Why God hates Calvinism is a brief overview of some of the grave problems of Calvinism.
To some people, just the title of this article would be blasphemous. God is against Calvinism. Let me expand on the why of this statement.
God wants man to move morally
From what we see and understand in Scripture, God wants man to move morally. By “moving morally” I mean God wants man to repent of his sins (moral activity), and have faith in Jesus Christ as his Savior (moral action). This moral action IS THE WILL OF GOD. In parlance of Calvinists, this is the perfect will of God, not the permissive will of God. Calvinism, in itself, admits that man believing God is good and is what God wants. The Calvinist will attribute this to his concept of irresistible grace acting on the individual, but even so, it is a good thing. This article is dual posted here and at http://www.theologicalsystems.com/calvinism/gods-great-displeasure-with-calvinism
What does Calvinism do to promote or hinder this moral action?
If God’s ultimate purpose, desire, and plan is that man is morally activity, then we examine doctrines, teachings, and practices to see how they line up with or against this ultimate plan of God. Within Calvinism, the teachings of the 5 pillars work against man’s moral activity. The teaching that man is total incapable of any moral action that is of value or desire before God is something that discourages the individual, not encouraging him. Is this teaching true or false according to the Bible. We examine the Scriptures to see if “NO MAN EVER PLEASED GOD” and we see it is just not true. Why was Noah chosen to be saved? His “election” was because he lived an upright life before God. Noah’s moral activity towards following God’s will let to his position of being under the protection, provision, and ultimately being saved from imminent physical danger and loss of life. This principle is repeated many times. Why was Saul rejected by God and David “chosen”? Again moral activity towards following God’s will (David) and an apathy attitude in Saul towards obeying God in all details. What was the issue between Able and Cain? Wasn’t it that Cain disobeyed God and Able obeyed God? We could go on with Moses, the prophets, and many other individuals, but the Bible simply teaches that when an individual chooses to follow and obey God, God considers that person special (“God’s grace descends on him” or he is chosen, elect, or of special status before God). What caused that special status is not a divine lottery that fell on the individual (Calvinism’s concept of election), but rather moral activity that the individual is responsible for. Perhaps all activity of any kind in life is ultimately traceable BACK TO GOD, yes, that is possible. But God is not given the credit for when a man believes Christ and is saved, but rather that man is responsible and his decision and moral action is what “saves him”. We understand in using this language, that no man can “save himself.” All salvation is because God made the way of salvation, and because God draws all men to him. But the Bible squarely places the destiny of that man in hell as his own hardness of heart, and that man in heaven as “HIS” faith. Calvinism teaches men to be spiritually apathetic or inactive. I am a missionary, and it is truly a great deception and lie when I see the ministry of Calvinist missionaries. Where I give the gospel (good news) that Christ died on the cross to save sinners, my Calvinistic counterparts are not putting their most forceful and constant efforts in this message. They are teaching the doctrines of Grace (i.e. Calvinism) instead of the true New Testament Gospel. These “doctrines of Grace” lead a true Christian into spiritual inactivity unless the person just rejects the conclusions of Calvinism and just witnesses and prays anyway “against his beliefs.” This is because Calvinism teach a fatalistic worldview, i.e. everybody is elect to somewhere by God before the world began, and nobody in any way can change that. Why would an unsaved man believe the true Gospel when he has been taught Calvinism? “Only some are going to heaven. You are a sinner destined to hell, and you nor anybody can change their destiny.” The point is that God can change a sinner’s destiny from hell to heaven. Calvinism does not understand this point at all. They consider that everybody, once born, is on the road to which ever of the two, and the Calvinist does not explain that people CAN CHANGE from a sinner to a saint “by God’s grace”. They leave the sinner in his mire of sin, and they refuse to really preach the gospel, that by moral action or activity, they can believe Christ, be saved, and change their eternal destiny. In the end analysis, this is where the Calvinist “WANTS TO BE”. Leaving the sinner on the road to hell. Calvinism, if the Calvinist will only honestly consider this, Calvinism is not a theological mindset about getting all men that we can into heaven, but rather about justifying our laziness and spiritual apathy about doing nothing for God, and justifying ourselves in the process that we are guaranteed to heaven, even though we ourselves (the Calvinist) are spiritual apathetic. No Calvinist can honestly pray in earnest for God to change a man’s heart and bring him to the point of salvation because his mindset is that OUR EFFORTS ARE USELESS (TOTAL INABILITY, or by their less offensive term, TOTAL DEPRAVITY). When God brings a man to salvation, and this is never talking about some unsaved they know and are wanting to be saved, but when they themselves were saved, then they refer to this as IRRESISTIBLE GRACE, again, concepts which wage serious war on the idea that man has a moral responsibility AND ABILITY to believe and obey God. Calvinists want to erase that idea from our minds. What is done that results in our own involvement in something morally God, has nothing to do with our ability or responsibility, but rather to God’s activity in overriding us completely.
Who is responsible ultimately?
If we follow the Calvinist’s thinking, we find that God elected those who will be saved from eternity past (before Creation without any view or reference as to whether they would repent and believe in Christ, just a divine lottery of sorts). What is the counter part of this concept is that by default God elected all the rest to eternal perdition, (Calvinist term, is “PERDITION”). It amazes me how many well known Calvinists in history that are exalted by most all Calvinists have secret works defending perdition, while today Calvinist book publishers do reprint these works, they are not often on their book lists. They know that this is “taboo” because no honest Christian will come to embrace Calvinism if this is present in the initial teachings of Calvinism. Moreover, this accuses God of MAKING MEN SIN by election, and then turning around and our “JUST AND RIGHTEOUS” God accusing us of fault for sinning which we had no other option. All sin becomes God’s fault under this concept of Calvinism.
Hyper-Calvinism or Just Calvinism?
I live in a Catholic country (Mexico) and many times in talking to dire-hard Catholics they will tell me that they don’t agree with everything that the Pope says. Even so they are still Catholics hoping on Mary’s intercession and the “rightness” of the Catholic church for their salvation by good works. It amazes how most Calvinists “wipe their mouth of all guilt” by saying “I am not a 5 pointer, I am only a 3 pointer.” That is like a Catholic saying, “I don’t believe everything the priests and the Pope say, I just trust Mary for my salvation.” Does that remove the fact that their core beliefs are still heresy? What makes Calvinism so despicable before God is simply that it changes the Gospel to be “another gospel”, something not given by God. “How is that” you say?
(1) Did Christ and the Apostles preach election (the doctrines of Grace) or salvation by grace through faith?
Calvinist’s make election the center doctrine of Scripture, but it is just not there. Did Moses and the prophets teach that Israel was going to heaven because they were sons of Abraham (chosen) or did they teach that there was a need to turn from sin, and trust God in order to be saved? The constant exhortation of these were turn from their sins, and they would live spiritually. Again, their correct spiritual activity