The Arminian Fundamentalist

A lot of Christians believe it to be a waste of time and energy to contend for certain Christian doctrines and/or to oppose other Christian doctrines.  Shouldn't Christians simply try to unite over and against the non-Christian ideological and non-Christian religious forces of the world?  For many doctrines, I would agree wholeheartedly. I don't think Christians should be fighting each other with regard to Baptism, to Eschatology, to Church Government, to Communion, to the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, etc. etc. I'm not saying that there aren't correct views and incorrect ones with regard to all of the aforementioned doctrines, but none of them say anything essential about God's character and/or His essence.  In short, there  are lots of doctrines we can agree to disagree upon. Especially the doctrines that don't have anything to do with maligning God's character. Take for example the issue of the mode of baptism. Whether we sprinkle someone or immerse them enti

There were NO CALVINISTS in the Early Church. No orthodox Christian theologian, apologist and/or leader taught the doctrines today associated with Calvinism. I've cited many of them in this blog and can post quote after quote, passage after passage from Church leaders in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries who TO THE MAN taught against the way Calvinists understand the Scriptures today.  And WHO was to blame? Where did "Calvinism" come from? It ALL came from/through Augustine in the early 5th Century. Previously, it was believed that Augustine's change/shift came in AD397. More recent scholarship would argue that it wasn't until AD412.  What is irrefutable is that it was Augustine who "introduced" the novel doctrines that today we call "Calvinism".  The irony of ironies is that one can find the doctrines of Calvinism in the days of the Early Church. But, they are NOT being taught by the Church; rather, they are being taught by the heretics! This ha

The funny thing about reading the Early Church Fathers is NO ONE remains a Calvinist after reading them honestly. Yes, Calvinist apologists will "cherry-pick" quotes from their writings, but if anyone were to read ALL of that writer, they will either have to hereticize them all as some kind of proto-semi-Pelagians and/or Pelagians or acknowledge that they were corrupted by Augustine and the Protestant Reformers.  I could literally do this all day, every day with hundreds and hundreds (if not thousands) of quotes from nearly every Church Father before Augustine (and after him especially amongst the Greek Fathers). There is simply NO Augustinian or Calvinist reading of the following quote from Athenagoras in the 2nd Century - he did NOT affirm the Calvinist/Reformed notion or understanding of total depravity (meaning 'total inability') or the bondage of the will. Those concepts were imported by Augustine from Gnostic Manichaeism, and pagan philosophy (Stoicism and neo-

It's a toss up - What influenced Augustine more to abandon the Apostolic understanding of Original Sin, Predestination, and Grace (Augustine being the first to teach its irresistability)? Was it Gnostic Manichaeism or was it the pagan Stoicism and Neoplatonism? The former leading to the semi-Gnostic label. The latter two leading to the semi-Pagan one.  The irony of ironies is the charges of Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism that Augustinian-Calvinists level at anyone and everyone who disagrees with them are mythological. Pelagius didn't believe any of the 14 charges Augustine leveled against him - he believe 1/2 of one of them. And Semi-Pelagianism is an a term invented in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, which again has NOTHING to do with Pelagius at all. But don't confuse Calvinists with the historical facts. Not a single Calvinist I have known has ever read a word of Pelagius' writings - most of them are largely unfamiliar with Augustine and his work. And like

I find, then, that man was constituted free by God. He was master of his own will and power. ...For a law would not be imposed upon one who did not have it in his power to render that obedience which is due to law. Nor again, would the penalty of death be threatened against sin, if a contempt of the law were impossible to man in the liberty of his will. ...Man is free, with a will either for obedience or resistance.  Tertullian (c. 207, W), 3.300,301.   As to fortune, it is man's freedom of will.  Tertullian (c. 210, W), 3.201.   This will be the power of the grace of God—more potent indeed than nature—exercising its sway over the faculty that underlies itself within us: even the freedom of our will. ...We define the soul as having sprung from the breath of God. It is immortal...[and] free in its determinations.  Tertullian (c. 210, W), 3.202.

I think my new counsel to each and every Augustinian/Calvinist/Monergist is to study Historical Theology because again and again, they demonstrate they are ignorant of the earliest Christian exegesis of John 6 and other passages the Calvinists use to support their particular doctrines. Hearing again about a recent debate between Leighton Flowers (from Soteriology 101) and Gabe Hughes (from WWUTT) on John 6 and Hughs (who argues for the Calvinist interpretation) begins immediately arguing for how the text would have been understood to those that first heard it/received it.  What Hughes obviously doesn't realize is that instead of arguing for the "Apostolic Exegesis" of the text, articulates Augustine's 5th Century understanding which was FIRST FOUND amongst the Gnostic heretics (late 2nd and 3rd centuries) and later the Gnostic Manichaeans (late 3rd and 4th centuries). If only the Calvinist Exegetes (the term I'll use to refer to all of them) would study early Chur