This post should be quite lengthy, and will be focused on arguing against two important points of a five-point Calvinist. Bear in mind that some (or most) of the arguments that I will be making here are not my brainchild, but from a few other people out there who has gladly answered many of my questions on this issue.
First, to define Calvinism.
Five point Calvinism, is basically in belief of 5-points in the acronym form of TULIP regarding the Christian faith. The five points are as followed:
Total depravity : Men have absolutely no way to be reconciled to God by their own means.
Unconditional election : God elects people to be saved not by any of their works or anything about them at all
Limited atonement: Christ did not die for all
Irresistable grace: The elect can never choose to deny Christ or his Grace
Preservation of the saints: Once saved, always saved.
Now, there are many out there who hold to only a few points of Calvinism (such as my quasi-theologian Uncle who's a 3-point Calvinist), but I'm mainly going to be dealing with the 5-pointers here. Namely those who believe in limited atonement and irresistable grace, the points which make God arbitrary and which nullify human freedom.
The main premise of the limited atonement(LA) Calvinists is this: Everything that God wills, will come to past. (I think this is their main premise). So since not everyone are Christians, then they conclude that God does not will everyone to be saved, and they find some scriptural support for doing so. LA's often quote all the scriptures that are thought to imply that Christ died for ALL, and say that our interpretation of scripture is wrong.
But before we get into scriptural interpretation, let me make some solid, purely logical arguments against LA Calvinism.
The Philosopher and most prominent public apologist to the lay people, Dr William Lane Craig, has often argued that Calvinism, which includes predestination would eventually lead to making God the author of sin. I agree.
Let's take the main LA premise here:
(1)Anything that comes to past is a result of God's will
(2)Adam's sin came to past (Original sin which probably led to total depravity)
(3)Therefore, God willed Adam to sin.
Now, hopefully the logic behind this is clear to the reader, since I probably suck at developing proper syllogism. But I think I'm right with this formulation.
So we see here that if this argument holds (which I definitely think it does), then if the LA's keep to their first premise, then it makes God the direct author of sin.
But if the LA denies the conclusion, he has to deny one of the premises leading to it. The LA can either deny (2) by saying that sin did not occur, which is obviously wrong. Or, deny their main premise, that anything that comes to past is a result of God's will. But if they do so, then it can be claimed that human beings have a sort of free will that would allow them to be morally responsible for what they do. And if they do so, we have one less reason to believe that God did not intend to die for all.
But what if they happily claim that God is the author of sin?
Well then we have another argument that we can make.
Most Christians would define sin as a deviation from God's will. Since since is an abomination to God, it definitely isn't something of him.
But if God willed sin to occur, then it means that God willed a deviation from his own will, which is of course, a contradiction!
Now the only way to overcome this contradiction is to say that Sin is not a deviation from God's will, but a part of His will. But if it is a part of His will, then what so wrong about Sin anyway? Why would God hate a part of himself?
Then it is obvious that the LA's main premise is absolutely false, and that it seems to me that God has given us free will enough to make us morally responsible for what we do.
If I am correct in my above two arguments, then I think I have shown that God cannot logically be a puppet master while still having the traditional Christian properties of God.
On to another objection...
Under five-point Calvinism, God chooses who to save, but also, there must be nothing that the individual does or is that affects God's decision.
What does that mean?
Say we have an individual called Rachel. Let's say that Rachel is one of God's elect, and then we have another individual, Sam, who is not one of God's elect. Now according to Calvinism itself, there is nothing that Rachel did or is that influences God's choice to elect her to heaven while condemning Sam to eternal hell. So according to Calvinism's main premise itself, there is nothing "special" of Sam or Rachel that determines their destinies. They are both exactly the same, it's just that somehow God saves Rachel and not Sam. Isn't this arbitrary? How can something like love be arbitrary? Can you love someone for absolutely no reason at all?
The Calvinists might have two objections under their sleeves:
1. Unconditional love
You hear this alot in the movies and from your parents sometimes. But unconditional love in the sense that the Calvinist God would use is far from what we think it is. When we speak of unconditional love, we often do not mean "absolutely no reason at all" like what the Calvinistic belief would entail God's love as, but we just mean that nothing the person that we love does can earn or lose our affection for them. Doesn't this suit the above picture? No it doesn't. Your parents love you because you are their children. IF and only if you were not their children, then they would not love you for that reason. But that won't save Calvinism since either (following the above examples)Either:
1)There is something about Rachel that Sam does not have that counted as a reason for God to love Rachel and condemn Sam. But then the Calvinists claims that the two of them are equally totally depraved, and hence they are equal in God's eye.
or
2)The reason why God loves Rachel is because she is God's creation. If so, then is Sam not God's creation?
The second way a Calvinist responds to this problem (and more commonly too), is too claim that God has "greater purposes" to be achieved when he elects someone. And that we cannot "know the will of God". But if he does have greater purposes to be fulfilled through Rachel and not Sam, doesn't that mean that there is something about Rachel that can fulfill his greater purpose and not Sam?
Calvinist objections
If my above arguments are correct, then a 5-point Calvinistic belief would be shown to be incoherent with Christianity and perhaps even illogical. But Calvinists often have their fair share objections against the non- 5 pointers.
Here are some of the few:
1. If Man can choose to follow God, then Salvation is dependent upon Man and the cross is useless
This objection misunderstands the non-C position. I don't think any form of arminianism or Calvinism would claim that Man are able to save themselves, but simply able to accept the gift of salvation or reject it.
Simply put, does a patient take credit for being cured when he merely accepts treatment from his doctor? If he does, he's a rather stupid patient!
2.Scripture maintains that God did not die for ALL.
So some scripture might contain verses that imply that Christ only died for his sheep, Israel and Paul. But the problem is that this "many" used in the scriptures can be used as a subset for "all". If we are to jump to the radical conclusion that these verses imply that Christ only died for the many, then why not jump to the conclusion that Christ only died for Paul since the Bible did have Paul saying that "Christ died for me".
And of course, there's the infamous Romans 9. You through John 3:16 or any other verses which imply unlimited atonement to them, they will simply say that you take those verses out of context and throw romans 9 back at you.
But given the logical consequences of Calvinism above, I contend that we should instead interpret Romans 9 differently from how the Calvinists want it to be. In fact, I think it's correct to believe that Romans 9 was not speaking of salvation but of something else. Here's a video from a member of an Eastern Orthodox Church clarifying this:
But wait, we also do have verses speaking of unlimited atonement. I won't use John 3:16 here since the Calvinist would easily contend that the use of the word "world" could mean other things, but I'm going to be using Romans 5
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
So if the Calvinists contends that the "all" being used here does not mean literally "all", he would also have to claim that not "all" have received condemnation. But there's a "many" in the verse, what can it mean? This verse is not to say that ALL will be saved in the end, but that many people will be able to choose God and live. Since it's quite obvious that not everyone chose to receive his gift of grace.
I do not wish to delve any deeper into the scriptural arguments here since I am simply not qualified enough to do a proper exegesis or whatsoever. But I do contend that for Christianity to be the truth, it has to rational and reasonable. And if my arguments above succeed, then Christianity can only be the truth IF Calvinism in that sense is not a part of it.
