“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to
a different gospel — not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.”
I’m a no-point Calvinist.
I used to think I was a “three-pointer”, but that was only because I didn’t really understand what Calvinists actually thought their points meant. Now that I do see it, I’m a no-point Calvinist … as in “the
Calvinists have no point”.
For anyone who hasn’t heard, Calvinism is the new hip thing
among naïve evangelicals today. Under banners like “The Gospel Coalition” and “The
Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals”, or “The Reformed-whatever”, the acolytes
of a whole new slew of theological gurus are out to get you. Following after
charismatic leaders like John Piper, John MacArthur or Al Mohler, they proclaim
unto you a new gospel — that unless ye be Calvinist, you shall in no wise be saved.
The Old Calvinist Song
What is it they’re spouting? Essentially, it’s the old
five-point Calvinist song. For memory-aid purposes, they convert it into the
acronym “TULIP”, standing for the following points:
- The Total Depravity of Man
- Unconditional Election
- Limited Atonement
- Irresistible Grace
- The Perseverance of the Saints
I used to think I agreed with 1, 2 and 5. I always disagreed with 3 and 4.
I did not believe that Christ died only for a limited
selection of people and doomed others to hell before the foundation of the
world, and I did not believe that it was impossible for a person to resist the
grace of God. I saw plenty of warrant in scripture to simply dismiss these
ideas as absurdities. I could see that God loved the world, not just some
“elect” few, and I could see many people resisting the universally-gracious
call of God, so it was just common sense to throw out those middle two points.
But on the other three I was confused. I thought that Total
Depravity meant “all have sinned”. I thought “Unconditional Election” meant
“the favor of God cannot be merited by human works”. I thought “Perseverance”
meant the same as the doctrine of Eternal Security — namely that, once saved, a
person could not be lost. But when I looked closer at what the neo-Calvinists
were actually teaching, I was stunned to realize that they did not mean any of these things. And I saw that
there wasn’t a thing in their whole package of teaching that I, as a Christian,
could believe — or should ever want to believe.
A Primer on New Calvinism
In a nutshell, here’s what these smooth new salesmen want
you to buy.
They want you to believe that human beings are not just
sinful but “depraved”, meaning not only that there is no good thing at all in
being a human being but that human beings have zero capability to realize or
understand anything at all about God.
They want you to believe that because of this “depravity”,
there’s no way for you to be saved unless God arbitrarily picked (“elected”)
you before the creation of the world to go to heaven, and everyone else to go
to hell; and that other than God’s arbitrary picking of some and not others,
there’s no mechanism of salvation.
That is why, they say, Christ died only for the “elect”, and
did not did not die for unsaved man. The offer of salvation is only to the
“elect”, and it’s a futile offer, since they cannot refuse it. There is no
sincere offer to the “non-elect”, and if you were picked for hell you go there
regardless.
But if God “elected” you, then you have no choice; you are
among the saved, and you have no choice either: the outcome is “irresistible”
either way.
Finally, you have no guarantee that you really are among the
“elect”, even if you think you are, or even if you’ve believed the gospel so
far as you can tell. So you must spend the rest of your Christian life working
hard to prove to yourself that you’re going to heaven — and hope you’re right,
because if you’re wrong you’re off to hell. Only those who “persevere” to the
end thus prove they are in the “elect”.
Divine Determinism
Ironically, the New Calvinists have fallen prey to an old
error. In philosophy, we call this thing “Determinism”. It’s the belief that
free will is an illusion, and that reality is preset in some form. Materialist
Atheism is based on it. Materialists believe that the only things that exist in
the universe are material laws (like the Law of Gravity or the Law of Entropy
or the Law of Survival of the Fittest) so that from the Big Bang until now, no
person has actually had free will; rather, all our choices are “pre-determined”
by these physical laws, and were fated to happen long before we ever thought we
“made a choice” of any kind.
New Calvinists are Divine Determinists: they take out the
idea of physical laws, and substitute for the iron fist of Determinism the iron fist of a
totally arbitrary “God”. God, they say, pre-determines all actions and choices,
so that no person has any free will at all. And they rejoice in the freedom
this gives them from fear, responsibility and uncertainty. They claim this
gives them great personal peace.
Well, dead things are also free from choice, responsibility
and uncertainty, but I wouldn’t recommend that option. There’s nothing more
peaceful than a graveyard.
The Point
Why am I bothering you with this stuff?
Because very soon, somebody else will; and when they do, it
would be great for you if you had some idea of what to think about it. They
will enthuse that they’ve “rediscovered the gospel”, and that if you go along
with them you can too. They’ll tell you that everyone who’s “faithful” and
“committed to the gospel” is coming along. They’ll have videos for you to
watch, books for you to read, conferences for you to attend, and then they’ll
drop names of preachers you’ve heard vague good things about in the evangelical
community.
At that moment, it’s just possible you might not know what
to think of their sales pitch.
So what are we to think? How should we react to the New
Calvinism, especially if we hear it coming from our cherished friends or from reputed
teachers of the Word? I don’t want to be harsh. In fact, I’m not going to be. I’m
just going to tell you what the scripture says is the right reaction to things
like neo-Calvinism. No less a teacher than the Apostle Paul himself writes:
“But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!”
Then, just in case we missed the
point, he does something that God only does when he really desires to make a
point abundantly clear and unequivocal. He repeats himself:
“As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!”
In Short
Now, I’m not saying we ought to
hold any witch hunts here. I’m not saying kill the Calvinists or run them
out of town. I wouldn’t even say we should necessarily break off relations
with someone who is under the neo-Calvinist spell, particularly if that person
has been caught up in their error accidentally, through ignorance or naïvity. Personally, I hope that God grants them the blessing of coming to their senses and escaping the snare of the devil.
Until then, we should address ourselves to sharing the sound doctrine on the gospel “with gentleness and reverence”. Those people we need to give help if we can.
But if we take the word of God
seriously, we may find that there are those who are not so naïve among them,
and who are calling on us to reject the gospel in favor of their “new gospel”.
If so, it’s one of those moments when our loyalty to Christ is being tested at
the deepest level, a sword is among us, and we must choose what we truly
believe … and ultimately, Whom we really love.
I have a sense that soon, very
soon, this is going to become a key issue in many local churches. As a favor
to you, I just want to give you a heads-up about what is involved.
I hope this little primer helps.
[Claims made in this post are examined in greater detail, along with the relevant scriptures, in the Calvinism series in our left sidebar — Ed.]
[Claims made in this post are examined in greater detail, along with the relevant scriptures, in the Calvinism series in our left sidebar — Ed.]
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