Adventures With Calvinistman - Episode 1 - The Calvinist Boogeyman

God Centered Theology

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:05

Welcome to Adventures with Calvinist Man. He's faster than a speeding

00:10

Arminian, more powerful than man -centered synergism, and able to leap tall strawmen in a single bound.

00:18

Look up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a tulip. No, it's Calvinist Man.

00:27

Welcome to Adventures with Calvinist Man. That's right, my friends.

00:34

You may think this is silly. You may think this guy's lost his mind. You're probably not completely wrong, but yes,

00:43

I am a superhero. I'm Calvinist Man. I need help.

00:54

Look, Calvinist Man is a fiction of my imagination. He is a superhero I've created to help the masses.

01:03

This is me helping you. Let me help you understand reform theology all that much better.

01:13

And yes, as our intro said, faster than the speeding Arminian, more powerful than man -centered synergism, and able to leap tall strawmen in a single bound.

01:27

Look up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a tulip. No, it's

01:32

Calvinist Man. Yes, I get it.

01:38

I'm a five -year -old stuck in a 41 -year -old man's body. You can just turn off the video.

01:45

You don't have to watch. I love that. I've always loved Superman and superheroes and all these things.

01:53

So I thought, you know, you've got all these misrepresentations of reform theology called

02:00

Calvinism, and you've got all... I mean, I've heard it all. And I thought, what better way to combat this?

02:08

Because I want to have, as a function of God -centered theology, to me, there's no better example of how to be

02:16

God -centered versus man -centered than the subject of salvation and soteriology.

02:22

And so, you know, I've got my handy -dandy deerskin Legacy Standard Bible.

02:29

This was rebound by Rocky Mountain Bibles, James Gagnon out there in Colorado.

02:37

Beautiful blue deerskin here. And, you know, I've been studying it, and it's amazing to me when you think about it, how so many people can read this book and come to such different conclusions about things.

02:56

And in my mind, there's no better example or no better doctrine that can be studied to point out the differences in how people approach

03:04

Scripture. And I believe the God -centered way to understand salvation is the reformed perspective,

03:11

Calvinism, or the tulip, the common tulip, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints, which myself and many like me would change the

03:25

L. We would prefer particular atonement and things like that. You know, and we could squabble over words and stuff.

03:32

That's not really what we want to do here. But I wanted to have, as a part of God -centered theology, a long -form discussion on the subject of soteriology and salvation and have the proper reformed or the, not even so much that, but just a proper biblical perspective.

03:53

And obviously, Dr. White with Alphabetic Ministries has covered all this forever.

04:01

Many others have done really good jobs with these things. But I think it's good to have more teachers and younger ones, which

04:09

I guess at 41, I guess I'm still younger, right? I don't know. Maybe. But, you know, we need to have the next generation of those to teach and combat the straw man, the straw men that come up and the man -centered synergism.

04:27

And synergism means we're going to get into all these things as we go through all this. But, you know, God and man working together, whereas reformed theology is monergism, which is

04:36

God is solely responsible for salvation and regenerating a heart and things like that. So I wanted to have that.

04:42

But, you know, I wanted to do it, you know, I didn't want to just have another boring, you know, college professory teaching.

04:55

You know, I wanted to put a little, a little Andy in if you will. And you can't see it, but I've got well, you can see the

05:03

Superman here, right? That the one here with the blue leg there, that's a big old

05:09

Superman bear. I've pulled that down sometimes that you see it. So I'm all things Superman. There's a let's say there's a

05:15

Superman cup right there. And, you know, I've got several variety of Superman, things like that there.

05:23

So, you know, I've always been a big fan of that superhero. I said, you know, wouldn't it be cool to have a superhero that combats false teaching?

05:33

And, you know, when you're dealing with a subject, we're not talking about something definitional or something where I would say, you know, an

05:39

Arminian's a heretic or, you know, if you're not reformed, you're somehow not definitionally

05:44

Christian or you're, you know, a false teacher. I would believe you're wrong and an error.

05:50

And they would say that I'm wrong and I'm an error, those that disagree with me. And that's okay. Good Christians can disagree about these things.

05:58

But I wanted to have something where I teach the biblical perspective consistently, thoroughly, and at times maybe even respond to certain things that are out there.

06:11

But I do want the primary focus of this to be the exegesis of Scripture.

06:17

So we're going to spend the bulk of our time looking at Scripture, what the text says, what's being taught, the original author's intent, and all those things.

06:26

And all this is going to be to not only inform and teach, but as your resident superhero,

06:35

Calvinist man, I am looking to defeat the enemies that seek to strawman us up.

06:44

I promise there will not be a whole lot of this nonsense every time. I just,

06:49

I have problems. It's all good. Just work with me, people. It's okay.

06:55

Stick with Calvinist man. I will not lead you astray. And in fact, for this first episode, the main thing

07:02

I want to talk to you about is the Calvinist boogeyman. Ooh, the

07:08

Calvinist boogeyman. Oh, he's lurking around the corner. He's coming for your children.

07:14

Get the pitchforks. Burn him at the stake. Yeah, you say, you're being a little dismissive.

07:24

I mean, the Calvinist boogeyman is a very real thing. I mean, you know,

07:31

I sort of make light of it. We're having fun with it here. But I mean, I tell you, I have encountered some people that if you even think you are

07:40

Calvinist, I mean, they would burn you at the stake. Maybe not literally. I mean, of course,

07:45

I'm sure some have, but it's at some point. But you know,

07:50

I mean, I interviewed at a church one time where, you know, the first question wasn't about, you know, scripture or my view of the eldership or anything.

08:01

It was, you ain't one of them evil counters, are you? I was like, um, no.

08:12

The first question I got was, you ain't one of them people that don't do altar calls, are you?

08:17

I was like, um, I don't think we're a good fit. But it's just reality that in your average typical

08:28

Southern Baptist church, it's going to be Arminian, mostly a free will -ish, and you may even have, to some degree, some open theism thrown in there because most

08:40

Christians have never taken the time to sit down, study the scriptures about this subject open -minded.

08:49

Now, we're not talking about like a loony leftist liberal like, oh, open -minded, nothing can be sure, nothing. There is no definitive truth or anything.

08:58

No, we're talking about open mind in the sense that we all, Calvinist man included, need to be working every day to remove our lenses of tradition, all the lenses of preconceived notions that we bring to the text.

09:15

We're not talking about from the standpoint of saying, we got to find what's wrong with it. There's errors in here.

09:20

No, I'm talking about a faithful, God -fearing, God -loving Christian who believes in the inerrancy of scripture.

09:27

But what I'm talking about is, I've had my mind changed. I grew up in a non -reformed perspective, and I had my mind changed to where now

09:37

I am reformed. And it was done because someone taught me scripture, and the scripture changed my mind.

09:43

I've had my mind changed on eschatology, and scripture was the thing that changed it.

09:49

You don't need to change or be afraid of some boogeyman, because the reason

09:55

I call it the Calvinist boogeyman, because you ever hear it talked about in circles where you can tell nobody's really done a deep dive on this?

10:02

It's, oh my God, those evil Calvinists, they don't believe anybody could be saved.

10:09

It's like, oh my God, it's like, that's not it. And the thing is, there's no need for a boogeyman.

10:15

There's no need for all this fear and nonsense. My friends, you may not have thought about this before, but the

10:22

Calvinist Armenian actually agree on a lot of stuff. Think about this.

10:28

Now look, the reason Calvinist man is important is because I'm going to fight through all the straw man.

10:34

I'm going to defeat man's synergism, and I'm way faster than the speeding Armenians.

10:40

But I still love my Armenian brothers. I have friends of mine that don't believe like I do, and that's okay.

10:47

They're still my friends. They're still my brothers and sisters, and we can go eat plenty of Mexican and have a good old time together.

10:54

It's okay. But when you look at this, if you do it without those lenses that we bring, so like, for instance, if you are, you know, died in a womb, dispensational pre -trib, whatever, they tend to always, and I did this, you always look at the scripture through that lens.

11:10

And when I say that I want to be biblical and not have any lenses, I'm not saying that I do that perfectly and somehow, oh, look at me,

11:18

I'm great, and you're not. No. I'm always trying to be mindful of that. When I look at a text of scripture and I'm going to teach it or whatever,

11:26

I always try to stop and think, okay, Andy, is what you're saying about this text, are you bringing any lens?

11:33

And the idea is, you know, am I taking any sort of lens or preconceived notion or what

11:39

I've always been taught or what so -and -so said, and am I taking that and putting it on top of scripture and then filtering what scripture says through that, or am

11:48

I letting the text speak and teaching what it says? I say that you need to do that because I need to do that.

11:56

We all need to do that. The person you want to run from, the true boogeyman, the person you really want to run from, someone that tells you they have no traditions, they have no preconceived notions about things or anything they bring to the table or to the text beforehand.

12:13

I ain't got no traditions, I ain't got no traditions, I just pick up a

12:20

Bible and whatever it says, that's what I do, blessed God. That's the person you want to run from because that person either is woefully ignorant or they're lying.

12:33

They're looking to deceive you, and you don't want to be around that. If you can get somebody that's honest about it and say, look, you know, there have been some lenses and traditions

12:40

I've had in my life that have colored my view of scripture and I've had to work to get rid of those,

12:46

I'm going to tend to listen to you and trust you more because there's a guy that recognizes that it's scripture that's correct.

12:53

It's scripture that's inerrant. Our understanding of it is not inerrant.

12:58

Our understanding of it has to increase and grow and become deeper and conformed to the text of scripture.

13:09

But that Calvinist boogeyman, I mean, I've heard tales of people getting run away from churches and pastors being fired.

13:18

Probably the only thing that'll get you fired quicker than being a Calvinist is if you're in a

13:24

King James only church and they find out you're not King James only. I mean, that'll get you out the door faster than anything.

13:30

I mean, there's whole families that won't even talk to people if they're not, oh my God. They'll like almost have a funeral and mourn them.

13:37

Oh my God, they're not King James only. They don't even have a Bible anymore. It's like, calm down.

13:44

Take a deep breath. It's going to be okay. Calvinist man is here to help you, to lead you to greater prosperity in your biblical understanding.

13:58

But it's just, it's so funny to me how emotionally angry people get so quickly and easily.

14:06

It's like, just take a deep breath and calm down. It's going to be okay.

14:11

The Calvinist man is not going to hurt you. Calvinists, they're not out there to hurt you and to harm you.

14:19

And so, you know, I want to warn you against this Calvinist boogeyman. If you have people in your church or you can encounter them and say, man, we ain't got nothing to do with them

14:27

Calvinists. Like, I've got to leave out the possibility that there are situations like that aren't like what

14:35

I'm about to describe. And I get this is just my experience. Just what I've experienced. You may have experienced this differently.

14:41

I want to be fair here. But from my experience, a hundred percent of the time when

14:47

I encounter somebody that has the emotional anti -Calvinism of, oh my

14:53

God, the Calvinist boogeyman, it's usually because they, they intentionally are misrepresenting reform theology or ignorantly are misrepresenting it.

15:07

And if you get the opportunity to explain it or walk through it and show them, you know, this is, this is not what we believe.

15:15

This is what we believe this and that. Sometimes it'll help. Like, like I was saying earlier, and I want to end with this for this first episode, the

15:23

Calvinist and the Arminian, and then there's other views, but the Calvinist and Arminian are the two main views we agree on so much more than we disagree on.

15:32

Let's walk through this. Let's dispel and destroy the Calvinist boogeyman forever.

15:40

After all, I'm Calvinist man, and that's what I do. All right, so let's take, uh, justification.

15:48

Both the Calvinist and Arminian believe justification is by grace through faith.

15:53

We would both teach that. If I'm in a pulpit teaching the gospel, I'm going to say it's by grace and mercy of God through faith.

15:59

You need to repent of your sin, place your full faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and you're fully justified based on your faith and faith alone.

16:05

Arminian gets up, preach the gospel. They're going to say grace and mercy of God. Repent and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

16:11

Your faith alone justifies you. So we both agree there. We both agree, um, well, the, the truly biblical

16:20

Arminians and Calvinists, uh, that don't get caught up in craziness are both going to believe in the original sin, you know, the fall of Adam and how it has corrupted man and our spirit.

16:31

You know, we would mean different things when we would say it, but we would both agree that man is dead and trespasses in sin, unable to save himself.

16:40

Now, when you get into how man is saved, you've got the, the, obviously a debate there.

16:47

I would come from the reform perspective that the spirit of God has to raise one spirit to life first, meaning regeneration would precede faith.

16:57

Whereas the Arminian or the person is not reformed would look at, or especially you've got this thing out there now from blatant flowers and others, the provisionism and stuff, you know, they would probably see from what

17:08

I understand that you would have the repentance and faith first. And then the regeneration is either intertwined with it sort of almost simultaneously, or maybe after.

17:18

And that is a point of disagreement. And, but we both, both camps, if you will agree that regeneration is part of salvation, it's a power, it's a, it's a work of the

17:30

Holy Spirit, and it's necessary for salvation. Hence John 3 being born from above, so on and so forth. We all agree on the necessity for salvation.

17:40

We would both agree that there's no universalism, that not everybody's going to be saved.

17:46

There is a hell. We also would agree that not everybody goes to hell, that some. So I think,

17:52

I think Dr. White, I've heard him say this first. He talked about how, you know, God could have ever either saved all, universalism, and if he saves all, he displays his love and mercy and grace, but no justice and holiness and, you know, wrath for sin.

18:07

If he saves none, well, he's only had justice and righteousness and holiness and wrath on sin, but there's no love and grace and mercy.

18:15

It's only in saving some that God displays all of his attributes in his creation for his glory.

18:23

It's that some that the debate hinges on, and typically speaking, it's the unconditional election part that people would disagree with the reformed perspective.

18:35

There's debate on the atonement, but remember, we're talking about the fact that we agree a lot more than we disagree on.

18:43

Both sides agree that Christ is the only atonement for sin, and one of the things

18:49

I want to make sure that I, Calvinist man, do is if I talk about another side or talk about another view,

18:55

I want to make sure I fairly represent that view. I don't want to do what is done to us often and have these straw men that I have to leap in a single bound, okay?

19:05

But they, you know, both sides, reformed and non -reformed, would believe the atonement is not only necessary, there must be a blood payment for sin, but that Christ is the only satisfaction, the only propitiation, the only accepted sacrifice for man's sins, and we both believe that those that repent of their sin and put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ are saved, their sins have been atoned for, and they belong to Christ.

19:34

We also would believe in the eternal security of the believer that our assurance of salvation is in Jesus Christ, and so we also, generally speaking,

19:46

I believe most Armenians, and I think even those in the Provisionist camp, and I'm still reading some of their stuff, but it seems like most of them,

19:55

I think, would agree that saints will persevere, they will, they are eternally secure, you can't lose your salvation, as John MacArthur famously said, you know, if you could lose your salvation, you would, so really, when you really boil this down, the

20:10

Calvinist boogeyman is about the unconditional election. Man is obsessed with being in control of his own destiny, and when you tell him that he's dead in sin, and he's incapable of raising himself to life spiritually, that he must be raised to life spiritually first, it really messes up with people, and this is where we're going to get into this today, but we'll get into things like open theism versus the sovereignty of God, His decree, all these things.

20:40

That's where your debate kind of finds its life, and we need to make sure we recognize there's a whole lot of agreement, there's a whole lot of things for us to agree on, and the things that we disagree on doesn't make the

20:53

Calvinists evil, doesn't make the Armenians evil, they're not boogeymen to be scared of, you don't have to go crawl in the corner, they're coming to get you.

21:03

We're all just a bunch of Christians trying to learn more about this, learn more about our

21:08

Savior, and live in consistency with what we believe the

21:13

Scripture teaches. I believe that, and that's the thing, when I'm dealing with someone or debating with them, you know,

21:20

I'm going to be as kind and cordial as I possibly can, but I don't have any problem saying, I think this is true, and I think you're in error here.

21:29

I believe the Reformed perspective. Thus, anything that's not the Reformed perspective, I would believe to be in some level of error.

21:37

But when you're dealing with someone and looking at different layers of teaching and layers of discussion, just remember there's areas of agreement there.

21:46

You know, the Armenians are not our enemies. Calvinists, us Calvinists, and especially me, your hero,

21:52

Calvinist man, I'm not your enemy. You okay? I'm just not.

21:57

So, my hope for this, if you're completely new to this discussion, or if you say,

22:05

I've always heard about those Calvinists, but usually what I hear about them is, random, evil Calvinists, we got a bourbon state.

22:10

If you're coming to that like that, you say, you know what, I just want to learn, what do these Calvinist people actually believe?

22:16

What is this Reformed theology? What is this stuff? I want you to come along for a walk with me.

22:21

I don't know how long it'll take, but we're going to be looking at this all the time, going deeper, looking at texts, looking at this text versus that text, and all these things.

22:31

And I'm going to try to be as fair to other viewpoints as I possibly can, represent them as best as I possibly can.

22:38

But my main focus is going to be on the text of Scripture, and I will tell you my best, most honest understanding of it at the point in time in which

22:47

I teach it to you. And if you have any questions, comments, concerns, want to throw vegetables at me digitally, let me just remind you, my block game is strong.

22:58

If you come at me and say harsh words, or you attack me personally, it's like, you're going to get blocked.

23:05

But I don't have a problem with discrepancy. Hey, you know, I heard you say this, that, and the other, you know, and handle it in a mature, respectful way.

23:12

So, you know, I just don't think I agree with you here, and here's why. What do you think about that?

23:17

I may do a video in respect to you, if you don't want to be named, I'll leave your name out, you know, just that's up to you.

23:24

But I may just deal with the content, say, you know, a viewer had this question, they disagree with me, and, you know,

23:31

I'll explain and answer it, and try to do the best I can for you. Just be mature, be respectful, don't come at me, don't be harsh.

23:40

I have feelings too, so let's be nice to each other, okay? So, about a good 20 -22 minute introduction here to the series

23:50

Adventures with Calvinist Man. That's the gist of what we're going to be doing. I hope you'll come along for the ride with us.

23:57

So, thank you for joining me on Adventures with Calvinist Man!