Calvinism Unmasked

Chapter 1

I’m a Calvinist

 

      After I graduated from high school in 1951, I believed in Jesus Christ as my savior. Shortly after that, I was discipled by a high school friend of mine who went to the church where I got saved. Although the church was Arminian in theology, he was a Calvinist. All the Scripture he showed me was interpreted from that viewpoint. Since the explanations seemed reasonable to me, I became a strong advocate of Calvinism, reflecting Calvin’s statement in his Institutes:

      No one who wishes to be thought religious dares simply deny predestination, by which God adopts some to hope of life, and sentences others to eternal death. But our opponents, especially those who make foreknowledge its cause, envelop it in numerous petty objections. We indeed place both doctrines in God, but we say that subjecting one to the other is absurd. When we attribute foreknowledge to God, we mean that all things always were, and perpetually remain, under his eyes, so that to his knowledge there is nothing future or past, but all things are present. And they are present in such a way that he not only conceives them through ideas, as we have before us those things which our minds remember, but he truly looks upon them and discerns them as things placed before him. And this foreknowledge is extended throughout the universe to every creature. We call predestination God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death.[1]

      Later, I was influenced by my wife’s dear uncle, who was a Universal Reconciliationist. He showed me in 1 Timothy 2:3-6, that God willed all men to be saved:

      For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

He explained that not all were saved in this life, but all would eventually be reconciled to God. He showed me that there were many ages in the Bible. This reconciliation would happen at the end of the ages. This added to my problem. Now I was wrestling with two doctrines – the doctrine of universal reconciliation, all will be reconciled to God, and limited atonement, Christ died only for the elect. At that time it seemed that these were my only choices. I believed I had to see a systematic consistency in the biblical statements. Either God exhaustively foreknew the future and willed all to be saved, or He predestined only the elect to be saved. Which one was right? Did God will only the elect to be saved? Or did He will all to be saved ultimately? I thought it had to be one or the other.

 

A Breach in My Calvinist Armor

      Shortly after we moved to California, my pastor presented a new idea to me. He showed me another interpretation of Ephesians 1:4,5:

      just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.

He explained to me that both the election and predestination here were corporate. He pointed out in the passage that it didn’t say the body of Christ was chosen to be saved or predestined to be saved. Instead, they were elected because they were in the body of Christ, to be holy and without blame, and predestined to the adoption as sons. I also saw that the nation of Israel was God’s elect, but individuals in elect Israel had to believe to be in the true Israel, God’s elect nation. That was the first crack in my Calvinistic armor.

      However, in my mind, the idea of corporate election and predestination had a serious flaw which the Scriptures did not seem to support. That problem could be stated as follows: In this theory, in contrast to Calvin’s view of predestination, God’s foreknowledge was the basis of His election and predestination. But, I reasoned, since to God “all things always were, and perpetually remain, under his eyes, so that to his knowledge there is nothing future or past, but all things are present”, God knew everything as though it were present. Then, since I could see from Scripture that His election and predestination followed His foreknowledge, and since He knew everyone who was foreknown, then God’s predestination had to be individual just as His foreknowledge was. I was right back where I started. I could not reconcile this apparent biblical inconsistency.

      At this time of my life, this deterministic theology had a detrimental influence on my attitudes about prayer. If God knew everything, and I believed He did. And if God predestinated everything based on His foreknowledge, and I believed He did that too. Then, everything that I prayed was foreknown and predestinated. If I didn’t pray, that also was predestinated. Then, it became easy to feel, why should I pray? Unfortunately, I ended up having a lousy prayer life. The only reason I prayed, I determined in my mind, was because God commanded it in His word. I realized that Christ was zealous in prayer, and Paul was zealous in prayer, however, there was no zest in my prayers. Therefore, I recognized that something was seriously wrong with my prayer life. I knew this was wrong but didn’t know what to do about it.

      During this troublesome period, my wife and I visited her parents in Illinois. Her father had a treasure trove of theological books. I was browsing through his books when I found one by William Biederwolf titled, How Can God Answer Prayer? I began reading it immediately. BOOK THREE chapter IV. had the title, “Why Pray if Everything Is Predetermined by God?” That was exactly my dilemma. I eagerly turned to that page. He had three answers based on three different explanations:

      The first explanation declares that everything which comes to pass is first predetermined in the mind of God. It declares that God’s predestination precedes His foreknowledge as the ground of certainty for human action. God only foreknows that which He has predetermined to take place.

      The second explanation, while admitting that God absolutely predetermines some things, contends that such things as respect the government of his free moral agents are only conditionally predetermined. God purposes to do under certain conditions, which depend upon the free agency of man, what He would not do under other conditions. This explanation further declares that God’s foreknowledge precedes His predestination. God only predetermines that which He foreknows will take place and the foreknowledge of human action has no influence upon its taking place; it does not necessitate the action.

      The third explanation denies that God’s foreknowledge is necessarily all-comprehending.[2]

The third explanation was a brand new idea to me. He then evaluated three suppositions. He started with, “Suppose we accept.” I will skip his suppositions on the first two explanations and will continue with the third:

      3. Suppose we accept the third explanation: the explanation which affirms that God’s foreknowledge and foreordination are not necessarily all-comprehending.

      You shrink from an attitude of thought like that toward the Supreme Being. It appears, does it not, to reflect discredit upon His perfection? Yet, let us not be too hasty in our judgment. Many earnest and noted scholars defend the position and strenuously maintain that not only does it not dishonor God, but that it is the only scheme of thought which does not divest Him of the essential attributes of His divinity.

      The position is quite clearly set forth in W.W. Kinsley’s “Science and Prayer,” . . . This explanation, if it may be maintained consistently with the perfection of God’s character, relieves us, of course, of the difficulty in question.

      It is contended by the advocates of this explanation, that when God created us in His own image and made us equally with Himself of sovereign will (and we know we are free to choose as we will) by His very so doing He surrendered at least partially His control over us and of necessity limited thereby His foreknowledge concerning us. Plainly it is the old time-worn controversy between two great schools of theology; between God’s sovereignty on one side (involving as it does His absolute foreknowledge and predestination) and man’s free will on the other, and between the horns of such a dilemma the only thing to do is to confess a wise ignorance and hang on to both.

      A controversion of God’s perfect foreknowledge does not set well with most of us, regardless of our denominational bias. The fear, however, of any belittling conception of God its advocates would overcome by showing what the theory of such foreknowledge really involves, leaving us to decide which is the greater injustice, if any, to the all-perfect character of God.

      The following from the work above quoted on “Science and Prayer” will help us to an appreciation, if so be such is possible, of the position assumed by the advocates of the limited knowledge theory. The author says: “No petitioner can plead with any genuine unction unless he believes that he can actually effect some change in the purposes existing in the divine mind at the time his prayer is offered. . . . If God foreknows everything that will ever come to pass, all His own mental states must necessarily be included in that foreknowledge. A moment’s reflection will convince us that otherwise there is not a single present intention or plan but what is exposed to the possibility of modification. If a single thought or emotion is ever going to spring up in God’s mind unanticipated, God Himself must be as ignorant as we as to what part of His vast plan it will pertain. And so, if we would logically defend a belief in the all-comprehensiveness of God’s foreknowledge, we must affirm that not a single new idea can arise in His mind—not a single new emotion be felt—and that if He is thus limited now He must have been equally so at every moment in all the eternal past, and must be through all the years to come; for if there ever has been, or ever will be, a moment when a new thought can thus come, then during all the time preceding that moment the foreknowledge was incomplete. Where does this lead? In what sort of an intellectual or emotional condition does this irrefragable logic compel us to assert God to be continually? Unquestionably that of perfect stagnation. No thought processes can be carried on under such conditions—no succession of ideas, no change of mental state; but God must have been and must still be imprisoned in a hopelessly dead calm. . . . When, then, did He form His plans for creation? Under this supposition there never could have been a time when He began to think about them. . . . If God has had no thought succession, He can have had no feeling; His emotional state having ever necessarily been that of unbroken placidity—of absolute apathy, His heart throbless as a stone. He could experience no change of feeling, for that would involve thought-succession. From all the sources of joy or sorrow of which we can conceive He would be utterly debarred – from pleasurable or painful memories, from hopes and forebodings, from social sympathies, from emotions that accompany changes, contrasts, surprises, from the glow of activity, even from the delights and griefs of contemplation; for they all involve thought-movement. Therefore, under this supposition God can have no emotional activity, for He would have no thought-activity for its background. Thoughts must, of course, come and go, or the heart lies dead.” “Such,” he says, “are the absurdities in which we become hopelessly entangled the moment we attempt to defend the doctrine of God’s perfect foreknowledge.”[3]

      This was astounding to me. If this were true, it would change everything. But he had presented no Scripture to back up the argument. It was just philosophical reasoning. I had already been shown and then studied God’s word on this subject. The Bible said that God worked all things after the counsel of His will. But I thought about his statements. I must find a copy of that book, Science and Prayer, and see if there was any Scripture to back up this argument.

      I relentlessly searched until I finally found the book in a used book store. I avidly read it, but it was very philosophical. However, he wrote: “The doctrine of God’s perfect foreknowledge is not only unphilosophical, but also unscriptural.”[4] That encouraged me to read further. I got to the part that Biederwolf had quoted. Then I realized Biederwolf had skipped the most important part, for me, the reference to Scripture. It was there! Kinsley even admonished the reader:

      Read if you will the ninth chapter of Deuteronomy. Moses here rehearses the several rebellions of Israel, and his three separate pleadings before the Lord, of forty days and forty nights each, without either eating bread or drinking water. Each time he fell down before a very angry God who had fully purposed, and had definitely announced his purpose to destroy the rebels, and each time, if Moses can be credited, he actually changed that purpose right then and there and rescued his people. The God here depicted had none of that foreknowledge which theologians with such strange unanimity ascribe to him. But, say you, [And many have made these statements often.] that and similar accounts scattered throughout the Bible are simply instances of anthropomorphism, of rhetorical accommodation, of describing in the language of human experiences and human limitations what really transcends the human; that it was not the intent to have these narrations interpreted as literal history, but as poetic approximations of dim shadowings of really ineffable truths. It seems to me that it would be a strange way to bring the truth within our comprehension, to state what is directly opposed to the truth, and to reiterate the downright falsehood again and again, in a most misleading way, and in a matter of such vital moment that all possibility of religious life depends on it, and through which alone any lasting comfort comes to the hungry human soul.[5]

      What happened next changed my life. I read Deuteronomy 9 with a searching heart. Here is what shattered the foundations of my Calvinistic system of theology:

      Deu 9:8-19 Also in Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, so that the Lord was angry enough with you to have destroyed you. 9 When I went up into the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you, then I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. 10 Then the Lord delivered to me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly. 11 And it came to pass, at the end of forty days and forty nights, that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. 12 Then the Lord said to me, ‘Arise, go down quickly from here, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly; they have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made themselves a molded image.’ 13 Furthermore the Lord spoke to me, saying, “I have seen this people, and indeed they are a stiff-necked people. 14 Let Me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.” 15 So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire; and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. 16 And I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God—had made for yourselves a molded calf! You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you. 17 Then I took the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes. 18 And I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. 19 For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was angry with you, to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me at that time also.

      This Scripture disrupted my presuppositions. Along with other Scripture it undermined my Calvinistic mindset about the immutability of God. Here was Scripture I had read but never grasped before. Before long, I found that there was a vast amount of Scripture which showed that God changed His mind – even repented. Since that time, I have studied this issue for thousands of hours. This book is the result of my studies.