Are Calvinists Arrogant?

I’m much more involved in political/cultural battles than I am in theological squabbles, but ever since I first dipped my toe in those tumultuous waters, I’ve heard the same criticism again and again: Reformed believers are just so darn arrogant. When I first heard the critique, I scoffed. Surely not. After all, who has less reason to boast than a Calvinist? Not only can we take zero credit for our faith (can a zombie take credit for someone graciously giving him the antidote?), but the theology is, frankly, not that complex. Let’s face it: “God is sovereign” is not a hard concept to grasp.

I kept scoffing — until the evidence mounted and mounted. Ex-members of the PCA described endless theological disputes, other Christians I respect opened my eyes to the subtle jabs hidden in blog posts and public statements, and even official outlets like the PCA’s own magazine began carrying articles noting (and lamenting) the denomination’s often uncharitable contentiousness. I even felt its sting directly as a church official responded to one of my own inquiries (admittedly, a rather adversarial inquiry) with a condescending declaration that I didn’t really understand Calvinism.

Arminian pride I can get. After all, if you truly have free will, then you deserve some degree of legitimate credit for discerning the truth. Your pastors deserve credit for communicating truth in a way that it is most easily understood, and your good deeds are, well, your good deeds — at least to some extent. (And yes I know I’m over-simplifying). But a prideful Calvinist? It should be an oxymoron.

And yet the reputation exists. Why? I have three non-mutually-exclusive theories:

1. Lots and lots of Calvinists are arrogant. Let’s start with the Occam’s Razor explanation. We could have a reputation for arrogance because, well, we’re arrogant. This of course begs the question as to why, but let’s start with noting that our reputation is in part well-deserved.

2. Calvinists are a squabbling, disputatious lot. I used to think that my old church (the one I was predestined to leave), the a cappella churches of Christ, had cornered the market on fratricide. If you live in the heart of Church of Christ country (as I do), then you’re familiar with the phenomenon of two churches from the same “denomination” brooding at each other from across the street, and you likely lived through the newsletter wars of the 1990s, and the endless controversies over things like gyms in church buildings, taped music during weddings, and basketball goals in parking lots. Growing up in the churches of Christ was like growing up in in a community center built by the Crips and Bloods — without declaring a truce.

But we Calvinists certainly give the Church of Christ a run for its money. Where my ancestors used to break off and start their own church, my fellow congregants bring claims in church courts and glare from the pews at preachers they despise. The theological disputes are at least as intense, the language every bit as nasty, but — crucially — that nastiness exists when we don’t actually believe souls are at stake. In my Church of Christ upbringing, lost arguments could mean damned souls. Not so for the Reformed, yet we fight on. And on. And on.

Of course there is room for healthy disagreement in any denomination, but unless disagreements are conducted with grace and charity, one or both sides will always come across as arrogant, bull-headed, or just plain jerks.

3. Calvinist theology sounds arrogant to modern ears. Simply put, it’s tough to talk about the “elect” in our egalitarian era without it sounding harsh, unforgiving, and elitist. Even if the “elect” can’t take any credit at all for God’s grace and mercy, then very concept itself puts many of us on edge. I can see it in almost any religious discussion — when “the question” is popped: “So you actually believe that God has chosen some people for salvation and left the rest of us for damnation?” I will rephrase, of course, and try to reframe the discussion around God’s mercy towards a broken and depraved world, but the true Good News of the Gospel so completely depends on there also being a bad news we don’t want to hear (that we’re lost, sinful, and evil — richly deserving judgment) that it’s impossible to be Calvinist and be in step at all with our modern, “up with people” everyone-gets-a-trophy culture. In other words, even when we leaven our words with love and grace, the mere vocalization of our beliefs strikes many people as utterly insufferable.

Oh, and if you combine actual arrogance and a contentious spirit to an out-of-step theology, well then you’re basically the superhero of d-bags — the Superbag.

What’s the antidote? It’s more than humility, really. Our zombified, putrified soul was lifted out of its flesh-eating blackness only because of the amazing grace of a loving God. We did nothing at all to merit our rescue any more than lost sheep do anything at all to merit the Shepherd’s rescue. Cognizant of this fact, shouldn’t we be the most grateful people alive? It took a trip to Iraq and back for me to become truly grateful. But it shouldn’t have taken riding over an antitank mine that didn’t explode for me to understand grace and gratitude.

So here’s my message to my fellow Calvinists: let’s proclaim the Gospel, but let’s get over ourselves. After all, how can we possibly be cocky about a simple theology that we couldn’t possibly understand without divine intervention?

You think Reformed folks don't think conviction of sin and repentance is part of the process?

If they think it's part of the process, they don't understand the process. The concepts of sin and repentance that existed up until Calvin, et al, were redefined by Calvinistic predestination into concepts that have no meaning whatsoever.

To sum up Reformed theology, first the words of Calvin and Zwingli:

"The devil and wicked men are so held in on every side with the hand of God, that they cannot conceive, or contrive, or execute any mischief, any farther than God himself doth not permit only, but command. Nor are they only held in fetters, but compelled also, as with a bridle, to perform obedience to those commands." (Calvin's Institutes b. 1, c. 17, s. 11.) T

"...when God makes angels or men sin, he does not sin himself, because he does not break any law. For God is under no law, and therefore cannot sin." (Zwingli, Sermon on Providence)

Calvinism is to heresy what HIV is to infection: it is something that attacks the theological body at the most fundamental level--the level of meaning.

Accepting it requires that everything become something completely other than what it appears to be:

a God who so loved the world becomes the cause of misery and death,

a God who is righteous and causes no man to sin or tempts anyone to sin becomes the source of all sin,

faith or belief become “works” that can’t save you,

they’re not a door to salvation that can be opened by anyone (because what living person is not able to believe) but a “gift” given to mark someone who was unconditionally elected and regenerated from the death of sin to which God had previously consigned him before he ever knew what was going on,

“whosoever will” becomes a tiny elect from the entire human race throughout all time “who cannot ever,”

human will and purpose and moral responsibility become illusions floating on a sea of preordained necessity,

man, a real, though limited, being created in the image of God becomes a ghost in the machine,

a loving God and Father of an eternally existing Son turns away from the love relationship that existed between them since before the foundation of the world to create a universe dedicated to the eventual torture, abandonment, and death of that Son for the purpose of glorifying the Father and bringing him praise (but glory before whom and praise from whom?) and

it turns a beautiful story into a sick and perverted horror flick.

The gospel according to Calvinism:

Once upon a time, before anything was created, when God in three persons dwelt happily in and of themselves, God the Father said, "Hey, I've got a great idea. We're going to create a universe by and through you, God the Son, and I am, before you create anything at all, going to determine how every single bit of it, from start to finish, from the beginning to the end, from the least quark to the biggest bang, is going to go. We will create an entire human race from an original male and female that I will cause to be tempted and sin and, because of that, subject the rest of the human race to untold millennia of misery and suffering and death and tell them it's their own fault, all for my greater glory because it seemed good to me, all the while promising them a means of salvation from that misery I've imposed on them as a result of their sin against me that I will have preordained.

"And a really neat thing is that we will tell them that if they listen to what they are told and follow it faithfully, we will hear them and answer them and forgive their sins and heal their land, but they won't know that in actuality they won't be able even to try unless we make a few of them do it and the vast majority we will keep in the bondage of sin and degradation and then hold them responsible for not doing what we created them to be unable to do.

"And the best thing of all, God the Son, is that because the sin (that I will ordain and set into motion to the very degree and extent that is my good pleasure according to the unfathomable counsel of my will) cannot be forgiven without a sacrifice and since none of them is able or capable or even willing because I will have made them unable, incapable, and unwilling, YOU are going to have to enter the human race and grow up among those who, but for the few I will have made to act to the contrary, won't listen because I will have made them unable to hear, who won't see because I will have blinded them to the truth, and who won't ask for forgiveness for something they were hopeless to avoid doing because I will have made them incapable of doing so and then have the ever loving crap beaten out of you, scourged to within an inch of your life, before being made to carry the instrument of your torture before crowds jeering at you, because I will have made them do so, to the place where others, because of my decree before the foundations of the earth according to my own good counsel, will drive spikes through your wrists and hoist you up to hang between criminals--and the best part of all, at that moment, just as you are about to die, I'll turn my back on you!

"But that's cool, because in three days, I'll raise you from the dead so that we can say that this proves you are who we already know you are without ever the necessity of our even creating a universe or a human race and then use faith in that as the ostensible means by which we confer saving grace on the humans without telling them, until John Calvin comes along, that what they think is turning to us in faith to freely receive the gift of forgiveness and salvation is, in actuality, every bit as programmed and inevitable as the majority of the human race on their way to burn and suffer eternally in the lake of fire for refusing to believe that which I will have made them unable to believe since before the foundations of the earth and all for my praise and glory. How does that sound?"

And does God the Son say, "Wait a second, you're going to create a universe with a world of conscious beings made in our image, screw them over in the most horrendous ways imaginable, hold them responsible for what you're going to compel them to do, and then, near the end of the whole shebang, make ME suffer for every sin they ever committed without their ever having had the capacity to decide otherwise, and die so that those who don't even have the capacity to make anything but a faux choice will be "saved"? And that will make the relationship that you and I and the Holy Spirit share right now better how?" or does he say, "Hey, that sounds great and we'll call that the GOOD NEWS!"

I also realize that my thoughts are set in a history/time frame. God is not constrained by time. He can hear all prayers - everything is in the ‘now’ to Him. A hard truth to understand, but so is eternity. I still wrestle getting my mind around the concept that God has had no beginning and will have no end or that heaven is everlasting.

I have 'meditated' over your words here to attempt to understand what you are saying. I do not understand. Christ told us in Mark 13:23 But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things.

Granted He did not say any or all would understand all things, but, 'time' and what it means to God would be included in all things. Some things are appointed in His time, and Peter told us the method in which time is kept by the Heavenly Father. My personal opinion is there could be no such thing as 'faith' IF a date certain of specific events foretold would be was given. However, as it is Written, we can know the 'season' of events by what is taking place in the here and now. The reappearance of Sodom and Gomorrah as national culture is kind of a benchmark to me. And much is said about the reemergence of the modern era being even worse than the days of Sodom and Gomorrah.

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