Why I'm a Calvinist

Dinesh D'Souza recently stirred up the Calvinist beehive. He said it, not me. The Indian-American commentator was interacting – positively at first – with an RC Sproul teaching on salvation by faith alone, which turned into criticism of predestination. He then went on a social media rampage against Calvinism. D'Souza argued that the doctrine is contradicted by the Bible's emphasis on free will, implies Christ didn't die for everyone, and called predestination a “fallacy.” In other social media posts, he dismissed Calvinism as “indefensible,” with “huge vulnerabilities,” “a form of Gnosticism,” “an insult to the character of God,” that “makes God into a monster,” and likened Calvinists to Marxists in the way they “monopolize the discourse.” Stirred up the beehive, indeed!

Well, I'm a Calvinist. And I am so for a fairly simple reason: I think Calvinism makes the best sense of the cumulative biblical evidence concerning salvation. And cumulative is the important word.

The strength of Calvinism doesn't rest on one or two supporting texts. The case is much bigger than that. There's a vocabulary the Bible uses for salvation. There's certain things the Bible says God does in salvation. There's an order Scripture repeatedly establishes between what God does and man's response. And there's explanations Scripture gives for why one person believes while another remains in unbelief. Put all of that together and I think you get something, from the Bible itself, that looks a lot like what is commonly called Calvinism.

Start With Man
Before asking how God saves, we need to look at what the Bible says about the kind of people he saves. The first priority of the Bible isn't to assert that God saves free or autonomous moral agents. For some, "free will" is the starting place when speaking about man's salvation. But the overwhelming emphasis of Scripture is on man's spiritual condition. And the Bible's portrayal isn't flattering.

The universal verdict is announced by Paul: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10-12). There's no wiggle room here. No one understands, seeks, or does good.

And it's not simply that they haven chosen not to understand, seek, or do good. Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (Jn. 6:44). Notice, Jesus doesn't say no one is willing to come, he says no one can come. There's a marked inability in man to be able to come to Christ.

Paul says something similar when he writes, “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:7-8). And elsewhere, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).

Most familiar is Paul's diagnosis that we're “dead in the trespasses and sin” (Eph. 2:1). The choice of death and not, for example, sickness, is interesting. What does Paul mean? It seems obvious that "dead" doesn't mean sinners don't do anything. The Apostle immediately follows that statement with things that dead sinners do: they walk, they follow, they obey, and they desire. The problem is that they do so in the wrong direction – they walk according to the world, they follow and obey Satan, and they desire the flesh. Their problem isn't inactivity, but inability. Left to themselves, everything turns away from God.

So whatever else we say about salvation, we have to reckon with this biblical portrayal. The sinner doesn’t sit neutrally between God and sin waiting to decide which one he prefers. He's deprived of all good, he's hostile to God, he's spiritually unable and incapable, and he cannot come to Christ unless something happens to him.


Something God Does
So what does God do?

Take Lydia as an example. Paul preaches the gospel, Lydia listens and she believes. But the historian tells us something else happened: “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14). Yes, Paul preached and Lydia believed, but between that we're told God did something to Lydia.

Or, take Acts 13:48, “As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” Or Philippians 1:29, “It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.” Or 2 Timothy 2:25, “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.” Or, again, Ephesians 2 where God has “made us alive together with Christ.” The Apostle John also writes, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh not of the will of man, but of God” (Jn. 1:12-13).

When you put that all together God does something: he appoints, he opens the heart, he grants faith and repentance, he makes alive. So Jesus declared: “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father” (Jn. 6:65). In salvation God's will is ultimate.

Calvinism doesn't deny that people believe, repent, and come to Christ. But the question is: why. Why did I believe? Why did I repent? Why did I come to Christ? The Bible is remarkably clear answering that question by pointing to God.

And Then There's Election
If we take a step back we can ask another question: why does God act savingly toward a sinner in the first place?

The Bible's own vocabulary pushes us to certain words: God chooses, he elects, he predestines, he acts according to his purpose, he has mercy, he calls. Those aren't words invented by Calvinists. Those are the words the Holy Spirit has inspired to tell us why God acts savingly.

And, very importantly, the Bible repeatedly tells us that he does these things before we do anything, even before we exist: “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world,” and “predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:4-5).

Or in another place, “[He] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began” (2 Tim. 1:9).

And then, of course, there's Romans 9. Before Jacob and Esau “were born and had done nothing either good or bad,” God made a distinction between them “in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls” (Rom. 9:11). From this, Paul concludes: “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (v. 16).



I'm familiar with the common objections. Namely, Romans 9 is about Israel. It's corporate, not individual. It's situated in the history of redemption and Paul is defending the faithfulness of God to his covenant promises. But none of that makes the actual language disappear. In fact, notice the objections that Paul anticipates: “Is there injustice on God's part?” (v. 14). And then: “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will” (v. 19). If Paul's point is simply that God has chosen to save a corporate people of those who freely choose to believe, why would anyone accuse God of injustice? Why would it be asked if God can still find fault? Why would Paul be pushed upon with the objection, “Who can resist his will?”


Paul's answer to the pushback isn't that someone has misunderstood the force of what he wrote. He doesn't say "God isn't unjust because man has free will," or "He finds fault because man is the ultimate decision maker." Rather, his answer to the objections is to say what God has said, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy" (v. 15). That sounds Calvinistic because it's what Calvinism says.

The Order Matters Too
The cumulative evidence gets even stronger. It's not simply the vocabulary the Bible uses, it's the order it establishes too.

Paul says: “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” (Rom. 8:29-30). Follow the order. The people God foreknows are predestined. The predestined are called. The called are justified. The justified are glorified. And it's the same group all the way through. He doesn't say some of those foreknown are predestined, and some predestined are called. There's no break in the golden chain.

That tells us something important about what Paul means by “called.” It can't simply mean that these people heard the gospel. Plenty of people hear the gospel and are never justified. But everyone who is “called” is justified.

What Paul says elsewhere is helpful. He says he preached Christ crucified. Some hear the message and stumble over it. Others hear it and regard it as foolish. “But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). The gospel is preached to everyone. But Paul identifies another category within those who hear it: the called. And for them, something is different. Christ is foolish to one hearer but he's the power and wisdom of God to another. Why? Paul points us to the call of God – an effectual divine summons is what determines the difference.

We find that same idea elsewhere. Jesus says, “All that the Father gives me will come to me” (Jn. 6:37). Notice what comes first. Jesus doesn't say those who come to him are given to him by the Father. The Father gives a people to the Son, and they come. Or, when Jesus says to unbelievers “You do not believe because you are not among my sheep” (Jn. 10:26). I imagine most of us would naturally put it the other way: “You're not Christ's sheep because you don't believe.” But that's not what Jesus says. He says they don't believe because they're not his sheep.

Again, Acts 13:48: “As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” The order is striking. We're not told that as many as believed were appointed to eternal life. He says those who were appointed believed. None of that makes faith unnecessary. Actually, it's the opposite! The predestined are called. The called believe. Those who believe are received by Christ.

When the Bible explains why these things happen, the order always moves in the same direction: God does something, and sinners respond. God chooses, and sinners come. God calls, and sinners believe. God appoints, and sinners receive eternal life. That order matters.

These Things Aren’t Contradictory
Calvinists don’t deny that the Bible contains universal gospel invitations, warnings about apostasy, and texts that emphasize human responsibility in the strongest terms. But nothing of what has been said above requires us to set those things aside or redefine them. God can sincerely command all men everywhere to repent while effectually granting repentance to some. Christ can be freely offered to every sinner while the Father draws sinners to the Son. Every person who believes will be saved, while the Bible can also explain why anyone believes in the first place. Those aren’t contradictions, they just force us to answer different questions.

For example, John 3:16 says that whoever believes will have eternal life. Calvinism doesn’t qualify the "whoever." It asks the question behind it: why does anyone believe? First Timothy 2:4 raises important questions about the will of God, and 1 John 2:2 raises an important question about the extent of Christ’s work. Both deserve careful exegesis. But neither overturns what Scripture elsewhere says about election, calling, drawing, granting, and making alive. These things aren’t contradictory.

The Basic Question
Let’s remove Calvinism for a moment from all the debates, associations, and heated social media arguments. Let’s ask a much more basic question: why am I saved?

What’s the answer? Am I saved because I was smarter than the unbeliever? Is it because I saw something he didn’t see? Is it because I had more opportunities? Is it because I’m more spiritually sensitive? Is it because I simply made a better decision?

Certainly not! Of course, I am saved because I believe. I repented. I came to Christ. The Bible speaks that way, and so we do too. But why did I believe?

In the final analysis, the sinner can only answer: I’m saved because God would have it so. Any other answer to that question will, consistently, glory in man’s ability and strength and wisdom. And any other answer cannot consistently end where the Bible ends it all: “To the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph. 1:6). That's why I’m a Calvinist.