Misguided Calvinism
By: Deji Yesufu
When a Christian brother died recently, I felt a weight of anger which only Christ could have helped relieve me of. In fact it was that rage that propelled me to take a long trip to attend his burial. My anger was pacified by the sincere grief I witnessed in the faces of many whom I know where persecuting this brother and intentionally putting him under. My friend was a lovely person in his lifetime. He had a whole heart submission to the will of God. Yet, this latter thing was what I think was his greatest undoing. I think there are such things are biblical truths, but I believe that there are truths that many people hold in the spirit of a lie.
I am in the middle of counselling a couple in a difficult marriage. The husband and wife hold the truth that the wife should submit to the husband, yet the man is an extremely abusive person. This man holds the truth in a spirit of a lie. Similarly, I thought that my late friend, every time he counselled that I submit to the will of God, within a clearly abusive church system, was holding the truth in a spirit of lies. My friend and I are Calvinists – we believe in the sovereignty of God that saves sinners, yet I see many people stretching “sovereignty” to unbiblical ends. I call it misguided Calvinism and that’s what I wish to write about in this article.
Calvinism is a historic Christian tradition that dates back to John Calvin (1509-1564). I call myself a Calvinist because I see that the doctrine is both biblical and historic. Calvin found a lot of commonality in his doctrine with Augustine and many church fathers. Calvinism is biblical Christianity because it is a doctrines that starts and end with God: the glory of God, particularly in the saving works of Jesus Christ. It is a solid doctrine that is enamoured with the salvation of sinners. Genuine Calvinists want all men to be saved, and are usually occupied with the prodigal spread of the gospel, with the hope that God will save the elect. Calvinism is what informs my activity on social media: that God will give eyes to men to see through their depravity and come to saving knowledge in Christ.
Yet, Calvinism became increasingly misguided from day one. Calvin never wished for his name to be put on any Christian tradition, but God permits things to happens beyond our wishes sometimes. The first problems with Calvinism began with the emergence of Arminanism in the late 16th century and early 17th century. Jacobus Arminius trained under Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor, at Geneva. Arminius remained a Calvinist till his death. However, he maintained a point that Calvin’s Calvinism was being stretched to unhealthy ends. The churches came together at the Synod of Dort and enacted what we call the five points of Calvinism. This protected Calvinism for a bit, but soon enough Arminius’ fears were realized: hypercalvinism emerged and it is still with us today. Hypercalvinism says in essence: God will save the elect therefore we make evangelism secondary or even a non priority at all. Every Calvinist has a bug of hypercalvinism in us – we must make clear cut effort to rinse ourselves of this error. I will tell two anecdotes on misguided Calvinism, and I’ll bring my article to a close.
William Carey was heavily criticised by church people in his day because he suggested that heathens in India need be reached with the gospel. The refrain came up: if God will save the heathen, he will do it himself. God did it himself. He put a burden in the hearts of a few men, and sent these men to Africa and Asia. Hundreds died from malaria attacks in the process and their critics felt justified. Today, one of the great grand sons of those heathen men is penning this tribute to the effort of those men who refused to be misguided by their Calvinism but took the effort to share the gospel with my progenitors. I will be eternally grateful to God and to those men for this.
Another place we find misguided Calvinism was when the moral question of owning slaves begun to be debated in the West in the 18th century. It was Wesleyan Methodists, John Wesley’s disciples, who led the campaign in England. Calvinists held slaves without conscience, “as long as you treated them well”. Even when the drum beat of civil war began to run in the USA in the 1860s, and men like C. H. Spurgeon was calling on his Calvinist brothers in the southern parts of America, to submit to God’s counsel, and end slavery, they remained misguided. They went to war, and many of them perished holding to a false notion. America was freed by liberal thinkers from the oppressive hold of Calvinist thinkers. It was at that time that our great doctrine began to suffer a decline, until it began to experience a resurgence in the 20th century with men like A. W. Pink and Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
What’s my grouse here? Calvinists should remain in the text. Don’t read anything else into the biblical text. Calvinists become misguided through powerful men – mostly great thinkers or preachers. God gives the church gifted men, but we often forget that these men are still sinners. It is easy for these men to begin to read their sins into a text, and fail to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. The way God has given us ability to discern these errors is through the ministry of the local church, and plurality of thinkers. Believers must be content with what they are taught in their churches. Yet, God has given the church a plurality of thinkers – books. No one opinion is lord here. Christ is still the head of his church. The moment we make one man without error, we then imbibe both his truths and errors. It happened with John Gill; I see it even in Spurgeon and R. C. Sproul. And the latest is John MacArthur. Scripture alone is without errors.
As we drove to bury my friend, I struck a conversation with a lady in the vehicle. I told her of the article I pinned to my Facebook profile: A Temple God Has not Built. She wanted to know why I used “not”; I could have written the article without the negative slant. I explained that the temple God has built is the human body. All of our life, learning and experiences are given to us to be whom God wants us to be. The worst thing that can happen to you is when churches give you the armour of Saul to battle with. You must reject it like David did. As long as you live your life by the opinions of men, you are living in a temple God has not built. Christian liberty means that a Christian must be led by God, not by men. This lady asked: where then is the place of faithful pastors. I told her that the moment you have to resort to your Pastor for every decision you want to make, you are in a cult. Pastors are faithful as long as they remain in the text and make applications relevant to the text. Anything else is their personal opinion, and you have all the freedom to reject it.
The Spirit who led you to Christ, will guide you through life. You will make mistakes but those mistakes will add to you. When pastors begin to monitor every aspect of your life, that is overshepherding – it is misguided Calvinism. The beauty of life is that Christ made us, he saved us, and he will lead us to his eternal home. That is biblical Calvinism. The way he will take us through will be diverse, but the blessing of experiences is that God himself authored every path we must walk. Beware of misguided Calvinism; beware of heavy shepherding; beware of cultic Calvinist churches.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY and VICTOR BANJO.
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