Think Wink.

Yesterday in my doctrine class, we were finishing up a discussion on the Scripture.  We were discussing its necessity and sufficiency.  The prof. said that the gospel was needed for salvation.  The only place that we find the gospel is the Bible.  Thus the Bible is needed for salvation.  He then went into a biblical discussion, using texts, to show how this is to be true.  He came to Ephesians 2:8-10 and said that faith is a gift.  He qualified that by saying that the ability to chose to believe is a gift.  One student, bored with talking about the Bible itself, asked for the prof. to explain his position and verify it with more Scripture.  The prof. said he couldn’t.  This entered into a forty-five minute to an hour long discussion on Calvinism.  I believe there are three calvinists in my class, one being me.  We lost most of our lecture time because to illustrate the sufficiency of Scripture to give us contentment in what it says, he had an exercise that took the last half-hour of class time.  He divided the class up into two sections, going right down the middle.  On one side was free will, on the otherside was predestination/unconditional election.  I was on the predestination side, the other two calvinsits were on the free will side.  The exercise was simple, write on the board as many verses as our group could find defending our position.  When the smoke cleared, they had about seven or eight verses to defend their position, or rather to refute predestination and reprobation–many of their verses had little to do with man’s will to chose faith or not to.  We had almost half of the marker board covered with verses defending predestination for salvation or tasks.  However it is good to point out that in the cases of Paul and Jeremiah, the need to fulfill God’s task in them required their salvation.  When the class got back together, we looked at some of the verses.  Two particular passages caused the prof. struggled with in trying to interpret them in a non-calvinistic manner.

I say all of this by way of saying first, no one can say that the Bible does not affirm both sides of the coin.  Secondly, I began to reflect, especially in light of 9/11, of why I became a calvinist.  So tomorrow I am going to unveil my struggle with the doctrines of Grace.

For right now, let me say this.  Up until April of 2005, I was a non-calvinist.  I believed in maybe two of the points.  But my journey began when I began to actually read arguments for calvinism by authors who are calvinists, not non-calvinists.  My parents began going to a church which is calvinist.  I read their arguments as well.  I began to wonder, do their arguments really work?  Is this what the Bible teaches?  I didn’t know.  So this was my plan, I was going to study all of the calvinist texts and see if they are really reading them right.  My goal was actually to try and to defeat calvinism.  I wanted desperately to not be a calvinist.  More next time on my actual process of becoming one.

The Nerve of Him

Some Interesting Bits

Pure Enjoyment