08/29/2026
Has this been your experience if you find yourself on either side of this? Having gone from Arminian to Calvinist, I can say yes- this describes me. (Original post from X)
The difficult part about arguing about Calvinism with an Arminian, Semi-Pelagian, or your run-of-the-mill Synergist is that you have to catch them up on basic Christian vocabulary and doctrinal concepts before you can even have a coherent conversation about the subject. You have to put them through ten years of Sunday School to catch them up on Biblical concepts even to discuss the subject with you.
Things like justification, regeneration, the difference between election and predestination, imputation, effectual calling, and the like- the foundational building blocks of biblical soteriology- are often over their heads, while they present you with metaphors like, “It’s a gift, but you have to accept it" and speak in vague generalities and illustrations. Many times, they hear those Biblical terms - used right there in the Scripture- and think you are quoting them Calvinist catchwords and key phrases, like Westminster invented them just to confuse the normies.
Largely, it requires significant catechesis for them to even grasp what you’re saying. And no, I don't mean pretentious theological terms invented by seminarians, but terms and doctrines drawn straight from Scripture, concepts a well-catechized child in a Reformed church can understand. You basically have to teach them Christianity 101 before they can even have the vocabulary necessary to argue that you're wrong. They're not ready for "regeneration," let alone an "prevenient grace."
Synergism really is the default position of the unlearned. All they know is that one day they believed in God, and suddenly they were saved. From the vantage point of their experience, faith appears to be the first thing that happened because it was the first thing they were there for to experience, so naturally they assume it was the thing they did that caused everything else to happen.
This is why Spurgeon said, “I was born an Arminian, as all of us are by nature.”
Arminianism makes intuitive sense because you don't have to know HOW the Gospel works to be saved by it (praise God). And because what you need to know to be saved is really simple, you naturally assume what happens on God's end of salvation is really simple. You have no idea how the sausage is made. So when an educated Christian comes along explaining to you the Ordo Salutis, you freak out because you had no idea what happens behind the curtain.
You heard the Gospel, saw Christ as desirable, believed, repented, and came willingly. From inside the experience, it felt entirely like YOU doing it. And then somebody comes along and says, "God did that," and your pastor never told you any of this before because - let's face it - your pastor is a Joel Osteen clone who preaches 15-minute sermonettes from The Message, so this shouldn't be surprising.
There’s a reason why it seems like Calvinists are pretentious know-it-alls: they acquired their position by learning. They weren’t born with it. They found it in the Bible, by study of the Scriptures, and by struggling with the Text. The Arminian arguing their default position is nine times out of ten not ready for a debate with someone who had to crawl through bloody glass to arrive at his theology, kicking and screaming past every verse he wished said something else, only to surrender because the accumulated weight of Scripture finally left him no other option than to become a Calvinist. Most Calvinists did not wake up one morning and decided the doctrines sounded pleasant. They were dragged there verse by verse, objection by objection, often fighting the conclusion the entire way.
That creates an enormous asymmetry in these arguments. One man is defending what has always seemed intuitively obvious to him. The other has already occupied that position, discovered its problems, fought his way through Romans 9, John 6, Ephesians 1 and 2, John 10, Acts 13, Ezekiel 36, and every objection presently being thrown at him, and finally abandoned the intuitive explanation because he could no longer make it survive the Scripture which, chances are, he knows backwards and sideways.
The Arminian thinks he is introducing the Calvinist to the obvious problem with Calvinism, giving him a metaphor he hasn't considered before. Nine times out of ten, he is introducing him to the objection that kept the Calvinist awake fifteen years ago.
That doesn’t make Calvinists smarter, and it certainly doesn’t make them incapable of error. It does explain why the conversation can feel so lopsided. The Calvinist frequently knows the Arminian position because he used to hold it. He knows why it feels persuasive. He knows the verses used to defend it. He knows the objections to his present position because he once made them himself. He didn’t arrive at Calvinism by choosing the easier road. He arrived there with his fingernails torn off from trying to hold onto the theology he had before Scripture finally pried his fingers loose and he had to admit, "Salvation is of the Lord."
