Review: What Love is This? (3)

What Love is This? Calvinism’s Misrepresentation of God
Dave Hunt

Mr. Hunt doesn’t always avoid arguments from the Scriptures. For instance:

Israel is called God’s elect in both the Old and New Testaments (Isaiah 45:4; 65:9, 22; Matthew 24:31, etc.). There is no question that God chose Israel, called her, and drew her with “bands of love” unto Himself. Yet most Israelites went into idolatry, refused to repent and were not among the redeemed. Gad had to repeatedly say, “My people hath forgotten me, they have burned incense to vanity” (Jeremiah 18:15); “my people have forgotten me days without number” (Jeremiah 2:32). pg 338

Based on the Scriptural evidence, it’s hard to see how the word “elect” could mean “redeemed,” or to see how “drawn” can mean “called without the ability to refuse.” His treatment of Ephesians 2:8 is another example that show both his strength and his weakness again. He quotes many authorities showing the gift in question is salvation, not faith, but doesn’t dive into the Greek himself to show the reader directly.

The one point on which Mr. Hunt is devastating is eternal security. He dedicates the final chapters of the book to telling a fictional story of a believer who becomes enmeshed in Calvinism, eventually losing his ability to trust in God, and God’s salvation. He shows how each of the five points works to destroy trust in God’s forthright promises, and then how Calvin, and many other Calvinistic thinkers, agree that you cannot know if you are redeemed or not. Some of these quotes are below.

Among the temptations with which Satan assaults believers, none is greater or more perilous, than when disquieting them with doubts as to their election, he at the same time stimulates them with a depraved of inquiring after out of the proper way … I mean when puny man endeavors to penetrate to the hidden recesses of the divine wisdom … in order that he may understand what final determination God has made with regard to Him. Calvin

Few seem to appreciate the doubts of professing Christians who question whether they have been born again. They have no doubt that God will keep His promises but they wonder whether they have properly fulfilled the conditions for being heirs to those promises… They are asking a legitimate question, “Have we believed and repented? Are we recipients of God’s grace?” Since we read of self-deceived hypocrites like Judas, it is an imperative question. “What must I do to be saved?” is an altogether different question from “How do I know I’ve done that?” You can answer the first confidently. Only the Spirit may answer the last with certainty. Walter Chantry

… experience shows that the reprobate are sometimes affected in a way similar to the elect, that even in their own judgment there is no difference between them … Not that they truly perceive the power of spiritual grace and the sure light of faith; but that the Lord the better to convict them, and leave them without excuse, instills into their minds such a sense of his goodness as can be felt without the Spirit of adoption. Calvin

The reality is that Calvinism destroys assurance of salvation, for God, being all powerful, can make you think you’re saved, when you’re not, and make you think you’re not saved when you are. There is no telling, either based on works, or belief, or anything else, whether you are saved or not.

While the book is difficult to read in some places, and the arguments presented aren’t always well supported, the book is interesting, and worth reading.