I have written a great deal against Reformed/Calvinistic theology, including my lengthy essay:
An Examination and Critique of the Theological Presuppositions Underlying Reformed Theology
An Examination and Critique of the Theological Presuppositions Underlying Reformed Theology
There are
not just biblical and theological problems with Calvinism, but also psychological
and social, too. Writing in 1942, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm noted the following
problems with the doctrine of predestination as found in the writings of
Luther, Calvin, and other followers:
The psychological significance of the
doctrine of predestination is a twofold one. It expresses and enhances the
feeling of individual powerlessness and insignificance. No doctrine would
express more strongly than this the worthlessness of human will and effort. The
decision over man’s fate is taken completely out of his own hands and there is
nothing man can do to change that decision. He is a powerless tool in God’s
hands. The other meaning of this doctrine, like that of Luther’s, consist in
its function so silence the irrational doubt which was the same in Calvin and
his followers as in Luther. At first glance, the doctrine of predestination
seems to enhance the doubt rather than silent it. Must not the individual be
torn by even more torturing doubts than before to learn that he was predestined
either to eternal damnation or to salvation before he was born? How can he ever
be sure what his lot will be? Although Calvin did not teach that there was any
concrete proof of such certainty, he and his followers actually had the
conviction that they belonged to the chosen ones. They got this conviction by
the same mechanism of self-humiliation which we have analysed with regard to
Luther’s doctrine. Having such conviction, the doctrine of predestination
implied utmost certainty; one could not do anything which would endanger the
state of salvation, since one’s salvation did not depend on one’s actions but
was decided upon before one was ever born. Again, as with Luther, the
fundamental doubt resulted in the question for absolute certainty; but though
the doctrine of predestination gave such certainty, the doubt remained in the
background and had to be silenced again and again by an ever-growing fanatic
belief that the religious community to which one belonged represented that part
of mankind which had been chosen by God.
Calvin’s theory of predestination has one
implication which should be explicitly mentioned here, since it has found its
most vigorous revival in Nazi ideology: the principle of the basic inequality
of men. Or Calvin there are two kinds of people—those who are saved and those
who are destined to eternal damnation. Since this fate is determined before
they are born and without their being able to change it by anything they do or
do not do in their lives, the equality of mankind is denied in principle. Men
are created unequal. This principle implies also that there is no solidarity
between men, since the one factor which is the strongest basis for human
solidarity is denied: the equality of man’s fate. The Calvinists quite naively thought
that they were the chosen ones and that all others were those whom God had condemned
to damnation. It is obvious that this belief represented psychologically a deep
contempt and hated for other human beings—as a matter of fact, the same hated
with which they had endowed God. While modern thought has led to an increasing assertion
of the equality of men, the Calvinists’ principle has never been completely
mute. The doctrine that men are basically unequal according to their racial background
is confirmation of the same principle with a different rationalization. The psychological
implications are the same. (Erich Fromm, The
Fear of Freedom [Routledge Classics; London: Routledge, 2001], 77-79)