On Calvinism

I usually try my best to stay away from lengthy posts regarding theology or philosophy due to the lack of interest from most of my friends, but recently, with the rise of Calvinism in Malaysia and with the Cavlinist view being dominant in the youth of big churches, and also with a talk on Romans 9 coming up in my church in a few Sundays to come, perhaps I should start stating my position with clarity here. Simply put, I am not 5 point Calvinists like John Piper, Paul Washer, RC Sproul, Jon MacArthur and the like.

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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs_4GwyJCHA&feature=related

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.

BlackBerry day #1

So I've just gotten my new toy/utility tool, which is of course a replacement to my dead Nokia ; The Blackberry Torch 9810.

Now, there have been much debate between the iOS fans, the Android fans and the Berry fans about which OS is better. But I believe that this is all based on what one wishes to use their phone for.

Thinking that I would be more suited with a Berry because I would prefer a utility based device, I got it.

I'll be doing write-ups about my Blackberry to see if it really lives up to the standard of how some people want it to be and whether it is good enough to debunk myths by other fans.

The package

I bought the phone for about RM1.25k with a 2-year contract with DiGi. I subscribed to the BIS plan and a DG 68 smart plan.

That would mean that I'd have to pay RM 78 per month just on Data usages, but then again, going with Maxis would cost me RM90 per month solely on Data usages. Plus, DiGi allows me to use past my monthly quote (3GB), except having a massive speed cut though with no extra charges. While I'll be charged extra with Maxis (I think).

The packaging was good. Unlike my other phone boxes, this one was small despite being one of my bigger phones. Saves the trees! The box came with the phone itself, battery, charger, manual, USB cable, and a set of headphones. Of course including the 18-month warranty from Brightstar along with the manual.

As soon as I plugged the phone to my computer though, I quickly realized that a CD was not provided for the Blackberry Desktop software. Took me quite awhile to find a proper download mirror for the software, but it was no biggy.

I immediately bought a screen protector (a lousy one in fact, screws up my screen resolution, though it's good at keeping the stains away!) and a hard case by Seidio. (The case isn't that nice and the top portion seems to be Seidio's old design that prohibits a whole lot of scrolling on the trackpad)

First impressions

When I first got the phone, I wasn't all too surprised by the weight and the thickness of it simply because I've been using Nokia phones which were reasonably fat. So bulk and weight weren't a problem for me. The screen resolution was pretty good. I would compare this to the Retina display of my iPod touch 4g, but it's hard to make a fair comparison simply because my screen protector screws up the resolution. The keyboard, although small, is amazingly nice to type on. Sure, not as good as the Bold 9900's keyboard (yes, I've handled it before in the store and during the display show by DiGi), but it beats anything else that I've used (which includes Nokia's full QWERTY slide out keyboard on the N97 mini) and definitely better than any touchscreen keyboards. It has this nice feeling to it to make you feel that the keyboard has been pressed. I tried out the keyboard on my friends Curve, it's almost the same I think.

The OS, Blackberry OS 7 is rather decent for an OS. I like how it's not too simple yet simple enough to understand compared to the likes of my old Windows mobile 6.5 phone! It's smooth and fast. After trying out appworld though, I quickly understood why Android and iOS fanboys hated BB OS. The lack of apps is saddening. But with that being said, I do think that there's enough apps out there to get me going. Twitter and Facebook for BlackBerry is certainly not as easy to adapt as one would be able to on an iOS device, but it's good enough I guess.

BBM and being a social climber

Many people have claim to get a BB just for BBM. I never understood why when it seemed to be the same as something like whatsapp. BBM was still really good though, despite having little contacts, it was easy to contact other BBM users in groups or in solo while being able to know stuff about them if they're connected to Foursquare or etc. It's a tad more organized than Whatsapp if you ask me.

Battery life

Many have complained about how BB's have lost their good reputation for their good battery life with the release of the latest OS7 models. However, for a smartphone that can be connected 24/7 to EDGE or 3G, the battery lasts quite awhile. I started the day at 100% then heading off to OU with EDGE on. I used Wikitude, BBM, Twitter and Facebook a whole lot and came back with around 80% of my battery still left. Not bad.

After full day of use, I really think I made a right choice with going with BB. Though, as for the Torch's build quality, I'm quite worried about the slider!

Before the morning?

There are two ways to explain my current situation;

1. Either I'm going through what I'm going through to learn something new

OR

2. IF Calvinism is true, then perhaps I'm just not lucky enough to be loved by God.

My family is the biggest burden I have so far. The fact that I lost the only few friends whom I can ever express myself too adds on to it.

I've had enough of my mother not having a job yet not wanting to help me out in things that she can help me out with. I've had enough of her nagging. She's been working so much all her life, so find, she showed her love by money. Once the money stopped flowing, she pretends that she's been a great mother who spends time with her kids since young and knows them perfectly well. Heads up, you don't know me at all.

My dad. Arrogant and unreasonable, the worse combo. I study in the day and go for my tuitions, and what happens at night? I used the internet, and with a holiday tomorrow, I use it past midnight.

He goes on and on about how it's been affecting my results and how I'm using it too much but like wha-?!

I worked for my trials, I've improved on almost every single paper by at least a 10 mark margin and still you say it's not enough?

All I want is a short break before SPM, and you can't give it to me because you refuse to be "disobeyed"

Come to think of it, my upbringing was terrible.

Why am I so different from my sister in terms of confidence? Why am I so not confident in all I do and say? Why do I have such a temper?

My dad has a worse temper than me so...check.

The last time I heard them say "sorry" to me genuinely was probably when I wouldn't stop crying as a kid. They have an ego so high that even when they're wrong, they always somehow twist the situation "We MIGHT be wrong, but your response was also wrong so... blabla"

I don't understand. When you do something wrong, you apologize! You don't point out mistakes in someone else's reaction to your wrongdoing first!!!

The blame was always placed on me, so perhaps that's why I'm always so insecure in my beliefs, my faith and my friends.

God knows how much I yearn for someone I can pour my tears out to again.

Will I grow up to be a bitter man? Will I hold on to the hatred in my heart and take revenge on the ones who started it all?

Or will I be the better man and show the unloving what love is?

Only time will tell.

And today...

No pictures today, using my old computer!

I just need a friend.

Yes I ranted a really long post but I just decided to not post it.

The greatest day of history

A few "disastrous" events has happened in my life for the past week. Events that made me go "God, you kidding me?"

It seems that it's my gut response to put the blame on someone when life sucks.

But God is smart, very smart. The philosophy that he put me through has given me only one ability over a few others. I was given the ability to think. To think past my emotional barriers when thinking with your emotions becomes tempting. It's hard, but I thank God for it.

I have no looks to surpass others.

I have no real skill that is better than the average layman.

I sometimes even question my self-worth.

So what does God want to do with this lousy piece of clay when there are so many better pieces of clay to use?

This, I think is one problem with the view of Calvinism. If man had no free will, then God picks and chooses who does what. No one has the ability to try his best for God.

But before I go on, let me recap on what horrendous events happened this week:

Conflict and dejection from the body of Christ?

I had a quarrel with Huey Lin and a small one after that with Aaron. I should be used to it, but I'm just tired of being reconciled with people and just feel awkward with them again. I've been tolerating them for so long, but I'm about to go booms. Let's face it. I have a really opinionated personality. I've been into conflicts and clashes with almost all of the youth. Some my fault, some their fault. It's just hard mixing with EVERYONE knowing that you'll clash with them either way. I'd love to just hang around with the people that I CAN click with, and ignore the rest. But that would be mean. TBH, I also feel discriminated as a thinker by the youth leadership. I don't know if it's the case, but with what Ivan has been telling me. I do feel that I'm being looked as a person of pure reason and no faith. But Ivan only knew half of the story of my faith. He only knew of my doubts and questions. He doesn't know how I overcame doubts by diving into the richest source of knowledge in the world- Internet philosophy(it was more of being "pushed" into it). To sum it all up, I believe in the God of Christianity and the divinity of Jesus Christ. I believe in the doctrine of the resurrection and all. But why do I feel a little offended because I hold to different interpretations of certain scripture, and because I believe in these because of reason? Has God endowed me with reason only to forgo the use of it? Though these are just my assumptions.

I'm still not over youu?

Actually I am. Rachel was my best friend. She was the only person outside my family circle who has ever heard me cry (excluding childhood events lah of course). She was there when my faith was at breaking point, when my life was a messy disaster. She cared when no one else bothered.

But a few series of events happened last year. And now, we're just like strangers. Recently I got the chance to talk to her again. To be honest, Rachel is a very different person to me now. After the whole conflict she tells me that it's up to me if we still wants to be friends "lor". She says that well, if I still want to be close to her, then I'll have to go to her instead of her trying anything at all. I do believe that she has her faults in this conflict, and I do believe that I am not the only one who thinks so. But still, the very fact that the one person whom I held so dear to me has became someone who just wouldn't give a crap about our friendship anymore was disheartening and discouraging.

I failed my driving test!!

That's right. I failed.

I failed parking because I was oh so blur and careless.

I failed the road test with a GSM because I used my leg brakes instead of my hand brakes and was careless there as well.

I won't blame the car or the JPJ examiner. It was my fault. I should've gotten more sleep knowing how much of sleep I need to get through the day like this. I shouldn't have ate seafood sushi knowing that I have a big day tomorrow.

I was nervous.

I sucked.

Mid-terms?

My mid-term results were horrible. Nuff said.

So with all the failures and heartbreaks going around, where's my hiding place? What is God telling me? Does God hate me?

You see, through my failures, God has showed me things that I would not have seen when I am heartily happy with what I have been doing.

Through my weaknesses, he has showed me where I am weak at, and why I needed to be humbled to see it. My will is not as strong as I thought it was. Therefore I have to resist all temptations, even temptations of pride early instead of head on because I know how I'll get owned in a head to head battle with Pride.

Through my failures, God has showed me the consequences of not obeying him multiple times and thinking that what I do will not have any adverse effects- Like staying up late before my driving test to Troll CJ in LoL. That extra one hour of sleep could have gave me the alertness to pass my test and save my parents RM360. He has taught me also not to underestimate my studies and not be like my friends, friends who are born with the natural ability to do math and memorize so well last minute. I can't. I have limits.

And through everything, God has shown me mercy. I got to get extra close to people like Alicea and Phei Fern through the turmoil...

And thank God for that.

Getting closer to Phei Fern helped me see past what I already know of her and made me realize how much she has been doing for me and how much she actually sacrificed for her friends.

And Alicea? She was the first person I informed about my problem with the Church that arose recently and also talked to her about what I've been through with EHEM for the past 3 years.

Despite doing really well for her driving test, she kept on encouraging me to not give up despite knowing that I failed the easiest part of the test. She didn't diss me or anything, she just kept the support up. If I wasn't sleepy, that encouragement could've went a looooong way. And despite knowing how I only got 4/20 because of a GSM for my road test while she got 20/20, she didn't go "omg how you fail?! it was so easy!" She still gave her support like a mother would give to her child. (Even my family dissed me for failing btw)

And also, I got closer to Yuen Wei. Sure, he might be a tad annoying when he talks politics all the time and when he won't stop talking and joking around about serious matters. But well, what can I say, he does know when to help and when to cheer someone up. I guess the only thing he should learn now is to know when to stop joking -.-

What deer-deeer friends I have stumbled upon!

And so, life is not a snapshot. I might be going through crap right now, but I guess, I can expect brighter days up ahead as long as I turn my eyes upon the greatest conceivable being- God.

Running away again

And he's running away...

I've been reconciled with the best friend. At a price. Our best-friendship. We're now just acquaintances, but that's better than being enemies.

Haiyoh. If you don't know the full story of anything, don't lah jump to conclusions.

The post was edited because of fear that a few narrow-minded individuals would jump straight to their own conclusions based on their pre-held prejudices.

Jeesh what happened to you? When did you become so arrogant?

Theology?

Beautiful leaves planted at Yuen Wei's mansion...

Theology. C.S.Lewis once described it as a map in his famous book, Mere Christianity(If I've recalled correctly). You might believe in God without any theology, but that is like sailing in water without a map. Now, maps aren't always 100% perfect just as much as our theology might not be, but at least it helps lead you to your desired destination.

Theology isn't as simple as it seems. Many many Christians have different theories and beliefs about certain aspects of Christianity, but it's definitely worth noting that they're all labelled as Christians because they at least do share a few core theologies in common. (Mere Christianity does a ngawwfully good job at summarizing what all Christians believe.)

It gets harder, let me tell you, when Theology meets philosophy. Theories of Divine providence, theories of atonement, theodicies... It's not just arguing using scriptural support anymore. Thinking about God is not easy. We can try to fathom the Great Mystery, but man, it's no easy feat doing so.

But in light of all this, I thank God for allowing us to be able to go to him as we are, without immense knowledge of sorts. It's just that for the some of us here who were called to well...think... I guess things aren't that simple haha.