Why is Calvinism so dangerous? #7 (Hard hearts)

 [In this series, I'm breaking the long post "Why is Calvinism so dangerous?" into bite-sized pieces.]

7.
The Bible (and the concordance) says ... That when God "hardens" hearts, it is retribution for first hardening your own heart, for resisting God for so long even after He's been patient and long-suffering with you.


But Calvinism says ... God arbitrarily chooses whose hearts to harden against Him (non-elect) and whose to turn to Him (elect), with no input/responsibility on our parts.


Romans 9:18: "Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden."  [Calvinists say "See, God hardens whomever He wants.  We have nothing to do with His choice of whom to harden and whom to elect."  But in the concordance, "hardens" is retribution for first hardening your own heart, for resisting God.  And so, yes, we do have something to do with whether we are hardened or not.  God further hardens those who choose to resist/reject Him.  He confirms their decision and then uses it for His purposes.  Plus, and this is critical, Romans 9 is about Israel as a nation, about God handing them over to their hard-hearted rejection of Jesus and giving the Gospel to the Gentiles instead, because the Jews didn't want it.  But then the Jews cried "not fair!" because they thought the Gentiles shouldn't get salvation.  They thought the Jews were the "special" ones and should get God's favor and salvation just because they were Jews.  That's what Romans 9 is about.  God is telling them that He can give the Gospel/offer salvation to whomever He wants to, to whomever is willing to receive it (and the Gentiles were), and that He can take it away from (and punish) anyone, even Jews, if they resist/reject it.  But if you let Calvinists convince you that Romans 9 is about God choosing individual people for salvation or hardening individual people for hell, you will be a Calvinist.  Examine the worm!]

And notice the order of unbelief in John 12:37-39 - "they would not believe" resulted in "they could not believe."  Because they would not believe in Jesus, God hardened them so that they could not believe.  But they chose to not believe first.  And so God gave them what they wanted, what they chose: a hard heart.  

And in Ezekiel 20:21-25 and Romans 1:21-24, the people rebel against God, so He lets them become hardened and defiled, handing them over to their own sinful rebellion.  They earned their hard-heart by choosing first to rebel against God.

A simple study of what the Bible says and what the concordance says about many of the words Calvinists hinge Calvinism on will defeat Calvinism.


Such as, Calvinists always use God hardening Pharaoh's heart as "evidence" that God chooses whom to harden, without any influence on our parts.  But a simple reading of the early chapters of Exodus shows that early on and through the first several plagues, Pharaoh hardened his own heart.  And then eventually God made Pharaoh's self-chosen hardness permanent (retribution for first hardening his own heart).  God knew Pharaoh would harden his heart, and so God made a way to incorporate Pharaoh's hard heart into His plans.  But God did not harden Pharaoh's heart apart from Pharaoh choosing to willingly harden his own heart first.      

However, to make it fit Calvinism (after I brought this up in a letter to the elders), my ex-pastor tried to explain it this way in his sermons: "Yeah, I know it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, but it was really that God hardened it first, before Pharaoh hardened his own heart." 

Me: "Really!?!  Tell me more things that are NOT in the Bible!"

(Note: See #88 in "The Calvinist ESV: New verses Added #60-88" for a look at how the KJV, which is usually the most accurate, mistranslates Exodus 7:13, making it sound Calvinist when it's really not.)  

On a different note, let's consider 2 Peter 3:9 for a moment.  This verse says that God is patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish but wanting all to come to repentance. But what's patience for if He Himself hardens the hearts of the non-elect so that they cannot believe and if He Himself determines/controls when the elect believe?  Who is He patient with?  Himself?  Does this make sense!?!

And notice in Romans 11:4-5 how God "chooses" His people.  "... 'I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.'  So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace."  The people chose whether they would serve Baal or not.  Then God chose those who did not worship Baal.  The people's choice of whom they worshipped affected whether God chose them or not.  (But what did He choose the 7000 for?  If you go to 1 Kings 19:14-18, you see that He chose them, reserved them, not to be believers, but to be spared from death so they could be prophets alongside Elijah.  Election is about God choosing someone for a job, a task, not about Him predestining individual people for salvation.)  

And for further biblical proof that we choose to harden our own hearts, see Zechariah 7:11-13: "But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears.  They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through earlier prophets.  So the Lord Almighty was very angry.  'When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,' says the Lord Almighty."

Umm, yeah, does anyone hear "God controls/causes everything people do" in these verses?  

I didn't think so!

And why would Calvi-god get angry with them when he himself caused them to resist him?  That's just silly.  So he causes people to do things and then he gets angry about it?  He "patiently waits" for people to come to him when he himself decides if and when they come to him?  

In order to be a Calvinist, you have to look right at a Bible verse that clearly, plainly says one thing and go, "Oh, but it doesn't really mean that!  There's a secret layer of meaning that only we Calvinists know, and it changes what the verse is really saying."

Yep, sounds legit to me!  Sign me up for this "knowledge of the secret layers" so that I too can understand what God meant to say when He wrote the words that He didn't really mean!

[No, I am not nice and tolerant about Calvinism!  Not at all!  I am nice and tolerant when it comes to the people trapped in Calvinism, but not when it comes to the theology or those who trap others in it.  How can we be nice and tolerant about a theology that uses God's Word against God, that does such damage to God's character and truth and people's eternities while trying to appear like it actually upholds God's character and truth!?!  If Calvinism is a lie, like I believe it is, then who is the father of those lies?  That's right: Satan.  May we never be nice and tolerant about a satanic lie infiltrating our churches and destroying God's Truth and character, about a theology that shuts the door of heaven on most people, declaring them un-save-able.  Tolerating Calvinism or being soft on it will look like compromising with it, which will make it appear more acceptable, which will encourage its spread, which will eventually destroy the church from the inside out.  Be nice and tolerant with people who are trapped in Calvinism, but not with Calvinism itself!  I mean, if this issue - at the heart of the gospel and God's Word - isn't worth fighting back against, then nothing is.]