The five principles of Calvinism may be called to mind by an acrostic, the word “tulip”:
Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistible grace
Perseverance, or impossibility of apostasy.
These tenets are well known to the religious people who identify themselves as “Calvinists,” comprising several prominent denominations. But what is not well known is the Calvinist doctrine of redemption.
Assumed Christ Was Cast into Hell
The theology of Calvin assumes that for man’s redemption to be accomplished, it was necessary for Jesus to go into hell, bear the tortures of one condemned, and so experience the force of vengeance. In the words of John Calvin:
“Here we must not omit the descent to hell, which was of no little importance to the accomplishment of redemption.” … “In order to interpose between us and God’s anger, and satisfy his righteous judgment, it was necessary that he should feel the weight of divine vengeance, whence also it was necessary that he should engage, as it were, at close quarters with the powers of hell and the horrors of eternal death. … Christ bore in his soul the tortures of condemned and ruined man.” …
“But this we say, that he bore the weight of the divine anger, that, smitten and afflicted, he experienced all the signs of an angry and avenging God. … we may infer how dire and dreadful were the tortures which he endured when he felt himself standing at the bar of God as a criminal in our stead.” (John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, chapter 16:8-12.)
This assumption that Jesus descended for a time into hell and there suffered the tortures of an avenging God in our stead, we need to examine with an open Bible.
A False Assumption
Does the bible teach that Jesus went into hell after death?
Not the “hell” of eternal punishment.
Perhaps this is the confusion of Calvinists: hades is mistaken for Gehenna; both Greek words are translated “hell” in the King James Version. In Acts 2:27,31, Peter affirms that after death the body of Jesus did not see corruption, nor was His soul left in Hell, but He was resurrected. Does “hell” here refer to the state of eternal punishment (Gehenna) or the receptacle of disembodied souls in the intermediate sate awaiting judgment (hades) In the original text the word hades, and in translations which distinguish between the two terms, it is so noted:
“Because Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades …” (New American Standard)
“For thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades …” (Revised Standard)
“Thou wilt not leave my soul to hades …” (Young’s Literal)
Thou “wilt not leave my soul in the unseen world…” (Living Oracles)
“For you will not forsake my soul to hades…” (Williams)
Jesus did not go into Gehenna to suffer the agonies of eternal punishment even for a season.
Does Redemption Require Suffering “The Pains of Hell”?
In death, where did the soul of Jesus go? Into hades,“the common receptacle of disembodied spirits.” (Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon, p. 11) According to Jesus, hades has two compartments—one for the righteous and one for the wicked. (Luke 16:23,25-26) When Jesus died, He did not go into the realm of the wicked, but as He announced to the penitent thief, He went into “paradise” Luke 23:43).
Question: Did Jesus suffer “the pains of hell” (according to Calvin, page 268) while in “paradise?”
The Bible plainly tells us that Christ effected redemption for man through His death, not in suffering “the pains of hell.”
“In whom we have redemption through his blood” (Ephesians 1:7)
“In whom we have redemption through is blood” (Colossians 1:14)
You “were not redeemed with corruptible things …but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18-19).
“Thou has redeemed us to God by thy blood” (Revelation 5:9)
Conclusion
We must conclude that Calvinism’s concept of the nature of man, of God’s grace, of Christ’s death, of redemption, of man’s responsibility, etc., is of human origin and not of God. Faith in they system is not the faith that comes by the word of God. (Rom. 10:17) And since there is only “one faith” approved of God (Eph. 4:5), it follows that Calvinism is a vain faith that results in a vain worship.
It is the devil’s word that “one faith is as good as another.”