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If your sound is on you are listening to “Amazing Grace.”

Each of the five points of Calvinism is also discussed on the Arminianism page.

Calvinist Doctrine, like all frame works developed by men to interpret scripture, tells you what scripture is going to mean before you read it. The so called five points of Calvinism came into church vernacular from the five remonstrances developed by the Arminianists to present the Arminianist position to the church at the Council of Dort.

The five remonstrances presented by the Arminianists were as follows:

  • 1. Conditional Election - Election is based God’s foreknowledge of who will believe.
  • 2. Universal Atonement - The atonement is for all, but only believers enjoy its benefits. (Universal Atonment is also called General Atonement by some, and the limited Atonement of Calvinism is called Particular Atonement by some.)
  • 3. Saving Faith - Man, if unaided by the Holy Spirit, is unable to come to God.
  • 4. Resistible Grace - The drawing of the Holy Spirit can be resisted.
  • 5. Uncertainty of Preservation - This doctrine was left open to further inquiry.
  • There was only one side, the Calvinists, who debated the five remonstrances of the Arminianist position at the Coucil of Dort because the Arminians left the council before the debate opened in protest believing the rules that were established for the debate left them at a disadvantage against the Calvinists. The five points of Calvinism that came out of the Council of Dort were actually the Council’s rejection of each of the five Arminianist remonstrances and have come to be defined by the acronym TULIP.
  • 1. T stands for Total Depravity: Man is so corrupted by sin that he cannot seek God until God empowers him to do so.
  • To Calvinists the term "totally depraved," is what they call an extensive, rather than an intensive statement. What they mean is that the effect of man’s fall extends into every part of his being. According to Calvinists man’s thinking, man’s emotions, and his will are all totally depraved. To the Calvinsit this does not mean that mankind is "intensely" sinful, but, rather, that sin has "extended" to every part of his being. They quote Eph. 2:1-9 to mean that unregenerated (unsaved) man is dead in his sins and say that Mark 4:11 is proof that the unsaved are blind and deaf to the message of the gospel. There can be no quarrel with the fact that the New Testament teaches that the unsaved, who are living in accordance with the prince of this world, are dead in trespasses and sin. But then Calvinists take what they believe to be a logical step further and say that this deadness means that mankind is totally unable to contribute anything to his own salvation and quote such verses as Rom. 7:8-9; Matt. 7:18; Rom. 3:11; Jer. 13:23; and 2 Peter 2:14 as text proof.
  • The problem is that none of the verses quoted explicitly state that man is totally incapable of contributing anything to his salvation and so some “interpretation” has to be employed in order to derive the doctrine that man is so totally corrupt that his will plays no part in his own salvation. Rom. 7:8-9 is speaking of the effect that the law has upon sinful mankind, not what he can or cannot contribute to his own salvation. Matt. 7:18 is a parable of false prophets, not of what man can contribute to his own salvation.
  • The closest any verse comes to outrightly declaring that man cannot exercise his will in his own salvation is Rom. 3:11 that says specifically that no one seeks God. The 3rd Chapter of Romans is speaking about the truth that all mankind have been sold under sin and will be judged by a law so perfect and so absolute that no one can be justified by their efforts to keep that law. In that context the phrase that no one seeks after God has to mean that mankind is incapable of seeking God by keeping the law, not that he has no capacity within him to seek after God. It is plain that mankind in every culture that has ever existed, until the advent of secularism, have sought after some kind of god. This they could not do if they had no capacity within them to seek a god or even God. If Rom. 3:11 is taken to mean that no one has the capacity within themselves to seek after God, then Jesus misled us when he told us that all who seek will find. (Luke 11:10) And neither could Jesus have told us to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. (Matt. 6:32) Likewise so do Jer. 13:23 and 2 Pet. 2:14 not say that man is incapable of contributing anything to his own salvation.
  • The scripture is clear that mankind is totally corrupt and cannot keep from sinning. But, does the scripture then warrant such a step further to say that he has no capacity within himself to assume some responsibility toward his own salvation? Calvinists ask, “Can man without a knowledge of God ever come to this knowledge without God's making him alive through Christ?” The problem is they have have failed to understand that things forever changed on the Day of Pentecost with the out pouring of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh. (Acts 2:16-17). They do not understand the working of the Holy Spirit in the conviction of mankind concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. (John 16:8-11)
  • Calvinists believe John 6:44, & 65 and Ephesians 2:1-8 prove conclusively that man can take no part in his own salvation. They say the natural man loves to sin and hates God and quote John 3:19-20, but seldom include verse 21 of that passage in the same breath because verse 21 clearly lays some of responsibility for man’s salvation upon himself. Likewise, Calvinists take Prov. 21:10 to apply to all men universally but ignore Prov. 21:11-12 which clearly states God sees some distinctions within mankind by which he separates them, some being wicked and some being righteous.
  • Calvinists believe that Matt. 6:24 means that mankind is incapable of any cooperative effort in his own salvation. But all Matt. 6:24 says is that men cannot simultaneously serve two masters. James is saying the same thing in James 1:8. It is an overburden of the text to read into it that it has to mean that mankind is incapable of cooperating with God in his salvation. Likewise Calvinists believe that since Eph. 2:12 says that man without Christ is without hope that this somehow means that he cannot respond to the Gospel Invitation of his own freewill. Neither does Rom. 5:6, Rom. 2:1, or Rom. 3:9-11, (Rom. 3:9-11 has been commented upon earlier) say that mankind is unable to choose to believe the Gospel, but only that without Jesus Christ we are lost.
  • The truth is that Reformed Theology is in error concerning Freewill, but that does not mean that the Arminians are entirely correct in their beliefs. It is much better to believe the Bible than either the Calvinists or the Armenians and that is explained in some detail on the article on Arminianism."
  • 2. The second point of Calvinism is: Unconditional Grace. Calvinist say that God does not offer His grace to men based upon His foreknowledge of who will believe in Jesus.
  • While it is entirely true that God does not base his offer of grace to men contingent upon their belief in Jesus Christ, it is true that He offers grace to men based upon His foreknowledge of something. This is fully explained on the ArminianismArminianism page.
  • 3. The third point of Calvinism is that of Limited atonement. Calvinists say that Christ’s atonement is only efficacious for those whom God has predestinated to receive it.
  • It would therefore follow that if it can be shown that Christ’s atonement was for the entire world this point of Calvinism would be false. 1 John 2:2 says that Christ is the propitiation i.e the mercy seat, the replacement, the substitute, the atonement, for the entire world, so the third point of Calvinism is entire falsified by scripture.
  • 4. Calvinist say that God’s offer of grace is Iresistible. They reason that because only those who God has predestinated in eternity will be offered this grace that those thus predestinated will have no choice but to except it. Once again this is entirely refuted in the article on Arminianism.
  • 5. Because of the way they interpret Predestination Election, Calvinist must then believe in what they call the Perseverance of the Saints. By Perseverance they belief that once a person has been saved they can never become lost again. Again, this is entirely refuted by Scripture which can be seen on the Arminianism page.
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