Calvinism

Assuming Determinism to Disprove Free Will

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Phil Johnson of John MacArthur’s Grace to You has authored a post entitled “The Problem for Arminians”. Quoting Phil:


If God knows every detail of the future with infallible certainty, then (by definition) the outcome of all things is already determined. And if things are predetermined but God did not ordain whatsoever comes to pass, then you have two choices:

1. A higher sovereignty belongs to some being (or beings) other than God. That is idolatry.
2. Some impersonal force did the determining. That is fatalism.

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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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What is Reprehensible about Calvinism

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According to The Oxford American College Dictionary, the word reprehensible means “deserving censure or condemnation.” While there are aspects regarding Calvinism which are orthodox, overall I find its analysis of God’s character, and at times…

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Sin & God’s Sovereignty

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Here are some edited comments, short but sweet, from a member of our private discussion group:

The following quote is by RC Sproul, SR.

“Every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in His sovereign authority.”

No matter how long I’ve been involved in the A vs. C debate, I absolutely cannot reconcile in my mind how God ISN’T the author of sin if Calvinism is true given Calvinism’s doctrine of exhaustive divine determinism.

In turn, this quote by Sproul would be false if Calvinism is true, since our sins would reinforce God’s sovereignty.

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Calvinism and Evangelistic Method

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In my Evangelism class at The College at Southeastern, composed of both seminary and college students, the professor had the class form groups of four in order for each group to construct a gospel tract, each group having its own leader (chosen by date of birth). The leader of our group was taking advice from the other members and was very open to suggestions. When he declared that we were nearly finished, except for a few statements which needed to be nuanced, I responded, “Wait, but we have yet to inform the person what to do with this information.” He responded, “Well, I’m against anything like ‘pray this prayer after me.'” I agreed and said, “Is that our only option? We must tell the person to trust in Christ.” He was not fond of that idea.

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More On the Authorship of Sin (Part 2)

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This is the second of a series on the authorship of sin that came about as a result of discussions and observations on this post. Part 1 and the first section of this post address Calvinist claims that Arminians “also make God the author of sin.”

Conflating Origins

When discussing authorship implying the origination of sin, the argument inevitably arises, “but if sin originates in people, people still originate from God, therefore sin originates from God as well!” Not quite. Beings capable of sin originated from within God, it doesn’t follow that their rebellion itself came from within Him.

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