How could I trust God to be loving when he determined people to sin, and then held them accountable for what they could not have refrained from doing?
I desperately sought to hold these disparate theological tenets in proper balance, but the tension tore me apart. Intuitively I knew that if God was the ultimate cause behind evil, then he was evil; slowly, and in a dangerously creeping way, I began to hate this God of Calvinism even while I outwardly mouthed all the right doctrines. Before he gets there, however, Walls covers some basic issues. The doctrine of irresistible grace is the focus of chapter 3.
Supposedly, such a distinction allows Calvinists to preach the gospel as a genuine offer, even if the unbelievers they preach to are not elect. What makes the effectual call irresistible is that it is God who opens the eyes of the lost, softens their hearts, restores their corrupted will, and gives them the faith to believe so that they might be saved.
Given this, Calvinists face a problem: if salvation is accomplished by God alone and is in no way dependent upon humans, what prevents the general call and effectual call from being coterminous? If God is the one who alone makes the general call irresistible and thus effectual, what is preventing him from granting everyone irresistible grace and thereby saving all? Since Calvinists hold to compatibilistic forms of human freedom, which claim that theological determinism and human freedom are compatible, God could causally determine everyone to freely believe and be saved.
The Calvinist upholds premises , which if true, necessarily yield premise 6. Finally, since God is the source of everything which is, and since God—who is perfect goodness—cannot be the source of anything which is imperfect, we should respect and remember the goodness of the creation as He designed it. The goal of life is a new creation, not just a new society.
In his book On Being Reformed , I. From its powerinful concept of a sovereign God whose will determines the destiny of humankind and nations to the vision of the glory of God which is manifest and acknowledged throughout the ends of the earth, Calvinism is a faith of the grand design.
It also goes beyond the church, the body of Christ. The concern is for the realization of the will of God also in the wider realms of the state and culture, in nature and in the cosmos. In short, Reformed theology is kingdom theology. Steve Davis has already drawn out some of the implications of this Reformed view in his presentation. First, although the god being proposed by critics of the classical attributes may appear kinder and gentler, friendlier and more approachable as one who feels our pain, I am convinced that such a god is ultimately powerless to save us from that pain.
A god who changes, suffers, and is in time even as we are cannot save us. We must reject any understanding of salvation which suggests that God loved us once, but then his love cooled and needs to be rekindled, or that God has ambivalent feelings for us, or that God comes to love us once we have fulfilled certain conditions.
Nothing we do can make God not love us, though it may very well affect how we experience that love. Let us look at the last premise about God: God is absolutely sovereign.
Just as God has no need for anyone or anything beyond Himself, so God cannot be controlled by any outside influence. Rather, God is in control. The created order remains within His power to do with as He pleases. Several things follow for our understanding of salvation. First, the complete sovereignty of God combines with His love and goodness to assure us of His providential care over all creation.
If I gain control over another person, then that person is not free. Insofar as that person is free, I have no control. Just as I am able to make use of a tool while honoring its design and its nature, so God is able to control us while still honoring our nature as beings with free will. The Westminster Confession makes this point quite explicitly. In exploring the interaction between divine sovereignty and human freedom, The Canons of Dort teach:.
As a result, a ready and sincere obedience of the Spirit now begins to prevail where before the rebellion and resistance of the flesh were completely dominant. It is in this that the true and spiritual restoration and freedom of our will consists. Biblical freedom is not primarily about freedom of self-control, but rather about a renewed capacity for goodness. Now, I think, we are ready to consider the problem from which we need to be saved.
Calvin says this clearly at the beginning of the Institutes. We see our own sin. We see our sin in the mirror of the Law, but we also see our own sin in the mirror of the Word or the Law or Torah made flesh—Jesus Christ. We are not what we were meant to be. Thus it is not surprising that sin results in the disordering of our lives—our desires are misdirected, our priorities are out of line, our perception of reality is foggy.
Calvin is famous for teaching the doctrine of total depravity. This does not mean that Calvin thinks human beings are as bad as they might be. No one is absolutely depraved. Rather, depravity is total in that there is not one part of our lives untouched by the influence of sin. When I was a girl, my pastor explained this to me using the example of milk which has gone sour.
Although the milk may not be as sour as it could be, still the sourness infects the entire carton of milk. There is no part which is not sour. So too human beings on our own, apart from the saving power of God, are sinful all the way through. Even our best acts have a sinful tang. Of course, milk which is just a little bit sour is still quite drinkable, if there is nothing better around. Living in a sinful world, we get used to the flavor of sin.
Jesus, the only sinless human, reintroduces us to the fresh, wholesome flavor of a genuinely righteous life. The more we know Him, the more clearly the sin in our own lives is revealed. The Scots Confession summarizes the effect of their sin on all other human beings:. By this transgression, generally known as original sin, the image of God was utterly defaced in man, and he and his children became by nature hostile to God, slaves to Satan, and servants to sin.
And thus everlasting death has had, and shall have, power and dominion over all who have not been, are not, or shall not be reborn from above. A Christian understanding of salvation must be the salvation of the cosmos. God wants to save social systems and economic structures too. All of creation is subject to the work of salvation. The incarnation. So by creating the world a certain way and placing Person X into certain life circumstances, God knows in advance whether X will choose to be saved in those circumstances.
Had He done so, God would have eternally known that I would not be saved. Yet, on the other hand, it is also true that there is a sense in which each person is predestined. Molina did not speculate on why God ordered the world in the way that He did. He simply wanted to show how God can be sovereign over all that happens in the world He creates despite God giving humans free will.
But I think it is natural to wonder why God would order the world such that person X is saved but Person Y is lost. How does this fit with God wanting all people to be saved, as we saw in 1 Timothy and 2 Peter ? Answering this question would require more space than I have here. In brief, however, I will suggest that God purposefully orders the world so that, by the end of human history, as many people as possible are placed into circumstances in which they will freely choose to be saved.
Thus God orders the world the way He does for good reasons. William Lane Craig proposes a solution along these lines. The true leads to increased diligence in the practice of holiness; the false leads to sloth and self-indulgence.
Psalm , The true leads to candid self-examination and to a desire to be searched and corrected by God; the false leads to a disposition to be satisfied with appearance and to avoid accurate investigation. Psalm It is common for Calvinists to cite 1 John in the case of those who either were falsely assured or who deceived others knowingly or not into believing they were saved:. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us, because if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.
But they went out from us to demonstrate that all of them do not belong to us. Calvinists teach that to be assured of salvation, you must look first to Christ, his merits, and his promises, then to the fruits of faith that he has granted you. It is not found by inquiring into the decree of election, nor by looking chiefly to yourself. It is not necessary to be assured of salvation in order to be saved, but it is a good thing to strive for nonetheless.
There are ways of distinguishing it from "carnal self-assurance," and those who have such false assurance are mistaken about their salvation. John MacArthur, a five-pointer, wrote a whole book about this. From what I remember, it's entirely consistent with the confessions. Also consistent with the confessions: Calvin's views. Five-pointer Calvinists know that they are saved.
Furthermore, Calvinists believe that it is faith alone in Christ , confessing Him as God and Savior, that shows evidence of salvation as well as works fruits of being saved. Hence, although we do know that we're saved, that does not stop there. Having the knowledge of the truth results into a life of change - from glory to glory 2 Corinthians The new birth that a person undergone results into a new life in Christ and this reality is done by the Triune God Titus James tell us that mere verbal confession of faith won't prove that we are saved.
Rather, faith goes hand-in-hand with works. Faith and works are not the means of salvation but faith and works are the evidence of salvation. Those who say they have faith in Christ without acting upon it reveals that they do not have genuine faith because salvific faith is faith that inevitably shows itself by works. The analogy of the human body as separate from the soul denoting death evince the same thing to the faith that is void of expected results i.
On the other hand,those who fell away are clearly not genuine Christians in the first place 1 John Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams?
Learn more. Do Calvinists believe they know whether they are saved? Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 9 months ago. Active 2 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 11k times. My question is pretty straightforward: Do Calvinists believe they know whether they are saved?
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