Featured Calvinism and the SBC (a 2013 discussion between Hankings and Mohler)

God is sovereign in every passage. A passage need not mention the fact to be subject to it.

 

Think that he is affirming that those elect peoples are caused and due to their own 'free will" election!

 

Welcome back! And you are correct, in that the scriptures indicate that God salvation is due to Him being proactive towards us, and not in the passive/permissive mode!

 

I agree with you that those such as a Moody/Tozer/Luther et all have all written some good works, and that none of us have nailed down perfectly as aspects of Christian theology proper, but would stil lhold that the authors who wrote in the reformed, and also calvinistic baptist circles, on the whole, seemed to have produced much meatier and weighty writings concerning the theology of Christianity!

 

The scriptures affirm that there is no contradiction between the Will of God and of sinful man, but it states to us that is due to God being over all fully in control..
This need to have Mankind accorded full free will is due to the need to have sinners afforded the 'real choice" to accept/reject Christ!

 

The word "sovereign" is not in the King James Bible; I don't know about the other versions.It is often used to mean that God controls every little detail of existence, event to the point of controlling man's will. God did create all things and He has power and authority over all things. He even designed and instituted "election" and "predestination" but those doctrines don't mean what many think they do. God is almighty.

The Bible says that :"a man's heart deviseth his way but the Lord directeth his steps". He gives us the freedom to choose to believe and obey Him and the freedom to reject Him, but God alone controls the consequences of all of our choices now, and at the Judgement Day. I know the following verse was written to the Jews but, it was also written "for our admonition", the doctrine is the same throughout the Bible and God hasn't changed........

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: Deuteronomy 30:19

Of course, we should all know that "the LIfe" is Jesus Christ. But here's another note about the above verse that I just noticed: Before the semicolon, it addresses a group by using the plural pronoun "you". After the semicolon it uses "thou", which is singular. In other words, God was giving the invitation for all of them, but it was up to each individual to choose. Someone will say that is Arminianism and some will say it is "works" but it's not: It's faith.

 

None of us while sinners cam freely accept Jesus and get saved, as our very natures are as enemies of God!

 

Thanks! That tracks with Missionary Baptists here (total depravity, conditional election, general atonement and eternal security). Since we only attach the name free will to the Free Will Baptists, I wondered if these might be a slightly different tribe.

 

Agreed, I was thinking more in the quantity of the works over the years, as while those who had a different viewpoint have had some good works, its seems that the sheer bulk of good works came from this position.

 

The second half of your sentence just brought the contradiction.

That's not true at all. The issue of Fatalism vs Free Will is not exclusive to Christianity. For that matter, it's not even exclusive to religious thought in general. Many atheists go round and round against each other over the issue of fatalism and free will. It's nothing but a philosophical argument, regardless of one's religious persuasion or lack thereof

As a matter of fact, getting back to the topic of the original post, I took Hankins to task on this issue only a couple of days ago. I told him it's a shame that people will go to Seminary, and waste all this time and money getting a doctorate, and have nothing to show for it other than philosophical meandering

Of course, he disagreed. He seems to think that philosophy is the epitome of deep, substantive study.

His exact words to me were "We are getting our rear-ends handed to us by Reformed guys are simply more willing than we are to do the hard work of deep thinking about most important thing in the universe"

This was part of a FB discussion in the context of his keynote address at a dinner during this year's SBC annual meeting

 

Just another reason to jettison Mr James less accurate version.

 

Hankins told you the truth. Listen up.

 

LOL... The only problem is that philosopher does not equal theologian.

I've said before that every single Calvinist I've ever met has been a great philosopher. But not a single one was ever a theologian

 

LOL, that's just your philosophical opinion.

 

It's actually been revised a little bit. I've met about a half-dozen on this board

 

Just look at two of the biggest hot button issues in the SBC today:
1) Determinism vs free will
2) is faith a decision

Those are two of the most basic elements of Philosophy 101

And we have people going to seminaries and getting doctorates, who pretend like these two issues are the epitome of theology

What's that supposed to mean? That an Associates level philosophy class is equivalent to a ThD?

What a joke

 

They are biblical discussions based upon biblical text.
What you seem to do is call the debate philosophical so that you can ignore the debate and pridefully look down on those having the discussion.

 

What "sovereign" means is no one controlled God.

 

Hardly the case. Peek in on this FB discussion:

Tom Ascol

This is the president of Founders Ministries, who holds a doctorate, going on a philosophical rant about Jesus raising Lazarus. Many who replied hold doctorates also. By and large, the discussion (120+ replies) was purely philosophical. Virtually no one even cared to present what was actually in the text.

Are you going to tell me I have ignored this debate?