BEST OF DTB*God’s Girl: Calvinism vs Catholicism by Ross Earl Hoffman
deepertruthblog.com/
CALVINISM IS UNREASONABLE
Calvin located the reason of predestination solely in the absolute will of God. But by making God alone responsible for everything, Calvin abolished the free cooperation of the will in obtaining eternal happiness. Therefore he was logically forced to admit an irresistible efficacious grace, to deny the freedom of the will when influenced by grace, and to completely reject supernatural merits (as a secondary reason for eternal happiness).
Not only is God completely responsible for the salvation of the elect, but He must also be responsible for the damnation of the reprobate, even to the point of directly willing their sins. Since God wills everything good for the elect, as well as everything bad for the reprobate, Calvin maintained that Christ died only for the elect (this is challenged by Geisler’s recent book Chosen But Free, see link below):
“As Scripture, then, clearly shows, we say that God once established by his eternal and unchangeable plan those whom he long before determined once for all to receive into salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, he would devote to destruction.
“We assert that, with respect to the elect, this plan was founded upon his freely given mercy, without regard to human worth; but by his just and irreprehensible but incomprehensible judgment he has barred the door of life to those whom he has given over to damnation.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Book III:21:7)
Salvation and damnation depend wholly on the will of God — man is completely predetermined to one or the other by irresistible grace or the lack thereof, without any cooperation or resistance of his will. Since grace is irresistible, the will of the predestined is not free to cooperate with grace to perform meritorious good works, and so salvation is purely arbitrary. Even more disturbing, since concupiscence is likewise irresistible without God’s grace, the will of the reprobate is not really free to sin and perform culpably evil works, and so damnation is not caused by demerits.
The Calvinist position is consistent with itself, but is not consistent with human experience or the Scriptures. It cannot be reconciled with the cooperation and resistance of free will, sin and virtue, the possible loss of grace, punishment and reward, and the universality of redemption and grace.
Calvin’s God is arbitrary and despotic.
The Catholic position is consistent with itself, with human experience, and with the Scriptures. God’s foreknowledge and foreordination of the elect to heavenly glory includes His universal desire and sufficient grace to save all men, our free cooperation with His grace, good works which truly merit heavenly reward, and the real possibility — during this life of testing and pilgrimage — of rejecting grace and salvation and thus deserving the punishments of hell.
IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS
- Predestination is not predetermination :
“Predestination is nothing else than the foreknowledge and foreordaining of those gracious gifts which make certain the salvation of all who are saved.” (St. Augustine, Persever 14:35)
Predestination is God’s decree of the happiness of the elect. God’s infallible foreknowledge (and thus predestination also) includes free will. God’s foreknowledge cannot force upon man unavoidable coercion, for the simple reason that it is at bottom nothing else than the eternal vision of the future historical actuality. God foresees the free activity of a man precisely as that individual is willing to shape it, predestination is not predetermination of the human will.
- Free will can resist and reject God’s grace :
“You stiff-necked people…you always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51). The angels possessed grace and perfectly intact intellect, and yet many of them freely sinned and rejected God. Adam and Eve possessed grace and a perfectly intact nature, and yet they freely sinned. How much more so is it possible for the born-again Christian, who possesses grace but also a wounded nature and a darkened intellect, to sin also. Paul mentions sins which keep a man from the Kingdom of God: fornication, adultery, homosexuality, theft, greed, and so on (1 Cor 6:9-10).
- We cannot confuse Election with being “Born Again” :
The set of those who are “born again” (in Catholic and historic Christian understanding those who have been regenerated “of water and Spirit” in the Sacrament of Baptism — John 3:3,5; Acts 2:38) is not necessarily co-extensive with the set of those who will persevere and gain eternal life. Born-again Christians can and (sadly) do fall away. Otherwise free will and (mortal) sin are merely fictitious for a Christian during this life of testing and pilgrimage. Otherwise all the language in Scripture of persevering to the end in order to be saved (cf. Matt 10:22; 24:13; Phil 2:12-13) makes no sense.
The Pelagian heretics held that man alone (apart from God’s grace) is responsible for his salvation. Calvinists start with the opposite premise that God alone is responsible for man’s salvation
