10 reasons why free-willers fear accepting Calvinism

[gb93433]

So many Calvinists take their belief from Paul's prayer in Eph. 1:3-14. If read in context it has nothing to do with what so many label as predestination and say, "Aha, see what it says." That is much like saying, "All Cretans are liars" because it says so.

Correct interpretation has everything to do with the correct historical context and not just words on a page. But then again I have yet for one person to prove to me he is an obedient Christian and espouses all of the doctrines they often believe of election and predestination. The problem is so often their foundational interpreattion of election and predestination is wrong. Many have correct practice but incorrect interpretation. They cannot reconcile their belief with their practice. Some keep moving and do evangelism. Some quit doing evangelism and then struggle with what they thought they believed thinking something just doesn't fit but they do not know what the problem is. They know they must do evangelism but it somehow doesn't fit with their theology of predestination. If someone will come to Christ anyway then why preach? Then why a gospel. Then why a sacrifice? But the Bible says they will not come to Christ unless there is a preacher. Is that a inacurate statement in the Bible or is it true?

"How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?"

 

[gb93433]

Originally posted by Kiffen:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />I have met many, many Calvinists who are not sure if they are the elect and are going to heaven. That is heresy.

I have met many Arminians who feel the same way.

</font>[/QUOTE]I have too. It is for different reasons though. For the Arminianist it is conditioned on their works. For the calvinist it is conditioned on the idea of questioning if they are the elect. Neither are right. We must live for Christ and not just be willing to die for Him. Many are willing to die for Christ and only want salvation. We must live for Christ. I have never seen a person who lives for Christ ever doubt their salvation.

Only being willing to die for Christ is like living for the time when we die. Most often there is a lot of time in the middle.

 

[whatever]

Originally posted by TexasSky:
PS Timothy,

Why do you call yourself "Calvinist" is you don't embrace the whole of John Calvin's teachings?

For me it's just a label of convenience. I would choose a different label but unfortunately if I did no one would know what I was talking about. The five points were not articulated until the Remonstrance, years after Calvin's death. They do not encapsulate all that Calvin taught, not even close.

That's one reason I find it funny that people point to infant baptism or something and say "how can you believe that". Calvinism does not even address the mode or timing or purpose of baptism at all. And that's just one example where I would disagree with Calvin.

 

[whetstone]

Originally posted by gb93433:
But the Bible says they will not come to Christ unless there is a preacher. Is that a inacurate statement in the Bible or is it true?

"How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?"

Why not continue the questions? How shall a preacher preach unless he is called? How shall the preacher's message be accepted unless the Holy Spirit opens hearts? The preacher isn't why people get saved. He's merely an agent of the gospel. It is God that saves men.

And by the way- the verse doesn't say men cannot be saved without a preacher. These are rhetorical questions. The apostle Paul was not saved by a preacher- but by the very voice of Jesus speaking to him from the sky. God bless.

Daniel Allen
www.spurgeon.us

 

[HanSola2000]

Scuse me there timmy27, but Arminianism is the ONLY THING you find the first 300 years of church history. No one anywhere taught Calvin's warped dcotrines until that Papal apologist Augustine began to teach it. The source for Calvinism is Augustine, NOT THE BIBLE. Read any of the ante-nicene fathers to see they were all what you wouyld call Arminian, and NOT A ONE was Calvinistic.

What happened? Did the "great doctrines" of election andpredestination fall of the face of the earth and out of all the churhes for 300 years right after the apostolic age???

Yes indeed if Calvinismbe true, and the Holy Spirit left off His teaching position within the body!

Not only does Scripture testify against your man-made traditions, but so does history. We know when, where and who invented your doctrines, and it was hundreds of years AFTER the apostolic age. Such a thing is known as a APOSTASY, which is exactly what Calvinism is.

 

[webdog]

Originally posted by Brother James:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by webdog:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> The story of Cornelius is an interesting one- and it shows that man made in the image of God has a desire to fill his empty soul with God- but cannot do it of his own accord.

Explain why God would create man with a "desire to fill his empty soul with God", but then deliberately exlude those same men from salvation? This is the tyranical, monster of calvinism. </font>[/QUOTE]Read Romans chapter 9. </font>[/QUOTE]I have, and it doesn't answer my question. Care to defend Whetstone's assumption about Cornelius?

 

[TomMann]

I always thought that man tried to fill that empty soul with anything other than God.... Man doesn't know what is missing and will try Money, Power, Sex, Alcohol..... anything other than God.

Man will often plead with God for relief from his ills...... but what he wants is relief and not God Himself......

 

[whetstone]

Originally posted by HanSola2000:
Scuse me there timmy27, but Arminianism is the ONLY THING you find the first 300 years of church history. No one anywhere taught Calvin's warped dcotrines until that Papal apologist Augustine began to teach it. The source for Calvinism is Augustine, NOT THE BIBLE. Read any of the ante-nicene fathers to see they were all what you wouyld call Arminian, and NOT A ONE was Calvinistic.

What happened? Did the "great doctrines" of election andpredestination fall of the face of the earth and out of all the churhes for 300 years right after the apostolic age???

Yes indeed if Calvinismbe true, and the Holy Spirit left off His teaching position within the body!

Not only does Scripture testify against your man-made traditions, but so does history. We know when, where and who invented your doctrines, and it was hundreds of years AFTER the apostolic age. Such a thing is known as a APOSTASY, which is exactly what Calvinism is.

Since no one argues for the doctrines of grace from history or Augustine your post is moot. We have used only scripture and reason. Is that not good enough for you?

apostasy

n 1: the state of having rejected your religious beliefs or your political party or a cause (often in favor of opposing beliefs or causes) -Dictionary.com

Those who are labeled Calvinists believe the essentials: That salvation is by faith through grace in Christ's atoning sacrifice alone. For you to call the doctrines of election or predestination apostasy is just plain ignorant as those terms are in the actual Bible. If you are referring to the Calvinist interpretation of those verses- you need to say that. But to say that election is downright unbiblical shows you have no understanding in the matter whatsoever.

God Bless,

Daniel Allen
www.spurgeon.us

 

[timothy27]

Thanks whetstone, I was ust trying to show that even the arminians views are not their own. I hold to the bible not calvin. I also find it funny how only the Arminians start yelling apostasy and heretic when they are shown to be incorrect.

 

[qwerty]

Here, for our Calvinist friends, is a statement by a Calvinist. Do you agree with it? Is Boettner a solid Calvinist? He was considered a Calvinist scholar in the 1900s. Is he correct in this statement?


The Reformed Doctrine Of Predestination
By Loraine Boettner D.D.a

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/boettner/predest.vii.ii.html

1. Before the Reformation

It may occasion some surprise to discover that the doctrine of Predestination was not made a matter of special study until near the end of the fourth century.

The earlier church fathers placed chief emphasis on good works such as faith, repentance, almsgiving, prayers, submission to baptism, etc., as the basis of salvation. They of course taught that salvation was through Christ; yet they assumed that man had full power to accept or reject the gospel. Some of their writings contain passages in which the sovereignty of God is recognized; yet along side of those are others which teach the absolute freedom of the human will. Since they could not reconcile the two they would have denied the doctrine of Predestination and perhaps also that of God's absolute Foreknowledge. They taught a kind of synergism in which there was a co-operation between grace and free will. It was hard for man to give up the idea that he could work out his own salvation.

But at last, as a result of a long, slow process, he came to the great truth that salvation is a sovereign gift which has been bestowed irrespective of merit; that it was fixed in eternity; and that God is the author in all of its stages. This cardinal truth of Christianity was first clearly seen by Augustine, the great Spirit-filled theologian of the West. In his doctrines of sin and grace, he went far beyond the earlier theologians, taught an unconditional election of grace, and restricted the purposes of redemption to the definite circle of the elect.

It will not be denied by anyone acquainted with Church History that Augustine was an eminently great and good man, and that his labors and writings contributed more to the promotion of sound doctrine and the revival of true religion than did those of any other man between Paul and Luther.

 

[timothy27]

I would agree with the bulk of that qoute.

 

[russell55]

I'd agree with the quote. The church fathers went off-track rather quickly and kept on going in their off-track direction until their off-track teaching came to it's natural fruition in the teachings of Pelagius.

 

[HanSola2000]

FActs are facts.

Calvinism can be nailed to to its originator, time and origin--400 AD.

His views were completely new and unheards of in the churches.

The fact that we can pin down the origin of your false doctrines PROVES they did not come from the Bible, nor were these doctrines tuaght in the early church. Check-mate. ALL YOU FIND IS AN ARMINIAN UNDERSTANDING IN EVERY CHURCH FOUNDED BY THE APOSTLES.

These facts cannot be overcome by Calvinistic side-stepping. Your doctrine is not Biblical as proven by the fact that Augustine was THE FIRST to teach it.

Now who can believe that the ENTIRE CHURCH forsook Calvinism immediately after the apostolic age until Augustine??? Why, if you have an az to grind, then all Calvinists must AFFIRM that this is perzactly what happened! What an insult to the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit, and what an insult to His keeping power! But of course, Calvinism's specialty IS blasphemy, so no surprise here.

Whetstone:

I understand the doctrines you espouse quite well. Calvin redefined the terms elect, election and predestination. His definitions are wrong and blasphemy.

 

[whetstone]

To say that a doctrine was not studied in a special way until AD400 is not the same thing as saying the doctrines were invented in AD400. Let's not forget that the Trinity was not systematized until around that time as well. Much of modern prophetic study wasn't systematized until the past 500 years! I think your claim is pretty off base Han.

God bless.

Daniel Allen
www.spurgeon.us

 

[HanSola2000]

Not so. Chiliasm, as it is called in "scholarly" cirlces, was the view of the early church. The early church was premillenial, with some clear Dispensational undestandings of the 70th week, etc.

You have Tertullian clearly expounding the doctrine of the Trinity in 200 AD, and Athenagoras alluding to it in 170 AD.

Augustine was not making "special study" of election and predestination" for the first time in church history! He was DEPARTING FROM a universal understanding of those terms and inventing his own--hence I used the word apostasy. Now face facts. The originator of your views was someone 300 years removed from the apostolic age, and a man that introduced many other heresies into the church, including replacement theology, and much to support Rome's cultic false gospel.

 

[whetstone]

Originally posted by HanSola2000:
Not so. Chiliasm, as it is called in "scholarly" cirlces, was the view of the early church. The early church was premillenial, with some clear Dispensational undestandings of the 70th week, etc.

You have Tertullian clearly expounding the doctrine of the Trinity in 200 AD, and Athenagoras alluding to it in 170 AD.

Augustine was not making "special study" of election and predestination" for the first time in church history! He was DEPARTING FROM a universal understanding of those terms and inventing his own--hence I used the word apostasy. Now face facts. The originator of your views was someone 300 years removed from the apostolic age, and a man that introduced many other heresies into the church, including replacement theology, and much to support Rome's cultic false gospel.

I dunno. I can't help but read Pauls words and think he had a pretty good grasp on Calvinism if you ask me. Correct me if I'm wrong but he predates anything you've mentioned thus far.

 

[ILUVLIGHT]

Whetstone;

I dunno. I can't help but read Pauls words and think he had a pretty good grasp on Calvinism if you ask me. Correct me if I'm wrong but he predates anything you've mentioned thus far.

That's a rather dishonest statement if I ever heard one. Paul was not a Calvinist nor did he adhure to any of it's false doctrines. Calvinism is an assumed doctrine, totally man made. Not one point of the tulip is provable from scripture.
May Christ Shine His Light On Us All;
Mike

 

[timothy27]

You are incorrect Luvlght They are all provable from scripture.

 

[4His_glory]

Originally posted by ILUVLIGHT:
Whetstone;
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> I dunno. I can't help but read Pauls words and think he had a pretty good grasp on Calvinism if you ask me. Correct me if I'm wrong but he predates anything you've mentioned thus far.

That's a rather dishonest statement if I ever heard one. Paul was not a Calvinist nor did he adhure to any of it's false doctrines. Calvinism is an assumed doctrine, totally man made. Not one point of the tulip is provable from scripture.
May Christ Shine His Light On Us All;
Mike </font>[/QUOTE]Right Mike, Paul was not a Calvinist, but Calvin was a Paulinist.

 

[whetstone]

well said 4his.