"But predestination!" (#15: total depravity, manipulation)
In this series, I'm examining some things that Calvinists (especially my ex-pastor) say about predestination. Here's the whole series on my other blog: the pastor's sermons ("When Calvinists say 'But predestination!'"), and my comments 1-4 (election) and 5-6 (Romans and sovereignty) and 7-9 (depravity, Book of Life, predestine) and 10-11 (shaming tactics, Feb. 2015) and 12-14 (dead, regeneration, born again) and 15 (total depravity, manipulation) and 16A (God's Will, babies) and 16B (sin, evil, suffering) and 17 (double-speak and the gospel) . Fifteenth: Switching tracks: I think a Calvinist's over-emphasis on total depravity - their insistence that we realize how terribly wretched we are before we can be saved - hurts more than helps in evangelism and that it exposes some fundamental flaws in Calvinism. From his July 2018 sermon on the doctrine of sovereign election (I'm going to quote a lot of it because it was added