July 12th, 2007
The first objection that I want to tackle in my series on “Objections to Calvinism” is that of Election and Pride. Now this is not an objection that has personally been raised to me. No one has actually said to me, “I am not a Calvinist because it makes you prideful and arrogant.” But I have heard of people raising that issue with others and so I’d like to tackle this issue first before getting into some objections that have been raised to me personally.
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Categories: Calvinism vs Arminianism |
Tags: 1 Corinthians 1, Adverse Effect, Arrogance, Calvinist, Doctrines Of Grace, God Man, Marvel, Missing The Point, Objection, Objections, Passages, Pedestal, Pride, Reprobate, Romans 9, Scripture, Soteriology, Unconditional Election, Website Help | 13 Comments
July 11th, 2007
I want to begin a post series trying my best to answer some objections to the doctrines of Grace that I have encountered over the last two-plus years. The ones that I will attempt to answer are these: Election leads men to be proud and arrogant because they are “elect;” Why should I pray according to Calvinism; Why should I evangelize; Why should pursue holiness. I will take them in the order listed.
But before I get into the objection of pride because of election (I haven’t really heard this objection personally, unlike the other three, but I know it is out there), I to address an historical issue. Namely, the difference between Calvinism and Hyper-Calvinism. The last three objections–prayer, evangelism, and holy living–stem out of an apparent failure to distinguish Hyper-Calvinsim. The following is based off of the discussion of Hyper-Calvinism at Theopedia.com.
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Categories: Calvinism vs Arminianism |
Tags: Apparent Failure, Belief, Calvinism, Calvinist, Doctrines Of Grace, Holiness, Hyper, Infancy, Monergism, Natural Man, Objection, Objections, Obstacles, Prayer Evangelism, Pride, Repentance And Faith, Sacraments, Scriptures, True Church, Visible Church | 11 Comments
July 6th, 2007
I hate to leave such good conversations for a few days, especially when there is so much left to talk about. Meredith and I are heading out in a few hours to visit my sister Rachel and her husband Casey.
I leave you with an article about one of my interests, translation philosophy.
Form, Function, and the “Literal Meaning” Fallacy in Bible Translation by Mark Strauss
I have not gotten all the way through it, but I have liked it so far. If you have some spare time this weekend, I would recommend giving it a look over.
The problem comes when translation decisions are affected by the perceived need to retain form. The result is often barely-comprehensible (or incomprehensible) English rather than a natural rendering which communicates to contemporary readers with the same clarity that the Greek or Hebrew communicated to the original readers. Awkward and obscure English translations often result from seeking to translate idioms word-for-word, without carefully considering the meaning. Consider Matthew 5:2:
NKJV: Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying:
RSV/ESV: And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
NASB: And opening His mouth He began to teach them, saying,
NIV/TNIV: and he began to teach them, saying:
TEV: and he began to teach them
NLT: This is what he taught them:
The Greek idiom uses two phrases anoigo¯ to stoma (”open the mouth”) + didasko¯, (”teach”) to express a single action. Opening the mouth and teaching are not two consecutive actions, but one act of speaking (cf. Acts 8:35; 10:34; Rev. 13:6). In English we would never say, “The professor opened his mouth and taught the class.” This is a Greek idiom, not an English one.
Categories: translation issues |
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July 5th, 2007
Here is the link to an incredible video on Youtube.com in which the Institute of Religious Research presented the case for the Mormon Scripture of the Book of Abraham is not an accurate translation. If the Book of Abraham cannot be trusted, then may be the book of Mormon can’t be trusted either. Check out the video, it is almost an hour long and is very interesting with the Egyptology used to examine the scrolls.
Categories: Archeology, The Bible |
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July 4th, 2007
As we have been dealing with the idea of original sin and imputed sin, there has been some question about what Romans 5:14 means. Here is the verse:
Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
There has been a suggestion that this might imply that the sin of Adam was not physically connected with the rest of humanity.
Here is John Piper’s attempt to exegete this verse:
Paul’s statement at the end of verse 14 clarifies that he does not have personal sins in view as the reason for human death.
In other words, yes Paul concedes that there are other kinds of laws before the Mosaic Law, and yes people broke those laws, and yes, one could argue that these sins are the root cause of death and condemnation in the world. But, Paul says, there is a problem with that view, because death reigned “even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam.” There are those who died without seeing a law and choosing to sin against it.
Who are they? I think the group of people begging for an explanation is infants. Infants died. They could not understand personal revelation. They could not read the law on their hearts and choose to obey or disobey it. Yet they died. Why? Paul answers: the sin of Adam and the imputation of that sin to the human race. In other words, death reigned over all humans, even over those who did not sin against a known and understood law. Therefore, the conclusion is, to use the words of verse 18: “through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men.” (Ibid)
So the purpose of verses 13 and 14 are to clarify verse 12 in this way:
At the end of verse 12 the words, “death spread to all men, because all sinned” mean that “death spread to all because all sinned in Adam.” Death is not first and most deeply because of our own individual sinning, but because of what happened in Adam.
Categories: Calvinism vs Arminianism |
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