Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Fatal Flaws in Calvinism - Part 1

The first fatal flaw in the Calvinist system revisited

by Roger Olson
October 2, 2010

Recently I wrote about flaws and fatal flaws in theological systems. All have flaws. Some also have fatal flaws. One I mentioned that I see in the Calvinist system (as articulated by some leading Calvinists) is the dual claim that everything without exception is foreordained and rendered certain by God for his glory and that certain heresies (probably all heresies) detract from, diminish, demean God’s glory and rob God of his glory.

Some respondents here have attempted to defend these two claims by arguing that God’s glory is eschatological or that (and this seems to amount to the same) certain things that detract from God’s glory are foreordained by God because they are necessary or helpful for his full glorification. I’m not convinced that these defenses relieve the contradiction. Here’s why

I will use an analogy. Imagine a husband whose wife has been diagnosed with a terrible cancer. The doctor tells him that the only cure is a three step treatment of chemotherapy and that the first two will destroy her health while the third, which cannot work without the first two, will cure her. After the third step of the treatment she will be cancer free and completely restored to health. The doctor asks the husband if he agrees to the treatment in spite of the fact that it will make his wife extremely ill at first. The husband jumps to agree–Yes, of course, start the treatment!

The doctor sends the wife to a clinic where they begin the first step and the wife becomes gravely ill. The second step makes her worse, bringing her to death’s door. She is in such suffering the husband becomes angry with the clinic and technicians who are adminstering the treatment but does not withdraw his permission to continue the treatment. He still remembers that all this is necessary for his wife’s full recovery.

However, during the second step he puts pen to paper and writes a letter to the CEO of the clinic and to the American Medical Association and to the local newspaper’s editorial pages editor blasting the second step of the treatment as doing great harm which is against the medical community’s code of ethics. He brings charges against the nurse who is administering the therapy and the clinic where his wife is staying during the treatment.

Strangely, however, he doesn’t bring charges against the doctor who ordered the treatment. He is still grateful to him and sings his praises everywhere.

The husband continues his emotional crusade against the clinic and the treatment administered there because it is making his wife so ill, all the while knowing this is necessary to make her well.

Finally, a friend takes the husband aside and says “Aren’t you being illogical? I understand your inner turmoil over your wife’s suffering, but you know the medicine that is making her so ill is necessary so the next medicine they are going to give her can cure her. And you aren’t withdrawing your permission to keep treating her. Don’t you think you’re being unreasonable to keep up this crusade against the clinic?” The husband looks at his friend and says “My wife’s cure is future; right now she’s suffering terribly. There’s nothing unreasonable about fighting what is making her so ill even though I know it is necessary so that eventually she’ll get well. Someone has to point out how toxic this second step is.” His friend says “But you know its toxicity is exactly what is necessary for the third and final step to work.” The husband replies “Yes, I know that.” The friend just looks at the husband and shakes his head in bewilderment.

In my opinion that is an exact analogy to the illogic of those Calvinists who claim (often vehemently) that some heresy detracts from God’s glory or diminishes God’s glory or robs God of some of his glory (etc.) all the while confessing that God foreordained it for his glory (i.e., as a necessary step towards his full glorification). Just as there is a fatal flaw in the husband’s thinking and acting in the story, so there is a (the same) fatal flaw in Calvinism’s polemics against heresies. I cannot take them seriously. I can only, like the husband’s friend, shake my head in bewilderment.

Olson is a professor of theology at Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University, he blogs, and publishes a bunch of books….including ones for a general audience.
 
 
 
Proceed to Part 2 -
 
 
 

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