Calvinism distorts the Gospel
Arminian Complaint: Calvinism distorts the Gospel
Jacob Arminius writes: “The Gospel says, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life’ (John 3:16). But this doctrine declares: ‘that God so loved those whom he had absolutely elected to eternal life, as to give his son to them alone, and by an irresistible force to produce within them faith on him.’ To embrace the whole in few words, the Gospel says, ‘fulfill the command, and thou shalt obtain the promise; believe, and thou shalt live.’ But this [supralapsarian] doctrine says, ‘since it is my will to give thee life, it is therefore my will to give thee faith,’ which is a real and most manifest inversion of the Gospel.” (Arminius Speaks, p.49, emphasis mine)
In other words, the Bible says, believe and you will have life, whereas according to the inverted Gospel of Calvinism, have life and you will believe, insomuch that according to Calvinism, only when a person has life, through preemptive regeneration and an irresistible gift of faith, can one believe and be saved.
The apostle Paul states: “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” (1st Corinthians 2:2)
That statement sets aside theology, and places Christ Himself at the rightfully preeminent place, but not so fast, according to Calvinists:
Calvinist, Charles Spurgeon, states: “I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else.” (A Defense of Calvinism, emphasis mine)
Spurgeon adds: “I do not come into this pulpit hoping that perhaps somebody will of his own free will return to Christ. My hope lies in another quarter. I hope that my Master will lay hold of some of them and say, ‘You are mine, and you shall be mine. I claim you for myself.’ My hope arises from the freeness of grace, and not from the freedom of the will.” (Spurgeon’s Sermons, emphasis mine)
Calvinist, Jeff Noblit, states: “Any preacher...who dumbs down the depravity of man...is not preaching the true Gospel. That’s not the Gospel. It’s not clever; it’s wicked. It’s dooming men’s souls and leading millions to false assurance.” (Calvinism: A Cause for Rejoicing and Concern)
So did the apostle Paul, at Acts 17:24-31, fail to truly preach “Jesus Christ and Him crucified”?
John Calvin states: “If we are not ashamed of the gospel, we must confess what is there plainly declared. God, by His eternal goodwill, which has no cause outside itself, destined those whom He pleased to salvation, rejecting the rest; those whom He dignified by gratuitous adoption He illumined by His Spirit, so that they receive the life offered in Christ, while others voluntarily disbelieve, so that they remain in darkness destitute of the light of faith.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.58, emphasis mine)
One Calvinist at oldtruth.com explains: “A wonderful friend of our family once commented that coming to understand the Doctrines of Grace was akin to a type of salvation within salvation.” (oldtruth.com, emphasis mine)
However, the salvation described at Romans 10:9 doesn’t mention anything about conversion to Calvinism: “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)
Another Calvinists states: “My transition to Calvinism was somewhat reluctant, but the inevitable result of Christian maturity....” (Sovereign Grace Church, emphasis mine)
Some Calvinists have proposed an answer:
Sovereign Grace Church states: “Must a person believe ‘the doctrine of election’ to be a Christian? The answer is yes, as surely as one must believe and accept God’s grace to be a Christian. To cut election away from grace is to have ‘grace’ which is no grace. To cut election away from the gospel is to have a ‘gospel’ that is no gospel, for a gospel without grace is another gospel from the Biblical message (Galatians 1:6-10).” (Sovereign Grace Church, emphasis mine)
“To cut election away from grace is to have ‘grace’ which is no grace.” Warning: Circular Logic. You cannot base your conclusion on an unproven, assumed assertion, namely that biblical grace in any way includes Calvinistic election. In other words, you cannot assume Calvinism in order to prove Calvinism.
John Calvin cautions: “Let us heed the simplicity of Scripture with more attention and respect, in case our over-ingenious philosophizing leads us, not to heaven, but rather, to the bewildering labyrinths of the depths beneath.” (Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, Matthew, Mark and Luke, Vol. III, James and Jude, p.331, emphasis mine)
Indeed, Calvinists ought to heed Calvin’s own warning about philosophizing, and stick with the biblical definition of the the Gospel, as Paul outlines at 1st Corinthians 15:1-11, as well as at 1st Corinthians 2:2: “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”
Here is a Blog discussion on this point.
Question: Who are the “children of God”?
Answer: There are the children of God by creation through Adam. (Acts 17:28-29) There are the children of God by adoption through new birth. (Romans 8:14-17)
Question: If Calvinism is the Gospel, then why didn’t Paul preach the Gospel? Why did he, instead, preach an Arminian message about everyone being the children of God, and that God loves everyone, and God wants everyone to repent because He is going to judge everyone someday through His Son whom He has raised from the dead? What kind of watered-down version of the Gospel is that, if Calvinism is the Gospel?
Answer: That’s not a watered-down version of the Gospel. That is the Gospel, and it’s anti-Calvinism since it eliminates the exclusivity of salvation. You can’t play the game of “all people” merely means “groups” and “never individuals,” or else it would mean that God has fixed a day in which to judge groups, and not individuals, and that He has furnished proof merely to groups and not individuals. (Take this principle and apply it to 1st Timothy 2:4.)
Question: Does not being ashamed of the Gospel mean not being ashamed of Calvinism?
Answer: Why is it that, in the verses where we are told not to be ashamed of the Gospel, there is no mention of the 5-Points of Calvinism?
Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
2nd Timothy 1:8: “Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God.”
Question: So what is the Gospel?
Answer: The Gospel is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1st Corinthians 15:1-11), in whom there is life by believing in His name. (John 20:31)
1st Corinthians 15:1-11: “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also. For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.”
Galatians 1:6-9: “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!”
The “different gospel” referred to at Galatians 1:6-9 was a Gospel which denied the grace of Christ by embracing a salvation through obedience to the Law, especially circumcision. Therefore, given that the Paul preached the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and labeled it as “the Gospel,” and, by way of comparison, given what John Calvin taught, which was Theistic Fatalism, and similarly labeled it as “the Gospel,” surely the possibility exists, therefore, that Paul and Calvin had two distinctly different concepts of what the Gospel was.
Question: If according to Calvinists, “Calvinism is the gospel,” what exactly was it that the apostle Paul preached to the lost Gentiles?
Answer: “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” (Acts 17:24-31)
