I have spent most of my life thinking about things like predestination, free will, and salvation as well as studying the Bible. Over the years, I have acquired and refined some very definite beliefs about these topics. Until a couple of years ago, however, I deliberately stayed away from the theological combatants.
Now, as I review the particulars of the various camps, I must admit that I have the most sympathy for Calvinism. Does this make me a Calvinist? I highly doubt that I would agree with everything that modern Calvinists profess, but so far I am agreeing 100% with the materials that I’ve read.
Most that I have read which claim to be introductory to Calvinism deals with the sovereignty of God. In fact, Chesterton once argued that Calvinism is an imbalanced and overly exaggerated doctrine based on the truth of God’s sovereignty.
Two documents I read are this one and this one. Neither discusses the “five points” or addressed “once saved always saved”. They simply argue for the supremacy of God and the depraved, fallen condition of man. How could anyone disagree with either point? How could anyone who has experienced even a sliver of human nature disagree?
The authors of both articles insist that people do disagree with the truths outlined in their documents, and that those people are called “Arminians”. They make the Arminians sound like a truly blasphemous bunch.
Considering that none of the Catholic saints I’ve read would even disagree with the documents I’ve read from professed Calvinists so far, I am suspicious that these Calvinists are presenting their doctrine so as to seem maximally agreeable and reasonable, and are masking any doctrinal points that are weak or open to challenge. I’m suspicious that they are beginning to engage a tractor beam … and it’s working.
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