ALAN ROEBUCK writes:

There has been some discussion of Calvinism at your site.  As a Calvinist myself, I’d like to add some explanation. 

Christian apologist Greg Koukl has provided a very useful insight. He says “Calvinism describes what’s going on behind the scenes.”  Behind the scenes, God predestines. But “on stage,” as it were, we don’t feel predestined. We have free will, in the ordinary sense of the word, and this was defined best by Jonathan Edwards: Free will is the ability to choose what we want to choose. And we clearly have the ability to choose what we want to choose. So we have free will, in this sense. 

Calvinism (i.e., Christianity!) is concerned with free will primarily in the area of choosing Christ. Nobody in his natural state can choose Christ because when we are born, we all have a propensity to hate God and His gospel. And nobody has the ability to choose something he does not want to choose. But behind the scenes, operating in a way that we will never even be capable of understanding, God causes some to want to choose Christ, and so they do. That’s what irresistible grace means: if you have been enabled to want something, you cannot resist that which you want. [Insert pun about attractive woman named Grace here.] 

Regarding total depravity: It does not mean that we’re totally depraved, i.e., as bad as is logically possible. It means that all areas of our being are affected by sin and the Fall. But we still retain some ability to reason, to know right from wrong, and so on. Our main problem is, unless God regenerates our hearts, we do not want to reason correctly about God. For confirmation, see any atheistic polemic. 

More could be said, but perhaps that’s enough for now.

                                                                     — Comments —

Laura writes:

Thank you for the clarification. So in other words, total depravity means our minds, our sentiments, our instincts all have an element of rebelliousness.

Does the Calvinist believe that while some are the beneficiaries of irresistible grace others are damned from birth and remain unelected through eternity? Is that simply a caricature of Calvinism or an actual doctrine?

Sage McLaughlin writes:

Alan Roebuck says that, “We have free will, in the ordinary sense of the word, and this was defined best by Jonathan Edwards: Free will is the ability to choose what we want to choose.” But this is not the ordinary sense of the word at all, in fact this is its precise opposite. We think of animals as having the ability to choose what they want to choose, but we generally do not think of them as enjoying free will in the same sense as human beings. What distinguishes us is our ability to choose what we do not want to choose. That is real freedom in the way that the Church fathers understood it, and as Christians have traditionally understood it.

Does Roebuck mean something else, something more nuanced than what I’ve interpreted his words to mean? If not, then he has really just laid bare the very thing to which non-Calvinist Christians (who, contra Roebuck’s monstrous presumption, do exist) object so strongly–the absence of meaningful moral agency for the predestined soul.

mdavid writes:

Does the Calvinist believe that while some are the beneficiaries of irresistible grace others are damned from birth and remain unelected through eternity? Is that simply a caricature of Calvinism or an actual doctrine?

The problem with this question, of course, is that there is no provable Calvinist. We are nearly 500 years past Calvin, and even within his own generation the splintering of Western Christianity was in full swing. Who now is the true Calvinist? Which one of the many thousands of Christian denominations with roots to Calvin get to claim the moniker? Methinks the only way to get an answer is to a) find out what Calvin himself believed, or b) find out what the denomination he founded at the moment of his death formally believed.

Regarding your question of doctrine as of today: I can guarantee that there are thousands and thousands of people right now who call themselves Calvinist who fall on each and every side of the issue (even some sides we haven’t even thought of). So it’s kinda nice – you get to pick your answer :-).

Stephanie L. Murgas writes:

I realized I should probably be Presbyterian when I read, “The kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are like these children.” My realization was that I was an adult, and I could not accept faith like a child any longer. My conflict with the doctrine regards the idea that there is supposed to be One Truth among four clearly conflicting versions of the Gospel, and that supposedly all sins were forgiven when Christ was crucified. Yet the Bible says that the unforgivable sin is the sin against the Holy Spirit, which is constantly committed, and my chief argument lies in the practice of infant baptism. How can an individual who does not yet have the ability to exercise his free will be baptized in the name of a Trinitarian god, without committing a serious Sin against that individual’s soul? Surely the people who do this will suffer eternal damnation in Hell. Again, I cite the example of Christ, who prayed to be saved from his death, and his prayer went unanswered. He lay his life down in submission to a law that was morally wrong, and his death was in vain.

Alan Roebuck writes:

Laura wrote, 

Does the Calvinist believe that while some are the beneficiaries of irresistible grace others are damned from birth and remain unelected through eternity? Is that simply a caricature of Calvinism or an actual doctrine?

Keep in mind that Calvinism is not the teaching of Calvin, but a complete system of biblical interpretation and church administration that was begun by Calvin and developed further after his death, and that does not see him as its highest authority. Calvinism is one school of biblical interpretation, the one I believe to be the most accurate.

Yes, Calvinism interprets the Bible as teaching that some are not predestined to be saved. It is a hard teaching, but it is what the Bible says. But as Koukl reminds us, the identities of the elect and the reprobate are not knowable by us. In the practical sphere anyone can be saved, and it is their response of faith that saves them. But behind the scenes, it is God who gives some, and not others, the ability to desire faith in Christ, and therefore to be saved.

Alan adds:

Says Sage McLaughlin, 

But [Free will as the ability to choose what we want to choose] is not the ordinary sense of the word at all, in fact this is its precise opposite. We think of animals as having the ability to choose what they want to choose, but we generally do not think of them as enjoying free will in the same sense as human beings. What distinguishes us is our ability to choose what we do not want to choose. 

But when we choose what we don’t want to choose, we do want to want it. The addict who wants to kick his habit does not want to stop taking the drug, but he does want to change what he wants. He wants to stop wanting the drug. The one who chooses what he does not want does want to choose it, although he does not want it. 

If we had no desire to change what it is that we want, then we would not choose something we don’t want. Question for Sage: Do you want to become a Moslem? Do you not want to, but want to want to? No and No. You cannot choose what you don’t, at some level, want. 

So the non-Christian, contemplating Christ, is like Sage contemplating Islam: He doesn’t want it. But some change what it is that they want (either because they now want Christ, or they now want to want Christ.) What causes this change? There are only two possible answers: “We cannot know the ultimate cause,” or “God works it, according to his foreordained plan,” which is what the Bible says.

Stephanie writes:

The LORD once walked on his earth so dear,
But man-made conditions made them impossible to hear.
 
So God sent his Son,
to reclaim her Body.
And still they rejected him:
the conditions still shoddy.
 
The next logical progression
in the three-fold host
should be to incarnate
the soul Holy Ghost.
 
If logic dictates that,
and reasoning proves right,
then this is in fact,
a Blessed Good Night.
 
Stephanie Louise Murgas
dob: 11/21/1983
suburban American homemaker. 

Laura writes:

Stephanie writes above:How can an individual who does not yet have the ability to exercise his free will be baptized in the name of a Trinitarian god, without committing a serious Sin against that individual’s soul?

If an individual can inherit sin without exercising free will then he can be baptized without exercising free will. The notion that baptism is evil and the idea that Christ’s death was in vain are profoundly anti-Christian.

Alan writes: So the non-Christian, contemplating Christ, is like Sage contemplating Islam: He doesn’t want it. But some change what it is that they want (either because they now want Christ, or they now want to want Christ.) What causes this change? There are only two possible answers: “We cannot know the ultimate cause,” or “God works it, according to his foreordained plan,” which is what the Bible says.

There is another possible cause: the individual perceives the merit of that which is offered because of changes that arise from within.

Kristor writes:

Laura writes:

Alan writes: So the non-Christian, contemplating Christ, is like Sage contemplating Islam: He doesn’t want it. But some change what it is that they want (either because they now want Christ, or they now want to want Christ.) What causes this change? There are only two possible answers: “We cannot know the ultimate cause,” or “God works it, according to his foreordained plan,” which is what the Bible says.

There is another possible cause: the individual perceives the merit of that which is offered because of changes that arise from within

There is yet another possible cause (although it occurs to me that in what follows, I am only elaborating on what you meant by a “change that arises from within”): that we were originally designed to worship and adore God, so that we cannot attain our highest happiness unless we are so doing; and so, while we may wallow in our sin, and enjoy it well enough, and prefer not to give it up, still we are by our very nature fundamentally restless and unhappy until we repent and return to him. As St. Augustine said in his Confessions, “Our hearts are restless, until they rest in thee, O Lord.” In our restlessness, we worry and worry at the problem of the essential unhappiness that idolatry of any kind produces. So we seek and seek, until eventually we find; we knock, and knock, until eventually we find that the door is opened to us. To seek, one need not even know quite what one is looking for; it is enough to know that one has not yet found it. So may one proceed, saying with the Hindus, “not this; not that.” To say just that is to set our affections, not on earthly things, but on heavenly. To say just that is to be faithful, in the truest sense, which is to place one’s whole trust in something one sees but darkly, as through a glass. Since God is the Omega of all creatures, we can be confident that if we keep at it we shall arrive at him, sooner or later. 

I don’t know much about Calvinism, but it seems to me that the notion that we don’t have the least desire to adore God unless he plants it in us must be in one sense trivially true, and in another probably false. It is trivially true that our desire for God originates with him because everything originates with him. Our disordered desires are desires he has given us, that wereab initio good and righteous altogether, but that we have perverted. Had he not given our desires to us in the first place – any of them – we would not have them, and they would not exist for us to disorder. It is probably false, I think, that God has engendered the desire to worship and adore him in certain creatures, but not in others; for in creating a being that had no love or desire for him, or even any possibility of any such love or desire, God would be creating evil, which he cannot do, any more than he could create a stone he could not lift. The concept of God doing evil is incoherent, for that would contradict his nature. In doing evil, God would be less than perfectly good; i.e., he would not be God at all. I am no one to be preaching to the whirlwind, to be sure. But whatever good really is – i.e., whatever God in his omniscience understands as good – that is what he does, and indeed must do, if he is to be true to his own nature. 

God has provided that we should join him in heaven; but some have spurned the invitation to the wedding feast of the Lamb, or have shown up at the celebration without dressing properly for the occasion – i.e., clothed still in our bodies of death. Not all who cry “Lord, Lord!” may enter; for some have taken the Name in vain, and approached the altar unshriven. All of these will find themselves cast into the outer darkness, not because God is evil and vengeful, but by their own choice, on account of their moral idiocy, or their stiff necks, or because they have wholly given themselves over to evil. So, while our thrones have all been set up from before all time, and all of us elected to the royal priesthood, some have rejected the office; so that at the last day their thrones shall remain forever empty. 

And God knows eternally which of us make that dire choice. Still it is ours to make, or it is not a choice at all. The analogy to which Alan refers, of God setting up the action of the play “behind the scenes,” while we merely recite the lines, meanwhile laboring under the illusion that they are ours, seems to me to fail. If the players can do nothing more than recite the lines they have been given by the director or playwright, then despite their delusions to the contrary, the lines are not theirs at all. If they say, “I hate God,” they do so as tools only, mere robots or puppets, and no more. Only if the players can make a creative contribution to the play have they done any acting at all – whether play acting, or acting in the Aristotelian sense. But if they can, then the analogy of the play works, after all. For the actors all have their lines. They may play their parts well and faithfully, and so succeed as players. Or they may refuse to take direction, stomping off the stage in a rage; or they may play the prima donna; or they may fail to learn their lines, or to meet their marks, messing up the whole production. It boils down to whether we are really free. If so, we may refuse to play our appointed part in the wedding feast, or wear the wrong costume, or stiff the whole proceeding; or, we may turn from our wickedness, and live. But if we are not free, then discussion of the matter is really rather pointless, no? For in that case, there is nothing we can do about anything, one way or another. 

Speaking of plays going off the rails, allow me to recommend the movie, “Noises Off,” in which a show lurches from one disaster to another, each worse than the last. Absolutely hilarious.

John E. writes:

Mr. Roebuck says: 

But when we choose what we don’t want to choose, we do want to want it. The addict who wants to kick his habit does not want to stop taking the drug, but he does want to change what he wants. He wants to stop wanting the drug. The one who chooses what he does not want does want to choose it, although he does not want it. 

There seems to be a danger of infinite regress here, and sophistry. Is there a difference between wanting something and wanting to want it? Perhaps I find it difficult even wanting to want the good. Could there be redemption if I want to want to want it, or only if I want to want it? What exactly is the difference between wanting good and wanting to want good?

Brandon F. writes:

From what I understand Calvin teaches that God’s will is irresistible; that if we are called we cannot resist. That means that there is no free will for anyone called or not with regard to the calling. The bible is full of people who resist God’s will starting with Adam and Eve. Even Peter has a moment when he resists as he denies knowing Christ. 

There are as many or more verses that speak of God’s love and forgiveness for all so getting hung up on one aspect of biblical teaching does nothing but chase people away from the Truth.

Brandon adds:

An early teaching of many prominent church fathers was apocatastasis, the reconciliation of all to God at the end of days. There are diverse teachings throughout the history of Christianity but we should all take comfort that God will decide, not Calvin.

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