I have been attempting to listen to a debate between Steve Gregg and James White on Calvinism. I am currently half way through the second of five sessions. I am not sure if I will finish. I find the Calvinistic view of God as Sovereign to be a caricature. I agree that God is sovereign but that should be defined in the sense that God reveals Himself, not in a way that fits the box the Calvinists want to force Him into.
If there is no free will and salvation is totally a coin toss that God enjoys then what is the point of all this? What keeps being ignored or twisted away is the fact that if God arbitrarily chooses who will be saved the other side of the coin is that He also arbitrarily chooses who will be doomed to eternal damnation and torment. I think the term is “double predestination”. If that is the way it works then having Jesus die on the cross is some sort of masochistic ritual that serves no function. Why go through the agony of becoming sin on our behalf if you could just wave your magic wand and bestow salvation by fiat?
I will concede that being a mere human what might seem arbitrary to me is carefully thought out by God. At the same time He did make us different than the animals. We are created in His image. Adam and Eve were without sin. God used to walk the garden with them. I don’t see any way around the necessity of God making them sin if He is the sovereign that Calvinists describe. In that scenario they had no choice.
I could probably set my phone up to greet me as Lord and Master every time I opened it. I would find it amusing because I know I am not. If I programmed it to do so and felt like somehow that brought glory to me I would become the God of the Calvinists.
White took John 6:36-40 and lifted out verse 37,
(Joh 6:37 KJV) All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.Based on that he build a case that only those sent by God could be saved. In the heat of a debate that sounds like a case but he totally overlooks that the verse gives no reason why God sent some and not others. All you have to do is back up two verses and you find,
(Joh 6:35 KJV) And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.Notice it is no longer a matter of whom God chooses but who comes and who believes.
It is always dangerous to start with your favorite paradigm and squeeze your Bible verses into that mold. I assume that I suffer from the same malady but I am trying to start with the word and build my theology from that. It is often a lonely road and it is worse when I am surrounded by people who love sound bite religion.
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.