Noted Christian Author: God Is Having Children. Jesus Not The Only Son Of God.

[Rob Bowman]

Vance asked, regarding the United Church of God:

So, are you kicking them out of Christianity?

No need; they walked out on their own (1 John 2:19).

KevinG wrote:

Rob's heaven will be an exclusive place. I prefer to continue passing out invitations to ours in the holy temple.

We're passing out invitations to God's eternal kingdom in the marketplace--anywhere people will listen. We call it preaching the gospel. It will be inclusive in that it will not be limited to people who accept our denomination or sect, either in this life or in the next. It will be exclusive in that those who reject the gospel or (which amounts to the same thing) radically redefine the gospel will be outside.

[urroner]

We're passing out invitations to God's eternal kingdom in the marketplace--anywhere people will listen. We call it preaching the gospel. It will be inclusive in that it will not be limited to people who accept our denomination or sect, either in this life or in the next. It will be exclusive in that those who reject the gospel or (which amounts to the same thing) radically redefine the gospel will be outside.

Rob, seriously, I've asked this question to many EVers and I don't remember getting a answer that made any sense. What good does passing out invitations do? If there is nothing that you or anybody else can do to save you or anybody else, since it's all up to God, why even preach the gospel? I know that the apostles were commanded to preach the gospel to the world, but, from what I understand of EV doctrine, God alone decides who's going to be saved and who is going to be damned and what we do or don't do, has no effect upon it.

I asked this question several times in an EV Bible study I attended for about a year and the answer I always received was "We do it because we love everybody and want to help them accept the gospel." I always let it go at that because I had told the person heading the study that I would not make any comments that might lead to a "Bible bash" and I took that commitment very seriously.

The reason I ask is because I have heard over and over again for EVers that it's God who moves the person to accept the gospel and that the person, basically, had no say in whether he was going to accept it or not. It was an irresistible call coming from God. They said that a person could pray day and night to find the truth and try to keep the commandments, but since works, which those things are, aren't of any valid outside of saving grace, they are, but dust in the wind and worthless. It isn't our desires that draw us to God. We can want to find God, but we have no say in the matter.

So, basically, what it boils down to is we can't reject the gospel, or the calling from God, because only God can extend it to us and once it has been extended to us from God, we can't reject it because it's an irresistible calling. I realize that this verges on the edge of Calvinism.

Do I understand this correctly?

[Rob Bowman]

urroner,

I do hold to Reformed (Calvinist) theology, but I'm not particularly concerned here to "push" that specific theological perspective because I accept some diversity of belief on the pertinent issues among evangelicals. In other words, I don't think one must accept the Reformed position on predestination, election, etc., in order to be an evangelical Christian.

The answer to your first question is that we preach the gospel because God does his work of saving people through means -- that is, he uses people, the Bible, Christian books, radio programs, and other means to draw people to Christ for salvation. The doctrine that salvation is completely a work of God and not of man does not entail the idea that humans are completely uninvolved. The Holy Spirit works in, through, and with people, not apart from people. While I cannot make anyone be saved, I can be used by God to deliver the message. What we do is not sufficient or determinative of who will be saved, but God is pleased to work through us in bringing people to salvation.

To assert that a person has "no say" in whether he will accept the gospel or not is a confused or at least confusing way of articulating the Reformed view. An unregenerate person cannot move himself from unbelief to belief by an act of his own will. He is dead in his trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1) and as a rule dead people don't raise themselves from the dead (Jesus, the sinless and divine Son of God, is the only exception). However, when an unregenerate person whom God chooses to save hears the gospel, that person becomes willing to accept it. His will is very much involved. The point is that his will is involved because God graciously softens his heart and redirects his volition to become willing to repent and trust in Christ alone as Savior. The idea that a person might sincerely want to know God and pray day and night to know the truth and yet be denied because he isn't on God's list is a caricature of the Reformed doctrine. There are questions that might legitimately be raised about this hypothetical noble reprobate, but answering such questions assumes we know more about what is in people's hearts than we can know (and again, the figure is hypothetical). The Reformed doctrine is that people don't seek for God except by the initiative of God the Holy Spirit leading them to turn away from falsehood and pride and to turn to God in truth in genuine humility.

Finally, well-informed Calvinists will tell you that the term "irresistible grace" was chosen to fit into the acronym TULIP and not because irresistible is the ideal description. The unregenerate can and do resist the grace of God. What Reformed theology says on this subject is that God's grace will certainly save those whom God has eternally foreknown and chosen to be his people.

Rob, seriously, I've asked this question to many EVers and I don't remember getting a answer that made any sense. What good does passing out invitations do? If there is nothing that you or anybody else can do to save you or anybody else, since it's all up to God, why even preach the gospel? I know that the apostles were commanded to preach the gospel to the world, but, from what I understand of EV doctrine, God alone decides who's going to be saved and who is going to be damned and what we do or don't do, has no effect upon it.

I asked this question several times in an EV Bible study I attended for about a year and the answer I always received was "We do it because we love everybody and want to help them accept the gospel." I always let it go at that because I had told the person heading the study that I would not make any comments that might lead to a "Bible bash" and I took that commitment very seriously.

The reason I ask is because I have heard over and over again for EVers that it's God who moves the person to accept the gospel and that the person, basically, had no say in whether he was going to accept it or not. It was an irresistible call coming from God. They said that a person could pray day and night to find the truth and try to keep the commandments, but since works, which those things are, aren't of any valid outside of saving grace, they are, but dust in the wind and worthless. It isn't our desires that draw us to God. We can want to find God, but we have no say in the matter.

So, basically, what it boils down to is we can't reject the gospel, or the calling from God, because only God can extend it to us and once it has been extended to us from God, we can't reject it because it's an irresistible calling. I realize that this verges on the edge of Calvinism.

Do I understand this correctly?

Edited October 8, 2012 by Rob Bowman

[Cobalt-70]

urroner,

I do hold to Reformed (Calvinist) theology, but I'm not particularly concerned here to "push" that specific theological perspective because I accept some diversity of belief on the pertinent issues among evangelicals. In other words, I don't think one must accept the Reformed position on predestination, election, etc., in order to be an evangelical Christian.

The answer to your first question is that we preach the gospel because God does his work of saving people through means -- that is, he uses people, the Bible, Christian books, radio programs, and other means to draw people to Christ for salvation. The doctrine that salvation is completely a work of God and not of man does not entail the idea that humans are completely uninvolved. The Holy Spirit works in, through, and with people, not apart from people. While I cannot make anyone be saved, I can be used by God to deliver the message. What we do is not sufficient or determinative of who will be saved, but God is pleased to work through us in bringing people to salvation.

To assert that a person has "no say" in whether he will accept the gospel or not is a confused or at least confusing way of articulating the Reformed view. An unregenerate person cannot move himself from unbelief to belief by an act of his own will. He is dead in his trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1) and as a rule dead people don't raise themselves from the dead (Jesus, the sinless and divine Son of God, is the only exception). However, when an unregenerate person whom God chooses to save hears the gospel, that person becomes willing to accept it. His will is very much involved. The point is that his will is involved because God graciously softens his heart and redirects his volition to become willing to repent and trust in Christ alone as Savior. The idea that a person might sincerely want to know God and pray day and night to know the truth and yet be denied because he isn't on God's list is a caricature of the Reformed doctrine. There are questions that might legitimately be raised about this hypothetical noble reprobate, but answering such questions assumes we know more about what is in people's hearts than we can know (and again, the figure is hypothetical). The Reformed doctrine is that people don't seek for God except by the initiative of God the Holy Spirit leading them to turn away from falsehood and pride and to turn to God in truth in genuine humility.

Finally, well-informed Calvinists will tell you that the term "irresistible grace" was chosen to fit into the acronym TULIP and not because irresistible is the ideal description. The unregenerate can and do resist the grace of God. What Reformed theology says on this subject is that God's grace will certainly save those whom God has eternally foreknown and chosen to be his people.

I haven't met any Mormons that are very receptive to the Reformed perspective. Mormonism is fundamentally kind of an extreme Arminian view, and there has been a strong anti-Calvinistic bias within Mormonism since the day that Joseph Smith went home to his mother, leaned toward the fireplace, and told her, "I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true." If Mormonism ever becomes reconciled with Protestantism, I think it will be on the Arminian side. The gulf between Mormonism and Reformed theology is just too wide a chasm.

[Rob Bowman]

Cobalt-70,

You wrote:

I haven't met any Mormons that are very receptive to the Reformed perspective. Mormonism is fundamentally kind of an extreme Arminian view, and there has been a strong anti-Calvinistic bias within Mormonism since the day that Joseph Smith went home to his mother, leaned toward the fireplace, and told her, "I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true." If Mormonism ever becomes reconciled with Protestantism, I think it will be on the Arminian side. The gulf between Mormonism and Reformed theology is just too wide a chasm.

The chasm between the two is indeed wide, and of course you are right about Mormonism emerging out of an Arminian theological context. Joseph Smith was more favorably disposed toward Methodism, which is Arminian, than the other available forms of Protestantism. I would be extremely happy for any Mormon who found safe haven in an evangelical Arminian faith.

As for Joseph's comment to his mother about Presbyterianism, I would be inclined to the view that the comment was made, if at all, in a later context than the one in which Joseph presented it in his 1839 history.

[wenglund]

As for Joseph's comment to his mother about Presbyterianism, I would be inclined to the view that the comment was made, if at all, in a later context than the one in which Joseph presented it in his 1839 history.

And, your inclination to view it in this pejorative way is made in the context of you pretending to know better what Joseph experienced than Joseph himself, and this through your clouded lens of scant and murky historical data and across the sizable distance of hundreds of years.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Rob Bowman]

Wade,

You wrote:

And, your inclination to view it in this pejorative way is made in the context of you pretending to know better what Joseph experienced than Joseph himself, and this through your clouded lens of scant and murky historical data and across the sizable distance of hundreds of years.

Actually, no. Joseph claimed in 1832 to have already come to the view when he was a boy by simply reading the New Testament that all of the churches (including the Presbyterians) were wrong before he had any visionary experiences. I am of the opinion that in this respect the 1832 account is more likely to be accurate than the 1839 account in which Joseph claimed that he had not yet reached that opinion and learned it only from a vision. So it is not about me privileging my opinion against Joseph's, but about me sorting out Joseph's conflicting claims and making the best assessment I can from the available evidence.

You, on the other hand, are assuming uncritically that what Joseph said he experienced is the same thing as what Joseph thought he experienced. There are good reasons to question this assumption, quite apart from theological presuppositions. Joseph certainly was in a better position to know what he experienced than I am. Unfortunately, this proves Joseph's account to be correct and mine to be incorrect only if we know that Joseph was telling us what he actually knew.

[Damien the Leper]

As a humanist who once was LDS, I still reject many of the teachings of Calvin because I disagree with the thought processes involved in their soteriology. TULIP is, with all due respect as I have many Reformed friends, a disaster. IMO, The New Perspective on Paul is the appropriate response to Calvinism. However, I have heard some good arguments against the NPP but they are much fewer than that of the Reformed perspective. I have a difficult time stomaching R.C. Sproul, F.F. Bruce, John Piper, Mark Driscoll and Wayne Grudem.

I will agree with Cobalt and Rob, Mormonism leans heavily toward Arminian extremism. If they became more moderate Arminians they may have a better shot at other Christians hearing their message. I'm not saying the LDS should. It would be pretty bad for them to lose their identity.