Sunday, February 26

Jazzy explains de facto Calvinism

Non-Calvinistic or Arminian Christian theology holds that human free will has the ability to choose salvation. While the Holy Spirit draws a person to salvation, human beings must freely choose Jesus Christ and salvation. What is the ingredient of free will that makes the decision to choose faith in Christ? Is it intelligence, discernment, genetics, a gentle spirit, the heart, the environment, or perhaps a combination of many factors? If a human makes this free choice, then there must be reasons that cause him to make the choice. For the sake of this discussion lets call this reason SP. Human A chooses to have faith in Christ because his SP leads him to have faith in Christ. Human A’s twin Human B does not believe though he has been exposed to everything as Human A. His SP does not lead him to Christ. What is SP and where did it come from?

While we can’t explain what it is exactly, we can trace it to the source. Was it a believing parent or great grandparent that provided the SP for Human A? Where does the road lead for the ingredients that provided the SP? Acts 17:24-28 and many other Scripture verses provide us with the answer. Whatever SP is the road for where it comes from winds back to God. The free will, that allows a person to choose Christ, can be traced back to God; therefore, the SP that is required comes from God. Unless it can be shown that a person can choose his parents, his intelligence, and all the things that Paul speaks of in Acts 17, then free-will salvation comes from God just as surely as pure Calvinism comes from God. Let us give the SP we mentioned a name and call it sovereignty and providence. These are the reasons a person chooses Christ and we can label this thinking de facto Calvinism.

Therefore, we have pure Calvinism which holds that regeneration by the Holy Spirit quickens a spiritually dead person and allows him to freely come to faith in Christ and we have de facto Calvinism in which human free will (which comes exclusively from God) chooses Christ through faith which brings regeneration. In both cases unconditional election is at work. Pure Calvinism is more logical and Biblical, but either way salvation comes from God.

2 comments:

Terry S said...

Okay.

jazzycat said...

Thanks for stoppping by Clyde. One way or another everything comes from our sovereign God.