What, if anything, do you believe, that a typical Calvinist does not believe?
I am different from them in reasoning—mine is not only from reasoning about/from Scripture, but from several directions of simple logic.
Typical Calvinist is somewhat ambivalent about causation. To me, the simple logic of it demands that God has absolutely determined all things. On the other hand, the supposed "Hyper-Calvinist" who says the same, is supposedly (as characterized by such as yourself) saying that God equally purposed the reprobate for eternal torment as he purposed the elect for eternal joy. I don't think that way at all, but that he purposed them for that end as part of what I call the 'producing' of the Church, the Bride, the Body of Christ, the People of God, and so on. And Scripture bears me out.
In fact, pretty much every way you take me wrong, in whatever particular you are right that they are the way you describe, I am not like them in that. But I have to say, you are wrong in almost every instance; the only times I see you as right, is when you are describing those outliers—they do not represent Calvinism (nor Reformed) generally.
Typical Calvinism uses "nice", "acceptable", terminology. I don't. For example, they say that God "allowed" sin and its sinful deeds—that he "allowed" or "allows" moral agents to sin. Though they do say he does so for a purpose, I say that God purposed there to be sin. My thinking, as you have noted, directly opposes and cannot be reconciled with your liberal notions of God's love —yes, they are liberal, no matter how fundamentalist you may be— because you claim to know just what and how God's love is. No, you don't say you do—you will no doubt, besides to pontificate you will wax eloquent about the depths of his love and so on—but you don't know enough to understand that you cannot build doctrine on your notions of the meaning of God's love. You plow right on, carelessly throwing about your eisegetically-derived uses of texts, subjugating Scripture to your notions of God's love. Typical Calvinism is nicer about opposing you.
Typical Calvinism has a reconciliation of Predestination to Free Will, calling it Compatibilism. I can see their reasoning, or better, the basis for their reasoning more clearly than they generally seem to. I would agree to Compatibilism, except for the use of the word, "free", there, and except for that my view is more directly logical—that is, I say that God has decreed all fact, which claim is necessarily logically derived from his being the
willed, purposing and omniscient first causer, which truth implies necessarily that
man's will depends on God's decree, even when fallen man chooses at enmity with God.
The Hyper-Calvinist, or at least the caricature of them, says that man doesn't even choose. To me, that is ludicrous. Of course he chooses, and his choices are real, with real—even eternal—consequences! There are rewards, and lack of rewards, in Heaven, and growth in Christ here makes a difference on where your place is in Heaven. And for the reprobate, for everything they do, God, the only one who knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart—knows, because he purposed them—will expose them and repay them "
according to what their deeds deserve". But I know personally of no Calvinist who believes man does not choose. The caricature seems drawn upon what the Arminian and Pelagian thinks is the necessary logical notion, that Predestination and "Free" Will are mutually exclusive. —If they are indeed mutually exclusive, then "Free"will is a fantasy. But not many Calvinists go as far as I do, showing that if God did not "establish" something, it cannot happen. After all, "
...from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen."
Which brings up another thing in which I am different from the average Calvinist. They agree with, and even promote as central, God's sovereignty. But so, (I say), does the Arminian—at least, in words. These Calvinists insist on it by use of terms like, "rule and overrule", while the Arminian, using the same words, mean only, "overrule". But I say, that verse I just quoted above, that, "
from him and through him and to him" affirms the very fact of God being the center of all fact, the reason for even very existence, the first causer, the purposer—THE motivation behind reality and is its upholder, in all its particulars; it is all about him—not us. He doesn't just steer reality; he
made it.
This is about God—not us.
It is GOD who works in you both to will and to do according to his good purposes.
Now, you will say that view, as corruptly as I hold it, is the lens through which I read Scripture. I'm not going to say that you are entirely wrong, but that you are very badly wrong, several ways. I admit to some degree of it as we all read Scripture according to our worldview—it is inescapable. The problem with you saying that, (if you do), is that I got it FROM Scripture. I grew up from birth steeped in the same kind of theology and mindset you show—that it was up to me to bring God's will about, and that all that was wrong was that I hadn't figured out yet just how it all works, or what I had to do to get to the ideal. But Scripture kept showing me differently, until I had to admit that "God is not my co-pilot, nor just the driver, but that he built this bus, and the road it rides on, and the world this road is made of, the universe the world is in, and the principles and realities that it all depends on." God is no mere co-resident within reality with us. He doesn't just work bad things out for good.
Everything that happens, happens by his say-so, and I am more than happy that he made me to be part of that.
I also differ from some Calvinists in my allegiance to the usual tenets of Calvinism/Reformed theology, (though, I note—that is, from what I have seen—that most of them do avoid deriving their doctrine from those tenets). I use those tenets to say better than I say, what I believe, (wherever I agree with them, anyhow). But unlike them, I do not firmly believe in MY CONCEPTION of much of anything as if it was complete and unfaulty, but only that so far it is the most logical and scriptural I have found. However, wherever I do agree with the tenets, I will defend them.
I also differ from the Calvinists in that I was not taught Calvinism in order to find something very like it, as I said. It is not MY lens, but what I found in Scripture, whether or not I admit to using it as a lens. (Still galls me that anyone would claim to have no lens through which they read Scripture.) And that lens is continually subject to correction, (though, again, so they say, too, and so I have seen them do).
I also believe, as you might suppose, that quite a lot of Scripture is written anthropomorphically, to make eternal principles understandable to the temporal mindset. (For example, the term, "eternal", when I was young, meant to me something like, "a forever, never-ending time". I no longer believe that, as such, though it is still useful to think that way, being hard to avoid, since I am still here, subject to and dependent on the familiar passage of time. I believe it means something closer to "timeless", or, at least, "outside of time". Many, many Reformed/Calvinists disagree with me about that.) What amazes me about that anthropomorphic language is that it is still exactly accurate, in that "WE look at everything backwards"—for example, unlike the average Calvinist, who will interpret some prophetic language as symbolic or figurative (and the like), I suppose it altogether valid that, for example, the gates of the New Jerusalem are the real pearl(s), and our current pearl is only a fleeting vaporous incomplete copy. The FATHER (God) in Heaven is the REAL one, and these here on earth only poor copies. —and so on. As that applies to time—I note that we don't even know what time is, how it is, even from the most brilliant mind in the science community, we don't really know, anymore than we can explain existence, nor HOW God made it and upholds it. I admit that I am speculating about much of this, but so far, I am more than skeptical of anyone else's 'firm assessments' to the contrary. They don't know either.
Like some of what I have said, I believe, probably as much or more than anyone else I have spoken with or read, that our very words deceive us, being tied to our faulty concepts. It's bad enough that we poorly state what we mean to convey, and ironic that the listener never quite gets it anyway, and that our words are only interpreted to that listeners mind by their worldview, but that what we say corrupts us, and that what we think about is what we talk about.
And in many words, [such as in this long post],
there is no lack of sin. Proverbs 10:19
