Why is it a Total Waste of Time to Debate a Calvinist?
You ever convinced a Calvinist of anything? Neither have I. There is a reason for that. They actually perceive reality differently than you do. When you read your Bible, you of course know that the redemptive historical account of Christ is a primary theme. But you also believe God wants you to draw other truths from His word. If you are a Biblicist, you believe that God’s wisdom found in the Bible has a many-faceted application to life.
Not so with a Calvinist. Calvinists, like mystics, think in dualisms. In other words, when you are speaking to a Calvinist, he/she perceives you as speaking from one or two realities: the glory story, or the cross story. Those are the only two realities.
When two Calvinists are talking together they are talking from the standpoint of understanding through the prism of reality being interpreted through their evil as set against God’s holiness. Every verse in the Bible seeks that end. Every verse in the Bible seeks to show you that contrast—nothing more—nothing less. That’s the cross story, and it interprets all reality:
If the story is true, Jesus Christ is the interpretative key to every fact in the universe and, of course, the Bible is one such fact. He is thus the hermeneutic principle that applies first to the Bible as the ground for understanding, and also to the whole of reality (Graeme Goldsworthy: Gospel-centered Hermeneutics; p.48).
That’s why the following is important if you are a Calvinist and preparing a Bible study:
At this time, resist the temptation to utilize subsequent passages to validate the meaning or to move out from the immediate context. Remembering that all exegesis must finally be a Christocentric exegesis. Look for Christ even if He isn’t there directly. It is better to see Christ in a text even if He isn’t, than to miss Him where He is (http://clearcreekbtsc.blogspot.com/2011/06/beginning-to-study-whole-purpose-of-god.html).
So, all reality is interpreted through God’s good and our evil—the contrast is reality. This is the “cross story.” Martin Luther believed that the only people in the world that were worthy enough to be called theologians interpreted all reality in this way (Heidelberg Disputation, theses #20). Calvin reaffirmed this in the first sentence of book one, chapter one of the Calvin Institutes. Luther even mused about the benefit of civil authorities arresting good Samaritans to demonstrate that God sees their deeds as filthy rags. However, he concluded in thesis 5 of his Disputation that such should not be treated as crimes against society. What a guy.
Also, this relegates the Bible to contemplative purposes only. When we see the reality of our evil as set against God’s holiness—obedience is imputed to our realm as a “mere natural flow.” Christians are only to “rest and feed” on the cross story (Paul David Tripp).
In contrast, if you are speaking from the viewpoint of a many-faceted life application, and a learn and do discipleship approach, you view life through a distorted reality. If you think that there is any goodness in you at all, that is the glory story—it’s your story and not Christ’s story. Hence, Calvinists do not think that unbelievers or Arminians can properly grasp reality.
Therefore, know this: when you are debating a Calvinist, they are debating from the standpoint that you cannot properly assess reality.
In the past you have somehow gotten the idea that Calvinists are arrogant.
Now you know why. They are the wisest totally depraved people walking the earth. That we could all be totally depraved wise people.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
Reblogged this on Clearcreek Chapel Watch.
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It’s called theological juggling. They take their points and then listen to your point and if it contradicts their point they throw it up in the air. While it is in the air they don’t have to deal with it. As each point comes back down it can only be held onto long enough to briefly look at it because it has to be thrown back up again because there is another point coming down. A theologian is not one who can hold the truth but one who can successfully juggle many points without actually handling any of them for any lenght of time.
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These are my favorites that it always resorts to:
So, you do not believe God is Sovereign, then.
Or,
you did not sin today?
Their paradigm is total depravity or sinless perfection. And well, since none of us are the latter then that means the former by default since that is the premise. They have been indoctrinated and do not even know it.
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Hi Paul,
I have been lurking at your site for a few weeks now and have found your posts to be very interesting. I have seen the same basic point made by another former Calvinist. Dan Gracely wrote in “Calvinism: A Closer Look” that he believes the Calvinistic attempt to reconcile all of their conflicting doctrines is really a form of dialecticism. In fact he wrote an entire chapter on that topic (link here).
It is really interesting to see former Calvinists coming independently to the same conclusions.
Thank you.
Glenn
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Glen, Thanks for the link! I am meeting more and more former Calvinists. I always appreciate it when they are theologians and write about it. But the ones I have known or read where not Calvinists starting out but came to it later then left it.
But sadly, many of the followers are now rabid athiests. Not just your typical “backsliders” as many are termed but rabid athiests.I have met quite a few in person and some on exchristsian sites. And I think there is a reason for this: They eventually took REformed doctrine to it’s logical conclusion and they could not support that view of the determinist God and were in the YRR circle where any deviation is considered heresy and authoritarianism reigns.
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From Glen’s link chapter 4:
“Now observe the following quote by Reformed thinker Loraine Boettner, in his book, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, an older Calvinistic work of a few generations ago:2
But while the Koran and the (Mohammedan) traditions teach a strict foreordination of moral conduct and future destiny, they also present a doctrine of human freedom which makes it necessary for us to qualify the sharper assertions of divine Predestination in harmony with it. And here, too, as in the Scriptures, no attempt is made to explain how the apparently opposite truths of Divine sovereignty and human freedom are to be reconciled (emphasis added).xii
Here Boettner attempts a contrast between the Islamic Koran and Calvinistic doctrine. The statement above is his attempt to modify the absolute determination (sovereignty) of God so that people can be said to be the author of their own choices. Observe the language of Calvinism when Boettner says that predestination (i.e., for Boettner, the divine foreordination of everyone’s activity, moral content, and future destiny) and human freedom are “apparently” opposite truths. The reason he prefers not to say that they are opposite truths is because to do so would be to admit to a final contradiction. Instead, he qualifies his assertion by implying that these concepts are “apparently” a contradiction, i.e., that they are a seeming contradiction rather than an actual one. As a result, conclusions about God and man are never finalized in definition, since Boettner’s “divine Predestination” is ‘qualified’ with its exact antithesis. Thus, such an apparent contradiction that should be an actual contradiction to Evangelicalism is to Evangelical Calvinism only an “apparent” contradiction. In other words, for Evangelical Calvinists the ‘apparent’ contradiction is regarded as no real contradiction at all.
”
Now, I know I have to read this. I have been saying the same thing for several years now. Here is their problem: Their determinist God filter is a short walk to Allah so they have to focus on the “mystery” or ” seemingly contradictions’ God does not want us to understand.
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