Answering Objections to Calvinism with (Chris Date)

All right, we are live for another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Elias Ayala, and today

I have a guest with me, Chris Date, who will be helping me answer some objections to Calvinism.

We're going to address the issue of Calvinism and popular objections to it. Chris Date is a great guy.

He knows his stuff, and I'm looking forward to interacting with him a little bit and learning how one might defend the

Reformed faith from common objections. So before we begin that, I just want to make a few announcements.

Nothing set in stone, but I have a couple of upcoming guests. I have

Dr. James Anderson from Reformed Theological Seminary. Hopefully we can solidify the date in March to talk a little bit about transcendental arguments, and I will definitely keep people posted on that as well.

And I also have just secured Sean Cole. If anyone's familiar with Sean Cole, he is a

Reformed pastor. He's debated the likes of Leighton Flowers, and I believe there was an interaction with him and Braxton Hunter over at Trinity Bible College.

And so we have a couple of interesting guests coming up. Sam Shamoon as well, who's also known as the

Assyrian Cyclopedia, where we'll be having him on at a later date to discuss defenses of the

Trinity and responses to Islam. So once those dates are solidified,

I'll definitely be sure to post that on my Facebook page, Revealed Apologetics. But until then, if you just want to listen to the episodes that we've done so far, check out my podcast,

Revealed Apologetics on iTunes, and of course you can subscribe to the YouTube page as well. All right, well, all that out of the way, we have

Chris Date here. Now if those of you who know Chris Date from other areas of theology, he is a very controversial person, especially in regards to his views on hell.

So why don't you share a little bit about what you're doing in that area? We don't have to go into great detail.

But why don't you share with folks a little bit about why you're so controversial in these other areas, yet very interesting topics to discuss.

What's going on there? Yeah, so I'm part of a ministry called Rethinking Hell. I'm also sort of the leading, the spearhead of a movement of evangelicals who've become convinced that the

Bible teaches conditional immortality or annihilationism rather than the traditional view of hell.

And I suppose what's controversial is, well, other than the fact that the view is such a minority of Christian thought on the topic for at least the past 1 ,500 years, but also because I don't fit what a lot of critics of annihilationism or conditionalism think is true of people who hold to our view.

So I'm not liberal, I'm not progressive, I'm not emergent, I'm none of those things.

I'm very conservative, I'm a five -point Calvinist, I believe in the inerrancy of scripture.

And I think that there's nothing more reformed, nothing more conservative, nothing more evangelical that a

Christian can do besides accept what the Bible says about hell, which isn't the traditional view. So, yeah,

I mean, in a nutshell, that's what I do. And so as part of Rethinking Hell, we publish a couple of books,

I publish journal articles, we do an annual conference. In fact, we've got another one coming up, our seventh in November of this year, up in my neck of the woods, up here in the

Seattle area, and if people want to find out more about that, they can go to RethinkingHellConference .com. And I do a weekly

YouTube live stream, Mondays at 6 p .m. Pacific, which people can find at YouTube .com slash

RethinkingHell. So yeah, those kinds of things, that's where my work is in that area.

All right. And again, I know there are a lot of, especially within the Reformed community, at least within the popular echelons of the

Reformed community, people are very quick to condemn others for being associated with others who don't hold to the traditional views.

I am a Reformed Christian, I don't hold to your view on hell, but then again, it's not an area that I have looked into very much.

And so if we're going to be true Reformers, and we're going to hold to the principle of semper reformanda, we need to be willing to reevaluate some of our traditional beliefs and to see them in light of Scripture and be able to defend those positions biblically.

If we find that there are certain views that we've held to for a long time and we're unable to defend biblically, then we should consider that as well.

So just because we don't agree in those areas doesn't mean that there is not any value in anything else you have to say, because you are a bright guy.

And I do appreciate the spirit with which you engage in dialogues and debates and things like that.

And I think there's something there for everyone to learn. Thank you. Well, thank you for coming on.

Now, how long have you been a Calvinist? Why don't you, first of all, why don't you define for us your definition of a

Calvinist and then explain how long you've been a Calvinist and maybe tell us a little bit about your backstory. Yeah.

So when I hear and use the word Calvinist, I think of somebody who affirms at least four out of the five so -called points of Calvinism, you know, so those who self -identify as four point

Calvinists would affirm total depravity, unconditional election, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints, the tulip of tulip.

And then those of us who are consistent Calvinists would say that we would affirm the

L as well, the limited atonement, which is a bit of an unfortunate way of phrasing it.

We don't think that Christ's atoning work is limited in any sense of the word. We think it's particular.

We think its scope is restricted to the elect. But anyway, so that's what I mean when

I say I'm a Calvinist, that I affirm all five points. I do think, though, that Calvinists generally, or at least many of us,

I suppose I should say, we affirm many or all of those five points because of a first point that we affirm even before we affirm tulip, which is the sovereignty of God, by which we mean something like meticulous providence of God.

So I don't believe that God simply knows all things that are going to take place in time.

I think that he foreordains every single detail that takes place in time. And I think it's that foreordination of God, that meticulous foreordination of God that makes it even make sense for us to pray that if we're trapped in a ravine after a car crash out in the middle of nowhere, it makes little sense to pray for God to rescue us if we don't believe that he can orchestrate events, myriad minutiae of events, in order to get somebody driving an ambulance to show up, or somebody driving a car to come by and make a phone call to emergency services.

The point being, meticulous providence means we believe that God actually can answer our prayers in ways that I don't think people who deny it cannot.

But anyway, so when I talk about Calvinism, I'm talking about people who affirm those four or five points and preferably even the meticulous providence of God.

Now how did I get to that point? I began my Christian walk when I was 20 or 21 years old, and having been an atheist and being a part of sort of the individualistic, freedom -loving

West, I began my Christian walk as a standard non -Calvinist. And early on in my faith,

I became friends with somebody who would become my discipler and my mentor, my best friend. He remains my best friend to this day.

And he challenged me on Calvinism, and at first I fought it tooth and nail.

It wasn't that it sounded unjust to me or anything, like I just can't relate to some of the arguments that we're probably going to be discussing today.

But one thing that really did irk me and infuriate me was the notion that God might have chosen to save me, but not have chosen to save my wife.

My wife and I, by this point, had been married a few years. I was a Christian. She was not yet, because we'd been married as atheists.

And I was like, how dare God choose me and not my wife? I was really upset about it.

But at some point, so he challenged me from the biblical data, and I had no good response.

But I still fought it until the thought occurred to me that there's nobody

I would rather my wife's eternal destiny, no one whose hands I would rather my wife's eternal destiny be in than God's.

I would much rather God be the one who ultimately determines whether my wife will be saved rather than her. Because if it were up to us,

I think none of us would choose to be saved, and I include my wife in that list. So when

I was able then to see not only how the biblical data supported this view, but also how much more confidence it meant

I could have in whether or not my wife would be saved and whether that would be appropriate, et cetera, when

I realized that, I stopped fighting tooth and nail, and I embraced it, and I've been a

Calvinist ever since. In fact, I've even published a two -views debate book on two parts of Calvinism, the meticulous providence and unconditional election.

And it's funny, incidentally, that you mentioned Sam Schmoon, because I cite him in my debate book.

Oh, actually, sorry, that's a different debate book. That's a debate book I've got coming out with Dale Tuggy, a Unitarian. But anyway,

I'm rambling now. Hopefully that answers your question in a roundabout sort of way. Well, no, no, that's good.

And I think it's very important for people to understand people's backstories, because people don't just come to beliefs just willy -nilly.

I mean, you do have people who will affirm a theological position because it is popular, or they are associated with a particular denomination that they want to make sure they're in line with, maybe because of leadership positions and things like that.

And so I think it's very helpful to see what is the background story as to what brings people to the things they believe.

And of course, no doubt, you have a vast array of biblical support as to why you hold to the positions that you do.

We have Tyler Vela asking you a question, if you don't mind. He says, Eli, how can Chris affirm the man -made theology of a murderer, hashtag

Cervetus? That's just a fun poke at Chris. I hope you don't mind that. No. And you don't have to answer that either.

No worries there. I was just going to say, all of us believe something that really terrible people from history or people who've made terrible decisions in history have done.

So I'm really no different than anybody else in that regard. Boom. Take that, Tyler. All right. Very good.

All right. Well, you laid out basically what Calvinism is. Just by way of vocabulary and definitions, there are a lot of people who make a big deal out of the equivocation between Calvinism and Reformed theology.

And there's a broad stroke of what is included within Reformed tradition.

And so when people equate Calvinism with Reformed theology, you have these other groups within the umbrella of Reformed saying, hey, wait a minute, that's not fair.

You could be Reformed and not a Calvinist. Would you equate Reformed theology with Calvinism or do you make certain distinctions that it includes a broader tradition there?

I think historically I've thought that all people who identify as Reformed are in fact Calvinists, but I think

I'm learning that that's not the case. And I just don't know enough about the other streams within Reformed theology to be able to speak in an informed way to those distinctions.

But yeah, I think I've become convinced that you can't just simply equate the two. Calvinists are a subset evidently of people who hold the

Reformed theology. And I suppose it's even possible that there might be Calvinists who don't affirm Reformed theology, although I don't know who that would be.

Okay, very good. All right. Well, so then let's just jump into the bulk of what I wanted to talk about. I mean, I've entitled this interview, this kind of video,

Answering Objections to Calvinism. And so really, this is geared towards the average

Calvinist. I'm going to be careful. I don't want to say Reformed guy, you know, this is geared towards them.

And I know there are a lot of attacks upon Calvinism where many Calvinists are just at a loss.

They're not sure how to respond to many of these objections. And so I want to go through some popular objections more specifically.

But in your opinion, at least in the popular level, what do you think is the most common objection you hear to Calvinism?

And then how might you kind of provide a response there? Yeah, I think the most common objections that I hear to Calvinism is the notion that in our view, human beings are somehow like puppets or robots or something like that, that we somehow we don't have any meaningful freedom or moral responsibility if God foreordains all that takes place in time, or even if he just predestines who's going to believe.

And how you would respond to that? I mean, so there are a couple of things here that I think are worth noting.

First of all, when non -Calvinists compare human beings to puppets or to robots, in our view, they're first of all using analogies that flatten out the reality of things.

And here's what I mean by that. In our view, God isn't on the same plane as us.

He's not in the same stream of time. He's not just one in a long chain of causes and effects.

He transcends us. You know, the relationship I've often compared God and creation to is the relationship between an author and his novel.

You know, the entire story inside an author's novel is right there in the hands of the author.

It's not like the author is in the timeline of the story and the author has written the story.

And the author is not in some sort of cause and effect type chain causing the characters in the story to do what they do.

He's foreordaining, if you will, that the characters in the story do exactly what they do. But if you were to ask that character, why did you do this or that?

They're going to tell you, well, because I wanted to, you know, that was what I wanted to do or that was the decision I thought was the best, given all the all the factors involved.

They wouldn't they wouldn't say, I just I felt this inexplicable pull, you know, that caused me to do this or that.

You know, that's not that's not the relationship between God and creation. So so I think the problem with the analogies is that it takes this this reality in which

God is transcendent and human beings are imminent. And these objections flatten that relationship and make

God just another actor in time. Once you get rid of this really facile objection or view that, in our view, people are just like puppets and robots whose movements are being caused by this chain of cause and effect in which

God is a player. Once you move past that, I think much of the objection vanishes, especially if you consider that human beings, unlike robots and puppets, also have consciousness and will.

And, you know, you may not we wouldn't say it's a libertarian will, but we would say that they're fundamentally different from puppets and robots in important ways.

So, yeah, that would be the the most common objection I've heard is how can we how can you say we're anything more than puppets or robots?

And the way that I just answered that is how I would say it. Now, now, when people hear Calvinism, they usually have this knee jerk reaction.

And this question is then produced, oh, aren't you those guys who deny that we have free will? All right.

So so let's clarify this. When someone asks you as a Calvinist, do you believe in free will?

How do you answer that? I say yes, but I believe in a particular kind of free will or formulation of free will.

You know that what most people, I think when they use the phrase free will, they mean even if they don't haven't heard of this terminology, they mean libertarian free will, meaning they at any point in history, when they chose

X or Y, they metaphysically could have chosen the alternative.

In other words, there was nothing in time right then and there and nothing ultimate, not not

God, not anything that determined it perfectly and on, you know, unreservedly.

Anyway, nothing that determines that they would choose this or that thing. They genuinely could have chosen this or that thing.

And it's just a matter of which they choose. But the form of free will that I believe in and that I suspect you believe in as well is what we call compatible, compatibilistic free will, which is the notion that humans have a kind of freedom.

It's a kind of freedom with which we are imbued by God. But it's a freedom that is at the same time compatible with divine sovereignty, with divine providence.

But even that's really not where we get the word compatibilism from. The word comes from the compatibility we think there is between that divine sovereignty that I just mentioned, that meticulous foreordination of God and human responsibility.

So then the question becomes, well, how could those two things be compatible? How could somebody be truly morally responsible if God has foreordained that a person will do

X or Y and there's simply no metaphysical chance that the person could have done the other?

And that's where I think the emphasis is on. This is what we as creatures want to do.

You know, the common objection to this kind of free will is that people are being coerced or forced or something like that to do this or that thing.

But any, I suspect that on the final day, if you and if we are right, if you ask anybody why they rejected

Christ, why they killed this person, why they cheated on their spouse or whatever, they're going to tell you, well, that's what

I wanted to do or that was what I felt was the right thing to do given this or that circumstance. So I think that all it takes for a human to be free in the sense that enables them to be held morally responsible is they need to want to do what they do or they need to come to the conclusion that it's the best of all possible things that they could do.

And that doesn't that is perfectly compatible with the idea that God foreordained it in the same way that going back to my analogy of the author in a story, if the author writes that some protagonist or some antagonist in his novel is going to murder somebody, yes, the murderer does it in a sense because the author has written it.

But the author isn't coercing the character or causing the character to do this or that as some sort of chain event of cause and event, like I said.

So so I guess I think we have free will, but I think it's creaturely free will. It's it's the only the only one who has the kind of free will that I think most people have in mind when they talk about the word is

God. So, yeah. So now, OK, so people do what they desire to do.

So I guess the pushback would be, well, why does one person desire to do what they do and another person desire to do what they want to do?

Doesn't God on Calvinism create the desire, so to speak, the desire, the reason why they desire what they want to desire is because of God, ultimately.

That's the ultimate cause of it, sure. Right. So how would you respond to someone who suggests that with, you know, and in that suggestion, there's the indication that God is somehow at fault as to why you desire to do what you do and act upon those desires, if that makes sense?

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess I just don't see the objection. What I mean is

I don't see any teeth in it. You know, we could say, well, gosh, God's just God's causing that that desire.

And so he's at fault or or the person still can't be excused or can be excused because God is the one who's ultimately causing those desires.

But I don't think that's true. You know, even when somebody, you know, when somebody gets drunk, let's say, and and while inebriated, they do something terrible, like run somebody over, that person isn't only morally responsible for the choice to have gotten drunk.

They're also responsible for the choice they made when their decision making had been hindered by having gotten themselves drunk.

So I don't I don't and that's obviously an imperfect analogy. But my point is, is that we're not I don't think that our ultimate the ultimate source of our desires has to be our own personal free, libertarian free will in order for us to be held morally responsible.

I think that, you know, going back to my analogy, if an antagonist, if a serial killer in a book is tried, you know, in a trial, nobody's going to say, oh, well, that that person should get off the hook because the author just made that made him do it.

Right. That's why I keep referring to this relationship, this transcendent relationship between God and creation, because I think that it nullifies a lot of these objections.

And as far as does it does it does it put the blame on God in some sort of sense that would make us question

God's goodness or God's culpability? And here I would say that, number one, we have biblical evidence that this is, in fact, the way things work, you know, in the book of Genesis, for example, when

Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers, he tells them, you what you did for evil or the evil you meant for me,

God did it for good. God meant it for good. You know, and the same exact verb meant or intended or for ordained.

In fact, everywhere that throughout the Old Testament that this word translated evil or calamity or whatever is used in conjunction with this verb meaning to intend or to mean or whatever, the verb means something like design, devise, that kind of thing.

And here we have one example among many, I would argue, where God where it is both the human beings who intend evil and God who intends that evil, both the human beings who devise that evil and God who does it.

So, number one, we have to wrestle and reckon with the fact that God does, in fact, for ordain evil desires in this way.

But secondly, I would say that often what determines whether an act is righteous or not is the motives behind the act.

And I think the one that I just offered from the book of Genesis is a good example. Both the humans and God are designing, devising, intending, whatever this evil calamity to befall

Joseph. But what is the difference? Well, the text says that the difference is that God's intentions behind it were good.

And I think that if we were to say that if a human being were to cause somebody's desires to be this or that, there's going to be sinful, selfish intentions wrapped up in that.

But if it's God who's doing it, I think that the motives may indeed be pure and don't in any way make

God culpable. So going back to my analogy of the author and a story, I'm a big believer that a big reason why

God foreordains evil is so that we can emulate aspects of God's character that we simply could not emulate if it hadn't been for the reality of evil and sin.

If it hadn't been for the reality of evil and sin, nobody could show mercy. Nobody could show grace or forgiveness.

You know, if there weren't suffering and evil in the world, then there would be no opportunity to be like God in these ways, to act like God in these ways.

And so I think that God has told a profound story in which there is evil and sin and fall and redemption and forgiveness and grace.

He's told this story, and just like any compelling story, there's fall and there's redemption.

And God has written a story in that way so that we as creatures can act out certain characteristics of God that we wouldn't have been able to had we not had sin and evil in the world.

So you would say that God sinlessly preordains all the evil that occurs. That's right. Along with preordaining sinlessly everything that occurs.

That's right. Exactly. And so that the fact that God has preordained all things is what gives the things that are actually preordained meaning and purpose such that there is no gratuitous event, good or bad.

They're just not, you know, there's always a purpose and a reasoning behind why these things occur. Okay.

In fact, I write about just that in my debate book. I opened my opening statement in that debate book with the story of my wife's and my miscarriage.

You know, what got us through that, our miscarriage, our most recent one, anyway, we had one before we were believers too, but what got us through it was our trust that there was meaning and there was purpose in this terrible calamity that was befalling us, which we couldn't have done if we didn't believe in Calvinism and meticulous providence.

And as it turns out, we got a peek at what that purpose eventually proved to be because several years later, my wife and I tell the story in the book, my wife was in Scotland on a trip and she was on a train with her friend and they met this other couple there and they got to know them.

And they found out over the course of their time for several days with this other couple that they had just lost their, miscarried their first pregnancy the day before they left for this trip to Scotland.

And their trip was, they were sad, they were depressed, obviously grieving. And yet my wife was able to minister to this other woman and her husband because she had lost children.

She had lost, she had miscarried, we both had miscarried. And so she was able to bring, she was able to help this other person to experience some level of enjoyment of this trip with her husband that had been planned despite the fact they just lost their child.

So I would say that, yeah, exactly. The only way we can see meaning and purpose in evil is if we affirm this view of God.

And I think it's a much better view than if we just say God, even though he could have stopped this or that gratuitous evil, he lets it happen anyway for what

Armenians will typically say is this grander purpose of giving human beings libertarian free agency, right?

They'll say that the greater good that God, that motivates God to allow gratuitous evil to happen is libertarian freedom.

But I think few of us are going to find that very consoling in the midst of pain and suffering and grieving.

On the other hand, if we believe that that pain and that grieving and that suffering is inherently purposeful because God has foreordained it, that's a much more comforting and consoling view.

Right. All right. And what I enjoy about that answer, and I suppose critics of reform theology or Calvinism would probably have problems with, and I'm thinking someone like Leighton Flowers, great guy, but he is never shy to share his dislike for Calvinism as a system, although admittedly he does like Calvinists.

There is a very strong pastoral aspect to all of this. On the one hand, we can talk very abstractly and very philosophical and theologically about these issues.

But when you boil down to kind of the real life, you know, rubber hits the road situation, these things have profound indications for us at a personal level.

And I think that's a very important thing to keep in mind. And that's why I appreciate you giving the backstory, because you've connected your theology with kind of the dirt of life, you know, and I think that's a very helpful thing to keep in mind.

All right. Now, before I get to my next question, would you be okay with answering some questions in the comments here?

Okay. All right. So let's start up at the top here. So Tyler mentioned here, he says, a tough question, a good tough question,

I think posed against our view, Tyler's a Calvinist as well, is that if Christ accomplished atonement on the cross, does that mean we are saved from the cross or saved at conversion?

So I think it's this issue of when are we saved? Are we saved when Christ died on the cross or are we saved when we believe?

Yeah, well, I mean, I take at face value the biblical texts that say that we are saved by grace through faith.

We are not, salvation isn't experienced subjectively at the very least until we experience saving faith.

And by the way, that's part of the reason, not the only reason, but it's part of the reason why I'm not one of these Calvinists who think that infants and the unevangelized and things like that are saved.

I think that salvation comes by grace through faith. And so, you know, and so I've told people,

I know this is going to sound really hard or cold hearted, but I don't expect to see my miscarried children in eternity because they didn't express saving faith.

But anyway, putting that aside, so number one, I take at face value the texts that say we're saved by grace through faith, not saved by grace, by atonement, and then we believe in it.

And so then the question becomes, well, then what is the relationship between the atonement and the salvation?

And I think number one, we can say that the atonement is what, the atonement is the grounds by which we are saved by grace through faith.

It's in other words, it's because Christ has taken our place and suffered what we deserve or suffered what was coming to us as a result of our sin.

And because of that, we can therefore be declared innocent. He having borne the punishment or the fate that we suffered or that we deserved in our place.

And number two, I think we can say that it's the fact that Christ died for the elect that guarantees that God will bring about the conversion of that elect.

And so it's by virtue of what Christ did on the cross for me, that the Holy Spirit then regenerated of me, admittedly, many thousand, you know, a couple thousand years after the atonement was done.

But nevertheless, it was on the basis of that atonement that I was converted by the Holy Spirit, and it's the basis upon which having been converted,

I am subsequently saved. So I think it's just the difference between, you know, what it is that, what it is, what is grounded by the work of Christ on the cross and when that which it grounds is applied, if that distinction helps.

Sure. Now, you did say something that was very quick and very perhaps shocking for people, and we won't concentrate on it because that's not the goal here.

But just to give a heads up, you did mention your particular belief in regards to infants, and that is a topic that is debated.

I do not hold to that view, but I would clarify that is your perspective, and you,

I'm sure, would be willing to defend that. And that's a different discussion and debate for another day. So I just wanted to throw that out there for people who might have like, well, is that what?

Wait a second. I just wanted to throw that caveat. All right. We have another question here. Let me see if I can pop this up here.

There we go. Does God choose us arbitrarily? Now, I guess he's speaking in regards to election, the idea of predestination and election

God chooses from before the foundation of the world. Does God choose us arbitrarily like pulling names out of a hat?

Well, the answer is no. And despite the fact that the answer to that question is no, people like Layton Flowers constantly throw this objection around that somehow our view makes

God arbitrary. I love Layton, and I don't mean any insult by it, but he's been refuted on this before, and yet I think he keeps pulling it out.

And this is the reason why Layton feels justified throwing around the word arbitrary.

It's because he thinks that one legitimate common use of the word arbitrary by people is no evident reason.

That simply if you don't know what the reason for a choice might happen to be, if you see somebody make a choice and you just don't know what the reason could possibly be, that means it was arbitrary.

And of course, we would say that in many cases, we don't know for what reason, or in all cases, we don't know for what reason

God has chosen this or that elect person over this or that non -elect person. And so Layton feels justified, therefore, in saying that, yes, in our view,

God's choice to save the elect is arbitrary. But I don't think that's a legitimate definition of the word arbitrary.

Arbitrary doesn't just mean that there's no discernible reason. It means that there's no reason, right?

It's just drawing names out of a hat or flipping a coin or just eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

But we don't believe that that's how God works. God's reason for choosing this or that elect person isn't based on something about or some quality of this or that person or what it is that they'll do.

That's what we believe, that God's choice to save a person has absolutely nothing to do with who that person is, what that person's character is, what that person has done or might do or will do or anything like that.

God's the basis upon which God makes his choice of whom to save is entirely in himself and in his own will, in his own purposes, in his own desires.

And we often, if not always, cannot discern what that is.

But that doesn't make it arbitrary. Now, there's one other thing that I'll just say, and this is something I've been meaning to develop into something like a paper, hopefully one day.

But there's another reason why arbitrary isn't a good word to describe this choosing. And that's because arbitrary is typically a word that we use to describe when we just pick a certain subset of a preexistent number of things.

So you've got a bunch of objects on a table.

They're already there in front of you. You push some of them left and some of them to the right and your choice of which one's going to go on which side is arbitrary.

But I don't think that we would say, as Calvinists, that God takes a, he creates humanity and then having created humanity, he then chooses some subset of humanity to be his elect.

No, that's definitely not the view that we see in, for example, Romans 9 to 11, where the analogy is more like God's very creation of the elect is the act of creating them for a purpose.

And so now, so let's go back to my attempt at an analogy. And Leighton always, we

Calvinists often give Leighton flack for using analogies. I try not to because I use analogies too.

I just like to base my analogies on scripture. But, you know.

A gentle jab, a gentle jab, if he ever sees this. Exactly. But, you know, so take, for example, you've got a lump of dough and out of that lump of dough, you pull off one piece of dough and you form a bowl into which people are going to urinate and defecate in their bathroom, right?

And this is kind of the analogy that Paul uses in Romans 9 to 11, right? But another part of that, another, he takes out another lump of clay, a lump of dough out of, or another piece of dough out of it and forms it into some object for righteous purposes.

Maybe one of the utensils that the priests would use in the temple during their sacramental work.

Well, God hasn't arbitrarily chosen to take one object and make it useful in the sacraments, well, the priestly sacraments, and another object and use it as a human waste bucket in the back corner of somebody's room.

No, in the very process of tearing pieces of dough off the larger lump, he's crafting them into those purposes.

And then I don't think arbitrary even really applies to begin with. He's not choosing from among pre -existing things.

He's creating things with the purpose of this or that, you know, final purpose. So for all of those reasons,

I think that the arbitrariness objection just does not hold up under scrutiny. Okay. One more question, and then we'll move on to my original line of questioning.

We have a question here. Did God create the majority of people for the sole purpose of sending them to hell?

That's a common one when you think in terms of how people popularly understand or commonly understand predestination and people like, well, what's the point or what's the purpose of this person being created if God, you know, or doesn't ordain them to eternal life?

Right. Yeah, this is a common objection and it's a really foolish one. And I'm just being, I'm just being honest.

Qualification. The person who sent the question says, this is a question my Armenian friend asked, not mine.

No, no, but it is a foolish question because, and the reason is because whenever has a

Calvinist said that the only purpose for which God creates somebody is their final destination?

No Calvinist has said that, that the, you know, that the entire span of human history up until the judgment is meaningless in God's eyes.

And the only real thing that has any purpose is where they end up going. That would be the, that would be the assumption that one would have to have in order to ask could or to object on the grounds that God somehow created millions of people only in order so that they would go to hell and there be destroyed, not given immortality and live forever in torment.

We need to have the conversation sometime, Eli. But no, no, we would say that God has purpose in every moment of every person's life that he creates something, you know, and it's their purpose in many cases, maybe so that they can, as God's divine image bearers experience the many of the good things that God gives to all his creatures in life, including life and breath and everything

Paul says at the periopagus, their purpose can include being a part of the process by which

God reveals his character to the elect, the process by which the elect are given the opportunity to exercise some of those divine qualities

I mentioned earlier, mercy, grace, forgiveness, things like that. There's, there's a whole host. I mean, I just,

I just gave the example of how my wife's miscarriage had a purpose in that she was able to console this other

Christian couple that was going through a similar issue. Even if my, even if our miscarried child does end up going to hell and destroyed there, it doesn't mean that his or her, well actually

I know it was a boy, that his going to hell was the sole purpose of his having been created. No, he had this other purpose in time as well.

So yeah, I would just encourage people who object on this, for this reason, this idea that the sole purpose that God created the wicked is to send them to hell.

I would just encourage them to, to realize that there's much more to human history and human purpose than just what happens at the end.

Okay. All right. Thank you for that. All right. So let me get back to my main line of questioning, common objections, and those are good questions and each answer that you've given, there could obviously be more in depth look into those issues.

And sometimes an answer to a question will produce more questions, which unfortunately you're not going to get the answers to all of them because question after question, if the question we'd have to be omniscient because we'll keep asking.

So be that as it may, those who are continuing to ask questions, keep them coming. And hopefully at some point we can get to some of them and, and hopefully they,

Chris can provide a satisfying answer to, to those questions. Probably not, but I'll try. Yeah, that's right.

All right. So getting back to this idea of Calvinism and in terms of definitions, I think a lot of people sometimes think of Calvinism as being equivalent to determinism or equivalent to some metaphysical explanation as to how those things work together.

What do you think if you think there the problem is with equating Calvinism, the theology with determinism as it relates to a specific metaphysical account as to how all of these issues relate to each other.

God, sovereignty, human freedom. Does the Calvinist, is the Calvinist committed when he says

I'm a Calvinist, is he committed to a specific metaphysical account as to how sovereignty and freedom fit together?

No, definitely not. I do think more Calvinists should be willing to just simply accept the reality that they are determinists.

You know, there are a lot of Calvinists or at least Calvinists who affirm meticulous divine providence like I do.

There are a lot of them who would shy away from the word determinism, but I don't think they should do so.

I think they should just bite the bullet and accept the reality that they're determinists. The question is not whether we're determinists. The question is what kind of determinists we are.

There's, you know, philosophers who work in the realm of determinism, they distinguish between different kinds of determinism.

The one that is very often discussed simply because it would be, it's the only kind that atheistic and secular philosophers can conceive of is materialistic determinism or mechanistic determinism.

It's the idea that everything that takes place in time is the inevitable result of a chain of causes and effects that goes back to the very moment of the

Big Bang, right? So in this account of things, whatever

I do at any given point in time was invariably determined by what happened in my brain immediately moments, you know, in milliseconds prior to that, and that is the inevitable effect of the cause of my eyes transmitting signals to my brain based on the light that came into the eyes and so forth.

So we've got this series of causes and effects stretching backward in time. That's a secular, atheistic, materialistic account of determinism, and we certainly don't believe that.

But we do think, those of us who embrace divine, meticulous divine providence, do think that God determines every single thing that takes place in time, but the means by which he brings about whatever he has foreordained is something that we very often have no idea of.

We don't have any access to what that might have been. So in some cases, God will use cause and effect,

I think, to bring about what he has foreordained, but in other cases, he'll use divine intervention, right?

He'll step in and give the Pharaoh a dream so that he doesn't take

Abram's wife, right? God will step in time to intervene and bring about what he has foreordained, and in other cases, he'll use what, you know, in order to bring about these scriptures, for example.

Peter, I think it is, describes God's Holy Spirit as sort of sweeping up the authors of scripture and moving in them to write what they write.

The exact, you know, metaphysics behind that, the exact mechanism by which God does that is not clear to us, but it's definitely something more than mere cause and effect, right?

And on and on we could go. So I think that, yes, as Calvinists who believe in meticulous providence, we should embrace the label determinism, but we believe in theological or divine determinism, not materialistic or mechanistic determinism.

And I think that makes a big difference. Here's one example. Our friend, or my friend, I don't know if you know him personally, but Justin Brierley, the host of Unbelievable, he recently had a debate in which he argued against atheism on the grounds of libertarian free will.

He said that, he said that if you don't have, if your thoughts are just the results of cause and effect stretching backward in time, then you have no reason for thinking that your thoughts are logical, you know, that they're rational or that your conclusions are legitimate.

And the reason is because there's no logic, no rationality being exercised in this chain of causes and effects, right?

But if God is the one who determines what takes place, and if he uses a variety of means, very often means that we don't know what they are, then the quintessential logical mind is the one who's bringing about the processes of thinking in our minds.

And so, yes, our thoughts are still determined in that sense, but they're not determined in that mechanistic cause and effect way that it is in atheism.

And so our form of determinism escapes that challenge, the challenge from rationality.

So what do you do with someone to say, well, big whoop, that's a lot of vocabulary and a lot of terminology, like what's the difference?

I mean, on a naturalistic, mechanistic, deterministic outlook, I have no more control over my choices than on theological determinism.

God determines, I cannot do otherwise. And so there's no difference. You're just kind of, you know, pulling the wool over my eyes, and so you can support your, you know, your evil doctrine.

You know how the conversation's going. How would you respond to that? Yeah, I mean, I would just respond by saying, look,

I'm not trying to pull a wool over your eyes or play smoke and mirrors games or anything like that. I'm just simply being, trying to be precise.

And the argument against atheism on the grounds that our thought processes cannot be rational if they're just, you know, the invariable effects of a previous chain of causes and effects, that objection, if we're going to be precise, isn't really about what is determined or the fact that it's determined.

It's about the means by which it's determined, right? This chain of causes and effects that I've described through time is mindless.

It's rationality -less, right? It's simply mechanistic physical processes.

And yeah, I think if you say that a decision is the inevitable result of just simply mechanistic, you know, physical processes, yeah, that's irrational.

You can't have any trust that you're exercising rational thought. But again, that's because that's not because it's determined.

It's because of how it's determined. So I'm just trying to be precise. And if in being precise,

I expose a flaw or a weakness of Calvinism, I'm happy to discuss it.

But just simply saying that I'm pulling wool over their eyes or something or playing word games just simply is factually untrue.

I'm just simply focusing like a laser beam, to use the language of Michael Medved, on the actual issue at hand, the actual thing that matters.

And in this particular objection, the issue that matters is not the determinism. It's the means by which the determination is brought about.

Okay. Now, what about the epistemological issue that if I'm determined to believe something, how do

I know if what I'm believing is actually the case, since it may be the case that God has preordained that I would believe this falsehood?

How do we escape that? You know, you have people saying that if determinism is true, you'd have no rational justification to affirm determinism, because our thoughts and every process within the chain of thoughts, they're all determined by God.

So that's something that's commonly brought up. It's that even if it's true, there's no justification for believing it since the entire rational process that brought you to that conclusion was itself determined.

Well, firstly, in our view, unlike the mechanistic form of determinism I described a moment ago, it's a mind, it's a perfectly logical mind that is doing the determining.

But secondly, and more importantly, arguably, even if we are willing to embrace, as I am, and I think you are, that what we believe at any particular point in time is we believe it ultimately because God has foreordained it, that doesn't mean that we don't have reasons that we can point to for why we think this or that thing is true.

And if, you know, if you've got a, let's say that you've got a logical syllogism, you know, premise one, premise two, therefore conclusion.

The conclusion may have been foreordained, and we might discover that we were wrong, but we can still check to see if that conclusion does indeed follow from the premises, and whether the premises do in fact reflect reality.

So it's important to, again, to be precise, to distinguish between the thing that is determined, which is the choice, and the basis in time upon which we make that choice, which can indeed be checked for, to make sure that it's logically valid.

We might, certainly it's possible that God has foreordained us to misevaluate, to incorrectly evaluate the premises and conclusions.

But we can check to see if that's the case. Other people can look at the thinking we've done, and see if those premises do in fact lead to the conclusion that are true.

And so no, I don't think the objection holds up. All right, very good. So let's kind of narrow in on issues relating to soteriology specifically.

So we kind of talked broadly about the metaphysics of Calvinism, or some options that people have in regards to how to understand the metaphysics of Calvinism.

By the way, side note, do you know where the word metaphysics comes from? Beyond physics?

Yeah, that's right. I don't remember if it was... I passed, okay. Yeah, I don't remember if it was Plato or Aristotle or one of those philosophers.

But literally, metaphysics came after physics in the library, right?

On a shelf, you would first have these studies on physics or whatever, then you'd have what comes after physics, which would be the metaphysics.

Anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry, I just thought that was interesting. Okay, but we have been talking about the metaphysics of determinism, and what that entails, and the questions that people pose when those issues come up.

Let's narrow in a little bit more on the issues of soteriology. But before we do that, we're going to take a few more questions, if that's okay, and then we'll move on.

You don't mind me going in and out of the... All right, cool. You're a nice and easygoing type of guy.

All right, so the question here, someone wrote, how does a

Calvinist viewpoint deal with the ideas of occasionalism? The idea that flipping a coin to tell you what to do is a good idea.

Let me actually put this up here, okay? How does a Calvinist viewpoint deal with ideas of occasionalism?

The idea that flipping a coin to tell you what to do is a good idea, as God set up the coin flip.

I'm not sure this person is using occasionalism correctly, as to how I understand occasionalism.

But how do you understand occasionalism, Chris, as you're just reading this question just on its face?

Well, so I'm, first of all, not familiar with the term occasionalism and what it means. So you can come in after me and unpack what you understand that to mean.

But in terms of the question is expressed, that it must be good to let a coin flip determine what you do, because God has set up the coin flip or predetermined whether it would land on heads or tails, whatever.

The problem is that assumes that everything that God foreordains in time is healthy for us, is wise for us, is consistent with His prescribed will.

We Calvinist distinguish, and I think everybody needs to distinguish between at least two kinds of wills of God. There's God's perfect will, that which

He foreordains in time, that which He, you know, when God speaks, it says, let there be light.

Light simply is. There's no prescription there. It's God's perfect will,

His secret will, whatever. And then there's His prescriptive will, the will that, you know, His desire that somebody not sin, you know, because God values holiness and righteousness.

Well, if we are consistent in our Calvinism, we believe that God foreordains not only those actions that conform to His prescribed will, but also those actions that go against His prescribed will,

His revealed will. And in the same way, if God foreordains that flip of the coin, that the coin when it's flipped lands on heads rather than tails, that doesn't necessarily mean that the choice that you've sort of attached to heads falls in line with God's revealed or prescriptive will.

It does align with His perfect or secret will, but not His revealed or prescriptive will.

And so, you know, frankly, I think the apostles may have been doing something a little bit unwise in casting lots, you know, in Acts chapter two,

I think it is, to determine who's going to take Judas's place. Because what the lot often lands on, what the die often lands on, may not in fact be in line with God's prescribed will.

That's how I would answer that question. Okay. Yeah, just real quick as a basic definition of occasionalism as I understand it, it is the doctrine ascribing the connection between mental and bodily events to the continuing intervention of God.

God continually intervenes in everything that we do, such that we really don't have free will in that sense.

For example, some people who hold to a position known as occasionalism say, for example, the ear is not necessarily made for hearing, but on the occasion that sound enters the ear canal,

God then intervenes and communicates knowledge about the world around them and things like that. So it is a particular view of how

God communicates revelation to us on the occasion of, say, the utilization of our senses and things like that.

It's usually related to discussions on empiricism. Does knowledge come through the senses?

Well, people who would reject that knowledge comes through the senses, they'll say, when you touch the table, there is no information being communicated per se, rather God on the occasion of you touching the table will communicate to your mind something that's true about the external world.

So there's a whole, I think Jonathan Edwards held to something similar to that and some others as well.

So that's how I was understanding it. Maybe there's some relation in there. So we've got to be careful how we use our vocabulary terms because they can mean a wide range of things.

All right. So let's, did you have a comment on that, Chris? No. Okay, let's go to one more question and then we'll focus more on the soteriological questions and then we'll wrap things up.

Okay, let's see here. So here's another question. If Leighton Flowers denies the effect of the fall such that people are capable of purely motivated good works apart from any need for a generation or grace, isn't he espousing heterodoxy?

Yeah, I mean, my meager understanding of church history is that the need for grace is indeed defined, declared to be essential to orthodoxy.

I don't know to what extent Leighton's beliefs rejected that need for grace.

Yes, I think that he denies at least certain understandings of original sin.

You know, I think he denies certain, he denies that people are, he denies prevenient grace, for example, that, you know, the

Armenian peanut butter, as James White calls it, where you just spread it on there and boom, you've got a problem solved, just slap prevenient grace on there.

No, he denies that people need a work of grace on the part of the Holy Spirit in order to believe.

But he, I think, would say that the act of, or that the preaching of the gospel is the grace that enables a person to believe in the gospel.

And so somebody more knowledgeable about church history would have to determine whether his belief that the preaching of the gospel is what enables a person to believe fails to qualify under those boundaries of orthodoxy that were set in the ancient church.

Okay. All right. That's, thank you for that. Whoever, I don't remember, I kind of scrolled down who asked the question, but thank you.

It was Mr. Kyle Vins. All right. Yeah. He looks like he has a lot of questions. That's good though. These topics are, they can be challenging and that's fine.

All right. So let's zero in on some soteriological issues. Now, when we think of Calvinism, when a lot of people think of Calvinism, they think of a soteriological system, which

I think is, it's much broader than that. I've heard often people say that Calvinism is a soteriological system, but then there's some other position in which it's just a broader theology.

I think Calvinism is broad in one sense, and it has certain application, which it's most infamous for, right?

The infamous tulip acronym or roses, however, whichever acronym one follows.

But let us take a look at the first point of the five points of Calvinism, which is total depravity.

Can you define for us, what is total depravity and how is it linked together with the idea of total inability?

And can you provide very briefly, again, this is kind of just an introduction sort of thing.

Can you provide for us briefly a biblical support for our definition of total depravity and maybe a verse or two in support of the idea of being of total inability?

Sure. Well, and first of all, I just want to say, you might want to take down Mr. Kyle's question from the -

There we go. Thank you. It's a longer question. So here,

I'm open to correction, but my understanding is that total depravity is the view that sin infects everything that we are and do.

It doesn't mean that we're as depraved as we possibly could be, but it does mean that there's no choice we make, no thought we have that is not to one degree or another affected by and infected by our sin.

And so, for example, I might, for many pure motivations, motivated by many pure reasons,

I might give to this or that charity. In fact, I do. My wife and I, we have a - we've adopted, so to speak, a couple of kids in Honduras.

We provide monthly finances or whatever to help them to receive medicine and food and education and stuff like that.

And that feels great. And we love that we're able to help these kids out that are in such need. And so there is pure motivations there, but I can't pretend as if there's not a part of me that thinks, oh, it's nice to be able to deduct that from my taxes every year, right?

Or it's nice. It feels good to know that I'm doing this for them. Well, that's a selfish motivation, not a selfless one, right?

And there are other ones that could be identified as well. Even with somebody who does amazing things like, say,

Martin Luther King Jr., right? He was incredibly well motivated to do what he was doing, but our view as people who believe in the total depravity of man would say that even those great things that Martin Luther King Jr.

did were in part motivated by impure reasons, by impure motivations. So that's total depravity.

And I would say that passages in Romans that say that no one does good, no, not one, you know, we all fall short of the glory of God.

You know, Jeremiah, the heart, I think it's Jeremiah who says the heart is wicked and deceptive beyond all else.

I'm obviously paraphrasing here. God saw at the time of the flood that the heart of man was evil and was committed to all sorts of evil things.

There's just these host of passages. You know, David, I think it is says that I was conceived in sin.

You know, there's just all throughout the scriptures, it's very clear that human beings are, they are oriented away from God to one degree or another.

You know, Paul says we were by nature, children of wrath, you know, so there's just, there's a host of a variety of ways in which scripture seems to indicate that we are infected by sin in these ways.

Now, as for total inability, I think, and again, this is why I say I'm open to correction.

I think total inability is the idea that nothing, we are totally unable to do anything that is pleasing to God and or truly good or righteous or anything like that.

For precisely the reason that I just described about total depravity, that is to say, because sin affects and infects every single thing we think or do, then we're unable to do anything that is of the kind of righteous quality that is needed to be truly pleasing to God.

And so they're not identical. Total depravity isn't identical to total inability, but the two do go hand in hand because we're totally depraved.

We are totally unable to do anything that is completely pleasing to God. So one implies the other total.

If total depravity is true, as the Calvinist understands it, then total inability is something that follows from that.

Right. And as far as biblical support for the total inability, I mean, just, you know, isn't Isaiah who says that all our works are like filthy rags, right?

And the language there, filthy rags for some of your viewers may not know. He's not just talking about like a rag that you use to clean up some dirt.

I mean, he's talking about menstrual rags, right? So even the most amazing things that we do.

Let's keep it PG, man, all right? We got to keep it PG. I said menstrual. There were 20 people watching.

Now there's 15. You know, you scared people away. Right. So yeah. So anyway, so I would say that that's an example of biblical support for the idea that nothing we do is truly, purely good.

Okay. All right. Very good. Well, what about what about when Jesus says, you know, that even the evil people know how to do what's good, right?

When a son asks a father for a piece of bread, father doesn't give the kid a rock.

Or something like that. Or Cornelius. Cornelius was a

Gentile and God appeared to him. It said that he was that he was righteous, that the people of Israel, you know, they liked them.

How would we respond to some of these biblical examples of what seems to be these people who are not saved, but are said to do good things?

How would we respond to something like that? Well, I'd be interested in how you would respond. But I would start with two thoughts that come to mind.

Number one, there's a difference between a good act and a person doing that act for perfect reasons, right?

So yeah, as a father, I know how to give my son who asks for bread, bread rather than a snake or a rock or whatever.

But oftentimes I'm giving him what he asks for, even though it's a good thing, because I'm sick and tired of hearing him ask for it or something, right?

Or because I'm trying to get him to do something I want him to do, or for some other reason. You know, in other words, an act can be good, but we could be, we could have something less than pure motives for doing it.

So that's the first thing. And then the second thing I would say is that we would say, I think, that anytime somebody does something good, it's because God is working in them to do that good.

There's nobody who's doing anything good where God has an entirely hands off approach.

I think that anything good in life is because God is involved. And if it had not been for God moving within us to do the good thing,

I think we would have done far worse. In fact, many of us would say that God is restraining the evil that many would like to do.

And if he hadn't been restraining them, they would do the evil that they want to do. So with those two distinctions in mind, number one, the distinction between a good act and good reasons for doing it.

And number two, the distinction between somebody doing a good thing all on their own versus doing a good thing because God is at work as well.

I think those two distinctions help us to answer that objection. Right. And I like to make the distinction between horizontal goods and vertical goods.

I'm not imposing philosophical terminology upon the scripture because the

Bible is not a philosophical text. It's not going to always make these distinctions. But if we take, for example, the didactic passages of scripture, which provide for us the metaphysical explanation as to how this all works in relation to man's ability and how

God works into all those things. I think it's very clear that someone who's not born of the spirit or not being aided in some way, shape or form by the spirit of God is going to be able to do that, which is pleasing to God.

So we make the distinction between horizontal good, good as it relates from man to man. So generally speaking, a man who gives his son a piece of bread as opposed to a stone, generally speaking, that's good.

Spiritually speaking, that's not good in the sense that it gains him points with God. And so I would say we'd make those sorts of distinctions because the didactic portions of scripture, which tell us metaphysically how this all works, that is the background music that needs to be playing when we engage in these kind of historical examples where a person does something nice for someone and is not a believer.

That theological explanation is playing in the background of our minds so that we could understand what's really going on there.

I think it's an interesting thing that many people who object to Calvinism, when they try to find counterexamples, they use counterexamples of historical events and historical circumstances instead of just going straight to the didactic, theological explanations given in scripture as the main primary soil out of which the belief should be springing out of.

And so I think that's an issue that we need to keep in mind. I think that's helpful. The only thing I would just add as a caveat is that I still think that even in the horizontal goods you're describing, our motives are never pure.

Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. All right. Well, good. So now you said something that produced another question that I think comes up often.

God is restraining evil, but I've often heard that why is God restraining evil if God ordained the evil that is in the heart of man?

What is he restraining his own decrees? I mean, what's going on? You've heard this before.

How would you respond to something like that? Well, notice that when I mentioned the restraining a moment ago, I said some of us believe.

I'm not sure I include myself among them. You know, there is a sense in which, you know,

God may prevent somebody from doing what he or she would like to do that's even worse than what he permits them to do.

But as Calvinists, I think we believe that God foreordained even their desire to do those worst things, right?

So in what sense does it really make sense to talk about God restraining a person from doing

X, even though he foreordained that they would want to do X.

In fact, he's not even he's not even in any way inhibiting them from like, it's not as even as if they're trying to do

X and God prevents them from being able to know their very decisions are foreordained by God in our view.

And so I do think that here our critics have some a basis for an objection if we want to use the language of restraining.

I steer clear from it because I think for precisely the reason that I believe in meticulous divine providence.

Now, I will say that the Calvinist philosopher Guillaume Bignon, whose book,

Excusing Sinners, Blaming God is a fantastic book. And I would highly encourage Good pronunciation, by the way.

I see people massacre that name. So I've tried to self -study French a little bit.

So I'd like to think I have at least a tiny bit of good pronunciation. But in the book, he actually does try to philosophically and logically reconcile

God restraining or passing over this kind of language that some Calvinists use with meticulous providence.

I'm just not convinced that that reconciliation is possible. So I would just simply personally bite the bullet and say, yeah, you're right.

I don't think God does in fact restrain anybody's evil, even if phenomenologically it looks that way.

Good. And I like how you caveat with some people hold to. And again, there's it's not just Calvinism believes

A, B and C and all Calvinists agree. And, you know, it's not even to say that I've necessarily agreed with everything you've said.

I just think that it's helpful to see different ways that people might understand this. And it might be helpful in answering some of those questions as people confront it.

Now, here's a common one. And these are kind of just pop examples. And we can go much deeper. But I don't know why you're arguing with me, man.

God ordained for me to not be a Calvinist. How would you respond to that? I would say that may be the case, but you don't know that that's the case.

And it may be that the very means by which God has ordained you to become a Calvinist is the conversation that we're having right now.

You know, this is this is a common trope, a common thing that people like Leighton does. And he knows this.

And hopefully he doesn't mind me saying it. But I told him privately, I said, look, I don't want to see that anymore on my Facebook comment threads, because it really annoys the heck out of me.

It's just a silly, childish objection that has been answered for, you know, centuries.

And it really does no it does conversations is no meaningful, you know, nothing meaningful in the first place.

But yeah, I think the key here is the distinction between what God ordains and the means by which he brings it about. And key to this is the reality that until until we die, at least we don't know what

God has, in fact, ordained. And it may be that God has ordained you to not be a Calvinist at this very moment.

But it doesn't you don't know that he hasn't ordained you to be Calvinist 10 minutes from now after I persuaded you. And it may be that my my reasons for believing it are the very means by which

God brings what he has ordained about. All right. Well, I don't know if I could be a Calvinist, because on your view, it looks like God doesn't love everyone.

And I don't know if I could worship a God who is as callous as your God. How would you respond to something like that?

Yeah, I would agree. If you if God didn't love everybody, I'm not sure that that would be a

God worth worshiping either. But our belief isn't that God only loves the elect.

This is a now if Calvinists have spoken that way and in an unqualified way in in church history, then

I think they had they made they were mistaken and so do it. But I think most of us Calvinists would say that, sure,

God doesn't savingly love every human being, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't love every human being.

But wait a minute. But hold up, Mr. Date. All right. OK, savingly love.

If we're not ever saved and God doesn't want to save us eventually, then in what way is it really love?

Right. This is the sort of stuff that that you'll you'll hear. Well, this goes back to what I said a while ago, which is that that objection stems from an extremely facile and myopic focus on the state of affairs at the end to the complete, you know, completely ignoring everything that has taken place prior to that point.

Look, when when I how many how many you know that phrase better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Sure, sure. What's that trying to capture? It's trying to capture the idea that there was something valuable and inherently worthy in the relationship that somebody had for a while, even if at the end that relationship is severed.

Um, well, similarly, there's innate and inherent worth and value in life itself, in in the relationships between people that God gives us to enjoy with others, in serving others, in being served, in the amazing taste of a good meal, in the in the intoxicated intoxicating aroma of a beautiful flower or, you know, something like that.

You know, every moment of life is absolutely filled with amazing, good experiences.

And God so loves every human being that he gives every human being, at least those who are born, let's say.

And, you know, that raises the question about what about those who haven't, who die in birth or in in the womb.

And I don't have a good answer for that. But at least for people that are that are born, their lifetimes are filled with good things.

And I think the only reason they're filled with good things is because God, in fact, does love them. I think that in order to make this objection, somebody would have to say that life and breath and everything, as Paul says at Areopagus, isn't, in fact, a good gift from God.

Because if you agree that life and breath and everything is, in fact, the good gift of God, then you have to say that God does, in fact, love all of humanity, even if not all of humanity ends up savingly loved, loved unto eternal life.

Okay. What about these verses in the Bible, which, for example, let's jump now.

So we did total depravity and total inability. We kind of spoke about unconditional election throughout.

Kind of just God's choice to save some or is not arbitrary, right? And then let's jump to the

L real quick. Now we're going to move really quickly so that we don't, I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I hope you don't mind kind of just this really simplistic.

This is what I see. This is at the academic level and the philosophical and theological level.

These are not the things people are talking about per se, but this is what the average Calvinist hears. And I think it's still helpful to kind of go through these things.

So let's jump to the L, which is limited atonement. Why don't you define for us what limited atonement is and answer this question from our hypothetical non -Calvinist?

Hey, man, you're telling me that Jesus didn't die for the sins of the world.

I mean, how can you tell me this? The Bible is clear. He died for all.

He desires all to be saved. And I don't see how this fits with your Calvinist perspective. How would you address those?

Sure. Limited atonement is the view that the atonement, the atoning sacrifice of Christ has both a particular scope and a particular effect.

The particular scope of the atoning work of Christ is the elect and not all of humankind. And it has an effect, namely, maybe particular effect isn't the word

I'm looking for. Unconditional effect is the language I want to say. In our view, there is no condition that somebody has to meet first in order to receive the benefits of the atoning work of Christ, at least not in effect of a condition they have to meet through the exercise of their own libertarian free will, right?

So everybody for whom Christ dies, which is a subset of humanity, there's the particularity of its scope.

Everybody for whom Christ dies, in our view, will by necessity be saved.

Those are the two facets to limited atonement. And by contrast, those who would believe in unlimited atonement, at least non -Lutherans, and I've recently discovered that Lutherans have a very bizarre view and I'm not even gonna try to address it here.

But at least non -Lutherans who believe in unlimited atonement, what they would say is that the scope of the atonement is universal.

It's for all humankind, but it doesn't unconditionally affect the salvation of anybody. Only those who exercise their libertarian free will and thereby make the choice necessary to become partakers of the benefits of Christ's atoning work, only they are the ones who are saved.

So the contrast then is between our view in which Christ's work is for a particular people and is unconditionally efficacious, versus the other view in which

Christ's work is for all people and is unconditionally efficacious for nobody at all. It's only conditionally efficacious.

And frankly, I think this is exactly why people like Leighton Flowers call themselves provisionalists, right?

They think that the atoning work of Christ is universal in scope and what it does is it makes provision for something.

It doesn't actually save, at least not, I mean, they might object to me putting it that way, but I don't know how else to put it.

Now, with that distinction in mind, does that mean that we don't think that Christ died for the world or for all? Of course not.

I think God saved the world, meaning God saved the human race when he destroyed all but Noah and his family in the flood.

You know, if there was an asteroid, if a scientist discovered an asteroid or a meteor on a crash course toward earth and the heads of the nations around the world got together and said, what are we gonna do to save the human race?

And maybe they come up with the only thing that they can do is to gather the DNA from, you know, as many thousands of people as they can get and maybe get a few living humans to get onto a spaceship with that, the

DNA from all those people and fly off to another planet and terraform it. They have only saved the lives of a few people, but they've saved the human race, right?

In that analogy before the meteor or the asteroid comes and hits earth and destroys the rest of humankind. So yes,

I think God saves the world, meaning he saves the human race. And, you know, being somebody who holds to my view of hell,

I think I can say that with a little bit more consistency than you can, but putting that aside. Another jab.

What's up with the jabs, bro? I got to squeeze them in. I got to eventually have the discussion. That's all right.

So that's number one. Number two, the language of world is also meant to be inclusive of all kinds of people, not just Jews, but also

Gentiles. Not just the rich, but also the poor. Not just men, but also women.

Not just free, but also slaves. Not just this, but also that. You know, the language of world is intended to capture the all inclusiveness of every kind of person you can imagine without necessarily being intended to capture the idea of every single person without exception.

And I would say the same thing is true about the Greek word pas translated all or each or every or whatever.

Is that more often than not, it really isn't about every single individual. It's about every single kind.

And so in the example that you just gave a moment ago that God doesn't want anyone to perish.

He wills that nobody perish, but repent. It's either in that passage or in another one. It's right after Paul has said, pray for all sorts of people, even people in authority and people in power.

He's not saying pray for every single person you come across as you're walking down the street. He's saying, don't exclude from your prayers any particular kind of person.

And I think that's pretty representative of most uses of pas in the New Testament. And so I would say that, yes,

God does want all people to be saved. Meaning he wants all kinds of people. He doesn't want to just save Jew.

He wants to save Gentile as well. He doesn't just want us. Yeah, go ahead. So in some context, it all doesn't mean all without exception, as we commonly say, but all without distinction.

People from every tribe, tongue and nation. And of course, context will dictate what kind of all is being used there.

All right. So great. Again, the topic of limited atonement. Very, very big topic. You just did a nice debate on it on the

Gospel Truth Show with Marlon Wilson over there. And people can check that out as well.

I think you did a good job. I'm my own worst critic. I think my opening is still very strong.

I just don't think that I did as well as I could have in what happened after the opening. Fair enough. And overall, if anything, they're helpful.

I mean, we have someone on the side here. We won't go through questions just yet.

But someone wrote here, wow, Calvinism is so dumb and these guys didn't help their case.

Well, thank you, Hudson, TD777. That's perfectly fine.

If you don't think Calvinism is true or supported, that you're well within your right to think that.

But add more to the conversation. Why don't you post a question where you think there was a weakness in the explanation or something like that?

I think a good purpose for having discussions like this is to learn from each other. And I think iron sharpens iron in that case.

And so if you have a question you want to pose or an objection or something like that, feel free to share it. And hopefully, if we have time, we could address it in the best possible way.

All right, so thank you for that. All right, let's jump to the I and the P real quick. Just very, very lightning flash quick.

And then we'll take two or three questions and then we'll wrap things up. Does that sound OK? Sounds great.

All right, how are you hanging in there? We've been on for an hour and 23 minutes. Is it? I'm in no hurry. I'm good to go.

OK, all right, sounds good. OK, so the I in Tulip is irresistible grace.

What is irresistible grace? And give me a scripture or two that you can use to kind of give a basic idea as to why

Calvinists hold to the doctrine. Yeah, irresistible grace is a bit of a misleading phrase.

We don't think that the grace, the saving grace of God, the regenerating grace of God is resisted, but God overcomes the resistance.

That's not what we're saying. We're saying that the regenerative grace of God, the grace with which

God regenerates the human heart and enables them to believe is effectual or effective.

It's not a simple wooing, like a, oh, please be saved. It's not like that, like non -Calvinists would often say.

It's a boom, your heart is replaced. Your heart of stone is replaced with the heart of flesh. It's effectual, right?

So I prefer something like effectual grace. But how could you say that? Isn't Jesus knocking on the door of the hearts of everyone and please open up.

If you just open up, man, I'll come in and sup with you. Well, so I suspect that if we were to dig into that passage, we would find that the context has something else in mind.

But the idea with irresistible grace, it's effectual grace.

It's grace by which God supernaturally brings about the regeneration of an elect person.

Now, what would be the basis for that biblically? I would offer two texts. One is in John six.

You know, Jesus is here interacting with people who question his identity and are objecting to his claims.

And he says, don't grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him. But he doesn't stop there.

He says, and I will raise him up on the last day. You see, Jesus is here making a one -to -one correlation between the one that the father draws and the one that he will raise up on the last day unto eternal life.

There is no God draws you and draws you and woos you and pleads with you, please come.

And then maybe if you believe that he will raise you. No, the one that he draws is the one who is raised.

That's effectual grace. The other place that I think is really helpful is the so -called chain, you know, the golden chain of salvation or redemption in Romans eight, 29 and 30.

For those whom he foreknew, and here the word foreknew does not mean to know things about a person in advance.

I know that's how our non -Calvinists typically understand it, but they do so without any biblical justification whatsoever.

The language of foreknowledge when the object is a person in scripture has to do with a loving relationship, a choosing to be in relationship with somebody in advance.

So those whom he foreknew, those whom he chose in advance to enter into a relationship with, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.

You've got this, the same group of people is the same group of people all throughout that chain.

The same group that is foreknown is a group that is predestined. The same group that is predestined is the same group to be called and so forth.

So you've got this, there is no narrowing, you know, concentric circles, right?

It's not like you've got those God calls, some of whom respond, and so now this group, the smaller group are the ones who are actually justified.

No, it's the same group throughout. So these are two examples of, I think, biblical support for the idea that those

God foreknows or chooses in advance, he effectually brings about their salvation by regenerating them.

It's irresistible in that sense, and that it's efficacious. It's not, it's unconditional. You don't have to make some sort of choice to get covered by it.

Perseverance of the saints. What is it? Give me some support for it. It's just the idea that anybody who has become saved will remain in saving faith until the judgment.

It's really that simple. And here again, perseverance of the saints might be a little bit misleading because we would say that the primary reason any saint perseveres in faith until the end is because God has made it so.

He's granted them, he's regenerated them. He's granted them faith in himself and so on and so forth.

And the God who begins his work isn't going to fail to complete it. Now, as for biblical support,

I just sort of alluded to one. I don't remember what text it is, but it's where Paul says, the one who began a good work in us is faithful to complete it until the end.

We've got this language that Paul uses to describe the double -fisted grasp with which the saints are held in salvation by both the father and the son.

We've got the biblical language of the Holy Spirit being inside of us as a seal or guarantee of our future resurrection into eternal life.

These are all examples where it seems as if the person who is truly born again doesn't need to be born again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

They're born again once and they remain a new creature up until the moment that they are judged and found innocent because they've got the

Holy Spirit as a seal inside of them because they're in the double -fisted protection of God and so forth. Okay. And so TULIP, T -U -L -I -P,

Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. We believe in those aspects with qualifications because we believe it is the consistent teaching of scripture.

It can be defended scripturally. And there is even a logical flowing from one into the other.

I think there are logical connections there that I think are important as well. So that would conclude kind of the summary of what

Calvinism is. And I think you've done a good job in addressing some of the common objections.

There are many more, of course. And so let's wrap things up a bit by taking some of the last few questions and then we'll conclude.

How does that sound? That sounds great to me. All right. Sounds good. And I apologize if I missed something in the comments, but okay.

We did read the, well, Calvinism is so dumb one. So that's, we'll skip over that one. John 1, 47 says, when

Jesus saw Nathanael, let me put it up on the screen here. Okay. When Jesus saw

Nathanael approaching, he said of him, here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.

And I think this is a cool question, which now the question is there. How should this verse be understood in light of total depravity?

Good question. So first of all, it's interesting to me that Jesus appears to be alluding to Psalm 32, 2 in the

ESV. So in the ESV, John 1, 47 says, behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there was no deceit.

And the almost identical language is used in Psalm 32, 2. Blessed is the man against whom the

Lord counts no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. The language here of somebody in whose spirit there's no deceit is somebody against whom the

Lord doesn't count his iniquity. This is very similar to the language that Paul alludes to in Romans 4,

I think it is when he talks about Abraham and then he quotes Psalm 32.

He quotes this Psalm. He says, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. So the picture here in Psalm 32 is not of somebody who lacks any sin.

The picture here in Psalm 32 is somebody who is honest about his sin. And because this person is honest about his sin to God, God doesn't hold it against them.

He doesn't count it against him. He forgives it, right? So number one, I would say that just because this

Israelite doesn't have any deceit in him doesn't mean that he's not totally depraved. It doesn't mean that he is not sinful.

It just means at most that he's honest about his sin. Um, just like this person in Psalm 32.

Number two, in a very just purely, you know, rigid way of reading the text, just because even if we wanted to read it in the way that our questioner here in YouTube chat is asking it, meaning there literally is no deceit whatsoever in this

Israelite. It doesn't follow that there aren't other sins, right? Deceitfulness is just one among many sins.

And there's no reason to think that just because there's no deceit in this person, there's not other sins. And finally, of course, there's the hyperbolic aspect of this, right?

I think you could speak about somebody who is less overtly sinful than another person, even radically less overtly sinful than another person.

And you could say, man, this is such a good person, but you just mean relative to, you know, all these other terrible people.

And so it could be that in whom there was no deceit here, Jesus is just saying, compared to all these other Israelites, this is a really good guy.

So I think those three things and there are plausibly other explanations as well. So basically Jesus was saying to Daniel, hey, he's a really good guy.

Yeah, but again, even if somebody doesn't want to buy that, I think the other argument I gave nullifies the objection.

All right, good. I love these kind of... What's up with John 644?

What's going on there? Why do Calvinists say it demonstrates Calvinist beliefs? Well, first, the person who asked the question has to clarify which

Calvinist belief they're referring to. But what might we think this person might be referring to?

And in John 644, let me find it and read it. I'm sure you have your screen in front of you there as well, but I'll just find it here.

Verse 44 of John 6 says the following, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.

What makes you think, Chris, that that in any way, shape or form supports the Calvinist understanding of total inability?

Maybe that's what the person's asking. Well, I mean, the total inability part of it seems to be pretty self -evident, right?

Now, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him.

So number one, you've got a lack of ability for people to come to Christ unless someone intervenes.

So there you've got the T. You've got the election part or you've got the irresistible grace here as well, because the word draw here, helkuo, doesn't mean like a wooing.

It doesn't mean like, oh, please come to me, please. It'll be so nice to you. No, it's the language that's used to describe

Peter pulling a net up out of the water with fish in it, right? Or somebody drawing a sword from his sheath and so on and so forth.

The language is one of active movement, not just a please, please come to me.

So that would be this. And very often, non -Calvinists will say, yeah, but the same word is used when, in fact,

James White is currently doing a review of, who's the Scottish or British theologian?

I don't know if you listen to The Dividing Line regularly. Okay, well, just recently, he's been going through a

Scottish, a well -known and brilliant Scottish or English theologian who wrote a book called

Determined to Believe or something like that. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about. Let me look it up. Uh, The Sovereignty of God.

This is John Lennox. That's what I'm trying to think. Ah, yes. Why didn't that pop up?

I thought you were talking about a Calvinist. John Lennox is not a Calvinist, right? No, he's not.

Right, that's right. I know what you're saying. Yeah, well, so in that book, he makes this very argument. He says, draws can't mean effectively moves here because Jesus elsewhere says,

I will, when I am left it up, draw, halkuo, amen to myself. But of course, we've already addressed the language of all

God. Jesus will indeed, you know, in the context where he says that he has not yet been willing to speak to the

Gentiles. And he's saying, but when I'm lifted up, I will draw all men to myself, not just Jew, but also

Gentile. So it's perfectly consistent with the language of drawing here as well. It's not just a wooing.

It's an effective movement from one place to another. And then as far as the perseverance of the saints, look what he goes on to say, the person whom he draws or the person who the father draws,

Christ will raise up on the last day. So you've got the total inability, you know, that no one can come to me.

You've got the irresistible grace, the father who sent me draws him. And you've got the perseverance of the saints.

The one so drawn will be raised up on the final day unto everlasting life. And I suspect that if we were to look deeper into this passage, we might even find the

U and the L in there as well. But at the very least, we've got the to it. Right there in one verse all by itself.

All right. Well, we're almost finished here. I think Daniel asks is a very penetrating question.

Chris Date, what's up with all those subtle jabs? I agree. I don't know what's going on here every now and then.

I mean, it's all right. I understand. Jesus still loves you. Exactly. Our last question here is from Matt Yester.

He is joking, but I think he is joking and making reference to an interpretation of Romans chapter eight, verse 29 through 30.

That is sometimes taken. I believe he is making reference to something maybe Layton Flowers has said.

And that is Romans nine. I'm sorry, Romans eight, chapter 29 through 30, which says the following. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.

Romans eight, 29 is only about people in the past. So why do you interpret that Calvinistically to explain that this is how all of salvation works with these necessary connections between those various terms, justification, sanctification or whichever terms it uses there?

Well, first of all, the language of foreknowing there isn't the language of knowing people in the past.

Contrary to Layton's characterizations of the language there. But nevertheless, the verbs are all in the past tense, right?

Foreknew is aorist. Predestined is aorist. Called is aorist and so forth.

So, and these are all indicative verbs, meaning that these probably are not, I mean, arguably these are all past actions.

But even if we want to limit these actions to people in the past, Paul is offering that chain of salvation of those people in the past as the basis for which we can know what he says.

We know in verse 28, which is we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.

And in the context there, he's talking about, he says in verse 26, the spirit helps us in our weakness.

We do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself intercedes for us. He who searches hearts knows what is in the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for the saints.

That's present tense. So Paul is talking about the stuff that the Holy Spirit and God is doing for us now.

And what it is that we can be, the confidence that we can have now. And so even if verses 29 and 30 are about people in the past, he's saying it's because of that, that we can have this kind of confidence and comfort in our weakness and in our failures.

And so I would say that the only way that that works is if that same chain of events that illustrates how

God works all things together for good in those he loves or for those who love him.

The only way that works as the foundation for that is if the same things he says about the people he says about in verse 29 and 30 is also true of all the other saints.

Well, not bad, not too shabby, Chris. I thought this was gonna be a train wreck, but I think you did okay.

I appreciate that. Well, that will conclude our answering objections and answering questions.

If you guys are finding these interviews interesting and informative and useful to you, please don't hesitate to subscribe to the

Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel and to also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and other formats as well.

And also stay tuned. I don't just do interviews with folks like Mr. Date here. I do also do some teaching with a more central focus on apologetics and presuppositional apologetics and argumentation and things like that.

So if you find those things interesting and useful as well, please subscribe. That'd be greatly appreciated.

Those of you who may disagree with a lot or much of what Chris said, that's okay too.

Iron sharpens iron. And I hope at least some of these things have challenged our thinking and caused us to go back to the word of God as that is our main authoritative source by which we are to measure all truth.

Thank you so much, Chris. Before you go, where can other people find you? And perhaps you wanna say something very briefly about that debate book you did on the topic of meticulous divine sovereignty.

Thank you for that. Yeah, if people just go to amazon .com slash author slash Chris Date, you'll get my

Amazon authors page. And in addition to the two books that I edited on a topic of hell, there's also a book there called

Does God Predetermine the Eternal Destiny of Every Individual Human Being? And it's a debate book that I did, that I coauthored with an

Arminian in which I argue both for meticulous providence and for Calvinistic predestination.

So, and I think it's got a four, it's foreword was written by Dr. Michael Brown, who is not a

Calvinist, but he and I are friends and well, I mean, we know each other.

Well, I remember, but anyway, I'm sure he's got way too many people that he would count as friends to be able to.

But it's a good book and people like Jonathan Pritchett who is also not a Calvinist at Trinity College of the

Bible and Theological Seminary. He has said good things about it and so do many other, both Calvinists and Arminians. So people can check that out.

It's available on Kindle as well. And actually I think it's over, people can see the cover of it right here over my back.

So yeah, people can check that out. I've also by the same publisher got a debate book coming out very soon with Unitarian Dale Tuggy in which

I defend the deity of Jesus Christ and Dale Tuggy argues against it. So if people just check back to this page periodically, they can find that as well.

And I'd love for them to pick up that book as well. And if people wanna find me online, they can find a lot of the stuff

I do with Rethinking Hell at RethinkingHell .com and at our YouTube channel, youtube .com

slash RethinkingHell. In fact, we have a weekly YouTube live stream at 6 p .m.

Pacific on Mondays that people can check out. And finally, I'm very accessible on Facebook. Just go to facebook .com

slash Chris Date and you'll see me and you can befriend me there and I'd be happy to chat about this or any other topic.

So yeah, there you go. All right, well, thank you so much for that. And just another shout out, I know throughout the course of this discussion, we've mentioned

Layton Flowers a lot. If those of you who do not know who Layton Flowers is, he can be found at Soteriology 101.

There's no fear to point people in the direction of what critics have to say. And he's a very outspoken critic of Calvinism.

So you can check him out at Soteriology 101. Nice guy. I've had an interaction with him.

That episode is on his podcast as well as my podcast. And Chris Date has also engaged

Layton Flowers in a very fun and interesting and engaging discussion on Justin Brierley's unbelievable show.

So you can check that out over there as well. Well, thank you so much, Chris. I really much appreciate you being on.

And hopefully we can have you on at a future date to talk about something else. Maybe your views on hell and we can kind of talk a little bit about that.

I'm sure you would be interested in doing something like that. So thank you so much for your time, brother. It's been my absolute pleasure.