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

There are instances where a lack of knowledge indicates a lack of study, and perhaps even a failure on the part of the church to rely on indoctrination without understanding, or worse yet, to ignore doctrine all together. I grant this may be true in some cases.

But insofar as the issue of Calvinism and non-Calvinism as discussed here goes, this is not the case. I say this for several reasons. First, as @JamesL pointed out, this issue does not hinge on Scripture itself but on philosophy and that applied to interpretation. We need to keep in mind that the Doctrines of Grace, or the Five Points of Calvinism, as Calvinism itself is not a complete soteriology but rather a response to an erroneous view of predestination. It is an interpretation of Scripture combined with a reasoning out of the workings of God not specifically revealed in Scripture to focus on a specific challenge. Which brings me to my second point. If we hold Calvinism as if it were Scripture itself then we either elevate man to the level of God or we view Scripture as less complete than SBC doctrine would allow. I find neither acceptable. But this takes us to my third point. If we do believe that Scripture is deficient and man must rely on a divine special revelation to fill in the blanks, then we are back at a gnostic type of faith – that is a hidden knowledge as a mark of maturity with God revealing knowledge exponentially as the convert grows.

And this would be an unbiblical view of Christian maturity. Scripture defines the mark of maturity as a Christ-likeness, not an accumulation of knowledge. And an Arminian who loves like Christ loved is as about as mature as any Calvinist could hope to become.

 

The early leadership was Calvinistic. Both Johnson and Howell (the first two presidents of the Convention) were Calvinists (this can be seen clearly with Howell in his letters against the hyper-Calvinistic anti-missions movement). If I remember correctly, J.R. Graves was a non-Calvinist (he was anti-Calvinist because of his Landmarkism but he also based election on God seeing "end to end").

This is why I find the anti and hyper Calvinists so alarming. "Traditional" seems to mean denying the Calvinistic SBC churches a voice (Hankins letter and the push from the Traditionalist side was to redefine the statement of faith in such a way that would exclude Calvinism).

 

Yes.

We have Calvinists who hold a type of theology that fills in the blanks to what Scripture has left unanswered, sometimes to the extent of denying Scripture itself. Here are a couple of examples:

There are some who will tell you that for three hours on the Cross God abandoned Jesus by withdrawing His actual presence in such a way that Jesus experienced what the lost will experience at Judgment. Not only can this be refuted simply by Scripture, but such a detailed explanation is nowhere to be found in Scripture itself.

Some have narrowed down their theories to the point that they deny God can actually forgive man (God must exercise wrath on each sinful act, regardless as to where that wrath falls). This is a skewed view of Penal Substitution, but it is also an error that often creeps into Calvinistic circles.

Another example is the anti-missions movement. This was something I mentioned that Howell fought early in his ministry at the SBC. These Calvinists rejected active evangelism because one could find themselves witnessing to a non-elect person, urging them to believe in opposition to God's will. Or consider Daniel Parker's two seed theology (as an extreme view).

As I say this, please keep in mind that I am Calvinistic and I do believe in Penal Substitution. But I also believe that there are those who hold right views wrongly.

 

All of what I am speaking of can be applied to other theologies as well. Calvinism lacks the vagueness that others have within the SBC and lends itself more (if abused) to denying truths based on the perciseness of what it affirms. Arminianism could present the same issue, but we are dealing with SBC theology (which excludes Arminianism). The non-Calvinists (SBC) seem to hold, as a whole, a less precise doctrine in opposition to the points of disagreement.

 

And that is, I believe, a problem within the SBC. I recently watched one of Leighton Flower's interviews and he said the exact same thing - no one wants to remove Calvinists from the SBC, but at the same time the complaint is the Convention's use of language that would include Calvinists over the exclusive language of unlimited atonement. It's like me saying I'm not a racist as I hang a "whites only" sign in my shop window.

The problem is that we have on one side a group who makes too much with too little Scripture and another group that makes too little with so much Scripture. The majority are in the middle but they are not so loud.