Featured The two major shortcomings of Calvinism

Only in those who would deny the accuracy of the post. Anyone can easily find the Spurgeon and Calvin quotes, and for your convenience, I responded by posting Spurgeon, a fact you ignore.

And yet again, so what? It's a non sequitur, totally irrelevant.

I suppose it would be unconvincing to a modern Calvinist who has trouble seeing the error of the doctrine on a frighteningly regular basis.

Straw man argument, a logical fallacy. I didn't say I don't need to offer proof, those are words you put in my mouth -- which also ignores the fact I've offered much proof in the two posts.

If you don't need a Spurgeon quote, they why ask for one? And once given one, why not dispute or affirm it? Instead, you deny you need what you claimed you wanted. That, my friend, is what is intellectually dishonest.

Calvinism is the gospel if all of Calvin's theology is considered, preached, and compared to Scripture. The gospel is only found in Calvin because he found it in the Bible. What the modern Calvinist adheres to is not all of Calvin, and therefore is not all of the gospel. I have no statistics upon which to base my opinion that when someone today calls himself a Calvinist, he hasn't a clue what Calvin taught in the whole. Nonetheless, Calvinists prove to me every day that my opinion appears to be spot on, as most can only cite the Doctrines of Grace as being Calvinistic. Those are only a very small portion of what Calvin wrote of, taught, and believed. Calvinists today are overly simplistic in their biblical approach, and miss a great deal of the complexity of God, though they try very hard to explain Him in toto through Calvin. In case they hadn't heard, I will point out to them that God defies understanding. He said so Himself.

Of teaching justification, I have no doubt. Hardly any of those you just named teach sanctification, and those that do confuse it with justification. The two are totally separate, and sanctification has three different levels. Most modern Calvinists deny this plain biblical fact. You should have thrown Paul Washer in there, too. He also utterly fails to conceive of a biblical concept of sanctification.

But that is just one area of the complexity of God and the gospel modern Calvinists either do not understand, do not teach, or simply and outrightly reject. To list them all would require a book, but I don't need to write such a book, as many have already been written.

Please forgive me for not responding to the entire Westminster Confession, as I have no problem with its tenets whatsoever. What I have a problem with is the modern Calvinist's view of the Confession. McKim's definition is excellent. Did you notice is collectively said "a people," and not "an individual"? The same can be said of the Second London Baptist Confession. Why do you suppose that is?

Incorrect. I have a biblical view of election.

Be that as it may, hackles or not, as I've pointed out here, what you call "holes" are not, but merely your own disagreement with the view expressed, and I appreciate it being posted.

As was my original post. Thanks for expressing your own opinions on the thread.

 

Apparently you have difficulty identifying proof when it is set before you. I will state this one more time, then so be it.

Sanctification as taught by the modern Calvinist overemphasizes God's sovereignty -- and lest anyone be confused, I am not talking about "New Calvinism" on this thread, but simply the modern Calvinist who thinks he/she is adhering to Calvinistic thought. In that statement regarding overemphasizing God's sovereignty, I mean to say that the modern Calvinist relegates believers to passive participants in the Christian life. They argue that God is the agent of spiritual growth whether believers cooperate in the process or not. Undeniably, yes, God is the agent and power of sanctification. That does not mean believers are uninvolved.

Believers can and do resist the Holy Spirit. Unbelievers who may eventually believe, resist the Holy Spirit by ignoring the drawing, calling and revelation of the Spirit. But we're talking about believers here, who resist growth, change, refuse to tear down strongholds in their lives such as alcohol or drug addiction, pornography, adultery, gluttony, or the whole host of sins discussed in the Bible. Any one of those sins can become a stronghold, and clearly the most enticing and idolic among them do become strongholds. We utterly fail, as Christians, to produce fruit when we live in a stronghold of sin. The Bible teaches us that the Holy Spirit produces fruit in our lives.

Galatians 5, NASB
2 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.​

The Bible also instructs us to sacrifice our lives, continually, to God's service.

Romans 12
1 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.​

It is God who saves and sanctifies us, but we are called to be holy ...

1 Peter 1
15 but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior;
16 because it is written, "YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY." ​

... and to obey God.

1 John 5
3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.​

Without Christ we can do nothing ...

John 15
5 "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing." ​

... but through Christ we can do anything.

Philippians 4
13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.​

That is the biblical balance in sanctification. We rely on God and recognize His sovereignty, but at the same time we put forth our best effort, through His strength, to conform our lives to Christ's image.

Whenever we attempt to create a system that defines God, we will fail. It is impossible for us finite human beings to fully comprehend an infinite God. God is indefinable, unexplainable, and incomprehensible. Calvinism is a system designed to explain the relationship of God's sovereignty with the free will of mankind. Many, including all of those whom you named in your previous post, do not even grant that free will even exists. Our behaviors, both before and after salvation, disprove that concept. Man definitely has free will, but God is no less sovereign because of it.

Calvinism strongly emphasizes God's sovereignty, sometimes to the extent that it teaches mankind has no free will whatsoever. Extreme Calvinism relegates mankind to nothing but robots doing exactly what God has pre-programmed us to do. The opposite of Calvinism, Arminianism, emphasizes mankind's free will, sometimes to the extent that God is not sovereign and/or is not in complete control. Extreme Arminianism relegates God to a being who does not know the future and is limited in what He can do. Neither extreme is biblical. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. Modern Calvinists fail to understand that simple truth, nor do they realize that no system, including theirs, can fully explain God.

 

I already feel sorry for you, being someone who must reach deep into hyperbole and misdirection in order to attack another member's viewpoint. You have dealt with none of what I've said, only chosen to attack the form of what I've stated, which I've said from the beginning is "editorial," a point you yourself made, disparagingly, though I never pretended it was anything but. Therefore, despite my giving in to your irrational insistence on support for an opinion and delivering some, you now want more, and still have said nothing about the substance of what I've said.

Therein lies the sorrowful feeling I have for you, that such responses come from a lack of ability to respond otherwise, i.e., with reasoned argument against my points. So, to make it easier for you, I'll give you something solid -- not my opinion, but factual statements from those you admire -- to illustrate my points. Then you can attempt to negate them, again, with reason, not the intellectual dishonesty of self-righteous, puffed-up yet empty protest.

John MacArthur's book "Slave" is a prime example of what I'm talking about, if you want specifics. Throughout the book, MacArthur describes Christian obedience as “pure delight” and “joy-filled.” On page 208, he describes our experience as slaves to Christ as “not partially sweet and partially sour, but totally sweet.” This, despite what the apostle John clearly experienced as recorded in Revelation. But regardless of the fact that there is nothing sweeter than being a slave of Christ, to suggest that our experience is never mixed with bitterness (taste, not attitude) is just plain nonsense. A believer who has lost an unbelieving relative or close friend would be an example. A job loss, a prolonged illness personally experienced in self or close family -- these things serve to progressively sanctify, but is MacArthur going to try to convince us that we must face them with joy and delight, with no negatively expressed emotion mixed in, or else we are in sin? Tell me that isn't what he said.

According to Piper, if we find ourselves in a situation where we find no joy in the obedience, we are to move ahead and unhesitatingly obey. So far so good, but then he gets unbiblical in claiming that we must also ask God for forgiveness because of our sinful obedience. He states this quite plainly in (John Piper: Treating Delight as Duty is Controversial. Moreover, this paradigm, according to many Calvinists in our day including John MacArthur, asserts that Christians often obey and experience biblical truth that they are unaware of intellectually. That erroneous view is expressed by Bill Baldwin.

These appear specific to the concept of joy and delight as commands, when in reality they are the authors' efforts to encourage us through difficult times, pointing out to us that these trials always result in growth, learning, and a greater closeness to God. But they are also a general indicator of how Calvinists view sanctification. That is, as totally God-centered, God-empowered, without cooperation, acquiescence, or acceptance on our part. Such is utter folly and fallacy, for it does nothing more than reinforce the unbiblical belief of the modern Calvinist that man has no cooperation, acquiescence, nor acceptance of his own salvation, either. That is a matter we settled with Spurgeon earlier, who clearly states that two seemingly disparate facts -- God's sovereignty and man's responsibility -- are nonetheless intertwined, equally active and important, and absolutely necessary to salvation.

There can be no argument. The activity of both God and man are absolute necessities to enable effectual saving grace, though it is all of God to empower man's grasp of that grace, of His truth, for salvation to be possible.

Now -- argue the points. I will no longer accept the nitpicking of form. It is disingenuous.

 

There are many things in this post I could pick apart, but I'm going to deal with just two, because they totally disqualify anything else you say in the post. First there is ...

... followed at the end of the post by this:

You have contradicted yourself. Both my statements, to which these two segments of the post replied, said the same thing. And you say the first statement goes too far, then you claim no Calvinist claims this ability. Yet saying that I am "going too far" in the first post implies that Calvinism can, in fact, explain God. Then you deny it. That doesn't logically follow anything that has been said up to this point.