Kirkland: "Calvinism: None Dare Call It Heresy," Text, Part 4

Kirkland: "Calvinism: None Dare Call It Heresy," Text, Part 4
Wednesday, October 26, 2022 by Dr. James W. Walraven

Categories: Apologetics / Apostasy / Contemporary issues / God’s sovereignty / Scripture discussion / Spiritual deception / The church / Thought for Today

Chapter 4: Using a Foolish Analogy to Support Calvinism, deals with the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity, of the human inability to obtain salvation apart from God’s intervention. The book contains a couple chapters where Kirkland misses the mark quite badly. This chapter is one of them.

First, the belief in total depravity isn’t held only by Calvinists, but Protestants of many different theological stripes. The main dissenters are those form the extreme free-will camp.

Kirkland declares, “Calvinism says that because all mankind is dead in trespasses and sins’ [sic] (Ephesians 2:1–4) they cannot respond in any way to receive Christ as their Savior” (page 32). He explains, “Calvinists say, ‘Since he is dead, it is impossible for him to believe.’ This is a foolish analogy! The Bible is referring here to spiritual death not physical death” (page 35).

Citing Isaiah 1:18, Kirkland asks (page 36), “If a spiritually dead man is never capable of reasoning spiritual things, why would God command him to do so? That is a fair question. What the author skips is what God tells Isaiah the result of his ministry, that the people would not see, hear, understand, nor turn and be healed (Isaiah 6:10). One can make a strong case that the problem lies with the people, not God, but it doesn’t speak well of human ability to come to faith apart from God’s intervention.

The author cites John 6:44 (page 39), mentioning it as a keystone verse to the Calvinist position, that no one will come to Christ, unless the Father first draws them. The author dismisses that concern by linking the verse to John 12:32, that when Jesus is lifted up (crucified), He will draw all to himself. For the author, that presents the solution to the John 6:44 problem. The difficulty is, to use the author’s terminology, most still reject Jesus.

The bigger problem is Kirkland’s misunderstanding of Ephesians 2:1–4. The verse refers not to physical death, but spiritual death. Those described as dead were physically alive, living according to the course of the world, living in sin. The author reverses the meaning of the verse. If the verse is taken at face value, it negates the author’s thesis, as God’s intervention is required to make that person alive. Although Kirkland dismisses the analogy, that which is dead cannot make itself alive. We cannot make ourselves spiritually alive, God must intervene.

One might think of it this way: if a person has cataracts, their vision is impaired. Left to their own devices, there is nothing that person can do to improve things. Surgery by a qualified specialist is required. Help must come from outside. The same is true for all of us: we all start out spiritually dead. Again, as already stated, God must intervene.

We will see Kirkland continue to develop his argument in chapter 5.

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