Kirkland: "Calvinism: None Dare Call It Heresy," Text, Part 5

Kirkland: "Calvinism: None Dare Call It Heresy," Text, Part 5
Friday, October 28, 2022 by Dr. James W. Walraven

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

In chapter 5: Created to Choose and Reason, Kirkland continues to develop his position that he began in chapter 4. As the title of the chapter suggests, he asserts that we’ve been created to think and reason, that we can reason our way to salvation in Christ.

Kirkland states: “Even though Adam fell, man still has a soul. And man still has the ability to choose and to reason. These attributes were not taken from man when Adam fell as is very evident by simple observation. In Scripture, God commands the sinner to reason, to choose, and to repent. God’s grace operates in our lives in a viable active way” (page 43). He correctly describes the nature of the Fall, that both Adam and Eve willfully chose to sin, their spirits died as a result, and thus the need to be born again (pages 44–45).

He then makes a major inference, “There would have been no need for the Cherubims with the flaming sword if man did not have a free will” (page 46). Is that why the Cherubim were there? Did God place them because “man had a free will”? While human choice is arguably part of the reason, the issue runs much deeper. Genesis 3:22 declares that man had become like God knowing good and evil, and in that state might eat from the tree of life and live forever. The reason God placed the Cherubim was to keep them from being able to live forever in their new (sinful) state of knowing good and evil. As the book of Genesis unfolds, evil becomes the norm for all humanity, a norm requiring God’s intervention.

Does our sinful state impact our ability to think and reason? Kirkland notes, “Contrary to Calvinism, man can reason concerning salvation, and man can reject or receive the salvation God offers him through the Gospel of Jesus Christ” (page 51). He also states, “To support Calvin’s wicked-God theory, we would need to change the creation account to read, ‘In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth . . . And God said, Let [sic] us make people with no free will. [sic] And then God said, ‘We will trick them into thinking they have a free will…’ (page 47). To me, Kirkland is now obscuring the issue, resorting again to reductio ad absurdum.

What is the author’s position? On the one hand, he tends to skirt the issue, on another, there are some strong inferences that he sees our ability to think and reason as unimpacted by the fall. Although the author is not a Pelagian, Kirkland’s line of reasoning on this point seems to be dangerously close. Pelagian, an arch-opponent of Augustine, held that man’s ability to think and reason remained unchanged after the Fall, that our natures weren’t impacted at all. A full discussion of Pelagius falls outside this review. His views were declared heretical.

We will continue our discussion in the next post. We’ll ask the question: On our own, will we reason our way to faith?

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