Total depravity
Also called "radical depravity" and "total inability", this point means that every person is corrupt and sinful throughout in all of his or her faculties, including the mind and will. Thus, no person is able to do what is truly good in God's eyes, but rather, everyone does evil all the time. As a result of this corruption, man is enslaved to sin, rebellious and hostile toward God, blind to truth, and unable to save himself or even prepare himself for salvation.
While I agree with the second part, I disagree with the first. Man is sinful, he is rebellious and, even if he wasn't, he'd still need God. No man has ever been good enough and that is one of the reasons why it was necessary for Christ to come and die. However, not good enough isn't the same as always bad. Even mostly bad isn't the same as "not capable of ever being good". Calvin doesn't allow for the tension of being created in the image of God and being a fallen creation. We are capable of doing good, but we don't do it near often enough. We get disobedient and hostile and end up falling the same way every human has since Adam and Eve. But we aren't born evil and always evil, or we couldn't claim to be made in God's image. And, even if we did manage to be perfect, in the sense of never sinning, we would still need God. You can keep your lungs perfectly clean, or damage them with cigarettes, but you'll need oxygen to breathe, either way. The idea that we need God simply because we are sinners doesn't hold water for me.
Unconditional election
Election means "choice." God's choice from eternity past, of whom he will bring to himself, is not based on foreseen virtue, merit, or faith in the persons he chooses but rather is unconditionally grounded in his own sovereign decision.
Calvin takes the idea of God's choosing us to say that God is choosing very specific ones of us. I don't see it. I believe that God's plan is that all might be saved. Again, Calvin doesn't allow for tension. Yes, God has a plan, is omnipotent and omnipresent. But He builds free will into His plan. So His plan is to share paradise with humanity. But free will allows for the possibility that they might choose not to share it with Him. They can both be true. If I plan for my son to be a Christian and work to make that happen and nurture an environment where it is likely to, but still allow him free will it means that he still might not become a Christian. That doesn't mean it wasn't my plan, it means he didn't go with my plan. I could tie him to a chair and brainwash him into being a Christian, but that would negate his free will. Something I'm not willing to do to my son and that God isn't willing to do to His children. While I believe God may have specific plans for specific ones of us, I believe His plan in regards to all of us is that we might be saved.
Limited atonement
Also called "particular redemption" or "definite atonement", the doctrine of the limited atonement is the teaching that Jesus's atonement was definite and certain in its design and accomplishment. It teaches that the atonement was intended to render complete satisfaction for those and only those whom the Father had chosen before the foundation of the world. Calvinists do not believe that the atonement is limited in its value or power (if the Father had willed it, all the people of all generations could be saved), but rather they believe that the atonement is limited in that it is designed for some and not all.
See previous.
Irresistible grace
Also known as "effectual grace", this doctrine does not hold that every influence of God's Holy Spirit cannot be resisted but that the Holy Spirit is able to overcome all resistance and make his influence irresistible and effective. Thus, when God sovereignly purposes to save someone, that individual certainly will be saved.
I'm not sure what to make of this one. God can do whatever He wants. He can break down our resistance. He can remove our free will. He can make time go backward and make the Fall never happen. I just don't see that being what He did or will do. Yes, I get confused by passages that talk about God hardening Pharoah's heart and recognize, in my confusion, that God can alter people from within against their will. But I think this is the exception, not the rule (I also think that said passages may not, in fact, be saying that at all). I think God longs to be in relationship with us, to offer salvation to us, and to reveal Himself to us. But I think that the free will He offers us can make that a difficult process. I don't think God is limited except in the ways that He chooses to limit Himself. And I think this is one of the ways.
Perseverance of the saints
Also called the "preservation of the saints" or "eternal security," the fifth point teaches that those whom God has called into communion with himself will continue in faith until the end. Those who apparently fall away either never had true faith to begin with or will return. This is slightly different from the "once saved, always saved" view prevalent in some evangelical churches in which, despite apostasy or unrepentant and habitual sin, the individual is truly saved if he or she had truly accepted Christ in the past; in traditional Calvinist teaching, apostasy by such a person may be proof that they never were saved.
I will say it again...free will. I don't think a man can be good enough to become a Christian and I don't think he can sin enough to stop being one. But I do think he can make the conscious choice to enter into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and then choose to no longer follow Christ. I have met people who have done it! Just one of those people was a youth minister from the church where I grew up. At the time, he believed (unless he was the world's most talented actor) that Jesus was the Son of God. He now travels the world declaring that he has proof that Jesus was just a good teacher who went on to have a wife and kids and so on. It would be wrong to say that he is a Christian now or to say that he wasn't one then.
Now before my fellow theologians drop on me to heavily, let's remember to speak the truth in love and that a lot of my thinking on a lot of this is a work in progress.
OK. Let's dialogue.
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