CADRE Comments

“God would prefer us all to be united than divided. The devil would prefer us all to be divided than united. God prefers the man who loves than the one who hates. The devil prefers the man who hates than the one who loves.”  ―  Suzy Kassem ,  Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem At present, I am teaching an 11 week class on the Epistle of Titus for my church's adult education program. If you are wondering how I can teach a class for eleven weeks on a book that can be read out-loud from front to end in seven minutes, my response is that you should be spending more time meditating on the wording chosen. The theological richness found in Titus coupled with the practical application makes Titus a book well worth a long study. But it also has language that will spark debate in your church if you have, as my church does, a mix of people who tend to lean Calvinist in their viewpoint as well as a number of people who favor a more Arminian understanding of ...

Recently I was asked, due to my holding a minority position of which we will not speak (so to speak {lopsided g}), how "faith" and "works" fit with my position, the implication being that I have the wrong idea about faith and works and salvation somewhere. The specifics don't matter, since I am sometimes accused of having a "works" based salvation, and I am sometimes accused of having a "faith" based salvation, and I am sometimes accused of having an idea of salvation based on nothing at all. In fact, my idea of salvation follows from trinitarian theology, and from trying to reckon scriptural testimony coherently (exegetics); so it isn't surprising that I get accused of one thing or another, because (as I will argue below) trinitarian theology gives an important place to both faith and works, while of course ideas of faith and works in salvation which conflict with trinitarian theism ought to be avoided and denied. Anyway, I answered ...

The tension between God's sovereignty and the free will of man has not gone unnoticed in ages past. Differences of opinion over how God interacts with His creation go back long before Arminius, and Calvin, and even Augustine. Indeed, the battle lines were well drawn in Jesus' day. While it would be an oversimplification to equate various sects with the sects of today, when it comes to free will and God's sovereignty, we can assess the differences between the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes and their similarities to modern day Christian sects. Most of our information comes from Josephus, the first century Jewish historian. Since he claimed to have been -- at different times -- a member of the Pharisees and the Essenes, Josephus would have been well situated to know their beliefs. We must keep in mind, however, that Josephus was writing for a predominantly Roman and Greek audience, so he couched his explanations and descriptions of things Jewish in terms and concepts ...

In a comment to a post about Calvinism, PuritanLad suggested that Jude 4 supports Calvinism. Apparently, he offered it as evidence of double predestination -- the belief that God not only unconditionally predestines some people to heaven but that he unconditionally predestines the rest of humanity to hell. Setting aside the ultimate merits of this doctrine, what are the merits of using Jude 4 to support Calvinism? Here is the relevant verse: For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Jude 1:4. Apparently, PuritanLad understands this verse to mean that God specifically ordained and caused some people to pervert the Gospel and work hard to turn people away from Christ. I find this problematic from a few different perspectives. It seems to be counterintuitive in light of other verses. Is God really workin...

Theology is not my thing. Give me history or apologetics, even some mild philosophy. But given the apparent growth of Calvinism among younger evangelicals, I have found the old Arminianism v. Calvinism debate more interesting of late. Because of that interest, I recently commented on a post over at the Triablogue blog. In addition to doing some fine apologetics work, most of the bloggers there are staunch Calvinists. In any event, the title of the post referred to "free will" and associated that term with Arminianism. This can lead to some confusion, though it is very understandable as the debate has been framed by such terms for many decades. It would probably be more accurate to say that Classical Arminianism affirms "freed will." That is, man in his natural state is unable to choose to follow God and therefore is in exactly the same state that Calvinists call "Total Depravity." But unlike Calvinists, Arminians believe that God has extended, t...