Debating Calvinism: Five Points, Two Views

by Dave Hunt

Paul said, “We persuade men” (2 Corinthians 5:11). Why, if the elect don’t need persuading, having been predestined to salvation, and the nonelect can’t be persuaded, having been predestined to the lake of fire? The plain text of Scripture is mutilated in order to fit a theory. Luke writes that Paul and Barnabas “so spake, that a great multitude both of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed.” (Acts 14:1). So spake? Isn’t that misleading? Calvinism says that the listeners’ salvation had nothing to do with the apostles’ preaching but with God sovereignly regenerating and giving faith to believe. In hundreds of places the plain words of Scripture must be changed to accommodate a man-made theory.

White says that “man has a will”—it just happens to be enslaved to sin. He adds that “man wills to do what he does.” Yet leading Calvinists say that God “creates the very thoughts and intents of the soul”1; God wills all things that come to pass2; and that [all] events are produced by the will of God.3 That sounds like man’s will is “enslaved” by God! Calvinism won’t allow man to act independently of God’s will, even to sin. In Calvinism, all evil and suffering are exactly what

If I am to preach faith in Christ to a man who is regenerated, then the man, being regenerated, is saved already, and it is an unnecessary and ridiculous thing for me to preach Christ to him.”