Did God send a tornado as a warning to the Evangelical Lutheran Church?John Piper says yes. Greg Boyd says no. Blogger Ed Thompkins has a post entitled: What is Arminianism and Why am I an…
Calvinism
Essays by Collin Hansen about The Reformed Resurgence
At Justin Taylor’s blog, Andy Naselli recently drew attention to a series of seven short essays on “The Reformed Resurgence” by Colin Hansen, author of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists…
Paul Copan, “Taking Calvinism Too Far: R.C. Sproul Jr.
In his book Almighty Over All (Baker, 1999), R.C. Sproul Jr. makes some controversial statements—ones that appear to be sub-biblical. What tipped me off to this was hearing a paper presentation at a conference in April in…
The Fallacies of Calvinist Apologetics – Fallacy #4: “Free Will is the Power to Do Anything!!”
By J.C. Thibodaux Related Fallacies: Oversimplification Strawman False Dilemma One of the most telling signs of the fallacious nature of Calvinist apologetics in general is its heavy reliance upon caricatures and misrepresentation of the beliefs…
The Fallacies of Calvinist Apologetics – Fallacy #3: We Choose by ‘Chance?’
Related Fallacies:
Begging the Question
Special Pleading [given that God has power of contrary choice]
False Dichotomy
If all men are neutral in prevenient grace was it by chance that one believed and not another? – [A Prayer That a Synergist Won’t Pray (An Open Challenge to All Synergists) – yet another winner by John Hendryx]
The Fallacies of Calvinist Apologetics – Fallacy #2: Arminianism Entails Salvation by “Inherent Ability”
Related Fallacies: Strawman “Bait and Switch” “Why are you a Christian and your friends aren’t? … Is it because you are smarter than your friend?” (The Pelagian Captivity of the Church, R.C. Sproul) …I believe…
Interesting Links – 8/16/09
Calvin Leaves a Divided Legacy in South Africa. “Now, as Protestants worldwide mark the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth, South Africans are remembering how the followers of the Protestant reformer were counted among the most…
Interesting Links 8-9-09
Peter Lumpkins writes about the misuse of the word “monergism” among Calvinistic Southern Baptists. Ben Henshaw asks: Do you really want to claim John Calvin as your homeboy? Check out the reply thread on this…
The Failure of God?
The following post is comprised of comments submitted to our website by [email protected], slightly revised with the author’s permission. Insofar as such infamous “failed God” arguments clearly assume the doctrine of irresistible grace (grace=force/deterministic salvation)…
Roger Olson Hits A Triple Out Of The Park
I have come to appreciate Dr. Olson’s perspectives on Arminian apologetics over the past few years. The Society of Evangelical Arminians recently posted a well written commentary by Olson considering Scot McKnight’s recent blog posts…
Hyper-Calvinism: The Logical Conclusion of Regular Calvinism?
Calvinist Phil Johnson has said, “History teaches us that hyper-Calvinism is as much a threat to true Calvinism as Arminianism is. Virtually every revival of true Calvinism since the Puritan era has been hijacked, crippled, or ultimately killed by hyper-Calvinist influences” (http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/articles/hypercal.htm).
Might this be because hyper-Calvinism is the logical conclusion to the distinctive doctrines of Calvinism? Perhaps regular Calvinism simply refuses to go where its own doctrine logically leads because where it leads contradicts the Bible so blatantly.
John Wesley Charges that Calvinism Makes God Out to Be Worse than the Devil
To follow up on Roger Olson’s essay recently posted here, perhaps it would be appropriate to post an excerpt from John Wesley’s famous sermon, “Free Grace”, in which he made a very similar charge about Calvinism as Olson, but more passionately and more forcefully. Whereas Olson states that Calvinism’s consistent divine determinism makes it difficult for him to tell the difference between God and the devil in the system, Wesley says that the system makes God worse than the devil and so is blasphemous (and he explains why). Now Wesley accepted Calvinists as brothers in Christ, so he surely did not mean that Calvinists are blasphemers or that they worship a false god or anything of the sort. I take him to mean that the logical implications of Calvinism are blasphemous, which Calvinists themselves might not really see, and which Wesley labored to help them see to bring them to the more bibilical position of Arminianism.
Interesting Links – 07-19-09
The Albert Mohler program interviews Matt Pinson (Arminian) and Mark Dever (Calvinist) on Calvin’s 500 year legacy. They amicably address their theological differences. Were the 18th century (largely Arminian) revival movements based on Enlightenment thought?…
Exploring the Psychology of Embracing Calvinism
In one of our private discussions, one of our members was wondering about the influence background may play in nudging some toward acceptance of Calvinism. He noted that he knows someone whose family background resulted…
Six Ways That Calvin is Better than Arminius
[Disclaimer: the following is tongue-in-cheek. It is the opinion of the author, and does not necessarily represent the view of SEA, which is generally true of SEA blog posts, but perhaps deserves special mention for this post, which is so bold as to suggest on SEA’s own blog ways that Calvin is actually better than Arminius!]
Today is the big 5-0-0 for Mr. John Calvin. Although he isn’t our favorite theologian, he deserves special recognition in honor of his big day. So we humbly offer six ways that Calvin is better than Arminius.
Robert Shank on Calvinist Pastors and the Warning Passages of Scripture
In 1960 Robert Shank published a book called Life in the Son. This book was written to refute the teaching of eternal security. At the time of it’s publication Robert Shank was a Southern Baptist minister. The book caused no little stir among the Southern Baptists and it led to the author eventually leaving the Southern Baptist denomination and joining the Churches of Christ. In this book Shank writes about the way Calvinist Pastors preach and teach the warning passages in Scripture. Though a bit polemical, I found it expresses well the way Arminians view the Calvinist understanding of the warning passages. Following the quote by Shank I will give an example of what he’s talking about from popular Calvinist Pastor John Piper. Shank writes,
“Completely absurd is the assumption that men are to be sincerely persuaded that apostasy is impossible and, at the same time, sincerely alarmed by the warnings…
The Reality of Choice and the Testimony of Scripture
What is Free Will? It may seem strange to some that there even is a debate as to what constitutes free will. The average person believes that he has free will. Whenever he is confronted…
Daniel Whitby, “Refuting Arguments for Irresistible Grace (Part 1): Grace
By Daniel Whitby – part of Discourses on the 5 Points Editor Note: Archaic spellings and words have been updated, sentences broken down into shorter sentences and links to scripture references inserted. – Godismyjudge SUFFICIENT…
Daniel Whitby, “Arguments against Irresistible Grace (Part 2)”
By Daniel Whitby – part of Discourses on the 5 Points
Editor Note: Archaic spellings and words have been updated, sentences broken down into shorter sentences, and links to Scripture references inserted. – Godismyjudge
To proceed now to the arguments which evidently seem to confute this doctrine:
II. ARGUMENT ONE – Sufficient Grace
And (1.) this is evident from those expressions of the holy scripture, which intimate that God had done what was sufficient, and all that reasonably could be expected from Him in order to the reformation of those persons who were not reformed; ‘for what could have been done more, (HEBREW, what was there more to do?) for my vineyard, which I have not done in it? Wherefore then when I looked (or, expected,) that it should have brought forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? (Isaiah 5:4)
Daniel Whitby, “Refuting Arguments for Irresistible Grace (Part 3)”
By Daniel Whitby – part of Discourses on the 5 Points
Editor Note: Archaic spellings and words have been updated, sentences broken down into shorter sentences and links to scripture references inserted. – Godismyjudge
Answering the arguments produced to prove, First, that man is purely passive in the work of conversion, and that it is done by an irresistible or unfrustrable act of God.
Preliminary Remarks
These arguments, for method-sake, may be reduced to four heads,
First. Arguments taken from the nature of the work itself; as v. g. it being represented by such acts:
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Video: David Pallmann, “Introduction to Soteriology: Calvinism, Arminianism, and Molinism”
