Soteriology 101: Former Calvinistic Professor Discusses Doctrines Of Salvation

These brothers of the Credo House in Oklahoma put out a great Theology Podcast and they have good hearts. However, they hold to a Calvinsitic soteriology and thus I do take issue with some of what they teach.  Today I go through some of their series titled "Invitation to Calvinism" and critique their points. In today episode we discuss: The history of Calvinism Why the Early Church Fathers do not appear to support Calvinistic conclusions The fault of most Calvinists today in not addressing the most prominent scholarly non-Calvinistic interpretations of the text. To find the Theology Unplugged Podcast you can go to: www.reclaimingthemind.org To join our discussion go to www.soteriology101.com

Today we dialogue about Christian Charity in this debate over soteriology by interacting with John Piper's comments about influential Arminians.  In the discourse we cover:   ·       The Philosophical aspects involved in this discussion. ·       Being people of “The Book” ·       Are non-Calvinists as exegetical in their approach? ·       Who are some scholarly non-Calvinistic scholars?   This and more are covered in today’s episode.  Join our discussion at www.soteriology101.com

In the closing of this debate Dr. White makes several erroneous remarks in defense of Calvinism that I would like to address: 1.  He mocks preachers who ask, "What will you do with Jesus?" Instead of asking, "What will Jesus do with you?" Yet, in Matthew 27:21 Pilot did ask the crowd what they wanted him to do with Jesus. Is this not still an applicable question for each person to ponder?  This question does not need to be pit up against the question regarding what Christ will do with us, because both questions are viable (see debate fallacy: False Dichotomy). Paul wrote, "Now everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ; certain that God is appealing through us, we plead on Christ's behalf, 'Be reconciled to God.'" (2 Cor. 5:18-20) "What wil

"Can I lose my salvation?" is one of the most googled phrases regarding the topic of soteriology. Many people are concerned with this question. Some reference to the doctrine called the "Perseverance of the Saints," and others the more common phrases such as, "Once Saved Always Saved," or "Eternal Security of the Believer." All of the discussions typically center around the foundational concern of an individual feeling insecure in his relationship with God.   Many of us have gone through similar insecurities in dating relationships.  We know how we feel about that significant other, but we are not quite sure how they feel about us. What has to happen?  The "DTR!" The "Defining of the Relationship." NOTE: I preached a Sermon by that Title HERE if your are interested. We have to sit down with the one we care about and tell them how we feel  in hopes that they reciprocate those feelings.  In that process we can either bring that relationship to an end or find security in knowing how the other feels about us.   

Recently several people have asked what specific points lead me away from Calvinism. I believe there are many who are trying to help a loved one to give up their Calvinism.  I hate to tell them, but it is doubtful a podcast will accomplish that. It is very difficult to leave a system of thought after you've fully adopted it. Nevertheless, I tell my story and reveal the top five points that helped me to see the text from another perspective.  In summary, here are the 5 points: 1. I came to realize that the "foresight faith view" was not the only scholarly alternative to the Calvinistic interpretation. 2. I came to understand the distinction between original sin (depravity) and the Calvinistic concepts of "Total Inability." 3. I accepted the fact that a gift doesn't have to be irresistibly applied in order for the giver to get full credit for giving it. 4. I realized that the decision to humble yourself and repent in faith is not meritorious. Even repentant believers deserve eternal punishment.  God gives grace

Should a church openly advertise that they teach Reformed Theology? Should a preacher be honest about being Calvinistic in the interview process? How should we respond to Calvinists who make us angry? What are people saying about this podcast? This and more is discussed on today episode.  Join our discussion as www.Soteriology101.com  

False assumptions of Calvinism: 1. Man is not only born sinful, but they are born totally hardened (by sovereign decree) and thus unable to even respond to God's own appeal to be reconciled from the fall. 2. The responsibility of man to humble ourselves and repent of our inabilities and sinfulness in faith merits salvation and thus is boast worthy if we do it apart from God's irresistible grace. 3. A gift has to be irresistibly given for the giver to get full credit for giving it. If you think a person is able to resist the gracious gift then you are robbing God's glory. Truths: 1. Man is born sinful, depraved and in need of a savior, not judicially hardened or blinded in their rebellion.  Men become hardened over time after rejecting the revelation of God, "otherwise they are able to see, hear, understand and turn.' (Acts 28:27-28; John 12:39-41; Rm. 11, Mark 4, Mt. 13) 2.  A humble response to the gospel truth is not meritorious. God doesn't give grace to those who humble themselves because humility earns s

“If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be its victim.” Richard Bach “Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the nonpharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.” John W. Gardner One big problem a lot of people have is that they slip into thinking of themselves as victims that have little or no control over their lives.   Victim mentality is an acquired (learned) personality trait in which a person tends to regard him or herself as a victim of the negative actions of another, and to think, speak and act as if that were the case — even in the absence of clear evidence. A victim mentality is one where you blame everyone else for what happens in your world. You may come to believe that you are destined to struggle.   Victims of victim mentality have the illusion that they are constantly under attack from the universe, but only because of the way they choose to digest the t

We quote and address CS Lewis, John Calvin, Charles Hodge, W.G.T Shedd, R. L. Dabney (Reformed Princeton Theologians), Phil Johnson (Grace to You) and JD Hall (Pulpit and Pen). Quotes below... The first half of the podcast deals with Limited Atonement: Particular versus Provisional  One can support he provisional view without denying Calvinism. Not really the most important point of the Calvinistic debate yet it gets most of the attention. The bigger points of contention have to do with Total Inability and Irresistible Grace. The second half of the podcast is my response to JD Hall's most recent podcast were we deal with the root cause for a regenerate man's choices. God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? B

Much of this podcast is me attempting to rephrase our point of contention.  JD continually moves the discussion to be about a non-regenerate man's need to become regenerate, when my contention was about the ability of an already regenerate to resist temptation. If a Christian sins is it because God has in any way failed or neglected to give His child what was needed to resist that temptation?  Or is the that believer simply free (contra-causally) to resist divine aid and fall into that temptation? Compatibilists, like John Hendryx and Phil Johnson, believe "we do not make choices seperately from God's meticulous providence." In otherwords, God decrees which choice men (even regenerate men) will make, not that they will be free to make it.    I'm not sure if JD would affirm this or not since he never went deep enough into our actual point of contention. Below is the blog post covering in more detail some of the other points in the broadcast: JD Hall responded to my podcast entitled “Is Calvinism Practical?” Ma

In today episode we: Continue the Phil Johnson debate over Twitter by reminding everyone that non-Calvinists, such as myself, may not believe God determines everything, but that doesn't mean we believe God determines nothing.  Calvinists, like Phil Johnson and James White point to examples of God's deterministic activity in the world as if its the smoking gun proving their deterministic premise.    If you witnessed me having to hold down my son in order to give him a shot for diabeties because he was afraid of needles, would you walk away and conclude that Leighton always uses brute stength to over power the will of his son, denying his child any freedom or personhood or independance?  Of course not, yet this is what deterministic Calvnists do with the scriptures.  They take examples of God's interaction within the course of human history and insist this is how God determines everything.  This does nothing except undermine the unique divine nature of such events recorded in scripture.   I quote John MacA

In this episode Stewie and Phil Johnson gang up on me and hurt my feelings. They are insisting my claim that God's sovereignty is more about his desire to reveal a world NOT under his complete control than it is about Him attempting to maintain deterministic control over every thing that happens is just plain 'stupid' and 'jejune.' What ever that means. It once again goes back to the Determinist's claim that God cannot create a rock to big for Him to move, but does that in any way prove that God cannot create a rock that He chooses NOT to move?  Phil Johnson, like James White, seems to think even the consideration of such a idea is irrational.  Who cares if it doesn't seem rational to our finite mind, I just want to know if its biblical.   These passages teach that there are "authorities" and "powers" which are yet to be destroyed, and that have been given dominion over God's creation. Isaiah 24:21 A time is coming when the Lord will punish the powers above and the rulers of the earth. Ephesians 6:12  For

"God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, 'What doest thou?' Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so." - A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God Too many here think man's contra-causal freewill somehow violates divine sovereignty, which begs the question by presuming that God could not have chosen in His sovereignty to make mankind contra-causally free. Dare one argue that God's not powerful enough to create contra-causally free ind

Paul writes:  "What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory." Remembering that the question Paul is answering in Romans 9 is: “Has God’s word failed in regard to God’s election of Israel?”  What is Paul’s intent in this passage?  Is Paul concluding that there are some people who are destined before time began to be objects of wrath and others destined to be objects of mercy, as Calvinists conclude?  If so, how does that really answer the question posed by the apostle?  How does that fit with Paul’s expression of unconditional love for these hardened, cut off, stumbling people of Israel in the beginning of this chapter?  How does this fit with the fact that Paul expresses God’s longsuffering patience to a people who He has held out his hands too for generations (Rm. 10:21, Matt. 23:37)?  How

The Non-Calvinistic View of Romans 9: It begins, as before, with Paul agonizing over the failure of Israel to come to faith in Christ (vv. 1-5). He has to confront the Jewish objection that, if his gospel were correct, it would mean that God’s promises to the Jews had failed. His response is that God’s promises have not failed, but others are inheriting the promises, because not all of Israel is Israel: i.e., not all of Israel has followed Abraham in faith (v. 6). Ethnic descent from Abraham is not enough to be considered “Abraham’s children,” as the examples of Ishmael and Esau demonstrate; Israel has already been granted unmerited blessings as compared with other descendants of Abraham (vv. 7-13). Therefore God is not unjust if he now excludes those descendants of Jacob who do not come to faith, because anyone he blesses, even Moses, is a recipient of his mercy (vv. 14-16). God may choose to spare for a time even someone like Pharaoh, whom God has chosen to harden—knowing that he will harden himsel

Jacob I loved and Esau I hated: The term “hate” is sometimes an expression of choosing one over another, and does not literally mean “hatred.” For instance, Jesus told Peter, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). No commentator worth his salt would suggest the term “hate” in this passage is literal, otherwise he would be hard pressed to explain scripture’s other teachings about loving and honoring our parents. Instead, this passage is understood to mean that man must choose following God’s will over the will of even the most beloved in one’s life. Could the same hermeneutical principle be applied toward understanding God choice of Jacob over Esau? Certainly, it could. God clearly chose one over the other for a noble purpose, but can we be sure that was Paul’s intent in this passage? No, not entirely, we would have to speculate. However, do we have to speculate rega

Many are Called, but Few are Chosen. Our calling is unconditional, but is our election?  In the illustration of the Wedding banquet (Matt. 22) the choice of those who enter is clearly conditioned upon their wearing the correct garments. We will unpack that parable today. We will also look at 1 Thess. 1:4 and 2 Thess. 2:13, which are used by Calvinists to prove their view of individual election to salvation. Join the discussion at www.soteriology101.com

After Stewie makes fun of the Professor for a host of reasons, the discussion picks up where it left off on John Piper's introduction to Calvinism as he speaks of its practicality in ministry. How teniable is the belief that all our choices are actually determined by God?  Does it really help us? In a culture that blames God and runs to sin rather than blaming sin and running to God, does the Calvinistic system help bolster the false notion that God is to blame for the evil, fallenness and all it consequences?   Do passages such as Eph. 6:10 which speak of other authorities and powers in this world and in heavenly places suggest that God has given over some measure of control? Does the Lord's prayer asking for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven suggest that what is happening on earth is not necessarily as God would determine it if He were in complete deterministic control over every thing that comes to pass? Join the discussion at www.soteriology101.com

We discuss John Piper's sermon: TULIP, Part 1 of 9: 
Introduction
A Seminar for The Bethlehem Institute
March 7, 2008 | by John Piper | Topic: The Doctrines of Grace / Calvinism John Piper introduces his 9 part series on the topic of Calvinism with this quote from AW Tozer. "It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the 20th century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity. All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral being must do about Him.  The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of 10,000 temporal problems, for he sees at once that these have to do with matters that at the most cannot concern him for very long… Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold t

Do non-Calvinists believe we save ourselves?   Can we respond to the gospel without the aid of the Holy Spirit? Can a non-Calvinist ever correctly represent Calvinism? What about men like John the Baptist or Paul, who seemed to be predestined to be followers of Christ?  Doesn't that prove God predestines all believers? Does proving that God predetermined the crucifixion of Christ prove that God predestines all sin? How does someone who holds to the corporate view of election deal with verses which clearly address individuals? All of these questions and more will be addressed in today's podcast.   If you have questions, rebuttals or comments please visit us at www.soteriology101.com.