Calvinism is a Christological Heresy

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In this thread, we will expose Calvinism as the Christological heresy of Monothelitism. I'll address the Calvinist "TULIP" doctrines one by one through a Patristic lens and very briefly comment on why they each have a flawed anthropology which leads to a flawed Christology. 🧵

T: "Total depravity" states that man is so depraved that he is unable to respond to God's grace on by his own will. But if our human nature is totally depraved, so was Christ' human nature. If this is the case, then the incarnation is rendered pointless.

If we are free, we have to be at least partly capable to receive and understand divine revelation in the first place. Otherwise the only way the transition from depravity to belief is made, is by God forcing it, thus man has no free will in the process.

If God creates people whom he not only predestines would reject him, but knows they are incapable of repenting by their own free will, then sending them to eternal damnation as a result, this makes God into a narcissistic tyrant which justifies atheist arguments as such.

U: "Unconditional election" is also completely at odds with what Church Fathers taught about predestination being based on God's foreknowledge and conflates His predestination with a type of determinism. It implies God creates non-elect whom he predestines to damnation.

St. John of Damascus and St. Gregory Palamas wrote that God does *not* predetermine things, rather He foreknows and thus foreordains. If God's will is predetermined, this diminishes the hypostatic nature of Christ' human will, so He would only have a divine will (Monothelitism).

L: "Limited atonement" asserts that Christ only died for the elect and not all men. Aside from the ignorance of Christus Victor and emphasis on a penal substitutionary atonement, the Calvinist must impose limitation into the Biblical text so "for all" means "for all the elect".

This doctrine is also refuted by the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, dating back to the 5th century, based on John 3:16 - "Having come and having fulfilled the divine plan for us, on the night when He was delivered up, or rather gave Himself for the life of the world…"

Again, the doctrine of limited atonement presents a Christological conflict in that if His atonement was limited to the elect, He did not defeat death entirely but just for His chosen few, meaning the curse of death is only removed by faith of the elect.

I: "Irresistible grace" is fully dependent on total depravity being correct, since it implies we are completely incapable to respond to God's grace by our own will, so He must compel us against our will to receive His grace.

P: "Preservation of the elect" is circular as it states if an "elect" falls back into sin, they were never elect to begin with, which implies even the elect cannot know if they are truly elect, thus those "perservering" are doing so without participation in divine grace.

The Orthodox approach to soteriology is quite simply that we are willing participants in our salvation, with our human free will cooperating in a synergy with God's divine energies, becoming partakers of the divine nature itself.

TL;DR - Calvinism parallels with the heresy of Monothelitism, which denies the human free will, replacing it with the total dominance of the divine will, making it also a Christological heresy since Christ incarnated the human free will in a hypostasis with the divine will.

For a much more detailed critique of Calvinism, please check out Robert Arakaki's essay "Plucking the Tulip" orthodoxbridge.com/2012/08/12/plucking-the-tulip-1-an-orthodox-critique-of-the-reformed-doctrine-of-predestination/

Also, before you critique this please just take note that I am fully aware there is much more complexity to both the Calvinist and Orthodox views, for brevity sake I tried to touch on some of the key arguments but I welcome and encourage further dialogue on this thread.