This is a rather long article I wrote for John Calvin's Birthday celebration at our church.
"In Ephesians 2:8-10 we read this; “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we would walk in them.”
Since the time of John Calvin in the early 1500’s, there has been a great debate over the doctrine of salvation, the basis of the argument being this: whether God’s people were chosen by God before the foundation of the world and have no power to resist the call of the Holy Spirit, or whether we choose our spiritual state after death and can accept or refuse as we wish, God handing salvation to us as a gift, and yet we are not powerless to refuse.
This deliberation over the fundamentals of soteriology is a very significant one in the life of the worldwide church, and poses a very difficult question. How do we teach this doctrine? Are we saved by God’s grace alone, or are we saved by our human will, somehow having enough wit to realize that we are in sin and that we need a Savior, then giving our lives to God?
The History of Calvinism & Arminianism
This dispute was started long before the time of the reformation, in the fifth century, by a man named Pelagius. His beliefs were circulated throughout the known world at that time and his teachings consisted of a belief that all of mankind is still in the state that Adam was in before the fall, and the only thing that ensued from his sin was the fact that he set a bad example for his descendants. These teachings were strongly refuted by Augustine during that time, and they were never carried very far into the minds of the Christians living then. Pelagius’ foremost principle, however, did receive much acclamation from the church, and he taught that every man’s mind is free and open and he can accept or reject the gospel as he so wills.
Many years later Arminius would restore the reputation this belief, although up to that time the general conviction in the church was what is now known as Calvinism, due to the significant role that John Calvin, a Swiss reformer had in defending the conviction of divine election. These Arminians, as they came to be known, in order to give even more public notice to their doctrine, drew up what is now called the Remonstrance. This document consisted of five points, known as The Five Points of Arminianism, and was drawn up in 1610. These points read as follows.
The Five Points of Arminianism
1. Free Will or Human Ability
Although human nature was seriously affected by the Fall, man has not been left in a state of total spiritual helplessness. God graciously enables every sinner to repent and believe, but He does so in such a way as not to interfere with mans freedom. Each sinner possesses a free will, and his eternal destiny depends on how he uses it. Mans freedom consists of his ability to choose good over evil in spiritual matters; his will is not enslaved to his sinful nature. The sinner has the power either to cooperate with God’s Spirit and be regenerated or to resist God’s grace and perish. The lost sinner needs the Spirits assistance, but he does not have to be regenerated by the Spirit before he can believe, for faith is man’s act and precedes the new birth. Faith is the sinner’s gift to God; it is man’s contribution to salvation.
2. Conditional Election
God’s choice of certain individuals for salvation before the foundation of the world was based upon His foreseeing that they would respond to His call. He selected only those whom He knew would of themselves freely believe the gospel. Election therefore was determined by, or conditioned upon what man would do. The faith which God foresaw, and upon which He based His choice, was not given to the sinner by God (it was not created by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit), but resulted solely from man’s will. It was left entirely up man to determine who would believe and therefore who would be elected for salvation. God chose those whom he knew would, of their own free will, choose Christ. Thus the sinner’s choice of Christ, not God’s choice of the sinner, is the ultimate cause of salvation.
3. Universal Redemption or General Atonement
Christ’s redeeming work made it possible for everyone to be saved, but did not actually secure the salvation of anyone. Although Christ died for all men and for every man, only those who believe in Him are saved. His death enabled God to pardon sinners on the condition that they believe, but did not actually put away anyone’s sins. Christ’s redemption becomes effective only if man chooses to accept it.
4. The Holy Spirit Can Be Effectually Resisted
The Spirit calls inwardly all those who are called outwardly by the gospel invitation; He does all that He can to bring the sinner to salvation. But inasmuch as man is free, he can successfully resist the Spirits call. The Spirit cannot regenerate the sinner until he believes; faith (which is man’s contribution) precedes and makes possible the new birth. Thus, man’s free will limits the Spirit in the application of Christ’s saving work. The Holy Spirit can only draw to Christ those who allow Him to have His way with them. Until the sinner responds, the Spirit cannot give life. God’s grace, therefore, is not invincible; it can be, and often is, resisted and thwarted by man.
5. Falling From Grace
Those who believe and are truly saved can lose their salvation by failing to keep up their faith, etc. All Arminians have not been agreed on this point; some have held that believers are eternally secure in Christ- that once a sinner is regenerated, he can never be lost.
According to Arminianism:
Salvation is accomplished through the combined efforts of God (who takes the initiative) and man (who must respond) - man’s response being the determining factor. God has provided salvation for everyone, but His provision becomes effective only for those who, of their own free will, choose to cooperate with Him and accept His offer of grace. At the crucial point, man’s will plays a decisive role; thus man, not God determines who will be the recipients of the gift of salvation.*
*Taken from “The Five Points of Calvinism” by David Steele, Curtis Thomas and S. Lance Quinn
After these articles were originally completed, the writers were still disputing how to write this last statement. Thought was given as to this, and they finally deliberated that the perseverance of God with the saints was not inherently, and indisputably true, and they revised the manuscript, although since that time there has been disagreement in this vein of doctrine.
In response to the blatant writing of the Arminians, those who held to the doctrines of grace gathered in a town in Switzerland, known as Dort, to hold a meeting in which to discuss the issue at hand. The synod, as it is called, was begun on November 18, 1618, and continued for 6 months, 9 days, and during that time, those in attendance completed the five points of Calvinism, and they have now become know as the soteriological basis for reformed theological views. The five points of this belief, in a more advanced format reads as follows;
The Five Points Examined
The first point of Arminianism by itself takes away from the sovereignty of God by stating that faith is the sinners gift to God, for this portrays that God cannot take the soul and beliefs of man, a being that He created, and change these beliefs to His, and that man must give his life to God; God is incapable of having and owning the heart and soul of the things that He created; the creature needs to give himself to the creator before the creator can do anything about the eternal destiny of the man. Arminianism, we see, does nothing to aid a conviction in the power of the Almighty God to rule His world.
The second article as well does not line up with Scripture, and acceptance of it is dependent on one’s interpretation of the word foreknew. Robert Haldane gives a very compelling argument against the Armenian ideas when he writes about a Calvinistic interpretation of ‘foreknew’ in his book, Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans,
“Faith cannot be the cause of foreknowledge, because foreknowledge is before predestination, and faith is the effect of predestination. “As many as were ordained to eternal life believed,” Acts 8:48. Neither can it be meant of the foreknowledge of good works, because these are the effects of predestination. “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works; which God has before ordained (or before prepared) that we should walk in them,” Eph. 2:10. Neither can it be meant of the foreknowledge of our concurrence with the external call, because our effectual calling depends not upon that concurrence, but upon God’s purpose and grace, given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, 2 Tim. 1:9. By this foreknowledge, then, is meant, as has been observed, the love of God towards those whom he predestinates to be saved through Jesus Christ. All the called of God are foreknown by Him, - that is, they are the objects of His eternal love, and their calling comes from this free love. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness I have drawn thee. Jer. 9:3.”
The word foreknew, therefore, is not referring to God’s looking into forthcoming times and seeing who would choose to believe then electing them to salvation. If this was the case then there would be a possibility of none believing, and the atonement Christ provided upon the cross would be fruitless; God’s appointing us to salvation before the world was founded is the only explanation of Christ’s death.
The third article of Arminianism speaks to the issue of who Christ died to save. Arminians promote the idea that Christ died for all men, and yet not all men are saved; consequently, the atonement was a broad act, but the effect is limited to a few; the sinner upsets the Spirits efficacious call. Making Christ’s reparation for sin not effective until the man wishes to “start the ball rolling.”
The fourth aspect of this document is talking of the Holy Spirit, rendering Him powerlessness to save without the sinner’s initiation. Also in this portion it states that the sinner enables God to save him. The Spirit, according to their beliefs, does not have the effectual power to save, and the offender of God’s holy divine laws gives Him something, and the God who is helpless to save the man can then wipe His brow and bail him out of his sin. This is, in fact, blaspheming the might of the Spirit in the Trinity through the rejection of His power to keep the sinner from eternal punishment unless the sinner desires it. However, man does have a required responsibility to believe the gospel, to produce the obligatory faith; yet this faith comes from the choice that God made of the sinners that He wishes to save; man’s faith stems from God’s choice before the world began. This issue comes up frequently in disputes over these doctrines and yet when we are called to repent and believe in Scripture, this does not state that we are the initiators of our salvific redemption, but it states that our responsible faith comes from God’s initial selection of us.
Our fifth point debates the doctrine of the perseverance of the Saints, saying that a man, once saved from his sin effectually, can fall away from his salvation and again be on the road to Hell. But we must define what is a heinous enough offense to cause loss of salvation or else there will be confusion on that point. The Bible teaches that loss of salvation is not possible, and if it were, it would be inevitable.
As we read in Romans 8: 35- 39,
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written “For your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life , nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This verse tells us that nothing can separate us from God’s love, with which He loved us, for the effectual call was an eternal call.
The Five Points of Calvinism
The Five Points of Calvinism, in their most popular summarization read as follows,
Total Depravity,
Unconditional Election,
Limited Atonement
Irresistible Grace
Perseverance of the Saints
The first point, Total Depravity speaks about the inherent sinfulness of mankind, due to the Fall of Adam through his disobedience. As we saw before, the theologian Pelagius in the sixth century taught that Adam did not defile all of his descendants. But we read in Genesis 3:15 God speaking to the serpent saying,
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”
Reading from Webster’s 1828 dictionary we read the definition of the words ‘seed’ and as other translations put it ‘offspring’.
“Seed: Progeny; offspring; children; descendants.”
“Offspring: A child or children; a descendant or descendants, however remote from the stock.”
What does the word, used in both meanings, descendants describe? Again we read Webster’s 1828 Dictionary:
“Descendants: Any person proceeding from an ancestor in any degree; issue; offspring in the line of generation.”
The phrase “enmity” teaches us about our relationship to the devil after the Fall.
“Enmity: The opposite of friendship.”
These words, defined so well for us, are meant to disprove Pelagistic beliefs by showing that the offspring that God speaks of is the literal offspring of Adam, and realize that we are at enmity with Satan and Adams offspring; we are all sinners that God alone can redeem.
Next we see Unconditional Election as our topic of consideration and this is a phrase meaning grace, the grace that was bestowed on believers. The definition of grace is this
“Grace: 1. To favor; to honor. 2. To supply with heavenly grace.”
God showed His undeserved favor to us as sinners, who had done nothing meritorious to earn salvation, without setting a standard of perfection which we must reach before He would save us; He sacrificed His son instead to make us righteous in His eyes.
Romans 9:16 “So then it does not depend on the man who wills, or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.” (Emphasis Added)
Limited Atonement comes next, and we see in John 17:9 these words, as Christ speaks of the disciples,
“I ask on their behalf, I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom you have given me, for they are yours.” (Emphasis Added)
God kept the redemption of Christ to His chosen people, rather than distributing it to the entire world. When we read passages of Scripture that speak of “all nations” or “all people” this is not referring to an idea that Christ died to save all of mankind from damnation, but instead it refers to Christ grafting the Gentiles into the race of God’s chose people, telling us that now we are capable of receiving salvation from God, and he died not only for Israel, but for all nations.
Next comes Irresistible Grace, or the Efficacious call of the Holy Spirit. This portion say’s that we are incapable of rejecting God’s call; since we were chosen by God, there is no byway to take. We see in Romans 8:30 this compelling verse,
“And these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom he justified, He also glorified.”
This verse states that since we were predestined to salvation we were called, and since we were called to a saving knowledge of God, we were therefore justified, and we had nothing to do with it.
The last thing that we see in this acrostic is Perseverance of the Saints, or more understandably, the Perseverance of God with the Saints. God is forever with us once we are saved; we don’t fall away from the faith by our sins. If this were possible, then all of God’s children would fall away, for one offense is enough to earn us eternal punishment in Hell. 1 Corinthians 1:7-9 states:
“… so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Emphasis Added)
Conclusion
As we come to a conclusion about our fundamental soteriological beliefs, we have examined every point, seeing the doctrine of Arminianism, drawn up into five points, as well as Calvinism in its modern form. We still, however, must come scripturally to a conclusion of which principle is the correct one. First we will read Ephesians 1:5,7.
“He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intervention of His will.” (Emphasis Added)
“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.” (Emphasis Added)
Next we see verse 13 of the chapter, and here we read,
“In Him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation- having also believed you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.” (Emphasis Added)
The Bible is riddled with countless other passages that support the Calvinistic soteriological standard, and after our examination we must conclude that the clearly taught doctrine throughout Scripture is that God chose His children before time began, and we cannot resist his effectual call.
We have now examined both the Scriptures, and the two separate doctrines as they were originally laid out by the different supporters of the principles. We have concluded, on the basis of sound investigation, that God has chosen us to live for Him, and we will always maintain that position in His eyes. We cannot fall from His grace which He lavishly bestowed upon us, the chosen people of God, and we have now no fear of damnation.
“Therefore now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)"
The retreat took place at the Crooked Creek Ranch just outside of Fraser. It is a beautiful facility in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, complete with everything from a pool and hot tub to a forty-foot tall ropes course that takes you through the treetops.
