Transcript

Welcome back to Shameless Popery.

I'm Joe Heschmeyer.

And as far as I can tell, Calvinism is logically impossible.

That is, I don't just disagree with how Calvinists interpret scripture and theology, reformed Protestantism seemingly cannot be true because it doesn't actually make logical sense within its own rules.

Now, I realize that's a big claim, and I'm about to set out an argument that I don't think I've heard anyone else make, so I could very well eat crow on this.

So please, if you find holes in my points or in my argumentation, let me know in the comments.

And just to make sure that I'm not, you know, unwittingly mischaracterizing Calvinist theology, I'm gonna be focusing here on the form of Calvinism taught by some of the most popular Calvinist preachers, like John MacArthur or the late R.C.

Sproul.

Now, there may be other Protestants who call themselves reformed or Calvinist who disagree with that form of Calvinism.

Maybe this doesn't all apply to you.

But this is the form that I see in here most often under the banner of Calvinism and I think it's worth replying to.

And so as I've said, my argument isn't just going to be that the theology is unbiblical or that it presents a bad view of God, but also that it's actually logically impossible if you consider three important beliefs within the Calvinist system.

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So let's consider three elements of the Calvinist system and whether or not these arguments make sense together, whether they actually hold up under scrutiny.

Argument number one, Jesus did not die for everyone.

To make sense of Calvinism, or at least the kind of Calvinism that I'm critiquing, you have to first understand this doctrine called limited atonement, sometimes euphemistically referred to as the doctrine of particular redemption or definitive atonement.

But whatever you call it, the idea is pretty straightforward.

Everyone that Jesus died for on the cross is guaranteed to go to heaven.

If Christ died for you, then it's impossible for you to go to hell since your sins have already been paid for.

The reform view is that God's design from all eternity in the atonement was to provide salvation for the elect, so that God is not just working with possibilities.

He has an eternal design that he brings to pass, and it, it's effectual.

It works.

Every person for whom Jesus died receives the benefit of that.

That sounds straightforward enough.

But if you accept that premise, you're going to be forced to accept two seemingly unbiblical conclusions.

The first is this: if you're one of the elect, one of the people for whom Jesus died on the cross, then you were never really unsaved.

Your sins were paid for, and your salvation was perfectly secured on Good Friday, or from all eternity depending on your theology.

And now God is bound in justice to let you into heaven because your sins are already paid for, no matter what you do.

You have God providing an atonement for sin where the sins are removed, the guilt is paid for, and then in the form of double jeopardy he punishes that person who's already had his sins paid for.

But if God cannot justly send you to hell because your sins are paid for, then it follows that God has owed you heaven your entire life, whether or not you believe or love or obey or anything else.

So you really cannot claim that baptism saves you or even that faith saves you.

Nothing you do, including believing, has anything to do with your salvation.

At best, faith and baptism might be the means by which the graces of salvation are applied to you, but those graces were already yours.

You were saved before you were born, so you were not saved by faith.

But the second seemingly unbiblical conclusion is this: if everyone Christ died for is saved, then you're forced to either reject the biblical passages about Christ dying for the sins of the whole world or else reject the biblical passages about people going to hell.

If he actually died for the whole world, then the whole world is saved.

So we don't, we can't go there because there is a hell and it's full of people, in fact most people.

So the atonement is limited.

Then the question is, who limits it?

Do we limit it or does God limit it?

And the answer to that question biblically is crystal clear.

God limited it.

He limited it to the elect.

In other words, believing in this concept of a definitive atonement, that if Christ died for you you're guaranteed heaven, it means you're going to have to either believe that Christ didn't really die for everyone, hence limited atonement, or else that Christ did die for everyone and therefore everybody's going to heaven, everybody is saved, universalism.

As an aside, if you've ever wondered how the famously conservative Puritans so quickly turned into liberal Universalists who believed that everyone was saved, you seemingly have your answer right here.

Calvinists and Universalists are the two groups that reject the idea that our actions have any meaningful bearing on our salvation.

So the Calvinist answer is that most of the humanity, a group that they call the reprobate, are people whom God created but has no plan to save.

Christ did not die for these people and so they're gonna go to hell, and there's nothing they can do about it.

Even if they wanted to convert, which they don't, faith would not save them because Christ never redeemed them.

This means that God does not really want all men to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth, and that Christ is the expiation for our sins as the elect but not for the sins of the whole world.

Now, just laying out that theological worldview- it sounds pretty bleak, right?

It doesn't sit comfortably with the Biblical portrait of a loving God or about Christ's mission of love to the furthest from God.

But if you accept this Calvinistic argument, this is actually only the tip of the iceberg because it leads to a second argument which seems to follow logically.

Argument number two, God doesn't actually love everyone.

Now you might think that in saying this I'm being unfair, that I'm mischaracterizing the Calvinist position.

So I'm gonna let you hear it from people like John MacArthur and R.C.

Sproul themselves.

And to say that God loves all people unconditionally is not the Gospel, it's not even true.

Uh, I think if- if you say what the old

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, that's not accurate.

Actually, there is currently a terrible plan for your life and destiny.

When I hear preachers stand up and say that God loves everybody unconditionally, I want to scream and say, Wait a minute.

Then why does he call us to repent?

Why does he call us to come to the cross?

Why does he call us to come to Christ?

I find it very strange to hear Christian preachers making arguments like this or suggesting that loving someone requires endorsing their lifestyle, but there we go.

According to this view, God loves the elect but does not love the rest of the world, or at least not in any meaningful way.

Now you're gonna find some Calvinists who resist the logical conclusion of their own theology.

Does God love everyone?

And the answer is yes, but not equally.

They'll say that God loves everybody somewhat, what's sometimes called common grace, but that he only loves some people enough to actually save them.

But I think that this risks playing games with words.

Biblically, loving someone involves desiring their good, and particularly their eternal good.

If you've got a friend whose company you enjoy but you know they're unsaved and you never bother to share the Gospel with them, it is fair to ask whether you really love them.

Well, likewise, if God created people specifically to become objects of his eternal wrath, the fact that he lets them enjoy a few brief moments of happiness before damning them for all eternity is hardly evidence that he really loves them.

So the position of folks like Sproul is unpleasant, but I appreciate that he tells the truth about his own theology, that God hates the sin but also hates sinners.

Now we say always the cliche God hates the sin but he loves the sinner.

That's nonsense.

God doesn't send the sin to hell, he sends the sinner to hell because he abhors the impenitent sinner who becomes the object of his wrath.

Now to be fair to the Calvinist side, it is true that the Bible sometimes speaks of God loving some and hating others, but these passages need to be understood in their semitic context.

This is when Jesus tells us to follow him, he says we must hate our fathers and mothers.

I'm gonna actually do an episode soon on how to make sense of these expressions which don't make a lot of sense to us in English and how we often find these passages misinterpreted and misunderstood.

But for now, just recognize taking those passages with the literal meaning they carry in English would mean pitting Jesus against the commandment to honor your father and mother.

And as God himself tells us, As I live says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.

Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, oh house of Israel?

Taking the Calvinist view has some implications not only for the question of whether you can tell sinners that God loves them or that you can tell them that Christ died for them, it even has implications for basic theological questions like whether you can affirm biblically that God is love as 1 John 4 tells us.

Sproul is forced to say that when John says God is love, that that's just hyperbole.

And MacArthur says

The reason God did not choose to love everyone savingly is because the love of God is qualified and controlled by his glory.

By his glory.

God is not obligated to be the unqualified equal opportunity savior of everybody.

God is not the prisoner of his love and he is not the prisoner of man's expectation.

God's love is never separated as if it is superior or dominant over all his other attributes such as justice and holiness and righteousness and wrath.

In the end, it pleased him to do it as he did it because it gave him glory.

So in this view, the chief attribute of God is not love the way the Bible presents it.

It's rather power or glory.

God's glory limits his other attributes, it limits even his love.

Now this creates some serious theological problems worth maybe unpacking elsewhere involving everything from the doctrine of divine simplicity to the relationship of love and glory.

We could make entire separate episodes just on those kind of themes.

But I think there's an even more practical problem with this, and this is a part I haven't heard anybody lay out yet.

Argument number three, we must love our enemies with divine love.

Now on the surface, this argument is pretty uncontroversial.

This is one of the defining characteristics of the Christian religion, and a point upon which as far as I can tell, all Christians or nearly all Christians rightly agree.

But if you believe we must love our enemies with divine love, then you're quickly gonna find that the Calvinist theological claims are not just controversial, they're logically impossible because Calvinists will rightly recognize that as Christians we are called to love our neighbors, but even to love our enemies.

This creates two giant problems for Calvinists.

First, loving your enemy doesn't mean that you enjoy their company.

Clearly you do not.It means that you desire their good for them.

As John MacArthur himself put it in his book, Nothing But The Truth, It means that we have a loving concern for our neighbor's physical good, but also for their spiritual salvation.

And he's right about that.

This is one reason that St. Paul reminds us to speak the truth in love.

It is an act of love to work towards someone else's eternal salvation.

Let me tell you, if you love somebody, you tell them the truth about God, about God's word, about God's standards, about God's requirement, or you don't really love them.

If you don't love them enough to bring them into the knowledge of the truth from God, then you don't love them very much.

Is that not so?

Love doesn't hide saving truth, love doesn't hide sanctifying truth.

It speaks it, because it cares so deeply about the object of its affection.

But this brings us to the first logical absurdity.

Calvinists will argue that God creates billions of people that he doesn't want to save, and then he demands that we love them by desiring their salvation.

In the Calvinist scheme, Christians are called to be more loving to sinners than Christ himself is.

We want something better for our neighbor than God himself wants for our neighbor.

But the problem actually gets worse, because how is it possible for me to love my neighbor, or even my enemy, in the first place?

Now, biblically, love here does not mean merely human affection.

The kind of love that Jesus is calling us to is possible only with divine grace.

As St. John said, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God.

And he who loves is born of God and knows God.

He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

While Sproul misunderstands this passage by thinking the God is love part is hyperbole, he rightly acknowledges that the passage means that Christian love comes from God himself, that it's a love which originates in God and is a divine gift to his people, and is a work of the Holy Spirit.

So I want to be perfectly clear here.

I think Calvinists are getting this third argument right, that they clearly have scripture on their side.

We are to love our neighbors and even our enemies, and the kind of love we're to love them with is possible only by the gift of God, the gift of the Holy Spirit, this gift of charity which enables us to love our neighbors with the strength of divine love.

But hopefully you can see the impossibility of saying, on the one hand, that God loves my neighbor so much that he's given me the divine grace to will and work towards my neighbor's salvation, and on the other hand, that there actually is no divine grace ordered towards this same guy's salvation.

In other words, we aren't required simply to be more loving than God, we're required to somehow have more divine grace than God.

Which isn't just theologically bad, it's logically impossible.

I am called to love my neighbor, but I can't do it with merely human affection like a pagan does.

That is not good enough.

I'm called to love him with a love that comes from God, the kind of love that is ordered to his salvation.

But according to Calvinism, God himself doesn't even have that kind of love towards my reprobate neighbor.

So either it's impossible to love my neighbor, or I must somehow have more divine love than God.

So, that's the argument in a nutshell.

If Calvinism is true, we're seemingly called to love our neighbor better than God loves our neighbor, and to do this with a divine charity that doesn't exist.

But this is actually one of many problems with the kind of Calvinism presented by people like R.C.

Sproul and John MacArthur.

Perhaps an yet more serious issue is how much they distort the theology and the meaning of the cross.

For more on that, I talk about it right here.

For Shameless Popery, I'm Joe Heschmeyer.

God bless you.