Calvinists say that non Calvinists have a problem with the doctrine of the Inherency of scripture.
This is due to the free will of man. They say God would have to override the free will of man “law” so that His word would be perfect. If He didn’t override the free will of man then the Bible would have mistakes due to man’s sinful nature. They say that if you hold to free will and non Calvinists views the doctrine of the Inherency of scripture is compromised.
I don’t understand this thinking, and I see it as flawed.
Why can’t God use men that deny their own will (which the authors of the bible did) to write His Inherent Word through them?
How does freewill take away the power of God to use men that have given themselves to be used by God?
I'm fairly new to this Calvinism, Arminianism & Open Theism debate. I would have to say I don't side with any side since all sides are man made doctrines. Yet Calvinism scares me the most since it seems to put the blame of the sin of man on God shoulders.
anyway it's all so confusing and I wonder, did God make His word confusing?
Calvinists say that non Calvinists have a problem with the d
Re: Calvinists say that non Calvinists have a problem with the d
No, it's people that make His word confusing.
The problem with the Calvinist argument that you describe above is two-fold. What I mean is that it a) misunderstands the free will of man, and b) probably misrepresents the concept of the inerrancy of scripture.
a) On the first point, no one has ever claimed that man has absolute free will. For example, as much as I might wish to fly through the air like Superman, it is not within my range of choices. I might wish to be able to do my best work consistently without ever having to take time out to sleep, but I am not so constructed. There is no such thing as absolute free will, because that would mean absolute human sovereignty—and no one believes in such a thing.
Further, all Christians acknowledge that God can intervene to suspend even such free will as men normally possess (e.g., Proverbs 21:1). This would be seen in those special cases like the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, or God's giving certain people over to a reprobate mind.
What most non-Calvinists believe about free will is that every man has enough of it to guarantee his full responsibility for his personal rebellion against God. All that this really would require is that a man have the ability, at some point in his life, to choose to repent and to believe in Christ. The failure of a man to do this is a failure that goes back to his free choice—not to the sovereign election of God that unilaterally consigns him to perpetual unbelief and consequent punishment.
Once a man has repented and been regenerated, we are told that God "works in [him], both to will and to do of His good pleasure"(Phil.2:13). The Christian has surrendered his will to his Creator, and is only too happy to have God override his human weaknesses, whenever God may choose to do so. Sadly, God does not do this all of the time! However, if God wished to imbue one of His servants with the ability to write scripture infallibly, this would be entirely possible, without violating any doctrine of human free will.
b) The doctrine of scriptural inerrancy is a slippery subject—first of all, because the scripture does not ever speak of such a doctrine. The word "inerrancy" is a word chosen by certain men to describe the reliability of scripture, but the word itself is not used by the biblical writers, nor is it defined consistently by everyone who uses it.
Inerrancy might mean that the Bible does not affirm any facts that are not correct—thus it is without error (the root of the English word "inerrancy"). It would, of course, be possible to produce such a book even without direct divine intervention. If people have witnessed certain events, and accurately recorded them, then their record might be said to be "inerrant" (without error), even if it is a secular account with which God had no special involvement. The historical narratives of the Bible (the vast majority of the biblical material) could easily be inerrant, in this sense, without introducing any theories of divine intervention—so long as the historical writers correctly chronicled what occurred.
For most evangelicals (especially those who would also be called "Fundamentalists"), there is a much different meaning ascribed to the word "inerrancy." For them, the concept is connected to their view of "inspiration." While there is no uniform belief even about the meaning of this latter concept among evangelicals, all would agree that it suggests that the Bible is a revelation from God, and that some or all of the writers received and recorded actual words (or at least truths) that God revealed to them. Many would additionally suggest that the Bible was directly inspired in such a manner as not only to be able to avoid "errors," but also to rule out even the possibility of the writers making any mistakes. This is the view with which I was brought up from my childhood.
It is also, apparently, the view of your Calvinist friend. To suggest that God could not produce "inerrant" scripture without destroying the free will of the writers is to suggest that the inspiration of scripture was some kind of "force" working upon the consciousness of the writers, feeding them information word-by-word (as in the occult phenomenon of "automatic writing"), so that the author's mind, personality, and natural fallibility were supernaturally set aside for the duration of the writing session. It is generally acknowledged that these writers, at other times (for example, when they were at home conversing with their wives and children), did not have this strange force working upon their minds. It only happened while they were writing "scripture."
My problem, today, with such a view is that there is nothing in the Bible itself that makes any such claims for its writers. If this idea is not actually taught in the Bible, it would seem to be a Fundamentalist tradition, on the same level of credibility of the Roman Catholic tradition of the "immaculate conception" of Mary.* Both of these traditions presuppose the presence of a seemingly magical influence working to keep holy things completely untainted.
If there is any case in scripture where such an influence is seen working through biblical writers, it would have to be in the oracles of Old Testament prophets. This would represent a relatively small percentage of the total biblical material, and I am not sure that the Spirit of prophecy completely overrode the personalities of the prophets. The Spirit did seem to have this kind of influence upon bad men who prophesied, like Balaam and King Saul. However, the godly prophets, like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, clearly exhibit in their writings each man's distinctive literary "style," suggesting that the "automatic writing" model of inspiration probably is not quite correct.
There are strong statements in the New Testament about the divine origins of Old Testament scriptures—most famously, 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:20-21. The former of these seems to refer to the entire Old Testament. This is not absolutely certain, since the first line could be translated, "All God-breathed writings are profitable..." meaning that some writings are God-breathed and others are not, without directly identifying which one are).
The other passage (2 Peter 1:20-21) limits the scope of its interest to the Old Testament prophets, and comments only upon what they spoke, rather than what they wrote. However, it is a fair assumption that what they spoke was reliably written down by their disciples (Isaiah 8:16/Jer.36:4). There is no reason to assume that these disciples, acting as scribes for the prophets, were themselves infallible authors, but there is also no reason to assume that they were incompetent.
With reference to the New Testament historical writings and the theological teachings (e.g., in the epistles), we are not told whether or not the writers were under any supernatural influence while they wrote. There is no reason to assume that this was the case, even if we affirm that everything they penned was reliably true. The Gospels were written either by eye-witnesses of the events they record, or else by competent historians, having the eye-witnesses as their sources. Luke, for example, while making no claims to personal inspiration, does insist that his knowledge of his subject matter is comprehensive and reliable (Luke 1:2-4). As for those histories written by actual apostles, one must remember that Jesus had promised them that the Holy Spirit would bring to their remembrance the things he had told them (John 14:26). There is thus no reason to doubt the accuracy of any of these records.
The authority behind the epistles is the authority of the apostles who wrote them. These men were appointed by Jesus—who, we hope, had the insight to choose competent and reliable men—to be His official spokespersons after His departure. These men had either learned directly at the feet of Jesus, or through the revelation of the Holy Spirit, so that their ability to correctly represent the divine mind need not be questioned. After all, Jesus had promised that the Holy Spirit would teach them all things (John 14:26). When Paul was stressing his doctrine of the body of Christ, in order to inspire his readers' confidence in what he was writing, he did not say, "Accept what I say, because my writings are inspired." He said, rather, "when you read, you may understand my knowledge of the mystery of Christ...as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets..." (Eph.3:4-5). In other words, while Paul made no claims about some contemporary influence of inspiration upon him at the moment of writing, he did claim that what he was writing was truth that had come to him (earlier) by direct revelation from God.
This would explain why the New Testament writers could make grammatical errors (the Book of Revelation is full of them), could make the vanishingly insignificant mistake of thinking that a quotation from Zechariah had come from the Book of Jeremiah (Matthew 27:9), could claim to have no clear recollection about some matter of inconsequential fact (1 Corinthians 1:14-16), or could say that he had no command from God about a certain subject, but that he would give his "judgment" or "opinion" about a matter (1 Corinthians 7:25, 39).
One ought to have a view of the inerrancy of scripture that accords with the scriptures' own claims about themselves—rather than one that comes from human tradition.
For these reasons, I cannot agree with your Calvinist friend's assessment of the perceived problem created by the Arminian free will position. The non-Calvinist can consistently claim that we do have a completely reliable and divinely authoritative Bible—and this without any need to postulate the suspension of significant human free will.
Blessings!
Steve
* It is fairly common for Christians to confuse this doctrine with the scriptural doctrine of the virgin conception of Christ. They are different doctrines. The Roman Catholic doctrine of "the immaculate conception" teaches that Mary, when conceived in the womb of her mother, was supernaturally preserved from the taint of original sin. There is no scriptural basis for this belief.
The problem with the Calvinist argument that you describe above is two-fold. What I mean is that it a) misunderstands the free will of man, and b) probably misrepresents the concept of the inerrancy of scripture.
a) On the first point, no one has ever claimed that man has absolute free will. For example, as much as I might wish to fly through the air like Superman, it is not within my range of choices. I might wish to be able to do my best work consistently without ever having to take time out to sleep, but I am not so constructed. There is no such thing as absolute free will, because that would mean absolute human sovereignty—and no one believes in such a thing.
Further, all Christians acknowledge that God can intervene to suspend even such free will as men normally possess (e.g., Proverbs 21:1). This would be seen in those special cases like the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, or God's giving certain people over to a reprobate mind.
What most non-Calvinists believe about free will is that every man has enough of it to guarantee his full responsibility for his personal rebellion against God. All that this really would require is that a man have the ability, at some point in his life, to choose to repent and to believe in Christ. The failure of a man to do this is a failure that goes back to his free choice—not to the sovereign election of God that unilaterally consigns him to perpetual unbelief and consequent punishment.
Once a man has repented and been regenerated, we are told that God "works in [him], both to will and to do of His good pleasure"(Phil.2:13). The Christian has surrendered his will to his Creator, and is only too happy to have God override his human weaknesses, whenever God may choose to do so. Sadly, God does not do this all of the time! However, if God wished to imbue one of His servants with the ability to write scripture infallibly, this would be entirely possible, without violating any doctrine of human free will.
b) The doctrine of scriptural inerrancy is a slippery subject—first of all, because the scripture does not ever speak of such a doctrine. The word "inerrancy" is a word chosen by certain men to describe the reliability of scripture, but the word itself is not used by the biblical writers, nor is it defined consistently by everyone who uses it.
Inerrancy might mean that the Bible does not affirm any facts that are not correct—thus it is without error (the root of the English word "inerrancy"). It would, of course, be possible to produce such a book even without direct divine intervention. If people have witnessed certain events, and accurately recorded them, then their record might be said to be "inerrant" (without error), even if it is a secular account with which God had no special involvement. The historical narratives of the Bible (the vast majority of the biblical material) could easily be inerrant, in this sense, without introducing any theories of divine intervention—so long as the historical writers correctly chronicled what occurred.
For most evangelicals (especially those who would also be called "Fundamentalists"), there is a much different meaning ascribed to the word "inerrancy." For them, the concept is connected to their view of "inspiration." While there is no uniform belief even about the meaning of this latter concept among evangelicals, all would agree that it suggests that the Bible is a revelation from God, and that some or all of the writers received and recorded actual words (or at least truths) that God revealed to them. Many would additionally suggest that the Bible was directly inspired in such a manner as not only to be able to avoid "errors," but also to rule out even the possibility of the writers making any mistakes. This is the view with which I was brought up from my childhood.
It is also, apparently, the view of your Calvinist friend. To suggest that God could not produce "inerrant" scripture without destroying the free will of the writers is to suggest that the inspiration of scripture was some kind of "force" working upon the consciousness of the writers, feeding them information word-by-word (as in the occult phenomenon of "automatic writing"), so that the author's mind, personality, and natural fallibility were supernaturally set aside for the duration of the writing session. It is generally acknowledged that these writers, at other times (for example, when they were at home conversing with their wives and children), did not have this strange force working upon their minds. It only happened while they were writing "scripture."
My problem, today, with such a view is that there is nothing in the Bible itself that makes any such claims for its writers. If this idea is not actually taught in the Bible, it would seem to be a Fundamentalist tradition, on the same level of credibility of the Roman Catholic tradition of the "immaculate conception" of Mary.* Both of these traditions presuppose the presence of a seemingly magical influence working to keep holy things completely untainted.
If there is any case in scripture where such an influence is seen working through biblical writers, it would have to be in the oracles of Old Testament prophets. This would represent a relatively small percentage of the total biblical material, and I am not sure that the Spirit of prophecy completely overrode the personalities of the prophets. The Spirit did seem to have this kind of influence upon bad men who prophesied, like Balaam and King Saul. However, the godly prophets, like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, clearly exhibit in their writings each man's distinctive literary "style," suggesting that the "automatic writing" model of inspiration probably is not quite correct.
There are strong statements in the New Testament about the divine origins of Old Testament scriptures—most famously, 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:20-21. The former of these seems to refer to the entire Old Testament. This is not absolutely certain, since the first line could be translated, "All God-breathed writings are profitable..." meaning that some writings are God-breathed and others are not, without directly identifying which one are).
The other passage (2 Peter 1:20-21) limits the scope of its interest to the Old Testament prophets, and comments only upon what they spoke, rather than what they wrote. However, it is a fair assumption that what they spoke was reliably written down by their disciples (Isaiah 8:16/Jer.36:4). There is no reason to assume that these disciples, acting as scribes for the prophets, were themselves infallible authors, but there is also no reason to assume that they were incompetent.
With reference to the New Testament historical writings and the theological teachings (e.g., in the epistles), we are not told whether or not the writers were under any supernatural influence while they wrote. There is no reason to assume that this was the case, even if we affirm that everything they penned was reliably true. The Gospels were written either by eye-witnesses of the events they record, or else by competent historians, having the eye-witnesses as their sources. Luke, for example, while making no claims to personal inspiration, does insist that his knowledge of his subject matter is comprehensive and reliable (Luke 1:2-4). As for those histories written by actual apostles, one must remember that Jesus had promised them that the Holy Spirit would bring to their remembrance the things he had told them (John 14:26). There is thus no reason to doubt the accuracy of any of these records.
The authority behind the epistles is the authority of the apostles who wrote them. These men were appointed by Jesus—who, we hope, had the insight to choose competent and reliable men—to be His official spokespersons after His departure. These men had either learned directly at the feet of Jesus, or through the revelation of the Holy Spirit, so that their ability to correctly represent the divine mind need not be questioned. After all, Jesus had promised that the Holy Spirit would teach them all things (John 14:26). When Paul was stressing his doctrine of the body of Christ, in order to inspire his readers' confidence in what he was writing, he did not say, "Accept what I say, because my writings are inspired." He said, rather, "when you read, you may understand my knowledge of the mystery of Christ...as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets..." (Eph.3:4-5). In other words, while Paul made no claims about some contemporary influence of inspiration upon him at the moment of writing, he did claim that what he was writing was truth that had come to him (earlier) by direct revelation from God.
This would explain why the New Testament writers could make grammatical errors (the Book of Revelation is full of them), could make the vanishingly insignificant mistake of thinking that a quotation from Zechariah had come from the Book of Jeremiah (Matthew 27:9), could claim to have no clear recollection about some matter of inconsequential fact (1 Corinthians 1:14-16), or could say that he had no command from God about a certain subject, but that he would give his "judgment" or "opinion" about a matter (1 Corinthians 7:25, 39).
One ought to have a view of the inerrancy of scripture that accords with the scriptures' own claims about themselves—rather than one that comes from human tradition.
For these reasons, I cannot agree with your Calvinist friend's assessment of the perceived problem created by the Arminian free will position. The non-Calvinist can consistently claim that we do have a completely reliable and divinely authoritative Bible—and this without any need to postulate the suspension of significant human free will.
Blessings!
Steve
* It is fairly common for Christians to confuse this doctrine with the scriptural doctrine of the virgin conception of Christ. They are different doctrines. The Roman Catholic doctrine of "the immaculate conception" teaches that Mary, when conceived in the womb of her mother, was supernaturally preserved from the taint of original sin. There is no scriptural basis for this belief.
Re: Calvinists say that non Calvinists have a problem with the d
Thanks Steve,
The reason I had the question is becuase I watched this video clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0uACs89vhE
I really admire Eric Holmberg for his other works like the ones about hollywood and music (UnHoly Hollywood & Hells bells 1 & 2) and he is even a facebook friend of mine. Yet I dissagree with him on his stand in calvanism.
Thanks
Sam
The reason I had the question is becuase I watched this video clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0uACs89vhE
I really admire Eric Holmberg for his other works like the ones about hollywood and music (UnHoly Hollywood & Hells bells 1 & 2) and he is even a facebook friend of mine. Yet I dissagree with him on his stand in calvanism.
Thanks
Sam
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darinhouston
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Re: Calvinists say that non Calvinists have a problem with the d
I watched the video -- it had fabulous production values, but I was repulsed by the straw men and other ill logic, and can say I don't think I agreed with anything that was said in it. It had the flavor of a well-produced PBS documentary against the historical claims of Christianity.
Re: Calvinists say that non Calvinists have a problem with the d
I have now watched the video. What struck me was how the producer was able to find so many scholars who would perjure themselves and make such irresponsible statements on camera. I should have thought that scholars would be more protective of their credibility!
The beliefs of the Arminians are misrepresented from the very first, suggesting that Arminianism teaches "absolute free will of man." Nobody believes in such a thing (as if a man can have and do anything he might wish!). Beginning with this misleading representation, the film finds the most bizarre (and "inevitable") connections to liberalism, humanism, totalitarianism, Darwinism, sponsorship of abortion, gay marriage, etc. How is it that the church managed to hold "Arminian" theology for its first four centuries without moving in any of these directions?
No informed and responsible film maker would allow such misrepresentations to dominate his productions. I am afraid I cannot view the maker of the "documentary" as an informed or honest man. I am always perplexed at why any public minister would make himself look so ridiculous in the public media, when he does not have to do so. Or is it possible that he has no option in this matter?
The beliefs of the Arminians are misrepresented from the very first, suggesting that Arminianism teaches "absolute free will of man." Nobody believes in such a thing (as if a man can have and do anything he might wish!). Beginning with this misleading representation, the film finds the most bizarre (and "inevitable") connections to liberalism, humanism, totalitarianism, Darwinism, sponsorship of abortion, gay marriage, etc. How is it that the church managed to hold "Arminian" theology for its first four centuries without moving in any of these directions?
No informed and responsible film maker would allow such misrepresentations to dominate his productions. I am afraid I cannot view the maker of the "documentary" as an informed or honest man. I am always perplexed at why any public minister would make himself look so ridiculous in the public media, when he does not have to do so. Or is it possible that he has no option in this matter?
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SteveF
Re: Calvinists say that non Calvinists have a problem with the d
I found the video completely far fetched. Their serious tone made it seem like a parody.
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darinhouston
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Re: Calvinists say that non Calvinists have a problem with the d
Only because you're crippled by rational thought and have been corrupted by the liberal bible hating influence of the Enlightenment.SteveF wrote:I found the video completely far fetched. Their serious tone made it seem like a parody.
Re: Calvinists say that non Calvinists have a problem with the d
Amazing video. I guess that (at least in some circles) it has been determined that the best way to approach the issue is to misrepresent the opposing view. Why don't they just say that only commies, Islam and big scary meanies believe other than the makers of the video. God forbid we actually search the scriptures to see if these things are so. 
As far as the inspiration of scripture being affected by "Arminian" theology, I think the debate over Calvinism/Arminianism is mainly over the manner of salvation itself and not how Christians serve God after salvation. Both believe man serves God by the power of the Spirit and both believe that a denial of self is involved. This being so, I don't see how a Christian empowered by the Spirit would be unable to write down whatever God has informed them to write. Or are we to assume that an "Arminian" Christian who has a revelation from God would deliberately refuse to write down such a revelation if directed to? Someone who does not obey the Lord in such a straightforward manner could hardly be taken seriously when they say "Jesus is Lord". A Christian is one who follows and obeys. So I don't see how they can claim an Arminian is one who believes you should be "free" to do what you will.
As far as the inspiration of scripture being affected by "Arminian" theology, I think the debate over Calvinism/Arminianism is mainly over the manner of salvation itself and not how Christians serve God after salvation. Both believe man serves God by the power of the Spirit and both believe that a denial of self is involved. This being so, I don't see how a Christian empowered by the Spirit would be unable to write down whatever God has informed them to write. Or are we to assume that an "Arminian" Christian who has a revelation from God would deliberately refuse to write down such a revelation if directed to? Someone who does not obey the Lord in such a straightforward manner could hardly be taken seriously when they say "Jesus is Lord". A Christian is one who follows and obeys. So I don't see how they can claim an Arminian is one who believes you should be "free" to do what you will.
He will not fail nor be discouraged till He has established justice in the earth. (Isaiah 42:4)
Re: Calvinists say that non Calvinists have a problem with the d
Wow, I'm not sure I would say he is not honest, maybe just decieved. This is the only one of the videos of his I have seen that I would disagree with. I don't think he really got the non calvanist views that are in this video from non calvanists but from calvanists, that may be his mistake. He may have just not done his research on this like he should have. I would like to say in other videos I feel he did his research. I really like his stuff on the popular media. Anyway, it would be interesting to see his response to all these comments. He is a facebook friend of mine and I think I'll ask him to join this forum and get into the debate.I am afraid I cannot view the maker of the "documentary" as an informed or honest man.
He may say no. 
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darinhouston
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Re: Calvinists say that non Calvinists have a problem with the d
I would only have to say that if his answer is "ignorance," he has a pretty high degree of accountability for doing something like this with such gross ignorance. I'd almost think it would better to say he's dishonest than to suggest he would do such a hit piece without some diligence in understanding the issue.