Note to Readers: This e-teaching is the first of seven that are consecutive chapters of a book I wrote more than 30 years ago titled, Calvinism Considered. My hope then was to persuade Calvinists to abandon their Calvinism, but that has proven to be a more difficult task than I originally thought. Now I hope that this book will be more of a preventative than a cure, and I hope that will be the case for you! — David
Book Introduction
Calvinistic theology is usually explained by focusing on its five cardinal doctrines: (1) Total Depravity, (2) Unconditional Election, (3) Limited Atonement, (4) Irresistible Grace, and (5) Perseverance of the Saints. These are easily remembered by the acronym TULIP. All five points are interrelated, so that accepting or rejecting one typically leads a person to accept or reject the others as well.
This study is a respectful and scriptural examination of the five points of Calvinism. More specifically, it is a response to John Piper’s booklet TULIP: What We Believe about the Five Points of Calvinism. I have chosen Piper’s booklet only so that no one can claim I have misrepresented true Calvinism (an accusation with which I am familiar). John Piper is a respected, knowledgeable, and moderate Calvinist. He has not misrepresented mainstream Calvinism in his booklet, and neither have I in what follows.
My purpose is to examine Calvinism in the light of Scripture and logic, and to help seekers of truth arrive at a biblical understanding of how God saves people. As I see it, Calvinism is flawed on at least three levels: (1) by focusing on certain “supportive” scriptures while ignoring many others that clearly contradict the Calvinistic interpretation of those texts; (2) by offering unnatural and forced interpretations of scriptures that contradict Calvinism; and (3) by relying on faulty logic. When we consider the full balance of Scripture, accept the most natural reading of the text, and maintain consistent logic, the five points of Calvinism do not harmonize with what the Bible teaches about God and how He saves people.
I am certainly not the first to question Calvinism. Whenever its various doctrines have surfaced in church history, they have raised objections. For example, writing around A.D. 225, the well-known church father Origen wrote against a contemporary Gnostic sect, saying:
Certain ones of those who hold different opinions misuse these passages. They essentially destroy free will by introducing ruined natures incapable of salvation and by introducing others as being saved in such a way that they cannot be lost.
Origen’s words essentially contradict the first and fifth pillars of modern Calvinism.
I hope my comments will not be taken as an attack against Calvinists, but rather as a sincere and thoughtful examination of Calvinistic doctrines. I love and respect any Calvinist whose Lord is Jesus. I have, however, written passionately on some points because I am passionate for God’s reputation. When His sovereignty is emphasized to the point of diminishing His love and justice, the result is an obvious imbalance.
Near the end of his booklet, Piper quotes the legendary Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, who said that he began as an Arminian (Arminians essentially disagree with all five points of Calvinism), like everyone else. That is a telling remark because it is true: no one begins as a Calvinist. No one reading the Bible on their own naturally arrives at Calvinism. People become Calvinists only as they are taught Calvinism by skillful teachers. Piper’s own testimony is no different. He admits “many years of struggle” (p. 1, para. 4) before he was able to accept Calvinism. Perhaps even more difficult than the struggle to accept Calvinism is the struggle to reject it after one has worked so hard to embrace it. Yet it can—and has—been done.
John Piper writes in his booklet, “We are open to changing any of our ideas which can be shown to contradict the truth of Scripture.” I am glad for his humble attitude. I am likewise open to scrutiny of my comments by anyone who presents an argument that harmonizes with the entire Bible, for I too sincerely desire to understand God’s truth. Although this teaching has been posted on my website for decades and viewed frequently, I am still waiting for the first comprehensive refutation. Calvinists have occasionally sent me short lists of proof texts (all of which I address in my examination of Piper’s booklet) or titles of books on Calvinism that they suggest I read. But what I am waiting for is a point-by-point response to the numerous arguments I have made. Sending one or two proof texts or a recommended book title is not a comprehensive refutation.
How difficult it is to remain truly open to truth that challenges our long-held beliefs! May God help us all, by His grace, to comprehend His great plan of salvation.
Chapter 1
Total Depravity and Irresistible Grace, Part 1Points one and four of Calvinism’s TULIP—Total Depravity and Irresistible Grace—are intrinsically linked, making it nearly impossible to consider one without the other. The remaining three points rest on these two pillars; if they fall, the others must fall with them.
Concerning human depravity, all genuine Christians affirm that humanity is sinful by nature and born with a propensity to sin. This is easily demonstrated from Scripture (and confirmed by human experience). In Romans 3:9–12, for example, Paul records a sampling of God’s assessment of sinful humanity drawn from various Psalms: “There is none righteous, not even one… there is none who seeks for God… there is none who does good.” In Ephesians 2:1, 3 he writes that we were “dead in [our] trespasses and sins… by nature children of wrath.” Unregenerate people are “slaves to sin” (Rom. 6:6) and are “held captive” by Satan “to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:26).
Clearly, the Bible teaches that humanity is deeply corrupt and sinful. Apart from God’s initiative to draw us to Himself, we would never turn from our sins. No one can escape slavery to sin without God’s gracious help. I therefore affirm man’s depravity, God’s prevenient grace (grace that precedes regeneration), and His enabling grace that empowers believers to live holy lives after they are born again.
Calvinists, however, go further. They maintain that unregenerate people are so corrupt that it is impossible for them to submit to God or believe in Jesus; they are totally depraved. Unless God sovereignly changes their wills by an irresistible grace, they will never submit or repent.
According to this view, even though people may think they have the freedom to repent, they are mistaken. If they do not repent, they are simply doing the only thing they are capable of doing, because God has not granted them irresistible grace. If they do repent, they are doing what it would have been impossible for them not to do, because God is sovereignly changing them by irresistible grace. In reality, they make no genuine choice in the matter of salvation. God chooses them and makes them believers by changing their wills. Totally depraved people, according to Calvinism, would never—and could never—humble themselves or choose to repent.
Oddly, many Calvinists, including Piper, still maintain that unregenerate people possess free will to some degree. Piper writes:
There is no doubt that man could perform more evil acts toward his fellow man than he does. But if he is restrained from performing more evil acts by motives that are not owing to his glad submission to God, then even his “virtue” is evil in the sight of God (p. 5, para. 2, emphasis added).
If an unregenerate man could perform more evil acts but does not because he is restrained by some inward motive, then he is restrained by himself rather than by an outside force. He is making a moral decision by his own free will not to do further evil.
Piper also states, “Except for the continual exertion of saving grace, we will always use our freedom to resist God” (p. 9, para. 6, emphasis added). Notice his affirmation of free will in the phrase “use our freedom.” Yet he insists that, apart from continual saving grace, we will always use that freedom to resist God—because we are allegedly totally depraved.
This being the case, it is not too strong to say that Calvinists believe God causes people to believe in Christ and be born again against their wills. They would never—and could never—have chosen otherwise. Given the choice, they would have preferred to remain in sin. Moments before God bestowed His “irresistible grace,” if asked whether they wanted to repent and follow Jesus, they would have answered with a firm “no.” Moments later, God causes them to do what they had been resisting, what they never wanted, and what they could not have done. Thus every person God causes to be born again is born again against his or her will—this is what Calvinists believe, even if they deny it.
Piper explains that some influence of the Holy Spirit can be resisted, but that “the Holy Spirit can overcome all resistance and make His influence irresistible” (p. 9, para. 1). God, therefore, can send two kinds of influence: resistible and irresistible, whichever He chooses. Piper elaborates:
When a person hears a preacher call for repentance he can resist that call. But if God gives him repentance he cannot resist because the gift is the removal of the resistance. Not being willing to repent is the same as resisting the Holy Spirit. So if God gives repentance it is the same as taking away the resistance. This is why we call this work of God “irresistible grace” (p. 10, para. 6).
Immediately afterward he declares: “Note: It should be obvious from this that irresistible grace never implies that God forces us to believe against our will. That would even be a contradiction in terms” (p. 10, para. 7, emphasis added).
I must respectfully ask: How can irresistible grace act upon a totally depraved person without forcing him to believe against his will? If the unregenerate person is initially able to resist God’s grace while hearing the gospel, then God must at that moment be sending a resistible grace. According to Piper, the totally depraved person will always continue to resist as long as the grace remains resistible. The moment God bestows irresistible grace, the person can no longer resist (by definition) and is immediately born again and believes. Yet only a moment earlier he was resisting. How, then, can Piper claim it is “obvious” that irresistible grace never forces anyone to believe against his will? Far from being obvious, this claim directly contradicts what he has just affirmed.
Piper’s logic becomes still more strained:
On the contrary, irresistible grace is compatible with preaching and witnessing that tries to persuade people to do what is reasonable and what will accord with their best interests (p. 10, para. 7).
Piper recognizes that irresistible grace creates a serious problem for the necessity of persuasive preaching. Why must preachers attempt to persuade sinners to believe if those sinners are incapable of believing until God grants them irresistible grace? If man plays no part in his conversion, why must he hear the gospel in order to be saved, as Paul insists in Romans 10:14? Piper’s one-sentence disclaimer (quote above) only highlights the incompatibility.
A consistently logical Calvinist cannot claim that persuasive preaching influences an unregenerate person to yield to God, because that person will always use his freedom to resist God (Piper, p. 9, para. 6). The only way an unregenerate person becomes regenerate is if God sovereignly bestows irresistible grace. All the persuasive preaching in the world makes no difference. Indeed, attempting to persuade someone becomes an implicit attack on God’s alleged sovereign grace, for it implies that salvation rests partly on the hearer and partly on the preacher.
According to consistent Calvinism, preaching cannot have any persuasive power over one who is totally depraved. If it does, then we must admit that unregenerate man can do something (be persuaded) that contributes to his salvation.
Paul’s Persuasive Preaching
If man has nothing to do with his repentance because the ability to repent is solely God’s gift, why did Paul so often “reason” with the Jews from the Scriptures to “prove” that Jesus was the Messiah (see, for example, Acts 17:2–4)? Why did he attempt to “persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11) and beg people to “be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20)? Why does Acts 28:24 record that as Paul reasoned with the Jews about Jesus, “some were being persuaded by the things spoken, but others would not believe”? Why did Paul write, “I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22)? Why did he say that the Jews hindered him from “speaking to the Gentiles so that they might be saved” (1 Thess. 2:16)?
Clearly, Paul believed that what he said and did affected the results of his evangelism because people’s wills played a real part in their salvation. A preacher’s attempt to persuade an unregenerate man is an admission that man plays a part in his repentance. If no one can be saved apart from God’s irresistible grace, such persuasion is an affront to God’s sovereignty.
In fact, trying to persuade an unregenerate person to yield to Christ is to mislead him into thinking he is not totally depraved after all—because he can choose to repent.
For the consistent Calvinist, persuasive preaching is ultimately ineffectual and useless. Any other conclusion would imply that salvation is not entirely the sovereign work of God. There is no escape: if people must hear preaching in order to be saved, then both preachers and hearers play a part in salvation. Preaching persuades them to do something, which means they must possess free wills capable of choosing to repent. This is further evidence that salvation is not solely the work of God. Man must play a part; otherwise there would be no need for preaching.
Calvinists sometimes reply that preaching the gospel is simply a means God uses in saving people. I must ask: Is it a meaningless means or a meaningful means? If it is meaningless, why call it a means? A means, by definition, serves a purpose toward a certain end. There is no such thing as a meaningless means.
If it is a meaningful means, then it serves a necessary purpose. According to Scripture, preaching the gospel is an essential means (Rom. 10:14), because through it God’s message is communicated to people who, if they are to be saved, must believe that message and repent. Thus people’s salvation depends on preachers preaching and hearers responding.
If salvation is purely a sovereign act in which God bestows irresistible grace on some, why do Calvinists not simply stand before unregenerate audiences and recite nursery rhymes? That would demonstrate the truth of irresistible grace as people are sovereignly born again. Yet Calvinists consistently appeal to the minds and hearts of their hearers in order to persuade them to repent and believe—something those hearers, by definition, cannot do unless God first regenerates them. The practice of Calvinist preaching contradicts the theology they claim to hold.
Many biblical examples illustrate the effects of persuasive preaching. Acts 17:11–12 states:
Now these [Berean Jews] were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, along with a number of prominent Greek women and men (emphasis added).
The Bereans’ receptivity contributed to their salvation, just as Jesus taught in the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1–20).
If Calvinists are consistent, what gospel should they proclaim? Should they call on people to repent and believe, thereby misleading them into thinking they can do something regarding their salvation and thus increasing their spiritual pride? Or should they tell them the “truth”—that they are so depraved they are incapable of submitting to God, and that unless God grants them irresistible grace they can never be saved? How does “faith come from hearing” (Rom. 10:17) such a message?
Such a “gospel” leaves the hearer with nothing to believe in order to be saved. That is why Calvinists generally keep these distinctive doctrines hidden from the unregenerate and reveal them later to Christians who are considered ready for the “truth.” The five points of Calvinism function as a kind of “family secret.” Though claimed to be foundational truths of salvation, they dare not be preached to the unsaved. This fact alone exposes a serious flaw: Calvinists intuitively recognize that if they told unregenerate people their full doctrine, they would gain no converts. So they preach a functionally Arminian gospel, hope for a response, and only afterward explain “what really happened.”
Calvinistic Converts
I cannot help wondering how God takes pleasure in people who are regenerated against their wills by irresistible grace. They are essentially robots. If they love Him, it is only because they had no choice; they would have preferred to continue hating Him. Genuine love, however, is predicated upon choice. Pre-programmed affection is not true love.
Imagine placing a sock puppet on your hand, turning it toward yourself, and making it say, “I love you!” Does that produce the same feeling as when your spouse or child freely speaks those words? Of course not—because free will has been removed. The puppet says only what you force it to say.
Piper’s claim that unregenerate man will always use his freedom to resist God is easily disproved by observation. Consider an adulterer whose God-given conscience continually condemns him (Rom. 2:15), yet he continues in the relationship. He is using his freedom to resist God—exactly what Piper says is all he can or will ever do. But suppose he finally breaks off the adulterous relationship because of guilt. Can it still be said that he has used his freedom only to resist God? No. He used his freedom to repent of adultery and yield to his conscience. If he can do that, why can he not, with the help of the Holy Spirit, repent of a lifestyle of rebellion and humble himself before God?
How can someone who has the free choice to remain unrepentant lack the freedom to choose to repent? How can a person have the capacity to choose greater evil yet lack the capacity to choose lesser evil? Choosing not to become more evil is, by default, a choice for good.
If we can use our freedom to resist God but cannot use it to yield to God, we have no real freedom at all. We are robots programmed only for evil. It is impossible to possess freedom to resist God without also possessing freedom to yield to Him. Calvin himself acknowledged this, writing in the Institutes:
Nothing is more absurd than to think anything at all is done but by the ordination of God…. Every action and motion of every creature is so governed by the hidden counsel of God, that nothing can come to pass, but what was ordained by Him…. The wills of men are so governed by the will of God, that they are carried on straight to the mark which He has fore-ordained (Institutes, Book 1, Chapter 16, Section 3).
At least Calvin was consistent. He admitted (unlike many modern Calvinists) that there is no genuine room for free will in this system. If depraved man can do nothing other than sin, then he has as much free will as a bullet fired from a gun.
Calvinists add to Scripture regarding both humanity’s depravity and God’s grace. Although unregenerate people are indeed “dead in [their] trespasses and sins,” hundreds of passages clearly state or imply that spiritually dead people can choose to humble themselves and repent, especially under the gracious drawing of God’s Spirit. That drawing, however, never forces anyone to repent, nor does it change anyone’s will apart from the consent of the heart.
While Scripture repeatedly describes the sinful condition of humanity, it simultaneously calls all people to repent. It is therefore evident that spiritually dead people still possess the capacity to repent. Paul publicly proclaimed, “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent” (Acts 17:30). If Paul believed people were so depraved that they had no capacity to repent, he would not have announced that God was calling all people everywhere to do so. Moreover, if it were impossible for spiritually dead people to repent, God would be unrighteous to command them to do what they cannot do and then hold them guilty for failing.
Like Paul, John the Baptist, Jesus, and the other apostles preached the gospel and called all people to repent (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; 11:20; Mark 6:12; Luke 5:32; 13:3, 5; 24:47; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 11:18; 20:21; 26:20; Rom. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9).
Several times in Revelation, John records his amazement that unregenerate people refuse to repent even while suffering God’s judgments (Rev. 9:20–21; 16:9, 11).
Jesus pronounced woe on the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida because they did not repent, clearly indicating that He believed they had the capacity to do so (Matt. 11:21). He further declared that the wicked people of Tyre and Sidon would have repented had they seen the miracles performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida.
In both cases Jesus treated those who did not repent as people who could have repented and should have done so. Calvinism, by contrast, holds that unregenerate people have no capacity to repent unless God changes their wills and forces them (which He does only for some). This portrayal makes Jesus appear to be a deceiver, for He spoke as though people could do what—according to Calvinism—He knew they could not. It likewise makes the Father a deceiver, since Jesus spoke only the Father’s words (John 12:49).
Jesus expected His entire generation to repent. He stated that the men of Nineveh, who repented at Jonah’s preaching, would rightly condemn His generation for its failure to repent. If His hearers had no capacity to repent, He could not justly condemn them. The people of Nineveh would have no moral standing to condemn Jesus’ generation, for the latter could reply, “How can you, who by God’s sovereign decree could do nothing other than repent, condemn us who by the same decree could do nothing other than remain unrepentant?”
Thus Calvinism, by holding that God condemns people for failing to do what they are incapable of doing, makes God appear grossly unjust—comparable to a parent who punishes an infant for not walking, yet infinitely worse, because the punishment is eternal.
Calvinism also makes God ultimately responsible for all the evil in the world. According to this view, God could end all evil by granting everyone His irresistible grace, yet He sovereignly chooses not to. Evil therefore persists only because of God’s choice. Depraved people can supposedly do nothing but sin unless God restrains them by irresistible grace; the ultimate reason for evil is that God does not prevent it.
In response, Calvinists often accuse non-Calvinists of making man solely responsible for his own salvation (an absurd charge). Yet Calvinism makes God solely responsible for the damnation of billions. The God of this system determines people’s eternal fate before they are born. If God is solely responsible for the salvation of some, He is equally responsible for the damnation of the rest, for only He could have rescued them, yet He chose not to. That decision was not due to any inability but to an unwillingness to stop sin. In this framework, God wills sin in the lives of the non-elect. Man continues in sin not merely because he has no choice, but because God, who could stop it, chooses not to.
Calvinists should not object to this conclusion, for Calvin himself taught that Adam fell not by his own free will but because God ordained the fall:
God not only foresaw that Adam would fall, but also ordained that he should…. I confess it is a horrible decree; yet no one can deny but God foreknew Adam’s fall, and therefore foreknew it, because he had ordained it so by his own decree (Institutes, Book 3, Chapter 23, Section 7).
Calvinism further portrays God as working against Himself—hating sin while creating people who have no capacity to do anything but evil and who are predestined never to change. It also portrays Him as hypocritical, practicing forms of partiality and deception that He condemns in others.
In summary, Calvinism presents God as a being who is ultimately responsible for the world’s evil, who creates people for the purpose of eternal torment, and who holds them accountable for failing to do what He has rendered them incapable of doing. If any human being acted in the ways Calvinists attribute to God, he would be judged morally reprehensible. The question must therefore be asked: Is it the non-Calvinist who diminishes God’s glory by affirming that people must freely yield to the Spirit in order to be saved, or is it the Calvinist system that distorts the character of God?
Unlike Calvinists, who place the responsibility for lack of repentance on God, Jesus placed the blame on the unrepentant people themselves. Weeping over Jerusalem, He said:
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling (Matt. 23:37, emphasis added).
Jesus loved them and desired their repentance, yet they refused. Calvinism, however, makes Jesus say, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, proving that you are totally depraved. I never wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, thus I chose not to grant you My irresistible grace, and I predestined you to eternal damnation. I’m weeping now, not for you, because I’ve hated you from the beginning. Rather, I’m weeping for no good reason. Perhaps I’m weeping for Myself, an unrighteous hypocrite, because I expect people to do what they can’t do and I command people to do what I don’t practice Myself.”
Jesus also rebuked the religious leaders: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life” (John 5:39–40). Clearly, Jesus believed that people, including religious Jews, possessed the capacity to choose whether or not to come to Him. No honest reading of the text can deny this.
More on Total Depravity and Irresistible Grace in the next chapter.
