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
How do you respond to 1 Peter 1:20?
“[Christ] was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for our sake. Through him you have come to trust in God…” This passage reveals that God created the world with Jesus Christ in mind (cf. Col. 1:15–17). The divine goal was (and is) to acquire a…
Two Ancient (and Modern) Motivations for Ascribing Exhaustively Definite Foreknowledge to God
A historic overview and critical assessment Abstract: The traditional Christian view that God foreknows the future exclusively in terms of what will and will not come to pass is partially rooted in two ancient Hellenistic philosophical assumptions. Hellenistic philosophers universally assumed that propositions asserting’ x will occur’ contradict propositions asserting’ x will not occur’ and…
“Whatever it means, it cannot mean that.”
pure9 via Compfight Roger Olson wrote a great article a couple of days ago entitled Why (High) Calvinism Is Impossible. He points out that there is no way to understand God as “good” while also believing in double predestination. The idea that God predestines some to heaven and a vast majority to hell for his “glory”…
Prayer and the Open Future
Kurt Willems posted a blog today written by Derek Ouellette regarding why understanding that the future is partially open is the only thing that really makes sense of prayer. Derek addresses his thoughts to your younger self, the self that was more “Open. Teachable. Curious. Adventurous.” Let’s all be willing to respect and freely interact…
How do you respond to Galatians 3:8?
“And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.’” God has never wanted “any to perish”: he’s always desired “all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9; 1 Tim. 2:4). God’s goal has always been to reach…
God Clearly Can, So Why Doesn’t He? (podcast)
Leah expects more from God. Should she? Greg confronts God’s inactivity and underperformance. Episode 510 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0510.mp3