Is Calvinism heresy?

In short then not only not Paul but no other inspired writer ever speaks of "eternal reprobation;" it is merely a dream of a certain school. So the curse of God follows, instead of causing, the impious ways of men. Arminianism is wholly astray no doubt in reducing God's election to a mere foresight of good in some creatures; but Calvinism is no less erroneous in imputing the evil lot of the first Adam race to God's decree. They both spring from analogous roots of unbelief: Calvinism reasoning, contrary to scripture, from the truth of election to the error of eternal reprobation; Arminianism rightly rejecting that reprobation but wrongly reasoning against election. Like other systems they are in part true and in part false — true in what they believe of scripture, false in yielding to human thoughts outside scripture: happy those, who are content as Christians with the truth of God and refuse to be partisans on either side of men! Our wisdom is to have our minds open to all scripture, refusing to go a hair-breadth farther.

This is the way in which His dwelling in man is effected; but the consequence of that gift to you is that you make God your refuge and delight. There is no such thing as the dwelling of the Spirit in a saint without bringing the soul to judge itself, as well as to peace with God. To this it seems to me that every Christian comes by grace sooner or later, though not always at first. He will be brought to it in God's goodness, were it, as it is often, on a death-bed. We do not always judge aright. There may be not seldom hindrances to comfort through bad teaching, as well as through unjudged sin. Of these I do not speak now, nor of defect in intelligence. Still less do I speak of the effects of the Calvinistic system or of Arminianism, both of which are prejudicial to enjoying the grace of God. Calvinists are apt to think an Arminian cannot have peace. — This is all nonsense: he may enjoy peace with God as really as the Calvinist. Indeed experience would say it is more frequent than with those of the opposite school, though each in a different way look within (I believe, unscripturally). The truth is that peace rests on our faith of Christ and His work. Arminianism is no more to me than Calvinism, and I doubt that I admire one more than the other. As systems they seem to me narrow, unsound, and pernicious. But I thank God that to not a few who are committed to both sides He has given to taste of His own grace in Christ.

What a pity to fall under these systems of men, as one may call the peculiarities of Calvinists or Arminians! For one only blames their peculiarities, not the truth which they hold as Christians. There are dear saints of God among both; but they both suffer not a little, from the Arminian not giving sufficient glory to God's grace in life eternal, and from the Calvinist not leaving sufficient value to communion, which is often followed by uncertainty about his own election. As one of them said, "If you do not doubt about yourself, I doubt about you." Their tendency is to slur their sins or to set up a school of doubt. It was a pious man who so spoke, and he wrote many hymns; and I can but hope the hymns are better than the doctrine. For such doubting is abominable, unworthy not only of a Christian but of Christ still more. It practically denies the gospel, which proclaims salvation by God's grace, and calls for our peaceful enjoyment of it. Hence in point of fact Calvinists generally, though with bright exceptions, are weak as to the gospel. They are occupied with election, rather than with God's love to the world, to say nothing of the provision of grace for their own souls. Election has a too absorbing place in their creed, which makes it a sort of servant-of-all-work. But all this falls miserably short of God's grace and truth. In Christ there is room for everything true that both Calvinists and Arminians hold, and for a good deal more which neither holds. It is a pity that saints of God do not drop these partial schemes of doctrine, cleaving only to God's revelation, accepting it wholly, and eschewing every substitute for it. Christianity has ample room for the widest feeling and for the soundest judgment, and in short for everything that faith is bound to receive from God, or that love is free to achieve for His glory.

Leave it to Arminians to preach man's freewill and power to turn, if not to do good. We know that we were slaves of Satan and dead in sins: a state incompatible with their bad doctrine. Leave it to Calvinists to preach election to the world, which can do no good to the lost but only injure them by accepting it in a fatalistic way, while still under the enemy's bondage. They are alike enamoured of their doctrines, true but wholly unsuitable in the latter case, and quite false in the former one. Be content with Christ and Christianity, which are divine. Arminianism and Calvinism are human and may be left for men to squabble about, instead of simply following (as all Christians ought) the word which glorifies Christ by the Spirit, and delivers the believer that cleaves to Him from the narrowness and the error of all human systems.

Take this evidence of it:- Calvinists and Arminians contend with no small acrimony in their common assumption that purchase and redemption are the same thing. He who holds to scripture learns the difference which they ignore. They do not see that the Christian is both bought and redeemed, and that the unbeliever, though not redeemed, is bought, Confounding the two, they cannot convince any but themselves; the Christian who discriminates them is assured that all are bought, even the most wicked (as in 2 Peter 2:1), and that the believer has redemption in Christ, the forgiveness of sins through His blood. Man, whether he believes or not, was purchased by the Lord, is bound to own Him, and is preached to ("all men" and "everywhere") that he may repent and believe the gospel of salvation. Those who believe are by faith forgiven their sins, and enter the family of God as His children, comforted to know their redemption as well as their election by sovereign grace. All the evil was theirs, all the good is of God which for us turns on faith in Christ.

Defectiveness of doctrine does not make it to be heresy, nor is all error heresy. What constitutes heresy is, it is the fruit of "human mind and will having been at work in connection with doctrine." The word heresy means "a choice" (from "to choose"). If the evil is present in an upright mind, get the thing once clearly before his mind and he will be set free. If a second time the mind turns back to it, there is reason to fear that there is want of ingenuousness, his having turned away from it before (after the admonitions) condemns him, if he turns back to it. For he had admitted that the root out of which his doctrine flowed was a bad one. His will had been at work. Its reappearing looks as if he had changed his doctrine without giving up the root of it. "Reject, or pass by such;" that is, do not sanction with your authority, which is from Paul, any such as teachers.

But we are looking not at mere errors, but marking those chiefly that denied the full truth of the Person of Christ, which are not errors, but infidelity. A man may hold wrong views concerning many things in the Bible. He may be singular in his views as to the mode and subjects of baptism, as to the doctrines of election and the Lord's coming; if he be sound and scriptural as to the Person of Christ, His perfect manhood, and His perfect deity he cannot be fatally wrong upon other and lesser points. But the heretic who denies the true humanity, or essential Godhead of Christ is an infidel.

But, upon the ground of responsibility merely, men are lost. Hence the texts upon which Arminianism relies have to do with the world at large, with the provision made in grace for these, and the divine appeals to and dealings with them. An important class of texts, however, even with regard to these, they overlook or explain away, while they infer wrongly from their general texts as to the actual salvation of those saved. Calvinism, on the other hand, when it treats of actual salvation, is almost wholly right. Scripture and conscience agree here in their witness to its truth, and the opposition made is compelled to be mainly upon another ground, namely, the supposed bearing of this upon the case of the lost. Here the Arminian is upon his own ground, and if the Calvinist follow him here, he loses the strength he but now had, and Scripture and conscience turn against him.

Calvinism clogs and obscures the gospel by teaching that Christ suffered to reconcile His Father to us, and by its decree of reprobation. For God so loved the world that He gave His own Son, not only that the believer might have eternal life, but that his sins should be effaced by His sacrifice. And Rom. 9:22-23 is conclusive, that while He before prepared vessels of mercy for glory, He endured with much long suffering vessels of wrath fitted for destruction. They were fitted by their own sins and unbelief, not by God, who is not the author of evil and is righteous in judgment.

The Arminian scheme necessarily fails by making man guilty and sinful, to go as partner with God in his own salvation. But if it be true as scripture plainly declares, that man is dead in trespasses and sins, not the Gentile only but the favoured Jew too, that question is decided. Arminianism is farther from the truth than Calvinism.

This is a grave practical lesson, and Malachi, I think, is deeply interesting in this way. At the beginning of the history of Jacob and Esau we find the purpose of God before the children were born. Indeed to make election a question of the deserts in the two parties is simply to destroy its nature, if allowed in word. Election is necessarily from God entirely apart from those that are the objects of it, as it means the exercise of His sovereign choice. If there is the smallest ground in the party chosen because of which God chooses, it is not His choice, but rather a moral discernment, which, far from being sovereign, is only an appraisal whether the person deserves or not. One may hold then as strongly as the stoutest Calvinist the free sovereign choice of God, but the reprobation of the wicked which the Calvinist draws from it, as an equally sovereign decree, is in my judgment a grave error. I do not therefore scruple to say a word upon it now, inasmuch as it is an important thing in both doctrine and practice. The idea that, if God chooses one, He must reprobate another whom He does not choose, is a fallacy and without, yea against, scripture. This is exactly where human influence comes in; that is, the petty self-confidence of man's mind. Now I do not see why we as believers should be petty; there is every reason why we should gather what is great for God. To be simple is all well; but this too is a very different thing from being petty, and no reason why we should limit ourselves to ourselves; for what does God reveal His mind for? Surely that we should know Him, and be imitators of Him.

At the same time it is remarkable that, while the first book of the Bible points out the choice of God from the beginning, He does not pronounce morally on Esau in a full, complete, and absolute way until the last book of the Old Testament. It is only in Malachi that he says, "Esau have I hated." I could conceive nothing more dreadful than to say so in Genesis. Never does scripture represent God as saying before the child was born and had manifested his iniquity and proud malice, "Esau have I hated." There is where the mind of man is so false. It is not meant, however, that God's choice was determined by the character of the individuals. This were to make man the ruler rather than God. Not so: God's choice flows out of His own wisdom and nature. It suits and is worthy of Himself; but the reprobation of any man and of every unbeliever is never a question of the sovereignty of God. It is the choice of God to do good where and how He pleases; it is never the purpose of His will to hate any man. There is no such doctrine in the Bible. I hold therefore that, while election is a most clear and scriptural truth, the consequence that men draw from election, namely, the reprobation of the non-elect, is a mere reproduction of fatalism, common to some heathen and all Mahommedans, the unfounded deduction of man's reasoning in divine things. But man's reasoning in the things of God, not being based on the divine revelations of His mind in His word, is good for nothing, but essentially and invariably false. It is impossible for man to reason justly in the abstract as to the will of God. The only safe or becoming ground is to adhere to the simple exposition of His own declarations; and this for the very simple reason that a man must reason from his own mind, and his own mind is far indeed from being God's mind. Reasoning means deduction according to the necessary laws of the human mind. Here, however, the groundwork being the will of God, faith to reason aright must reason from what God is according to what He Himself says. The danger is of inferring from what man is and from what man feels. Such is the essential difference between what is trustworthy and what is worthless in questions of the kind. Man must submit to be judged by God and His word, not to judge for Him. No man is competent to think or speak in His stead. But we may and ought to learn what He has told us of Himself and His ways in His word.