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Q&A on 2 Timothy 2:25, 26

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Question: I am wondering if you can provide, or point me to, an Arminian exegesis of 2 Tim. 2.25-6? This scripture is often used by Calvinists as a counter to 1 Tim. 2.3, as well as to advance the idea that God has two wills, one of universal love to mankind, another more narrow in which He controls who will and won’t repent unto salvation (the latter underscored by 2 Tim. 2.25-26). I am looking for a good Arminian analysis here.

Answer: I don’t see anything in these verses that should lead one to the conclusion that the repentance spoken of here is irresistibly “given” or “granted”, nor that this is meant to convey the idea that God arbitrarily decides to cause some to repent while denying repentance to others (which would, as you point out, contradict Paul’s statement in 1 Tim. 2:4 that God desires all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth).

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Nelson’s Dictionary of Christianity Gets it Wrong: Examining the So Called “15 Major Tenets of Arminianism”

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About a year ago I engaged in a conversation with someone who kept misrepresenting Arminian and Wesleyan teaching while insisting that his claims were “historical facts”. This person kept making reference to the “15 Major Tenets of Arminianism” to back up his claims. I had no idea what this could be a reference to since I was not familiar with any document written by Arminius or the Remonstrants that went by such a name. As it turns out, the so called “15 Major Tenets of Arminianism” is a sub-title given under the heading “Arminianism” in Nelson’s Dictionary of Christianity. Below is a critique proving that these 15 tenets are far from representative of Arminian theology.

The 15 Major Tenets of Arminianism are:

1. Human beings are free agents and human events are mediated by the foreknowledge of God.

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Eric Holmberg, “Truly Reformed . . . and Truly Wrong”

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Eric Holmberg is a convinced and serious Calvinist who produced the Calvinist documentary “Amazing Grace.” In this article, he corrects Calvinists who write Arminians “off as necessarily ill-informed, stupid, deceived, heretical – or worse unredeemed.” Readers should be wary of Holmberg’s affirmations of Calvinist theology.

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Is There a Middle Ground Between Calvinism and Arminianism?

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by Roger Olson

I’ve blogged about this before, but just yesterday Southern Baptist philosopher/theologian/seminary dean Steve Lemke, one of the editors of the excellent book Whosoever Will (which I highly recommended here) posted a message to the SBCToday blog accusing me of committing the fallacy of excluded middle for arguing that Southern Baptists like he are either Calvinists or Arminians and should admit it and (in his case) embrace the label Arminian — something he and the other authors of Whosoever Will reject.

Lemke’s post is here.

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David Pawson, “Once Saved, Always Saved?”

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A message by David Pawson on the topic, “Once Saved, Always Saved?”: https://youtu.be/Vy3tSIg7Gi0 It is also available from Pawson’s website, including an audio download: http://davidpawson.org/resources/resource/1160?return_url=http%3A%2F%2Fdavidpawson.org%2Fresources%2Fcategory%2Fbelief%2Ftheology%2F

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Atonement – Under Attack

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[Editor’s note: This review is of the book, Gabriel N. E. Fluhrer (ed.), Atonement (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2010).] This slim collection of essays is rooted in the proposition that the doctrine of atonement…

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