Defend Your Church Against Calvinism

What is the position of your church on Calvinism?  What is your position?  If Calvinism is making uninvited, ninja-like infiltrations into your church or denomination and you decide to stand against it, be prepared for certain tactics frequently utilized by those who believe Calvinism should, for the greater good, dominate or at least co-exist.  Once the core conflicts of Calvinism/Arminianism can no longer be suppressed by clever strategies, the proponents of Calvinism will generally maneuver from a tactical playbook that includes some of the following items.

• Avoid admitting you are a Calvinist.
• Avoid engaging your opponents with logic and reason.
• Erect a few “straw-man” arguments, attribute them to your opponents and then show their weaknesses.  (A typical straw-man argument erected by Calvinists is that Arminians believe in salvation by works because the act of free will acceptance is a “work.”  But Scripture never portrays a choice to receive a gift from God as a “work.”)
• Accuse your opponents of embracing Semipelagianism, an obscure soteriology uniformly condemned as heresy since 529 AD; for maximum effect, not only label your opponents as heretics but claim they are too ignorant to know it! 
• Never advocate the full face of Calvinism; instead, gradually weave theological threads into the preaching and teaching of the church.
• Assert that Calvinist men and women are hard working persons of the highest integrity whose motives are beyond reproach.
• Suggest that your opponents are divisive, narrow minded, mean spirited and instruments of discord.
• Assert the intellectual, academic and spiritual superiority of Calvinist theologians and spokespersons.
• Extol the magnificence of the Reformation and the Reformers.
• Teach that peace and unity are more important than some antiquated concept of truth.

The opponents of Calvinism need only three items.

• Calvinism is not supported by Scripture taken in its entirety.
• Calvinism is not supported by logic and reason.
• Calvinism is blasphemy at its core.

Claiming to uphold the intellectual magnificence and Scriptural purity of the Protestant Reformation is the most common ploy used by Calvinists as they assert their intellectual, theological and academic superiority.   But doesn’t Scriptural truth usually emanate from disciples who demonstrate love, integrity, righteousness, morality, ethics and character?  What about the personal character of the prime movers of the Reformation, Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564)?  While dictator of Geneva, John Calvin presided over approximately 58 executions, 76 exiles and numerous commitments to prison.  Most of the hapless victims had dared to be critical of Calvin or his theology but the executions included about 34 women burned at the stake for witchcraft.  John Calvin was a diabolically cruel dictator incapable of Christian kindness, mercy or love.  Not to be outdone, 400 years after Martin Luther died, his teaching triggered particularly diabolical consequences.  The prevailing view among historians is that Luther's anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of anti-Semitism in Germany, and in the 1930s and 1940s provided an ideal foundation for the Nazi Party’s attacks on Jews.  Just about every anti-Jewish book printed in the Third Reich contained references to and quotations from Luther.