As Baptists Prepare to Meet, Calvinism Debate shifts to Heresy Accusation

Christian Today ^ | 6 July 2012 | Weston Gentry

[Cronos]

A statement by a non-Calvinist faction of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has launched infighting within the nation's largest Protestant denomination, and tensions are expected to escalate Tuesday as church leaders descend on New Orleans.

..The May 30 document, "A Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God's Plan of Salvation," aims "to more carefully express what is generally believed by Southern Baptists about salvation." But both Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler and George W. Truett Theological Seminary professor Roger Olson, in separate blog posts, said that parts of the document sound like semi-Pelagianism, a traditionally heretical understanding of Christian salvation.

One sliver of the document's second article particularly drew their ire. It reads, "We deny that Adam's sin resulted in the incapacitation of any person's free will."

..Olson, a classical Arminian and author of the book Against Calvinism, is unaffiliated with the SBC, but has long asserted that most evangelicals—not just Southern Baptists—adhere to a sort of semi-Pelagian "folk religion," whose origins can be traced to the Second Great Awakening and revivalists in the mold of Charles Finney.

..Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, denies the charge. "We are obviously not semi-Pelagians," Patterson said. "We do believe that the entire human race is badly affected by the fall of Adam. However, we don't follow the Reformed view that man is so crippled by the fall that he has no choice."

..A just-released survey conducted by LifeWay Research found that roughly equal numbers of SBC pastors identify their congregation as Calvinist/Reformed (30%) or Arminian/Wesleyan (30%). More than 60 percent are concerned about Calvinism's influence on the denomination.

[darrellmaurina]

Fully agreed, Cronos.

I have far more in common with traditional Roman Catholics, Orthodox Jews, or even patriotic secular conservatives than I have in common with liberals who call themselves Christians.

The problem in this case, however, is that there are strong evangelicals and fundamentalists who seem to have a lower view of the effects of original sin than the Roman Catholic Church.

Politically, we can all agree on most things.

Theologically, we've got a real problem in our own evangelical house that we need to address. It's not good when the official Roman Catholic position has a higher view of the effects of original sin than the views expressed in a document signed by a group of Southern Baptist pastors.

Roman Catholicism is not Pelagianism. We need to give Roman Catholics credit for that.