Calvinism is syncretism of Christianity with false piety-philosophy, which doesn’t increase God’s glory, but rather hideously defames Him.
There is not much in the world that diminishes God’s goodness and glory before atheistic mockers and scorners as much as Calvinism does. (Maybe Catholic coverup of pedophile priests is about as bad?) Calvinism also joins atheism and philosophical naturalism/materialism in determinism/fatalism (which some would claim are not the same, but that’s a distinction without a difference).
We heard a Calvinist say live with Joe Rogan something to the effect of “even if you wanted to come to God, you couldn’t unless He decided to regenerate you first.”
That’s a sick twisting of the good news, the gospel message.
Calvinists will accuse me of emotionalism in my arguments, but their entire theology is based in the anti-intellectual emotionalism of “but God can’t be weak, and that seems weak to me.” They ignore and twist God’s own testimony about His own character, purposes, and interactions with humans to turn Him unfeeling (that would be “change!”), impassive and impassible, yet double-minded, decreeing disobedience itself and claiming this glorifies Him and “is a product of His own nature/being,” not requiring any power exercised throughout time to cause events to unfold, but “causing” (and not-causing at the same time” all acts of disobedience. Which He wants in particular chosen detail with one will, and doesn’t want with another will. Wow. Just wow.
Under Calvinism, “you can do whatever you want, so long as it’s exactly what God planned for you to do, and then you’ll be punished, because God wants the glory of being seen to punish you more than He wants little Emily to not be murdered with exactly the 78 stabs He chose before creation that she would be murdered with (not 77, not 79, because those would bring Him less glory).”
Calvinism claims God’s decree is “compatible with” man’s culpability, but that’s the same kind of claim that “2 2 = 4 is compatible with 2 2 = 5.” No, it’s not. Without control, there is no culpability. I cannot be charged with murder for drunk driving if I wasn’t drunk driving the car that killed the victim. And two people can’t independently drive the car at the same time—it would be cooperative, and that would likely inculpate both of them.
Calvinist “decree/ordain” language is a cover for absurdity. It is a bankrupt philosophical idea that God mindfully originated/chose/planned all events before time began, but is not responsible for them. Calvinists cannot explain how God’s decree turns into events in history.
The Provisionist view can easily define decree in a sensible, workable way: “to formally create a plan to act in the future using one’s own power to bring about at that time, and then so act culpably to cause, unless such events were already occurring through other agents.” This definition works for every instance of decree or ordain or predestine in the Bible. And it works for human kings, and bosses, and moms and dads, too.
God has all authority and power and does whatever He wants. This is not enough for Calvinists, who demand that unless God also decides and controls all microevents, He is not (fully) sovereign. That’s a claim that God must not, and cannot, want for people to be able to resist Him without Him wanting them to do specific unwanted acts that He decided in advice.
Where does the Bible teach that? It doesn’t.
And God being required to want people to commit specific unwanted acts is against God’s self-revealed heart in the entire Bible. Calvinism is implicit defamation of God’s character and must be resisted by every lover of truth.
I know there are true Christian believers of Calvinism who are deceived, and I have compassion for that problem. I am not saying being a Calvinist is a mindful attempt to defame God. But the philosophy does, in fact, do so. Calvinists need to wake up and abandon that flawed and opprobrious human system.