We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded by your direct support for ReKnew and our vision. Please consider supporting this project.

A Dear John Letter to John Calvin

Image via The American Jesus

Image via The American Jesus

Zack Hunt of The American Jesus wrote a brilliant “Dear John” letter after reading Calvin’s most famous work, Institutes of the Christian Religion. If you want to hear a well-articulated and engaging challenge of classic Calvinism, you should read the whole post.

Here’s a little snippet to spark your interest:

But, John, I think the ultimate problem between you and me is the starting point in your grand theological endeavor. For you, everything begins and ends with the glory of God. I wholeheartedly agree that giving glory to God is an important thing. But John, I don’t know what Bible you’re reading if you think that receiving glory is God’s primary interest in and purpose for mankind. If anything, the Bible is a sustained account of God’s disinterest in glory. It’s the story of a God who desires above all to be in a loving relationship with His people and God’s willingness to do anything to make that happen, including abandoning all sense of glory even to that point of death on a cross.

But perhaps the most ironic point in your emphasis on glory is that in your attempt to glorify God you destroy that very glory through your understanding of divine sovereignty and election. For if God ordains murder, rape, and abuse, while creating some people – maybe most people – for eternal torment, then that God is not worthy of glory. Period.

Related Reading

When Did You Let Go of Your Calvinist Beliefs? (Podcast)

Greg talks about his unusual transformation out of Calvinism. Episode 471 The Interview: http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0471.mp3 Photo by Paola Franco on Unsplash.com

Problems with the Simple Foreknowledge View

Some have proposed a model of divine foreknowledge which allows them to avoid the dilemma of affirming either that God creates people for the purpose of sending them to hell (Calvinism) or that he creates them without certain knowledge of their fate (open theism). In this alternative view God knows that certain individuals will be…

Topics:

Lighten Up: God’s Goofy Sense of Humor

Authentic Theology

So much theology does not do justice to the reality of the world. Any theology that’s going to claim to be authentic must be done on the edge of a mass grave of gassed children. If we can’t state our theology there, then it’s useless. We must never block out the pain of this world.…

Resignation to Evil: Not an Option

One lucky guy via Compfight While few Christians would deny that Satan is in some sense the ruler of this world, since it’s so clearly taught in the New Testament, many nevertheless insist that everything Satan and every other free agent does fits into a divine plan that is governing every detail of world history.…

Costly Discipleship

Bob AuBuchon via Compfight Zack Hunt over at The American Jesus is doing a series of posts called “Blogmatics” in which he fleshes out the theological assumptions that inform his blog posts. A couple of days ago he discussed discipleship and the life that believers are called to in a post entitled Blogmatics: The Cost…