Arminians seem to make the claim that they save themselves by their choices while at the same time denying that they really have anything to do with their salvation. Calvinists, OTOH, make the claim that while their salvation was determined at the foundation of the earth entirely independent of anything the person does or thinks during their lifetime, that their destiny is not the result of fatalistic determinism. Just saying.
If by "fatalistic determinism," you mean determined by chance or an impersonal God, then no, Calvinism doesn't teach that.
If you mean by "fatalistic determinism," that God determines everything from the color of our eyes to the next breath we take to the day we die and everything that happens to us from birth to death and beyond, then yes, that is Calvinism.
What you're perceiving is not a crack in Calvinism, but the ever-exasperating attempt to articulate God's sovereignty while still encouraging men to believe.
But the frustration is ours; not God's. We argue and cajole and urge, and some men respond and some don't. But God doesn't feel any sense of uncertainty. He's already determined the outcome of our preaching.
What I've found to be one of the real bonuses of Calvinism is that it lends a profound and rock-solid sense of security to the Christian. And that confidence is what we preach, rather than dwelling on men's supposed "free will" choice to believe. Because truth is easiest to apprehend in hind-sight. So while we plead our case to everyone, we know that all true believers will look back on their lives and see the hand of God everywhere.
Nobody explains it better than Boettner...
Calvin emphatically repudiated the charge that his doctrine was Fatalism. “Fate,” says he, “is a term given by the Stoics to their doctrine of necessity, which they had formed out of a labyrinth of contradictory reasonings; a doctrine calculated to call God Himself to order, and to set Him laws whereby to work. Predestination I define to be, according to the Holy Scriptures, that free and unfettered counsel of God by which He rules all mankind, and all men and things, and also all parts and particles of the world by His infinite wisdom and incomprehensible justice.” And again, ”.., had you but been willing to look into my books, you would have been convinced at once how offensive to me is the profane term fate: nay, you would have learned that this same abhorrent term was cast in the teeth of Augustine by his opponents.”2 Luther says that the doctrine of Fatalism among the heathen is a proof that “the knowledge of Predestination and of the prescience of God, was no less left in the world than the notion of divinity itself.” 3 In the history of philosophy Materialism has proven itself essentially fatalistic. Pan theism also has been strongly tinged with it. "...Predestination therefore differs from Fatalism as much as the acts of a man differ from those of a machine, or as much as the unfailing love of the heavenly Father differs from the force of gravitation. “It reveals to us,” says Smith, “the glorious truth that our lives and our sensitive hearts are held, not in the iron cog-wheels of a vast and pitiless Fate, nor in the whirling loom of a crazy Chance, but in the almighty hands of an infinitely good and wise God.”1
So here we learn that Calvinism is neither fatalistic nor anti-evangelical. And we see that Luther even used "fatalism among the heathens" as evidence that all men have a sense of the truth of predestination. I hadn't thought of that before, but it's an interesting approach. Makes sense to me.
No man can be a consistent fatalist. For to be consistent he would have to reason something like this: “If I am to die today, it will do me no good to eat, for I shall die anyway. Nor do I need to eat if I am to live many years yet, for I shall live anyway. Therefore I will not eat.” Needless to say, if God has foreordained that a man shall live, He has also foreordained that he shall be kept from the suicidal folly of refusing to eat.
That's a great defense. I'm going to remember that one.
This doctrine,” says Hamilton, “is only superficially like the pagan ‘fate.’ The Christian is in the hands not of a cold, immutable determinism, but of a warm, loving heavenly Father, who loved us and gave His Son to die for us on Calvary! The Christian knows that ‘all things work together for good to them that love God, even to them that are called according to His purpose.’ The Christian can trust God because he knows He is all-wise, loving, just and holy. He sees the end from the beginning, so that there is no reason to become panicky when things seem to be going against us."
AMEN.
It's modern man who seeks to suppress the notion of God's predestination because he really really likes to be in control. "Just do it."
Then Calvinism is not internally inconsistent. The inconsistency problem then is not with Calvinism as a theology, it is just with the Calvinists who deny the idea the Calvinism actually teaches fatalistic determinism.
Likewise perhaps the internal inconsistency with Arminianism is not with the theology itself, but with those who preach Arminianism on the one hand and then deny that they do believe they are, effectively, their own Saviors.
Amen! I love it, Dr. E. Fatalism has no true master, but Divine predestination does. And just as you say, the recoil away from God's loving predestination comes from man's desire to be in control. That was me and so I laugh at myself for pushing away from the very thing that benefited me and could comfort me MOST. I can see a reprobate being theoretically against predestination, but the saved should embrace it. There is no higher level of security. If the saved truly trust God, then they should WANT Calvinistic predestination to be true. :)