Dont ask me why I feel like laying down this gauntlet, but I would love to here significant dissent out there. You know who you are pssing through thinking “thats not right”. You see I want to move onto answering the question “so what” about all this doctrine and I will soon, but it bothers me that in all my arminian readers not one of them has really taken direct issue with any of my defininitions of the TULIP. Is that because I have been called close to both hypercalvinistic and arminian and as such I just seem acceptable to everyone? Surely not!
Lets here it first of all for the problems with these doctrines. For a start, I have hit on one, the tendency in some for the doctrine of the Perseverance of the saints to lead to a lack of assurance, and I intend to use that as a whole springboard into a series on assurance, which may itself become a series on why Calvinism matters.
So to you my readers (if you haven’t deserted me by now) why doesn’t this matter? What are the negative outcomes we might see in the lives of those who believe this stuff? How goofy are calvinists? Are we sad, deluded and missing out on the truth? Does any of this, perhaps most especially Steve Chalkes outburst really matter? Is their anyone out there spoiling for a conversation. This is what blogging is for now we seemed to have lost it almost everywhere else. Ironic isnt it, antisocially sitting in front of our screens is about the only way for some of us to meet who have very different ideas.
So where are you? Where is the online equivalent of my rabidly anti-semitic, rabidly anti-christian, facist that I debated with in the flesh at school? The debates tallied at a draw in our debating society but I praise God that several of the listeners subsequently turned to God, including my facist protagonist.
So roll up, roll up and join the debate. If you are someone who actually knows me IRL as the saying goes, why not let me know you read my blog and what u think of it- for the sake of others that know us both use a psuedonmyn if its too rude and drop me a mail to tell me it was you!!
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