The main difference between Calvinism, a man-made doctrine, and the Bible, a divinely inspired revelation, is the idea that Calvinists believe that all the works of God in connection with our salvation are unconditional. Such thinking is required by their concept of God’s sovereignty—a concept that is simply not taught in the Bible. But when this erroneous concept is then joined with the equally wrong idea that man, since the fall of Adam, is born totally depraved and is, therefore, not only unwilling to do God’s will in such a state, but is actually unable to do so, then the false idea that God can’t predestine a person to be saved based on His foreknowledge of whether or not that person will meet certain divinely imposed conditions is the inevitable result. This, in turn, provides all the main ingredients that form the basis of genuine five-point Calvinism (T-U-L-I-P).
In critiquing such an unscriptural idea, I have, at times, called it a “do-nothing religion” (in that God, in such a system, is the only actor), only to be met with screams and howls from Calvinists claiming this is a totally false caricature of their religion. However, if man does not have free will, and there are no genuine five-point Calvinists who have ever thought he truly does, and if, as has been amply pointed out, Calvinists believe that everything that has to do with man’s salvation must be done by God, then Calvinism, from man’s standpoint, may be properly classified as a do-nothing religion. Now, in saying this I am not describing those who call themselves three- or four-point Calvinists, which are not really Calvinists at all, but Arminians, even though they’d never admit it. This is because the Augustinians/Calvinists have already decided that Arminianism is heresy.
So, there must be no doubt that five-point Calvinism, from man’s standpoint, is a do-nothing religion, as God does it all, even to the point of selecting (viz., choosing/electing/predestining) certain ones to obey His Son by operating upon them with His so-called “irresistible grace.” This irresistible grace causes them to be born again, or renewed spiritually, so that they, in turn, are able to then do what it is that God requires of them. Consequently, there are absolutely no conditions to being saved, for if there were, Calvinists inform us, then man would be earning his salvation by works, not grace. Although this accurately depicts Calvinism, it does not describe, in any shape, form, or fashion, New Testament Christianity.
What The Bible Actually Says
The Bible teaches that God decided to create us with free moral agency. Because He has foreknowledge, God knew His free will creatures were going to fall into sin and be in need of a Savior. Making the decision to redeem them, which was certainly not something He was obligated to do (it’s grace we’re talking about here), God the Father determined to send the Logos (or the divine Word) into this world as a man (viz., Jesus of Nazareth) to live and die so that mankind, in spite of its sinfulness, could be saved by faith in the Father’s only begotten Son.
Consequently, it was foreordained by God, the Father, before the very foundation of the world (i.e., before He ever created man) that Jesus would shed His blood at a particular time in the space-time continuum (cf. 1 Peter 1:19-20). Referring to this, the apostle Paul called it, “when the fullness of the time had come” (Galatians 4:4).
The fact that God could foreknow, before He ever created them, that all His free will creatures would fall into sin and be in need of a Savior and that, in spite of this, He chose to go ahead and create them anyway, does not impugn the character of God, as some Christians seem to think. But why do they think so? I think it is because they have inculcated Calvinistic think-sos and arguments. Now, I’m not saying they’re Calvinists, mind you; only that they have been willing to let the Calvinists define the terms and set the parameters of the debate.
For example, the Calvinistic idea that there is some sort of friction between God’s foreknowledge and man’s free will is not taught in the Scriptures. But because some brethren have believed the Calvinists were right about this, they have felt the necessity to defend man’s free will by sacrificing God’s foreknowledge. Such was a major error for the Calvinists and it is an even bigger one for New Testament Christians.
Even so, because of God’s foreknowledge of the fact that man would sin and that this would, in turn, require Him to send His Son to pay the price for those sins, and that this would be accomplished by man kissing (viz., worshiping) His Son (cf. Psalm 2:12 for this concept of kissing the Son and how the idea is tied to worshipful obedience), and that this would be achieved, on man’s part, by exercising faith in Jesus as Lord and, ultimately, as Savior (stay with me here), He was able, in eternity, to do something—namely, to predestine not just the plan whereby He would redeem fallen man, but exactly who those individuals were who, when given the opportunity, would be willing, of their own free wills, to obey (or “kiss”) His Son, and this by rendering obedience by faith to the gospel plan. (I know this is a very long sentence, but it is imperative to understanding this issue. So, if you didn’t quite understand it the first or second time around, then please make the effort to do so before proceeding any further.)
Now, if God had not been willing to do this, and this even before the foundation of the world, then mankind was going to be lost. Therefore, if man is saved at all, he is saved by grace. But as we shall see, this salvation was not to be by grace alone. Man would have to do something in order to be saved. Salvation is, and this is extremely important, by grace through faith—a faith that would gladly accept and render obedience to God’s conditions of grace. But for now, let’s continue with the logical inferences and ramifications of the working in tandem of God’s “determined counsel and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23).
Thus, those individuals who God “chose…in Him [Jesus Christ] before the foundation of the world” were “predestined” by Him “to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ,…according to the good pleasure of His will” (Ephesians 1:4-5). That this was, even before creation, a done deal in the mind of God is once again confirmed and made quite clear by Romans 8:29-30, which says:
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.
Furthermore, that the end result of this whole process is that these foreknown individuals (i.e., “the elect”) would one day be glorified in Heaven (viz., the “new heavens and a new earth” of 2 Peter 3:13) cannot, according to this passage, be scripturally denied, although I am sorry to say that I have known Christians who have done so, arguing that the glorification mentioned here is only that which takes place on earth when an individual obeys the gospel. Now, I do not deny that our calling and justification is the <1>beginning of this process, but glorification cannot be fully realized unless, and until, we obtain our glorified bodies. It is only then that we will fully and completely be conformed to the image of God’s Son—a Son who is now glorified in heaven and, as such, is “the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18), and all this that He might be able to bring “many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10).
That New Testament Christians could ever think of denying an idea that is so clearly taught in God’s word demonstrates, once again, just how much Calvinistic thinking has influenced our thinking. Again, I am not arguing that such brethren are Calvinists, only that they are willing to deny (i.e., to explain away, if you will) the clear teaching of the Bible concerning the actual contents of God’s foreknowledge, thinking that if God actually knew before the foundation of the world who it was that was going to be saved in Heaven, then the future would somehow be fixed in a way that would nullify man’s free will.
However, the future is not “fixed” because God’s foreknowledge has caused it to be that way; instead, it is “fixed” only because this is the way free will creatures will respond to various circumstances and situations, and God, because HE IS WHO HE IS, simply foreknows what these contingent, free will choices will be. There is nothing inherently causative about such foreknowledge, and those who think there is have fallen prey to philosophy and other man-made think-sos.
But still suffering from that ol’ Calvinistic bugaboo, someone says that if what I have written above is true, then this means that Jesus must have died just for the sins of the elect (that is to say, a limited few) and not for the sins of the whole world. But this simply isn’t true. Although the elect were certainly foreknown by God even before He created the world, Jesus was not predestined to die only for the elect, as the Calvinists teach. No, no, no, a thousand times, no! Jesus, the Scriptures unequivocally teach, died for all mankind, not just a select few, and this, too, was a fact known by God before the foundation of the world (cf. 1 Peter 1:20).
This means that before He actually created this particular world, God knew that only a few, relatively speaking, would be saved, and that the rest would be lost, spending an eternity in a Devil’s hell. Consequently, it is argued by some that if this is, in fact, the case (and it has been demonstrated that this is exactly what the Bible teaches), then how could a loving, merciful God think that the few who would be saved were worth the many who would be lost? This is an important point. Therefore, it behooves us to understand what we can about this, at times, most perplexing subject.
Trying To Think It Through By Faith
As we try to think about such things, even though limited by puny, finite minds, we can theorize that there must have been a multitude of different worlds that God, with His infinite knowledge (which included foreknowledge), could have created, all with a multitude of different outcomes. Why He chose this particular world, along with its particular results, is something completely known at this time, and perhaps forever, only by God. Even so, and this is now a foregone conclusion, He did decide to create this particular world with its particular outcome. Thus, before creating this world and knowing that many souls would be lost for an eternity as the result of His doing so, God did, in fact, choose to create this world: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). And it is just here in this very first verse of the Bible that saving faith begins, for faith, we are told in Romans 10:17 (and this is the “saving faith” we’re talking about), “comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” In Hebrews 11:3, after being informed in verse one that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” we are told: “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” From this beginning verse—verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book—those of us who have been called by the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:14) have learned to trust in and rely upon our Creator, who is, no doubt, our Ruler, as well as our glorious Redeemer, and praise Him for it. And it is just here, at the very beginning of saving faith, that we begin to get some idea why God determined that the remnant of His creation that would be saved and spend an eternity with Him in heaven was worth His creating this particular world. This will become more evident as we continue this study in the next post.