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Is it true that only calvinists can be saved?
Well, if you were to ask a calvinist, and he were to be completely truthful, then he would have to answer, “Yes!” Of course, most calvinists reading this would immediately get upset that I should so misrepresent their revered religion, but if they could just see why I say this, they may have to think again. I may only misrepresent if I say something that is not true. I challenge all calvinists to show clearly where I have said something that is not true of their beliefs. If they can’t, then they should just accept what I say. I get accused of misrepresenting them, yet not one has actually named what it is that I have said that misrepresents them.
It’s simple, really. Calvinists believe that you must be regenerated (born again) by God’s Spirit before you are able to do anything else spiritually. They claim that until you are regenerated (born again), you are spiritually dead and, like a dead body, you are incapable of doing anything good spiritually. Unless you are born again, you cannot effectively hear the gospel, nor have faith in or believe in Christ (based upon their interpretation of John 3:3). And even then, according to calvinists, faith is a gift of God, only given to those who have already been born again. (Of course, faith is not a gift of God but instead it is the response of man’s free will to the character of God who promises such full salvation. They misunderstand – probably deliberately – the grammar of such as Ephesians 2:8-9.)
The first stage of a calvinist’s salvation is that you must be regenerated (born again). Therefore, to a calvinist, unless you have been regenerated (born again), you are incapable of hearing the truth of the gospel and responding. Even if you did hear the gospel, you couldn’t respond because you wouldn’t have the faith to believe in it, because the calvinist God only gives the gift of faith to those whom he has already regenerated. And the calvinist God will only regenerate those whom he has chosen; you do not have a say in the matter at all. If you were not chosen for salvation by the calvinist God, then you can never be saved, ever!
That is, the calvinist God only gives the gift of faith to calvinists, those of his elect that he has chosen for salvation. If you were not chosen by the calvinist God for salvation, then because you have no free will of your own, you can never be saved, even if you wanted to be saved. You will not be regenerated and therefore you will not be given the gift of faith, and therefore can never believe and be saved!
You see, calvinists believe that faith cannot be the response of the free will of man, because (according to them) non-regenerated man has no free will to respond to anything spiritual. Unless a man be born again, he cannot have faith in the kingdom of God (according to calvinists’ interpretation of John 3:3).
Let’s say you are a non-calvinist Christian, having heard the gospel, and by your own free will accepted the gift of salvation through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. That is, you called upon the name of the Lord to be saved. God offered the free gift of salvation and you gratefully accepted by faith in God’s promises. However, if calvinists are acting faithfully according to their doctrines, then they have to declare you to be yet unsaved unless God has previously regenerated you. They have to say (as many calvinist do openly state) that if you choose to receive Jesus as your Saviour, then you are not saved and are still heading for hell. They say that you do not choose God; instead, God chooses you! If you insist that you accepted the free gift of salvation, then they have to say that unless God chose to give it to you, you haven’t received anything of the sort. And their God only chooses a small proportion of mankind to save!
If calvinists teach according to their beliefs, they have to say that, unless you are firstly regenerated (born again as a calvinist), you cannot have faith to believe, you cannot be saved, you cannot be a Christian, you cannot have eternal life, and you cannot go to heaven. Calvinist doctrine has to declare any non-calvinist Christian as lost and going to hell, because they do not declare themselves to have been regenerated by God first. Therefore, if you claim to be a non-calvinist Christian, then they are required to evangelise you in order to see if God might regenerate you as one of his elect so that you might be saved. According to the calvinist, you cannot truly be saved unless you are a regenerate calvinist believer like themselves.
Some calvinists do actually tell non-calvinists that if they were truly Christians, they would know that they had been regenerated first (born again, made alive by God’s Spirit) before they understood what they had to do to be saved. And, if they do not accept calvinism as the truth, then they cannot be true Christians. Note what Al Mohler (president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky and avid calvinist) says about this subject: Where else are they going to go? If you’re a theological minded, deeply convictional young evangelical, if you’re committed to the gospel and want to see the nations rejoice in the name of Christ, if you want to see gospel built and structured committed churches, your theology is just going end up basically being Reformed, basically something like this new Calvinism, or you’re going to have to invent some label for what is basically going to be the same thing, there just are not options out there, and that’s something that frustrates some people, but when I’m asked about the New Calvinism—where else are they going to go, who else is going to answer the questions, where else are they going to find the resources they going to need and where else are they going to connect.
(https://www.newcalvinist.com/albert-mohler-and-hip-hop-culture/)
Clearly to Mohler, calvinism is the only good option available out there! All we non-calvinist Christians are either truly lesser Christians or not Christians at all. According to calvinists, they (the calvinists) are the only true Christians. Others are either not (yet?) saved, or greatly deluded in their understanding of the truth! To the evangelical calvinist, the non-calvinist Christian is their mission field. If you claim to be Christian but are not calvinist, then their task is to preach the “true” gospel of calvinism to you in the hope that you might yet be truly saved. After all, one of the catch-cries of the calvinist is that “calvinism is the gospel”!
Christians see the lost world as their mission field; calvinists see non-calvinist “non-regenerate” “Christians” attending churches as their mission field! Christians go out into all the world to preach the gospel. Calvinists go into all the churches to preach their gospel! When I asked a calvinist why he bothered with the great commission of Matthew 28:19-20, he answered that he was commanded to do so, and could come up with no other logical reason other than he was commanded to do so! Christians believe the lost are to be found in the world; calvinists believe that the lost whom God has chosen for salvation will be found in the church.
Calvin taught that there was no salvation to be found outside the walls of the mother church; you couldn’t be saved unless God had firstly brought you to the church through his regeneration (Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion Bk IV, Chap I, Part 4). The first sign to a calvinist that you have been regenerated by God is that you will be drawn to the church for salvation. They teach that the non-elect are totally unable to seek after God and thus should not be found in church. (Although Calvin did teach that God could give you a lesser, non-saving temporary faith as an inferior operation of the Spirit – Institutes, Book III, Chapter 2, Part 11. No doubt Calvin was plagued by the knowledge that there were people that he called “lost” still attending church. He was forced to declare them lost, yet given a temporary faith by God to make them look and act like the elect but only for a season. Such people with a temporary faith were never of the elect and would never go to heaven. Read more here The living-dead calvinist zombies – as taught by Calvin)
Therefore, if the calvinist is put on the spot, and forced to declare what their religion actually teaches, they are forced to admit that only the regenerated calvinist may be declared saved; and all non-regenerate Christians cannot be saved until (and if) the calvinist God declares them his elect. If a Christian denies such calvinist teachings, then he must be assumed to be lost and heading for hell. Your testimony of salvation at the cross of Jesus is of no value to the calvinist who says you should have been regenerated first before you could claim Christ’s salvation. To them you are still lost until you accept the “truth” of regeneration as necessary for salvation.
It is true that calvinism teaches that only calvinists may truly be saved. They may deny this as much as they can, but they still have to admit that unless you are regenerated (born again as a calvinist), you cannot have faith to believe in Christ and therefore can never be saved. Regeneration comes before faith; so to the calvinist, without regeneration you cannot be saved, cannot be a Christian, cannot go to heaven, cannot have eternal life. As calvinist Todd Friel says, “People who ask Jesus into their hearts are not saved and they will perish on the Day of Judgment. How tragic that millions of people think they are right with God when they are not. How many people who will cry out, “Lord, Lord” on judgment day will be “Christians” who asked Jesus into their hearts?”
(Ten Reasons To Not Ask Jesus Into Your Heart, by Todd Friel)
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You have not addressed most of the questions I put to you, and those you have addressed, you have quoted the same old rhetoric that calvinists in general are forced to quote for fear their heresies might be revealed. I have given up hope of getting some real answers for a change. Instead you appear to be trying to convert me (without success) to that doctrine of devils commonly labelled calvinism. The one thing you have demonstrated that is abundantly clear is that the calvinist gospel is not the same as the non-calvinist gospel. They are literally incompatible. The Bible says that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved, and the calvinist gospel says the opposite.
Note what Todd Friel says about the traditional gospel: “People who ask Jesus into their hearts are not saved and they will perish on the Day of Judgment.“ (“Ten reasons NOT to ask Jesus into your heart” – Friel) This is dangerous ground, for what Friel is really saying is that unless God chooses to save you, you aren’t saved. Even if you ask God to save you, you cannot be saved unless God has previously decided that you should be saved.
Therefore, if the calvinist gospel is right, then the non-calvinist gospel is wrong, or, if the non-calvinist gospel is right, then the calvinist gospel is wrong. One denies the other; that’s why we have had such arguments. You have defended your calvinist gospel at the expense of the non-calvinist gospel. If you are right, then (according to calvinist Friel), I am lost in my sins. And, if my non-calvinist gospel is Biblical, then you are lost in your sins. Either one or the other of us is lost because we both cannot be right here. Whichever of us is right will label the other’s doctrines as heresy!
So I will just define why you are wrong, and leave you with that. If you choose (by your free will, no doubt) to reject my statements, then so be it. I will continue to believe what I believe and you have the option of believing what you wish to believe. However, if the Bible is right, then you are clearly wrong, for your gospel can have a person saved with eternal life before a person comes to Christ to be saved and receive eternal life (something very clearly attested to by Spurgeon).
I will not pay any attention to all the extra waffle that you have added this time as a smoke screen to the fact that you don’t have any real answers anyway. Over a year ago (January 2017) I demonstrated to you that MacArthur had misquoted the Granville Sharp rule in a futile effort to somehow demonstrate that Acts 2:23 “proved” that God’s determinate counsel and His foreknowledge mean the same thing. I gave much evidence to support what I said. Yet, despite not being able to refute any of my document at all, you chose to believe that MacArthur couldn’t be wrong. You did, however, state a major problem for calvinists: that they are willing to interpret the Bible such that it suits the point they are trying to get across. Calvinists are very good at reinterpreting the Bible to suit the point they are trying to get across! ) Note that the false teachers of 2 Peter 2:3 use “feigned words” to get their point across. “feigned” is the Greek term plastos = carefully moulded or sculpted. Thus, “carefully sculpted words”!
You said (and I quote): “I’m thinking perhaps the rule itself can be interpreted in a way to suit one’s belief in whatever point one is trying to get across. There is one thing I am certain of and I have no reason to think otherwise and that is that I see no evidence that Macarthur would purposely mis-interpret anything to make his point.“
And why would MacArthur be right and therefore I must be wrong? You also said: “the only criticism seems to come from free will believing Christians“
So I am wrong simply because I do not believe in calvinism? This is illogical.
This does not seem to be a very good defence of something that is so critical to the calvinist cause: that foreknowledge must be proven to be other than God’s perfect knowledge of the future. For if MacArthur is indeed wrong (which he is without a doubt), then he has literally demonstrated by such efforts that it is absolutely necessary for him to prove this point. (Clearly MacArthur has “to suit one’s belief in whatever point one is trying to get across“?) Thus, if he cannot prove it, then he must accept that he is wrong. Therefore, by MacArthur’s lack of proper support for his assertions, he has demonstrated a concern that foreknowledge does not mean determinate counsel. Why has he felt to need for the carefully sculpted words?
You were unable to prove me wrong then, and have done nothing to change that state of affairs! MacArthur is wrong on this issue until someone can demonstrate that he is right. And therefore, so are all calvinists wrong who take the same method to “prove” that which cannot be proven! (Because they interpret the Bible “to suit one’s belief in whatever point one is trying to get across” perhaps?)
You have yet to prove that God’s foreknowledge in 1 Peter 1:2 is anything other than God’s perfect knowledge of the future. Your words indicate that you are still obsessed with MacArthur’s teachings on this matter. (Is he still trying “to suit one’s belief in whatever point one is trying to get across“?) I have already demonstrated in other documents that God’s foreknowledge (prognosis) is His perfect knowledge of the future, but I won’t bore you with material you probably won’t read anyway, so I’d be wasting my time. You have not been able to disprove that God’s foreknowledge here is simply His perfect knowledge of the future. Your “explanation” is totally dependent upon man not having any free-will which you also haven’t been able to prove otherwise (more on this later). If man has free will, then God’s foreknowledge is to determine such future decisions (such as those that He has not foreordained). Much as calvinists would love the Bible to say what they teach, it must be a great disappointment to those calvinists who realise that it doesn’t say anything of the sort. Just try disproving that God’s foreknowledge is His perfect knowledge of the future! You said that foreknowledge “does not refer to awareness of what is going to happen“ and yet the Greek word for foreknowledge, prognosis, means exactly that, its first use being by Hippocrates in his medical treatises about 400 BC. The word prognosis was used to describe what a doctor does when he determines what your future health might be, that is, he is referring “to (an) awareness of what is going to happen“ to you medically – please check this out.
(By the way, when a doctor gives a prognosis on your future health, what is he doing? Remember that Luke was a physician and used prognosis (Acts 2:23) as a medical man, having studied Hippocrates as a major part of his medical training.)
Romans 3 does not prove man’s inability to seek after God; it merely demonstrates his total lack of desire to seek after God. Prove me wrong using logic this time!
And you say that I don’t understand because I misunderstand the theology of the calvinists? How does this in any way determine the rightness of one side over the other? How can you be right because I allegedly don’t understand you? This is totally illogical! (Although I consider that I have more understanding of calvinism that most calvinists do. I have read much of their works, including Calvin and MacArthur etc, and have found so many inconsistencies that many calvinists refuse to believe exist, even when they are written in print! Try researching Calvin’s teaching on temporary faith which he termed an inferior operation of the Spirit! Read more on this at The living-dead calvinist zombies – as taught by Calvin.) And, note carefully, I was brought up a good elect calvinist until I was 19 when I was saved by calling upon the name of the Lord to be saved.
And what about the other questions I raised in my last document? For example, matters of free will brought up in Deuteronomy 30:19 which raises a choice that only man’s free will can answer? What about Isaiah 5:4 where a lack of man’s free will makes the calvinist God either tell lies or not know his own mind, as also in Jeremiah 32:35.
And what about some more of the questions I raised? How do you answer on my statement that John 12:32 and John 6:44 together demonstrate man’s free will because “all” means “all”? (Or else you have to prove that “all” cannot mean all mankind without exception.)
What about John 15:16 where your theology has to admit that Judas was one of the elect chosen to bear fruit?
Matthew 22:14 says “For many are called but few are chosen.” Calvinists have to explain this by claiming that there are two callings of God, effectual and general. Where does the Bible state clearly that there are two callings of God, effectual and general? Or is this just another calvinist “interpretation” or point of view that should never be used to prove a doctrine?
How can Spurgeon teach that a man already has life before he comes to Jesus for life, when John 3:36 says clearly that a man cannot have life until he has the Son of God?
How can Spurgeon have the incompetent gall to make “will not” into “cannot” in John 5:40? It is by such ridiculous word-changing that calvinists are able to interpret the Bible “to suit one’s belief in whatever point one is trying to get across“. For Spurgeon to have presented such a confused message demonstrates that his opponents must have really been getting under his skin annoying him the week before! His message is more indicative of a bad temper than logical reasoning.
You also have yet to demonstrate to me from the Bible alone (Sola Scriptura) that “the whole world” in 1 John 2:2 cannot mean the whole world without exception. For, until you do, you are forced to accept that “the whole world” can, in fact, actually mean “the whole world”! Why do you along with so many calvinists avoid this issue? They tell us (again with their “feigned words“) that “the whole world” only means a limited group of people, but they never prove that it cannot mean the whole world without exception.
In “A portrait of false teachers, Part 2” on 2 Peter 2:1, MacArthur tells us that there are two ways you could view this passage. His “second sense” of understanding here does not in any way demonstrate why his first option cannot be an option at all. He says it could be viewed as a universal provision for the redemption of sinners, so therefore it remains a viable option in his document unless he refutes it, which he doesn’t even try to do! Avoiding the issue does not get rid of his problem here. And this “second sense” is no more than what MacArthur thinks, that is, his opinion, his “feigned words“!
“In what sense did Christ buy these false teachers? Two ways to view it. First of all, you can view it as universal provision for the redemption of sinners, even though they refuse it and are damned.
But I think there is a second sense in which we have to understand this, that they have made an earthly identification with Christ’s redemption so that they claim Him as the one who bought them and they claim Him as their Redeemer, testifying that He indeed has bought them and their word then is taken at face value.”
I have asked many questions, yet have not received any satisfactory answers for any of them. I will not bother myself to waste my time further by writing answers refuting all your other “proofs”, many of which I have already refuted online. (And will continue to write about online.) Your lack of quality in your answers is more than made up for in quantity, a smoke screen tactic that so many calvinists use. For when they cannot answer properly from the Bible, they will all too often just clog the whole system up with irrelevancies that waste the time of those trying to prove the truth to those who just won’t see the truth. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Just one final comment: You said: “I can see that we also agree that even though a man calls out to God for salvation it is God who has the final say, which tells me that mans free will is non existent.“ No, I do not agree, for only the blind leading the blind (who both fall into the ditch) could say that man’s calling upon the name of the Lord proves man’s free will to be non-existent. For where does the Bible say that man’s free will is non-existent because God has the final say? If God has the final say, that strongly implies that this is His response (final say) to man’s response according to his free will (which is to call upon the name of the Lord). Is this merely “to suit one’s belief in whatever point one is trying to get across“?
I do not expect to continue this fruitless conversation in future. May God bless you with an understanding of the truth of the Bible alone (Sola Scriptura)!
PS. If MacArthur is so always right with all his teaching, then why did he teach that you could take the mark of the beast and yet could still be saved? The Bible says clearly otherwise. Is MacArthur actually one of the beast’s followers? The evidence does show that his spiritual harvest (as claimed by him to come from his great grandfather who was a high-level freemason) is actually that of freemasonry. Do some serious research for a change, please.
MacArthur says “Now, the question is, if you’re living in the Tribulation period, and you take this mark, in other words, you identify with the beast’s empire, will you still be able to be redeemed? And I think the answer to that is yes. ……
So I don’t think the fact that someone takes that is a sentence to…to permanency anymore than you being a part of this world system once in your life means you have to be a part of the system all your life.“ (MacArthur, Bible Questions and Answers, Part 11, Selected Scriptures Code: 1301-I https://www.gty.org/library/Print/Sermons/1301-I)
Of course, calvinists have to believe, also, that if they were of the elect, they could only take the mark of the beast if God foreordained that they should do so! Really?
I should just mention though that this website was set up mainly because of the heresies that Living Springs Baptist Church of Rockbank were getting involved with. Thank you, Living Springs, for giving me the incentive to fully investigate the doctrines of calvinism!
If you wish to read further, please try the following links.
List of all my posts on this site.
If you wish to read other documents on the heresies of calvinism, please use this link.
Please feel free to comment Comments and contact page
Comments and replies are recorded on the Comments page.