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.
What is the Gospel?
Our friend Roger Olson raised this question in response to accusations by Calvinists that those who espouse Arminianism do not “preach the gospel.” The same argument has been made about Open Theists. Olson writes:
The complete gospel is communicated in Ephesians 2:8-9: “For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast.” Every true, classical, historical Arminian of the heart (evangelical Arminian) believes and preaches this just as fervently and faithfully as any Calvinist does.
The problem begins to appear when Calvinists (and some Lutherans) begin to pack a systematic theology, that of Calvin, Edwards and Hodge, into that passage saying that it requires monergism. It simply does not.
To read the rest of Roger’s post click here.
Image by exquisitur via Flickr.
Category: General
Tags: Arminianism, Calvinism, Open Theism, Roger Olson
Related Reading
How Could God Foreknow Peter’s Choice but not Abraham’s? (podcast)
Greg looks at the nature of God’s foreknowledge and testing. Episode 562 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0562mp3.mp3
What is the significance of Exodus 13:17?
The Lord didn’t lead Israel along the shortest route to Canaan because Israel would have had to fight the Philistines. The Lord wanted to avoid this, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war, and they return to Egypt.” [NIV: “If they face war they might change their minds and return to Egypt”].…
How do you respond to Matthew 21:1–5?
Jesus commanded his disciples, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this: ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately” (vs. 1-4). Though this verse…
What is the significance of Genesis 2:19 ?
“So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was the name.” God wanted Adam to have authority over the animal kingdom…
Boyd’s Bad Ass Tattoo
by: Greg Boyd In the process of working through a philosophical issue surrounding the openness of the future around twenty years ago, I and two friends (Alan Rhoda and Tom Belt) ended up creating the “Hexagon of Opposition”, or “Hexagonic Logic of Futurity,” as I’ve sometimes called it. I’ll explain what it all means in…
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…