A missing soteriological critique?

John Calvin

Elected for his merits?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Short on time again today as this semester winds down and students' essays come pouring in, I'm going to focus on merely one point -- a perplexing aside, in fact, that Robert Koons makes about Calvinism in his essay "A Lutheran's Case for Roman Catholicism":

If we say, with the Calvinists, that Christ has died only for believers, we make faith into a human work that merits salvation in conjunction with Christ’s life and passion. Roman Catholics join with Lutherans in rejecting this error: Christ’s life and passion is the sole meritorious cause of our salvation. (pdf, pages 40-41)

I don't know Calvinist theology in any detail, but this looks like a travesty of what Calvinists believe. My understanding on this Calvinist point is that Calvinists teach that believers only believe because they have been drawn to faith through God's "irresistable grace," a saving grace extended not as a reward for human works of merit but out of an "inscrutable" soteriological decision that God made -- "before the foundations of the world" -- to save certain individuals, the elect, "because it pleased him to do so."

You'll notice that I'm quoting without providing citations. That's because I have these expressions in my head but don't know precisely where they come from, aside from casual conversations with Calvinists over the years -- with the exception of Ephesians 1:4-5, where Paul uses the expression "before the foundations of the world" in referring to God's decision to bestow grace.

I therefore do not know precisely what point Koons is making here, for it directly contradicts what Calvinists explicitly teach. I have to assume that he is alluding to some critique making the argument that Calvinism -- despite intentions to the contrary -- implicitly treats faith as a human work that merits salvation.

I'd have to see this missing soteriological critique before commenting further. Meanwhile, does anybody know what Koons is talking about?