The Arminian Fundamentalist

This blog post title is a play on words from Bruce Ware’s book, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism. Calvinist’s talk about Grace as if they invented the term or at least have exclusive theological rights to its use.  Sadly Calvinism's concept of Grace is truly a diminished one that ironically reflects poorly on the Glory of God they claim to uphold. To them, grace is irresistible. Once God extends it, no one can reject it.  They can’t reject it initially, and they can’t reject it once they are born again and regenerated.  It is rather controlling. To them, grace is exclusive.  God doesn’t extend it to everyone (that in spite of the dozens and dozens of Biblical passages that teach otherwise).  It is discriminating. To an Arminian, this Calvinist understanding of the nature of grace is NOT Amazing Grace.  It doesn’t have a sweet sound as the hymn extols. The Glorious God of the Scriptures has extended a far more glorious Grace.  A gra

When God is in the equation, change is possible – by definition.  Paul writes so powerfully, “Don’t be conformed to this world, but BE TRANSFORMED….” (Rom 12:1)  - Why would he write such an audacious statement if it wasn’t true!  Theology matter when it comes to this stuff.  For those who are more “monergistically-inclined” (aka Calvinists), they love to minimize in the name of honoring God and His Sovereignty our responsibility in these matters.  They will deny this and for the most part live just as synergistically-minded (aka Arminians) people do.  The truth is God has done everything possible for us to change – He inspired prophets and apostles to give us His Inerrant Word (so we know “what to do”); He has defeated the devil and given us the possibility of being born again and filled with His Holy Spirit (so have “the power to do it”).  So why are we so often stuck?  Why are we seemingly not finding deliverance, freedom and transformation?  (and that could include anything i

It is remarkable that Calvinists can seeming erase human responsibility from any and every passage of Scripture.  We can all agree that God is the initiator towards humans in our response to Him, but to eliminate our role, our responsibility in the name of upholding His sovereignty is ridiculous.  God has enabled His creation to respond to Him – to humble ourselves and obey or to resist His will and rebel.  It is EVERYWHERE in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.  Taking NT metaphors, I.e. “we were dead in our sin”, to unBiblical extremes amounts to poor exegesis.  Scripture must be balanced with the rest of Scripture.  When the Scriptures teach that “none is righteous” and yet all throughout the OT and even into the NT, men and women are called/considered “righteous” - I.e. Zachariah and Elizabeth in Luke 1:6, we must allow Scripture to interpret Scripture.  We don’t let “one is righteous” trump and negate all the instances where God calls His servants righteous.   So th

There is so much being said and written about the “Millennial Generation”.  A lot of it has been quite negative.  Recently the whole issue of their need for “safe spaces” in the wake of the election results for those that couldn’t handle the outcome has been given a lot of attention.   From Christians there has been a lot of alarmist voices – they are citing the statistics about them being unchurched and/or are leaving the church.   In 2015, CNN ran an article entitled “Millennials leaving Church in droves” (Source:  http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/12/living/pew-religion-study/ ). Atheism is on the rise amongst Millennials.  As for those who are still identifying as Christians, there does seem to be a trend towards abandoning historic Christian doctrines and/or practices.  For example, the percentage who affirm the traditional understanding of marriage as only between a man and woman is on the decline amongst Millennials.  Other doctrines such as universalism and the rejection of

I know I haven’t taken up this issue on this blog previously, but from time to time I will as this is the place I muse theologically. Certain “Hyper Grace” teachers teach that we don’t have to heed the teachings of Christ in the Gospels because they were given before the Cross and are therefore under the Old Covenant and do not apply to us as New Covenant believers.  Of course this teaching is utterly ridiculous and was “invented” because there are many things that Jesus taught that don’t “fit” the doctrine of these so-called “Grace teachers”.  For example, Jesus instructs believers to ask for forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer.  Hyper Grace teachers teach that no NT believer should ever ask for forgiveness as they are already forgiven.  Jesus also talks about the consequences of sin in the life of believers – if we don’t forgive, God doesn’t forgive us (Matthew 6:15).  But according to them, this can’t be true either.  So a hermeneutic (a way to interpret) was literally “inv

The ETS (Evangelical Theological Society) has just concluded their annual meeting and having heard from several theologians and scholars who attended, the use of the term "Evangelical" is becoming less and less meaningful to those of us who affirm the HISTORIC Christian faith.  The types of views that are somehow being "accepted" under the banner "Evangelical" should deeply concern those of us who are seeking to faithfully hold onto and propagate the Apostolic faith. Several years ago a theistic evolutionist at the conference boldly declared and then attempted to defend his view that there was no literal Adam as a historical person.  The doctrine of inerrancy is constantly being eroded as I highlighted in my last blogpost. This year it appears that the "gay affirming" position, which is the belief a Christian can somehow be in a sexual relationship with a person of the same sex that God blesses and sanctions, is being considered an "Eva