The Calvinism Debate - Way of Life Literature

the plain teaching of God’s Word. Whatever divine electionmeans, and it is certainly an important doctrine of the Wordof God, it cannot mean what Calvinism concludes, because toaccept that position requires one to strain at gnats andswallow camels. e gnats are Calvinist extra-scripturalarguments and reasoning and the camels are Scripturesunderstood plainly by their context.Consider some gnats that Calvinists strain at. e Calvinistreasons that if God is sovereign than man can’t have a willand cannot resist Him. e Calvinist reasons that if the sinneris dead then he can’t respond to the gospel, and if he cannotrespond to the gospel and if faith itself is a sovereignlybestowed gi (based on an erroneous exegesis of Ephesians2:8-9) then the elect must be born again before he canexercise faith. e Calvinist reasons that since God works allthings aer His own will then if He truly willed for all men tobe saved, He would save all men.In each of these cases, the Calvinist applies human logic tothe issue rather than a clear statement from Scripture, and theScriptures he uses to support his doctrine do no such thing.He thus strains at gnats while swallowing hundreds of clearScriptures that overthrow his doctrine.CALVIN’S CAMELSFollowing are just a few of the camels that John Calvinswallowed when he followed Augustine, that “Doctor of theRoman Catholic Church,” into the error of “sovereignelection” and when he reasoned that God would not besovereign if man could reject Him and if salvation could beaccepted or rejected by the sinner.I realize that a staunch Calvinist has an answer foreverything. He can flee immediately into his stronghold ofmaking clever and intricate man-made distinctions betweenelecting grace and common grace, between degrees of thelove of God, between desiderative vs. decretive will andantecedent hypothetical will, you name it.53