understanding calvinism. tuliptulip otal depravity nconditional election imited atonement...

UNDERSTANDING CALVINISM


TULIP

OTAL DEPRAVITY

NCONDITIONAL ELECTION

IMITED ATONEMENT

RRESISTIBLE GRACE

ERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS


The term Calvinism refers to a system of doctrines which attempt to explain the

nature of both God and man. Involved in this are concepts regarding the source of evil, the will of man, and the way in which

God offers and provides salvation. It is rooted in a strict understanding of the sovereignty of God and relies upon the

doctrine of imputation, or transfer, of sins and righteousness.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

“God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or

contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”

(Westminster Confession of Faith Article 3.1 - Of God’s Eternal Decree)


“... In His sight all things are open and manifest; His knowledge is infinite, infallible,

and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to Him contingent, or uncertain. He

is most holy in all His counsels, in all His works, and in all His commands. To Him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or

obedience He is pleased to require of them.”(Westminster Confession of Faith Article 2.2)


“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and

others foreordained to everlasting death.” (Westminster Confession of Faith Article 3.3)


“Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto; and all to the praise of His glorious grace.”

(Westminster Confession of Faith Article 3.5)


“As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath He, by the eternal and most free purpose of His will, foreordained all the

means thereunto. Wherefore, they who are elected being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ; are effectually called unto faith in

Christ by His Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power, through faith, unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually

called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.”



“The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His

own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the

glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to

dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.”


John Calvin

“ man is so enslaved by the yoke of sin, that he cannot of his own nature aim at good

either in wish or actual pursuit”

(Institutes II,iv,1)

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GODConnection to TULIP -

Total Depravity/Inability

John Calvin

“Hence, those who have defined original sin as the want of the original righteousness which we ought to have had, though they substantially comprehend the whole case, do not significantly enough express its power and energy. For our nature is not only utterly devoid of goodness, but so prolific in all kinds of evil,

that it can never be idle. Those who term it concupiscence use a word not very inappropriate,

provided it were added (this, however, many will by no means concede), that everything which is in man, from the intellect to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, is defiled and pervaded with this concupiscence; or, to

express it more briefly, that the whole man is in himself nothing else than concupiscence.”

(Institutes II, i, 8)

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GODConnection to TULIP -

Total Depravity/Inability


James White "The will decides based upon the desires that are presented to it by a persons nature, we can't tell what Adam's nature was outside of knowing there was no sin, but there was no

perfection in him which would keep him from having an evil desire, which evidently he did which lead to his fall...Not only did God have

knowledge of what Adam was going to do, but if God's knowledge of the future is based on his decree, then it was a part of God's decree"

(James White vs. Rober Sungenis Predestination Free Will, http://www.answeringabraham.com/2012/09/cross-examination-james-white-vs-rober.html

)

Connection to TULIP - Total

Depravity/Inability

Free Will??

Determinism

Free Will??

Soft Determinism

or

Free Will??

LIBERTARIAN FREE WILL

or

A SCRIPTURAL OPTION

Sovereignty“supreme power especially over a body politic...

freedom from external control:

autonomy”

A SCRIPTURAL OPTION

•The question is not is God sovereign but what is sovereign; the person or the attribute?

•In the Calvinistic model the attribute rules over the person, His sovereignty allows for no delegation or freedomCould God not be sovereign if He chose to allow us the freedom to choose a or b and assign blessings or consequences for those particular choices?

A SCRIPTURAL OPTION

•In Genesis 1 God demonstrates His sovereignty by creating the world

•God gave Adam dominion over the animal world Could Adam’s rule supersede God’s?

•God “brought them (the animals) to the man to see what he would call them”

•This statement necessitates libertarian free will

UNDERSTANDING CALVINISM:IMPUTATION


TULIP

OTAL DEPRAVITY

NCONDITIONAL ELECTION

IMITED ATONEMENT

RRESISTIBLE GRACE

ERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS

IMPUTATION

im•pute im-ˈpyüt verb transitive im•put•ed; im•put•ing [Middle English, from Anglo-French imputer, from Latin

imputare, from in- + putare to consider] 14th century 1 : to lay the

responsibility or blame for often falsely or unjustly 2: to credit to a

person or a cause : attribute (Webster)

IMPUTATIONGen 15:6 - “counted” - 1 to think, plan,

esteem, calculate, invent, make a judgment, imagine, count. 1a (Qal). 1a1 to think, account. 1a2 to plan, devise,

mean. 1a3 to charge, impute, reckon. 1a4 to esteem, value, regard. 1a5 to invent.

1b (Niphal). 1b1 to be accounted, be thought, be esteemed. 1b2 to be

computed, be reckoned. 1b3 to be imputed. 1c (Piel). 1c1 to think upon,

consider, be mindful of. 1c2 to think to do, devise, plan. 1c3 to count, reckon. 1d

(Hithpael) to be considered.(TDNT)

IMPUTATION

Rom 4:3 - 3049 λογίζομαι [logizomai /log·id·zom·ahee/] v. Middle voice from 3056; TDNT 4:284; TDNTA 536; GK 3357; 41 occurrences; AV translates as “think” nine

times, “impute” eight times, “reckon” six times, “count” five times, “account” four times, “suppose” twice,

“reason” once, “number” once, and translated miscellaneously five times. 1 to reckon, count, compute,

calculate, count over. 1a to take into account, to make an account of. 1a1 metaph. to pass to one’s account, to

impute. 1a2 a thing is reckoned as or to be something, i.e. as availing for or equivalent to something, as having the like force and weight. 1b to number among, reckon with. 1c to reckon or account. 2 to reckon inward, count

up or weigh the reasons, to deliberate. 3 by reckoning up all the reasons, to gather or infer. 3a to consider, take

into account, weigh, meditate on. 3b to suppose, deem, judge. 3c to determine, purpose, decide. Additional

Information: This word deals with reality. 2(STRONG’S)

IMPUTATION

If I “logizomai” or reckon that my bank book has $25 in it, it has $25 in it. Otherwise I am deceiving myself.

This word refers to facts not suppositions.(STRONG’S)

IMPUTATION

Lev 17:1-4 The man who failed to observe this

law was counted as guilty because HE WAS GUILTY

IMPUTATION

EZEKIEL 18 states a divine principle of just

dealings between God and man - the soul that sins shall die and the

righteous shall surely live

IMPUTATION: ADAM’S SIN TO MANKIND

“Therefore, since through man’s fault a curse has extended above and below, over all the

regions of the world, there is nothing unreasonable in its extending to all his

offspring. After the heavenly image in man was effaced, he not only was himself punished by a withdrawal of the ornaments in which he had

been arrayed—viz. wisdom, virtue, justice, truth, and holiness, and by the substitution in

their place of those dire pests, blindness, impotence, vanity, impurity, and

unrighteousness, but he involved his posterity also, and plunged them in the same

wretchedness. This is the hereditary corruption to which early Christian writers gave the name

of Original Sin, meaning by the term the depravation of a nature formerly good and

pure. (Institutes II, i, 5)

“The orthodoxy, therefore, and more especially Augustine, laboured to show, that we are not corrupted by acquired wickedness, but bring an innate corruption from the very womb. It was the greatest impudence to deny this.”

(ibid)


Westminster Confession Article 7 “Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of

Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin, God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His

own glory. By this sin, they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so

became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil,do proceed all actual transgressions. This corruption of nature,

during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be through Christ

pardoned and mortified, yet both itself, and all the motions thereof, are truly and properly sin.”


““Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all

men, for that all have sinned; even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord,” (Rom. 5:19–21). To what quibble will the Pelagians here recur? That the sin of Adam was

propagated by imitation! Is the righteousness of Christ then available to us only in so far as it is an example held forth for our imitation? Can any man

tolerate such blasphemy?“ (Institues II, i, 6)


The Scriptures plainly teach, therefore, that all the guilt or obligation to punishment incurred by the sins of his people

was imputed or charged to the account of Christ, as the legal ground of the execution upon him of the penalty

involved in the case. ...a.) The very force of the imputation is to make him alienee culpce reus; that is, penally

responsible for another s sin. They must remain ours in order that they may be to him the sins of an other. (b.)

Because personal moral qualities, and the pollution inherent in sinful ones, are inalienable and cannot be

transferred by imputation, (c.) Because, as Owen pointed out long ago, to be alienee culpce reus makes no man a sinner, subjectively considered, unless he did unwisely or irregularly undertake the responsibility, (d.) Because our

blessed Lord was a divine Person, and therefore absolutely incapable of personal sin in any sense or degree. While,

therefore, he bore our sins, and consequently suffered the penalty involved, and hence was both regarded and

treated by the Father, during the time and for the purpose of expiation, as vicariously guilty and worthy of wrath, he

was all the while not one iota the less personally immaculate and glorious in holiness, and all the more the

well-beloved Son of the Father, in whom he was well pleased.(HODGE)

IMPUTATION: MAN’S SIN TO CHRIST

“These (Romans 4 SC) and numerous similar passages render the Scriptural idea

of imputation perfectly clear. It is laying anything to one’s charge, and treating him accordingly. It produces no change in the

individual to whom the imputation is made; it simply alters his relation to the law. All

those objections, therefore, to the doctrine expressed by this term, which are founded on the assumption that imputation alters

the moral character of men; that it implies an infusion of either sin or holiness, rest on

a misconception of its nature.” (Hodge quoted by White, James R. (2007-05-01). God Who

Justifies, The (Kindle Locations 1774-1777). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

IMPUTATION: MAN’S SIN TO CHRIST

For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified,

than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O

benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a

single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many

transgressors! White, James R. (2007-05-01). God Who Justifies, The (Kindle Locations 237-240). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

IMPUTATION: CHRIST’S RIGHTEOUSNESS TO MAN

The righteousness of Christ is in justification imputed to the

believer. That is, is set to his account, so that he is entitled to

plead it at the bar of God, as though it were personally and

inherently his own. White, James R. (2007-05-01). God Who

Justifies, The (Kindle Locations 1017-1018). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition


Justification does not change the person but instead changes the

person’s status. White, James R. (2007-05-01). God Who Justifies, The (Kindle Locations 964-965). Baker Publishing Group.

Kindle Edition.


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