The TULIP completely ignores man’s responsibility and the gospel call itself. It is, in fact, the TULIP more than any other feature of Calvinism that gives non-Calvinists the impression that Calvinism discourages evangelism and teaches men to wait for God to save them rather than repent and believe the gospel. I would go so far as to argue that Calvinism should discard the TULIP and teach what the Bible says as the authority for what we should believe about Christ in His saving work.

The TULIP focuses exclusively on God’s sovereignty in salvation. But this obsession with the sovereignty of God drifts precariously close to a hyper-Calvinistic overstatement of God’s sovereignty, ala A.W. Pink, who couldn’t appreciate any attribute of God without re-hashing God’s sovereignty all over again. Reading Pink’s Attributes of God, one gets the distinct impression that he sees the sovereignty of God as the one attribute that defines all the others, that sovereignty is more important than God’s holiness or love.

I have no wish to understate God’s sovereignty. God is God, and as an expression of the “Godness” of God, the TULIP seeks to glorify God and to remind us that God doesn’t lay aside His sovereign control when it comes to the salvation of sinners. I am very grateful that God gets all the glory, that salvation is His work, and that I am and have always been in His hand. None of this is a denial of God’s sovereignty. Nor is it a denial that the TULIP includes vital truths about God and His work in saving sinners. I am unwilling to join some of my dear friends in repudiating the TULIP as if it contains no truth whatsoever.

But as I have insisted, the Bible doesn’t resolve the mysterious interaction between God’s will and man’s. God’s will is exhaustive. Of that, there can be no doubt. Man’s will and his entire self have been significantly damaged by sin so that from the time of the Fall onward, man’s heart has been hopelessly corrupted, deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. To put too much stock in man’s ability would be to set aside what the Bible tells us about ourselves. To diminish God’s sovereignty in our salvation would be to ignore or reject what the Bible teaches us about God. I do not wish to fall into either error.

But we must say what the Bible says, and we must emphasize what the Bible emphasizes. I believe the TULIP goes beyond Scripture in its claims about the interaction between God’s will and man’s.

So much has been written on the TULIP that I couldn’t possibly interact with every explanation or claim. I have two fairly simple presentations of Calvinist soteriology in front of me, both apologetic in nature. The first is Chosen by God by R.C. Sproul. The second is Easy Chairs Hard Words by Douglas Wilson. I recognize that neither of these men has attempted a defense of the TULIP itself, and both provide a substantial explanation of Calvinism that includes the TULIP but doesn’t rely on it. In fairness, both men might agree with some of my critiques. I want to interact with the TULIP itself as it is typically presented since (anecdotally) the TULIP tends to be the go-to expression of Calvinist soteriology. My claim in this article isn’t that Calvinists aren’t more nuanced than the TULIP, but only that the Calvinist reliance on the TULIP is flawed and misguided. And I say this because the TULIP mischaracterizes the gospel by giving only half the story.

The “T” in the TULIP represents Total Depravity (or Total Inability). Quoting this presentation of it (https://www.fivesolas.com/cal_arm.htm),

Because of the Fall, man is unable of himself to savingly believe the gospel. The sinner is dead, blind, and deaf to the things of God; his heart is deceitful and desperately corrupt. His will is not free, it is in bondage to his evil nature, therefore, he will not–indeed he cannot–choose good over evil in the spiritual realm. Consequently, it takes much more than the Spirit’s assistance to bring a sinner to Christ–it takes regeneration by which the Spirit makes the sinner alive and gives him a new nature. Faith is not something man contributes to salvation but is itself a part of God’s gift of salvation–it is God’s gift to the sinner, not the sinner’s gift to God.

Many take this doctrine of Total Depravity to mean that because of sin, man cannot repent and believe. Indeed, the statement above would seem to argue that man must be born again before he can repent and believe. And this fits with what many prominent Calvinists have claimed. I could give a host of quotations, but this is a longish post already.

Yet, the Bible never gives this kind of explicit order to things (i.e., regeneration, then faith and repentance). Instead, the Bible describes the corruption of man’s heart and will and mind, and then extends a gospel call to that same corrupted heart and will and mind. The Bible plainly expresses man’s inability of himself to seek God or savingly believe the gospel. However, the Bible nowhere treats this inability as an absolute inability. The following sets forth the Biblical teaching on man’s inability.

First, the Bible tells us that God searched the world over to find one man who sought Him, and that He did not find even one.

The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. (Psalm 14:2-3)

Second, the Bible describes the carnal (unsaved) mind as enmity against God, incapable of being subject to His law.

Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:7-8)

Third, the Bible tells us that the natural (unsaved) man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (I Corinthians 2:14)

Fourth, the Bible tells us that man cannot save himself, convert himself, or change himself in a spiritual sense.

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. (Jeremiah 13:23)

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:44)

And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father. (John 6:65)

These things are true, of course. In a moral and spiritual sense, the unbeliever is dead in trespasses and sins, a slave to his sins and the lusts of his flesh and of his mind. He is dead, blind, deaf, lame, and enslaved. Apart from the grace of God in the gospel of Christ, no man has any hope for redemption or conversion.

But Calvinism takes it further than this, arguing (as R.C. Sproul does) that the unconverted don’t even so much as go through a period of searching.

Why is it then, despite such clear biblical teaching to the contrary, that Christians persist in claiming that they know people who are searching for God but have not yet found him? St. Thomas Aquinas shed some light on this. Aquinas said that we confuse two similar yet different human actions. We see people searching desperately for peace of mind, relief from guilt, meaning and purpose to their lives, and loving acceptance. We know that ultimately these things can only be found in God. Therefore we conclude that since people are seeking these things they must be seeking after God.

People do not seek God. They seek after the benefits that only God can give them (Sproul, p. 110, emphasis his).

And yet, many of us have watched while, over a period of several weeks or months, an unconverted sinner sat down with the Bible again and again, clearly desiring to know the gospel and come to faith in Christ. I remember one family in particular where this was so evident. Week after week, I recognized the hunger to know, to understand, to find salvation in Jesus Christ. It was like a slow awakening, a slow unfolding of God’s saving grace in their life. As I drove home from those visits, I found myself singing, “I believe in miracles: I’ve seen a soul set free.”

But the Bible doesn’t teach progressive justification or a slow process of the new birth. Justification is immediate; the new birth happens in a moment.

Was this family awakened to their need by the gospel? Most certainly. Was God drawing them to Christ through the power of the gospel? Most certainly. There is no greater thrill in the Christian life than watching the incorruptible seed take root in a heart. But to claim that, before this process even started, they were born again? That goes beyond Scripture.

When the Philippian jailer sprang into Paul and Silas’ jail cell, was he born again before he asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” That is silly and extra-biblical. Nothing in Scripture compels me to believe such a thing.

In fact, the many gospel appeals in Scripture compel me to believe that the gospel and gospel preaching itself has the power to awaken the sinner to his need for salvation despite him being dead in trespasses and sin. Gospel preaching causes him to desire forgiveness and peace with God. The gospel draws him to Christ in such a way that he seeks God. The Bible states this so clearly and often that it seems we would need to deny Scripture to argue against it.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16)

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. (I Corinthians 1:18)

For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel; Which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth: (Colossians 1:5-6)

Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. (I Peter 1:23)

As I said, the Bible makes it so plain that the preaching of the cross brings men to a saving knowledge of Christ that I cannot imagine how one would conclude that regeneration must occur before the gospel can be heard. Nor do I find the evangelists of the Bible teaching men to wait for the new birth so they can seek the Lord.

Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. (Acts 2:37-38)

Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; (Acts 3:19)

Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. (Acts 26:19-20)

And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (Acts 16:30-31)

Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. (Isaiah 45:22)

He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:11-13)

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:14-16)

For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:38-40)

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) (John 7:37-39)

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? (John 11:25-26)

And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. (John 20:30-31)

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9-10)

These verses make it abundantly clear that the gospel works in the sinner so that he seeks the Lord, desires to be saved, and comes to Christ for salvation. God draws the sinner through gospel preaching.

Nor is it inconsistent with anything taught in Scripture to say that man’s inability is overcome when he hears and believes the gospel. But he is not born again until he receives Christ. He is not born of his own will, the will of his own flesh. He is born of God. Christ calls Lazarus forth from the grave. God’s saving power is in the gospel itself, in the preaching of the cross.

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:13-14, 17)

But we can also say that when he hears the gospel, the unbelieving sinner can listen to and respond to the saving of his soul. Some will resist and will die without Christ. And for some, their resistance will break down, and they will believe. Otherwise, we would not call him to faith and repentance. This is but one element of the TULIP, but an important starting point. In the weeks ahead, we will deal with more of these to demonstrate how the TULIP ignores man’s responsibility to repent and believe.