Providence
A Dialogue Between a Predestinarian and His Friend
A Dialogue Between a Predestinarian and His Friend
Out of thine own mouth!
The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., Volume 10, 1872, pp. 259-266
TO ALL PREDESTINARIANS
1. I AM informed, some of you have said, that the following quotations are false; that these words were not spoken by these authors; others, that they were not spoken in this sense; and others, that neither you yourself, nor any true Predestinarian, ever did, or ever would, speak so.
2. My friends, the authors here quoted are well known, in whom you may read the words with your own eyes. And you who have read them know in your own conscience, they were spoken in this sense, and no other; nay, that this sense of them is professedly defended throughout the whole treatises whence they are taken.
The Calvinist View of Foreknowledge Makes God the Cause and Author of All Sin and Evil
Submitted by SEA on Thu, 04/22/2010 - 7:27amOne of our members commented concisely and incisively in our private discussion group (slightly revised here):
In Calvinism God cannot see into the future. He only knows what will happen because He will make it all happen. This again leads to the inevitable conclusion that God is the cause and author of all sin and evil in the universe. He makes sin and evil happen just as He makes everything else happen. One cannot appeal to "secondary causes" because God must make them happen as well. God directly controls everything in accordance with His all encompassing eternal decree. Some Calvinists find the Calvinist account of foreknowledge compelling precisely because it explains how God can foreknow the future, while the Arminian account doesn't care so much how God can know the future, satisfied simply to affirm that God is capable of doing such things, just as He can create out of nothing, etc.
Another Middle Knowledge Passage
Submitted by Godismyjudge on Wed, 04/14/2010 - 4:40amMiddle knowledge is mostly an implication of the scriptural truths of God's providential governance of the world and man's choices. But there are some passages that do directly teach that God knows what we would do in various circumstances. I came across a passage supporting middle knowledge this week:
In Deuteronomy 28, Moses first tells of all the blessings the people will receive if the follow God's commands: 1 "Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the LORD your God will set you high above all nations of the earth."
Is There Trauma in Sovereignty? A Response to James Swan by Brennon Hartshorn
Submitted by bossmanham on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 6:15amArminians and other Libertarians are concerned with determinism, the proposition that all of our actions are made necessary by God in some way. We are concerned because determinism seems to make God the author of sin.
The compatibilist wants to show that we can still be free and responsible for our own actions and they can be determined. David Hume, a skeptic philosopher, tried to show this is the case on a naturalistic framework. Theist determinists adopt some of Hume's arguments and augment them in order to argue that it is possible that all our actions have been pre-determined, but we freely do those actions and are therefore responsible for them. There have also been other attempts at trying to show that this is possible.
Conflating Arminianism and Secularism
Submitted by WilliamBirch on Tue, 03/30/2010 - 6:44amCalvinist Southern Baptist pastor Mark E. Dever, having reviewed Richard A. Muller's 1991 book, God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius, notes, in his concluding remarks:
- Personally, as a pastor with Reformed [he means Calvinist] convictions, I found this book to be a telling intellectual journey, suggestive of the unwitting capitulations [surrendering] made by our Arminian brothers and sisters to secularism itself. At the end of the day, in a consistent Arminianism, the understanding of God and of humanity must be seen to be "rational" by the world around. Therefore I fear that their notions of God and of humanity can rise no further than the surrounding unbelieving culture. As an evangelical pastor in postmodern America, this is my fear. I pray that I am wrong.
Can God's Glory be "Diminished" in Calvinism?
Submitted by Ben Henshaw on Mon, 03/15/2010 - 10:17amCalvinist John Mac Arthur in his article, Why Every Calvinist Should be a PreMillennialist, writes:
- It is impossible to fully understand biblical teaching about the end times apart from understanding the future of Israel, the future of ethnic Jews in God’s plan. And if you don’t get Israel right, then your eschatology is confused and you cannot be blessed and you cannot give God appropriate glory and you cannot have a full hope for what lies ahead so that His glory is diminished, your joy and blessing are diminished as well (Bold emphasis mine).
A Chilling Quote of John Calvin
Submitted by SEA on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 7:21amHere is an absolutely chilling quotes of John Calvin. It is hard to believe any Christian can believe such a thing:
John Calvin writes: “Solomon also teaches us that not only was the destruction of the ungodly foreknown, but the ungodly themselves have been created for the specific purpose of perishing (Prov. 16:4).” (Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: Romans and Thessalonians, pp.207-208)
Wow.
[Note: This post was originally entitled, "Some Chilling Quotes of John Calvin", and gave three quotes. However, someone alerted us to the fact that, out of context, one of the quotes gave the wrong impression of Calvin's meaning, and that another quote was actually Calvin quoting an opponent's characterization of Calvin's view for the purpose of denying that to be his view. For more on this, see http://evangelicalarminians.org/node/863 .]
Haiti - Why do Disasters Happen?
Submitted by Kevin Jackson on Tue, 01/19/2010 - 9:09amWhy do disasters happen? What should Christians do when disasters happen? The recent earthquake in Haiti was catastrophic. Perhaps it has caused you to wonder if it was caused by God. I don't think that it was.
When a disaster occurs, sometimes Christians rush to judgment. We think that the disaster happend because the people who lived there were sinful, or perhaps their ancestors were sinful.
Does Proverbs 21:1 Teach Calvinistic Determinism?
Submitted by Ben Henshaw on Mon, 01/18/2010 - 11:09amVery often Calvinists will cite Proverbs 21:1 as a proof text for God’s exhaustive control over the will and decisions of men. Their use of the passage is not intended to demonstrate that God may at times override the will as Arminians would have little difficulty affirming, but that God is always in control of the will in such a way that we cannot will or do anything that God Himself has not caused us to do. If man has any independent control of his will then God is not “sovereign” according to the standard Calvinist understanding of sovereignty (exhaustive determinism). While there may be some Calvinists who do not hold to such a definition of sovereignty, it is the traditional Calvinist position held by John Calvin and most of his theological followers. The subject matter of this post is concerned only with Calvinists who hold to exhaustive determinism and see Prov. 21:1 as a text that confirms this doctrine as Biblical.
The passage reads:
Dr. Thomas McCall Takes On John Piper and the Calvinistic View of God's Sovereignty: 2 New Articles Added to Our Resources
Submitted by SEA on Mon, 01/11/2010 - 8:49amWe are excited to have added two articles by Thomas McCall, assistant professor of Biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, which critique John Piper's theology of God's sovereignty.
