Ancient Christian Witness

"Among such biblical texts as Romans 8 and 9 and
Ephesians 1, Calvinists are convinced that John 6 secures the notion that Jesus
taught a Calvinistic soteriology. I am convinced, however, that Calvinists tend
to see Calvinism in every text. I know. I used to be one.

My zeal for Calvinism clouded my interpretation of
Scripture. Whatever scriptures I encountered which contradicted Calvinism, I had
to find a way to make it mean something other than its simplistic meaning. I am
not saying that all Calvinists are necessarily guilty of this very
thing.
But I will admit that I was immersed in the
writings of John Calvin, John Piper, John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, Martyn
Lloyd-Jones, Iain Murray, John Owen, Martin Luther, Loraine Boettner, John
Murray, and others, and was raised, spiritually speaking, on a strict
Calvinistic hermeneutic, theology, and interpretation.
When I was eventually
convinced that what I was doing was not the appropriate manner with which one
should view and interpret Scripture, I abandoned my Calvinist hermeneutic and
replaced it with a more simplistic one--one which takes Scripture at face value,
interpreting the more difficult-to-understand passages by the simple ones.
Thus when I (and other Arminians) come to the statements made by Jesus in
John 6, I do not see Christ telling that group of Jews that His Father had
selected to save only some of them. And if Jesus was telling them that, then one
wonders why Calvinist preachers do not follow in the Savior's footsteps and
declare the same thing from their pulpits!
Moreover, the reaction from those
Jews in John 6 was focused not on Christ's alleged discourse on election, but on
His claim to have come down to earth from heaven. It seems to me that the
former, and not the latter, would have been far more offensive to the Jews (who
believed that their relationship with God was in tact due to their union with
and standing as an heir of Abraham)"