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Showing posts from October, 2016

critiquing Calvinism (1st of many posts)

Calvinism has a dark side that few Calvinists will openly acknowledge.  I admire those who will acknowledge the logical implications of their view that God meticulously controls everything that has ever happened, is happening and will ever happen - even when those things constitute horrendous evil. When it comes to explaining the problem of evil, its "achilles heel" is most exposed. Pastorally, many Calvinists will "counsel" (and act) more like Arminians, but you can’t have it both ways.  God cannot be “rendering everything certain” as He meticulously controls everything under their exaggerated view of what sovereignty means, and yet somehow when cancer comes, a rape occurs or some other unquestioned evil takes place, that God is off the hook.  Augustine taught tragically that EVERYTHING that happens is God’s will because His will in unconquerable.  So many theological systems continue to be infected with this Augustinianism, including Roman Catholic ideas

why "fundamentalist"?

The word "fundamentalist" has always had a bad connotation in my mind.  I was always an "Evangelical" over and against being a "fundamentalist" - or so I thought. I realize though that when push comes to shove - I really am a fundamentalist and I am not even reluctantly embracing it - I am celebrating it. I am a rabid fundamentalist and it all relates to my view of Scripture.  I was always a "Conservative Evangelical" and self-identified as such, but the term Evangelical has lost so much of the "teeth" it once had that I need a new self-identification. So - this blog will highlight from all throughout the history of the church that inerrancy was affirmed and believed. I will make this post a short one - but let's just get back to the early Church to get us started.  Here are two representative quotes from well-known, orthodox Church Fathers - let the games begin: Tertullian states unambiguously, “The statements of Holy Sc

why the title?

I have watched far too many Arminian theologians that I have read and who have had a profound influence on my faith begin "the drift" into liberalism and it seems that in many cases, a diminished view of Scripture has either caused or contributed to this tragic trend. As an Arminian (a term I, embrace as descriptive for theological reasons as opposed to Calvinist or Augustinian), I am finding it quite ironic that in recent years, I have been most impressed with it has conservative Reformed theological voices for upholding inerrancy and who are not capitulating to the liberal trends that have overrun so many Evangelical seminaries and other institutions. I've had enough.  Arminianism, to apply the term anachronistically, was the faith of the Apostolic and sub-Apostolic Church.  In other words, you cannot find a single Calvinist in the Church before Augustine.  Search the Early Church Fathers all you want, but you won't find a single voice that supports the unique