Why I Reject Calvinism

?? 

What does that have to do with this op... or my reply to this op? How is it the response to my op-reply is, "All Scripture requires interpretation," when there is no scripture in this op?!?!?  
I'll gladly explain how and why the "reasons given aren't reasons. I'll take them one at a time. 


The very first reason given is,

[indent]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.​[/indent]


No scripture. No interpretation of scripture. The opening statement for this "reason" says God is completely holy, just, powerful, and loving. Calvin, All the authoritative Calvinist documents, and all Calvinist completely agree with that statement. There is absolutely no difference whatsoever between Calvinist and Arminian regarding that statement. NONE. EVER. 

No reason so far. 

The first half of next statement about God allowing those He could save to be lost is also something ALL Calvinists and Arminians believe. There is complete 100% uniform agreement with that statement. The last half is just scripturally, factually, and logically wrong. The op states that is a wrong definition of love. I agree! So does every Calvinist! Arminius and Calvinists agree AND we all agree because of the exact same explanation provided in this op: God's holiness, power, justness, and love never conflict with one another; God has many reasons and/or motives for His action and inaction. None of it contradicts God's love for the sinner, whether the sinner be lost in sin or destined to a fiery destruction because of his/her failure to believe in the name of God's Son (Jn. 3:3). 


A person would also have to also reject Arminianism if this were the reason to reject Calvinism.



In Disputation 4: On the Nature of God, Arminius wrote, 

[indent]"56. The Divine Will is borne towards its object, either according to the mode of Nature, or according to the mode of Liberty. According to the mode of Nature, it tends towards a primary and proper object, one that is suitable and adequate to its nature. According to the mode of Liberty, it tends towards all other things. Thus, God by a natural necessity wills himself; but He wills freely all other things; though the act which is posterior in order may be bound by a free act which is prior in order. This may be called "hypothetical necessity," having its origin partly from the free volition and act of God, partly from the immutability of his nature. "For God is not unrighteous," says the Apostle, "to forget the work and labor of love" of the pious; because he hath promised them a remuneration, and the immutability of his nature does not suffer him to rescind his promises."

"67. Love is an affection of union in God, the objects of which are God himself and the good of justice or righteousness, the creature and its felicity.


Hatred is an affection of separation in God, the object of which are the unrighteousness and misery of the creature. But since God primarily loves himself and the good of justice, and at the same moment hates iniquity; and since He loves the creature and its happiness only secondarily, and at the same moment dislikes the misery of the creature; hence it comes to pass, that he hates a creature that pertinaciously perseveres in unrighteousness, and He loves its misery."[/indent]

God's love does not conflict with any of His promises, including the promise to condemn those rejecting His Son. His love for Himself, His Son, justice and His hatred of iniquity do not conflict with each other and His love for the sinner is subordinate to them. That is what Arminius taught. Right there in his own words for everyone to see and verify. 




This first reason also leaves out a pile of relevant content asserted in Calvinism, beginning with the reality God is not the author of sin and He does not deterministically cause the sinless to sin. Every single individual who has ever lived after Genesis 3:6 has born the mark of sin and sinned of his/her own limited volitional agency. That is the state of all humanity. Orthodox Arms and Cals agree. This is the state God is addressing when He chooses to save a person. They all need saving. Clearly they don't all get saved and that saving or not saving does not diminish any single aspect of God's character one iota because He has many reasons and motives for saving those He saves. The difference between Calvinism and Arminianism is that the Calvinist predicates God's choice(s) and God's action(s) on God's will and purpose and not that of the sinner, whereas the Arminian predicates God's choice(s) and action(s) on a mixture (a synergy) of God's will and purpose and the will of the sinfully, dead-in-sin, fleshly believer. That is the difference between Calvinism and Arminianism. 

The problem of a "less loving God," is not lessened by believing God allows a person to accept or reject Him. Neither is the problem lessened if it is said God doesn't force salvation, or God limited Himself to the creature's choice. All of that still means people are dying God could have saved because He is all powerful. 


It is Arminianism that makes God less loving! 

He left the matter in the hands of the dead person, the one lost and - according to Arminius Himself - unable to come to God for salvation apart from God (and God limited Himself from doing all He could do. If a soteriological doctrine is going to be rejected because it makes God less loving, then reject Arminianism; reject all the synergist soteriologies! 

 
From Disputation 11: On the Free Will of Man and Its Limits: 

[indent]"VII. In this state, the free will of man towards the true good is not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent, and weakened; but it is also imprisoned, destroyed, and lost. And its powers are not only debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace, but it has no powers whatever except such as are excited by Divine grace. For Christ has said, "Without me ye can do nothing." St. Augustine, after having diligently meditated upon each word in this passage, speaks thus: "Christ does not say, without me ye can do but Little; neither does He say, without me ye can do any Arduous Thing, nor without me ye can do it with difficulty. But he says, without me ye can do Nothing! Nor does he say, without me ye cannot complete any thing; but without me ye can do Nothing." That this may be made more manifestly to appear, we will separately consider the mind, the affections or will, and the capability, as contra-distinguished from them, as well as the life itself of an unregenerate man."[/indent]


Arminius was a one-point Calvinist. He completely agreed with Augustine (and Luther and Calvin): humanity is individually and collectively incapable of coming to God in the sinful state. 

God limiting Himself to the will of the sinful creature is much less loving than Him deciding on His own. 

Therefore, the first "reason" cited in this op is not a reason at all, at least not one with any actual scripture or logic behind it, and certainly not one that's actually very consistent with either Arminius or Calvin. 






How about telling us the original source for this op? Link us to the source if this list wasn't your own doing. 

The basis of God's sovereignty is not by causation but through control by use of God's decretive, permissive and preceptive will.

One person put it this way "Some (Calvinists, for instance) have thought that the key to sovereignty is causation. This is wrong! The key to sovereignty is ultimate control. Through His absolute foreknowledge of every plan of man’s heart, and through His absolute ability (omnipotence) to either permit or prevent any particular plan man may have, God maintains complete control (sovereignty) over His creation. The power to prevent means that God ultimately has the final word in everything that happens. To deny this is to deny the sovereignty of God!" 

"It is true, then, that whatever happens is God’s will. Everything that happens falls within the sovereign will of God in one sense or another. But, it is absolutely crucial to understand that there are three different senses in which this may be true: 1) Sometimes a thing occurs because God decides it will happen, and then He makes it happen. This we have called God’s decretive will and it seems to be limited mostly to His working out the “scheme of redemption.” 2) Sometimes a thing occurs because God desires it and man decides of his own free will to do what God desires. This we have identified as God’s preceptive will and has to do with God’s commandments or precepts. 3) Sometimes a thing occurs because of the agency of an individual or group of individuals and God permits it to happen"
Allan Turner: allanturner.com/ss02.html

Causation makes God culpable for all that happens whereby man is a helpless innocent victim of God's arbitrary, unequal choices rather than man being justly held accountable for his own free will choices.  What is righteous, just in God causing men to do wrong then God punishes those men for the wrong God caused them to do?

I spoke to a Calvinist who claimed he had been regenerated during the night and he woke up saved.

@dizerner said:


This philosophy is the root of sectarianism.

God speaks to us in simple terms in scripture.

But men belabor and argue over frivolous things in scripture that do not promote unity in love. These things are given life by the excuse “interpretation”.

When what it all really boils down to is men just adding or taking away from scripture. Hiding this forbidden act with the guise of “interpretation”.

Most are Bible interpreters, few are Bible followers.

That has nothing to do with my point. The point is there is no scripture in this op!!!!! A lengthy criticism of Calvinism was presented and the original critic did not offer any scripture to justify or explain the criticism. It's all personal opinion and conjecture. What you've said about the a priori necessities for understanding scripture is correct but it has nothing to do with the fact there is no scripture in this op. 

Think it through. As I just said in my previous post, both Cals and Arms believe God wishes all to be saved but not all are or will be saved. The chief difference between the two soteriologies is the volitionalists subordinate God's wishes to the will of the sinner and monergists do not. That makes Him more loving, not less loving. It is not loving to surrender the power to save to the dead, hostile, and futile fool. 

You're also wrong about God being able to damn others without compromising other attributes. God can be loving and damning at the same time. Properly understood, His damning of some is an act of love toward the not-damned  . Yep. The redeemed will one day be spared the travail of living with the corrupt. That won't be up to us. We don't have the power to rid creation of the corrupt. God does. Even were we to possess the ability and permission to destroy all the sinners and remove them from creation we would not be able to do so justly because we do not know the heart of another. God does. The fact of Calvinism is that God loved the unbeliever by allowing him or her to live am earthly life before being destroyed because He has made a conscious, willful decision to do so but the Arminian says God did it dependent upon the dead-in-sin sinner's Spirit-less will; The all-powerful Creator subordinated His all-powerful will to that of the creature. Volitionalism teaches this without a single verse to support it, and they do so in the face of scores of verses explicitly stating God's power, His own willfulness. He is not more "sufficiently moral" under Arminianism; He is markedly less so. 

When you say, "Arminianism maintains God can have more important reasons for allowing people to be lost while still loving them and desiring them to be saved," Calvinists completely agree and when you say the "maximal love" "cannot be maintained under divine determinism" we again also agree because you've argued a straw man and shown you do not correctly understand Calvinism. 

God did no violence to the creature's will. 

Determinism is NOT Calvinism. 

• God is not the author of sin.
• God did not violence to the creature's will. 
• God did not do violence to the contingency of secondary causes, either.

Calvinism is NOT determinism. Calvinism asserts the existence of the creature's will; it does not deny it. Calvinism asserts the existence of secondary causes and the existence of secondary-cause contingencies; it does not deny either. Lot's of people on both sides of the debate get this wrong. So even if you were to quote John Frame of James White I would simply point you back to the WCF because if Frame or White don't teach what is plainly stated in the WCF then it's Frame and White who are wrong, not Calvinism. We're not talking about Frame or White, though. 

We're not even talking about Calvinism.

We're not? 

No, we're not. We're discussing this specific op. 

This specific op does not cite actual Calvinism. If you, diz, intended this thread to be a moratorium on all of Calvinism 1) you should have said so from the outset and 2) chosen a better set of reasons because the ones stated in the op are straw men. It does not provide a single word of scripture to justify its criticism, nor does it evidence a single word from Calvin, or any of the authoritative documents within Calvinism. How many times do I have to say there is no excuse for that absence before intelligent and earnest posters start acting responsibly? Calvin's writings and documents like the WCF are available to every single one of us free of charge and it takes only a few minutes, sometimes only a few seconds, to check the veracity of criticism. 


THIS OP asserts a limited number of ery specific "reasons" for not being Calvinist." The problem is they aren't reasons in any sense of logic. They are reasons in the loosest definition of the word. They explain the basis for that individual's choice but those bases have nothing whatsoever to do with actual Calvinism. The actual anser to the question, "Why [do] I reject Calvinism for Classical Arminiainism?" turns out to be, "Because I am clueless about what Calvinism actually teaches and I prefer hearsay over actually investigating because I'd rather hate others for things I wrongly imagine to be true so as to stay with my own view of salvation," because Classical Arminianism does not teach God loves all people. 


That question of love is why I brought up Arminius and a one-point Cal. The point here is that not only does this original author of this article not correctly understand Calvin; he doesn't correctly understand Arminius, either. He's not Classical Arminian. As I've argued in another thread, Classical Arminianism is Augustinian. Arminius didn't quote Augustine only to justify his belief in total depravity. Arminius also quoted Augustine to say the following, "The cause a posteriori shall be given in the words of St. Augustine. 'A good being would not suffer evil to be done, unless He was likewise Omnipotent, and capable of bringing good out of that evil.'" So we see Arminius believed God allowed evil. How loving is that? (I ask rhetorically) Took me something like 20 seconds to look that up and paste it into the post. There's no excuse for the errors made in this op's misrepresentation of Calvin or Arminius. 



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