When talking with non-Calvinists (Arminians, or whatever you prefer to call them), what do you find is the most difficult of the 5 points for them to accept? I find most solid Baptists and Methodists agree with total depravity and to a certain extent perseverance of the saints. But the other 3 points tend to be much harder. The one that seems to turn off most non-Calvinists is limited atonement. Most people like to believe God died for "everyone" rather than the elect.

I'm interested to hear what others of you have found to be the biggest stumbling block to other people accepting the 5 points...

__________________
Mason
Member, Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA)
New York, NY

"Come now, and let us reason together," says the Lord, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." - Isaiah 1:18

No question in my mind the most difficult is Limited Atonement, then Irresistable Grace .

On the other hand the easiest would be Total Depravity I would think.

__________________
Benjamin P. Glaser
Pittsburgh, PA
Fairmount ARP Church
Student of Theology
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary
My Blog

"Nothing is sweet to me without the enjoyment of Christ in it." -- Thomas Brooks

Their wills.

__________________
Josh Hicks, Chloë's Daddy
Member of TRBC. My Blog
The Puritan Pub (Team Blog)
Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

Particular atonement was the one I had most difficulty with. G .I . Williamson in the Confession of Faith Study Guide helped me the most at the time I needed work through it.

Surprisingly I had no problem with any of the other four.

__________________
~Jay~
Husband of ENS, father of J II. | Indian Trail, NC
Teacher Aide, Union County Public Schools, NC
Communicant Member, Precentor | Presbyterian Reformed Church of Charlotte, NC | Presbyterian Reformed Church

Hi CSM,
L - is the point least accepted. The main reason it is not understood is that in reality the person who resists does not really understand the T- total depravity.
If you question them you find that they do not believe Adam died in the fall.They think he was slightly wounded, believing the lie of Satan, thou shall not die. God said dying thou shall surely die.
Natural men cannot understand divine truth savingly 1Cor2.
Proud spirited religious men, or immature believer's who will not come humbly to the word of God will not see the necessity of a definate atonement as they will trumpet the full ability of Adam to save himself by his own ability.

__________________
Anthony D'Arienzo
Sunday School Teacher
Hope Reformed Baptist Church:
Medford, N.Y.

They seem to and should reject the first four equally as they are neccessarily logically wound together. I find those who mostly agree to the doctrines struggle with atonement in favor of an Amyraldian slant. And of course almost no one has a problem with having the will that was free not being free anymore and bound to Christ in perseverence.

__________________
Bruce
PCUSA
Ocean City NJ

How many words are their for Limited Atonement?

C'mon Tupip and Tudip do not make any sense!!!

Limited Atonement was the hardest one for me too.

I come from a Baptist background and I'd agree; T. and P. were the easiest, since I already believed them.

__________________
Steve Butts - Former SBC-er
Three Forms of Unity - Bradenton CRC - Bradenton, Florida
(A conservative member in a conservative congregation)

"Of two evils, choose neither." — C.H. Spurgeon

__________________
Timothy Johnson
First United Presbyterian of Moline
PCUSA (Yea, I know)
Theology/Philosophy Sunday School Teacher
Davenport, IA

I have a different take on this. Limited atonement is supposedly the most difficult of the five points to accept. Actually it is the entire five points itself! None of the five points exists independently. They are symbiotic. Reject one and by default you are rejecting the others.

__________________
Bill Brown
Elder
Grace Baptist Church
Anne Arundel County, Maryland

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

I accepted the last 3 points (having previously accepted the first two, and part of the fourth) about 5 years ago. Actually it was Perseverance of the Saints that I had real difficulty with. I had previously been a strong denier of Once Saved Always Saved, yet I had had problems with agreeing to Universal Atonement, and while I didn't derive Limited Atonement for myself, as soon as I heard the concept I accepted it fairly quickly.

__________________
T W Hopper
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church
Currently between churches since PRC closed here - attending Crossroads Christian Church.
Canberra, Australia.

Agreed, at least that is what I have found.

__________________
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Revelation 1:8

Marc
Saskatoon Evangelical Free Church
Saskatoon, SK

Interesting...

I have found the most difficult is Irresistable Grace. It seems to be so ingrained in the mind of the modern church that Jesus is some wimp in the distance, calling people with a still small voice. They believe that Jesus is a disappointed God because the wills of His created people are to strong for Him to overcome.

"Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling..." but most believe that their is only one call, the gospel call. They could never conceive of a call with power!

__________________

While I agree with you for the most part, I also think about people like Bunyan and Ryle who did not affirm L.M., but were highly God-centered in their theology. The question of L.M. is a fairly new one, compared to the other four points anyway. From what I understand of it, there is evidence that Calvin would have defended L.M. if asked about it, but he never explicitly wrote on the topic.

__________________
Dan Pemberton
Vacaville, CA

Member, First Baptist Church San Luis Obispo
Formerly ABUSA (We left, so I guess that makes us American Baptists Unleashed!)

You make a really good point. And I agree with Iconoclast as well: if you really believe the doctrine of total depravity, the rest naturally follow philosophically. If we are truly DEAD in our sins, then only irresistable grace will save us, and He only gives that grace to the elect, etc.

I agree with you 100%, Bill. Generally speaking the claim is that L is the hardest, but then when you look at it carefully, if L is rejected, it's usually because they don't really believe T, and if they don't really believe T, then they don't really believe U or I, and we all know they really don't believe P either (in part because of their rejection of I).

__________________
Todd K. Pedlar
member, First Congregational Church, (CCCC) Cresco, IA
http://semperubi.rtrc.net

"Many men, after a long conversion, see more of the workings of sin in their hearts than ever they did before or at their first conversion. Now, such men have not an increase of sin, but an increase of illumination and light" (Christopher Love)


Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

I agree if you want have one of them really you want have none of them.

(EDIT: Actually My post isnt really worth reading I just said the same thing as Todd only in alot more words.)

There is no such thing as someone who believes in 4 of the doctrines of Grace, because without all five it is no longer grace alone. To deny L is to change the very nature of the atonement. The sacrifice is most often then made into a potential sacrifice that is "only accepted by the elect" and that acceptance makes it actual. If this were the case then we are (in some way) the cause of our own salvation, because as I was pridefully raised my whole life, we accepted. "God gives us a gift, but you must open it." Ohh the pride of the one who opens the gift, they say thier is no pride in opening a gift "after all who is prideful on xmas day whenever they open thier gifts?" I'll tell you who's prideful on xmas when they open thier gifts, the one who looks around the room and sees many many people who have not opened thier gifts and thier burning in hell for it.

Everyone I have ever talked to that denies L does so because they believe Christ is somehow obligated by his character to give every sinner an equal chance at salvation. This is a denial of T (as Iconoclast pointed out) and also a denial of UIP. (T)If they understood the depth of our depravity then they would see there is no good in us that makes us deserve a chance. (U)They do not truly believe then that God chose a group based on his choice alone. (I)They do not believe that it is only the by regeneration that we recieve faith. (P) Thier perseverance is not based on the atonement in that Christ literally accepted the wrath for thier sins on the cross, because this would mean christ did not accept the sins of others on the cross, thus meaning Christ did not give everyone "an equal chance".

Sorry to rant a bit but Calvinism is something I have been forced to defend among family and friends of recent days. It started as showing the ignorance of the age old "calvinist dont witness" argument, but turned into a point by point teaching of how it is the only biblical and Logical doctrine of sotierology, and how if "God gives everyone an equal chance" is true then we are, at least in part, responsible for our own salvation, and should be the most prideful of all beings.

__________________
Bryan Riddle
1689 London Baptist Confession
Bethel Baptist Church Owasso, Oklahoma

Just like a table with a leg missing, missing any one of the 5 points makes for wobbly theology at best.

From what I hear out there though, the one they least like is election and reprobation. The one they believe least is limited atonement, coupled with irrisistable grace.

__________________
Bert Mulder
Elder of the First Protestant Reformed Church of Edmonton
Edmonton Alberta Canada

Given the logical interrelatedness of the five, you might as well separate a cake into flour, milk, eggs, sugar, and butter as try to claim one without the other. However, L is the one most people fixate on as the toughest. After all, Moïse Amyraut didn't make it into the history books for believing in ULIP, TLIP, TULI, or TULP. The L has gone down in the annals of historical theology as the staw the breakes the Arminian camel's back.

Or, if you are Ergun Caner, believing such a doctrine will do nothing except "kill your churches with sermons expounding the Westminster Confession . . . "justify your laziness" . . . as you adopt "semi-Presbyterianism" . . . and run the church like an "oligarchy." As Caner says, "You do the math. And just because you cannot answer the questions concerning your views of predetermined fatalism does not make his arguments 'straw men.'"

__________________
Dennis E. McFadden, Ex Mainline Baptist (in Remission)
Atherton Baptist Homes, CEO
First Baptist Church of Alhambra, Member, Transformation Ministries (CA)

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

Perseverance (Preservation) of the saints is hardest for me.

When talking with others it is the system itself. Most very quickly see that Calvinism is a system--but systems have this stigma, whether rightly or wrongly, of being cold and austere. Men do not commit to systems. I can very quickly get people to see that Calvinism is utterly logical. But that is often the stumbling block. Cold logic turns into existential despair.

That is what I noticed in college.

__________________
J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College