Greetings Robert Pate,
The Bible plainly teaches that Jesus is the savior of the whole world, 1 John 2:2 and has provided salvation for everyone.
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that WHOSOEVER (All, anyone, Everyone) that believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" John 3:16. .
I agree with the concept that you advocated. In my fellowship the concept of Calvinism and predestination is rarely discussed and possibly it is because of the general teaching within our community that faith comes by hearing and affectionately accepting the gospel. On one occasion, one of our brethren did suggest a few things similar to Calvinism, but he seemed to be happy when, acting as our librarian, I gave him the following article written in 1946. I have not studied this subject, but I would be interested in comments by both sides of this discussion on whether the following article is a reasonable assessment and whether it is helpful in resolving some of the issues.
Calvinism and the Bible Doctrine of Predestination
THE first major protagonists in the predestination controversy, which has raged for centuries, were Augustine and Pelagius. It was Augustine’s point of view that Calvin later adopted, as did also, in their turn, Thomas Aquinas, the Dominicans and the Jansenists in the Catholic Church, Luther with slight modifications, and, among the Methodists, Whitefield. Calvin was opposed by Arminius, whose views correspond more closely with what we believe to be the Bible doctrine than those of the original Pelagius. Others on the Pelagian side were the Jesuits and Wesley.
The Augustinian and Calvinist position stresses man’s utter inability to will or do any good, and insists that God alone can save. He saves by means of grace, which is “effectual” (it does all that is necessary), and “irresistible” (if God chooses to make you the recipient of grace, you have no say in the matter). This irresistibility of grace for the elect entailed predestination: from eternity God had chosen some to receive it and gain life, and had passed over all others. In this God was not unjust, as death was the desert of all. It follows logically that, if Mr. Smith is of the elect, no sin that Mr. Smith commits, however heinous or deliberate, can prevent his gaining eternal life. It was here that Luther diverged from Calvin, maintaining that the grace could be resisted with resulting condemnation. Of course, Calvin would say that, in fact, the elect would not resist it. Calvinism, then, emphasizes basically the absolute, inscrutable and sovereign will of God. Its particular brand of predestination derives from that.
On the other hand, Pelagius emphasized man’s free will, grace coming in as a help, of which man’s striving made him worthy. Arminius insists that repentance and faith are the divinely decreed conditions of life and predestination is merely God’s determination to give eternal life to those whom He foresaw as fulfilling those conditions. (This doubtless is the correct interpretation of Rom. 8; 29–30.) He would, I think, have agreed with this saying of Luther: “—God, foreseeing who will and who will not resist the grace offered, predestinates to life those who are foreseen as believers”.
So much for a brief statement of the rival positions. To attempt in a few minutes even to suggest the Biblical doctrine and where it differs from Calvinism is a rather presumptuous venture. We must at all costs avoid an over-simplification of the problem for our own greater convenience in discussion. We will only try to clarify the issue, and to point a way to the right attitude towards the subject, not even listing the many passages relevant to the various points.
First let us state very briefly what seems to be the two major considerations to be borne in mind:
(1) The Calvinistic doctrine of absolute election, with its implication that many from eternity are passed over and therefore predestined to death, is untenable for Bible believers. We are told unequivocally that God “is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3 : 9). He “will have all men to be saved” (1 Tim. 2 : 4). “Whosoever will” is invited to take of the “water of life freely” (Rev. 22: 17). Whatever our final interpretation may be, it must leave room for a God who does not will the death of thousands, but the life of all.
(2) Calvinism insists on pushing its argument to a logical conclusion with results that shock our moral sense and nullify all moral exhortation. The Bible gives the data and does not offer a logical solution. Where it comes nearest to doing so, in Romans 8 and 9, it comes near to Calvinism. Its general teaching, as also the particular teaching of Romans finally, is just the presentation of the data, without a neatly parcelled and pigeon-holed explanation of what the divine wisdom knows is basically an unsolvable problem for finite minds.
The data are chiefly three:
1.GOD’S FOREKNOWLEDGE. This is limitless. Limit it, and your definition of God needs alteration.
2.GOD’S OMNIPOTENCE. Its exercise might be restrained, but only by God’s will, by His “longsuffering”.
3.MAN’S FREE WILL. It is not question-begging to include this as a datum. To deny free will is to play fast and loose with our own daily experience; to put the blame for Adam’s fall not on serpent, Eve or Adam, but on God Himself; to make Moses a play actor when he appeals to Israel to choose life rather than death; to tear page after page from the prophets as so much beating of the air; to tell the Lord Jesus Christ he was wasting his time in his appeals to come unto him; to erase from Apostolic writings everything that suggests the need for moral exhortations or offers it; and finally—though the sentence could be almost indefinitely prolonged—to cancel out entirely the first condition of life and all the clarion calls to it from Matthew to Revelation, namely, repentance.
Of these three data, in strict logic, (1) and (2) make (3) a mere human illusion. If God has absolute power fully exercised, then what He foresees He also causes or allows, and my freedom in things small or great is only a fancy of mine, and God’s punishment of sin becomes a mockery of justice by merely human standards. It is the objection of strict logic that is anticipated in Rom. 9: 19. Note that Paul’s answer does not deny the logic. All he says is: “You must accept it”. But here he comes nearest to the Calvinist position, emphasizing God’s sovereign will (Rom. 9: 14–24).
There is one other thing we can do with our data. We can say that God has limited His omnipotence to the extent of allowing man free will; in other words that datum 3 is only possible on the assumption of datum 2 having been limited. This leaves us with a slightly easier problem, still finally unsolvable by our finite minds, yet more easily imaginable. It is just possible to imagine that God may from eternity have foreseen all the free choices of free human wills without in any way interfering with their freedom. This will not do in logic, of course: a foreseen free choice must be made, therefore its freedom is illusory. But the whole plan of redemption, with the ideas of law, probation, sin, repentance, prophetic warning and appeal, God’s repenting of evil proposed, His longsuffering, the whole history of man’s declension and rebellion and the prospect of God’s final vindication, do necessitate something, which, for want of better terms, we may call a voluntary, temporary restraint of God’s power.
Here then is our choice: either deny free will and be logical (but also foolish, inasmuch as our choosing to deny free will cannot be free either—we just couldn’t help it) or accept both God’s foreknowledge and our own free will without demanding their logical reconciliation, but retaining for our help towards right choices the whole of God’s Word. This latter is the Bible’s own position. the passages where most emphasis is laid upon God’s sovereign will are followed in the same letter by hosts of passages which demand our belief in free will (Rom. 10: 12, 17; 11 : 14 , 18–19, 22, 25; 12 :1–3, etc.).
The Bible position then is this:
(i) It insists upon God’s foreknowledge. He knows which of us will be in the Kingdom, because He has foreseen which of us will be believers and trust in His mercy.
(ii) It insists—nay, its very existence demands—man’s free will, to receive or reject God’s grace, and after claiming to have received it, either to grow in it or to do despite to it and to fall from it.
(iii) It admits that, if you demand logic, even your reception of grace is of God’s sovereign mercy.
(iv) It sets as an aim before the Christian absolute identity of will with the Father, but relates the experience of the Apostle to the Gentiles (Rom. 7) and even of Christ himself in the garden, to give the sober reminder that for us that aim is not fully attained. There is always with us conflict.
(v) It also sets before us as an ideal, confidence in our final salvation by God’s grace, to which Paul sometimes attained (2 Tim. 4 : 8) so that salvation can be spoken of as already accomplished (Rom. 8: 30). If that confidence eludes us, because of a sense of our unworthiness, we may be encouraged by remembering that “Ifs” abound even in the most confident parts of Paul’s letters, and that the confidence sometimes eluded him. But we should also remember that it is not a question of our being “good enough” (none of us is that) but of the measure of our trust and hope in His mercy.
Kind regards
Trevor
