Well as someone who has been both Calvinist (but not 5 point Synod of Dort Calvinist) and non-Calvinist* I wish this thread hadn’t suggest Calvinism is a heresy. For my part, I am of the opinion that neither the determinist aspects of Calvinism or the non-determinist aspects of most (possibly all) Patristic theology and Arminianism can be proven from Scripture.
Also, this kind of debate reduces Calvinism to a single issue, when as our friend
@hedrick can attest, there is a lot more to Calvinist theology, and the theology of churches which embraced his doctrine in whole (such as the Continental Reformed churches, the Presbyterians of the Church of Scotland, the Covenanters (Reformed Presbyterian Church), the Free Church of Scotland, and formerly in England, now a part of the United Reformed Church) or in part (Puritans, Congregationalists, Particular Baptists, and so-called Calvinist Baptists in the Southern Baptist Convention led by the likes of Dr. Albert Mohler).
For my part, I think the answer is we have effective free will to embrace or reject the Holy Spirit, although God owing to his omniscience does know who will decide to reciprocate His love and who will refuse Him.
I would also stress the only basis I have for opting for this approach to determinism is the lack of ongoing support among the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church, of TULIP determinism and the rejection of monergism by the Oriental Orthodox and the Chalcedonians (who rejected it at the Second Council of Constantinople).
The same council rejected universalism, which did have Patristic support and is a form of monergism, along with Pelagianism (since in all three cases, it is divine action alone that is Salvific). We know that whas is now the Assyrian Church of the East once professed a diluted form of which which could be called exaggerated apokatastasis, based on the writings of St. Isaac the Syrian and Mar Sh
elêmôn the Bishop of Basra** This controversial doctrine was also embraced in the third and fourth century by Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa. So there is some Patristic basis for monergism, but it seems to me the consensus patrum (a term coined by Calvinist theologians, as John Calvin to his credit was well versed and strongly invested in Patristics, and like Luther and Cranmer saw himself as reversing errors in the Roman Catholic Church to return to a Patristic-Apostolic basis.
But other than these issues, and iconoclasm, which many Calvinist churches later rejected in the 19th century, something I am very happy about, I tend to like Calvinism and Calvinist churches. Indeed the greatest moral theologian since the repose of Pope St. John Paul II, was Dr. James Kennedy, memory eternal, who reposed in 2007, and today I think Dr. Albert Mohler of the SBC is probably the leading moral theologian of our time.
I particularly loved Dr. Kennedy; his early 1980s sermon condemning abortion as immoral and sinful is beautiful and compelling, and I believe it was one of the seminal works that motivated the Pro Life movement that united Catholics, conservative Protestants and the Orthodox and Assyrians in opposition to abortion, which paid off last summer with the repeal of Roe vs. Wade. And Dr. Kennedy’s moral theology was informed by Calvinism, and while thus like Pope John Paul II, was based on sources derived from medieval scholastic theology, a transformative process occurred with Calvin and John Knox, who Dr. Kennedy had a particular admiration for (he set up a seminary, the John Knox School of Theology, across the street from Coral Ridge).
*I don’t want to say Arminian, because Arminius had a whole slew of beliefs that the Remonstrant Church used to profess, before it degenerated into one of the smallest and most liberal historic mainline churches, with just 6 churches, unsurprising given that they tolerate non-Nicene Christology and encourage new members to write their own creed, which is obviously spitting in the face of the Council of Ephesus in 433 (and Chalcedon in 451, and Constantinople II in the 6th century, Constantinople III in the 7th century, and Nicaea II in 787 AD (although regarding this council and the equivalent Oriental Orthodoc position I doubt Arminius differed from the Dutch Reformed Church concerning iconography)
