Do you have a problem with Calvinism?

Jim,
I know of one freewill baptist church. It is located just a few miles from me. I have never been to the church, but I do know one person who goes there. We have never discussed what they believe, so I am not sure about this church.

 

Have MAJOR problems with Calvinism. I don't think it's biblical.

 

It is the third time in two days I have been labelled unbiblical.

What book, pray tell, do you think we use?

Not so cheerful, but rejoicing in the truth, as I see it, in the book, and rejoicing in that truth which preserved the message of hope all down through the centuries. The older I get, the more Calvinistic I become.

Jim

 

Jim, unless YOU ARE Calvinism, I did not call you unbiblical!

I think Calvinism is, and I have spent quite a bit of time, even today, making that point here:

http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=35;t=000396

and here

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=35;t=000398

and many other threads in that forum...

I am NOT saying that lightly and I am NOT calling YOU unbiblical.

 

Seeinh how as I still have not decided on this subject, I do have a question.
What do non calvinist say the words "choosen", "called", & "elect" in scripture mean? And I am not trying to start something over this, I just don't think I've ever seen anyone talk about that. But pobably I just missed it on here.

 

1) I am a 5-point orthodox Protestant:
1 - Scripture Alone
2 - Grace Alone ("the doctrines of grace", aka "Calvinism")
3 - Faith Alone
4 - Christ Alone
5 - Glory to God Alone

2) The church where I am a member includes those who hold to the doctrines of grace and those who do not.

3) We are Baptists, we'll come up with any excuse to eat the Baptist Bird (chicken) and any other home cookin'!

Rev. G

 

Terry:

Would you have the majority of baptists in Houston agree with Dr. W. A. Criswell of First Baptist, Dallas?

I know where he stood theologically. Your answer to this question will help me to understand.

Thank you, and cheers,

Jim

 

Actually, I have quite a few friends (who are pastors) in the Houston area. They are Reformed, and a couple of them pastor Reformed congregations. There is hope for Houston, yet!

 

Let's not argue, I feel there are good people on each side of this issue but there are also those from both camps that go to extremes and are acting unbiblically. I suppose I am speaking of some from the C camp who claim that a person has been predetermined for hell by God, and cannot alter that in any way. And from the A camp some who feel that they must do so much of the salvation equation that they are actually preaching a works doctrine. I feel both of these extremes are unbiblical and as Dr. Bob has rightly said you cannot divorce the believer from what he believes. eph 2 tells us that by grace we are saved thru faith, God provides all the grace but we must supply the faith. And I do believe that He enables us to have this faith. I hope I haven't made it worse.
Murph

 

To be a Calvinist basically means to teach the doctrines of grace, not everything John Calvin wrote or said. It is theological shorthand.

I don't know what John Calvin said on the subject, but I don't think that the doctrines of grace mean in any way that infants go to hell. Their salvation is in God's gracious hands.

There are a minority of Calvinists who make their Calvinism a fellowship issue with non-Calvinists, but most do not.

TULIP is an acrnonym that no one knows for sure who came up with it, but it probably grew out of the Synod of Dordt ( www.apuritansmind.com/Creeds/SynodOfDordt.htm ). By the time of this Synod, John Calvin had been dead for many years.

If I recall correctly, the five points of Arminianism were drawn up by followers of Arminius after Arminius died.

[ November 10, 2002, 10:48 PM: Message edited by: Ken Hamilton ]

 

Houston certainly is not lacking in churches that are both Baptist and Calvinistic. I'll name two off the top of my head: Grace Bible Church, which is pastored by Dr. Harry Leafe (who has a radio program and teaches at the College of Biblical Studies in Houston), and Spring Memorial Baptist Church, pastored by Richard Caldwell, which is hosting this week's Willam Carey Conference on Evangelism. Both churches are Calvinistic in soteriology, but I'm not sure you would call them reformed, because they are both fully committed to dispensationalism. Dr. Leafe is a DTS graduate and Spring Memorial is very much in the John MacArthur orbit.

There also seems to be a fairly strong Calvinistic influence in the parachurch network of Bible studies that attract so many Gen X people in Houston. A number of my own students attend these studies regularly, and it's a point of tension for some fundamentalists here. The "next generation" is growing more theological, less KJVO, and more Calvinistic. In fact, Houston's fundamentalist pulpits might be a good place to hear anti-Calvinist invective for just this reason: fear. A couple of my students were at Southwinds, a fundamentalist church in Tomball, where the pastor labelled Calvinism a "heresy" and the associate delivered a characteristically muddled sermon against it -- never expecting to be challenged afterwards. But there is a zeal in the younger generation of believers--whether they are Calvinistic or not--that expects the elders to back up what they say.

Anyway, the situation in Houston is far from hopeless in terms of reformation. The influence of DTS in Texas means that you find an inordinate number of Calvinists who are also dispensationalists, but they are Calvinists nontheless. Within the Southern Baptist churches, they are open but not militant. Within the fundamentalist churches, where they are still targets of hatred, they tend to be in the closet.

Mark

 

Here are some answers to these questions:

The Westminster Confession and, mirroring it, the Baptist Confession of 1689 both teach that "elect infants" who die in infancy will be saved. When he re-printed the BCF for his congregation, Spurgeon changed the wording from "elect infants" to "infants," reflecting his view that all infants who die in infancy are elect. I believe Spurgeon's view would be characteristic of most Calvinistic Baptists today. It suits our sensibilities without having to posit an alternate plan of salvation for those who have not yet reached the "age of accountability."

Fundamentalist anti-Calvinists tend to use the term "hyper-Calvinist" to describe anyone who is a fully orbed Calvinist--i.e., a "five pointer." In fact, the term refers to those who embrace Calvinist soteriology but reject the free offer of the gospel to sinners. For the purposes of anti-Calvinist invective, it would be a useful distinction to make, but it tends not to be made.

The Canons of Dort (i.e., the "five points") make up a consistent, coherent rejection of an equally consistent (though in my mind less coherent) system of thought proposed by the followers of Arminius, the Remonstrants. They deal with soteriology, our doctrine of salvation, and embracing the "five points" is only a part of what it means to be a Calvinist. A person who describes himself as a "3-point Calvinist" is basically saying that he has not fully accepted Calvinistic soteriology. In my mind, he would certainly be Calvinistic, but not really a Calvinist. The opposite is true as well. There are plenty of folks who embrace the Arminian notion of libertarian free will but have somehow managed not to accept the full Arminian position. They would be more charitable described as "not fully Arminian," I think.

Yes and no. If I affirm, say, total depravity and perseverence of the saints, but reject the rest of Calvinist soteriology, it's a misnomer to refer to me as a Calvinist. However, in common usage, it is the norm for people to chart their progress toward biblical doctrine by listing how many 'points' they affirm. We all know what they mean, and it's pedantic to keep repeating that they're not really Calvinists.

If you are an evangelical Christian who has given the matter of soteriology some thought, it is unlikely that you won't find points of contact in one camp or the other. So, some who "don't fit" don't fit because they haven't studied the question much. Others, though, simply resist labels. They may hold to libertarian free will and insist that Christ died in the (vain) hope of saving every man, woman, and child who ever has or ever will enter this world, but they don't want to be identified with Arminius. One-on-one, you have to respect a person's wishes in terms of labelling, but when I generalize, I tend to assign people to the categories to which their professed beliefs correspond more or less.

Salvation is by grace, not by the articulation of correct doctrine. As a rule, Calvinists acknowledge the salvation of anyone who professes faith in Christ, whether we agree in doctrine or not. Witness the fact that, when Calvinism emerges in a congregation that has typically been Arminian, the Calvinists attempt to win their brothers to sound doctrine. The Arminian response, in my experience, tends to be ejecting the Calvinists from the congregation. In fairness, though, there are extremists on both sides who deny that someone holding to the opposite view could be saved. They are quite wrong.

The "five points" are the result of the Synod of Dort, a gathering of divines from throughout the Reformed world of the seventeenth century. They gathered in response to the Remonstrance, a document submitted by the followers of Arminius, who wanted to see the Heidelburg Catechism and the Belgic Confession updated to reflect their views. The Synod rejected each of their five points, so that the "5 Points of Calvinism" are in fact five negations of Arminian doctrine. Thus, the five points were not simply the product of one man's mind. They reflected the concensus of Protestant, non-Lutheran thinkers at that time.

Arminius was a Reformed professor of theology--I believe at Leyden, but I could be wrong. After his death, his students wanted to see the qualifications he had introduced into the Reformed system integrated into the confession and catechism. Basically, they wanted to change the teaching of the church and make their own view acceptable within the Reformed camp. This was an in-house debate among Dutch Calvinists. The reason it has such universal application today is that it hit on some of the key issues in the mystery of God's salvation.

The thing to remember is that the Calvinist/Arminian debate is basically the Protestant evangelical stage of a disagreement that has been with the Church since the beginning. Both men borrowed ideas from those who had gone before, and modern Calvinists and Arminians draw on much more than simply the work of two men in their debate. The terms Calvinist and Arminian are useful as descriptions, although neither is really adequate to descibe what is intended.

Mark

 

Abiyah said, concerning some sticking points with Calvinism:

* I have a real hard time with infants going to
hell.

So do Calvinists, for the most part. For some reason, the question of infant salvation has mutated into a "Calvinist problem" even though both Calvinists and Arminian camps are in the same boat.

But when you actually think it through, it is really the Arminians and their belief in free will that have the problem. How can babies be saved, if they have never exercised their free will and accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour? The Arminian answer to the problem is to posit a (nebulous, and questionably Biblical) "age of accountability" before which children (and the mentally retarded, and so forth) are supposedly unable to tell right from wrong and are therefore not held accountable for their sins. (So in the Arminian system there are really two ways to be saved - one for young children and one for everyone else.)

For the Calvinist, however, there is no need to postulate an "age of accountability" - God extends his grace to infants on the basis of Christ's substitutionary atonement, just like everyone else.

* What is a hyper Calvinist, if there are Calvinists who excede the five points?

"Hyper-Calvinism" has nothing to do with the five points. Hyper-Calvinists overemphasize the sovereignty of God at the expense of the moral responsibility of men, and in so doing deny the universal offer of the Gospel, and thus the necessity of evangelism. Arminians take the opposite extreme; boring five-point Calvinists hold both God's sovereignty and man's responsibility to be true.

* Do other Calvinists accept that there may be
4- and 3-point Calvinists?

In a manner of speaking; we certainly would recognize them as being "Calvinistic," though inconsistent. But by definition a "Calvinist" is a five-pointer.

* Is there any such thing as a 2-point Calvin-
ist?

Not by definition. (Plus I wonder whether one can deny three points and still properly call oneself a "Calvinist.")

* How do Calvinists consider those who do not
fit in either the Calvinist or the Arminian cate-
gory?

The problem is, each of the individual points is an either/or proposition. One either affirms total depravity (Calvinism) or denies it (Arminianism); one either affirms unconditional electino (Calvinism) or denies it (Arminianism); and so forth. There is no middle ground between any of these points.

Consequently there can be no third option that is not somewhere on a spectrum between 5-point Calvinism and 5-point Arminianism. To the extent that one is not a Calvinist, one is an Arminian, and vice versa.

* Do Calvinists believe Arminians are not true
believers?

No, the vast majority of Calvinists (excepting a few weirdos) would affirm that Arminian Christians are true believers who are simply mistaken about soteriology. Salvation is based on who you know, not what you know.

* Are the Tulip points Calvin's own writings or a later theologian's summation?

They are based on the Canons of the Synod of Dort, which were formulated some time after Calvin's death. They are, however, an accurate summation of Calvin's own theology.

* Were Arminius' 5 points really his answer to
Calvin or another theologian's summation of his
beliefs?

Like the five points of Calvinism, the "Articles of Remonstrance" were formulated posthumously by Arminius' students seeking revision to the theology of the Protestant Church - not necessarily Calvin in particular. It was the Synod of Dort, in fact, that was convened in response to the Articles of Remonstrance.

 

Oh goodness, Bob, I have been called much worse by evolutionists! And they have had target practice on me for about five years now. They are very practiced with calling me things. So it really doesn't bother me anymore.

But the point I was trying to make is that it is ideas proposed by Calvinism that I find unbiblical. I'm sorry, but I really do, and I have expounded on that rather extensively at times in the Calvinist forum. I do NOT consider myself an Arminian, however, although I may well be a @#$%^&*(.

However, anyone who trusts Jesus Christ and Him alone is biblical. So I definitely separate the person from the ideas in the theologies, just as I know there are born again and saved Catholics, even though I also consider the Catholic church to be something that even those little signs cannot adequately express.

Each of us really is separate from the ideas we think are true. Because right or wrong, we continue being ourselves. Our ideas can change, and often do, however, in the course of time and learning and increased faith and such.

 

C.S. Murphy said:

Hog wash. there is only one way to salvation Eph 2 by grace are ye saved thru faith.

So infants and the unborn who die in the womb are saved by their faith?

So tell me sir plainly and clearly in the calvin teaching do all babies who die go to heaven or are some of them placed upon this earth by a God who has already decided that he will not allow them into heaven?

Plainly and clearly: Calvinists all agree that elect infants go to heaven when they die. Many, perhaps even most, Calvinists believe that everyone who dies in infancy is elect because this is most consistent with a gracious God. All Calvinists agree that whatever God does is good, right, and just.

[ November 12, 2002, 05:57 PM: Message edited by: Ransom ]

 

C S Murphy

I have to agree with you on this as I have noticed that when you have two extreems the truth is somewhere in between.

Richard

 

My sincere thanks to all who have answered me
here. All of your detailed answers were read
and appreciated.

8o)

 

That sir is a cop out, you failed to completely answer my question. which said simply and plainly does calvinist teach that all babies who die go to heaven. You shared the calvin view that those who are the elect will go but that means that no all babies don't go. Please tell the truth about your doctrine, don't be misleading.
Murph