What is the basic flaw with classical Calvinism (and Arminianism as a subset)? The basic flaw, and why I reject classical Calvinism, is the metaphysical apparatus it relies upon in order to think and speak God. As anyone knows, who has spent time with this topic, classical Calvinism finds its technical origination in and from the 16^th and 17^th century developments in so called Post Reformed Orthodoxy. Post Reformed Orthodoxy relies heavily upon the retrieval and synthesis of Aristotelian categories with Christian theology instanced by none other than, Thomas Aquinas. Clearly, by time we get to the 16^th and 17^th centuries, in their Protestant dress, the mode of Thomas’ theology we have therein is many times removed from Thomas’s theology itself. Nevertheless, the shared point of contact remains, in regard to their philosopher of choice: Aristotle. His theory of causation, tripartite faculty psychology, and Pure Being conception of godness is ever present; whether that is with reference to Thomas or the Post Reformed theologians. What we get with this conception of God has very little to do (in fact I’d say nothing to do) with the God revealed in Jesus Christ. We can grant that at the time the via antiqua of Thomas was all that was available to attempt to develop and grammarize a theology proper, so on and so forth. Of course before we get to the 16^th and 17^th centuries, the Reformers would have been privy to what had come to be known as the via moderna (which is a movement grounded primarily in nominalist categories); this was the spirit within which Martin Luther operated in as he engaged in his rebel protesting antics. So, we cannot let the Post Reformed orthodox Thomists off the hook that easily; there were ways to think God and do Christian theology that weren’t grounded in the ‘antique way’ of Thomas and those prior to him.

What I am saying is this (and this is just a brief grunt for me): When God is thought of as the ‘Big Intellect’ in the sky, as He crudely is on the Christian Aristotelian front, then you get an emphasis and mood of God that is less personal, and more decretal in His engagement with the world. You get a God who engages the world through law-like means, like decrees (absolutum decretum), and theories of causation like Aristotle’s fourfold set represent; and then primary and secondary causation, as we hear of often from both academic and popular Calvinist thinkers alike. This is ultimately why I repudiate classical Calvinism, and why I think you should too. They did the best they could for what they had to work with; both contextually and materially, but things can be done better and have been.

It behooves us to think God as God has freely decided that we think Him; that we think Him from where He has called us to think Him from. That we realize that where He has called us to think Him from indeed is His being in becoming for us in Jesus Christ; and in this becoming we come to have capacity to think God as a triune and eternal life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love. When we think God this way we are thinking in the categories and terms laid out for us in the attestation of Holy Scripture, rather than under the terms laid out for us by the philosophers. We quit thinking in terms of a chain-of-being, and instead think in terms of a chain-of-fellowship that has eternally co-inhered in the singular life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The way we think God determines everything else we think theologically and thus spiritually. These things matter immensely. Get God wrong, in terms of emphases and mood, and you get everything else following wrong. Pax Vobiscum