The Biggest Conundrum in the Bible: The Nature of Salvation

I have always been interested in the Bible.

I was raised a Christian and quickly adopted Reformed theology. I believed in the Five Points of Calvinism by the age of 16 because of the influence of Christian intellectuals like R.C. Sproul, J.I. Packer, and John Piper.

Then I left Christianity after moving to Oxford, England.

Over the years, I have thought a lot about Christianity, to the extent that I released a book on the topic, titled Up in the Air: Christainity, Atheism & the Global Problems of the 21st Century.

There’s a lot of problems with Christianity. But one always stood out to me. Let me explain.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Let me get straight to the point in this post.

For myself, the biggest conundrum in the Bible is the nature of salvation and to what extent people are “free” to choose God.

It’s clear that unbelievers are held accountable for their rejection of the Gospel because they do not have a valid excuse for not believing in God (Rom 1:19). At the same time, the Bible says that the Gospel is “veiled to those who are perishing” (2 Cor 4:3).

It was because of this that Jesus spoke to the Pharisees in parables “because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear” (Mat…