The Gospel of 1 Cor 15:3ff is pretty straight forward...as you say. And yet Calvinists (consistent ones) wont preach it to the unbeliever. And that remains astonishing...but then the scriptures they cite are pretty persuasive too.
Huh? By "consistent ones" are you attempting to lump in the hyper-Calvinist? A cheap shot. They are heretics. Plain and simple.
Hyper-Calvinism can be defined as believing in any one of these:
- God is the author of sin and evil
- Human beings have absolutely no will whatsoever
- Individuals are not responsible for their own decisions and actions
- Justification occurs in eternity, not in time
- God does not command all people to repent of sin
- Not everyone is required to believe upon Christ Jesus for salvation
- God creates unbelief in the hearts of the non-elect
- Assurance of election must be sought prior to repentance and faith
- Election is evident simply by a profession of faith, regardless of sanctification (antinomianism)
- Saving faith is equivalent to believing predestination (only Calvinists are Christians)
- Limited atonement must be believed in order to hear the gospel and be saved
- Evangelism is unnecessary, or even wrong
- God has no love whatsoever for humanity in His providence
On the other hand, the orthodox Calvinist obeys the command to preach the Good News promiscuously for it by
means of the foolishness of preaching by which's God's redemptive
ends for all His chosen will ordinarily be brought into the Kingdom.
What you will not find is the Calvinist telling a specific person "Our Lord died for you, {
Bob, Mary, Pete, Jane, etc.}" for we understand that Our Lord's active and passive obedience was particularly intended to
actually save, not
potentially save, those so given to Him by God the Father, persons (John 6:37; John 6:39; John 10:29; John 17:11-12; John 17:9; John 17:22; John 18:9) that no man can number
from among the peoples of the
world (Rev. 7:9). We also understand that we do not know exactly who God has chosen (Deut. 29:29), so we obey the command to preach the Good News to all.
Calvinists also reject the
hypothetical aspect (the
potentially saving view of the Atonement, of the anti-Calvinist's view:
Hypothetical universalism teaches that God gave Jesus Christ to save all men on condition they believe; but He has not elected all men to believe and be saved. This means that God gives Jesus Christ to all men but then takes Him away from some. Election comes in to exclude the application of the merits of Christ to a whole class of men. Christ's merits call for faith and justification but God says "
No" to His dearly beloved Son.
Hypothetical universalism teaches that God is not well-pleased to save all men for whom Christ died. This is a distortion of the gospel of free grace.
All your (and anyone's) questions begin and end with the beginning in the Garden. Just how fallen did those in the loins of Adam become? If you think those after Adam still possess some "seed" of righteousness such that they can still reach for and grasp the life preserver tossed to them as they are drowning in the sea of sin, then you end up outside of Calvinism.
On the other hand, if you think those in the sea of sin are actually morally dead at the bottom of that sea and will remain so if and until God does something to resurrect them from their state of moral death, such that they are enabled and made irrevocably willing to believe (Eze. 36:26), then you end up in the Calvinist camp.
All discussions of soteriology begin with the understanding of the fall of man and the universe in the Garden. You keep implying that Calvin somehow invented all of this. As I have pointed out in earlier posts, the
proper understanding of the fall of man precedes Calvin by well over a thousand years. It is not something new to Calvin nor Calvinism. It was also just one of the many things the Reformers were calling the church back to during the Reformation.
Are there differing opinions on the matter? No doubt this site gives ample evidence of the same. I am confident no one comes to grip with all the questions you are raising until that person is actually born anew. Afterwards, in their walk of faith not a few will come to a deeper understanding of how they came to be where they are now. You just cannot rationalize yourself into the Kingdom.
AMR