Have fun in your efforts. As for me, I don't have time for sensational claims and games. The last thing to enter my mind is to try and "trick" Arminians or anyone else who calls themselves a non-Calvinist. I enjoy the free exchange of ideas the Internet provides, and my personality naturally gravitates towards debate. But when I debate it is to contend for the truth. Tricks are for magicians and charlatans.
It is not fun...it is not a game.....you are obviously a talented rhetorician, and I could just as easily resort to that as you obviously can. You know how to use words like "charlatan" and you use them to good effect. I also know how to play that game and it will be only so long until you make your posts more convincing by changing "charlatan" to "mountebank". It is so painfully obvious to me that you clearly understand what I am driving at and you deny so by utilizing certain well-placed and powerful words, whilst also feigning ignorance. You absolutely know how powerful and convincing certain well-placed words can be (even if contending for a falsehood) and you know how to use them....this is the very crux of what I am debating.
You must think that those who hold to the doctrines of grace do so because they are engaged in some insidious plot to burden weak-willed people. Your view of 2 Timothy 3:5-7, in conjunction with the topic at hand, indicates as much.
There is nothing in my posts which suggests that. What I have suggested is that many of those who do, have indeed fallen prey to certain forms of rhetorical tricks such as the implicit equivocation between "grace" and "Calvinism". I am fully willing to recongnize the strengths (very real strengths) of the Calvinistic arguments and could probably successfully debate, convincingly so, those arguments to one unskilled in the word and convince them of their truth. If I were to "trick" or "Play games" with them merely to win the debate....I would begin by insisting that they were to refer to my position as the "Doctrines of Grace". And it would also work. It would be powerful, and you know it.
If you actually do believe that then I leave you with your delusions.
Don't bite off more than you can chew....I am not "delusional"; you are also fully aware of that.
Facts present a real problem to fables. The overwhelming majority of Baptist churches in this country are not Calvinistic. The idea that "Calvinism has veritably owned theological popular thought for about 25years" is preposterous. The Founders Movement is a minority in the SBC. Self-proclaimed Reformed Baptist Churches are scarcely a blip on the Baptist radar screen. Some states don't even have one Reformed Baptist church! The doctrines of grace have always been in the minority since the post-Puritan age. Providentially, the doctrines of grace have gained traction in some evangelical circles. But instead of being the populace position it is simply becoming another voice at the table.
1.) No one suggested a "fable" which, by definition, always includes an animal as one of its main characters i.e.
fox and grapes
2.) No one is claiming it has gained prominence in the "pew" but in the seminiaries, wherein the Young Restless and Reformed are easily duped, and then subsequently lie to their respective congregations (from whom they must rely for a pay-check) about what they believe. I am not stupid enough to claim that it is a genetic movement from the pew upward....it is a movement from the seminary downward....This is also something you know full well.
3.) Some "States" are inestimably small and insignifigant that they barely deserve mention, and even if they don't "consider" or "call" themselves "reformed" that is no indication that some sycophant from a SB Seminary hasn't already begun to reform it. This is also something I think that you are perfectly well aware of. I would prefer that we were more honest with one another about the status of this.
Most Reformed Baptist churches have eschewed the modern church growth movement. They are committed to evangelism, but also to raising godly families - organic growth.
I more or less agree (in large part at least) and it is something I also commend them for. I also note that there is little or no commendation forthcoming from the opposition point of view on this...(just sayin') Know this.........I am an Arminian, I have been married 5 years.........and the wife and I have 4 kids.......We will be equally ready to fight sir.
I don't need to prove you mistaken. You've done an able job of that yourself.
That is what you are trying to do. We are debating something which (by it's very nature) is not very objectively provable or disprovable....We are merely expressing as powerfully as possible, two very conflicting opinions. It is not a debate of "facts". Stop attempting to confuse the reader of the nature of the argument....both of us are merely (and ably) engaged in the dialectic of our respective points of view. There is no "high ground" or "low ground" in a debate such as this....Only those who would pretend there is.......As example...I cite you here:
I have no need for such tactics.
It is the very "tactic" of equivocating in the mind of the unlearned of the synonymity of "grace" and "calvinism" against which I argue. You indeed do have a need for such tactics and you are defending their use here. It will not be often that I will agree with Michael Wrenn but he is absolutely right with this.
I stand on what I am convinced Scripture teaches.
We all do, so did Luther, so did Calvin, so what.
I know what I believe will be rejected by the majority. That's okay since I am know I will never convince the majority.
Claiming the role of the martyr.........don't worry, 5 posts from now, I will find a way to work that in myself, and make myself the crucified and Messianic figure of persecution for the furtherance of truth......If I am skilled.....I will weave it into a correlation wherein my view is synonymous with Tyndale's who, while burning at the stake, cried "Lord open the king of England's eyes!"
People will weep when I do so....the dying martyr for the Arm. point of view will stand as the ultimate example of supreme self-sacrifice for the furtherance of truth.
Hopefully, anyone reading this thread will realize that this is a battle of rhetoric vs. rhetoric, and they will take little or no stock in our exchange except to realize that the designation of Calvinism as the "Doctrines of Grace" is merely part and parcel of the same thing, which is merely what I am contending here. It is as much a game as you claim I am engaged in here.
Calling it the "Doctrines of Grace" is a trick of rhetoric............and exposing that............is the job of all legitimate and concerned Arminians.
Millions have now possibly seen this post, sleep in peace.
