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Problem: Paul writes, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins… even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Eph. 2:1, 5). Calvinists sometimes argue that our human condition is “dead” in the sense of having a total inability to respond to God. Like Lazarus in the cave (Jn. 11), we needed God to impart spiritual life and call us from this corpse-like, dead state. Calvinists often argue, “Is a dead person able to respond to God or make himself alive? No! Therefore, God had to give us spiritual life before we could believe and respond to him.” John Calvin stated that this is “a real and present death.”[1] Wood states that this expression for death is not “merely figurative… The most vital part of man’s personality—the spirit—is dead to the most important factor in life—God.”[2] Is this the case?

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Problem: Paul writes that the church “is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23). John Calvin believed that we (the church) fill Christ: “Until he is united to us, the Son of God reckons himself in some measure imperfect” (Calvin on Ephesians 1:23). Is this the case?

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Problem: Some Calvinistic interpreters argue that this passage supports the doctrine of unconditional election, where God predestines some for heaven and others for hell. Is this the case?

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Problem: Paul writes, “[God] chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him” (Eph. 1:4). Calvinistic interpreters argue that this passage teaches God’s unconditional election of believers. Is this the case?

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