Now...he [God] arranges all things by his sovereign counsel, in such a way that individuals are born, who are doomed from the womb to certain death, and are to glorify him by their destruction. So wrote John Calvin.
The Calvinist declares that salvation is based on the idea that God regenerates a spiritually dead person for whom, according to Calvinism, it's impossible to respond to God in any way. After regeneration, God gives the regenerated person the faith to believe. In other words, as they say, "Regeneration precedes faith." So, for a split second, he's a born-again person who has no faith in Christ.
The formerly dead person had no choice but to be regenerated, then he had no choice but to be given the faith to believe in Christ. He had no say-so, no choice in the matter.
To disagree with that order of salvation is, as the Calvinist says, "To rob God of His glory." But this charge raises a huge issue that's so contradictory that it, like so many other assertions of Calvinism, has to be placed in Calvinism's every-growing mystery box.
According to Calvinism, God foreordained everything; He contols everything, every thought, every act, and every event. He is, their system says, therefore, the cause of everything. So, let's apply this idea of robbing God of His glory.
If God foreordained all things and causes all things, then He ordained and causes people who believe that, as the Bible says, faith precedes regeneration according to Romans 10:17, to rob Him of His glory. According to Calvin, they have no choice in the matter, God foreordains people to rob Him of His glory then condemns and punishes them for the theft, although they aren't responsible for the robbery, God is.
There's to be the abandonment of logic at this point (and at many points in Calvinism.) The problem is that Calvinism fails to recognize that the Bible declares faith to be a non-meritorious system of perception which cannot bring glory to the believer.
The Bible explicitly points out that the placing of one's faith in Christ doesn't bring glory to the one who believes: "Now to the one who works, the wages are not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness." (Rom 4:4-5)
Faith is not a work which would bring glory to the believer because Paul places faith in opposition to works.
If a father offers his son a new five-million dollar limited-edition Lamborghini, fully paid for along with car insurance for life and he tells him the only condition is to believe him for it, the son's act of faith to believe his father in no way diminishes the father's glory and grace. Whether the son accepts the gift or rejects it, the father's love, grace, generosity, and glory remain on full display for all the world to see.
Does this make sense: God commands that no one rob Him of His glory but has foreordained and caused men to rob Him of His glory, then punishes them for doing what He foreordains that they will do.
How can those things be? "It's another mystery," declares the Calvinist. But instead of "mystery," they should be saying, "Yes, it's another contradiction."
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