Reflections of a Disenchanted Calvinist

Sovereignty of God

1.    I affirm that God is sovereign over everything without exception; therefore, He is in total control; further, I believe that creating a world where men are given a real choice demonstrates God’s sovereignty rather than undermines it. By real free choice, I mean that by grace, God gave man the ability to believe the gospel or not to believe the gospel; as a result, the ones who believe could have not believed, and the ones who disbelieve could have believed unto salvation. Consequently, man’s consignment to hell is due to being born a sinner, sinning, and rejecting a real offer of the redemptive love and mercy of God, which he could have accepted; therefore he is in hell because he chose to be despite God’s provision and desire for him to be saved (2 Peter 3:9). This position does not in any sense minimize or waste the redemptive work of Christ and the power of the cross, or undermine or thwart the sovereignty of God. The work and power of the sacrifice of Christ was to provide salvation for all and secure it for all who would receive it by faith and by God’s gracious provision. I affirm that God’s sovereignty is not minimized because He sovereignly chose to provide a real choice for everyone to accept or reject the gospel. This includes deliverance from eternal hell, men’s just desert, for anyone and everyone who acts by and in concert with His grace enablement and follows Christ.
     The means of this grace enablement include but are not limited to: conviction of the Holy Spirit (John 16:7-11), working of the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 6:1-6), good soil (Matthew 13:1-23), and the power of the gospel (Romans 1:16). Further, I affirm that man, because of these gracious provisions and workings of God, can choose to seek God, such as the Bereans, where it says because they studied the Scripture, “therefore many of them believed” (Acts 17:12). Moreover, no one can come to God without God drawing (John 6:44), and that God is drawing all men (John 12:32). The same Greek word for draw, helkuo, is used in both verses. "About 115 passages condition salvation on believing alone, and about 35 simply on faith." Other grace enablements may include providential workings in other people, situations, and timing or circumstances that are a part of grace to provide the most optimal moment for an individual to choose to follow Christ.
    I further affirm that God’s full character and/or attributes, not just His sovereignty or justice, are to be considered when speaking of Him and His plans. This includes His infinity, justice, mercy, compassion, love, grace and power, which He possesses perfectly and infinitely. God is the sum of perfection.
    Moreover, I affirm that all of God’s attributes are more accurately reflected by accepting the truths of Scripture, which declare that salvation is provided and genuinely offered to everyone by God, and everyone can by “grace through faith” receive salvation, rather than by accepting the teaching of Calvinism that God only actually offers salvation to some because only that particular some can actually believe; those are the ones He monergistically causes to believe by changing their nature against their will. This is a disquieting reality.
    
2.    I disaffirm that God selects to regenerate some and thereby either actively or passively chooses to leave some in their lost condition, and therefore irresistibly pre-determines some to be forever lost and damned to a place created for Satan (Matthew 25:41).
    Calvinism asks us to believe that God chose eternal torment for the vast majority of His creation (Matthew 7:13-14). They want us to rejoice in a God who desires and chose for the vast majority of his creation to go to hell when He could have redeemed them. That is indeed the God of Calvinism, but not the God Scripture. This is a disquieting reality. Where is the plethora of Scripture where God expresses His desire for the vast majority of His creation to perish in eternal torment and this with equal clarity and abundance as those Scriptures that declare His indefatigable, sacrificial love and desire that all repent and be saved? I suggest that they do not exist and for good reason.
    Here is the dilemma caused by selective regeneration. If God monergistically selects to regenerate some and not to regenerate others, and all whom He regenerates will necessarily believe, and none whom He does not choose to regenerate can believe, then God is necessarily the one deciding to send the vast majority of sinners to hell. In other words, according to Calvinism’s monergism, everything necessary to save one sinner—God choosing to regenerate prior to faith—is sufficient to save all sinners. The only thing lacking is God choosing to regenerate certain sinners. Therefore, it is an inescapable reality, based on Calvinism, that people are in hell because God sovereignly chose not to regenerate them. God is the sole determiner that certain lost people cannot be saved and therefore must perish in hell. This is a disquieting reality. I maintain that the portrait of God painted by Calvinism is not the picture painted by Scripture.
    It is rather perplexing to see how a Calvinist can sign the Baptist Faith and Message because it says of God, “He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.” Since Calvinism teaches that God actively elected to withhold salvation from most of the lost people of the world, it seems fair to ask in what way is that fatherly. In other words, He chose to pass them by, thereby predestining them irrevocably to eternal torment, which action, according to Calvinism, pleased Him. To say they deserve it, or that God is just, misses the point. For the dilemma is not regarding their just due, but rather what kind of father is God, knowing that He could have exercised selective regeneration through irresistible grace and delivered them from such fate. This indisputably transmogrifies the affectionate and endearing word “fatherly” into something that is horrifyingly dreadful.