My Journey Out of Neo-Calvinism

"Yes, but how do you deal with the deterministic passages of Scripture?" I asked my philosophy professor for the second time that day.

"Well, you sure know how to put someone on the spot," he rebutted, clearly flustered.

"He is replacing the Word of God for his own philosophical opinions," I thought.

When I first came to the College at Southeastern, I was a Neo-Calvinist. Suckled on the near-identical writings of John Piper and working my way through the Calvinistic-leaning ESV Bible translation, I was aflame with the Doctrines of Grace. Weeks before New Student Orientation, I explicitly remember debating my (wonderful and loving) friend in our local church's ministry office about the tenets of Calvinism. Pulling from a small pamphlet I had been given by my mentor, I went through the scriptural passages that clearly indicated that behind the curtain of salvation God was pulling the strings of our hearts so that we would love him. I also pulled up those passages that clearly indicated everything in existence was sovereignly directed by God, from the movement of my hands turning the pages of the Calvinist pamphlet, to my friend's bewildered eyes moving back and forth between her fist and my head.

When I first started (truly) following Christ at age 16, I did not know what Calvinism was. All I knew was that I loved Jesus, I loved reading His Word, and I wanted others to know Him. As I got into my later teens, however, I started to become hungry for a deeper theological knowledge. Although I knew Bible stories and I knew that Christ and the Trinity were biblical, I wanted to immerse myself in a strand of theological thinking and speaking which would propel me to a life of fuller obedience and love (since I knew my own shortcomings better than anyone). That is when I stumbled on Calvinism.

Propelled by my mentor and discovered through my own personal research, I started devouring Calvinistic writings. Before long, I spoke about Calvinism like it was on par with (and perhaps, some times, more important than) first-tier doctrines like the Hypostatic Union or humanity's sinful nature. How I came to subconsciously view those who didn't hold to the same theological points that I did (in relation to God's sovereignty in particular) isolated me from those around me. Though I was in relatively good company as an energetic, passionate Christian college Freshman, the occasional acquaintance or friend I made would immediately stir a suspicious attitude in me regarding their "orthodoxy," and an under-the-surface spiritual investigative period would then ensue so as to "clear" them in my mind for further friendship. Though this is clear to me now, the unhealthiness of this attitude alluded me. My Calvinism led me to certain behaviors which rightly constituted me as a radical. Of course, I still affirm the rightness of a deep passion for God and others, but the radicalism I was then engaging in created rifts all across my relational web.

The function that this radical stance played in my early-adult developmental stage was, of course, to strengthen my skills of relational assessment. I was deploying theological language and conceptions which I thought would aid me in my pursuit of what I thought I needed at the time: strong friends who would help propel me on in those behaviors I considered crucial to succeeding at my particular view of a successful life. Little did I know that the ideal end-goal of my life as a Reformed-patriarch-evangelist differed in significant ways from the true end-goal of life which Jesus spells out. In other words, my imagined telos differed from Jesus's telos for me, which focused on a genuine relational union with the Triune God who propelled me on to relational union with others, both Christian and non-Christian.

After hearing from professors, pastors, and friends, I slowly and painfully modified my telos to more closely align with that Triune vision. My relationships with other Christians - and really everyone - improved, and I realized how much better off I was before subsuming myself into the undifferentiated, sectarian Reformed Mass which informed my life for three years. I realized that the centre of life, in fact, should be the divine life into which the Trinity adopts us in justification and which Christians invite non-Christians to enjoy in evangelization: the ontological divine-and-human relationship which informs reality itself.