As Baptists Prepare to Meet, Calvinism Debate Shifts to Heresy Accusation
Hundreds, including seminary presidents, have signed a
statement on salvation criticized by both Reformed and Arminian theologians.
Weston Gentry & CHRISTIANITY TODAY
[ posted 6/18/2012 10:17AM ]
A
A statement by {militant Arminians} aka a
non-Calvinist faction of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has launched
infighting within the nation's largest Protestant denomination, and tensions
are expected to escalate Tuesday as church leaders descend on New Orleans.
While the election of the denomination's first
African American president in its 167-year history will dominate the
meeting's headlines, water-cooler talk is sure to be fixated on a theological
dirty word that, for the past two weeks, has spiked the blood pressure of
theologians as much as it has Baptist visits to Wikipedia.
The May 30 document, "A
Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God's Plan of
Salvation," aims "to more carefully express what is
generally believed by Southern Baptists about salvation." (FYI
“traditional SB understanding” is expressed in the 1689 Baptist Confession and
as its biblical its also extremely Calvanistic) But both Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler and George W. Truett
Theological Seminary professor Roger Olson, in separate blog posts, said that
parts of the document sound like semi-Pelagianism, a heretical understanding of
Christian salvation.
One sliver of the document's second article
particularly drew their ire. It reads, "We deny that Adam's sin resulted
in the incapacitation of any person's free will."
Even though the two scholars represent
opposite ends of the evangelical spectrum on salvation, both made essentially
the same allegation: the wording seems, at best, theologically careless and, at
worst, represents a heretical understanding of sin, human nature, and the human
will.
"This is what many laypeople believe
that they shouldn't, and pastors and theologians should be correcting,"
Olson said. "My surprise is that the framers of this statement didn't
immediately go back and rewrite it because it is so obviously and blatantly
semi-Pelagian."
Olson, a classical Arminian and author of
the book Against Calvinism, is unaffiliated with
the SBC, but has long asserted that most evangelicals—not just Southern
Baptists—adhere to a sort of semi-Pelagian "folk religion," whose
origins can be traced to the Second Great Awakening and revivalists in the mold
of Charles Finney. He believes the new document proves his thesis. (In my
experience in American Churches its true most are Free-will Pelagian &
Free-will Semi-Pelagian heretics)
"Traditional Christian doctrine has
always been that people need a special infusion of God's grace to be able to
respond to the gospel—both Calvinists and classical Arminians agree on
that," he said. "They haven't addressed that here at all."
Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern
Baptist Theological Seminary, denies the charge.
"We are obviously not
semi-Pelagians," Patterson said. "We do believe that the entire human
race is badly affected by the fall of Adam. However, we don't follow the
Reformed view that man is so crippled by the fall that he has no
choice."Patterson didn't assist in the framing of the document, but was
one of six former SBC presidents and two SBC seminary presidents to affirm it. At
last count, more than 650 other Southern Baptists, ranging from laymen to SBC
state directors, have signed
the more specific articulation of a "Traditional Southern Baptist"
soteriology in an effort to rebuff the "New
Calvinism"—a movement whose growth, both in and beyond the SBC,
garnered it a spot on Time's 2009 list of
"10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now." (Proving that my beloved SBC is
full of Free-will Pelagian & Free-will Semi-Pelagian heretics)
A just-released survey conducted by LifeWay
Research found that roughly equal numbers of SBC pastors identify their
congregation as Calvinist/Reformed (30%) or Arminian/Wesleyan (30%). More than
60 percent are concerned about Calvinism's influence on the denomination.
A 2006 Lifeway
survey found that only 10 percent of SBC pastors identified
themselves as "five-point Calvinists." However, a similar 2007
study of young ministers by the SBC's North American Mission Board
discovered that almost 35 percent of SBC ministers that graduated from SBC
seminaries in 2004 and 2005 self-identified as "five-point
Calvinists."
"We needed to assure other young,
non-Calvinists that they were not alone," Patterson said in relation to
the document's timing and content. Eric Hankins, the primary author of the
statement, said he expected backlash when he posted it to the SBC Today website.
"The statement's language displeases
our Calvinist and Arminian friends not because it is heterodox, but because
their terminology and categories are not employed," he said. "That's
all the charge of semi-Pelagianism really means: 'You aren't following our rules.
You have to pick.'" "Well," Hankins said, "we beg to
differ." Hankins said his formulation, which was an adaptation of a paper
he wrote for the Journal for Baptist Theology and
Ministry earlier this year, "Beyond
Calvinism and Arminianism: Toward a Baptist Soteriology," was
an attempt to make a complex topic more accessible to pastors and laymen. (Oh,
I get it; he’s saying don’t pick Christ or Thor, join the 3rd way of
Facist optomism and choose the new and improved “blended” god Chror! Or is it
Thrist? Chose this day whom you would serve. Or listen to false teachers like -
I don’t know Eric Hankins - and
make up your own god and then you can make up your god’s theology – making you
and your imagination your new god!)
The 40-year-old pastor of First Baptist
Church Oxford, Mississippi, said he doesn't see an immediate need to revise the
statement because it wields no binding authority.
While acknowledging Hankins's right to
produce the document, Owen Strachan, a 31-year-old assistant professor of
Christian theology and church history at Boyce College, said many young
Calvinists in the SBC believe it wasn't necessary because they already have a
"big tent" theological agreement with non-Calvinists under the Baptist Faith & Message.
"I'm all for leaders finding ways to
enfranchise these brothers and sisters [non-Calvinists in the SBC], but this
statement is tough," he said. "It's a confrontational document, which
effectively aims to push away many of us who love the SBC." There are no
plans for an official salvation dialogue to take place at the conference this
week, but Strachan said the meeting's democratic nature makes it ripe for an
unpredictable agenda. "I don't necessarily think the floor of the
convention would be the best place for the cool-headed, rational debate that
this issue deserves," he said. "Even if doesn't come up, this has
already created a sense of unease in the SBC." (AMEN!)
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