A Crash Course in Calvinism (A Letter to Pastors, part 1)
We recently started attending a new church and are enjoying it enough. But having come from a church that was hijacked by Calvinism, I am highly alert for any whiff of it in this one. (It's kinda sad when words like "sovereign" and "grace" make you wince.) We haven't really noticed any Calvinism in this one, but the pastors do quote from and praise Calvinist theologians. Sure, they're good quotes, but it makes me nervous. I doubt they know what Calvinism really teaches or how easily it traps people. And so being someone who can't just ignore it, I decided to write them a letter, to make sure they realize what they're dabbling with. (If I don't warn them, it's on me. But if I do warn them and they ignore it, it's on them.) And I figured I'd post that letter here, too, for anyone else who might want to know this stuff or who might want to copy it to share with their own pastors (or family or friends) who dabble in Calvinism. It's long, I know, but this is actually a very short examination of it. So grab a cup of coffee, cozy up, and enjoy. (As if it wasn't long enough, I added a few things not in the original letter, particularly some Bible verses to help support my points.)
Hello Pastor *** (and any other pastor/leader/believer you want to share this with, please pass it on),
We are somewhat new to your church, but we are really enjoying it, especially your preaching. You have a wonderful ability to reach deep into your heart and soul, touching ours. We can feel how deeply passionate you are about people, about helping them find healing, hope, comfort, and help in God. That kind of preaching usually only comes from people who have lived it, breathed it, struggled through it, not just read about it in books. We can feel that you’re teaching from the heart, not just the head. Thank you. It’s a breath of fresh air.
We left a church recently (after being there 20 years, raising our kids there, loving it) because it lost its heart after a new pastor came on board. It became all about teaching for the head, academic stuff, instead of being about shepherding people’s hearts or helping them draw nearer to the love and hope found in Jesus, in a relationship with God.
The new pastor almost never said things like “God loves you, cares about you, wants to help you, wants to save you.” But he did say/write things like “God commands us to spank our kids, and it has to hurt… Depression is a sin [No help, no compassion, just “it’s a sin,” kicking hurting people while they’re down.]… We are not God’s top priority. He cares about Himself most, about getting more glory for Himself through us.… I don’t do altar calls because I don’t want people thinking they’re saved just because they walked the aisle… We are wicked, depraved, rebellious, God-hating sinners from the beginning… Christians like to think there’s an age of accountability where babies who die go to heaven, but NO ONE gets a free pass, not even babies, because everyone is born a rebellious sinner on their way to hell, and they need to repent to be saved… God doesn’t love all people, and He doesn’t love all people equally; He picked some for heaven, but not the rest... God ordains all your tragedies, even childhood abuse – it was His Plan A for your life - for His glory, for your good, and to keep you humble, etc.” [And he didn’t mean it as in “God knew it would happen, allowed it to happen, and can work it into something good in your life.” He meant it as in “God deliberately preplanned/caused it, there was no other plan for your life than your abuse or tragedy, and He did it for His glory and to keep you humble.”]
The new pastor brought in Calvinism, which wasn’t in our Evangelical Free church before that. And heart and truth and the true Gospel went out the window. And this is one of the reasons I am writing to you. We really enjoy your preaching and the message of hope you share, how biblical you seem to be. But though we don’t necessarily think you preach/talk/think like a Calvinist, we do hear you quote Calvinist theologians all the time. In fact, almost all the theologians you quote are Calvinists. And it makes our radar go up. (The other pastor at your church – we really enjoy his teaching too - has also quoted Calvinist theologians, calling them excellent theologians, or something like that. And even if you are not Calvinists or are not at risk of drifting into it, you’re leading others to it by highlighting Calvinist theologians like you do.)
We’re concerned that maybe you don’t realize what Calvinism really teaches (underneath the biblical surface layer), how badly it destroys the Gospel, God’s Word, God’s character, and people’s faith.
(Read this letter slowly, carefully, thoughtfully, prayerfully. Because you are dabbling in Calvinism, even if you don’t know it. Seriously, right now, breathe a prayer for discernment, for wisdom.)
Some of the most popular Calvinist theologians are very Big Names in the evangelical world, writing many of the theology books out there: MacArthur, Grudem, Piper, Sproul, White, Carson, Keller, Dever, Spurgeon, Challies, Chandler. DeYoung, Platt, Greear, Kennedy, Loritts, Lutzer, Mahaney, Lloyd-Jones, Mohler, Packer, Washer, Slick, Begg, Baucham, Augustine (whom Calvin gets his theology from), etc.
[Sometimes it seems like everyone is a Calvinist, like “everyone is doing it,” but it’s not true. There are plenty of great pastors/theologians who do not teach or agree with Calvinism. (My favorite is Dr. Tony Evans, and a friend who also left an Evangelical Free church hijacked by Calvinism really likes Dr. Andy Woods.) And even if “everyone’s doing it,” it doesn’t mean they’re right. Might doesn’t make right. Just because a great number of teachers - even if they're intelligent, educated people - all gather around each other and say the same thing, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right. The Pharisees and teachers of the Law in Jesus’s day were also intelligent, educated men who all said the same thing… but they were wrong, so blinded by their own intelligence and education that they missed the Truth when He was standing right in front of them.]
Calvinism is a corruption of the Gospel, of God’s Word, utterly destroying God’s good, faithful, loving, just, trustworthy character. And so we want to caution you (and all of your pastors, please share this with them), because the more you read, respect, and listen to Calvinist theologians, the easier it is to fall into Calvinism, to slide into it without realizing it. That’s how they get you. They seem so intelligent, lofty, God-honoring, educated.
But Calvinism is really just another form of “Did God really say…?”
After watching Calvinism slowly take over our church over the course of 6 years, we have deeply studied this issue for years now: what Calvinists really mean versus what they say, how they twist verses or use them out of context, how it takes over a church through manipulation/deception, how it’s aggressively spreading, etc. We know how sneaky it is, how alluring, how it slowly draws people in.
As a licensed counselor, I noticed first the manipulation from the new pastor, how he would try to shame people into agreeing with him, making them afraid to speak up against him. Even before he started revealing his Calvinist views, he started saying things like this:
“You only have three options when it comes to the truth of [Calvinist] predestination: ignore it, get angry about it, or accept it.”
No disagreement allowed. But Calvinists have an incorrect view of predestination. Biblically, predestination is not about God predestining who gets saved and how, but about God predestining what happens to believers (and anyone can believe) after they get saved, such as they will be glorified in the end, bring God glory, and have their bodies redeemed, etc. But Calvinists get this wrong, and then try to shame you into feeling bad for disagreeing.
And “This (my views) are what the Bible teaches. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to accept it. Humble Christians don’t fight God or question God’s sovereignty.”
But Calvinists have an unbiblical view of sovereignty, too. (Of everything really.) And it's a fundamental error, leading to many other errors and contradictions. They think it means that God must always use His power all the time to preplan, cause, control everything, even sin and evil, or else He can’t be God.
As Calvinist R.C. Sproul says (in Does God Control Everything?): “If God is not sovereign, God is not God. If there is even one maverick molecule in the universe – one molecule running loose outside the scope of God’s sovereign ordination – we cannot have the slightest confidence that any promise God has ever made about the future will come to pass.”
In Calvinism, "God" equals "sovereign" equals "must preplan, control, cause everything ('ordain,' in Calvinist lingo)" ... or else He's not God.
But telling God how God must act in order to be God is a dangerous and foolish thing!
(Calvinists will do their best to hide the fact that Calvinism makes God the cause of all evil and sin, but it is an inevitable conclusion of their beliefs. And the more honest ones admit it.)
But that’s not what sovereignty is, biblically or definitionally. It’s about being the highest authority there is, answerable to no one but yourself. And as the highest authority, He gets to decide how and when to use His power. And He has clearly decided to voluntarily restrain His use of power in order to allow us to have free-will, the right to choose to accept Him or reject Him, to obey Him or disobey Him, to love Him or hate Him.
(Wow, is that humbling or what! Knowing that the Creator God of the universe would love us enough and want us to voluntarily love Him enough that He would allow Himself to be ignored and rejected by His own creation. That's truly humbling. And it makes me want to love Him even more.)
He created us with free-will, and that's the only reason for verses like these:
Yes, Calvinists can say a lot of good things. They have a surface layer that’s biblical, that sounds right, that says the things we all agree with. But – and this is critical to understand – that surface layer covers up a deeper, hidden, unbiblical layer that ultimately contradicts/negates the biblical surface layer, a deeper layer they try to hide or obscure as long as possible. And the things they get wrong hit at the very heart of the Gospel, of God’s character, why Jesus came, who Jesus came for, and how we are saved. It destroys the very foundation of our faith and our trust in God and His Word. (Which is why it’s so important to stand against it, not tolerate it.) And so even if they do have some good things to say, it is far outweighed by the damage they do, by what they get wrong. They don't just preach a “deeper Gospel,” as they like to think. They preach a different Gospel, a different God, a different Jesus.
In the Bible, God truly loves all people, Jesus died for all people, the call to salvation is truly offered to all people, and anyone can put their faith in Jesus and be saved.
But in Calvinism, God only really loves the elect enough to save their souls. But He sure does “love” the non-elect, too - by giving them food and water while they are alive on earth, temporarily “saving” them from their “deserved” eternal damnation. [Where’s the verse that teaches this clearly? As clearly as “For God so loved the world…” and "He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”]
Calvinists wrongly conclude that if Jesus died for you, you will be saved, meaning that Jesus only died for the elect, because He wouldn’t waste His blood on those who’d reject Him. They mistakenly believe that “Jesus died for you” is the same thing as “Jesus saved you,” because they cannot comprehend that Jesus would die for all people but that God would allow people to reject it. They mistakenly assume that everyone, given the choice, would inevitably accept eternal life, that if salvation was an option for all, we all would choose to be saved. And so therefore, in their minds, since not everyone is saved, it means that we don’t have the ability to choose, which means that God chooses for us. [They have a whole host of misconceptions and wrong assumptions like this that they build their theology on.]
In Calvinism, God gives only the elect a real call to salvation, and then He causes them to respond to it. But He sure does "call" the non-elect, too - by giving them a fake call to salvation that they are predestined to reject, that He makes sure they reject by not giving them the desire to respond to it, and yet He holds them accountable for rejecting it, even though they had no choice.
Calvinists don’t believe in free-will - that we make real choices, among options, about Jesus or sin or whatever - but they will try to make it sound like they believe in free-will by using phrases like “we willingly choose.” But all they really mean (the hidden, contradictory layer) is that we make the choices God predestined we would make. God gives us the nature He wants us to have, which He implanted with the desires He wants us to carry out, even sinful ones, and we inevitably “willingly choose to do” what we “desire” to do, which is what He predestined us to do. But since we “wanted” to do it, God will hold us accountable for it, even though He is the one who made us want to do it in the first place, which caused us to do it. [This is why they always add the caveat “according to our natures/desires/will” when they talk about people making choices.]
Basically, God gives the non-elect a magic potion that makes them want to do what He predestined them to do (sin and reject Him), and since they could only want to do those things (He put no other desires into their nature), that’s what they “choose” to do. But since they “wanted” to do it, He holds them responsible for it, as if it was a real choice among options, as if they had the ability to choose anything different, as if they really do deserve their punishment.
[If I injected you with a magic potion that gave you the irresistible urge to kick every puppy you see – and you had to obey that urge – then who is really responsible for you kicking all those puppies? We all know it would be me, but Calvinists will blame you, saying that you “chose” to do what you “wanted” to do, and so you deserve the punishment you get, even though I determined and controlled your desires and actions, and you had no ability to change or resist them.]
In Calvinism, only the elect are given the regenerated nature that makes them want to seek God and believe in Jesus. The non-elect are forever unable to do this because they get the unregenerated nature that came only with the built-in desire to sin and resist/reject God, and so they are hopelessly damned to hell, by God’s choice, for His glory.
As John MacArthur (and all Calvinists) say, Jesus only died for “HIS sheep/the elect,” not for everyone. He says (in a YouTube clip “John MacArthur talks about Limited Atonement”, find the link in my post "MacArthur's Manipulations") that it diminishes Jesus’s death to say He died for all people, that it’s not a real atonement/sacrifice unless He died for specific, prechosen people who will inevitably become saved, instead of dying for everyone in general, for those who reject Him. Where is the verse to support this, the verse that clearly, plainly says this?
Because here’s what the Bible clearly, plainly says:
"And he died for all ..." (2 Cor. 5:15)
"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." (Titus 2:11)
"This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men..." (1 Tim. 2:3-5)
"He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9b)
“but now [God] commands all people everywhere to repent.” (Acts 17:30. Calvinists say that God commands it, but He does so knowing He made the non-elect unable to repent. In fact, in Calvinism, God commands them to repent so that they will disobey, so that He has a “justifiable” reason to punish them in hell, just like He predestined.)
“But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” (John 12:32. He draws all people, but He gives us the option of resisting Him.)
“Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.” (Romans 5:18. Life has been bought for all, paid for by Jesus's blood, and it's offered to all, but we can reject it.)
“Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29. All our sins have been paid for, but if we reject Jesus's payment, then we choose to pay for them ourselves.)
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son ..." (John 3:16)
These verses very clearly tell us God's heart for all people, that Jesus died for all people, that God wants all people to be saved. But Calvinism gets critical Bible verses words, verses, and concepts wrong. Calvinism appears biblical because it uses Bible verses and words, but it flips it on its head.
Such as, they believe that we get the Holy Spirit first, before believing, to cause us to believe. But what does the Bible clearly, plainly say?
Acts 2:38: "... Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
Ephesians 1:13: "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit."
It’s “believe first, then get the Holy Spirit,” not “get the Holy Spirit first who then causes you to believe.”
And Calvinist Lorraine Boettner says that we are not saved because we believe in Christ, but that we believe in Christ because we are saved. But what does the Bible clearly, plainly say?
"... Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31)
"That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9)
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)
"Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved..." (Mark 16:16)
"Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12)
Belief leads to salvation. Salvation does not lead to belief.
[Side note: Since Calvinists don't think we have a choice about what we believe, they don't often stress “believe to be saved,” even though it’s clearly what the Bible says. They tend to stress repentance instead. And so when Pastor ### did the same thing recently (saying that we need to repent and be baptized to be saved), it raised my red flags. I’m not saying he’s a Calvinist, but I found it very strange that “believing in Jesus” was left out.
Repentance is part of being saved, part of belief in Jesus, for sure – we can’t turn to Jesus unless we turn from ourselves first – but nowhere in his “how to be saved” speech (that I can remember) did he say that we need to believe in Jesus to be saved, even though it’s repeated all throughout the New Testament. Instead, he made it sound like it's our actions of repenting of our sins and being baptized in water that save us, not our belief in Jesus. I found that a little alarming, misleading, and off-track biblically. As if salvation is a behavior thing, not a heart thing.
Also note, when the Bible talks about the need to be baptized to be saved, I don't think it means water baptism, although it is important to follow Jesus's example in that and to publicly align yourself with Him as a new believer. But water baptism is not part of "getting saved." I believe the baptism that saves is the "one baptism" (Eph. 4:5) that we all get at the moment of conversion, when the Holy Spirit indwells us and regenerates us and makes us born again (1 Cor. 12:13). That is the baptism we need to be saved - because without it, we don't have the Holy Spirit, which means we aren't really saved/born again.)]
The Bible plainly and clearly presents the Gospel in an easy-to-understand, commonsense way. But Calvinists convince us that there is a deeper way to read the Bible, hidden messages that contradict the plain, easily-understood verses, changing the Gospel completely. And so to Calvinists, John 3:16 is not an invitation to all people to believe and be saved, not instructions on how anyone can be saved; it’s merely a statement about how the elect will be saved.
Interestingly, disturbingly, when explaining how he came to faith, MacArthur (in an interview with Phil Johnson, see here) says that he "always believed," that there was never a time he didn't believe, that he never rebelled against the Gospel (which contradicts his Calvinist idea of total depravity), and that he can't put his finger on the exact moment when he put his faith in Jesus because when God did His "saving work" in his heart, it wasn't even discernable to him.
So basically, he’s saying that he always knew he was saved, that he never really had to make a conscious decision to put his faith in Jesus, and that when the moment of saving faith came, he didn't even notice it because God did it without his awareness. Sure, he says there was a moment when his dad prayed with him, but it was a footnote, a formality, not the moment of deciding to put his faith in Jesus ... because, as he claims, he "always believed" and God put "saving faith" in his heart without his awareness. Sounds very fishy to me, very shady … especially since, according to the Bible, the way to be saved is to make a choice to believe in Jesus, to consciously put our faith in Him.
But Calvinists incorrectly define “believing” as a work, and then say that since we can’t work our way to heaven, we can’t choose to believe in Jesus, and so God has to cause it to happen to His elect.
But what does the Bible say?
"Then they asked him, 'What must we do to do the works God requires?' Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent [Jesus].'" (John 6:28-29)
"'Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.' Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to a man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:" (Romans 4:3-6)
God says that believing in Jesus is the one work He gives us, the one work we must do to be saved. And yet Calvinists say it’s a “work” that we can’t do, because it’s trying to work our way to heaven.
But God – in comparing Abraham’s belief to men who try to earn righteousness through works - says that believing is not like the other kinds of works we do to get to heaven. It’s different. And it’s what He wants from us, the one responsibility He gave us. But Calvinists wrongly define belief as “working for salvation,” and then say that since we can’t work for salvation, we can’t choose to believe either, that God has to do it for us, to us.
How, then, can anyone be saved under Calvinism when they teach that we can’t do the one thing God said we need to do to be saved? (If anyone is saved through Calvinism, it’s in spite of Calvinism, not because of it. It’s because of the biblical surface layer, not because of what they really believe.)
[I’m spending a lot of time on this, being very thorough, because it’s so important to know what Calvinism really teaches, underneath what it says. (And trust me, this is the very short version, just the basics, a crash course in Calvinism.) You cannot just listen to what Calvinists say, the good surface layer. You must listen to what’s underneath, to the things they really mean but don’t say, the things they hide/obscure, the ways they use verses out of context, the ways they precondition you to read things their way and try to manipulate you into accepting it, etc.]
In Calvinism, the Gospel is not for everyone. Jesus is not for everyone. Only for the elect. MacArthur even teaches that if we knew who the elect were - if they came with marks on their backs - then we wouldn’t have to preach the Gospel to everyone. But since we don’t know who’s elect and who’s not, then we have to preach it to all, even though the Gospel is only for the elect.
The Bible says the Gospel is good news for all, but Calvinism makes it good news only for the elect, and bad news – very bad, damning, hopeless, fatal news – for everyone else.
And in reality, Calvinism doesn’t actually rescue anyone from hell. Because in Calvinism, the elect were always saved from the moment they were created, and eventually they will just wake up one day (like MacArthur) and realize that they were saved all along, that they didn’t have to do anything to be saved, not even consciously, willingly choose to believe in Jesus, that “faith” just happened to them. And the non-elect can never be saved because they were always doomed to hell because Jesus never died for them, and God prevents them from believing, for His pleasure and glory.
Calvinism destroys the Gospel, God’s character, and most people’s hope for salvation.
If God, as Calvinism teaches, has hidden meanings behind the things He says in His Word, which contradict His plain Word – if He says things He doesn’t mean and means things He doesn’t say – then He can’t be trusted. If He says “don’t sin” but really means “I predestined you to do what I commanded you not to do”, and if He says “Seek Me and believe” but really means “But I predestined that you cannot and will not seek Me or believe,” then how can we believe anything He says or trust any command He gives us?
If He has secret, unspoken commands that contradict/violate His spoken commands, then He is two-faced, untrustworthy, unjust, and works against Himself, violating His own commands. (And yet Matthew 12:25 warns that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. And James 1:8 says that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. And 1 Cor. 14:33 says that God is not the author of confusion.)
[And, not unrelated: Whenever I read lately of celebrity/popular Christians leaving the faith, I look them up, where they went to church… and practically every time, they were Calvinists. Believing in an untrustworthy God who doesn’t mean what He says, who preplans/controls/causes our sins, who doesn’t love all people, who predestined most people to hell for His glory, who gets as much glory from sin as He does from obedience, and who might have given us a temporary faith that only makes us feel saved for a short time (look up Calvinism’s “evanescent grace”) will eventually destroy faith, causing many to turn away from God altogether. They were taught that Calvinism IS the Gospel, and in their naivete and biblical ignorance, they accepted it, not realizing that it’s actually a corruption of God’s Word and character. And so instead of just rejecting the Calvinism, they reject God and Jesus and faith altogether. Heartbreaking! (See here for some people's stories of the damage Calvinism has done to them.)]
(Part 2 coming up next)
