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The Arminian Fundamentalist

I use the term "Arminian" because it is the closest theological term to the Apostolic soteriology that people understand. Technically, Arminians hold to the Reformed understanding of "Total Depravity" meaning total inability which is NOT what the Apostolic understanding of the Fall was. I use the term "Fundamentalist" because the term 'Evangelical' has tragically all but lost its historic meaning and understanding in today's theological world.

Tertullian was NOT a Calvinist!

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- March 07, 2020

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David JohnMarch 8, 2020 at 5:38 AM
and Luther got it wrong in "On the Bondage of the Will"
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Tertullian or Luther on "The Bondage of the Will"? - I'll go with Tertullian.

- February 02, 2022

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.

If Calvinism were true, Jesus would be a liar.

- November 07, 2022

I am grateful that almost every Calvinist I know is inconsistent. They don't actually apply their systematic to the Scriptures. If they did, then they would have to concede that Jesus was a liar. Why? Because on Calvinism, mankind is dead in their trespasses in such a way as they cannot respond to anything, not even the Gospel. They are totally unable to do anything. According to Calvinism, the only way they can be saved is for God to resurrect them (to regenerate them) so that they can believe. Yes, Calvinism teaches that regeneration (being born again) must happen BEFORE a person can believe the Gospel. Why? Because they are dead. But then according to Calvinists, when God gives His "effectual call" to a person, they are brought to life and made able to respond to, to believe the Gospel. And from beginning to end they are enabled by God to persevere in faith. If they are "effectually called" they will be saved no matter what! So why is Jesus a liar accordin

Yet Another Early Church NON-CALVINIST - Athenagoras (AD 177)

- February 10, 2022

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-