Why I Reject Calvinism

Might as well open with a classic.

This is not meant to be polemical—but for those who would like to see an opposing view on Calvinism.

I have a confession to make—I used to be very intimidated by the idea of Calvinism because underneath I didn't feel 100% sure it couldn't possibly be true. This made me in practice scared of God—scared of who he might be and whether I was made for his wrath. Over years of prayer and study I have grown in my confidence that I am no longer intimidated by Calvinism and really don't think it's a very big threat anymore. The major reasons I reject Calvinism are as follows:

1. It makes God less loving than he is.

Just as God is completely holy, completely just and completely powerful, so God is completely loving. The argument comes that God allowing a person to be lost that he could have theoretically saved, makes God less loving than he could be. But this is a wrong definition of love. Love does not mean that God does not have any other reasons or motives for doing something that might be stronger or more important to him than the love he holds for the lost. So whatever mysterious reasons God had for allowing people to be lost, does not override the truth that God genuinely loved those lost people.​

2. It makes God more evil than he is.

These points overlap. Underneath all the secondary decrees and compatibilistic philoso-doublespeak Calvinism employs, is the unalterable logic God decrees all things. This means that however many "degrees of separation" you want to create in between the ultimate decree of God that something would be, and the enactment through external means to get to that decree, there is still underneath a chain from the decree of God to the fulfillment of God's decree that cannot logically be broken. This does indeed make God his own enemy and the author of all evil.​

3. It takes away all sense of true responsibility.

If everything I do is decreed by God before I am born, then my will cannot be the deciding or effectual agent of my sin. This is not to argue or imply that all sin is done through the will of a human; but it is also to support that there is indeed some sin that is done through the will of a human, the sin that rejects the grace of God that is freely offered and well meant. We could redefine "responsibility" as not "the ability to respond," but the mere bare culpability for what is decreed through secondary means, but again this is just philoso-doublespeak obscuring that it is in the end decreed by God.​

All the babble of rejections like "free will isn't in the Bible" and "you didn't use enough Scripture verses" are just pious rhetoric assuming what the objector sets out to prove by preloading the terms free will and exegesis to be deterministic friendly; that is unless you say the Bible verses mean a certain thing you are "eisegeting" and "rationalizing" because you don't agree with deterministic presuppositions brought to the Scripture.

And for the reasons above I do consider Calvinism to be a different Gospel than the one the Bible declares, although by the mercies of God their doctrinal sin can be forgiven. Beyond these 3 major points, I think I have a more primary and fundamental reason for rejecting Calvinism, and that is direct revelation from God that leads to the above logic. If one is spiritually beguiled and blinded, one will not find the above ideas "convincing" because one supernaturally emotionally feels they are wrong.​
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So essentially, I reject Calvinism because it was revealed to me that is a demonic doctrine that appeals to sinful desires we have for a false selfish reasons for security and an evil resolution to the problem of evil. We would rather God deliberately plan and enact evil, than that he passively allowed it to happen creating real victims, because the alternative offends us and makes us feel insecure, but if we can find more comfort in God being evil, then our sin nature will embrace it.​
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The other sinful alternative error for dealing with this problem of delegation, is to put self-righteous goodness inside of man and insist that delegation created no real victims. This is erring on the ditch on the other side of the road, which most Calvinists call "Pelagian," but would be better described as denying the effects of original sin and promoting inherent goodness.​

So then what do I believe if I consider Calvinism false?

I generally follow the ideas of Classical Arminianism, which embraces God's love for all people, the necessity of preceding grace for all those born in sin, the remedy of faith in Christ's substitionary death and resurrection, and the possibility of real apostasy. But all of us who accept Christ as salvation, when we learn of God's salvific economy, we intuitively run the numbers—we factor the way the morality of it "feels" inside our heart—and it's almost impossible not to feel one way or the other. If God seems to allow or work in some way that seems unjust, immoral or puzzling, it's a great challenge and can even become a source of offense to our soul.

I think it's absolutely necessary to employ two disciplines here—to accept things in Scripture that seem contradictory, and put to death everything in us that wants to logically prove our point. The biggest place this happens—is when we posit that God loves all people, and yet some are not saved—and this entails the puzzling contradiction of not seeing a way love synthesizes with letting some be lost, in one way or another. If we were simply to accept these two things—without trying to explain how and prove that they can be logically compatible—it might protect us from being misled by trusting in our own intellect and morality, to attempt to prove they can be compatible, and our own feelings could potentially motivate us to accept a certain doctrine that purports to "fix" the tension in a way that feels understandable or right to us. Weirdly people seem more ready to marry things as opposite as determinism and free will, than to blend universal love and an inexplicable lack of grace's universal bestowal.

A certain Dr. James White likes to call preceding grace the Arminian "duct tape," as if the best we could do is try to patch things together haphazardly. Sadly, even Dr. Flowers the Provisionist constantly seems to also mischaracterize Arminians in similar fashion, by calling our preceding grace a "mystical zapping" not found in the Bible. But I think the real duct tape we pull out, is trying to explain and justify to ourselves when God tells us two different things that seem to contradict, and we can't work it out logically or emotionally, instead of taking the path of complete humility and accepting a paradox that seems impossible to our limited understanding.

Preceding grace is in some way or other believed by all theologies, and the only reason it seems superfluous or absent, is because one doesn't like its implications—that man is both sinfully helpless to begin salvation, and yet free to reject the grace as its offered. Certainly it's frustrating that people seem too ready to box everyone under certain labels, and not allow the nuances for people to self-define, and I've been guilty of that. There are people of all labels with peculiar differences and variations, and all too ready to jump on someone for any perceived infraction of so-called misrepresentation, instead of helpfully explain. And little known to many, there are Arminians who believe in a form of special election, and I'd like to explain that here.

It is obvious to me, anyway, that putting spiritual principles together, it seems unlikely, if not impossible that all people receive the same amount of grace, and probably not even the grace to find the remedy of salvation in Christ under such areas and time periods of intense spiritual darkness. I can chalk that up in some way to the curse of the original sin and every consequence of that terrific rebellion that initiated the kind of unfair world we now live in. But the natural understanding would insist God could surely make a better effort than he has, and there seems—if we are honest—sometimes no good enough reason one can find for God to allow the amount of victimization we know, even intuitively, has happened in this fallen world despite the gift of redemption.

And so I, as an Arminian, accept a form of special election of some souls that receive a more unique call and grace from God—although not irresistibly—yet still, I accept the predestination and election and calling of specific souls called by God with a grace and purpose that not every soul ubiquitously shares. I don't think this necessarily logically means God does not want all saved, and in fact I think this brings a unique responsibility to guide, pray for, and help those not so specially elected, just as the nation of Israel was elected to bring spiritual light to other surrounding pagan nations. But at the same time—people seem to just knee-jerk categorize Calvinists as people who believe in unique election and Arminians as people who believe in "peanut butter" grace. Not so—there is room for nuance here.

This does harmonize and explain many certain Bible verses that speak of special election with other Bible verses that speak of a universal intent to save. I have tried to work out some model of corporate election, and I do think the principle of Christ being the ultimate and real Elect One is true and valid, yet the Bible also seems to specifically use election in an individual sense, even under the subset of Christ as the uniquely elect, and indicate some individuals are also elected in Christ specifically. On what basis are they chosen if God universally loves and is no respecter of persons? Here, ironically, the Calvinist would probably be unsatisified with me appealing to the same mystery they seem to fall back on—the mystery of God's unfathomable counsel.

However, we could speculate, perhaps unwisely, some certain theories that would harmonize universal love with special election, and it seems even some variations of Calvinism really come awfully close to something like this, depending on who you talk to. It may be that God works within certain limitations set by man's rebellion—by God's own choice to allow it for his glory—whereupon because of original sin only certain souls are within his influence of grace because of free will choices. Does this make man the "determiner" of the elect? I think not, for it only makes man the "influencer," and someone who influences is not the same as someone who determines.

I would be glad to get into heaven any way I can—if I were not specially chosen, if I were the least saint in all of heaven, if I had to live in a little pup tent on the outskirts of glory and be heaven's lowly janitor—I guess I'd be truly grateful and consider the least saint in heaven better than the best sinner in hell. But I can't deny very powerful and vivid signs of some kind of call of God upon my life I had nothing to do with, and set me apart from many other people, even though I really often feel more unworthy and sinful than they are. There is some mark of God upon my life since I was even born, and clearly this is not universal.

Allow for nuance. Sometimes I think we don't leave much room for it in theology, and it never feels good to be dumped in the "Arminian" or "Calvinist" or whatever box, when we have given a lot of thought and prayer to our views. I hope I can listen to people and consider their thoughts, and that maybe they can see a new kind of theology that seems quite vastly under represented and under appreciated in that of a Classical Arminian. I hope this view proved thought provoking and interesting at least, and I hope some ministers come to prominence who can be as persuasive as other strains of theology.

Blessings to all those who love Christ sincerely.