is a logical impossibility. One who falls short of the mark by being a 'miser' cannot also be a 'spend-thrift.' Though both are moral failings, they cannot co-exist. Likewise a 'coward' who is bold to the point of being reckless; there ain't no such animal. The pagan moralist Aristotle built a system upon these pairs, theorizing that virtue is the mean between. Carrying out his system required him to invent novel and artificial vices, but there is a kernel of truth to the insight that some vices cannot co-exist.

Introspection shows that not all struggle equally with temptations toward pedophilia, much less necrophilia, or bestiality. In fact upon first encounter with these aberrations in a text-book some cannot shake the suspicion that someone is pulling their leg; do people really do that? So be alert to this version of 'total depravity' which sometimes turns up in Calvinistic argument. John Calvin himself admitted that a man subject to all the vices by which human nature can be infected would be a logical impossibility: "Indeed, I grant that not all these wicked traits appear in every man; yet one cannot deny that this hydra lurks in the breast of each." (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter III, Section 2).

The Bible does teach the radical sinfulness of unregenerate human nature, but does it teach this?: "Therefore let us hold this as an undoubted truth which no siege engines can shake: the mid of man has been so completely estranged from God's righteousness that it conceives, desires, and undertakes, only that which is impious, perverted, foul, impure, and infamous. The heart is so steeped in the poison of sin, that it can breathe out nothing but a loathsome stench." (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter III, Section 19). There seems to be an agenda of exaggerating what is, in its kernel, a true Bible teaching. In truth, the Calvinist doctrine should be denominated as 'total inability' rather than total depravity: "Another way of describing total depravity is to call it total inability. As a matter of fact, many prefer this term to total depravity, since the latter term leads some to think that man is as bad as he can be." (Edwin H. Palmer, Five Points of Calvinism, p. 17). What they mean by this, "So when the Reformed tradition refers to 'total depravity,' it does not mean that we do as many bad acts as we possibly could. It means that we are totally unable to trust Christ and do the 'work of faith' (1 Thess. 1:3, 2 Thess. 1:11) without the decisive intervention of God's enabling grace." (John Piper, Bloodlines, Part Two, p. 134). They wish to find that no sinner can respond even by one finger-flick to the gospel call, even if awash in God's grace, but must be made to do so against his wishes, against his nature. This they consider a simple inference from the latter condition. But total inability is no Bible doctrine; it is a supposition built upon Bible doctrine. Recall, we must avoid 'utter depravity' because the Bible clearly does not teach this, nor does our common experience in the world in dealing with pagans teach this. The Calvinists admit we do not see 'utter depravity,' although they claim we would see it, were it not for 'common grace.' Because the real situation is masked, they then proceed as if it were conceded that 'utter depravity' had been demonstrated. 'Total inability' is just 'utter depravity.' See, once we have swept aside 'common grace' as an irrelevance and the "natural man" stands revealed in his true colors: "He does care: he hates the good and its source, namely, God." (Edwin H. Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism, p. 19). 'Inability' is Biblical, for which the cure is grace, inserting 'total' is an innovation.

No Such Animal

This shell game goes back to the founder. After painting the character of the natural man in the blackest possible dye, John Calvin helpfully informs us that. . .we've never seen such a monster, nor ever will! You see, if men were really that bad, they would gnaw away at each other, and God has providentially supplied His 'common grace' to keep that from happening. This 'common grace,' not known to the Bible, is spilled out so liberally that no one has ever seen a natural man:

"If every soul is subject to such abominations as the apostle boldly declares, we surely see what would happen if the Lord were to permit human lust to wander according to its own inclination. No mad beast would rage as unrestrainedly; no river, however swift and violent, burst so madly into flood." (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter III, Section 3).

But lucky for us, God restrains these evil-doers; how otherwise could human civilization or any sort of communal life endure:

"Here, however, is the surest and easiest solution to this question: these are not common gifts of nature, but special graces of God, which he bestows variously and in a certain measure upon men otherwise wicked." (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter III, Section 4).

What a furious kind of tail-chasing, to paint human depravity, admitted by the Bible, in such dark colors as to require the invention of a form of grace unknown to the Bible to keep it from devouring us all! Better to keep within the Bible bounds in describing the problem. Both 'grace' and 'nature' are realms under God's sole sway; what we receive from one we receive from the hand of God, as also the other. If human nature were as ruined and depraved as Calvin's case requires, civil society would be impossible. . .so therefore, manifestly, it is not so utterly ruined. There is no Biblical warrant to invent an otherwise unknown species of grace.

'Common grace,' a commodity not known to the Bible, is needed to remedy a defect in Calvinist 'Total Depravity,' namely its failure to conform to observed experience:

"Now I proceed to consider the dogma of 'common grace'. . .Sin places before us a riddle, which in itself is insoluble. If you view sin as a deadly poison, as enmity against God, as leading to everlasting condemnation, and if you represent a sinner as being 'wholly incapable of doing any good, and prone to all evil,' and on this account salvable only, if God by regeneration changes his heart, then it seems as if of necessity all unbelievers and unregenerate persons ought to be wicked and repulsive men. But this is far from being our experience in actual life." (Abraham Kuyper, Calvinism: Six Lectures Delivered in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, Lecture 4, p. 104).

With one slash of William of Ockham's razor, we rid ourselves of two unnecessary entities: the man-made theory of 'Total Depravity,' and the man-made theory of 'common grace.'

Certainly there are men of appalling evil, like Genghis Khan and Osama bin Laden, who murder with no more pangs of conscience than we would suffer swatting a fly. But just as none is so good as to leave no room for improvement, so none is so wicked as could not be made worse in thought. Adolf Hitler was a mass murderer, but he did not murder his mother, as did Nero Caesar. Before he and his companion Eva Braun did away with themselves, they married; he could have omitted to do that, and been worse. He was affectionate to his dog, although "It [election] denies that the unregenerate are capable of predicating a right thought, generating a right affection, or originating a right volition." (Arthur W.  Pink, The Doctrine of Election, p. 11). He was not evil in every way he could possibly have been evil. Was the reason for this 'common grace:' a special, secret type of grace not known to the Bible? There is no reason to think so, other than to salvage 'Total Inability.'

Internal Consistency

According to advocates, 'T' is the entire system in embryo: "The Five Points of Calvinism all depend on each other. If T is true, the[n] U is true, and so are L, I, and P. They all hang or fall together." (Edwin H. Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism, p. 72). To see how, let us recapitulate the argument: Apparent Depravity = Innate Depravity counteracted by Common Grace. Think, Gray = mixture of Black and White. Apparent, or Observed, Depravity is far from utter depravity. Nothing like utter depravity is either experienced in life or taught in scripture, except in connection with the flood, and was the flood inefficient in its stated mission of cleansing the earth? John Calvin, a classicist, was well aware of exemplary pagans who displayed civic and patriotic virtues. Although the sources which describe these heroes are propagandistic and slanted, we all know from our own experience, and the Bible confirms, that the pagans are not all bad all the time. Of course these people are 100 per cent unsaved, as they have no covering for sin and cannot stand in the presence of a holy God. Contra the Bible, these model citizens are described in this system as masterpieces of grace not nature, because nature is obliged to be 100 per cent bad.

Since Common Grace is not ordered to salvation, it cannot be relevant to a discussion of salvation. So we leave it behind; it is cancelled out from the equation. Out with the gray, which we agreed is what's sometimes seen in scripture and in life, in with the black. Cancelling out 'common grace,' what is left?: "The biblical doctrine of total depravity emphasizes that natural, unregenerated man is never able to do a single good thing for even a fraction of a second. He is dead to good actions." (Edwin H. Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism, p. 99). So 'utter depravity,' driven out the front door, returns through the back door. (What Calvinists mean by 'nature' is fallen nature, ruined by the fall.) Now we are left with natural, or innate depravity, which from this point forward will be equated with utter depravity: hating God, behaving as wild beasts, etc., although these same rambunctious wild men are simultaneously dead. As anyone who's ever lived near a cemetery can tell you, dead people are prone to rest there peacefully. They are quiet neighbors. Perhaps we have strayed into the territory of mixed metaphor. This being so, salvation cannot be accomplished except under compulsion.

This argument is internally consistent, but be alert to 'common grace' being inserted, then removed. The skeptic should ask, where is the Bible proof there is any such thing as 'common grace'? If we never see man except veiled by this heavenly shower of grace come down from above, though the Bible does not characterize the pagans in quite this way, then how can we say anything about a nature which is always concealed and unseen, never seen naked? The Bible says the pagans are people "without God in the world:" "That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:. . ." (Ephesians 2:12). They are αθεοι, without God, not recipients of His grace. By their system, this universal common grace has rescued man from his own nature, but we then must imagine him without this covering, without which we never encounter him. Ask them how they know anything about the natural man, who is, in their system, never seen?

A chemical company wanted to use a process patented by a competitor, but without paying any royalty. So they employed the same procedure, but added aspirin, salicylic acid. . .and then took it out at a later stage. This was a different process, they said. Shame, shame; the courts were not fooled. Adding aspirin and then taking it out was a diversion. When they tell you that utter depravity is not seen, because common grace masks its effects, tell them that since you know they are going to drop this ingredient later, they need not bring it up to begin with. Either prove utter depravity, or if you cannot, cease troubling people with an unbiblical notion.

U - Unconditional Election

The principle:

"Out of his lavish grace, the Father chose out of the fallen race a people from every race to be redeemed through his Son and united to his Son by his Spirit. This determination was made in eternity, apart from anything foreseen in the believer." (Michael S. Horton, For Calvinism, Introduction, Kindle location 58).

Notice that the principle does not say, 'apart from any MERIT foreseen in the believer,' which would be both Biblical and uncontroversial, but "apart from ANYTHING foreseen in the believer." Indeed one can show from the Bible that God's choice is not premised on any merit in man, of which there is none apart from grace; but the Calvinist goes further, he makes the progression from no merit to no thing: "God never bases His choice on what man thinks, says, does, or is. We do not know what God bases His choice on, but it is not on anything that is in man." (Edwin H. Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism, p. 31). Be alert for this substitution: for 'no MERIT,' which is Biblical, we shall substitute 'no THING,' which is not.

Things to Come

Isaiah advertised as the dividing line between the true God and the idols that God foretold the future to His prophets:

"Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen: let them show the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together." (Isaiah 41:22-23).

The living God sent His prophets to tell His people what would happen in time to come. How? To God the 'future' is not a topic of speculation and surmise, as it is to us. God is not bound by time, He inhabits eternity:

"For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." (Isaiah 57:15).

There is a modern-day aberration called open theism that denies perfect foreknowledge to God. The open theist fully concedes that God knows His own intentions. We all do! Inventorying the contents of our mind is something even we with finite minds can do. Like the open theist, the Calvinist believes that God can foreknow and 'predict' His own intentions. . .but not much else, claiming that in principle it is not possible for God to foreknow, for instance, free will choices by other agents. But the Bible teaches God's perfect and complete omniscience.

John Calvin

John Calvin did not in any way deny God's perfect foreknowledge; he just denied that it had anything to do with His decree of predestination:

"No one who wishes to be thought religious dares simply deny predestination, by which God adopts some to hope of life, and sentences others to eternal death. But our opponents, especially those who make foreknowledge its cause, envelop it in numerous petty objections. We, indeed, place both doctrines in God, but we say that subjecting one to the other is absurd.

"When we attribute foreknowledge to God, we mean that all things always were, and perpetually remain, under his eyes, so that to his knowledge there is nothing future or past, but all things are present. And they are present in such a way that he not only conceives them through ideas, as we have before us those things which our minds remember, but he truly looks upon them and discerns them as things placed before him. And this foreknowledge is extended throughout the universe to every creature." (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, Chapter XXI, 5.)

All Bible believing theists think that everything that happens in this world, good, bad, or indifferent, happens with the permission of God. Some people wonder, consequently, how a good God can allow bad things to happen to innocents, such as the victims of child rapists:

Known and Unknown

One oddity about John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion is the rigor with which a Biblical principle of God's choice is uncovered. . .and then advanced as evidence that God foreknows nothing outside Himself which influences His eternal decree of predestination. We know what we know, and we know, if we read the Bible, that God likes to choose the younger over the elder: "It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger." (Romans 9:12). There are many instances of this, for example little David chosen from watching the sheep in preference over his elder siblings. It is not an invariant rule, but a pattern, a regularity careful observers can pick up. And of course, God must foreknow who is the elder and who the younger to exercise this preference.

What joy, we have discovered a principle of regularity, a definable preference! We begin to discern the outlines of an agenda of compensation, of upending, of turning the world upside-down. To add to our excitement in discovery, we notice this principle stated explicitly, that the first shall be last and the last first. We know, we are starting to learn, we begin to think God's thoughts after Him! Or rather, we know nothing at all, and this consistent preference God exercises for the younger over the elder proves that He foreknows nothing outside Himself which could possibly interest Him or swerve His eternal decree. How this conclusion follows from the demonstration of a known regularity is the greatest mystery of Calvin's Institutes. Birth order is neither chosen nor meritorious. We know that the world likes to choose the elder, and God likes to choose the younger. How can the fact that we know something prove that what we know is unknowable?

Notice that the Calvinist's mind is not God's mind. God consistently chooses the poor, the downtrodden, the lowly, the small, over the showy, the successful, the prosperous. The Calvinist does not think like this: to him this choice is "most unlikely"! The "most unlikely" to whom? Not to God, but to the Calvinist. Thus we substitute the Calvinist's disdain for the poor for God's anomalous and strange liking for this group. We minimize the consistent pattern: God did not choose to pass by the sumptuous palaces only in this instance, nor is this only "often" his preference as our author seeks to reduce the problem. The take-away is that, God does not choose the poor because He likes the poor or anything like that,— how could He? Although we know that when He makes up His jewels, the seats at the Messianic banquet are taken up by the poor, the obscure and the uncelebrated disproportionately. Rather, He is only choosing an "unlikely" group to display His arbitrary might and sovereignty!

As a historical factor in corporate human life, Calvinism had a lot to do with the rise of the modern economy. This has been no doubt a great boon to humanity, though the demolition work required to make a smooth place for this brave new world involved more than sweeping away a few medieval cobwebs. Moses' dislike of usury had to go. And the well-known and well-documented Bible fact that God especially loves the poor had to go. Some people, learning that this is a favored group in God's sight, felt disturbed, realizing that they did not belong by native right. Therefore they went and sold their belongings, thinking this would 'fix' the problem. This depressed the GDP! So no more of that. But in their erasure of the Bible truth that God loves the poor, Calvin's heirs have made mince-meat of His own explanation of why He chooses the people He chooses. They will not let God be sovereign, because He has explained it to them, and they say: 'No! Not that!'

False Arminians

Calvinists routinely identify all who disagree with their views as 'Arminians:'

"It must be evident that there are just two theories which can be maintained by evangelical Christians upon this important subject; that all men who have made any study of it, and who have reached any settled conclusions regarding it, must be either Calvinists or Arminians." (Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 496).

This dichotomy will hold true when the laws of logic have been repealed. Unfortunately, many naive non-Calvinists 'learn' from their encounters with Calvinists to call themselves 'Arminians,' when they are not. As noted, traditional Arminians make God's predestination contingent upon His foreknowledge: "1.) Election and condemnation, conditioned upon the faith or unbelief of men." ("Five points of Arminianism," An Encyclopedia of Religion.). They differ on this point from Calvinists, who deny that God's predestination is in any way contingent upon foreknowledge. But it is not uncommon to encounter today 'Arminians' who flatly deny that God has any more prior information in this matter than the rest of us. Not only do they not contend God's predestination of the elect is conditioned upon His foreknowledge...they don't think He has any foreknowledge! This low conception of deity is not confined to confessed 'Open Theists;' I've encountered 'Oneness' Pentecostals who believe God is every bit as surprised as anyone else when their ministers open the envelope and reveal the names of the baptized.

Even if God were as passive in the salvation process as they claim, He would still have to know the names of His elect before the foundation of the world. Why? Because if there were some state of affairs in the world of which God did not know, such as the names and number of the saved, He would not be omniscient. Yet God is omniscient: "For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things." (1 John 3:20). The clueless godlet they describe is not the living God.

Nor is it fair to servants of God like James Arminius and John Wesley to allege that their system entails denial of a fundamental attribute of God. At a bare minimum one must concede that God foreknows His elect from the foundation of the world, or else God is nescient rather than omniscient:

"And, First, let us look forward on the whole work of God in the salvation of man; considering it from the beginning:, the first point, till it terminates in glory. The first point is, the foreknowledge of God. God foreknew those in every nation who would believe, from the beginning of the world to the consummation of all things. But, in order to throw light upon this dark question, it should be well observed, that when we speak of God’s foreknowledge, we do not speak according to the nature of things, but after the manner of men. For, if we speak properly, there is no such thing as either foreknowledge or after knowledge in God. All time, or rather all eternity, (for time is only that small fragment of eternity which is allotted to the children of men,) being present to him at once, he does not know one thing before another, or one thing after another; but sees all things in one point of view from everlasting to everlasting. As all time, with everything that exists therein, is present with him at once, so he sees at one, whatever was, is, or will be, to the end of time. But observe: We must not think they are because he knows them. No; he knows them because they are. Just as I (if one may he allowed to compare the things of men with the deep things of God) now know the sun shines: Yet the sun does not shine because I know it, but I know it because he shines. My knowledge supposes the sun to shine; but does not in anywise cause it." (John Wesley, Sermon 58, On Predestination)

That God foreknows His own from the foundation of the world is the bare Bible minimum; what might allowably be built upon it? Recall that the same Bible which links God's foreordination with foreknowledge also expressly denies that God's choice of Jacob over Esau was premised on merit. So when these authors add works to the list of God's relevant foreknowledge, or when they describe faith itself in language such that it could not be classed as other than a meritorious work, they've wandered from the Bible path.

All Possible Worlds

Not only does God know what will actually happen from the beginning of the world, He knows what would happen under circumstances which do not obtain:

quot;Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand? will Saul come down, as thy servant hath heard? O LORD God of Israel, I beseech thee, tell thy servant. And the LORD said, He will come down." (1 Samuel 23:11).

Note the Lord does not say, as would the TV weatherman, 'He might,' or 'It's 50-50,' but "He will come down." Did the Lord know that Saul would come down because the event was necessary? No, the foretold event was a true contingent. Was it because the event was part of God's immutable decree? But it was not any part of God's decree. How do I know? Because it didn't happen: "Then David and his men, which were about six hundred, arose and departed out of Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go. And it was told Saul that David was escaped from Keilah; and he forbare to go forth." (1 Samuel 23:13). Thus the Bible; compare man's blindness:

"In the nature of things there cannot be anything known as what shall be unless it is certain to be, and there is nothing certain to be unless God has ordained it shall be." (Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, p. 102).

How such knowledge is possible escapes us, it's not possible to us, but God has it: "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it." (Psalm 139:6). In general, knowing something is so does not cause it to happen:

"The contingent is opposed to the certitude of knowledge only so far as it is future, not so far as it is present. For when the contingent is future, it can not-be. Thus, the knowledge of one conjecturing that it will be can be mistaken: it will be mistaken if what he conjectures as future will not take place. But in so far as the contingent is present, in that time it cannot not-be. It can not-be in the future, but this affects the contingent not so far as it is present but so far as it is future. Thus, nothing is lost to the certitude of sense when someone sees a man running, even though this judgment is contingent. All knowledge, therefore, that bears on something contingent as present can be certain. But the vision of the divine intellect from all eternity is directed to each of the things that take place in the course of time, in so far as it is present, as shown above. It remains, therefore, that nothing prevents God from having from all eternity an infallible knowledge of contingents." (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book One, Chapter 67, 2.)

Compare this Bible reality with Calvinist expectation. Robert Lewis Dabney, a Calvinist, simply cannot make himself believe that God can know anything about the future other than His own intentions. After all, that is true for us, and wouldn't the same be true for God? Why should our limitations not also be His?:

"The Bible is full of it; all of God's prophecies imply predestination, because, unless he had foreordained the predicted events, he could not be certain they would come to pass." (Robert Lewis Dabney, The Five Points of Calvinism, Kindle location 463).

Is it reasonable to follow Dabney in projecting human weakness and nescience onto God? After all, we only know for certain what we intend to do, not what other agents might do. Surely God must share our limitations, otherwise He would be greater than we are! No, because God did not, in the event, intend that Saul "will come down". . .after all, that never happened! His sources of knowledge, and His ways of knowing, are beyond our ken.

In a like vein, the Lord said that, if His works of power and might had been done in Sodom, they would have repented:

"Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day." (Matthew 11:21-23, see also Matthew 12:41-42).

This statement is a conditional contrary to fact: these mighty works were not done in Tyre and Sidon, nor in Sodom; but surely even a Calvinist would not venture to say of the Lord, 'He's just guessing!' More respect than that is demanded; God knows things we do not know. In any case, He cannot know these things only because He intends to make them so; He does not intend to make them so, they never happened. Calvinist Robert Lewis Dabney asked, "Nay, what ground of certain futurition is there, save that God purposes it?" (Robert Lewis Dabney, Systematic Theology, Chapter 3, Divine Attributes, Kindle location 1403). So how did Jesus know what the outcome would be had His mighty works been done in Sodom, when God purposed no such thing? He does not lay 'odds.' Surprisingly, you will find people who want to make man's ignorance the standard for God's omniscience:

"Speaker: 'I'd love to do that, but if I'm not able, that's certainly in keeping with first century Jewish thought. For example we have a famous statement from the second century or early third century, but probably goes back earlier, where the Rabbis said that everything is foreknown and free will is given and you say how can those both be true. . .'

"James White: 'They can't be!'"

(The Dividing Line, May 28, 2013, 30:40-31:02)

This protocol, if followed diligently, would establish atheism rather than Calvinism. How does God create the world? We can't do any such thing! So therefore, He couldn't either. We can't provide a methodology which would enable us to know the future (to us, unlike to God, it really is future). We can, of course, know what we intend to do. So therefore God can only know the future (to Him it is not future) insofar as He intends to bring it about. But this is to make man's nescience the measuring rod by which to shrink and contract God's omniscience down to our size.

The following argument in favor of Calvinism is offered by mainstream Calvinist authors:

"Now if future events are foreknown to God, they cannot by any possibility take a turn contrary to His knowledge. . .Common sense tells us that no event can be foreknown unless by some means, either physical or mental, it has been predetermined." (Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, Chapter VI, p. 90).

The Bible view is, "For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place,..." (Isaiah 57:15). But in this Calvinist view, God is our neighbor trapped right next to us on the time-line, looking forward to the future and remembering the past: "Furthermore, if the acts of free agents are in themselves uncertain, God must then wait until the event has had its issue before making His plans. . .He would then be ignorant of much of the future and would daily be gaining vast stores of knowledge." (Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, Chapter VI, pp. 92-93).

Dear Reader, please do not think I am exaggerating or misstating the views of these people; this is exactly what they say. They 'trap' God right next to us on the time-line, and then announce that He, like us, can only reliably 'predict' those future events which are highly determined, i.e., would always turn out the same way no matter how many iterations were tried:

"Well, Rich and I have been working together for a long time now, long time now. . .But he can predict pretty well how I'm going to respond to certain things, because we've known each other for a long time. But there are times that I surprise him. . .
"Or might the actual reason for that be, that I'm a human being and sometimes, you know, if it had been a different day. . .I object to the idea that, given certain circumstances, I would always act in the same way. Because I know that's not the case."

(James White, The Dividing Line, January 16, 2014, at 75:08).

This is offered as if an argument in favor of Calvinism: failing determinism, God, like us, can only foreknow events which would happen the same way every time. Why? Because we can only predict that sort of event, for instance 'the sun will rise tomorrow,' with any degree of certainty, and surely He cannot be more capable than we! The Biblical corrective for this error is, "And the LORD said, He will come down." (1 Samuel 23:11).

Flatland

In the child's fantasy 'Flatland', two-dimensional beings bound to a plane are mystified when three-dimensional creatures invaded their world. These beings could do 'impossible' things, like touch a square on its 'insides': something no square could do to another, they could only meet up at their boundaries. God is not bound by time as we are, to Him the future is not far away but at hand; that's how it's said,

"Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world." (Acts 15:18).

Human beings can only predict with a fair chance of success those events which always or for the most part happen in just the same way. We can predict, with some hope of success, that the sun will rise tomorrow,-- because it always has before. Because the laws of gravitation always work in the same way, we can predict events such as eclipses. Those events which do not always happen the same way: whether a flock of birds will fly to the left or to the right,-- we cannot predict at all.

We unthinkingly impute these creaturely limitations to God and assert that He, too, can only know the birds will fly to the left or to the right if some necessity has been laid upon them by a prior inexorable law. But we can at the present moment see the flock fly this way or that, and thus know that they have done so. To God, all things are present. We cannot imagine ourselves into the position of knowing what God knows as He does, but must remember that,

"God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent." (Numbers 23:19).

Does God 'look down the corridors of time?' No, because He is not situated in the corridors of time. "Our existence is marked off by days and weeks and months and years; not so the existence of God. Our life is divided into a past, present and future, but there is no such division in the life of God. He is the eternal 'I am.'" (Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, Kindle location 1224). Take off the roof and look down, and you are closer to His perspective. God's perspective may be compared to that of a camera crew viewing a parade from some lofty perch, say atop city hall. They see in a moment the front of the parade and the end of the parade; not by magic, but on account of their viewpoint. The spectator down on street level watching the parade go by cannot see both the end and the beginning simultaneously. This Calvinist argument drags God down to our level, placing Him within the time-stream, as if time were a condition of His existence, not merely that of the creature:

As best I can ascertain from his sometimes wavering writings, John Calvin did not deny human free will altogether, as do his successors. His diagnosis of the human condition was not that man's will, since Adam's fall, is constrained or determined, but that it is corrupt. Man's problem is that, given the choice between good and evil, he will not choose the good. There is a Biblical foundation for this diagnosis, for instance in John 8:34: "Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." But this same passage which diagnoses the unregenerate sinner as a slave, not a free man, does not say that all men in all circumstances are unfree, but "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." (John 8:36).

This is the other side of the Biblical coin: some men are free, others are unfree. The a priori arguments offered by contemporary Calvinists intending to show that God's omniscience cannot be reconciled with man's freedom, may be compatible with the unfreeness of the unregenerate, but in no sense with the equally Biblical fact of the freedom of the regenerate. Does not God foreknow the thoughts and actions of the regenerate free? However He does it, that's how He does it.

Some contemporary Calvinists retain this Biblical view, that both Adam before the fall and the redeemed are free indeed: "As created, human beings were completely free to choose good or evil, truth or error, God or idols. God's freedom is not a threat to human freedom, but the very presupposition of the latter's existence." (Michael S. Horton, For Calvinism, Kindle location 502). Adam's real and actual freedom did not short-circuit God's perfect and comprehensive knowledge of past, present and future. After the fall, Adam's children were oppressed by a kind of 'voluntary servitude.' As the Pharisees set a hedge around the law to protect it, some modern defenders of Calvinism seem to think they are protecting the crucial issue, that the unregenerate sinner is not free and cannot get out from under his contract with Satan except by divine liberation, by denying freedom to all and sundry: Adam before the fall, the redeemed in heaven. But exploding this thermonuclear device invalidates also God's great promise that the truth shall make you free: if human freedom is conceptually impossible from the get-go, then none ever had, or ever will have, it.

Given that the transaction wherein the unregenerate sinner comes to Jesus is the most important decision in life, determining our eternal happiness or misery, it is understandable that it would suck up all the available oxygen and dominate the debate about free choice. Yet simply to state the rubric: as election to eternal life goes, so go all the choices of life; if the choice to repent made by an unregenerate sinner is not a free choice but requires such as degree of divine assistance as to leave uncertain who is the agent, then there are no free men and no free choices,— is to show its bankruptcy; it is patently wrong. The Bible does not say there are no free men, but that some men are not free.

To say nothing of his ability to choose the good, when the regenerate man makes a morally indifferent choice, say whether to have pancakes or waffles for breakfast, there is nothing in the Bible to suggest this is not truly a free choice. It is certainly not the result of Godly coercion. The regenerate man is free to wear his blue shirt or the green, both being neither immodest nor inappropriate. When the regenerate man chooses between two equally wholesome options, such as whether to enjoy a picnic in the park or to attend the model train convention, God does not make this decision and leave him with the illusion he made it.

Even John Calvin never denied that there was once one free man, Adam, who was created free but fell into bondage: "On the other hand, when we come to speak of man, he will be found to have sinned voluntarily, and to have departed from God, his Maker, by a movement of the mind not less free than perverse." (John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, Chapter 3). Adam fell, he was not pushed. Nor does John Calvin resort to the Soviet device of redefining freedom. Adam's freedom was real; he was created good, and "able not to sin" (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter II, Section 13). God would have granted him perseverance if he had asked for it: "The grace of persisting in good would have been given to Adam if he had so willed." (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter II, Section 13). It was left to the successors to cross this Rubicon. In the wake of the success of Isaac Newton's physics, philosophical determinism became popular, and this worldly system of philosophy was wedded to the Bible. This is the 'Calvinism' which still lives today and pokes its head out through the teaching of popular Calvinist preachers, though when challenged, the challenger is rebuked for raising a straw-man. It is no straw-man, but a bad, unbiblical, man-made system of thought. When those who subscribe to it insist on finding, in the interwoven fabric of time, eternity and God's knowledge, some incompatibility with the very concept of human freedom, point out to them that John Calvin did not deny that Adam was free, and free in the truest sense: he was created good, and able to choose both good and ill.

The erroneous idea that God foreknows the future (though to Him, of course, it is not future) only insofar as He inventories the contents of His own mind and discerns His own will, is so far an integral part of the modern Calvinist system as to be advanced by them as an 'argument' in favor of their ideas:

Calvinists protest, but there is nothing God could possibly foreknow about a dead man, as are all sinners:

"And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others." (Ephesians 2:1-4).

It is certainly true that sinners are "dead in trespasses and sins," and moreover are disabled by inert hearts of stone. Grace gives new life, and implants a new, beating and living, heart. However, it is possible to overwork this simile; while it is certainly true that a dead man cannot repent, it is also true that a dead man cannot sin. The Bible teaches that the law holds no sway over a dead man, "Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?" (Romans 7:1), so where is the decedent's condemnation? Where is the law that stands against him? So the effort to forge this admittedly Biblical simile into an all-purpose demonstration of the truth of Calvinism runs into difficulties of mixed metaphor.

What it is that God foreknows we can't be sure, but we can be sure that God does foreknow something He perceives as relevant, because the Bible tells us so.

Denying the Bible

"In Scripture there is not the slightest reference to an election of God whereby one person is chosen to be saved and another is not...It is the plan of God that is elected, chosen, foreknown, and predestined -- not the individual or national choice of man to conform to that plan. The plan is the same for all alike; and everyone without exception is invited, chosen, elected, foreknown, and predestined to salvation, on the sole basis of the individual's choice and total conformity to the gospel to the end of life; otherwise, one will be lost, and there can be no exception to this divine plan. God's part in salvation for all men has been completed, and whoever meets His terms will be saved." (The Dake Annotated Reference Bible, Finis Dake, p. 1259, Election.)

Why did Cleopatra go into therapy? Because she was Queen of de Nile. Perhaps she will have to cede her crown to Finis Dake. The Bible knows of no "plan" of God which is predestined to glory,-- what glory might a "plan" enjoy?-- but of human individuals:

"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified." (Romans 8:28-30).

As we've seen in Ephesians 1:3-6, adoption as sons belongs to human beings, not to a 'plan.'

Belief belongs to human beings, not to a 'plan:'

"Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed." (Acts 13:48).

Salvation belongs to human beings, not to a 'plan:'

"But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14).

Names belong to human beings, not to a 'plan:'

"All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." (Revelation 13:8).

These references are inherently personal; and what can be the point of denying a plain Bible truth? But however bad some of the popular Arminianism out there may be, that is no reason to adopt Calvinism; we mustn't select the least bad of two bad alternatives, but aim for perfect conformity to the Bible standard.

Poor in Spirit

"Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?" (James 2:5).

Calvinism portrays God's decree of predestination as grounded solely in His free sovereignty, on a basis unknowable to man, looking to nothing outside Himself. Yet Jesus and His followers spoke at great length about whom God had chosen and whom He had not. In some cases the qualities mentioned are fruits of grace displayed by the elect, in other cases the qualities mentioned are neither meritorious nor produced by grace:

"Then He lifted up His eyes toward His disciples, and said: Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh...But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full, for you shall hunger." (Luke 6:20-25).

Physical, literal poverty is neither chosen nor meritorious, nor is it simply ordained by God, inasmuch as the Bible finds human oppression one of its causes. John Calvin's solution is to 'spiritualize' and 'meritorialize' all Biblical references to poverty and riches. In some cases this seems to be warranted, as when Matthew speaks of the "poor in spirit": at other times it plainly is not. In John Calvin's mind, God can have no possible reason for preferring one sinner over another, because both are wholly, and thus equally, bad. Yet God plainly has His own ranking system; He loves the poor, though they are no better than the rich.

Sociologists credit John Calvin with helping to invent the capitalist ethic, which is a good thing in its way. Too bad he did it only by turning a blind eye to much of what the Bible plainly teaches.

Hen and Chicks

Jesus lamented over Jerusalem:

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" (Matthew 23:37, Luke 13:34).

If there is no factor involved but God's good pleasure, then it is not obvious why He expresses disquiet and displeasure, at times, over the outcome of His dealings with men:

"Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’" (Ezekiel 33:11, 18:23, 32).

"How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I set you like Zeboiim?
My heart churns within Me;
My sympathy is stirred." (Hosea 11:8).

If there is no factor involved but only God's sovereignty, then why does God insist on making Himself unhappy?

All Men

"The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9).

"For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. . ." (1 Timothy 2:3-6).

The Bible says that God wills all men to come to repentance and be saved, yet not all men repent and are saved. There must therefore be some factor at play outside of God's will. Since there is no force in the universe which can overturn or defeat God's will, it must be that He allows the working of some extraneous agency, whatever it may be.

Some people say that the "all men" of these verses are not "all men" but rather "all" of those to whom these letters are addressed, that is the saints of God. Does scripture allow imposing contextual limitations to God's promises? The Psalmist exhorts the people, "Today, if you will hear His voice: do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion..." (Psalm 95:7). What day is 'today' by the reckoning of the author of the letter to Hebrews? A thousand years ago? No, the day when the hearers of scripture hear the verse: "...but exhort one another daily, while it is called 'Today...'" (Hebrews 3:13). Paul endorses this principle of interpretation in Romans Chapter 3. The Psalmist cries out against violent men: "They sharpen their tongues like a serpent; the poison of asps is under their lips." (Psalm 140:3). Who are these awful people? The hearers of the law: "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law..." (Romans 3:19). What a strange principle of interpretation, cutting so far against the grain for modern readers, who are urged to ask, 'What did this mean to those people back then?' But by God's own principle of interpretation, His words are not addressed to those people back then, but to those who hear, whoever they may be; 'we' are 'you,' the day when we got up this morning is 'today.' God's own principles of interpretation do not allow limiting the promises of God by narrowing their context to those originally addressed.

It is objected that sometimes 'all' does not mean 'all,' as for instance when Luke says all the world was to be taxed: "And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered." (Luke 2:1). South America was not taxed, China was not taxed. The Mediterranean was not even all the known world, what about the Scythians, the Ethiopians, the Persians? This is true but seems a slender reed on which to lean. What if that was the precise wording of Caesar's decree? Ambitious rulers have claimed what they have not held; only God's reach does not exceed His grasp. Latin historians like Tacitus use similar language: "There was the Roman Emperor, lord but a few days before of the whole human race, leaving the seat of his power, and passing through the midst of his people and his capital, to abdicate his throne. Men had never before seen or heard of such an event." (Tacitus, The Histories, 3.68). Perhaps they dismissed as a temporary inconvenience the fact that the entirety had not yet been brought into proper order. If Caesar had used this language in his decree, then it says nothing about Luke's, or the Holy Spirit's, sense of propriety as to the meaning of 'all.' It is not the lexicographer's job to make valid every boast.

I don't know whether there is any other man-made doctrine which encounters the conundrums with one simple world as do the Calvinists with 'all.' Like other quantity words, 'all' can be used in approximation, meaning, not 'each and every one,' but only 'the vast majority.' However this helps the Calvinist's case not at all, because he does not understand 'the elect' to be 'the vast majority' of men. Instead, he prefers, 'all the elect,' or sometimes an otherwise unattested sense of 'all,' in which it means a representative sample of each sub-group:

"The word all must be understood to mean all the elect, all His Church, all those whom the Father has given to the Son, etc., not all men universally and every man individually. The redeemed host will be made up of men from all classes and conditions of life, of princes and peasants, or rich and poor, of bond and free, of male and female, of young and old, of Jews and Gentiles, men of all nations, and races, from north to south, and from east to west." (Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 429).

Why "must" 'all' mean 'all the elect'? Because otherwise Calvinism is disconfirmed.

L - Limited Atonement

"Atonement limited to the elect."

"The Calvinist, on the other hand, says that Christ died only for the believer, the elect. . ." (Edwin H. Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism, p. 50). This point is directly contradicted by the Bible:

"And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world." (1 John 2:2).

This is not a point of theoretical concern only. If you stand on the street corner handing out gospel tracts, and a passer-by asks you, 'Did Christ die for me?', if you are a Calvinist, you cannot look him in the eye and tell him 'yes.' How would you know whether he is one of the elect? You are obliged to rephrase.

All and Some

There are times when words like 'whole' and 'all' are not meant literally, but there is no reason to think this is one of them, nor would anyone so think unless seeking to save the hypothesis. John repeats the thought, "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world." (1 John 4:14). That Jesus is Savior of "the world" is several times stated in John's writings; he records the Baptist's testimony as, "The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." (John 1:29), and also witnesses to the Samaritans' testimony, "And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world." (John 4:42).

Is it God's will that any should perish?: "Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish." (Matthew 18:14):

Paul sketches out a similar concept, "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. . .To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation." (2 Corinthians 5:14-19). The object of reconciliation and atonement is "the world," not a subset of the world's population, 'the elect.' It is unclear how Jesus could taste death for "every man:" "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man." (Hebrews 2:9);— if He did not die for "every man," ('pantos,' all), but only for 'some' men. The verse quoted above, 2 Corinthians 5:14, states explicitly that "one died for all." It is always true that words,— all words, not just 'all,'— can be used loosely, not in their strictest signification. However if a theory has nothing bolstering it but the hope that the Bible's words are used carelessly, then why adopt it?

The gospel call is universal, "Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead." (Acts 17:30-31).

“Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45:22).

Jesus gave the call: "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28). The invitation goes out to "all you who labor and are heavy laden." Is this a bona fide offer, or is it said with a snicker, like those carnival games where no one can possibly ever win the stuffed animal, because it can't be done? The Calvinist concedes it must be a bona fide offer, to deny it is monstrous, and then explains, "We believe that God “unfeignedly,” that is, sincerely or in good faith, calls all those who are living under the gospel to believe, and offers them salvation in the way of faith and repentance. . .The offer of salvation in the way of faith and repentance does not pretend to be a revelation of the secret counsel of God, more specifically, of His design in giving Christ as an atonement for sin." (Berkhof, Louis. Systematic Theology (Kindle Locations 8281-8285). GLH Publishing.) The Lord throws out this invitation, knowing that not "all," but only "some," of those who labor can possibly respond! That's the "secret counsel:" that to some of those who labor and are heavy-laden, the message is really, 'I'm not talking to you.' Why, then, is the invitation made to "all?"

All who thirst can freely come to the waters of life: “And the Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!' And let him who hears say, 'Come!' And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.” (Revelation 22:17). The pagans assigned to Tantalus the torment of watching what was offered flee away as he reached for it; surely no such fraudulent offer can be suspected of God.

'World' presents problems, for the Calvinist, similar to 'all' and 'every.' A word with several meanings in scripture, it must unconvincingly be wrested to mean 'the elect:'

"As to whose 'sin' (i.e., guilt, as in 1 John 1:7, etc.) has been 'put away,' Scripture leaves us in no doubt — it was that of the elect, the 'world' (John 1:29) of God's people!" (Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, p. 58).

Go back a few verses and give that interpretation a test drive: "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not." (John 1:10). His own elect knew Him not? Yet so they insist: "In like manner, the 'world' in John 3:16 must, in the final analysis, refer to the world of God's people." (Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, p. 191). Let us test and see whether the 'world' of John 3:16 can mean 'the elect world:'

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." (John 3:16-18).

This means the world of the elect, they tell us: "It was just because God so loved the world of elect sinners that he sent his only begotten Son that the world might be saved through him." (Edwin H. Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism, p 53). Try to work that out in detail: 'For God so loved the elect. . .For God sent not his Son to the elect world to condemn the elect; but that the elect through him might be saved.' Who, then, is condemned? Someone who lives elsewhere than the world? Plainly someone is condemned: 'he that believeth not.' And why say later, "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." (John 15:19), where 'the world' [κοσμος] cannot possibly mean 'the elect.' Taking 'the world' to mean 'the elect' (when it needs to, not otherwise) is an evasion that fails to convince; let words take their natural meaning, and draw conclusions accordingly.

A passage like John 6 indicates a concern for "the world:" "For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. . .If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." (John 6:33-51). If all that is meant is only, 'that portion of the world which I care about,' perhaps this restriction should have been stated. In response, the Calvinists point to instances where 'world' means considerably less than the whole entire world, for example, in the decree mandating Luke's census. But this establishes less than they world like. The Romans used to refer to the sphere of their sovereignty as 'the world,' even though they not only did not rule over, but did not know the existence of, Sumatra, New Zealand, Pantagonia, etc. All the Bible is guaranteeing in an indirect quotation of an imperial decree, is that, yes, the emperor, or those acting in his behalf, did say that, not that he said it and it's true:

At this, they will point to Acts 11:28, "Then one of them, named Agabus, stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar." Can it be thought the penguins in Antarctica suffered dearth during these years? These people knew nothing about penguins! And so, indeed, one must concede 'the world' can sometimes mean the known world, or the inhabited world, not the entirety. But I think this grants them less purchase than they think to plant their lever and eject the troublesome 'world' and 'all' verses from the Bible. It's a quibble.

Suppose God really does mean 'all'? Why not simply take Him at His word? It is a bit of a come-down when a system which advertises itself as the Bible truth turns out to lean upon the hope that God doesn't mean just exactly what He says. In some cases the Bible's 'all' is 'all' by approximation, virtually all, say 95 percent; in no case is 'all' a 'small fraction' of the total, nor a representative sample of each constituent group. A willingness to 'bend' words as needed pulls in a different direction from a willingness to learn from God's word. It matters in evangelism because people have been saved when they heard that God loves them, even in Calvinist churches: “An ungodly stranger, stepping into one of our services at Exeter Hall, was brought to the cross by the words of Wesley’s verse—“Jesu, lover of my soul.” 'Does Jesus love me?' said he: 'then why should I live in enmity to him?'” (Spurgeon, Charles H.  Lectures to My Students (p. 81). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.) Why indeed? However the greeter cannot stand at the door of churches which subscribe to limited atonement and tell all and sundry, 'God loves you,' because He does not; in Calvinism, He loves only the elect. They must rephrase; if done skillfully, only the alert will notice.

History

There is controversy whether John Calvin himself believed in 'L.' Sometimes he does not sound like it:

"Who taketh away the sin of the world. He uses the word sin in the singular number, for any kind of iniquity; as if he had said, that every kind of unrighteousness which alienates men from God is taken away by Christ. And when he says, 'the sin of the world,' he extends this favor indiscriminately to the whole human race; that the Jews might not think that he had been sent to them alone. But hence we infer that the whole world is involved in the same condemnation; and that as all men without exception are guilty of unrighteousness before God, they need to be reconciled to him. John the Baptist, therefore, by speaking generally of the sin of the world, intended to impress upon us the conviction of our own misery, and to exhort us to seek the remedy." (John Calvin, Commentary on John, John 1:29).

See also his Commentary on Hebrews 9:28, "To bear, or, take away sins, is to free from guilt by his satisfaction those who have sinned. He says the sins of many, that is, of all, as in Romans 5:15. It is yet certain that all receive no benefit from the death of Christ; but this happens, because their unbelief prevents them." (John Calvin, Commentary on Hebrews 9:28). The founder's uncertainty on this point is no recommendation in its favor.

Calvinists generally rebut the Bible's 'all' verses with 'many' verses, which they take to mean 'only many;' Calvin himself here shows their error. The pastor who tells the congregation, 'Christ died for you and  me,' isn't ruling out the billions of human beings he has not mentioned. John Calvin himself seems undecided on this crucial point, 'L.'

Although this point is widely accepted by Calvinists today, its history generally is rather sparse. Augustine, for example, who pioneered some of John Calvin's viewpoint, does not accept this one; he considered Christ's atonement as having covered Judas's sin:

"To suffer indeed He had come, and He punished him through whom He suffered. For Judas the traitor was punished, and Christ was crucified: but us He redeemed by His blood, and He punished him in the matter of his price. For he threw down the price of silver, for which by him the Lord had been sold; and he knew not the price wherewith he had himself by the Lord been redeemed." (Augustine, Exposition of the Psalms, Psalm LXIX, Chapter 27, p. 674 ECF 1_08.)

While the novelty of a given viewpoint is no conclusive argument against it, the fact that this view is first found in certain of Calvin's successors is no recommendation either.

Fair Warning

Christ died for the weak brother, but not only for the weak brother: "And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?" (1 Corinthians 8:11).

"Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died." (Romans 14:15).

If the possibility exists, and plainly it does, that the weak brother might "perish," be lost, even though Christ died for that now destroyed weak brother, then it is not only for the elect that Christ died. Some claim this is a hypothetical case which cannot occur: "In the second place, these passages are, in some cases at least, hypothetical. . .The passage neither asserts nor implies that any actually perish for whom Christ died. None perish whom He came to save. . ." (Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology: The Complete Three Volumes (Kindle Locations 22101-22104). GLH Publishing.) If so why bring it up?

A similar situation is found in Hebrews 10:26-29:

"For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?" (Hebrews 10:26-29).

If this willful sinner was sanctified by the Lord's blood, but is on his way to a fearful judgment, then the power of the blood extends even to the non-elect, though without benefit to them.

Unmerciful Servant

The Lord told a story about forgiveness. When the king forgave his Hell-bound servant; he did not tell him, 'There are insufficient funds in the royal treasury to cover your debt:'

I - Irresistible Grace

Stiff-Necked

Some means of grace are readily resistible:

"You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you." (Acts 7:51).

A face-to-face encounter with a prophet of God can be resisted, as the Sanhedrin resisted Stephen, to his death. At this, some people would drop the matter. But in Calvinism, if the Bible indicates that God's grace can be resisted, we do not stop there. Instead: 'Sure, that kind of grace can be resisted; but then there is the irresistible kind!' We simply proliferate kinds, types and species of grace, as per usual: "The work of the Holy Spirit upon or towards men is always 'resisted' by them; His work within is always successful." (Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, p. 195). Thus, there is the general call, and then there is the effectual call.

But Biblically, the longsuffering of God which is resistible, and originates in common grace not saving grace, is not distinguished from the longsuffering intended to eventuate in repentance: "Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?" (Romans 2:4). Those who make this distinction are not following the Bible in so doing, because the Bible fails to make this distinction when it would be relevant, if it were real.

Drag and Drop

 Indeed there are various ways God works upon His children; outwardly, as shown above. But God also works on our 'insides':

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. " (Ezekiel 36:26).

With what heart will we resist God then? John 6:44 is sometimes brought in to prove this point:

"No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day." (John 6:44).

The word "draw" is ελκυω, to draw or drag. 'Draw' has the sense of pulling toward oneself: "To cause to move continuously by force applied in advance of the thing moved; to pull along; to haul; to drag; to cause to follow. . ." (Webster's, 1). People are dragged here and there, with or without their consent: "But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw ['ελκυω'] you before the judgment seats?" (James 2:6); "And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew ['ελκυω'] them into the marketplace unto the rulers. . ." (Acts 16:19). Here the sense is of people coerced, dragged along by a mob they are unable to resist.

This, some say, shows that grace is irresistible. But are there any cases in scripture of 'drag-and-drop'? There is one in the Septuagint, Nehemiah 9:30: "Yet thou didst bear long ['ελκυω'] with them many years, and didst testify to them by thy Spirit by the hand of thy prophets: but they hearkened not; so thou gavest them into the hand of the nations of the land." (Brenton Septuagint). God dragged them along for a while, but ultimately dropped them. So perhaps too much is made of this verse and this word.

Internal Consistency

What is plain is that God's grace in some forms is eminently resistible, and is resisted. But, they say, this is not saving grace. That kind is irresistible. And they know this how? Because they have so defined it; their definition of Total Depravity as Total Inability leaves this as corollary. One must admit it all hangs together:

"The parts of this scheme are not only harmonious, but they are also connected in such a way that the one involves the others, so that if one be proved it involves the truth of all the rest. . .There can scarcely be a clearer proof that we understand a complicated machine than that we can put together its several parts, so that each exactly fits its place; no one admitting of being transferred or substituted for another; and the whole being complete and unimpeded in its action. Such is the order of God's working, that if you give a naturalist a single bone, he can construct the whole skeleton of which it is a part; and such is the order of his plan of redemption, that if one of the great truths which it includes be admitted, all the rest must be accepted." (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Kindle location 18032-18049).

Given a bone, they've given us a system. In fact the skeptic is entitled to demand Bible proof in detail, not of portions only. This internal coherence only means subtle errors snowball and distortions of emphasis grow. Once the system is complete, the enquirer is entitled to ask, 'Does the system as a whole cohere with scripture?' If the answer is no, the response should become, not a retreat to mystery, but rather a search to discover which small error has been allowed to propagate unchecked.

To summarize the doctrine: "Although the general outward call of the gospel can be, and often is, rejected, the special inward call of the Spirit never fails to result in the conversion of those to whom it is made. This special call is not made to all sinners but is issued to the elect only! The Spirit is in no way dependent upon their help or cooperation for success in His work of bringing them to Christ." (D. N. Steele, C. C. Thomas and S. L. Quinn, quoted in Whosoever Will, David Allen and Steve Lemke editors, p. 111). But there is no reason to bifurcate grace in this manner except to 'save the hypothesis' of Calvinism.

Happy Atheists

When Paul cries out, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24), the Calvinists hear the voice of a redeemed man, because who, absent God's irresistible grace, would inspect his own condition and find it "wretched"? Do they think, then, that atheists are happy? Atheists object when Christians talk about how there is a God-shaped hole in the human heart, an empty place which only God can fill. They angrily protest that their lives are perfectly fulfilling, thank you very much, there is nothing wrong with them, and nothing lacking to their happiness.

But social statistics tell a different story. Atheists score higher in bad things, like suicide rate and incidence of depression, and lower in reported satisfaction with one's life. Atheism, in fact, does not 'work,' for very many people. Both sides of the debate, I think, put too much stock in the testimony of converts. It stands to reason that people who are on the verge of leaving will express the lowest levels of satisfaction with the organization to which they presently belong. Atheists over-estimate the dissatisfaction of Christians when they assume that, because those who left the church to become atheists say that their fellow pew-sitters are hypocrites and pastors phonies, all Christians feel the same way. And likewise, those atheists who find their way to the altar and confess how miserable was their life as an atheist, are not necessarily speaking for those who haven't left. The 'leavers' are the group with the most dissatisfaction, versus the 'stayers.' Still, there does seem to be a surplusage of unhappiness on the atheist side; why else do more of them kill themselves?

As we've seen, Calvinists 'meritorialize' a lot of things which are quite pointedly not described as meritorious works in the Bible, like faith and repentance. No doubt they also meritorialize godly sorrow. Now godly sorrow,— contrition and unease over an ill-spent life,— might be worth meritorializing. But what of the sorrow that sends the atheist plummeting through the upper-story window of the sky-scraper down to the pavement below? It cannot have been awoken by irresistible grace: a miserably unhappy man who dies an unbeliever is no recipient of irresistible grace, if there is such a thing. It may be that the demon who inhabited him found sport in casting off its host. But had he bounced off a canopy instead of smacking onto the pavement, might he have sought, and found, a remedy for his unhappiness?

From time to time Christians speak up, expressing outrage that their community is not more 'open' about mental illness. They think they are showing compassion in encouraging their depressed fellows to look to the pharmaceutical industry for an answer. Meanwhile, the church is sitting on a very effective cure for mild depression in the form of the gospel. It is difficult to avoid the impression that there really is a God-shaped empty space in the human heart, as Blaise Pascal thought. Calvinism requires erecting a Chinese wall between the misery that leads the atheist to the altar and the misery that drove him, three years prior, out the sky-scraper window. Practically and experientially, there may be little discernible difference.

Call and Response

Scriptures like Proverbs 1:24 describe a futile quest,

"Surely I will pour out my spirit on you; I will make my words known to you. Because I have called and you refused, I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded, because you disdained all my counsel, and would have none of my rebuke, I also will laugh at your calamity. . ." (Proverbs 1:23-26).

What is the Calvinist translation of this? 'I called, but not effectuality; you disdained, like you could have done any differently'? It seems better to take it at face value.

P - Perseverance of the Saints

Failure to Persevere

It's a matter of common observation to watch people who appeared to accept the gospel with great enthusiasm turn away. They may even end by blaspheming God. How does the Bible itself describe these people: as saints who failed to persevere...or as "not of us"?

"They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us." (1 John 2:19).

This is the Bible vocabulary, we should use it too.

Those who are truly "of us" are not lost but persevere till the end. So it is said, and believers should not argue with their instruction sheet. A more pointed question might be, how to determine group membership? Who are these individuals? Alas, they do not wear name tags. Whether introspection might help determine membership in this class is one speculative possibility. We can rest assured in His promises, which are solid; but how do we stand in relation to these promises? Have we seized hold of them? Several verses to study:

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand." (John 10:27-29).

Is this just a truism: that those who persevere to the end will persevere to the end? At salvation time meets eternity and mutable, changeable creatures are stamped with our eternal destiny. The New Covenant is instantiated with a promise that God remakes our very nature:

"And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from Me." (Jeremiah 32:40).

The same work He began, He will finish:

"I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, . . .being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;. . ." (Philippians 1:3-6).

It is the "power of God" which keeps the believer:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (1 Peter 1:3-5).

This supernatural preservation is the work of God, not a testament to the fidelity of the believer. The turgid, filthy water we might draw from our own well will not cleanse us, only the fountain of God. On this point Calvinists are on to something: "It is, strictly speaking, not man but God who perseveres." (Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, Kindle location 11464), because "the believer would fall away, if he were left to himself." God does not leave the believer only forensically 'justified,' i.e., found innocent though guilty as hell; the Holy Spirit sanctifies and makes new this declared-innocent-though-guilty miscreant. It is the power of God working in man.

Since the question is not about the facts but about how to describe a category of people, one wonders why there need be such controversy.

Falsification

There is a vernacular form of 'Once Saved Always Saved,' which runs like this: 'Johnny answered an altar call when he was ten years old. Although he subsequently became a second-story man and died in a shoot-out with police, he must have gone to be with the Lord in spite of everything, because he certainly was saved when he answered that altar call.' But this is not, as far as I can gather, what Calvinists believe. There is a kind of 'faith' which is more apparent than real; Simon the Samaritan, the heresiarch, 'believed' after a fashion, but it was not counted to him for righteousness, he was too ambitious.

Sociology

When we look about us at church life, we see a spiritual muddle. It may be that the person sitting to your right side in church will, in ten years' time, be a Wiccan or a Buddhist and thus lost for eternity, while meanwhile the atheists outside, railing against God, will be on the inside. If one wrote down the names of the 'elect' on a list, as best as can be determined by the outward observer, and then stored it in a safe-deposit box, retrieving it ten years later, the list would require considerable editing. Does either side, the Calvinist or the Wesleyan, actually predict the confusion we see? If so, this would be an admittedly weak, empirical verification of their view. It might seem that they do so; Calvinists, in their polemics against other viewpoints, will often describe the church in a binary mode seldom heard from Arminians. If, however, these binary, light/dark descriptions of the church are heard only in polemics and what is heard elsewhere is far less dramatic, or different from what is observed, this may be less of a determining factor.

Sometimes people who are angrier with Calvinism than familiar with it will complain, my God does not sit in stony silence while sinners plead with Him for mercy, which He will not grant because they are not of His elect! Calvinists indignantly reply that this never, ever happens in their system, because the carnal mind is at enmity with God, and the elect are the only people who mourn for their sin. Since these are two distinct, non-overlapping populations, the ready conviction of the Calvinist that he is of the elect is understandable: "'It is impossible, that a believer in Christ should not be elected of God, because it is only by the election of God that one becomes a believer in Christ. . .'" (Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 458).

But we all know of cases where a sinner has turned to God with great apparent enthusiasm, studied the Bible diligently. . .and then ended his race a hardened atheist shaking his fist at God on his death-bed. The Arminian has a ready answer, finding fault with the apostate's faith; he never truly believed. But according to the Calvinist, there is nothing within the repentant sinner to which God looks with any interest.

"What causes some men to repent and believe, while others, with the same external privileges, reject the Gospel and continue in impenitence and unbelief? The Calvinist says that it is God who makes this difference, that he efficaciously persuades some to come to Him; but the Arminian ascribes it to the men themselves." (Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 251).

Actually Arminians, fewer in number than counted by Calvinists, ascribe it to God's grace, though they do situate saving faith within the human heart. In this case, what happened? Certainly this person objectively threw himself down before God, begging His mercy. Is repentance after all within unaided human capability, as Arminians do not believe it to be? Are they Pelagians after all? But haven't they said, "In the nature of the case the first movement toward salvation can no more come from man than his body if dead could originate its own life." (Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 252). Or was God playing, toying with him, experimenting? Although according to Calvinist theory the complement of sinners who begged for mercy and did not find it should be an empty set, empirically, it would seem, it is not.

As seen above, Calvinist doctrine demands a particular order of events. First comes regeneration, then faith. Once regenerated, the believer is free to pray for. . .what he has already received!:

"A man is not saved because he believes in Christ; he believes in Christ because he is saved." (Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 175).

Again: "All Christians believe in the new birth, but Calvinists believe that it is a gift that God gives us so that we will believe, not because we believed." (Michael S. Horton, For Calvinism, Kindle location 258). Can this sequencing requirement be defended, consistently and in detail, against the Bible? Or is it one-sided and unbalanced? In John 20:31, believing is the ground and source of life, not its after-effect: "But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name." Or, "Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting." (1 Timothy 1:16). These show faith as the basis of new life. Compare also Acts 2:38: "Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." To be sure this verse cannot give a hard-and-fast rule either, because scripture says, "Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost." (1 Corinthians 12:3). However one would expect that if regeneration-repentance-belief were indeed the invariant rule, it would be so stated, but this is not found to be the case:

Return to Saved by Faith...

Post-Mortem

Having examined the five petals of our tulip in detail, we discover this man-made system cannot be fully substantiated by Bible study. We don't have exhaustive knowledge, but neither have we so little to go on as to say, 'We don't know:' "Why God selected these particular individuals rather than others, we do not know." (Arthur W. Pink, The Doctrine of Election, p. 5). Perhaps we do not like God's upside-down system, but it has been adequately explained.

The Synod of Dort pronounced that salvation was "unconditional," i.e., not contingent upon anything foreseen by God, but no Calvinist has ever delivered proof that there is nothing God foreknows which is relevant. Rather they have concentrated their scrutiny upon only one point, or at most two: that God cannot foreknow merit, inasmuch as human merit is his gift. Indeed, but far from exhausting the category 'everything about an individual human being which God can foreknow,' these one, or two, points, barely scratch the surface! Given that the Bible explicitly teaches God's election is according to foreknowledge, it does not fall to the duty of the Bible-believer to point out what God foreknows which is germane, but only to repeat, with the Bible, that he does foreknow something or another which informs His decree of election. While helpfully cueing the inquirer not to confuse 'total' depravity with 'utter' depravity, they themselves make the switch, implying that our status is really the latter, only this reality is masked, by the extra-biblical gift of 'common grace,' and thus no one actually ever sees an utterly depraved person, nor are such described in the Bible. 'Just as we predicted!' they exult. Limited atonement is verbally contradicted in the scriptures. And so it goes. This man-made system is not the Bible explicated, but a speculative addition thereto.