The Bible and Culture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9wqN-nwSzEKudos to Vivian Sawyer for finding this. It's got some helpful points, though it ignores the rhetorical character of Hebrews unfortunately. … [Read more...]

BEN: When the Gospel of Matthew presents us with Jesus saying that he is submitting to baptism to ‘fulfill all righteousness’ he is of course talking about the righteousness that comes from obedience to the Mosaic Law. He is not talking about his righteousness acting as a substitute for his later disciples righteousness in the new covenant. Indeed, he is talking about the fulfilling of the Mosaic Law because Israel didn’t. In other words, this has little or nothing to do with what Paul is tal … [Read more...]

BEN: Your discussion of open theism is interesting, and I wonder if since your book was published (2006), you’ve settled the matter in your mind. For my part, I have rejected open theism. I think there is a way around the paradox. Suppose God has what I will call teleological knowledge of all things both possible and real. To put it another way, suppose all God’s knowledge of things that do or may happen in space in time is a form of hindsight. Now no one would argue that hindsight kno … [Read more...]

BEN: It seems reasonably clear that Arminius took the Calvinistic view that regeneration precedes conversion. I suppose it depends on what one means by regeneration--- the ability to repent? In any case, various later Arminians associated regeneration with the new birth or conversion, perhaps as a part of conversion itself. What is your view of what a proper Arminian theology should say on this subject?ROGER: I have posited a “partial regeneration” in the reception of prevenient grace. … [Read more...]

BEN: Jonathan Edwards in his Freedom of the Will argues that there is no compulsion or coercion involved, only predetermination when it comes to human choosing. People choose according to their desires and will and they do not feel compulsed or coerced, even though they could not have done otherwise. So the issue is not coercion but predetermination in his discussion of the matter. He objects to Luther’s treatise on the Bondage of the Will for a variety of reasons, not least because Luther d … [Read more...]

BEN: I was reflecting on what you say on pp. 155-56 about ‘simul justus et peccator’ and it occurred to me what a difference there is between Luther and Wesley on this matter. Luther, famously believed that the Christian continued to be in bondage to sin even after conversion, and made it part of the weakly confession. Wesley absolutely rejected this and for good reasons. His message was ‘while sin remains it no longer reigns’ in the life of the believer. The believer has been set free from … [Read more...]

BEN: On p. 123 you say that sin does not thwart the will of God. I think this is a mistake. Surely any time evil or sin happens it goes against the will of God of a good God. I tend to find the phrase ‘permissive will’ something of an oxymoron—willing something is not merely allowing something it seems to me. If you will it, you want it to happen, even if reluctantly. In particular, if God really desires that all be saved, and has made available salvation for all, then surely that is in acco … [Read more...]

BEN: How would you distinguish the Calvinist notion of God’s providence from the Arminian one? It is interesting to me that if one reads Wesley’s Journal, one finds the phrase ‘a singular providence of God’ cropping up again and again in regard to both incidental things and significant things. So for instance Wesley sees the crowd pressing together in Wednesbury so that the rotten eggs in the pockets of some scoundrels are crushed by the crowd as a sign of God directing things so Wesley’s pre … [Read more...]

BEN: The issue of how to interpret the phrase ‘only begotten of the Father’ has bedeviled Christological debates forever it seems. Is this Scriptural notion the basis of Arminius and various his successors arguing that the Son is fully God, but he has his divine essence from God the Father who is the only one who can rightly be called autotheos, since he is the font of all deity for both the Son and the Spirit? What do you make of Wayne Grudem’s attempt to suggest that Christ is eternally (pe … [Read more...]