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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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Book Review: Whedon’s Freedom of the Will

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John Wagner recently edited and republished Daniel Whedon’s Freedom of the Will: A Wesleyan response to Jonathan Edwards. The book is an outstanding refutation of Edward’s Inquiry into the Will. Whedon seeks and engages top authors and arguments like Hobbs’ argument (later adopted by Locke and Edwards) that free will is incoherent, because it either amounts to a causeless cause or infinite regression of causes. Whedon responds by pointing out 1) the will is the cause of choice (74); 2) defining indeterministic causes (38-39); and 3) explaining that indeterministic causes account for either choice (71-72). In other words, indeterministic causes explain the goal of our choices (or reason for our choices), but the will is the cause we choose this goal, not that goal. This is essentially agent causation.

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Arminius on Sola Scriptura

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by Godismyjudge I recently read Michael Patton’s post on the canon of scripture, Dave Armstrong’s response, and Turretinfan’s debate with Matthew Bellisario on sola scriptura. Before I continue, let me make it clear that I…

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Calvinists Interpreting Church History

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In a previous post I suggested that when it comes to interpreting non-Calvinistic Church history or representing Arminian or non-Calvinistic theology, many Calvinists cannot be trusted. We find very few academic exceptions (and this can…

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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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Dr. Brian Abasciano Introduces His New Book on Romans 9:10-18

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Dr. Brian Abasciano has done a guest post in the blog of his publisher, T&T Clark/Continuum, introducing his new book on Romans 9:10-18. We have reproduced the post below, which was taken from http://tandtclark.typepad.com/ttc/2011/04/a-guest-post-from-brian-j-abasciano.html :

<a href="http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=125352&SearchType=Basic

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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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More On the Authorship of Sin

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[Editor’s note: This post was originally posted at http://arminianperspectives.wordpress.com/, so any time references are no longer applicable.]

A few weeks ago I wrote on a fallacy common to Calvinist apologetics, namely, that they often claim that while they teach exhaustive determinism, they still claim that God isn’t the author of sin. It garnered substantially more responses than I expected. To clarify things and answer some common questions/objections, I’m putting together a synopsis of the relevant arguments (this is part 1).

Moral problems?

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The Fallacies of Calvinist Apologetics

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Related Fallacies:
Red Herring
Equivocation

“All I have tried to do here is show how clearly, succinctly and simply that Calvinism does NOT charge God with the authorship of sin and so (to employ the somewhat aggressive language of Scripture) to shut the mouths of the gainsayers. If any have a case against Calvinism, then let it be based on truth and not on falsehood and slander.” – Colin Maxwell, Do Calvinists believe and teach that God is the Author of Sin?

Colin Maxwell put up the page linked to above showing various quotes from prominent Calvinist sources indicating that they do not believe or teach that God is the author of sin. His point apparently, judging from the content and page’s title, is to stop non-Calvinists from ‘slandering’ them by claiming they teach such a thing.

Problems with this logic

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