- The latest controversy within the SBC: Are infants who die before reaching the so-called "age of accountability" destined for hell?
- Calvinism is to blame, of course, especially since so many Calvinists remain silent on the issue like Pelagius did. According to the keenly insightful Peter Lumpkins, Calvinists are "just as cowardly as others in stating what they really believe concerning infant salvation."
- James White isn't your regular, run-of-the-mill Calvinist. He's an arch Calvinist.
- Can Calvinists really be in favor of mercy ministry? Yes.
- Does a premillennial view destroy the Calvinist interpretation of Romans 9? Not necessarily. Still, abandoning the premillennialial view couldn't hurt.
- Pastor Billy Stevens talks about what he likes and dislikes about Calvinism. (SPOILER ALERT: The dislikes won out, which is why he left.) One thing he doesn't like about Calvinists is how they approach evangelism: "The Calvinist cannot tell any random person that God loves them." Because, as everyone knows, that's how all the apostles evangelized.
Friday, September 06, 2013
This Week in Calvinism - September 6, 2013
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4 comments:
"The Calvinist cannot tell any random person that God loves them."
But ... I can. Not in the same way, perhaps, but no one believes that everyone (God included) should love everyone in the same way.
Sigh. It gets tiring sometimes defending the faith against strawman attacks.
"The Calvinist cannot tell any random person that God loves them."
And that's bad? These silly “gotcha” questions are tiring. They are tiresome over the shallowness of the question and the trepidity of too many Calvinists. Yes, in a certain sense God loves His whole creation including mankind. In another sense, God hates the sinner and will pour out His wrath on him in judgment. The problem with these petty questions is that they are grounded in the weak, almost deistic “God is love” idol that is presupposed by the questioner.
God does all His holy will. He is holy and perfectly just in everything He does simply because He is God, whether that entails destroying millions of people in a flood or punishing His Son on a cross. I would rather throw the question back and insist first that the anti-Calvinist first prove and defend their view of God from the pages of Scripture (the whole Bible and not just the passages they like). Until we first address the fundamental divergence we have on our view of God and His attributes, any argument on God’s love or the salvation of infants is pointless.
Does anyone else find it strange that non-Calvinist Baptists want infants to be forced to go to heaven against their wills, without making a free choice in the matter? Calvinists at least have a basis for infants going to heaven that does not violate their usual soteriology of unconditional election and irresistible grace. But if election is conditioned on faith, how can all infants be assumed to be elect? Non-Calvinists seem to be wholly inconsistent on this point. I would expect them to say that those who die before reaching the supposed "age of accountability" will be allowed to grow up in some kind of heavenly "neutral zone" and then be given a free choice to perish or be saved once they are morally accountable. However, it is more fun to throw rocks at Calvinists than to think through the absurdities created by a man-dependent system. Southern Baptists are suffering from a few militant anti-Calvinists in their ranks who like to stir up trouble and create imaginary controversies.
Again, I enjoin all to pray with me that Lumpy will be called to a mission field in the Third World with no Internet access.
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