Continuing with my disagreement, which in itself is a rather large act of hubris from a man who is minimally educated (high school diploma), I have posted the next two responses of his objection to Calvin’s TULIP. I agree with any and all disparaging remarks concerning both John Calvin and Calvinism. I view Calvin as a noxious weed in the garden of Christ’s church. His writings show an intelligence used by a darkened mind not guided by the Holy Spirit, but instead relying on carnal training. As such, Calvin, trained to be a lawyer, related soteriological events to juridical punishment rather than the medicinal approach of Orthodoxy, in which Christ comes not to condemn, but to heal. His whole view of God and life is dark and without any sense of charity.

(I) Inalienable Dignity: The image of God (Imago Dei in Latin) gives inherent dignity to every human being (Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 9:6) even though, since the fall of Adam and Eve, each of their descendants (1 John 1:8)–save Jesus Christ (Hebrews 4:15)–has lost participation in divine life and has become subject to suffering and death (Romans 5:12-14, Hebrews 2:14-15). Despite the corruption of sin, fallen human beings retain free will to receive or reject God’s grace (Luke 7:29-30) and can, even prior to becoming Christian, perform good deeds that are praiseworthy before God (Romans 2:14-16, Acts 10).

(L) Liability to Apostasy: While God desires every human being to receive and abide in His gift of salvation, He respects human freedom to reject that gift, or having received it, later abandon it. This is why Christ and His Apostles warned their disciples about the dangers of falling away from salvation (Matthew 13:20-21, Hebrews 6:4-8, Hebrews 10:26-31, 2 Peter 2:20-22).

There is certainly a difference between how Calvinists, and by extension, some of the more radical Fundamentalist sects, view human beings, and how Orthodoxy views the same. With the juridical mindset of the West, you will find that death, which resulted from Adam’s transgression, is considered a punishment rather than a consequence. Furthermore, in Calvinism, only the “elect” are subjects of God’s love, which leaves the vast majority of non-Calvinists and non-Christians open to the righteous punishment of God in whatever form that may take. This is because according to Calvin, God no longer sees in man His image, but instead is viewed in this manner:

“Now God’s image is the perfect excellence of human nature which shone in Adam before his defection, but was subsequently so vitiated and almost blotted out that nothing remains after the ruin except what is confused, mutilated, and disease-ridden. ¹

In other words, from this quote, you could imagine that God no longer sees those whom He creates as His children, but as a vast swath of enemies, of disgusting and immoral creatures whose very existence is noxious to Him. Who wouldn’t take such vile creatures and burn them forever? Indeed, when I was a Protestant, one of the more common phrases I heard was that God abandons us because His eyes are so pure that they cannot look upon sin. And we are just buckets of sin, walking around waiting for the next evil deed we can do. I was never encouraged to develop within the image of God through ascetic practice. I imagine that with such a view of human nature, it would seem like painting over rotten wood. Lacking any substance which could be seen as in the image of God, this belief necessitates a legal and forensic justification in which we are covered by the righteousness of Christ, so that God does not see disgusting us, but only Christ and His righteousness. God forgives based on a legal declaration of “imputed righteousness,” and not within the context of ontological reality. This idea of imputed righteousness has taken hold of Western Protestant thought like a virus, with much the same negative effect that is associated with the word “virus.”

I am in agreement with Jonathan’s assessment of mankind and the image of God within. However, I take issue with, as I mentioned in my first response to his Substack piece, his statement that human beings have “free will.” I believe one of the problems involved with the idea of having a “free-will” is that people confuse the ability to make a choice with the freedom to make a choice that is correct and in the best interests of the one making that choice.

The Logical Limits of Free Choice

But why suppose it even possible that someone should both experience the unbearable misery of hell, on the one hand, and freely choose to lock its doors from the inside, on the other? Are there no limits of any kind to the range of possible free choice? If there are no such limits, then an undetermined free choice seems indistinguishable from sheer chance or utter randomness; and if there are such limits, then we must consider whether Lewis’ imagined choice lies inside or outside of these limits. Any consideration of the latter issue, moreover, requires a much more complete analysis of moral freedom than the mere assertion of incompatibilism. For it is hardly enough merely to specify a single necessary condition of moral freedom—namely that a choice is free in the relevant sense only if it is not causally determined by factors outside the choosing agent’s control—and then simply to leave it at that, as if there were no other necessary conditions of free choice. Not just any uncaused event, after all, or just any agent caused choice, or just any randomly generated selection between alternatives will qualify as a free choice for which the choosing agent is morally responsible. At the very least, moral freedom also requires a minimal degree of rationality—including, for example, an ability to discern normal reasons for acting, to draw reasonable inferences from experience, and to learn important lessons from the consequences of one’s own actions. With good reason, therefore, do we exclude small children, the severely brain damaged, paranoid schizophrenics, and even dogs from the class of free moral agents. For however causally undetermined some of their behavior might be, most of us believe that they all lack some part of the rationality required to qualify as free moral agents. ²

The simple argument here is that in order for the will to be free, there must be a corresponding degree of rationality. It is impossible to ascribe to someone who is demon-possessed, who has an irrational belief in a monstrous pagan deity of great cruelty, who has never heard of Christ and the Good News of His Resurrection, or is in some other way non compos mentos, the idea that they are rational enough to make a clearly free decision. In addition, how can you say a decision is truly free when all the facts of any decision made are not clearly understood. It is simply impossible. In that sense, you could perhaps even say that Adam’s decision to partake of the fruit of the tree was not entirely free, for he had no idea what death was and what would be the long-term effects on both him and his posterity, the human race. It would seem to me that only if Adam could fully experience every pain, every sorrow, every sadness that sin would bring into the world, and then correspondingly experience the full joy, satisfaction, and completeness of being found in Christ, only then could he make a decision which would be fully free. Even though Adam was warned by God to not partake of the fruit of the Tree because of the consequences of eating it, could we say that in lack of full knowledge of everything that would transpire from its consumption, that he made a completely free-will choice? ³

I have no argument with the ability of men to apostatize from Christ and His Church. Indeed, history is filled with examples of those who have walked away from Christ, both having been raised in the Church, as was Josef Stalin, who was studying to be a priest, and those who converted to the faith and then later left. The real question is this: does such apostasy mean that our Father washes His hands of the apostate and fires up the gas burners in hell with which to greet them? Does God’s love stop upon their death and He ceases from any further effort for the remediation of their soul? This is the thought of so many in Christendom, that you get one chance and one chance only to come to Christ. It is in this life and you better make it a good one, or you are going to wind up a French Fry in the deep fryer of eternity.

I have a different view of this. Christ and Saint Paul both spoke about rewards in the next life. They warned about both receiving and losing rewards, according to our deeds in this life. Why can it not be that instead of inheriting eternal (and useless) torment forever, the act of apostasy strips from the apostate any rewards he may have had?

Matthew 10:42 And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.

Mark 9:41 For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward.

2 John 1:8 Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.

What is at stake in this life in regards to the next life? Is it that we must do all we can to avoid the wrath of a God who will allow us, by our own free choice, to be tormented without relief forever? Or could it be that – and please, this is just conjecture on my part – the loss of rewards so glorious and beautiful that if we could see them now, we would all run to be monks and nuns, eschewing all of life in order to obtain these glories? One verse of Scripture gives me an idea along these lines.

Revelation 5:10 “And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.”

Well, now, this is most interesting. Have you stopped to really ponder this verse? John must be speaking of a time yet to come because throughout the centuries of the Christian faith, we have not reigned as kings at all. Christians have been mocked, stoned, sawn asunder, drowned, and otherwise killed in most horrible ways. Reign? Not now and not in this life! To me, this speaks of a time yet to come when Christ comes to wrap everything up and hand the kingdom over to the Father.⁴ When he does, who will be kings and priests? It has to be believers, those who repented in this life and turned to serve Christ as best they could.

I seems to me, in my simple mind, that there will be levels of glory and authority in the eternal kingdom. What if, given the massive and immense size of the universe, those who were the holy monks of Mount Athos will be the most glorious of kings, and what if, each one of them will be given an earth-like planet to rule over, a paradise like unto the Garden of Eden, where God will be all in all? The glory of these men and women, who sacrificed everything for the Lord, will shine forth like the sun. And over whom will they rule? The lesser Christians and those who never repented in this life. Can you imagine with me the most heinous of tyrants, a monster in this life, who ruled over all through sheer violence and terror, being the lowest serf in the Kingdom of God on a planet ruled by Saint/King Paisios. He who spent his life chasing fleeting glory and power reduced to tending a garden every day while watching Saint Paisios in humble glory rule over the planet.

Let me say it one more time – this is just complete imagination on my part. Maybe something else will be the reward in the eternal kingdom, but whatever it will be, the rewards will be worth our giving everything in this life to achieve, not for the sake of the rewards themselves, but out of sheer love for He who condescended to die for us. And the loss of rewards will be forever. This is the time and the life we are given to pursue theosis, to seek Christ, to give up the vanities of the world for the glory of God. In this, there will be no second chance.

Will there be regret in the next life? I think so, based on Christ’s admonition that certain ones will experience “wailing and gnashing of teeth.” ⁵ I think some of this wailing and gnashing of teeth will be a response of the sinner as he is not only chastened for his sins, but sees in clarity all that he has lost by chasing the illusions of sin. I don’t think it will last forever, just as I don’t think that Christ’s chastening and purifying of the sinner (what St. Isaac of Syria referred to as “hell”) lasts forever, but only as long as necessary to achieve the desired results. Yes, we can fall away, but do we fall into the arms of an angry and vengeful God who is going to take out His wrath on us for our mistakes, or do we fall into the arms of the true Father who will do all that is necessary to heal us and bring us home whole?

1. ^ Calvin, J. Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. T. McNeill, (Philadelphia: Westminister Press, 1960), 1.15.1 ↩︎
2. Talbot, Thomas, The Inescapable Love of God. Cascade Books 2014 ↩︎
3. Of course, for those who have a bone to pick with God, there arises the acrimonious question of why God allowed this to all to come to pass in the first place? Could not the serpent been kept out of the Garden? With foreknowledge of all the woes and misery of billions of sentient beings which would come to pass in the many centuries to come, why would God allow such to happen? This is no place for me to try to answer these questions because A.) they are WAY above my pay grade and B.) for those of us who trust implicitly in Christ, we know that even from some thing bad which we of our own selves have caused, God can and will bring goo. ↩︎
4. 1 Corinthians 15:24 “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.” ↩︎
5. Matthew 13: 42; 50 ↩︎