The SEA regularly posts articles from Calvinists when they think it sheds light on some specific area. I don’t need to agree with everything in a long article to think it is worth reading and considering. Scripture is true, but what men write about it - including all my posts - have the failings of man mixed in.
I think a part of the problem is with systematic theology. We want rules and to confine God to a systematic way of doing things, but I don’t think God works within our limits.
For example, when did I become a Christian? IN the second grade, I attended a missionary school run by baptists in Taiwan. I remember asking the teacher how to become a Christian, and I remember praying...and I remember flunking citizenship the following 3 months. During the next 5 years, I don’t recall ever thinking about or considering God in anything.
In the 7th grade, I met a group of kids whose lives were different from any I had met before. I asked them, and they said the difference was Jesus - they had asked God to forgive them and they wanted to be like Jesus. I knew whatever they had, I needed. But we moved a month later.
For a couple of years, I thought I ceased to be a Christian any time I sinned, which meant...well, a lot. I did get a Bible and start reading it, and a few years later I asked to be baptized. That was something the church I was going to never brought up with kids.
Was there a moment when I became a Christian? God knows, but I do not. I think many conversions are like that, where God is working and Satan is opposing and the person is resisting and giving in stages, but God brings things thru His way and in His time.
I also think the situation Paul describes in Romans 1 is more common that we know, where someone has known enough of God to accept at least that part of God’s revelation,but they reject God and God knows they will never turn. God may implore, but He doesn’t beg.
I don’t think the dogmas of Calvin or Arminius limit God in anyway. That is one of the reasons I don’t study systematic theology any more. It tries to quantify God, and God won’t be fit into their containers. God has given us revelation, but He has also left ambiguity. He COULD have given us a theology text, but that isn’t what we need and He doesn’t fit in the confines of our boxes.
That said, I firmly believe scripture teaches corporate election, not individual election. I think the parable of the sower shows that Calvin, at least, missed the boat by a larger margin than I have. I just don’t think God is limited by my thoughts...
"...In contrast, the sufficient conditions for coming to faith that are presented in John’s Gospel have, quite frankly, proven intractable for Arminians. This may not be something that most Arminians would like to admit, of course, but it seems to me to be a fair estimation of the current situation in Arminian theology. This is not to say that there have been no attempts by Arminians to deal with the relevant statements by Jesus in John’s Gospel. However, the attempts of which I am aware, despite their many other important contributions to the subject, seem to me to reach unsatisfying conclusions when it comes to dealing with the sufficiency conditions placed by Jesus on who will come to faith in him."
It is interesting to me that even though the author admits that the many verses of John's Gospel cannot be satisfactorily argued by Arminians, they still reach the conclusion that Calvinists have to be wrong.Great catch, Harley.
Ultimately Armminianism always falls on its own dull sword of contradiction.
For instance, if God is omniscient and salvation is based on God "looking down the tunnel of time" and "seeing" who would accept or reject Him, and yet he creates and gives birth to those people who reject Him ANYWAY, Arminians still end up with God knowingly and purposefully creating men He KNOWS will end up in hell and which clearly contradicts their contention that God "wants all men to be saved."
Arminianism is a very inconsistent system for understanding theology.
"Those men who at this day obscure, and seek, as far as they can, to extinguish the doctrine of election, are enemies to the human race; for they strive their utmost to subvert every assurance of salvation" - John Calvin, Zech.-Mal.84,85