We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
A Calvinist and an Arminian walk into a bar…
Roger Olson posted A Conversation between a Calvinist and an Arminian about God’s Sovereignty that we thought was dead on. In fact, we kind of wonder if Roger is bugging some of the conversations we’ve had. Déjà vu much? And since Roger has argued that Open Theism should be included under the broader umbrella of Arminianism, you can just substitute “Open Theist” where you see “Arminian” and it won’t make a bit of difference.
Here’s a snippet of the conversation from Roger’s post:
Arminian: “How does God love those he predestined, foreordained, to hell?”
Calvinist: “He gives them many temporal blessings.”
Arminian: “You mean he gives them a little bit of heaven to go to hell in.”
Calvinist: “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way.”
Arminian: “That’s what it sounds like to me.”
Calvinist: “That’s because you don’t understand God correctly. God is infinite and beyond our comprehension. So God’s love is not the same as our love. It transcends it.”
Arminian: “How is that different from saying God is ‘supercalifragilisticexpialadocious’?”
Category: General
Tags: Arminianism, Calvinism, God's Love, God's Sovereignty, Open Theism, Roger Olson
Related Reading
Greg Boyd Chats with Thomas Jay Oord (podcast)
Greg talks with Thomas Jay Oord about what God can and can’t do. Episode 674 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0674.mp3
What is the significance of 2 Chronicles 12:5–8?
The Lord allows King Shishak of Egypt to almost conquer all of Israel because of King Reheboam’s rebellion. “You abandoned me, so I have abandoned you to the hand of Shishak” (vs. 5). The officers and king repent, so the Lord responds by saying, “They have humbled themselves; I will not destroy them, but I…
What is the significance of Matthew 26:39?
Jesus threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” Scripture indicates that much about the life and death of Jesus Christ was foreordained and thus foreknown long before it came to pass. Given that this…
What is the significance of Jonah 1:2; 3:2, 4–10; 4:2?
God “changed his mind” (3:10) about the destruction he planned to carry out on Nineveh. If all events in history are eternally settled and known by God as such, his word to Jonah that he planned to destroy Nineveh in forty days was insincere as was his inspired testimony that he in fact changed his…
The Logical Hexagon Made Simple
by: Greg Boyd The Hexagaon in a Nutshell For those of you who don’t have the twenty to thirty minutes it will probably take to read this essay but who nevertheless would like to have some idea of what the Logical Hexagon is all about, here is my two sentence elevator speech: The Logical Hexagon…
How can we determine what is and is not “open” about the future?
Question: You believe that the future is partly open. You’re writing has pretty much convinced me this is true, but I’ve still got some serious questions about it. For example, how does anyone determine what part is open and what part is not? If we can’t determine what is and is not open, isn’t the…