Festival of Faith and Writing 2012 – Day 1

Posted on May 17, 2012

Last month, Gail and I had our third opportunity to attend the Festival of Faith and Writing which Calvin College organizes every other year. Once again, it was a very satisfying experience, and I’ll share a few thoughts about some of what I heard there, for the benefit of those who could not attend, or for interaction with some who may have been there and understood things differently from me. No two of the many … Continue reading →

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Why does God reward the good deeds of believers?

Posted on May 16, 2012

In a book review yesterday, Roger Olson expressed his puzzlement about how God’s giving rewards to believers in the final judgment coheres with Calvinism’s monergistic understanding of sanctification. He wrote: “My fear is that Spence, and Calvin before him, rob rewards of any meaning and imply that God is actually rewarding himself and not believers. If that is the case, why mention rewards at all? Why preach or teach heavenly rewards as motivation for obedience … Continue reading →

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On monergistic providence and synergistic salvation

Posted on May 16, 2012

John Marshall wrote an interesting comment on my post “What makes a theological statement newsworthy?” I will answer it in this post rather than in the comment thread, to allow for broader interchange. John wrote: “I am an undergrad in the UK and working on a dissertation on providence and I am wondering if we should make some kind of distinction between God’s will/providence in natural events or lots being cast and his divine agency … Continue reading →

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Virginia bound

Posted on April 16, 2012

I am leaving for a month and will likely not be able to do any blog posting while I am away, but I hope to return to blogging when I get back. Gail and I start out with the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College. This is the third one of these biennial conferences which we have attended, and we thoroughly enjoyed the first two, so we are looking forward to this experience … Continue reading →

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Conversation about Knitter’s pluralist approach

Posted on April 12, 2012

In chapters 4 and 6 of  Only One Way? Three Christian Responses to the Uniqueness of Christ in a Pluralistic World, Gavin D’ Costa and Daniel Strange respond to Paul Knitter, and then Knitter replies to their concerns, in chapter 8. Gavin D’ Costa’s response to Knitter’s proposal D’ Costa commends Knitter for: his commitment to the poor, suffering and marginalized; his respect for other religions; and his rethinking of the Christian tradition in light … Continue reading →

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On the essence of Calvinism, and on the condition of fallen humanity

Posted on April 9, 2012

Having worked our way through Roger Olson’s Against Calvinism, I’m now reading Michael Horton’s For Calvinism. As I read this book, I want to hear Horton’s presentation in its own right, recognizing that neither of these two books was written as a response to the other; they were written simultaneously. At the same time, Roger’s challenges are fresh in my mind, so I will be looking for ways in which Horton’s independent work speaks to … Continue reading →

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A unitive pluralist approach to other religions

Posted on April 5, 2012

In chapter 2 of  Only One Way? Three Christian Responses to the Uniqueness of Christ in a Pluralistic World, Paul Knitter presents his thoughts, which fit within the fifth alternative in my typology of positions regarding other religions, unitive pluralism.   Paul Knitter’s theological method For Paul Knitter, theology is an “open-minded conversation between the ‘two sources of theology’ – that is the ‘text’ of the Christian message and the ‘context’ of one’s place in the … Continue reading →

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The appeal of Calminianism

Posted on April 2, 2012

Every now and then, I hear some one say that they are Calminian. By this, they generally mean that they do not wish to affirm determinism (that God is meticulously in control in the world, so that even moral creatures always act according to God’s eternal will [Calvinism]), but they also do not want to affirm indeterminism (that God has chosen not to have that comprehensive control, so that moral creatures can be libertarianly free … Continue reading →

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Conversation about D’ Costa’s fulfillment approach

Posted on March 29, 2012

Paul Knitter’s response to D’ Costa Knitter responds to Gavin D’ Costa as a fellow Catholic and a friend, but he asserts that D’ Costa is wrong on a number of critical points: D’ Costa thinks tradition to be “like a wise man living through the centuries, learning to adjust and speak different languages as times and cultures change,” whereas Knitter images it as “a couple procreating new embodiments of truth and so producing a … Continue reading →

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On thinking charitably about unorthodox theologians

Posted on March 26, 2012

You have probably heard about the recent death of John Hick, whose theological pilgrimage took him out of the evangelicalism of his younger years into fairly classical liberalism and then on to the relativistic pluralism for which he was probably best known. We evangelicals naturally grieve a bit when a fellow evangelical rejects what we consider to be the core truths of orthodox Christian faith. But not everyone expresses that grief in the same way, … Continue reading →

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