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Earlier this morning, I found out that Michael Sudduth has renounced Christianity in favor of Hinduism. Sudduth was a Reformed philosopher. I did not know him personally, nor have I interacted much with him—if I have, it would have only been through a comment or two on Triablogue. As such, I won’t say much about his renunciation in particular.

It does bring to mind other conversions, however. I have read comments from some of the Arminians at SEA who have said that any new convert to Christianity who reads the Bible will automatically find Arminianism. Arminianism can be read in Scripture, they say, while Calvinism must be taught. (I would counter by asking why it is that we trust those who are least experienced in Christ, who have followed Him for only a short time and who have not developed a long relationship with Him, would have some kind of inside knowledge about Him that those who have travelled the path of sanctification for many years would somehow lack. That is, why trust the immature Christian to show us the truth as opposed to the elders in the Lord?)

The direction of conversion is fairly one-sided when it comes to Calvinists and Arminians. I can think of countless individuals who have converted from Arminianism to become Calvinists—indeed, I am one such individual myself. However, I only personally know one (Billy Birch) and can only think of just a few others, such as Clark Pinnock, who have gone from Calvinism to Arminianism (and Pinnock doesn’t really fit, since he then continued on far to the left of Arminianism, embracing Open Theism). This is not to say that I don’t know of some former Calvinists; just that Calvinists do not tend to convert to Arminianism. Instead, the former Calvinists who I know (other than Birch) are now almost all atheists, with a liberal Metropolitan Church goer (having embraced homosexuality), two Roman Catholics (a married couple), and now, with Dr. Sudduth, a Hindu too.

Now, I’m sure that part of this is due to the circles I run in. I know more Calvinists to begin with, so I’m sure some such as Billy Birch would know of more former Calvinists who are now Arminian. Yet it still strikes me that even Arminians would acknowledge that there are far more former-Arminian Calvinists around than former-Calvinist Arminians. And this would seem, to me, an indication of the direction of sanctification in the lives of a believer toward the Reformed position as one matures in Christ.

In what may seem to be a bit paradoxical, I also think this shows the truth of the Reformed position in the fact that former Calvinists so often will renounce Christianity altogether. After all, consider the following passage:

For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt (Hebrews 6:4-6)

1. Calvinism is a more consistent form of Christianity.
2. Those who reject the more consistent form a Christianity have nowhere more consistent within Christianity to go toward.
3. Therefore, it is more likely that to reject the more consistent form of Christianity, one will reject Christianity as a whole.

1. More Arminians become Calvinists than vice versa, indicating the flow of sanctification.
2. More former Calvinists reject Christianity completely than convert to a different form of Christianity, indicating that Calvinism is the more consistent version of Christianity.

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