As tomorrow we celebrate the 500th anniversary of John Calvin's birthday a few appropriate quotes from Charles Spurgeon might be in order.
I am not a Calvinist by choice, but because I cannot help it.
I believe nothing merely because Calvin taught it, but because I have found his teaching in the Word of God.
Some seem to believe in a kind of free agency which virtually dethrones God, while others run to the opposite extreme by believing in a sort of fatalism which practically exonerates man from all blame. Both of these views are utterly false, and I scarcely know which of the two is the more to be deprecated. We are bound to believe both sides of the truth revealed in the Scriptures, so I admit that, when a Calvinist says that all things happen according to the predestination of God, he speaks the truth, and I am willing to be called a Calvinist; but when an Arminian says that, when a man sins, the sin is his own, and that, if he continues in sin, and perishes, his eternal damnation will lie entirely at his own door, I believe that he also speaks the truth, although I am not willing to be called an Arminian. The fact is, there is some truth in both these systems of theology.
I am not a Calvinist by choice, but because I cannot help it.
I believe nothing merely because Calvin taught it, but because I have found his teaching in the Word of God.
Some seem to believe in a kind of free agency which virtually dethrones God, while others run to the opposite extreme by believing in a sort of fatalism which practically exonerates man from all blame. Both of these views are utterly false, and I scarcely know which of the two is the more to be deprecated. We are bound to believe both sides of the truth revealed in the Scriptures, so I admit that, when a Calvinist says that all things happen according to the predestination of God, he speaks the truth, and I am willing to be called a Calvinist; but when an Arminian says that, when a man sins, the sin is his own, and that, if he continues in sin, and perishes, his eternal damnation will lie entirely at his own door, I believe that he also speaks the truth, although I am not willing to be called an Arminian. The fact is, there is some truth in both these systems of theology.
They are all Calvinists there, every soul of them. They may have been Arminians on earth; thousands and millions of them were; but they are not after they get there, for here is their song, “Salvation unto our God, which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.”
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