I agree with those who say that Calvinism needs to be defeated on the grounds that it is unscriptural<\/b><\/i>. The Calvinist’s misreading of the Bible is the doctrine’s most fundamental and grievous error.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But that doesn’t mean we should avoid discussing objections which are philosophical.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
One can explain how the context of a Scripture passage disqualifies the Calvinist interpretation or one can present solid exegesis of a passage showing the presumed evidence for Calvinism evaporates on closer inspection, but … the Calvinist’s presuppositions remain in place.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
In my experience, little to no headway is made through Scriptural arguments.<\/p>\n\n\n
Which is sad. Every Christian should be pursuing correct and accurate interpretation of God’s word no matter what the cost to his or her established presuppositions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Most of us would say we are doing just that, but few of us actually do it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
So Scriptural arguments often go absolutely nowhere.<\/p>\n\n\n
A philosophical objection, on the other hand, has potential to get the ball rolling in the right direction.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
If you can present a philosophical issue capable of breaking through presuppositions, it may cause the Calvinist to pause, to reflect, and – perhaps – to return to Scripture on his or her own for a closer reading.<\/p>\n\n\n
For example, I once asked a Calvinist friend, “Why do you think God hates so many people?”<\/p>\n\n\n
He was appalled at the thought that God would hate anybody<\/i>. “What do you mean?”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
“Well, according to you, He has created gobs of people with the sole intent of allowing them to live a few years on earth – many of them in quite miserable circumstances – and them damning them to hell for eternity. Surely you can’t say that He loves those people. Not in any meaningful way. In fact, it seems like the sort of thing you would only do to people you passionately hate.”<\/p>\n\n\n
His response was, “I will have to think about that.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Yes, please do!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I agree with those who say that Calvinism needs to be defeated on the grounds that it is unscriptural. The Calvinist’s misreading of the Bible is the doctrine’s most fundamental and grievous error.\u00a0 But that doesn’t mean we should avoid discussing objections which are philosophical.\u00a0 One can explain how the context of a Scripture passage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7165,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions\/7165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}