Musings on Calvinism

A a record of my journey exploring and ruminating on this issue. I strive to present the issues in as simplified a manner, in order to aid understanding. Great thanks to Leighton Flowers, Kevin Thompson, William Lane Craig and the many posters and commentors on various FB groups whose insights and explanations (from many different viewpoints) have proven invaluable.

I have cleaned up and organized all my posts related to this topic. Click on this to sort for only those posts:

https://scottthong.wordpress.com/category/soteriology/

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I have bolded the most important ones that have to do with common proof-texts or arguments for Calvinism, as that is the crucial issue in my opinion:

6. ROMANS 9 – A NON CALVINISTIC INTERPRETATION

15. YOU ACCEPTED THE GOSPEL? SO YOU THINK YOU’RE SAVED BY YOUR WORK?

20. VESSELS OF MERCY/WRATH

22. LIKE OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN VS LIMITED ATONEMENT

28. ROMANS 9 AND OLD TESTAMENT CONTEXT

31. JOHN 6 & DRAW

32. ROMANS 9 & JEREMIAH

36. ROLE-MANS 9

39. HOW WOULD THE ORIGINAL RECIPIENTS OF ROMANS 9 HAVE UNDERSTOOD IT?

43. DOES ACTS 13:48 TEACH UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION?

47. HEBREWS 12:2 AND FAITH NOUN/VERB

64. REGENERATION SO YOU CAN BELIEVE, OR BELIEF SO THAT YOU ARE REGENERATED?

67. WHAT CONTEXT ARE THE OLD TESTAMENT PASSAGES CITED IN ROMANS 9?

69. THE PROVISIONIST VIEW OF ROMANS 3:10

71. WHO IS THE INTERLOCUTOR OBJECTING TO GOD’S WAYS IN ROMANS 9?

74. ‘SOTERIOLOGICAL’ PSALMS IN CONTEXT

79. PASSAGES THAT UNDERMINE LIMITED ATONEMENT, GOING FURTHER THAN JUST ‘ALL’

83. BRAD SAAB ON CALVINIST & NON-CALVINIST INTERPRETATION OF EPHESIANS 1

84. EPHESIANS 1 AND PREDESTINATION – TO WHAT?

85. WHO IS PREDESTINED, AND FOR WHAT?

86. WILLIAM LANE CRAIG ON ROMANS 9 & 10, EPHESIAN 2 ‘FAITH IS A GIFT OF GOD’

87. FALLACY OF EQUIVOCATION: IS ACCEPTING SALVATION A ‘WORK’?

88. ROMANS 8 – THE GOLDEN CHAIN OF ADOPTION FOR THOSE WHO HAVE ACCEPTED CHRIST (NOT THE GOLDEN CHAIN OF SALVATION FOR THE TOTALLY DEPRAVED WHO ARE UNCONDITIONALLY ELECTED)

90. 1 CORINTHIANS 2:14 – ABOUT UNREGENERATE UNBELIEVERS, OR IMMATURE BELIEVERS?

91. ROMANS 8:29-30 – PAST TENSE OLD TESTAMENT?

94. LIMITED ATONEMENT – LIMITED IN ACCEPTANCE BY CALVINISTS

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Or, browse by all post titles in chronological order below.

OVER-EXTENDING THE USAGE OF FOREKNEW & PREDESTINE

I’ve shifted my paradigm to not overextend keywords in the Bible.

The term translated as ‘foreknew’ (proginosko – https://biblehub.com/greek/4267.htm) only appears in 4 places, and two of them are where humans do it. In all 4 places it fits perfectly well with the definition of ‘knew, past tense’. See more details at ROMANS 8:29-30 – PAST TENSE OLD TESTAMENT?.

Proginosko does not mean future-vision like Dr Strange using the Time Gem or Nicolas Cage getting glimpses of possible outcomes. God does know the future, but the word for that is not proginosko.

Same goes for ‘predestine’, again appearing in only 4 places in the Bible. The English word is laden with fantasy epic adventure conceptual baggage of destiny/fate, that the Greek (proorizo – https://biblehub.com/greek/4309.htm) does not necessarily entail. See WHO IS PREDESTINED, AND FOR WHAT?. God does have everything planned out, but the word for that is not proorizo.

So these Greek words in their Biblical usage don’t carry the mystical, fairytale, comic book connotations that the English words ‘foreknew’ and ‘predestine’ have come to be burdened by.

It might be fair to read those words into other passages where the concepts of God knowing and planning all things are stated. But the writers God used to pen the Old & New Testaments didn’t choose to use those particular words there. We shouldn’t go around applying the words ‘foreknew’ and ‘predestine’ like some catch-all term to passages in the Bible where they simply are not used.

(NB: A better case might be made for ‘foreknowledge’ (prognosis – https://biblehub.com/greek/4268.htm butwhich makes the use of proginosko in the other passages an even stronger contrast.)

Many thanks to Kevin Thompson for opening my eyes to this key fact as he often stresses in his videos.

GOD WILLS THAT EARTHLINGS HAVE AGENCY

God is sovereign, and has sovereignly given humanity the authority to make decisions – encapsulated in two verses of a Psalm.

Our God is in the heavens; He does all that he pleases… The heavens are the LORD’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man. – Psalm 115:3,16

And reiterated by Jesus in what we should pray for:

“Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” – Matthew 6:9-10

Credit to Leighton Flowers who often uses these citations.

PLEASE DON’T GO AROUND SAYING ‘GOD DECREED RAPE’

The section from around 44:00 to 48:00 is a massacre. Paraphrasing:

“So God decreed child abuse?”

“Yes.”

“God decreed rape?”

“Yes. For His glory and pleasure.”

“And God is gonna punish the person for the rape God made them do?”

Much more experienced debator James White isn’t immune to this either: https://godisopen.com/2014/08/16/james-white-becomes-flustered-about-child-rape/

Congratulations to the Calvinist, they get an A+ for an exam on their systematic theology. Meanwhile, listeners abandon the faith.

Although I don’t think that Calvinism is correct, it still represents part of the body of Christ. In the eyes of the world, their embarrassing performance impugns our God by association.

Any Calvinist – especially those in the public sphere – needs to prepare a proper response to these kinds of questions. Something that adheres to their views, but doesn’t easily end up as a GOTCHA soundbite that can be used as fodder by critics.

I know that they aren’t about to so easily ditch their systematic just because of the apologetic deadweight it ties to their swimming legs – they can’t just clarify “I am not a Calvinist“!

But Calvinists can at least prepare the Greater Good Defense without straying from the systematic they are married to. I cover that as well as free-will defenses here:

CHALLENGING KEY PROOFTEXTS HEAD ON

There are certain passages that proponents often rely upon to argue and bolster the Biblical basis for TULIP.

You might be tempted to avoid the ‘hard’ passages and divert to ‘safe’ ones like John 3:16, 1 Timothy 2:4, etc in order to defend your position.

But that just makes it seem like they know what they’re talking about – and you don’t.

Rather, you should prepare yourself to meet these passages head on! This is what I made myself do, and I am much more confident for having done the hard work of searching out the best explanations for myself.

If you want a leg up, then check out my record of my journey – but don’t neglect to think and decide for yourself! https://scottthong.wordpress.com/2020/05/29/musings-on-calvinism/

(Meme reference: Dio’s strength is in close quarters combat, where he is basically unmatched – a deadly force. Yet Jotaro’s strength is also close up, and he is confident enough to match up against Dio mano-el-mano.)

See also this video with a similar concept (but done much better) of countering the key prooftexts, using Overwatch:

RATHER WEAK DETERMINISM THERE TBH

MERE MOLINISM EXPLAINED IN 3 SUPERHERO SCENES

If we can accept that foreknowledge does not = predestination in people, why not also of God?

DETERMINISM: MY GLOCK CAN’T AIM ITSELF

“My Glock can’t aim itself” – Tim Stratton on determinism analogies

(The actual quote is “If something or someone else is doing all the aiming, on his view you don’t aim at anything any more than my Glock does” – 43:30 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFKg0veH7fo&t=5443s about Guilluame Bignon’s deterministic view)

But don’t worry, the gun will be tossed into a smelter for all eternity. That will make it all good!

NO MIDDLE KNOWLEDGE = DETERMINISM

What Happens WITH NO Middle Knowledge?

I’ve heard that some Calvinists dismiss Middle Knowledge as unnecessary. God has Natural Knowledge and Free Knowledge, and the superfluous concept of Middle Knowledge just falls under Free Knowledge.

Now, William Lane Craig has said that “without middle knowledge, God would find himself, so to speak, with knowledge of the future but without any logical prior planning of the future”.

But I think there’s a different result – DETERMINISM.

God DOES have logical prior planning of the future, it’s just that there is ONLY ONE possible future!Think about it: Under divine determinism, the future is perfectly known by God BECAUSE God controls every molecule, thought, interaction, etc.

There is literally only ONE possible outcome and no hypotheticals or counterfactuals, because there are no freely acting agents except God. There’s no need for knowing the variables, because there are NO VARIABLES – God is the only and all. Thus the ‘WOULD’ of Middle Knowledge truly is completely subsumed by the ‘WILL’ of Free Knowledge. There are no hypothetical situations or other possible worlds because God is the ‘sole alternative’. There is only what God chooses to minutely, exhaustively, meticulously predetermine – down to the last ‘thought’ or ‘feeling’ or ‘decision’ of His creatures. No annoying libertarian free wills to throw a wrench in His decreed plans!

If Middle Knowledge is likened to a tree sprouting infinite branches and sub-branches and twigs, subsuming it into Free Knowledge is more like a straight pole. Or rather than the gamebook analogy that Calvinistic Determinist Chris Date uses, without Middle Knowledge it’s more of a linear novel.

“Determinism may now be defined: it is the thesis that there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.” – Peter Van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 3 https://soteriology101.com/2019/06/03/a-more-meaningful-world/

PS. Thinking about it, it’s actually kind of sad. Like a lonely programmer who has no real people to play with online, just the preprogrammed AI that he already knows how it will act in any given situation. Or the mad professor in Fallout 3’s Tranquility Lane, if you kill off all the real people hooked up into his VR world (from 6:20 of https://youtu.be/7FH94dnJz3k).

ROMANS 9 & MIDDLE KNOWLEDGE

I don’t see why Romans 9:10-12 has to be interpreted to teach Unconditional Election.

The passage doesn’t say that the brothers were chosen regardless of what they would EVER do, merely that they were chosen (for roles and tasks, it doesn’t say anything about salvation) BEFORE they had done anything.

With Middle Knowledge, God of course would know which brother (and by extension their descendants) would carry out His plans effectively. It could be as simple as God choosing which brother would be the ancestral lineage of Messiah, before they were born (which by definition is before they had done anything good or bad), without categorically stating that it’s unconditional of anything they WOULD eventually do.

Call it Pre-Conditional Election or something.

And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad – in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” – Romans 9:10-12

SUPRALAPSARIANISM IN SWISS & ARAB FLAVOURS

They are so far removed by time and space, that the only link I can make so far is that of Persia (see https://scottthong.wordpress.com/2020/08/19/molinism-labe/).

From https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=FREODF&u=https%3A%2F%2Fphilpapers.org%2Farchive%2FFREODF.pdf :

Even though Calvin and Beza both advocated supralapsarianism, no major Reformed confession or creed followed their lead. The reason is obvious: supralapsarianism places the origin of sin at God’s feet, and as the Canons of Dort declare, the notion that God the author of sin in any way “at all” is “a blasphemous thought.” The Westminster Confession makes a similar declaration.

In Calvin’s day, a physician in Geneva by the name of Bolsec objected to Calvin’s teachings on predestination on the grounds they impugned the character of God. Bolsec was arrested, convicted and eventually banished from Geneva, and Calvin sought support from Reformers in other Swiss cities for his supralapsarian position. He seems to have been genuinely surprised when the Reformers such as Heinrich Bullinger disagreed with him and argued instead for infralapsarianism. And in the subsequent debates between the infra- and the supra- parties, the creeds and the confessions reveal that the Reformed churches universally chose Bullinger over Calvin.