BIBLE TEACHES
PREDESTINATION
INDEX – CLICK TO NAVIGATE
UNCONDITIONAL
ELECTION IN BIBLE
FALSE
OBJECTIONS TO UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION
PREFACE
This book deals with the issues of Calvinistic Protestantism surrounding
the notion that God chooses some people for salvation and rejects others. It shows how the Bible sees nothing worthy in
human nature even to the extent that God gives you faith and it is all his work
and it is the only thing that is necessary for salvation.
PREDESTINATION
Predestination can
mean that God manipulates a person through memories, thoughts and feelings to
freely but inevitable choose him or it can mean that God forces your will to
act as if it freely chooses salvation but it is not free at all. The first retains free will which is shaped
by our environment and inner soul anyway.
The latter is fatalism.
What can be confusing is the way believers use
the idea of free will. Calvinist
Christians who believe in predestination hold that we do not have free will in the
sense that we can choose good or evil by ourselves. We have only the power to choose evil and we
want to be evil so we have free will only to do evil. The choosing we do is just between different
kinds of evil. They reject the Romanist doctrine
that you can choose good as well as evil.
The Bible certainly teaches that the good works done by the unbeliever or the believer before real conversion to Christ are really sins of hypocrisy. This is the doctrine of total depravity. Since we do nothing but sin clearly the only way we can be saved is if God does all the work. He has to predestine us to conversion and salvation.
The doctrine of total depravity does not mean that we will do all the violence we can do but that all the good we do is really just hypocrisy and we do all the evil we can and only act good so that we can carry on with our addiction to sin.
Predestination is expressed in
the Calvinist Protestant idea that God chooses who is to be saved and not the
saved. Unconditional Election is the
doctrine that God chooses certain people for salvation not because of anything
they have done or will do but just because he wants to. When God completely ignores merit it is
obvious that this has to be arbitrary and is fatalism though not the extreme
kind of fatalism that says that we have no free will at all. If we have no merit even when we choose
saving faith it must follow that we are programmed to exercise this faith even
if we are not programmed regarding anything else.
UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION
Protestants following Calvin and Luther believe in unconditional
election.
They teach that man can only
use free will to sin until God enables him to do good
and to become holy. God chooses some
people for salvation and they invariably get saved because he has made his
grace irresistible to their free will.
This choice made by God, is not based on anything they have merited. It is not a case of him saving them for he foresees
that they will do great works after being converted. This is the doctrine of unconditional
election. Some are predestined to
salvation which means that the rest must be predestined to everlasting torment.
To make
sure it is clear, the doctrine teaches not that God programs people to choose
him but that he makes people who are too bad to desire to turn to him desire it
and this desire ensures that they will convert to him. So the unsaved sinner is able to choose God
but won’t. When a Calvinist says that a
sinner has the inability to do good he does not mean that it is the same as the
inability of an invalid to walk but a self-inflicted inability that the sinner
maintains until God seduces him or her away from maintaining it.
If God makes his choice
arbitrarily then it follows that he hates those he has predestined to
everlasting torment.
Calvinism says
that God chooses the way he does because he sees some purpose in it. But when the good only do good
by God’s power and the wicked will be in Hell forever and the saints forever in
Heaven it is clear that there can be no purpose. So, the charge made against Calvinism that
its God really hates those who are predetermined to go to Hell is the
truth.
Non-Calvinists say that God
would not choose some people for salvation but that anybody who is not saved is
lost though their own fault. That is
wrong. They should admit that even if a
person chooses Hell that decision is not made final until God acts and ends
that person’s life. It is not the
person’s fault that God made the decision irrevocable. God could have let the person live and kill
them when they repent and choose him.
God could reincarnate the dead on another world and keep doing so until
they repent and are ready for Heaven.
These people actually do believe in predestination but they will not be
honest about it. They call the doctrine
evil and then they believe in it. It
would be better to be an overt Calvinist.
To be one and deny it while castigating the Calvinist God as the Devil
himself is just to adore the Devil.
Mercy is something that is freely
given. If God is forced to be merciful
to fulfil his purpose then that is not mercy.
If God has to forgive me because he has to maximise good in general and
it is not done for me it is not mercy.
He is not intending to cancel the debt of justice but to do something
else so it is not mercy. In the same
way, if I am nice to X because I want his money then it is not X I care about
but the money and so this is not love.
Mercy means that there can be no ultimate purpose for predestination and
that those who say the God of Calvinism just picks people for salvation for no
reason like names out of a hat are right.
When God hates the unsaved and
even the saved person sins a lot it follows that the saved person should try to
sin more against the unsaved rather than the saved. If a saved and morally weak man likes beating
women then he should go for non-Christian women.
Let Calvin’s theology thrive
among the Christians for it is been said often that it is the kind of doctrine
that makes Atheists! To many, it is the
supreme proof that all the evidence for Jesus being a prophet is wrong if he
preached the dreadful doctrine and he did if he existed. Paul was commissioned by Jesus to speak for
him and teach for him and Paul taught the doctrine meaning Jesus did.
The Calvinist can say that even if God makes a person get saved of their own free will it is still true to say that their salvation is entirely God’s work. God makes the person exist and makes that person exist until he is saved. The person’s free will is God’s work because God causes that free will to exist even though he does not force it to choose but manipulates it to choose what he wants. But this is not just what Calvinists mean by saying that salvation is all of grace.
St Paul warned the believers that if they sin by adultery or homosexuality and in some other ways they will not inherit the kingdom of God. How does this fit salvation by faith alone without obedience? It is possible that you can think you have become a true believer and be wrong. Then if you abandon the faith, it shows that you are predestined to everlasting torment. Claiming to be a believer and then apostatising could mean your damnation is guaranteed. Christians who become Catholics are predestined by God to eternal damnation. This is how Paul could write that once you are saved you are always saved but that if a believer commits sins such as homosexuality or adultery or witchcraft he or she will be damned forever. Their behaviour is a sign that they were predestined to everlasting damnation. Holiness in the believer is not required for salvation but is a sign of being chosen for salvation. It is a sign of predestination to eternal happiness with God.
REASON AND CALVINISM
Anti-Calvinists accuse Calvinists of being more influenced by reason than
scripture. But are Calvinists really
that logical?
The answer is that if you
believe in God then Calvinism is true.
The two beliefs go together.
* If God exists then
predestination is true. All the freedom
we need to be responsible is a choice between two things so God can control our
thoughts and feelings so that we will choose what he wants. Our thoughts and feelings are manipulated anyway. Whatever we do is predestined by God. It is not true that God cannot save us
because free will gets in the way.
Whoever is not saved is chosen to be lost for God cannot choose some for
salvation without automatically choosing the rest for damnation.
God is not trying to save all
he can for missionaries do not live to be a thousand years of age and many die
young. Why can’t he kill babies who will
probably grow up in unbelief in infancy to get them into Heaven? Why can’t angels come to the world and teach
the people we are too lazy to teach? The
answer is that God is not out to save all.
Moreover, if he was and failed he would not be much of a God.
* If God exists only
believers will be saved. Suppose you
need to do good works to be saved. God
would have no reason to keep the truth from those who are saved by their goodness
for it is best for them to have the truth.
He would enable and cause the saved to believe. As for the lost, it does not matter if they
know the gospel or not.
* If God exists he will cause
the saved to do good works and little else.
Calvinism says that if you are truly born again or forgiven by God you
will be very holy.
* If God exists
the unsaved cannot do good works for God does not care what they are like
inside.
* If God exists then
salvation by obedience is not possible for God wants the best and we won’t give
perfect obedience and he won’t let us give it.
If God were good he would
choose believers for salvation and make them earn that salvation by perfect
obedience.
* If God exists then God
ordains evil as Calvinism states. The
alternative is to say that God does not ordain evil but tolerates it for the
sake of a greater good. If God ordains
evil for a greater good then he is tolerating it. So Calvinists and Arminians
believe the same thing about this issue for even Calvinists deny that God is to
blame for sin. They say he causes it for
a purpose that justifies him doing so. Arminians and Romanists deny that God ordains or causes
evil and maintain that he just let it happen which is
the same thing as ordaining or causing it.
* If God exists then you
are saved forever the moment you are saved for he is unlikely to destine
somebody to be saved and then destine them to lose that salvation.
* Christians believe in
unending and everlasting punishment in Hell.
The Bible says that Hell is painful and the fire in it shows just how
bad it is. Now that means that when you
sin you not only intend to offend God infinitely you also commit a separate sin
of willing to insult everybody forever by being away from them in Hell and then
another one of pulling everlasting agony on yourself. Hell trebles sin so only a God who
predestines people to rot there could reveal it. The infinity of the offence and the
separation stuff make it sinful enough but the pain makes it worse. So God causes needless sin when we sin by
putting pain in Hell. He is certainly
capable of what Calvin said he was.
The Bible speaks of God’s
patience towards sinners. How could he
be patient if he causes us to sin for it is his own fault? You are always patient for a reason so God
can be forced to cause your sin for some reason and have to patiently bear with
it.
Arminianism
argues that a good God who is worth worshipping would not make people in order
to send them to Hell forever. But their
God kills people who can only go to Hell so what difference does it make? And if God had a mysterious plan he could be
good and make people for eternal reprobation.
Arminians
and Catholics plot to make the God of Jesus Christ seem to be a wonderful
person. Their PR cannot be proved from
the Bible which is a Calvinist’s Charter.
They are in reality no better or worse than Calvinists for their own
teachings logically lead to Calvinism.
UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION IN BIBLE
Does the Bible teach that God arbitrarily chooses some for salvation?
Calvinists argue that John
The Calvinist believes that
since Jesus did the choosing and they were not chosen because they had chosen
him that unconditional election is correct.
The reply is that Jesus is on about choosing disciples or servants and
friends and not on about choosing people for salvation.
But Jesus means friends in the
spiritual and not worldly sense. He is
saying that they are not servants anymore because they want to obey him and God
and that makes them friends. Jesus could
not have had any friends who were spiritually opposed to him for sin is a
rejection of God and all who speak for God.
The Calvinists are right. The
passage is for unconditional election and it is loud and clear.
The Bible says that the chosen
are chosen on the basis of the foreknowledge of God (1 Peter 1:2). It is thought that its meaning is that God
saw that they would be saved and he chose them on that basis (page 4, Great
Heresies, John R Rice). This seems
to confute unconditional election. God
could pick those who will pick him when he knows who he chooses when he sees
the future as long as the picking does not cause them to pick him. But the verse says that God foresaw the
people and chose them. That is all it
says. It does not say that he foresaw
their good works or conversion but he foresaw them. It preaches unconditional election.
The Bible says that God
prevents people from believing in the gospel and coming to salvation (2
Corinthians 4:4; Mark
Faith is plainly and fanatically
taught to be of supreme importance in the Bible. For example, we are told to love God alone which
is the most important and then others just because it pleases him which is only
the next important. We need to believe
in God before we can think about doing the greatest good of all which is to
love him so much. So belief comes
first. To believe is part of the greatest
commandment. And the commandment is evil
for we know others exist and can only believe in God. Anyway, the commandment means that faith
comes first. If so, it follows that God
would let all believe if he could. So
there is a mysterious reason why some are excluded from salvation and belief.
The Bible makes faith based on
dogma more important than salvation. At
least if you know the truth which this faith claims to be true, you would have some
hope of salvation. Also having the truth
even if you don’t have the kind of faith in it that is caused entirely by God
and not yourself, the faith that is necessary for salvation, is still
beneficial. The truth would be promoted better if God liked people he had rejected and he had
predestined to salvation. When he doesn’t
let them believe without the kind of faith that is necessary for salvation he
is definitely determined that they won’t get near the gates of salvation never
mind through them.
U.E. IN PAUL
Unconditional Election is more explicit in Paul than in anywhere else.
Titus 3:5 says that true
Christians are saved not because of works but because of God’s mercy. Mercy alone was the reason. This unconditional election for mercy that is
not free is not true mercy. In other
words, God gives mercy because he wants to.
It is not because he has to for any reason. You can’t show mercy to A for his mother will
suffer if you don’t. You are really
showing mercy to his mother for you would still torment him if you could.
In Romans 8:28-31, we read that
everything is caused to work for the good of those who are chosen for salvation. We read that God foreknew them and then
predestined them to become holy like Jesus and then he called them to salvation
and made them justified in his sight and glorified them. This is evidently in the right order. It describes the steps and the order makes
sense. Paul said that those who God
foreknew he predestined to be justified or suitable for Heaven. Some say that this says that God only
predestined those people for salvation who he foreknew
would do much good after being saved.
They think it means that God predestined you in the following way. That is, in the sense that he made you so
that you could have a future existence which led to salvation for you. Thus he destined you for salvation in the
sense that he held you in existence for it.
That is not predestination any more than a mother having a baby who
becomes a doctor predestined him to be a doctor. And the verse says the people not their works
or conversion were what was known beforehand and also
says that they were predestined FOR good works not BECAUSE of them. The passage says that God is taking care of
the chosen because he has predestined them.
This says then that the predestination is proper predestination not the
non-predestination that the others call predestination that we have just
refuted. God can’t predestine a person
in the sense of making them exist so that they will convert and then care for
them because they have been predestined.
God caring for them is supposed to cause the predestination. He cares and he predestines them for
salvation. Romans 8
teaches unconditional election.
The order of the passage, first
predestination, then foreknown corroborates that. Conditional election would place
foreknowledge first for it is the cause of predestination. It claims God chooses you for he foresees
what you will do.
Some imagine that since the passage
says that those who love God are foreknown and predestined that the call that
is a means of working out the predestination depends on loving God –
conditional election. But God cannot
make it possible for a person to love him because he sees that the person will
love him that is for that reason. The
future cannot cause the present or the past.
If God sees what will happen it will happen. Even he cannot change what he sees in the
future. What is foreseen will
necessarily happen.
In Ephesians 1:4, we read that
God chose Christians before time began that they would be holy and blameless
before him. They are not chosen because
they are good but to be good. It is
replied, “The verse says nothing about being chosen for Heaven or Hell. It says we are chosen that we should be holy and
without blame before him in love” (page 8, Why I Disagree with All Five
Points of Calvinism). But if
Christians are saved from a world of people who can’t please God unless they
get saved then only getting saved can enable them to
be blameless and holy. The verse does
say that unconditional predestination is correct. It says it indirectly but clearly.
According to 2 Thessalonians
2:13,14, we must thank God because he has chosen us
from the beginning for salvation through holiness and the true faith. Why did he say chosen from the
beginning? He would have left that
phrase out for it was no importance in that context if he did not mean
Calvinism. It was sufficient to say that
God has chosen us. If you were a
Calvinist you would be likely to say that because you want election to be
unconditional and decided before the world was made. If you were not a Calvinist you would be
unlikely to draw attention to the fact that God is outside time and therefore
he has chosen all that has happened “before” he ever created. That is what Peter would have been doing if
he were not in agreement with Calvin.
But he must have been when he used the phrase to speak of a doctrine of
eternal decree that has no relevance to what he had to say.
ROMANS 9
Romans 9 is revered by Calvinists as the supreme
unconditional election chapter.
In it Paul says that God choose
Jacob to be over Esau before they ever did good or evil because his choice is
not influenced by such things. Paul asks
if this is injustice and concludes that it is not for God can have mercy on
whoever he likes for mercy by its nature is not deserved. Those who reject unconditional election say
this says nothing more than that God favoured Jacob more in this world and gave
him more worldly blessings than Esau and says nothing about who was preferred
spiritually and given grace and salvation or who was not. But the verses say nothing about temporal
things and when the Bible claim that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in sin is
cited in support, God must have meant that he put Jacob over Esau
spiritually. God cited this case to
prove that mercy like Jacob received was not dependant on free will or merits
so the chapter is about unconditional election.
Verses 19,20 have
Paul dealing with the problem of how God could blame us for sinning when he
leads us to it. Paul says those who see
the problem are not mistaken for God does this but he answers that God can do
as he wishes with us like potters can do what they want with the clay. And then he relates this to eternal perdition
and eternal glory so he is talking about predestination with a capital P as
distinct from predestination to merely temporal things. There is no hint in the chapter that the
alternative interpretation, that God fixes your life and gives you things in
this world without regard to good works or man’s will, is correct. The chapter speaks of spiritual gifts and
salvation. Catholics say that it is up
to each person and not God if they will be saved or not. Since free will is geared towards good and
sin being only a misperceived good it follows that God can force a person to be
saved without removing free will. They
should believe in predestination for it follows from the doctrine of God. It impugns his goodness and that is the only
problem but you can’t believe in God without doing that anyway.
Verses 22,23
say that God made some people for destruction and to show his wrath and made
others to show his mercy which he gives them in preparation for their
glory. He means final loss of salvation
by destruction and means salvation to glory.
The Calvinists are right for this is how Paul concludes the argument and
the point he is trying to make about Esau, Jacob and Pharaoh. God blessing Jacob most in this world would
not show God’s salvation for God gave many people great blessings on earth and
they lost their souls and were evil.
Jesus often said that the rich will be the worst off. So these verses prove that Paul meant that
God shows his salvation by admitting into Heaven and his wrath by rejecting
those who die unfit for Heaven.
The Catholic and Arminian claim that Romans 9 just says that God gives
everybody born into this world a different kind of life. Some will be healthy. Some will be ill. Some will have wealth and others will
not. But would Paul really have had to
argue so much and even quote the Bible to teach that? Everybody believed in those days that no two
lives were equally blessed and that goodness does not guarantee a happy life –
they could see it happening all the time.
They also believed that there was a divine purpose for all this. Paul was not arguing about what there was no
argument about. The only way to
interpret him is to take him as meaning the only thing else he could have
meant, that unconditional election is true.
The Bible says that God hates
unsaved sinners. It says it so many
times that we know we can be certain it teaches that.
Only three verses in the Bible
seem to say that God loves everybody.
They are, the one in which we are told that God so loved the world that
he gave his only son so that anyone who believes in him could have eternal life
- John 3:16. And the one which says that
God wants all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth - 1 Timothy 2:4. And the one where we are told that God so
loved us that while we were still sinners he saved us which is Romans 5:8.
The bit in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus
says we must love our enemies for God gives earthly blessings even to the
wicked refers to enemies who sincerely mean well but just are against us for
the wrong reasons. The Bible is clear
that God hates those who hate him. We
are not to love God’s enemies. But all
who hate one another wish that they did not and that the persons would change
so they love in a sense.
Both the first two verses, John
3:16 and 1 Timothy 2:4 speak in terms of God wishing the
damned would change but he refuses to succumb to this wish. It is because this wish is present that he is
able to hate perfectly. The person who
finds it easier to be good to a bad person has a more degrading attitude
towards the enemy than one who finds it hard to be good to a bad person. The former is kind of rewarding the evil and encouraging
it while real love does not encourage a person to do evil. Jesus was a gift to everybody on earth even
the wicked but in many different ways.
Paul’s disciple in 1 Timothy 2:4 says
that God wants all to be saved and know the truth for there is one mediator who
is the only way to God. This means he
means all who can know the mediator and respond to him. It does not refer to all on earth. Even if it did it would make no
difference. God could hate sinners and
love them in the sense that he knows they will change if he saves them from sin
and wants them to change. He hates them
in refusing to honour this wish. It is like
how an estranged wife can hate her husband but she hates him because she loves
him. But her hate is real and
dangerous. God hates them now.
But some of them will be saved. As
for these, he does not let that hate stop him from making it possible to love
them and them to love him, as well, later.
The love for what they will be is the reason he makes their salvation
possible now not the love for what they are.
This is the explanation for the Romans 5:8 verse
and it is the only explanation for the persons referred to as being loved are
clearly those who have embraced the gospel in sincerity and have been saved by
it. Many believe that God hates all
sinners except sinners he has predestined to salvation. He loves them in their sins now for he sees
they will be saved. In other words,
their sins are paid for unlike those who will never be saved so he has nothing
to hate them for though they are sinners now.
But this view is not in the Bible at all. God could hate you even if your sins are paid
for on the basis that the payment has not been activated yet. It has not been appropriated.
Proverbs
Christians say that since we do
not know who will be saved we have to love everybody and only God can hate
sinners for only he knows who will be saved and who will not be. But it is a contradiction to say you value a
person as a potential saint. That is
valuing what God wants and not the person.
It is putting the qualities before the person to the person being left
out if the equation. It is denying the
fundamental principle of real right and wrong in which field the Bible has no
competence whatsoever that the person is the absolute value.
Please do not object that the
Bible says that baptism is necessary for salvation so salvation can’t be by
faith only. It says nothing of the kind.
FALSE OBJECTIONS TO UNCONDITIONAL
ELECTION
Those who oppose the doctrine of unconditional election argue that if it is
true then whatever will be will be and there is no point in preaching the
gospel to others. They see the commands
in the Bible that we must spread the good news as proof of its falsity. But if those who are predestined to salvation
are those who trust in the gospel then it follows that the word had to be
preached to all so that the elect will be reached.
The Bible tells us to pray for
the world. Many say that Calvinism must
be false because it would be a sin to pray to God for the salvation of the
souls he has not chosen for salvation.
But the Bible may mean that you just pray for those who are now lost and
who are destined to get saved later. It
seems absurd to pray when prayer makes no difference and does not influence God
concerning who to save. But God-religion
teaches that God only answers a prayer because it fits in his plan so God was
planning to do what you asked anyway even if you had never asked. So an answer to prayer is a coincidence and
not God having being influenced by it. The
Bible taught predestination and unconditional election but it never denied that
God could at times decide to predestine the whole world and do so.
The fate of dead babies,
baptised and unbaptised, is another problem for the
doctrine.
Calvin believed that all these babies
who die go to Heaven.
Augustine who developed the
theology of unconditional election centuries before him confirmed that they all
go to Hell. Augustine taught that God
wants to save all in accordance with their free will (Question 709, Radio
Replies Volume 2). But these
statements are not necessarily anti-predestination. God might want to save all but he does not
save all. God could force salvation on
you and then you could be freely accepting of it a moment later and
forever.
The Dominicans believed that
some dead babies were destined for salvation and the others were not. The latter went either to Hell or Limbo. Morally speaking, life is the absolute
value. Therefore if God is right to
visit the death penalty on babies for Adam’s sin as the Bible says he must have
the right to send babies to Hell forever for that is not destroying their lives
and not doing the worst evil to them.
When the Bible says that all
begin to exist in a state of estrangement from God it is most likely that the
babies go to Hell. Christianity says
that sin is worse than even everlasting suffering therefore nobody can dare to
say that God is too nice to do that to a baby for when he maintains it in sin
he does worse to it than damning it.
If God did not intend to damn
babies he had predestined to die in infancy he would have kept them free from
original sin from their conception.
We can be elect according to
the foreknowledge of God (1 Peter 1:2) in Calvin’s theology. A predestined person can be chosen for Heaven
according to the foreknowledge of God who sees that he or she will get
there. It is the problem with everything
having two or three different senses that confuses theology students and proves
that the Bible theology is not divinely inspired for God would be aware of the
care needed to avert confusion. So a
hardcore Calvinist can say that God predestines on the basis of foreknowledge
of the person’s goodness for he sees the person will be saved and causes that
salvation by keeping the person in existence though he will deny that God fixes
the person’s fate on the basis of the person’s good works in the sense that the
person deserves to be chosen.
When the
Bible says Jesus died for all it means he died for all the chosen. We see Paul claiming that Jesus redeemed all
from sin and got all forgiven in Romans (5) though we know he did not mean all
in the sense of all people on earth. The
New Testament Church meant all who are chosen to be saved by all.
Unconditional election does not
deny that God invites all to be saved (1 Timothy
2:3-6; 2 Peter 3:9). According to it the
sinner is so bad that they won’t respond until God influences the will so the
invitation is sincere but the sinner won’t take it. A man who hates you will not accept your
invitation to the party. If you show him
proof that he should not hate you he changes his mind and accepts. It is exactly the same thing with God. Before, the man was in prison of his own free
will and you used his free will to get him out.
And when you invited him in his former state of mind your invitation was
sincere even if you know he won’t accept.
The God of unconditional
election wants to save all but he will not.
Perhaps he cannot save all for if he did it would be a sin for him for
he has a mysterious purpose to fulfil?
But this denies that the election is unconditional. The purpose must have something to do with us
for God is all-powerful. And if it has
something to do with us then it is something to do with our morals because God
is interested only in our spirits.
Jesus said that many are called
but less than that are chosen (Matthew
Romans 8:28-31 speaks of those
who are called for the divine purpose.
It says that God foreknew them and also predestined them to be right
with him. This is supposed to say that God
foresaw who would choose him of their own free will and destined them for salvation. But this fails for it is not said what
choices God foresaw but who he foresaw.
God foresees the chosen and predestines them to salvation. This passage does indeed affirm the doctrine
of unconditional election. A person who
God sees will choose him is not predestined for predestination means causing a
person to do something. Calvinists take
the order in Romans 8 as being of great significance. It says foreknowledge then predestination and
calling and then justification. This
order could be literal for God would have to know you and see you in the future
before he could destine and call you and calling and predestination would cause
justification.
The other verses which have a
different order are not to be taken as giving a strict order that must be
adhered to. They are not on about what
leads to what. But this one could be and
so should be taken to be.
Jude 1:1 has sanctification
preceding the divine calling but the order is not intended to mean
anything. Besides, God can’t make you
holy to call you to be holy! Maybe Jude
just means that God makes us holy before he calls us in the sense that he keeps
us saved and has already saved us though this salvation hasn’t been activated
yet. It doesn’t activate until the person
gains faith. If I am saved once for all,
God can still be said to be calling me to salvation now, the present moment whether
I am saved yet or not.
1 Timothy
2 Timothy 1:9 says that God
saved Christians with a holy calling not because of works but because of his
purpose. This says that goodness isn’t even
considered when God chooses you for salvation.
That is exactly what unconditional election says.
Opponents of unconditional
election maintain the following. “We
believe that God chooses people for his purpose and because of their
works. God saves such not to reward
their works or to treat their works as earnings but simply because he chooses
to. It would be the same as picking
people with blonde hair for your football team.
So this verse does not disprove our position”.
. This is dubious. If Paul had meant God saves for we will do
good and not because we have earned this salvation he would not have written the
way he did. He would not have written, “We
are not saved in virtue of works.” He would
have written, “We are not saved in virtue of earnings”, which would be clearer.
If you are saved because of your future good
deeds not your past ones then you are earning salvation. It would be ridiculous for the Bible to stress
that salvation is a gift that God is plotting to be paid back for. To choose a person for salvation because of
their goodness would be wrong when it could be intended as a reward and you
won’t let it be for if it could be it should be.
2 Peter
We see then that the order the
anti-Calvinists hope to find in the Bible that contradicts that of Romans 8
does not exist. This makes Calvinism the
at least the probable teaching of the Bible.
IRRESISTIBLE GRACE
Irresistible grace is sometimes just called effectual calling or
effectual grace. The grace is meant to
convert the sinner to God and it always does what it was meant to do.
Irresistible grace is not
implied by the doctrine of total inability.
You can be totally depraved and receive the grace to turn to God and not
avail of it.
It is complained that this irresistible
grace doctrine must be fictitious because it has a person being reconciled with
God BEFORE he or she believes making it a denial of justification by faith
alone. That is nonsense. Imagine that A is a totally depraved sinner
and will not turn to God until God offers him such great happiness that he
cannot refuse it. The instant he is
offered the happiness he accepts it and is saved. Before salvation is activated by faith, you
are saved if you are predestined to salvation so the complaint is wrong.
Genesis 6:3 has God saying his
spirit will not always strive with man. But spirit in this part of the Bible stands for breath which stands
for life. Strictly speaking the
almighty strives with nobody but people strive with him.
In the Bible, Jesus calls on sinners
to repent and believe and trust in him.
If he refuses some of them the gift of effectual grace then is he
mocking them? No for the sinners can
repent but won’t and imprison themselves in sin. It is true that God can stop them doing this
to create their prison but it is also their fault. The true solution to this seeming
contradiction can only be delivered in parables for anything else leads to
misinterpretation and confusion.
The Bible says that those who
sincerely pray to be saved will be saved (James 4:8). God could predestine the chosen to pray that
they will be saved later on. People
desiring Heaven is not the same as them desiring God for Heaven is happiness but
having God is love and love is hard.
Jesus said that when he is
lifted up he will draw all people to himself (John
In Acts 7:51, the Jews are
condemned for resisting the Holy Spirit.
But the Bible says that the saved do not have to sin because the Spirit
helps them not to and yet they sin. It
is only the grace that makes you saved and reconciled to God that is
irresistible. The Jews could have been
fake unbelievers and yet saved sinners.
Or perhaps the verse is not saying that they got grace but that they
resisted the Holy Spirit in the sense of resisting his words like every totally
depraved person does. Never does the
Bible say that when a person receives the grace to turn to God and be converted
that that person can go the other way – grace is irresistible.
Christ said that no one can come to him
unless God inspires them to do that and that every person who learns from God
comes to Jesus (John
If saving grace is irresistible
then why preach the gospel to save anybody?
Because God has decreed that he will save only those who believe as a
result of your preaching. Some heretics
make the incredible mistake of forbidding missions to the unconverted on the
grounds that the gospel is only to be preached to the saved. This contradicts the command of Christ to
preach to all people at a time when the Church was very few. John
1 Peter 4 claims that the
gospel was preached to the dead. This is
not the Limbo of the Old Testament saints as in Catholic tradition for you
would say that you preached to the dead person meaning that you did so when he
or she was alive. The simplest
interpretation is the right one.
We see that very few were saved before
Christ. The prophets including Isaiah
and Ezekiel may not have been saved at all.
Assuming that the author of Hebrews was psychic as
Christians like to assume, only the prophets like Abraham and David and the
others listed in Hebrews would have known the bare facts about the gospel for
nobody else was sure how to interpret their revelations.
LIMITED ATONEMENT
The Bible says that Jesus was the Lamb of God. Lambs were killed to atone for the sins of
the people. But did Jesus die for every
person on earth or did he just die for those who God has chosen for salvation
with the elect?
If unconditional election is
true then he did. He did not intend to
save those who were not predestined for Heaven.
But if unconditional election
is false then he still could have not have died for everybody. He would only have died for those who
repent.
The Other Side of Calvinism
asserts that the Bible never says that the world Jesus died for or the all he
saved means all the people chosen for salvation and not the whole world (page
248). I answer that it does not have to. John wrote that Jesus died not only for “our”
sins but for those of the whole world.
Whole world could have loosely meant those who were destined to be saved
but not saved yet. Even if he did mean
the whole world it would still not refute limited atonement. Jesus could have died for the elect, those
who were predestined for salvation, in the substitution sense. His death was meant to save them. But he also died for those who would not be
saved but not in the substitution sense.
He died to win graces from God to keep them in better check but not with
a view to forgiving them or making them holy.
He died for their sins too. They
might not have saving faith but have an unsaving
faith which has its benefits too.
God cannot pay for your sins on
the cross and then make you pay for them in Hell. It is replied that Hell is not God punishing
you but you punishing yourself and refusing to be happy. That is a lie because God can stop you
feeling sad for you can’t control feelings like the channels on a remote
control television. He must do something
to the damned when they will not change.
And the damned don’t punish themselves for they believe they have done nothing
to be punished for and that they were right to seek their own way not God’s.
If we are saved by faith alone
as the Bible says, then it follows that those who do not believe will be the
ones who will have to pay for their own sins in Hell forever. The Bible says that Jesus paid the debt of
sin to God for believers only so everybody else has to pay for their own sins
in Hell. The Bible says that unbelief is
a sin. Now if unbelief is a sin and
Jesus died for all sins as most Christians say then Jesus died for the sin of
unbelief meaning that nobody goes to Hell.
So justification by faith alone contradicts itself.
Jesus’ death was sufficient to
save a million worlds but it saved only the chosen.
BEWARE
THE VANCE BOOK
Laurence M. Vance wrote and published his The Other Side of Calvinism.
This book is devoted to the demolition
of Calvinism which is accused of blasphemy and of being a perversion of the
teaching of the Bible.
But there are dreadful errors
in this book so the book fails to dispose of Calvinism.
John Calvin is said to have
taught that Jesus was spiritually present in the bread and wine of Holy
Communion and that this was a hangover from Catholicism (page 36). Calvin taught that Jesus was spiritually
eaten by faith in Holy Communion. That
means, faith alone gives us Jesus’ saving presence and
if we communicate in faith we are fed by him because of our faith. In reality, faith is Jesus working in us so
that faith feeds us with Jesus and Jesus feeds us by faith. So, communion in Calvin was not something
that gives you grace but is a sign of the grace that is already yours. You are receiving Jesus all the time
anyway. Calvin should have realised that
any food and drink we take would be the same as the communion – but, it is
certain he would have. Vance declares
that Calvin’s doctrine of communion was not far from
The anti-Calvinist, James Arminus, taught that God only chooses those who believe (predestinates) for salvation and does not pick people for
salvation first regardless of their qualities like Calvinists say (page
51). In other words, the divine choice
does not cause one’s genuine decision to go to Heaven in Arminianism
but does in Calvinism. Vance approves of
Arminius’s doctrine.
But how can you choose not to believe in the gospel unless you already
believe? Such a choice would be
rejecting your perception of the real gospel.
Calvin was right to say that predestination causes the faith that makes
you justified before God for all eternity and which is your free ticket into
Heaven. So if faith which is God’s
supernatural gift saves as the Bible says, then you cannot choose God unless he
enables you to. This means that the five
points of Calvinism must be right.
Page 67 says that there is a
difference between the doctrine of total sinfulness and total inability to
accept God’s salvation. The first says
that we can turn to God freely but prefer to sin. The second says we sin and cannot turn to God
in repentance. There is no difference
for the second simply means that we shut God out by self-deception and depravity
so that though we have the power to change we will not use it and cannot even
see it any more. In that sense, we have suppressed
our free will so as to stay away from God.
Even Calvinism says that we freely refuse to repent until God does
something to make some of us change our minds.
Because we suppress and abandon our will to do good,
we are said to have no free will practically speaking. We just have it potentially.
ALTERNATIVES TO CALVINISM
Jacob Arminius who was born in 1560 in
Arminians
and Calvinists agree that salvation is by faith alone. Roman Catholics and these two factions all
agree that justification and salvation are gifts from God which cannot be
earned by good works (Romans
Calvinists were convinced that
all who are saved have been caused to choose salvation
by God and could not resist it. Arminians said that God does not cause this decision but
merely influences it by grace so that the person can resist the grace.
Calvinists said that God chose
to save some and not all. He does not intend
to save everybody.
Arminians
said that he chose to save only those who choose to believe him but intends to
save all and can’t save all for they will not come to him for salvation.
Arminianism
holds that God looks into the future and foresees that some will obey and
chooses them for salvation because of their holy works and because they choose
him. Yet they say salvation is by faith
alone. You might do the good works after
you are saved but they got you your salvation so it is a doctrine of salvation by
works. Some say salvation is conditional
on choice and not on works. But choice
is a work. It is something you do. God’s past decision cannot be caused by the
future. He cannot predestine you for
salvation because he sees you will do good works if you are saved. The future cannot determine the past for the
past is meant to give way to the present and the present give away to the
future and that order cannot be altered.
Therefore he is just seeing what you will do and because of that he can
choose you before he even makes you but there is no
predestination conditional or unconditional.
Arminians must face then the Bible texts that
speak of us being chosen before the world was made. Only Calvinists can make sense of them.
Calvinists said that humanity
is wholly sinful and unable to turn to God for salvation. Arminians said that
it is true that all are completely sinful but denied that all could not repent
and be saved.
Calvinists claimed that Jesus
did not die to atone for the sins of those who are not chosen while Arminius stupidly said he did.
Calvinists said that the saved
would persevere in the faith forever and Arminianism
is not so sure about this. It is
agnostic.
Many but not all Arminians hold that once you are saved you are always
saved. So do Calvinists.
Arminianism
is closer to Roman Catholicism.
But unlike Catholicism it
believes that faith is enough – or that it is enough to believe and repent once
while turning to the blood of Christ for salvation. Catholics say it is only enough if you can’t
do good works. The Catholic is saved by
faith alone until it is time to do good works and then you are saved by
both. It often says that all sin is
mortal contrary to Roman Catholicism.
Arminianism
teaches the legal fiction theory that Jesus’ obedience is credited to the
sinner’s account and the sinner’s to Jesus’.
This denies
CONCLUSION
Born-again Protestantism is the religion of the Bible and the Roman
Catholic Church is not Christian according to the Bible. Born-again Protestantism is bad news so the
Bible is bad news too.
WORKS CONSULTED
A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Catholic Truth Society,
A Summary of Christian Doctrine Louis Berkhof, The Banner of Truth Trust,
A Withering Branch, Joseph H Harley, John English
and Co, Wexford, 1956
All One Body – Why Don’t We Agree? Erwin W Lutzer,
An Examination of Tulip, Robert L Sumner,
Biblical Evangelism Press,
Apologia Pro Vita Sua,
John Henry Newman, JN Dent & Sons Ltd,
Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic, David B Currie, Ignatius Press,
Can a Saved Person Ever Be Lost, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
Christian Answers About Doctrine, John Eddison, Scripture Union,
Doubt The Consequences Cause and Cure, Curtis Hutson Sword of the Lord,
Eight Gospel Absurdities if a Born-Again Soul Ever Loses Salvation John R
Rice Sword of the Lord,
Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan,
Four Great Heresies, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
How to be a Christian without Being Religious, Fritz
Ridenour, Regal Books, California, 1970
HyperCalvinism, John D Rice, Sword of the Lord,
Is it necessary
for you to be baptised to be saved? Hoyt H Houchen,
Guardian of Truth,
Legalism – A Smokescreen, Mike Allison, Sword of the Lord,
Radio Replies, Vol 1, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio
Replies Press,
Radio Replies, Vol 2, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio
Replies Press,
Radio Replies, Vol 3, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio
Replies Press,
Reasons for Hope, Editor Jeffrey A
Mirus,
Saved For Certain, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
The Catholic
Church has the Answer, Paul Whitcomb, TAN, Illinois
The Catholicity of Protestantism Ed R Newton Flew
and Rupert E Davies, Lutterworth Press,
The Eternal Security of the Believer, Curtis Hutson,
Sword of the Lord,
The Grace of God in the Gospel, John Cheeseman,
Philip Gardner, Michael Sadgrove, Tom Wright, The
Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1976
The Great Acquittal, Tony Baker, George Carey, John Tiller and Tom
Wright, Fount,
The Institutes of the Christian Religion, John
Calvin, Hodder and
The Other Side of Calvinism, Laurence M Vance, Vance Publications
There is no Difference for all have Sinned, John R Rice, Sword of the
Lord,
Unitarian Christianity and Other Essays, William
Ellery Channing The Bobs-Merrill Company Inc,
Why I Disagree with All Five Points of Calvinism, Curtis Hutson, Sword of the Lord,
BIBLE TRANSLATION USED
The Amplified Bible
21 January 2008
Top of the Document