Calvinism

 

Calvinism vs Fanny Crosby

Fanny Crosby wrote the great hymn, To God Be the Glory in 1872. I’ve always thought it was a great song but it seems Calvinism has a wee problem with the first verse:

To God be the glory, great things He hath done;

So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,

Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,

And opened the life gate that all may go in.

Do you see the word which I emphasized: “all”?  Now what can the complaint be about that word? Didn’t Jesus die for the whole world’s sins (only efficacious for those who place their faith in Jesus)?  Doesn’t John 3:16 say that “God so loved the word…”?

Let’s look at the version in the PCA hymnal.

To God be the glory, great things He hath done;

So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,

Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,

And opened the life gate that we may go in.

Ostensibly the song is sung by Christians so perhaps “we” would be better than “all” in that respect, but I think the point by Crosby is that ALL people have the ability to choose Jesus and the Christian faith.

Ah, but Calvinists say we do not have the ability to choose whether or not to accept the Christian gospel and place our faith in Jesus and his atoning sacrifice. Therefore only those singing, i.e., “we,” have been justified without our choosing. 

But what if there is an unbeliever in the assembly who sings this song; does he think the “we” includes him?

When you get right down to it, there really isn’t much difference in which word was used so there must have been a reason for Fanny to choose “all” and I believe it is there because of passages like these:

Ezra 8:22 – “everyone who looks to him”

Ps. 86:5 – “all who call to you”

Isa. 53:6 – “We all…have gone astray…laid on him the iniquity of us all”

Joel 2:32 - “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord”

Mark 16:15-16 – “all creation” and “whoever believes”

John 1:12 – “all who received him”

John 3:16-17 – “whoever believes” and “to save the world”

John 3:36 – “whoever believes”

John 5:24 – “whoever believes”

John 6:40 - "that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him"

John 6:47 – “he who believes”

John 7:37-38 – “If anyone is thirsty…Whoever believes”

John 11:26 - “and whoever lives and believes in me”

John 12:26 - “whoever serves me…My Father will honor the one who serves me”

John 20:31 – “by believing you may have life”

Acts 2:38 – “every one of you”

Acts 10:34-35 - “God does not show favoritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear Him”

Acts 10:43 – “everyone who believes”

Acts 13:38-39 - “I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified”

Acts 16:31 – “Believe…and you will be saved.”

Acts 17:30 – “all people everywhere”

Rom. 1:16 – “salvation of everyone who believes”

Rom. 3:22 - “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”

Rom. 5:18 - “the free gift came to all men”

Rom. 10:4 - “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”

Rom. 10:9 – “If you confess…and believe”

Rom. 10:13 – “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord”

1 Cor. 1:21 – “those who believe”

1 Tim. 1:15 – Christ came to save “sinners” (re. Rom. 3:23 all have sinned)

1 Tim. 1:16 – “those who would believe”

1 Tim. 2:4-6 – “who wants all men to be saved”… “a ransom for all men”

Titus 2:11 - “For the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all men”

Heb. 2:9 - “might taste the death for everyone”

2 Pet. 3:9 – “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance”

1 John 2:2 - “propitiation for…the whole world”

1 John 4:14 – “Savior of the world”

1 John 4:15 - "Whosoever shall confess"

1 John 5:1 – “Everyone who believes”

Rev. 22:17 – “whoever is thirsty” “whoever wishes”

The Calvinist says “all” means “all of the elect,” “everyone” means “everyone of the elect,”  “all creation” means “all of the elect of creation, and “whoever of the elect who believes,” ‘the world” means “the world of the elect,” etc.  They have to add to the passages to make them fit with their ideology!  

So “we” becomes more specific if the only people singing are Christians (i.e., “the elect).  I’d say it’s pretty “petty” to change a word because one is needed to be closer to Calvinism than the other one. Calvinism just says, “To hell with Fanny Crosby—she didn’t know what she was talking about!" On the other hand, I’d say, “If you don’t like her lyrics, don’t sing the song.”

Some Unbiblical Calvinist Ideas

Back in January 2010 I posted an article about my church experience (including my wife after marriage), and in 2015 I added a post-script "update" about how we left our most recent assembly after over a decade because they went market-driven. 

Well, I never got around to adding to that update, but that church we began going to in the fall of 2014 ended up with another problem; NOISE. While the teaching at our "new" church was solid, the music was sometimes "feel good" and the sound kept getting louder and louder. I complained about it to the "worship pastor" and he said he would do what he could but never did. SO I appealed to the teaching pastor (the "head" pastor, so to speak) and he said that wasn't his control. I was very disappointed with that response, as you can well imagine. I began wearing hearing aids in January 2019 and the sound volume really affected me (and apparently a lot of older people who would go into the hallway/entrance during the music). The live band didn't seem to care how their volume affected many people. So I told the pastor that we'd have to find somewhere else to worship.

Well, we had good friends who attended the local PCA church in our small town: 

1. One family had found it when they left the same church we had left in 2001 (due to the sin in the church not being addressed). 

2. Another family we had met back at our very first church in Iowa (December 1995-Summer 1996) had finally got fed up with that one getting more market-driven and seeker sensitive. 

3. The other very good friends, a couple, left the church we attended from 2002—he had been the music leader there before they decided to get a “rock and roll” leader— and bounced around to a few churches before finding this PCA. 

Now, none of us were Calvinists (#2 above became so), but this PCA had a very good pastor with good teachings and a caring heart. When the couple (#3 above) had a soiree in 2018 they invited their PCA pastor. Nice guy with a nice wife. I told the pastor that I didn't agree with Calvinism and he responded that a large number of the congregation didn't either but he wasn't bothered by that!  WOW. So in early 2019 we began attending the PCA church about 2 miles from home. 

It was very infrequently that the pastor had any specifically Calvinist teachings and when he did my wife and I (as well as others) just ignored it. But as a shepherd, we've not seen better. (Unfortunately, he and his wife moved to North Carolina last month to be near family and to take care of some health issues. So now we have an interim pastor while the search committee looks for a permanent one.) 

My readers have been apprised of my opinion that the primary Calvinist doctrines identified by the acronym TULIP are unbiblical. What I've never understood is that some of the best Christian apologists are Calvinists and yet they don't apply their apologetics to their own Calvinist teachings!

Anyway, you may have noticed over the past two years that I've had some short articles exposing some Calvinist errors; these were brought about by something that was raised in the church that particular week.

So for this post I'm going to show three other interesting/unbiblical teachings in Calvinism.

1. We normally have communion every week. However, when our pastor was on vacation if the substitute was not ordained we couldn't have communion. You see, you just can't have communion without an ordained pastor. I can't seem to find that rule in the Bible.

2. Our interim pastor had his first official day today, but he is not ordained in THIS presbytery so we didn't have Communion. He is ordained in his Georgia presbytery but that doesn't count. He now has to sit before the local presbytery to be ordained here, and until that happens we have no communion. This guy has some good education and has his doctorate but he can't carry his ordination with him. Can you see the apostles needing ordination as they traveled from country to country?!?

3. Now the big one for today. We very often cite parts of the Westminster Confession or Catechism as part of the liturgy. Normally it's just standard biblical doctrine but today's "Larger Catechism" question and answer led me to refuse to cite it. The Question (#123) asked what the 5th Commandment is and the answer was cited from the O.T. So far, so good. Then there was Question #124: To whom does father and mother refer in the fifth commandment?

Well, I thought it was pretty plain that it referred to father and mother, as does the citation of the Commandment in Ephesians 6:1-4. But not so with the Calvinist; they have an unbiblical idea as to whom this commandment refers. Let me cite the Catechism:

Father and mother refer not just to our parents" but to everyone who is older or more talented than we are, and specifically to those whom God has ordained to be over us in positions of authority, whether in our family, the church, or civil government. 

HUH?!?!? How do they read all this into a simple commandment about honoring one's parents?!?!

It gets even crazier. The next question (#125) asks: Why are those over us referred to as father and mother? 

The short answer is that they aren't!  But the answer given left me figuratively scratching my head in wonder:

The terms father and mother remind those in authority that, like fathers and mothers, they are responsible for and should act in a loving and tender way, appropriately reflecting their particular relationship, toward those under them; and those under them are also encouraged to accept their authority more willingly and cheerfully, as if they were their parents.  

Why is it that I can't find this meaning of father and mother in the Bible?

No, that's not the end of it. Q.126 asks: What is the general scope of the fifth commandment? 

I would respond that it is about honoring/obeying, etc, one's father and mother, but they have a different response, which you won't find even hinted at in Scripture:

In general, the fifth commandment outlines our obligations to others, depending upon our particular relationship to them, whether over, under, or equal to them.  

WRONG: it outlines only our obligation to parents.

The Catechism continues in this vein in regards to honor owed to those in authority over us and what kind of sins can be against them.

I agree that the N.T. outlines our duty to those in authority but you will find those duties in Romans 13:1-7 and 2 Peter 2:1-3.

I have the feeling that if I was to read the entire Catechism I'd find more unbiblical additions to what the Bible really says. This is a problem with so many mainline denominations as well as independent churches: they feel they have to add to God's Word to control their people! 

Be sure that what you are being taught aligns with Scripture or else ignore it.

When Calvinist Ideology Changes Lyrics

One of my favorite hymns is “And Can It Be?” —It’s a wonderful statement of the Gospel. But what happens in a Calvinist hymnal?

Here is the third verse as written by Charles Wesley:

He left His Father’s throne above—

So free, so infinite His grace—

Emptied Himself of all but love,

And bled for Adam’s helpless race:

’Tis mercy all, immense and free,

For, O my God, it found out me!

Now see a Calvinist version:

He left His Father’s throne above—

So free, so infinite His grace—

Humbled Himself, so great his love!

And bled for all his chosen race:

’Tis mercy all, immense and free,

For, O my God, it found out me!

Charles Wesley is spinning in his grave.

Calvinist Double-Talk

God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 3, paragraph 1.

This is double-talk and contradiction. If God ordained everything which comes to pass then it is thereby necessary that he ordained sin! 

Rick Warren, in his Purpose Driven Life, even states that everything about you -- sex, body shape, race, hair color, eye color, etc -- was ordained by God and that everything we are doing or saying was ordained by God. 

You can’t on one hand say everything has been ordained by God and then on the other hand say God doesn’t ordain sin. You can’t say on one hand that God ordained everything we do or say and then on the other hand say we are responsible for everything we do or say. 

Calvinism indeed makes humans nothing but pre-programmed puppets.

Yes, People Are Able to Repent

In the text just cited [Jer. 7:1-29], it seems clear that God truly desired for his children to repent and turn from their self-destructive ways. That God sent prophets to them over and over suggests not only that he wanted them to repent but also that they were able to do so. The prophets themselves were a means of grace by which the truth confronted Israel and made repentance possible. God’s threatening to punish them for their refusal to repent implies that they were responsible precisely because the could have repented and yet freely chose not to do so.

Jerry L. Walls and Joseph R. Dongell, Why I Am Not A Calvinist, pg.117

Something to Think About

From Robert E. Picirilli's book Grace, Faith, Free Will: Contrasting Views of Salvation - Calvinism & Arminianism

If the atonement actually secures saving faith for those covered, and did not secure saving faith for the non-elect, it is not sufficient for the non-elect. (pg.97)

If not all who hear can respond to the gospel, as the Calvinist insists, then only those given repentance and faith can do so. In consequence, no person who hears the gospel can do so with any confidence that he can respond. Conversely, all who hear and are not given the gift may conclude that the offer is not intended for them and therefore not rejected by them. What a person cannot receive, he can not really reject. Nor can he be rightly blamed for rejection (although he might well be blamed for being in the condition that brought on his inability). (pg.118)

Agglomeration

The Good - For Education and/or Edification

Admonishing with tears — the job of apologists. And it SHOULD be the job of pastors and elders.

Education and safeguarding our children.

Formerly known as male and female.  Thought-provoking article.

Dear Christian: STOP IT!

Good review of Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life.” One of my problems not noted here is his hard-line Calvinist predetermines. Warren said that God created everyone specifically (rather than allowing undirected procreation) so that every thing about you was predetermined, e.g. eye color, vision, hearing, deformations, etc. This would be a horrible God.

Clint has another review; this time it is of Jerry Falwell’s Building Dynamic Faith.

About that Word-Faith/Charismatic Religion.

Christians and slavery: Many got it wrong and embraced it.

HMMMM

Does Calvinism’s “Perseverance” Really Offer Eternal Security? The Answer: No!

More Wolves and False Teachings

Here’s a group I haven’t mentioned for a while: World Race.  Very cultic with false teachings.

I’ve never heard of Doreen Virtue, but I sure learned a lot about this false teacher at Mary Dalke’s blog.  Very “New Age.”

Beth Moore — Again!  She’s a flaming hypocrite.

Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, and Gnosticism.

Catholics and their absurd superstitions. There is no such thing as “holy water” to begin with!

This could very well be true!

For all its claims, Zondervan is no longer (and hasn’t been for a long time) a “Christian-based” publisher, as evidenced by their latest Enneagram movie.

Lou Giglio has been on my “RADAR” for a long time, but looking back through my articles I see most of the links I had to articles about him were on a site since taken down—which is actually the old side of Clint Adams. To help you see that Giglio is a false teacher, Clint Adams has an excellent review of one of Giglio’s books.

This is what apostasy looks like. Muslims are taught to eradicate Christians, Jews, and anyone not accepting the Muslim faith.

Did They Really Say That?!?!

God—the great Creator of all things—upholds, directs, disposes, and governs all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least.

Westminster Confession of Faith 5.1

Let’s put ellipses in to get to my point:

God…directs…all actions…

This is my BIG problem with Calvinism. The statement makes God the source of sin and evil if God directs everything. We are no more than puppets as part of a Game that God has already ordained. 

Biblical Christianity says mankind has free will to make his own choices in life, but Calvinism says that all our actions have been pre-ordained—directed—by God. Which is why to a Calvinist man cannot choose to obey God, cannot choose to accept faith in Christ’s work atoning for sin, rather God has to regenerate the man first with the Holy Spirit for him to choose to follow Christ.  This is backwards from Scripture which says the Holy Spirit regenerates the person AFTER he puts his faith in Christ.

If God directs all actions, then it is unjust to hold man accountable for the sin God directs him to commit.

Agglomeration

Here’s another episode of a collection of links to articles which I thought were worth sharing.

The Good - For Education and/or Edification

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that John MacArthur is a heretic with “lordship salvation,” I’d have all my doctor bills paid off! This excellent article exposes the very deceptive lying done by those attacking MacArthur.

Critique of the most popular praise and worship songs.

Keith Getty sounds the alarm about modern “worship” music being dangerous.

Nobody’s Fault But Mine: A Biblical Evaluation, Generational Curse Theology.

“Look, here is the Christ!”

Who were the “sons of God”? Who where the Nephilim?  You can also refer back to my old posts on the topic: Who were the “sons of God” sin Genesis 6? And Who were the Nephilim in Genesis 6?

Why do most Christians resist Calvinism? For very logical reasons.

Female pastors will only lead a church into apostasy.  I’ve been saying this for a long time; all one has to do is look at the ELCA, the Episcopal Church, United Methodist, and PCUSA, et al.

Testing the Seventh-Day Adventist “prophetess” Ellen G. White against the Scripture — she fails.

HMMMM

Except for their Calvinist beliefs, the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) is usually very solidly fundamental in their teachings.  So then why are they getting into this “racial reconciliation” nonsense of “affirmative action” — aka reverse discrimination?!?

The big news of late is all the brouhaha over Kayne West becoming a Christian.  Well, it seems to me that he’s been given some very poor teachings, and I wonder if he really has accepted the true Gospel and true Christ. He’s been making headlines with his bodacious debut at Joel Osteen’s “church,” and has made the absurd claim that “the greatest artist God ever created is now working for him.” I’d say that is some arrogant presumption!  Seems he’ll fit right in with Osteen unless some REAL Christian can get his attention. 

More Wolves and False Teachings

The Spiritual Damage Caused by the Rebellion of Women Preachers in the Church. An interesting thing I’ve personally noticed is that churches led by women, and denominations which have women “pastors” are all very liberal in their theology, sanctioning homosexuality, same-sex fake marriage, abortion and “social justice.”

Paula White — Satanic Mistress.  This is the woman who is President Trump’s “spiritual advisor.” Which explains why he is basically clueless about the Faith.  Of course she hasn’t left her heretical “seed money” scam behind.

Examining some of the false teaching of Bethel’s Kris Vallotton.

How to quickly prove you are not a Christian.

The leadership of the “Village Church” is extremely lacking in discernment, and now one of them even slanders Paul the Apostle!!!!

Need I say more about Hillsong?