CONTROVERSIES CONCERNING PREDESTINATION
The people of Jesus should not be focused primarily on ideas or doctrines but on a person—Jesus Christ. And yet so many are. Christ died for them and loves them anyway, and they are His people, but they are misled and distracted. One of the most glaring examples of this is the “Reformed” or “Calvinistic” doctrine concerning “predestination” or “election.” Scarcely will you find believers speaking and teaching in a more silly fashion than when it comes to what is known as “Calvinism.”
John Calvin lived from 1509-1564. He was a prosperous and dictatorial “theologian.” The ideas he presented were highly influenced by and taken from Augustine (354–430), the legendary “Bishop of Hippo.” It was Calvin who articulated and developed the “reformed“ doctrine of predestination that has divided believers for centuries, and taken countless people’s focus off of Christ. Not to mention the fact that it has caused many to despair, worrying that they are not “elect” and therefore cannot be saved.
A tree is known by its fruits, Jesus said (Luke 6:43-45), and the fruit of “reformed theology“ has been disastrous division and false hope—as well as false pride (“Jesus loves me, not you. I am one of the elect. But not everyone is. God just loves me so much, in a way that He does not love everybody else. Yay me!”). I love my brothers and sisters in Christ who have been caught up in Calvinism, but, seriously, can we not see the logical ramifications of this doctrine?
Among the countless ridiculous and spiritually devastating things that John Calvin wrote were these words: “All [people] are not created on equal-terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and accordingly, as each has been created for one or the other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.” Do you see what this “great Christian leader” is saying? God does NOT love everybody. He created some people to go to heaven and created other people just to send them to hell. If you consider yourself a Calvinist, or a part of the “Reformed” movement, this is what you support. Do Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses teach anything more spiritually harrowing than this?
Adopting these ideas from Calvin and others, The Westminster Confession (a very influential document among “Presbyterians” and “Reformed” Baptists and some other traditions) goes so far as to claim that one’s eternal salvation has already been “unchangeably designed” and the number of the elect cannot be “increased or decreased.” While we are attacking doctrines and not individuals—we have many brothers and sisters in Christ who are caught up in this mess—it still must be truthfully asserted that anyone who is focused on Christ and has read the New Testament honestly knows that this is as contradictory to the good news message of Christ for all people as can be found.
It is impossible to estimate the damage that Calvin’s doctrines, and the teachings of those who have been influenced by him, have done to how people perceive the character of God. If it was God’s intention and design—therefore being what He was pleased to do (i.e., was happy about doing)—to elect some to spend eternity in heaven and to pass over others or even predestine them for an eternal hell, then to say that God is a “respecter of persons“ would be an understatement. Yet this is exactly what Calvin, the Westminster Confession, and their modern day theological proponents assert. And they call this the “Gospel,” a word meaning good news. What “good news” it is to know that God has unalterably chosen that some people are going to hell and there is nothing they can do about it!
The Bible says that God is definitely not a respecter of persons (1 Peter 1:17; Acts 10:34–35; Romans 2:11; Ephesians 6:9; James 2:1, 9). Calvinism may not use that phraseology, but it definitely teaches that He is. Which will you believe? The Bible or “Calvinism”? The Gospel of Jesus Christ or “Reformed Theology”? To present God as thinking and acting this way—the way that Calvinists and their theological kinsmen represent Him—puts Almighty God’s morality and concern for human beings below what He explicitly requires from us. It makes one who loves Jesus want to say “HOW DARE THEY!”
Calvinism says that God only wants to save the “elect.” The Bible says that God desires all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). Which will you believe? The choice is yours. You are not “predestined” to believe one way or the other. THE CHOICE IS YOURS! You are not “predestined” to believe Calvin over the Bible. The choice is literally yours.
The Greek verb translated “desires” in 1 Timothy 2:4 is a present-tense form. That is significant. It means that God is “presently” desiring all men to be saved. How His foreknowledge and sovereignty work in real time, we do not understand. But we know they do not mean what Calvinists say they mean. This passage and many others teach that God is eagerly desiring everyone to make the personal decision for themselves to accept Christ. To present God in any other way is to grossly misrepresent Him. God remains in earnest concern for the lost. All of them. He is currently desiring that all people be saved. Anyone who would object to that statement and still call themselves a Bible-believing follower of Jesus is an enigma to me, to say the least. I don’t understand it.
By the same token, those who would say that God is in some sense happy about—“pleased”—to see some go to hell—well, just think about what that says about the heart and nature of God. And it is in direct contradiction to too many plain Bible statements (John 3:16; 2 Peter 3:9). To say that this misrepresents the love and mercy of our wonderful Heavenly Father is, again, an understatement.
When Calvin and his followers, both past and present, speak of “unconditional election” they are denying plain Bible statements. It is without intent, I’m sure (they are honestly mistaken, in other words), but it is still true. The fact that Paul wrote some things that are “hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16) is no excuse to “twist” and abuse those scriptures to make them contradict plain Bible truth. Which is exactly what is going on.
There is no such thing as “unconditional election,” and any verse which “seems” at first to teach that must be understood in light of the overall message of the Gospel. Paul said some difficult things, yes. So did Jesus Himself. There are difficulties in all the writings of the Bible. But you interpret the difficult in light of the simple and clear, not the other way around, which is what Calvinism does. The Bible teaches that God saves those who choose to obey Christ, not those He has “unconditionally elected” to salvation before people were even born (John 14:6; Revelation 3:20; Matthew 7:21; Hebrews 5:9; Revelation 22:17; 2 Thessalonians 1:8; 1 Peter 4:17).
Calvinism also affirms that God’s “predestination” is unchangeable. If you are elected to salvation, then nothing anyone does, including yourself, changes that. If you are elected to be lost, that cannot be altered, either. And yes, these are “Christian” preachers teaching this.
The Bible affirms that we choose to be saved, and we must choose to stay saved. How anyone could deny such a clear and simple Gospel doctrine is beyond me. Calvinists SEEM to pride themselves on their intellectualism, but there is nothing intellectual about denying plain Bible truth. Or in failing to see the logical consequences and conclusions regarding their teaching. If “unconditional election” and “perseverance of the saints,”—i.e., “once saved, always saved”— based on God’s “election” were true, then no one could go from being lost to being saved. They would have been saved from eternity past, and therefore, never really lost.
And no one could go from being saved to being lost, which the Bible continually warns is possible for the Christian to do (Revelation 2:10; 2 Peter 2:10; Hebrews 10:26-27; Matthew 24:13). One of the overall points of the Gospel, made perfectly clear throughout the scriptures, is that anyone can make up their minds to choose Jesus and go from being in a lost state to a saved state. That is the good news of the Gospel. How could any serious or responsible Bible student, much less Bible teacher, deny, either explicitly or implicitly, such basic, Christian (“Gospel 101,” if you will), teaching?
According to Jesus’ own statement, He came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). Someone who is “elect” in the way that Calvinism teaches is never really lost. Therefore, Jesus is not REALLY seeking the lost. If your salvation was determined before you were born, and it is unchangeable based on God’s immutable decree, then no matter how you slice it, the elect are never lost.
In eternity past, the Calvinist affirms, if you are one of the “elect,” God chose you for salvation. And your salvation is based on that election. Therefore, you have always been saved. A more ridiculous concept could not be found among the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. Jesus compared Himself to a physician who could make sick people well (Mark 2:17). Are the “elect” of Calvinism ever actually sick? Of course not. They were saved from eternity past by the election of God.
The Ephesians who came to Christ were, according to Paul, spiritually dead before they made a decision to accept Christ, and then they became alive spiritually (Ephesians 2:1, 5). How could one who has been “elected” to salvation ever be spiritually sick in any real sense? And how could they ever have been spiritually “dead”? Calvinists make much of the fact that the Bible teaches we are “dead” in sins before we become Christians. But that is a metaphor. Instead of taking it as such, they say that “dead people can do nothing.” Therefore, God does everything for you, including making your decision about where you will spend eternity. But Jesus also used the metaphor of someone who is sick and needs a physician. So are we dead or are we just sick? Both, because they are metaphors. Metaphors gravely abused by the dreadful teaching of Calvinism.
Peter talks about the elect and we should talk about the elect, but we should talk about them the way that Peter does and the way the Bible does. Peter’s doctrine of election completely wipes out Calvin’s doctrine of “election.” According to Peter, who was an inspired apostle of Christ – in contrast with John Calvin, who was an irresponsible theologian—said that God’s “elect” had changed. They were not the people of God, but became the people of God. They did not receive mercy and then they did receive mercy. They were in darkness, but they came to the light. All because they decided to trust in Christ (1 Peter 2:9–10). If one wants to say that God gets credit for all of that in some mysterious way, beyond our understanding, then that is certainly true. But to break it down and say the things that Calvinists say, to fit God in their “theological box”—a box that should not even exist, much less be taught to others—seems to me to be the height of religious irresponsibility.
Ignore Calvinists and “Reformed” theologians, my friend. Focus on Christ and the mercy of God, which is available to everyone, including you. When you accept Christ, you are one of the elect. When you accept Christ, you have been predestined. God does not, and will not, make the decision for you about where you will spend eternity. But He will receive you if you decide to come to Christ, no matter who you are. There are mysteries concerning everything that election and predestination means. But it does not contradict what the Bible plainly teaches. The mysterious cannot be interpreted to contradict plain Bible teaching. The plain Gospel.
If you read only the New Testament, only the Bible itself, you would never be a Calvinist. You would never be a Reformed Baptist. You would only be a Christian, rejoicing in the amazing grace of God and you would be focusing on Jesus, the person, not on doctrines like those of Calvinism.
And don’t be fooled or persuaded by the arguments that go “you were born in a Christian environment in a certain part of the world to certain parents at a certain time, and God made that choice, and therefore you were chosen in that sense because you were not born in the Middle East, influenced by Islam, growing up.” All of that sounds good, but it is ridiculous to tie that to some notion of God determining your eternal fate before you were born.
Yes, God is in absolute control, but the God of Calvinism is too small. He is too small to be sovereign and in control and yet, at the same time, leave room for human responsibility. The nature of the world and the nature of things the way God has created them suggests that some people will be born in certain places and others in other places. That is the way the world is set up. That is not indicative of God sovereignly making choices that this one will be born in a Christian environment so they will be saved, and that one will be born in an Islamic environment so they will be lost.
The natural flow of the universe does not keep anyone from being saved, nor does it indicate that you are God’s favorite and He loves you more than He loves others. Calvinism is just an atrocious error. Yes, I’m persuaded that many Calvinists love Jesus Christ and are saved people. They are our brothers and sisters. But they are woefully misguided, and they teach heinous things about God.
Bryan Dewayne Dunaway
