Hi All,
Before I was saved, I heard the gospel preached and backed up with quotes from the scripture. The preaching of the gospel that I heard was in a style of communication that implied to me that I needed to make a free will decision to accept Christ as my savior in order to be saved, the scripture that was used to support the gospel also implied to me that I needed to make a free will decision to accept Christ as my savior in order to be saved. When I actually looked up the scriptures that were used in the sermons, again the Bible text implied to me that I needed to make a free will decision to accept Christ as my savior in order to be saved. I had no idea whether the preacher believed in free will or not (Calvinism). For several months God was convicting me of my sin and that I was headed to hell, if I did not have my sins forgiven by faith in Christ. I was saved believing that I had made a free will decision to accept God's call to accept Christ as my savior.
As a new believer, I began to study the word of God from that perspective. As I came across the few verses (~2%) in the Bible that a Calvinists would use to syllogisticly build their “no free will to accept Christ as our savior” theology, I only temporarily mentally noted that they could be used to build the “no free will to accept Christ as our savior” theology; However, I proceeded to interpret those few scriptures from free will precedence, and did not have any problems understanding and interpreting them from a free will perspective. During these early years of my Christian life I had not even heard of Calvinism.
Years later I begin to come across Calvinists and heard their teaching and read of their theology of “no free will to accept Christ as our savior”. Their teaching of “no free will to accept Christ as our savior” seemed very strange to me; however their teaching and teaching method of just using those few verses (~2%) in the Bible appeared to me to be very intellectually appealing and very scholarly to me. I began to search myself as to why I had trouble accepting their very academic and scholarly syllogistic development of their “no free will to accept Christ as our savior” theology.
When they would give their interpretation of those few scriptures in their logic loop, the thought that repeatedly came to my mind was “what about the rest of the scriptures?” I would ask a question like “But, what about this verse over here in the Bible?”, then they would jump back to repeating their academic and scholarly syllogistic logic loop. I would again ask them the same question “But, what about this other verse over here in the Bible?”. And again they would jump right back on to their academic and scholarly syllogistic logic loop. Obviously the verses I brought up were verses that implied “that man had free will to accept or reject Christ as their savior”. After I had asked them about several verses in the Bible that implied “that man had free will to accept or reject Christ as their savior”, they would start accusing me of having a proof-texting mentality. I was then baffled and did not know how to proceed in the discussion with them, except to just ask them to give me more detail about their theology of “no free will to accept or reject Christ as our savior”.
Their seemed to me to be something about their development of the “no free will to accept or reject Christ as our savior” theology from the verses that they presented that seemed strange, even though their presentation of their logic loop appeared to me to be a very good academic and scholarly syllogistic logic loop. Also, their seemed to be something wrong with my method of discussing my conclusions with them. For a number of years, I pondered those two questions. Finally, I realized that they were experts at getting folk like me to get started on a verse hurdling contest, and then they would start accusing folk like me of being guilty of proof-texting. I asked myself why I was throwing the verses that I used at them? I realized that intuitively I realized that the “majority (~98%) of the Bible”, if not the whole Bible, was communicating from God to man in a style that reeked with an implication of an understood presupposition that those being communicated to (mankind) have the free will capacity to believe or reject what was being communicated to them from God. From that point on, I very early in discussions with a Calvinist, would point this out to them instead of getting caught up in a verse hurdling contest. I now also point out to them that the volume of scriptures that they use makes up only about 2% of the scriptures. I realized that the majority of people that get saved, intuitively see this implied underlying free will presupposition in the majority (98%) of the Bible without even being fully cognizant of it; and therefore, like I was, are unable to rationally explain it at first. Since the majority of scripture reeks with an implication of an understood presupposition that those being communicated to (mankind) have the free will capacity to believe or reject what was being communicated to them from God, I believe most folk, like myself, intuitively let that set the precedence and will automatically interpret the Calvinist ~2% of the scripture from a free will perspective. And those Calvinist ~2% of the scriptures are easily understood from a free will perspective. When I ask Calvinists to interpret the ~98% of scripture, that imply the free will of man, from their “no free will to accept or reject Christ as our savior” perspective, the majority of the time the answer I get is along this line “God communicates with man in a style that assumes man has a free will to accept or reject what God communicates, but God knows that man does not have the free will capacity to accept or reject what God communicates.” That response seems to me to imply that God has been deceiving mankind on this theological issue for millennia, implying that God is a deceiver. When I tell them that implies that God is a deceiver, they usually respond by saying that “--- My (God's) ways (are) higher than your ways --- Isa. 55:9”. When I ask the Calvinists why ~99% of the time they preach in a communication style that also implies the hearer has a free will to accept of reject, they usually reply by “saying that is the way God does it in the Bible”. This answer is like saying “If God is deceiving man on this issue, then so can I”. In my mind I think of those Calvinists that preach that way as “Bipolar Calvinists”.
David G.
Those percentages are bogus, dear brother.
That God is exhaustively sovereign and works all things after the counsel of his own will and that man is totally depraved completely unable to turn to God in his unregenerate state is clear throughout the whole counsel of God.
