....There are only so many times I can point to Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield and the Great Awakening, or William Carey and the great missionary movement of the nineteenth century, or Charles Spurgeon and the countless thousands saved under his ministry. Sooner or later I have to stop looking at my heroes and look to myself. I can’t claim their zeal as my own. I can’t claim their obedience as my own. It is my conviction—conviction rooted in close study of God’s Word—that Calvinism provides a soul-stirring motivation for evangelism, and that sharing the gospel freely and with great zeal is the most natural application of biblical truth. But it is my confession—confession rooted in the evidence of my own life—that my Calvinism too rarely stirs my soul to mission. The truths that have roared in the hearts and lives of so many others, somehow just whisper in me. The fault, I’m convinced, is not with God’s Word, or even with my understanding of God’s Word; the fault is with me.
Ouch, that hurts!
ping...
I didn’t know there were any Calvinists left.
So much for the caucus label. Not too surprised though.
>>> if God has already chosen who will be saved, it negates at least some of our personal responsibility in calling people to respond to the gospel.
Fact is that God does NOT choose who will be saved, but He DOES know who will be saved. It is entirely possible to know an outcome without influencing it directly.
If God does not know, then He is not God.
If we have free will, then that gift of free will came from God... and if God gives it, He must also accept the consequences of that choice. This is why he allows those whom He knows will perish to exist to begin with; because the first man (Adam) made the choice to rebel.
Just because He knows, doesn’t mean we don’t have a choice.
It simply means that God exists outside of our perception of time and space. He allows those whom He knows will perish to run their course for the benefit of those whom He knows will turn to Him.
God uses all things for good.
I don’t understand why I’m supposed to be offended because I understand this, and anti-Calvinists do not.
Rather, it was a room full of musloids.
Calvinists don’t get angry; they get sad. Sad, that there is so little understanding of the issue. Sad, that those who make such charges are so reluctant to follow a chain of careful definitions and deductions derived from the Scriptures. Sad, that emotional assertions trump logical thought so easily. Sad, that men suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
Evangelism is merely the sharing of the good news of the gospel: that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. We share the good news; God does the reconciling.
And that’s good news about which we can be joyful.
Do you want to know how to make a Calvinist angry? Do you want to know how to offend a whole room full of them? Just bring up the old line about Reformed theology being incompatible with evangelism.
If I were to hear that, I'd just write the speaker off as a blithering idiot.
I guess I'm just grumpy, right now.
(Read the whole thing later...)