So far in this series of posts we’ve learned that a Calvinist believes…
Everyone is born depraved which means we are all born “sinful” and helpless to do anything about it. (Total Depravity)
Out of the sea of depraved human beings God chose certain people to be separated from Him forever (Hell) and certain people to join Him forever (Heaven). All people are equally unworthy of being chosen by God. God chose some of us, not because of any merit in us, to know Him and represent Him on earth and chose others to never understand Him or want to and to eternally be miserable without Him. (Unconditional Election)
When Jesus dies on the cross He took away only the sin and depravity of those who were chosen, or elected, by Him. Any one who is not a Christian was not died for by Jesus on the cross. “The world” in John 3:16 really means “the elected or chosen people in this world.” (Limited Atonement)
God “draws” the elected or chosen people of this world to Him; He causes them to want to believe in Him, trust Him, etc. This drawing power of God is so great, and God is in such control of all things, that the chosen person has no choice but to give into this drawing and believe in Jesus. No one God draws can refuse to follow God and believe Jesus is the Christ. (<Irresistible Grace)
The final belief of Calvinism or TULIP theology is this: Once saved. always saved. Or Perseverance of the Saints, as the Calvinists have labeled it. To “persevere” means that belief in God and acceptance by God is a permanent state. A “saint” is someone who is accepted by God because they have been given the gift of belief in Jesus.
If God chose me and left me no choice but to choose Him then how could I later make such a choice against Him, renounce my faith and loose my salvation? How can something be lost that wasn’t found to begin with but was given instead? There’s no logical way to refute the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints IF T, U, L and I are true.
Of course, it’s said, someone who renounces their faith, someone who says in effect they no longer believe the story of Jesus to be true and no longer want to follow God or be one of God’s people, is not a Christian and has no place in Heaven. BUT, a Calvinist argues, that person NEVER WAS a Christian or else they could not have made such a move. 1 John 2:19 says, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.”
“Not of us” is said to mean they never were of us – they never were “true believers” in Jesus, never chosen, never died for by the Christ etc.
This is then applied to other passages in which people who SEEM to be Christians renounce their belief in Christ and are separated forever from God because of it. These people never were Christians to begin with, the Calvinist says.
This argument is convincing but hits at least one snag:
Hebrews 6:4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, 6if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
It seems that the person in question in Hebrews is a Christian because they have been given the gift of heaven, received the Holy Spirit, and understood the word of God to be “good”. These are all things a Calvinist would argue cannot be true of a non-Christian, yet this person, this seemingly Christian person, has “fallen away” from God and CANNOT BE BROUGHT BACK.
And this is just one example of such a person “falling away” from God because they decided Christianity was a lie. There are also examples that support the Calvinist view of Perseverance in which people are “damned” because they never produced “good works”. It is stated again and again in scripture that a person who truly knows God makes Him known, loves others, lives in a righteous trajectory. When this does not happen it is evidence not that a person has lost salvation but that a person never was saved. 1 John is a big book on this subject. People are called liars by John for claiming to love God while not sharing their wealth or loving fellow Christians. He says these are not children of God.
So those who fall away…Were they ever Christians to begin with, Christians who stopped believing in Jesus or is there another explanation to be heard.
Again, if a person believes T,U,L and I’m not sure how they could NOT believe P. Any of my non-P-believing friends want to explain that one to me?
Have at it.
If anyone’s interested in a short Catholic perspective on TULIP, check out Jimmy Akin’s “A Tiptoe Through TULIP.” It’s interesting to compare & contrast.
i am so sick of people picking on calvinists. what do you think you are going to prove? we’re all christians here, you know.
dont let my mother see that you have been nitpicking over this, or she might come on and give you *ahem* a piece of her mind.