Good Evening All,
I wanted some of your input and discussion on a topic that I’ve been mulling over lately. There are several issues that would need to be resolved in my mind before I could consider Calvinism, the main issue being that Calvinism appears to require elements of both absolutism and relativism in order to function. All of the Calvinists I have spoken with hold absolutism as being true, and believe that there are absolutes of right and wrong determined by one absolute standard (namely, the nature of God Himself). When God created us in His image, He wrote His standard on our hearts in the form of our conscience (Rom. 2:14-15, Micah 6:8). This is why we know what is right or wrong, righteous or sinful, just or unjust, according to God’s standard.
In previous discussions I have witnessed, or in which I have engaged, Non-Calvinists have made the accusation, “If God calls all men to repent, even though they can’t, it is unjust for Him to condemn them to hell when they don’t.” The Calvinist typically gives one of the following replies, or a variant thereof:
- “It may be unjust to you, but it’s just to God”, or
- “God is just, but not as we understand it”, or
- They quote or paraphrase John Calvin, who said, “…it is perverse to measure the divine by the standard of human justice” (Inst. III, XXIV, 17).
All of these responses appear to have a common thread: relativism, the idea that there are no absolutes of right and wrong and morals are subjective/relative to the individual. Calvinists seem to profess absolutism until the issue of God’s justice rears its head, at which point they switch to the relativistic argument that God has one standard and we have another. Unfortunately, absolutism and relativism are exclusive; they cannot both be true. But if we accept absolutism as being true, then Calvinism falls apart. Our conscience---which testifies to God’s standard---tells us that God would not act as Calvinism says he does, because that would be unjust. God is just (Is. 30:18, 61:8, Job 34:12, Deut. 32:4), and He cannot go against His own nature because He is unchanging (Heb. 6:18, Tit. 1:2, James 1:13). On the other hand, if we accept relativism is true, the entire Bible falls apart because morals are subjective and God would have no grounds on which to punish us for supposed “sins”.
Absolutism appears to be the only logical and valid system with which to interpret the Bible, but without the presence of relativism, Calvinism cannot survive. There are other issues connected to this same topic that I would need to resolve before I could consider Calvinism, but this is the crux of the matter. I welcome your comments and discussion.
In the love of Christ,
Gavino