What do calvinists believe about predestination

Truly, in the end, it doesn't matter if God elected us or if we elected God, for we are with Him. My main beef against Calvinism is the belief that God predestined certain people to be "elect"; in normal words, Calvinists believe that God dictated who will be saved before that person was even born. Now, that in itself is not so radical when you stop to consider how God sees time. But what is outragous is how Calvinists believe that man has no free will in the matter.

So they believe that it's not: "Because you have faith in God and follow his ways, God will have mercy on you and save you. So then he has mercy upon whomever he wills, and he hardens the heart of whomever he wills. However, this is an incorrect interpretation. These verses are simply stating that nothing man can do by himself can get him into heaven. Man needs God's grace and mercy, which only God can grant. God grants mercy to those he grants mercy to, and we can presume from Jesus' teachings that God will grant mercy to those whose hearts are truly seeking God and who follow Jesus' path in heart, mind, and action.

Yes, God is omnipotent and omniscient. He knows what will happen before it will happen. But foreknowledge does not imply predestination. Our problem is that we cannot fathom time the way God knows it. We see time as a constant stream from point A to point B.

This is why we cannot fathom that there is no beginning to God and no end to God. God is infinity. God simply is. Yes, I believe God predestines many events. Many events throughout the Bible have been predestined. Jesus' birth was predestined. Jesus' death was predestined.

Jesus' resurrection was predestined. Many things in our own lives could very well be predestined. But God certainly does not predestine people to go to heaven or go to hell. It is man's choice to either accept God's path or reject it. Introduction This short paper contains a list of common-sense and biblical arguments and counter-arguments against Calvinism and predestination.

What is Calvinism? Man is incapable of being "good. The rest of the four points rely on this point. Given this, Calvinists face a problem: if salvation is accomplished by God alone and is in no way dependent upon humans, what prevents the general call and effectual call from being coterminous?

If God is the one who alone makes the general call irresistible and thus effectual, what is preventing him from granting everyone irresistible grace and thereby saving all? Since Calvinists hold to compatibilistic forms of human freedom, which claim that theological determinism and human freedom are compatible, God could causally determine everyone to freely believe and be saved. The Calvinist upholds premises , which if true, necessarily yield premise 6.

Yet premise 2 and 6 are contradictions, showing that at least one of the other premises is false. The Arminian can resolve the tension by rejecting premise 5 replacing irresistible grace with prevenient grace, which only makes it possible for all persons to be saved , but what is the Calvinist to do?

Premises 1, 2, and 5 are strongly held by most Calvinists, so that leaves premise 3 or 4 open to question. Yet these two premises work in tandem to flesh out what it means to love someone i. Given that the WCF famously declares that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, it is puzzling, if not outright incoherent, for Calvinists to claim that God can truly love someone but not bring about their salvation especially since God can determine all people to freely believe by granting them irresistible grace.

One cannot glorify God and enjoy him forever in Hell. Thus the Calvinist finds himself in a pickle: affirm that God loves all people and you must consequently affirm salvific universalism; deny universalism and this requires denying that God truly loves all people. Most Calvinists respond to the above argument by differentiating various kinds of divine love. How is it that God genuinely loves the non-elect when true love would compel him to bring about their salvation?

The problem with this is that anything short of loving someone unto salvation—if one is able to do this—is not really love. It becomes clear in this light that consistent Calvinist theology not only denies that God loves everyone but also obscures the gospel message of Jesus Christ himself. First of all, a couple of definitions. Predestination is the doctrine that states how God determines what will happen in human history according to his eternal will and pleasure.

The debate on these doctrines is generally split between two camps: Calvinists and Arminians. Before getting into how these two differ on this issue, allow me to list some points of agreement although, as you will see below, how each scheme works out these concepts is different. Both sides agree that:. The differences that exist between Arminianism and Calvinism stem from the question of how human choice factors into predestination and election.

If God chooses who is included in His people, does the individual therefore not choose? Arminians answer this question by stating that people do in fact choose for themselves to believe in Jesus — free will is a value in Arminianism. A dead person cannot come back to life — a dead person needs to be raised. This results in working out predestination and election in the following ways:. Many people make the mistake of concluding that in the Calvinist scheme, the person has no choice in salvation.

Calvinists do not believe that God makes anyone a Christian against their will. So how should we understand the way personal choice factors into election for a Calvinist? Allow me to illustrate. Imagine you are a child on Christmas morning, and your father has just placed a gift in your lap to open. As you open it, you quickly realize it is not anything you asked for — yet it is the most interesting and delightful toy you have ever seen.

In fact, after all the gifts have been opened, it is your favorite present of all. Did your father force you to like the gift, as if you were a robot? Did he make you enjoy that gift against your will? But in his wisdom, as he planned for Christmas day, he predetermined to give you that gift out of his gracious love for you, his child.