The X-Calvinist Corner is a page on this website that shares the stories of people who were once Calvinist but have left Calvinism for a more Arminian theology. This series (The X-Calvinist Corner Files) highlights one of the testimonies from the X-Calvinist Corner in each installment.
Today’s testimony is from a guy named Dan:
I grew up in Baptist churches, and though I read the bible quite a bit, I didn’t really know about Calvinism/Arminianism. In high school I was challenged by a Calvinist. He pointed out certain aspects of Romans 9 that I hadn’t noticed before and at the time, I didn’t have a better interpretation of Romans 9 than he did. In retrospect, I didn’t really have an interpretation of the passage at all. Although I struggled a bit, I became a reluctant Calvinist. What I found appealing about it was 1) I found total depravity to be biblical and 2) Calvinism was a system as opposed to no system and most importantly 3) the Calvinist view of Romans 9 was the only view I knew of.One night I was having my devotions when I stumbled across Hebrews 10:26-29. I was shocked and upset. Why hadn’t my pastors/teachers told me there were warnings like this in the bible? I resolved to not declare myself either Calvinist or Arminian, but rather to re-baseline my views from the bible. In some sense, I never stopped digging into the issues, but today I am decidedly Arminian.The key for me was Romans 9. At the time I started studying about predestination, there weren’t many Arminian resources. Calvinists had warned me that Arminianism had been condemned as heresy, so I was very cautious when I read Arminius’ commentary on Romans 9. The first time I read it I probably only understood about 20% of what I read. So I read it again and again and other portions of Arminius’ writings. What I found was Arminius also had a system. So the choice was not a system vs. no system, but rather which system is scriptural. I think coming to understand Romans 9 was perhaps the most convincing aspect of my move away from Calvinism.
God be with you,
Dan
