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 from 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

Monday, February 25, 2013

A Recommitment to Human Rights and to the Civil Intolerance of Torture

 
 
I often wonder if the movie "Zero Dark Thirty" relieves American audiences of the awful images and guilt of terroristic beheadings and torture committed against itself and other Western civilizations during this past decade of America's unabated war on terror. That it says to America's enemies that you may expect as worst in retaliation and retribution. And although this is small comfort to those who have suffered or lost their lives both here and abroad - whether friend or foe - a civilized country should always remember to temper its frustrations and griefs from employing similarly horrendous methodologies utilized by opposing countries and their gang of thieves and rogues.

Especially for Christians who are charged by Jesus to love and to justice in a past ancient biblical world rife with torture and injustice committed by countries large and small. And perhaps this a contemporary example of an actualizing American myth as it works itself off the silver screen and x-box games into the public venue of historical actualization and acceptance by fell deeds of inhumanity taking root within the incorporated behavior of its people's consciousness. Transversing to American policies committing her to do the same to her enemies should they continue in their support and participation of terrorism - rather than pursuing more civilized methods of civil dissonance and patient diplomacy. An actualizing myth in the sense of moving America's acceptance of such brutal interrogation onto the public docks of coercive policies both domestic and international.

And by recent judgement it seems that America's public posture may have drastically changed since 2001 during our present war on terrorism from selective practices of enactment to aggressive policies of enforcement and methodology. Not that it hadn't ever been done before, but that it is now being pursued so vigorously, however the means employed (waterboarding being one such practice). To this precedence the several articles below would caution restraint and general disuse realizing that barbarity can come to any culture idealizing freedom and liberty. Certainly, laudable aspirations for any nation, but especially venomous to a nation not actively practicing its constitutionally appointed rights and mandates to even those whom it would consider as its enemies. Turning a blind eye to its inherent charters of constitutional humanity and pursuing more brutal policies to its own destruction and demise.

Thus, we would advocate the lessening of saber rattling in Hollywood, and in caustic media portrayals of America, and a return to a more civil restraint of mind and conscience. But this cannot be done by national mandate and laws, but from within a society's heart and soul. That we demonstrate an America no longer epitomized by its 
international image as a self-serving protector of its own rights, to that of a country more cautionary and respectful in its policies and aggrievement proceedings, corporate resolutions, and stands on solidarity with other similarly aggrieved countries. Providing, as it were, a common ground of civil ideology from which to work in recreating an era of peace from the turmoils and manifold injustices currently existing between hostile nations in grievance with America.

To not be content with mythologizing our enemies as zombies, aliens, predators, vampires, and stereotypical images of thuggery and violence. Nor promoting ourselves in the form of anti-heroes, or by roving mob attitudes of kangaroo-court justice, or cowboy gallantry. But focused on the legitimate rights and needs of even our enemies chaffing at America's deployment of force and strength against its coffers of blood money and capitalistic lust. To stand down from actualizing our mythologized ideas of ourselves by returning to a more civil engagement of humanity found in personal and corporate practices of public service to disenfranchised minorities and dispossessed ghettos everywhere replete within the 21st Century's moiling masses of humanity. Crying out, as it were, for merciful justice, human rights advocacy, meaningful and permanent civil services, beneficial civil infrastructures, and generally, personal empowerment.

By realizing that by serving the needs of others we might re-establish our own balance of civility towards a more corporate posture of compassionate human rights and solidarity previously unimagined or expected. Relieving us of our guilt and fears ingrained by previous policies orientated towards war and suppression in the name of defense and security. And thereby reducing us to an isolated, posturing population of brawn and muscle rather than focusing on the legitimate needs and outcries of our enemies as fellow human beings reacting to the capitalistic oppression and unjust rape of their people and resources. Even if it were by America's willful propping up of oppressive heads of state within their own regional jurisdictions of control and oversight pursuant to America's goals rather than to that country's means and interests.

America is a great county. Made great by its idealized version of itself as a "City on a Hill" planted within its own heart by its originating forefathers who were refugees themselves fleeing political, religious, and civil persecution. Determined to rediscover their personal rights within a new society no longer hostile to their differences and heritage. Forefathers who wished to open America up to all dispossessed refugees of oppression seeking asylum, basic human rights, civil liberties, and humanitarian forms of justice. It was the right of every man under God to which the American constitution provided political structure and will. However, we harm ourselves by not more actively exploring how to help and assist other countries in obtaining what little freedoms and liberties we have carved out for ourselves by God's largess and blessing. Though lately it would seem that we have not committed our ways nor our will to God's benevolence and grace. For without this most basic human commitment America's corporate responsibility for its behaviors and policies will disintegrate under its own self-interests. Hence, we must work everyday as a blessed people to humanize the best forms of our citizen government in order to better enact peace, freedom, and responsible relations to a world racked by pain and injustice. This would include the Muslim countries no less than to China and Russia.

Moreover, we do well to realize that we do not stand alone in our fears, our angers, nor our sufferings, within this world that we live in. That many times over it has been the sad experience of other woeful citizenry caught between powers of oppression. From Eastern Europe, to the Muslim masses, to the impoverished African countries controlled by fierce, inhuman gun lords and tyrannical governments. To SE Asia's experiences of aggressive sino-socialism, even to countries in South America and Mexico powerless to stop the rape and pillage of their own citizenry before the cruel hands of powerful crime and drug lords. For this America bears responsibility to lead by strength, and by strength of will, in all matters of human resolution, protection, civility, and justice. Even to unempowered nations ravaged by sin and hatred within their own assemblies and land-bound contracts with one another.

Hence, we do not wish to turn a blind eye to our own governmental policies as citizens of Nazi Germany once did. A Catholic Christian country that became inhuman and hellish to the very state of humanity itself. Nor to become powerless citizens before the creation of an oppressive state system by the hands of our own making in its socialistic and militaristic endeavors. Charged with the simultaneous mandates of peace and humanity but found within its parts to be anything but that. But to become citizens actively declaring to our government and media industry a stronger will of intolerance to any deviations from Jesus' mandates to love and to service to one another. To behave ourselves wisely and not to become caught up in the lifeboat malpractices of ethical confusion to the general harm of those "unlike" ourselves. To consider every man, woman, and child, as an image bearer of God, and precious in His holy sight. To mandate the right of civility and humanity in actualizing terms that would remove any images and myths that would reduce us to civil impoverishment and divine judgment.

Movies like "Zero Dark Thirty" cannot be so much ignored or boycotted as accepted and published in public declaration to just how far we have strayed from America's former commitments to life and liberty for all mankind. Rather than denying Hollywood's horror flicks and indiscretionary violence for violence sake, it should reawaken us by putting our pulse upon the lifeblood of our great nation and forthrightly declare to us our fears, our shame, guilts and sin. Fighting Hollywood and the media is not the issue here. It is we ourselves that this industry is portraying. And it to ourselves that we must work to change by the help of Almighty God and in the power of His Holy Spirit. For within the heart of man is sin and darkness. And in man's rebirth through Jesus can be found light and life. It is to this Kingdom that we wish to share and envisage with all the nations of the earth.

Consequently, music and movies, novels and news, may more accurately tell us of ourselves than we may wish to accept or believe - though we would pay dear coinage for any revisionary image of ourselves that we can find - myths and game technology included. For in those images do we find our actualized versions of ourselves if we continue to allow our selfish absorptions to continue and progress. But these are imperfect, dithering images made by man in his own lamentable image, and not in the Son of God's own image of grace and goodness. Against which we find hope in any local municipality, corporation, school, college, church, or community group, promoting the welfare of others by active service, giving, personal involvement and participation. These are the laudable sublime practices of a liberating nation wishing to break its stereotypes by opening up hand and heart to the needs of those around it. For it is by giving of ourselves that we may find ourselves. By focusing upon the needs and rights of all men - even our perceived enemies - if we wish to dispel the boogie-man of our fears and nightmares, fantasies and delusions.

R.E. Slater
February 25, 2013
 
 
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Is This (Torture as Entertainment) What We Have Come To?

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Roger Olson: "Why I Am Not a Fundamentalist (or Conservative Evangelical)"

 
Why I Am Not a Fundamentalist (or Conservative Evangelical)
 
What I think is that many, perhaps most, conservative evangelicals have erected Old School Princeton theology, Hodge and Warfield especially, as authoritative such that any interpretation of Scripture fundamentally in conflict with what they believed must be viewed with suspicion if not rejected out of hand.
 
There’s a sign on the interstate some miles south of where I live. It promotes tourism to a little town a way off the interstate. The sign says “Gently resisting change since 1872.” Whenever I see it I think of conservative evangelicals I know and Hodge’s Systematic Theology which was published in that year. Sometimes I would like to take that sign (that is, make a copy of it) and erect it outside the entrance to meetings of conservative evangelical theologians. Recently, however, I think I would have to add “Not so” before “gently.”
 
 
 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 
 
What Is “Fundamentalism” and Who Is a “Fundamentalist?”
Here “militant” does not mean “violent.” It means aggressive, pro-active (some would say “reactionary,” organized and vocal.
 
Early fundamentalists disagreed about many things: the sacraments/ordinances, church polity, eschatology, modern (as opposed to biblical) miracles, predestination and free will, etc. But they agreed that liberal (“Ritschlian”) theology and higher criticism of the Bible were very serious assaults on “real Christianity” that needed to be confronted and stopped. Their collective attitude was that “theological modernism” (as I described it in my earlier post about liberal theology) was false Christianity in the same way that, say, Mormonism and Christian Science and Jehovah’s Witness teaching was false Christianity. But unlike those, it was inside the churches and their colleges and seminaries. It needed to be rooted out and if it couldn’t be true Christians would have to leave those denominations, colleges, universities, seminaries, etc., and found ones committed to true Christianity.
 
They were, in other words, early twentieth century Puritans. Exactly like the Puritans of the seventeenth century, the early fundamentalists believed the churches needed to be purged of heresy and everything linked with it symbolically. And that’s where the trouble started—what that meant. What did it mean to purge the churches and Christian organizations of everything symbolically linked with heresy? And how to root out hidden heresies and heretics?
 
Scholars disagree about the birth of the term “fundamentalism.” Many, perhaps the majority, insist it was coined by Baptist editor Curtis Lee Laws in 1920. That may be true of the “-ism.” But the root “fundamentals” was being used before then as various groups listed the essentials of true Christianity as “fundamentals of the faith.” The booklets titled The Fundamentals were published in 1910 and 1911. These were articles written by leading fundamentalist scholars and ministers—defending what they saw as the essentials of Christianity with a strong anti-liberal flavor. (However, ironically, many of the authors would later not fit the emerging fundamentalist profile.) 1919 was the year William Bell Riley founded the World Christian Fundamentals Association and added premillennialism to the list of essential Christian beliefs—a move that excluded many people widely recognized as fundamentalists (especially those in the Reformed tradition such as J. Gresham Machen).
 
So that was early, original fundamentalism. Most contemporary conservative evangelicals would probably have been fundamentalists then. Except in Riley’s mind. He and his Texas friend J. Frank Norris joined hands across the Mason-Dixon Line (imaginary as it is in the Midwest) to forge a new, more militant, and exclusive form of fundamentalism. Many fundamentalists were swayed by Riley’s and Norris’ strict and exclusive approach. A divide began to open within the fundamentalist movement—between the narrow, exclusivist camp that absolutely eschewed evolution in any form, including “progressive creationism,” insisted on strict biblical inerrancy and literal interpretation (e.g., of Daniel and Revelation including premillennialism and eventually pretribulational dispensationalism) and the somewhat more moderate Reformed camp that followed Machen when he founded Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. There were those in that camp, however, who were more militant and exclusive than Machen and eventually broke off to found hyper-conservative groups and institutions. Carl McIntire was one of them.
 
Because of this evolution within fundamentalism (no pun intended!), scholars tend to talk about “pre-1925 fundamentalism” and “post-1925 fundamentalism.” The main movers and shakers of the fundamentalist movement after 1925 (the year of the infamous Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee widely regarded as a huge humiliation for fundamentalism) informally added “biblical separation” to the list of essentials of authentic Christian faith. That is, true Christians will refuse Christian fellowship with outright heretics and apostates and theological modernists and liberals (such as Harry Emerson Fosdick and his ilk) belong in those categories. Fundamentalists began founding their own separate Protestant institutions and denominations, publishing houses and missionary agencies. Many organized “Bible institutes” (where the Bible was supposed to be the basis of the entire curriculum) and urged, even required, Christian young people to attend only those after high school. Throughout the 1930s American fundamentalism especially flourished, but somewhat underground and almost invisible to the mainstream media and religious organizations (such as the Federal Council of Churches).
 
But something new began to happen within the fundamentalist movement that further fractured it and, in my estimation, anyway, killed it as a movement. That was the introduction by fundamentalist leaders of the doctrine and practice of “secondary separation.” This meant that pure Christians ought to shun Christian fellowship with other Christians who did not practice “biblical separation.” Thus, when Billy Graham, a fundamentalist when he began his ministry, began to allow Catholics and liberal-leaning, “mainstream” Protestant ministers to cooperate with and support his evangelistic crusades, leading fundamentalists criticized him and withdrew their support from him.
 
I believe the fundamentalist movement broke apart into several, often competing, movements practicing different degrees of separationism in the 1940s and 1950s. Many conservative and revivalistic Protestants left fundamentalism and joined the “neo-evangelical movement” launched by Harold John Ockenga and others in 1942 (the year the National Association of Evangelicals was founded). However, the fundamentalist movement left behind an ethos. And that is how I identify a fundamentalist—by his or her embodiment of the fundamentalist ethos. The criteria cited at this post’s opening describe that ethos.
 
A true fundamentalist minister, for example, will usually not join a local “evangelical ministerial alliance” (or whatever it may be called). Now, to be sure, some ministers within such an alliance may display fundamentalist traits, but a true fundamentalist, though he may be sympathetic with some of the alliance’s goals (e.g., to provide high school graduates with a Bible-based, united, city-wide, baccalaureate service) will avoid full participation in it. He will probably seek out other fundamentalist ministers for fellowship and cooperation. These fundamentalist alliances tend to be small and fracture easily because of disagreements about fine points of doctrine, practice and Bible interpretation.
 
The fundamentalist ethos is rarely “pure.” That is, it can be discerned in partial manifestations. Whenever any of the seven criteria mentioned at this post’s beginning are apparent I suspect a fundamentalist ethos is present (in a person or a movement or an organization).
 
I have met people who call themselves fundamentalists who do not exhibit most or any of those traits (criteria). Usually they are using the label in its original (“paleo-fundamentalist”) sense—pre-1925. I have no quarrel with them and if they want to be called fundamentalists when I would categorize them as simply conservative evangelicals, that’s fine. But in certain contexts I would not call them fundamentalists because that will automatically be misunderstood. Among the literati of American religious history and historical theology, anyway, “fundamentalism” is usually understood in terms of the 1930s and afterwards movement with defining prototypes such as the previously mentioned Riley, Norris, McIntire, Rice and (not previously mentioned) Bob Jones, Richard Clearwaters, and Jerry Falwell.
 
I have before mentioned a phenomenon I call “neo-fundamentalism.” That is my term (others may use it differently) for people who embody a fundamentalist ethos but have wedged their way into neo-evangelical circles calling themselves “conservative evangelicals” and finding acceptance as such. Here is an anecdote to illustrate that. About fifteen years ago I noticed that a seminary historically noted for being fundamentalist (in the historical-theological sense) had set up a table in the evangelical college where I then taught to recruit undergraduates. I approached the recruiter, a relatively young (early middle aged) employee of the seminary. I told him I would have difficulty recommending that any of my students attend his seminary. He asked why. I told him that the seminary had a reputation for being fundamentalist. He said “No, we’re changing. We’re evangelical now.” So I asked him this question: “If Billy Graham volunteered to preach in your seminary’s chapel free of charge, no honorarium expected, would your president allow it?” His slightly red-faced response was “We’re moving in that direction.” Enough said. Now, that is not to say no fundamentalist seminary would allow Billy Graham to preach there. Some might. But a seminary that calls itself “evangelical” and would refuse to allow him to preach there is almost certainly fundamentalist whether it uses that label or not.
 
I could cite numerous similar stories of encounters I have had with people who call themselves evangelicals but who operate out of a fundamentalist ethos. Also when I taught at that evangelical college I was accosted by a local pastor who is widely known as an evangelical leader who was furious, livid, that the college’s president had invited Robert Schuller to speak there. Now, I wasn’t particularly thrilled by the president’s decision, either, but I wouldn’t be furious or livid about it. When I pointed out to the pastor that the college’s (and denomination’s) roots are in Pietism and therefore irenic he said “’Irenic’ is just a term for doctrinal indifference.” His fundamentalist ethos appeared there and then.
 
 
 

R. C. Sproul, Arminianism, and Semi-Pelagianism

R. C. Sproul, Arminianism, and Semi-Pelagianism
February 22, 2013
 
Many years ago, as I was emerging out of my fundamentalist-Pentecostal cocoon into the larger world of evangelicalism (during seminary studies at an evangelical Baptist seminary) I was helped by the writings and teaching of several leading Reformed evangelical theologians. James Montgomery Boice, pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and publisher of Eternity magazine, was one of them. Not only did I read his books and articles in Eternity; I also studied under him at seminary. He took a sabbatical from his pulpit to teach homiletics at my seminary—something nobody at that seminary seems to remember! But I still have the sermons I wrote for his class and his handwritten notes on them. (He gave them good marks.)
 
Another Reformed evangelical theologian who helped me was R. C. Sproul who wrote many articles for Eternity (a now defunct magazine I have discussed here before as especially helpful to me during my student years and the first publisher of my own writings—two book reviews written when I was still in seminary). Of course I knew Sproul was a Calvinist, but so were some of my close relatives. Back then there was no hostility between evangelical Arminians and evangelical Calvinists. While in seminary I served on staff of an independent Pentecostal-charismatic church that was thoroughly Arminian. We worked in close cooperation with Reformed churches on evangelistic and other endeavors. We sometimes joked with each other about our theological differences, but there was no sense from either side that one was “more Christian” or even “more evangelical” than the other.
 
While in seminary I found my interests focusing on Christian history and especially historical theology and I learned, among other things, that something called “semi-Pelagianism” is a heresy. The Second Council of Orange condemned it as such in 529. Even then, of course, I wondered why a Catholic synod of bishops held so much weight for Protestants, but I agreed that semi-Pelagianism is biblically in error as well as seriously out of step with both Catholic and Protestant traditions (even if many in both folds fall into it out of ignorance).
 
I think it was while reading Louis Berkhof’s systematic theology that I first encountered the idea that semi-Pelagianism and Arminianism might be lumped together. That was during seminary. But it wasn’t until I was in my doctoral studies that I first encountered a blatant identification of Arminianism as semi-Pelagianism. I was serving as youth minister and director of Christian education at a Presbyterian church and teaching an adult Sunday School class. Most of the people in the class had grown up Presbyterian. I chose to have them read and discuss Presbyterian theologian Shirley Guthrie Jr.’s (that’s a man) Christian Doctrine—a fine one volume presentation of basic Christian doctrine from a Reformed perspective. There I ran into it—James Arminius used as the example of a semi-Pelagian view of election. I knew he was wrong about that and told the class, but they were hardly interested as none of them believed in election anyway! (This was a “northern Presbyterian church” in the deep South and most of the good folks were not Calvinists in spite of the Westminster Confession of Faith.)
 
When I began teaching theology at an evangelical Baptist college I used Guthrie’s book as a primary text in an introduction to doctrine course. It was so readable and full of good illustrations that I thought students would like it and I could correct his errors in my lectures—which I did. But every semester I became more annoyed at his use of Arminius as the example of semi-Pelagianism that I considered using some other textbook. Eventually someone edited Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology (three volumes to one) and I began using that. When I ran into Guthrie at a professional society meeting, I very respectfully confronted him about his error. He said I should write to him about it and he would consider changing it as he worked on a revision that was already in progress. I did that and the revision treated the subject somewhat better although not entirely to my satisfaction.
 
Throughout the 1990s I kept hearing rumblings about a new stirring of Calvinism among young evangelicals and I began to experience it among my students, many of whom were attending Bethlehem Baptist Church pastored by John Piper. I received the first issue of Modern Reformation magazine in 1992. It was dedicated to criticizing Arminian theology and many of the authors identified it as semi-Pelagian. I wrote a letter to the editor (Michael Horton) arguing that true Arminianism is not semi-Pelagianism and he published it with a lengthy response. That began our now twenty-plus year conversation about this.
 
Sometime late in the 1990s I heard a taped talk by R. C. Sproul where he simply used “semi-Pelagianism” as a synonym for “Arminianism.” In that talk (I don’t know where it was given) he divided evangelicals into two camps—“Augustinians” and “semi-Pelagians.” He treated semi-Pelagianism as a legitimate evangelical option (in contrast to Pelagianism) while criticizing it for minimizing the sovereignty of God. I could tell that by “semi-Pelagianism” he meant Arminianism.
 
I began to formulate a plan to write a book about true, classical Arminian theology. Several publishers expressed interest in it and I went with my friends at InterVarsity Press. Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities has been well-received both here in the U.S. and in other countries. It is being translated into Portugese for the Brazilian evangelical audience this year. I continue to receive e-mails from around the world thanking me for writing it—some of them from Calvinists who admit that reading it convinced them that Arminianism is not what they had thought.

In 2009 I wrote to Sproul and gently corrected his identification of Arminianism with semi-Pelagianism. I offered to send him the book if he would read it. I received his reply dated July 17, 2009. He addressed me as “Dear Roger.” He wrote that “I do not identify semi-Pelagianism with Arminianism, but as you indicate in your letter, that I see it as a variety of semi-Pelagianism. … All Arminians are semi-Pelagians in the sense that we have a relationship of genus and species.” He went on to explain that what “differentiates all forms of Augustinianism from all forms of semi-Pelagianism at bottom is the question of the efficacy of prevenient grace.” According to him, Arminianism is semi-Pelagian because it denies that grace is effectual.

I sent Sproul a signed copy of my book and asked for his response. In it I argue that “semi-Pelagianism” is more than denial of the efficacy of grace for salvation; it is the affirmation of the human initiative in salvation—which Arminians deny. I did not receive a response, so I don’t even know if he read the book. (I have given it to several Calvinist acquaintances and asked them to respond. Most did not.)

I am convinced that the identification of Arminianism with semi-Pelagianism has become a major polemical tool in the current resurgence of Calvinism among especially American (now spreading to other counties) young Christians. In other words, Sproul and other influential Calvinists present only two options: Calvinism and semi-Pelagianism and label the latter a denial of salvation by grace alone.

But what about Sproul’s definition of semi-Pelagianism? I can say quite confidently that he is wrong. “Semi-Pelagianism” is not any denial of effectual grace (i.e., what is commonly called “irresistible grace”). Every scholar of historical theology knows that “semi-Pelagianism” is a term for a particular view of grace and free will that emerged primarily in Gallic monasticism in the fifth century in response to Augustine’s strong emphasis on grace as irresistible for the elect.
 
According to historical theologian Rebecca Harden Weaver of Union Presbyterian Seminary (Virginia), whose book Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy (Mercer University Press, 1996) is the only English language monograph dedicated solely to semi-Pelagianism that I am aware of, “semi-Pelagianism” is tied inextricably to the teachings of Gallic monastic critics of Augustine and most importantly (prototypically) John Cassian. Cassian and certain other Gallic monks (“Masillians”) argued that although God may initiate salvation with grace, for many people the initiative is theirs toward God. That is, God waits to see the “exercise of a good will” before responding with grace. This is what was condemned (along with predestination to evil) at Orange in 529.
 
“Semi-Pelagianism,” then, is the view that “The beginning of faith may have its source in the human agent, although it will not always have its source there.” Furthermore, to compound Cassian’s non-Augustinian view of free will and human initiative in salvation, he taught that “The free will, even in its fallen condition, is not totally unable to will the good” and “the emphasis [of Cassian’s doctrine] falls on vigilance, unceasing struggle, in the attainment of salvation.”
 
This is the standard definition/description of semi-Pelagianism. But in some Reformed circles it has been broadened out to include any and every denial of the irresistible efficacy of grace (for the elect). That’s too broad and it departs from historical tradition in identifying what semi-Pelagianism is. That would be like me using “supralapsarian” to describe all denials of free will. I would be quickly challenged and corrected by especially infralapsarians like Sproul.
 
I was disappointed that Sproul did not respond to my book. He asked for a copy of it and I sent it with the intention that he would read it and respond. It’s been almost five years now. Perhaps life circumstances have prevented it, but I would like very much to know what other Calvinists who have misrepresented Arminianism in the same manner have to say about my book and its central argument that Arminianism is not semi-Pelagianism.
 
In the book I quote numerous Arminian theologians, from Arminius himself to Thomas Oden, to show that all classical Arminians believe that the initiative in salvation is God’s grace (prevenient grace) and that any good humans do, including the first exercise of a good will toward God, is so enabled by grace that there is no room for boasting.
 
Of course, even Calvinists who come to admit that Arminianism is not semi-Pelagianism will reject it. But my personal project in all this has not been to convert Calvinists to Arminianism; it has been to get them and Arminians to recognize what Arminianism really is in contrast to the widespread misinterpretations and misrepresentations of it.
 
 
 
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Problems with Calvinist Polemics against Arminianism
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/02/problems-with-calvinist-polemics-against-arminianism/
 
by Roger Olson