I like to ask questions and try to understand things
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Root retweeted
This is a good example of what I was referring to earlier about how some Calvinists create categories to make their system fit within scripture. Here is Calvin’s full quote to better understand the context:
“Not willing that any should perish. So wonderful is his love towards mankind, that he would have them all to be saved, and is of his own self prepared to bestow salvation on the lost. … But it may be asked, If God wishes none to perish, why is it that so many do perish? To this my answer is, that no mention is here made of the hidden purpose of God, according to which the reprobate are doomed to their own ruin, but only of his will as made known to us in the gospel. For God there stretches forth his hand without a difference to all, but lays hold only of those, to lead them to himself, whom he has chosen before the foundation of the world.”
— John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles (on 2 Peter 3:9).
As you can read, Calvin immediately undermines the universal language by distinguishing a revealed will (gospel offer) from a secret/hidden purpose regarding the reprobate thus making his view unfalsifiable.
Calvin also writes:
Institutes 3.21.5 (definition of predestination):
“By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.”
Also: “We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction.”
Institutes 3.23.7 (the “dreadful decree”):
“The decree, I admit, is dreadful; and yet it is impossible to deny that God foreknew what the end of man was to be before he made him, and foreknew, because he had so ordained by his decree.” (In the surrounding context Calvin ties the fall of Adam and the involvement of “so many nations with their infant children in eternal death without remedy” to God’s counsel.)
Treatise on the Eternal Predestination of God:
“God by His eternal goodwill (for which there was no other cause than His own purpose), appointed those whom He pleased unto salvation, rejecting all the rest; and that those whom He blessed with this free adoption to be His sons He illumines by His Holy Spirit, that they may receive the life which is offered to them in Christ; while others, continuing of their own will in unbelief, are left destitute of the light of faith, in total darkness.”
These (especially the double-predestination language and the “not all are drawn / only the elect” language) stand in clear tension with an unqualified reading of the 2 Peter 3:9 comment. Calvin resolves it for himself via the made-up revealed-will vs. secret-decree distinction, but the apparent contradiction is quite evident within Calvin‘s teaching which is no doubt why so many more modern day Calvinists, like those who followed Edwards (ie Piper, White, Sproul etc) rarely attempt to maintain both sides like Calvin did.
Calvinism only survives because of redefinitions.
The Fallacy of Unfalsifiability
Calvinists protect their system from being tested against the plain reading of Scripture by inventing double meanings for the very words the Bible uses. Once those double meanings are in place, almost any verse that looks like it contradicts their system can be reclassified so it no longer counts against it.
Take “grace.” Scripture speaks of God’s grace, favor, and kindness being shown to people. When a verse says God is gracious or offers grace in a way that does not fit limited effectual grace, it gets labeled “common grace.” Common grace is said to be real but non-saving, so it does not touch the doctrine of irresistible saving grace given only to the elect. The same word is doing two different jobs, and the distinction is not clearly marked in the text itself. Nothing in the passage has to change; the category does the work for them.
The same move happens with “love.” When Scripture says God loves the world, or loves those who reject him, or desires their salvation, that love is redefined as a general, non-electing love that does not actually intend to save.
The special, electing love is reserved for the elect alone. John 3:16 can stay in the Bible without requiring that God genuinely loves every person in the same saving sense. The word “love” has been split so the universal statements no longer falsify the particularist claim.
God’s “will” gets the same treatment. The decretive will is what God secretly determines will happen. The preceptive will is what he commands and invites. When the Bible says God wills that all be saved, or that he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, that is assigned to the preceptive will, which is not the will that actually decides outcomes. The decretive will remains absolute and limited. Apparent contradictions disappear in their mind because the two wills are not the same will. The system cannot be shown false by the plain sense of the command or the invitation.
“Calling” works the same way. There is a general, external call that goes out to everyone through the gospel, and an effectual, internal call that only the elect ever receive and that always succeeds. When Jesus or Paul says “come,” “believe,” or “whoever,” that is the general call. It can be resisted, so it does not threaten irresistible grace. The effectual call is the one that actually saves, and it is not given to those who refuse. The same language of calling now covers both a resistible invitation and an irresistible summons, and the distinction keeps the system intact.
Drawing, world, all, desire, and other terms receive parallel treatments. Each time a verse appears to teach a genuine, universal provision or a real condition of faith, a special sense is introduced that limits the force of the verse to the elect alone. The result is that the system becomes consistent with nearly any reading of the text. Counterexamples are not allowed to count as counterexamples because they have already been redefined into a category that does not threaten the core claims of the Calvinist.
That is how the system stays unfalsifiable. The ordinary words of Scripture are given technical double meanings that are not required by the passages themselves, and those meanings absorb the evidence that would otherwise challenge the doctrine. In their minds, the text can say what it says, and the system remains untouched.
Why do we think God’s spirit is a separate person from him?
For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.
1 Cor 2:11
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“God shouldn’t have to make a whole new plan to clean up our wrong doctrines.”
Well said by Mom, below ⬇️
I love it when people tell me what I did from mega miles away. I read it!… it’s just not in the Bible, like I said. Can I ask how you read my mind?
Is there somewhere you think that concept exists in text and context?
I think it’s super important to be extremely clear about what’s in the Bible, what the Gospel is, and to not ‘speak for God’ unless it’s His Word with the Gospel lens. If we’re not gathering with Jesus, we scatter abroad. These are souls we deal with and Jesus died for people.
God shouldn’t have to make a whole new plan to clean up our wrong doctrines. That’s where I’m coming from.
God’s decree established the order of nature,
but not the moral choices of people.
God laments what people do with their choices.
“Should you not fear me?” declares the LORD.
“Should you not tremble in my presence?
I made the sand a boundary for the sea,
an everlasting barrier it cannot cross.
The waves may roll, but they cannot prevail;
they may roar, but they cannot cross it.
But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts;
they have turned aside and gone away.
They do not say to themselves,
‘Let us fear the LORD our God…”
Jer 5:22-24
I believe in God the Father Almighty;
And in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord;
Who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary;
Crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried;
On the third day He rose from the dead;
He ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father;
From thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead;
And in the Holy Spirit;
The holy church;
The remission of sins;
The resurrection of the body.
Root retweeted
Ok, Frank. I will engage. You have made a lot of effort to try to answer me and I really appreciate it.
Sometimes I’m not feeling well enough, but today is my second good day in a row. Good as in not horrible 😆
The distinction I was actually making was re the oft repeated claim that Romans 9 teaches that God created some people for destruction. Please tell me if you do not believe this and my question will be moot.
I honestly believe that when God created, the future was open. I honestly believe that God knew all the possibilities. But that he made everyone with the real opportunity to seek and find him. No one was marked out for salvation or destruction.
So you see, the problem does not apply to me.
But I will also share that it grieves me immensely, as I know it does you and as I believe it grieves God, that some people reject the wondrous salvation that God worked through Jesus.
Is my description of Calvinism incorrect? Please detail exactly how.
Even though he could have designed it differently, God made reality so that all people would inherit from Adam a corrupt nature that would cause them to sin and be unable to respond to God.
God decided before creating to only save some people, though he could have saved them all, and to leave the others in their sin which merits death.
God will still punish the people he chose not to save, even though they were born unable to do any differently by his design and plan.
He does this to show his attributes and his glory to the ones he did choose to save.
Life is a literal horror story that God wrote, according to Calvinism…
We have no choice but play our part 🤮
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So many Calvinists on X consistently assume the worst about someone, right from the start of an interaction.
Try to think about people in a 1 Corinthians 13 way. Love.
It’s called acting like a Christian.
