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.
On The Calvinism Debate In Chicago Last Week
Image by OldOnliner via Flickr
For those of you who were unaware of it, there was a debate in Chicago last week on New Calvinism that was sponsored by Sojourn Network. Our friend T. C. Moore did an outstanding job of covering it. You can read his impressions over on his blog by clicking here. He also has embedded video of the debate if you’d like to check it out for yourself.
Just to whet your whistle and encourage you to check out T. C.’s article, we want to feature a point of the debate that we’re pretty passionate about. One of the metaphors that Austin Fischer presented to highlight the problem with New Calvinism was the image of a “firefighting arsonist”. T. C. expounds on it here:
The first killer metaphor was employed by Fischer. He wanted those who would watch this debate to know that despite the New Calvinists’ clever attempts to disguise it, the reality is that whatever condition they claim God is saving humanity from, their theology necessitates that God caused it. If it is true, like the Calvinists claim, that God rescues a group of preselected people from the tortures of their conception of hell, it is only because God “ordained” that humanity would be damned in the first place.
Fischer’s metaphor of God wanting the world to “burn down” conjures the image of the firefighter who has a narcissistic pathology which tempts him or her to start the very fires he or she is charged to rescue citizens from. This firefighter puts lives in danger only for the “glory” of being the one who swoops in to the rescue.
The reason this metaphor is so damning (pun intended), is because the New Calvinist routinely use the idea of God “saving some” from hell as the pinnacle of their argument for God’s redemptive glory. “Everyone should go to hell for their sins” Calvinists routinely shout. But, this is only just if human beings are responsible for their sin. In New Calvinism’s conception of why people go to hell, it isn’t because they have sinned and must suffer the consequences. No, it is because God “ordained” that they would sin and suffer the consequences before God brought creation into being. If any theology “robs God of glory,” it is the one that makes God out to be a psychopathic firefighting arsonist.
Category: General
Tags: Austin Fischer, Brian Zahnd, Calvinism, Debate, T.C. Moore
Related Reading
How People Misunderstand Open Theism
Open theism holds that, because agents are free, the future includes possibilities (what agents may and may not choose to do). Since God’s knowledge is perfect, open theists hold that God knows the future partly as a realm of possibilities. This view contrasts with classical theism that has usually held that God knows the future exclusively as a domain…
How Can Salvation by Grace Involve Free Will?
How does salvation by grace work if people have free will? If salvation hinges on whether individuals choose to be saved or not, is salvation based on grace or works? If we have to choose for or against God, then doesn’t the credit for our salvation ultimately go to us? Along the same lines, doesn’t…
8346
Umberto Salvagnin via Compfight Oh oh. It’s getting ugly up in here. Frank Viola is suggesting that Greg needs to fix a nice tall glass of shut-up juice. He and Greg have decided to have a debate on the open view sometime this fall, and they have been engaging in some smack talk since that decision…
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled…”
“…was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” ~Verbal Kint, The Usual Suspects Roger Olson reflected a few days ago on the curious absence of any discussion of Satan in modern theology. He even speculated: I suspect that one reason Greg Boyd, a brilliant theologian, is not taken as seriously as he should be by many…
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.…
Free Will: How free will presupposes a great deal of determinism
This particular video was recorded last week when the forecast called for a high of -4F. Greg makes light of the freezing conditions before he settles into the topic of how a mostly determined world is actually the needed context for free will to operate. Stay warm out there!