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Here is a book you guys might want to read and at no extra charge I'll thrown in a review.

The Other Side of Calvinism.
By: Laurence M. Vance

Calvinism Exposed as an Unbiblical System, March 3, 2002
Reviewer: Michael T. (see more about me) from Charlotte, North Carolina USA
Dr. Vance gets 5 stars for this important work.

I was once an ardent Calvinist -- supralapsarian, no air, die-hard John Gill-style predestinarian. I heard the logic of the 5 points over and over again and was ready for any objection from the irrational fool who would dare challenge the system. Eventually I saw some cracks in the system not only when held up to the light of Scripture but also as I observed that members of the 5-point community displayed some of the most intolerant and rancorous behavior one could imagine as they attacked one another in various media - especially the Internet.

I frequently participated in food fights among the Calvinistic "brethren" over the web which included charges of "antinomian," "heretic," "apostate," "romanist," as reconstructionists, covenantors, various reformed groups, sovereign gracers, Amyraldians(the real heretics) lashed out to defend the purity of their own calvinistic stances. Almost all arguments boiled down to "my interpretation of the Doctrines of Grace is better than yours,"...believe it, the level of ego casualty in the 5-point clique is beyond measure.

Later, I came across this book titled "The Other Side of Calvinism" and decided to investigate it so I could blast the heretic who would dare challenge the citadel of Calvinism. The book is sourced from thousands of statements by Calvinists as the author examines the validity of the teachers and tenents of this philosophical system. In a thorough and convincing manner, this book shows the the conclusion is a resounding "unbiblical" and it has the Calvinist community hopping mad. I see lots of "poison the well" comments and name calling in the book reviews from my old fraternity but they cannot escape the facts.

As Dr. Vance puts it "Calvinists have one thing in common: God, by a sovereign, eternal decree, has determined before the foundation of the world who shall be saved and who shall be lost. To obscure the real issue, a vocabulary has been invented to confuse and confound the Christian. The arguments about supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism, total depravity and total inability reprobation and peterition, synergism and monergism, free will and free agency, common grace and special grace, general calling and effectual calling.....are all immaterial. The stumbling block for the Calvinist is the SIMPLICITY OF SALVATION (emphasis mine), so upon rejecting this, a SYSTEM (emphasis mine) has to be constructed whereby salvation is made a mysterious, arcane, incomprehensible decree of God. Thus, the basic error of Calvinism is confounding election and predestination with salvation, which they never are in the Bible but only in the philosophical speculations....of calvinism."

I guess my problem with Calvinism today is the fact that one has to be TAUGHT it as a system. Its main tenets do not readily appear from a plain reading of Scripture. Calvinistic soteriology of the extreme variety where intensive interpretation of the 5 points is hammered into a system takes lots of INFERENCE from different passages collected together and presented as a product of inductive reasoning -- this is what the Bible teaches about: SALVATION.

Unfortunately the problem with inductive reasoning is that unless you complete the induction and collect ALL that the Bible says about a topic, you are likely to arrive at a false conclusion. Calvinists do this very thing for they select their favorite verses and repeat them over and over (Acts 13:48, John 6:37,44) and throw them together out of context and IGNORE the verses that teach against their system like 1 Tim 2:4, 2 Pet 3:9 and others. They also enter theories into their system that are not taught in the Bible. As A.W. Tozer once said, "the essence of idolatry is to imagine things about God and then preach them as truth" and Calvinism is guilty of this very charge.

Therefore, Calvinists spin out abstruse and academic theories like Covenant of Redemption, the Covenant of Grace, Supra-infra-sub-lapsarianism, -- theories that are typically not arrived at by the typical believing student of the Bible. No, it takes theological eggheads the like late Augustine, John Gill, or Beza to develop and teach theories like these and teach them as biblical soteriology. The result is a loss of Biblical truth for some vain and extreme traditions of men.

The author is no Arminian either. He holds to holds to assurance but disputes the intensive interpretations of Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Irresistible Grace, or Limited Atonement. His Biblical conclusions are then railed out by the theological elites of Calvinism to be arminian and heretical.

I find it interesting that these 5-pointers are constantly lamenting that their system is misunderstood -- let alone the fact we are flooded with materials about how the system works. It is much more likely that more and more people are seeing that it is impossible to live consistently within the strict and extreme framework of 5-point Calvinism for it would be impossible to communicate the Gospel to anyone and God would be misrepresented as a grotesque, sadistic, and capricious monster -- all just and no love. The attributes of God, however, cannot be logically separated so the system of extreme calvinism skews God's justice over His omnibenevolence and thus misrepresents God in the worst way.

Everyone Christian should read this book -- especially Baptists. Buy it, study and highlight it, and then go share the Gospel with "whosoever will." I also recommend "Chosen But Free" by Norman Geisler.

BigMack