In a section entitled “Can Only Regenerate Men Perform Truly Good Works?” Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong offered the following refutation of the Reformed/Calvinistic understanding of this doctrine:
What do we make of, for example, King Jehoshaphat? He was subjected to the wrath of God, yet nevertheless the Bible informs us that he possessed some “good” and even sought God:
2 Chronicles 19:2-3 But Jehu the son of Hana’ni the seer went out to meet him, and said to King Jehosh’aphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD? Because of this, wrath has gone out against you from the LORD. [3] Nevertheless some good is found you, for you destroyed the Ashe’rahs out of the land, and have set your heart to seek God.”
2 Chronicles 20:32-33 He walked in the way of Asa his father and did not turn aside from it; he did what was right in the sight of the LORD. [33] The high places, however, were not taken away; the people had not yet set their hearts upon the God of their fathers.
Was King Jehoshaphat regenerated and hence ultimately saved? We simply don’t know. But if he wasn’t, he couldn’t do any true “good” at all, according to Calvin. The Bible clearly states that he “did what was right in the sight of the LORD”.
Yet it was a mixed record. He didn’t get rid of the “high places,” which were shrines to idols, and the last thing we learn about him was that he was condemned by a prophet because he allied himself with wicked King Ahaziah of Israel. How about King Uzziah? The Bible says he sought God too:
2 Chronicles 26:4-5 And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, according to all that his father Amazi’ah had done. [5] He set himself to see God in the days of Zechari’ah, who instructed him in the fear of God; and as long as he sought the LORD, God made him prosper.
But Uzziah met an even more tragic end than Jehoshaphat:
2 Chronicles 16, 20-21 But when he was wrong, he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was false to the LORD his God, and entered the temple of the LORD to burn incense on the altar of incense . . . [20] And Azari’ah the chief priest, and all the priests, looked at him, and behold, he was leprous and his forehead! And they thrust him out quickly, and he himself hastened to go out, because the LORD had smitten him. [21] And King Uzzi’ah was a leper to the day of his death, and being a leper dwelt in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the LORD . . .
If Calvin wants to maintain that only a regenerate person can seek God and do any good at all, Uzziah must have been regenerated, but then how is his spiritual demise explained (since Calvin and Calvinists also deny the possibility of a truly regenerate, elect person ever falling away (unconditional election, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints)? If Uzziah was saved in the end (as he must be in the Calvinist schema, if it is accepted that he ever did a good work), again there is no text whatsoever that would indicate such a thing.
The case of King Asa presents yet another similar difficulty for Calvin and the Calvinist theological system. He had an initial zeal for God (2 Chr 14:11; 15:8-13). He destroyed idols (15:16), excluding the ones in the high places (15:17a), “nevertheless the heart of Asa was blameless all his days” (15:17b). Yet in the next chapter we observe his spiritual demise or backsliding (apostasy?):
2 Chronicles 16:7, 10, 12 All that time Hana’ni the seer came to Asa king of Judah, and said to him, “Because you relied on the king of Syria, and did not rely on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Syria has escaped you . . . [10] Then Asa was angry with the seer, and put him in the stocks, in prison, for he was in a rage with him because of this. And Asa inflicted cruelties upon some of the people at the same time . . . [12] In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe; yet even in his disease he did not seek the LORD, but sought help from physicians.
This scarcely presents King Asa as regenerated and saved. If not, how can it be claimed (under Calvin’s and Calvinists’ premises) that he ever “relied on the LORD” (2 Chr 16:8)? (Dave Armstrong, A Biblical Critique of Calvinism: Replies to Exegetical Arguments in John Calvin’s Institutes, Books I-III [Lulu: 2012], 24-26, emphasis in original)
