Roger Olson, an Arminian theologian, has written on his blog about how his interaction with Calvinists usually ends up with two ships passing in the night. He writes down one of my biggest questions with the Biblicism of Calvinism - the fact that as a Calvinist, you would need to believe and accept that the acts of God, however horrific they might be, are "good" and "righteous" because God is vindicated merely by the fact that he is God. This sounds good and seems godly, but are there other options? He writes...
"For example (I’m musing here because I’m not sure about this): It seems to me that most 5 point Calvinists I know seem bound and determined to believe anything they think the Bible says regardless of how horrific that may be. In other words, IF they became convinced that somehow they had been overlooking something in Scripture (as they think I do) and, in fact, God and the devil are actually the same being such that God is evil, they would believe it because the Bible says it."
It seems right that we trust God as much as Calvinism says we should - even if it seems his actions and attitudes towards humanity are horrific, terrible or just plain mean. But what if there is another way? What if the seeming moral dilemmas that God's horrific actions present us with are actually designed by God to be a paradox?
What is the role of the paradox in Scripture? The paradox - Martin Luther said that Christianity was a religion of paradoxes - is a dilemma that causes us to seek resolution but doesn't give it, because his thoughts are not our and his was are not our ways. So, would it be ok to just accept that the actions of God that we have a hard time accepting are paradoxes and not just realities to accept or not accept. The third option is that we start by throwing our hands up and seeking the paradoxical solution - "I don't know."
Check out the counterpoint books - Against Calvinism by Roger Olson and For Calvinism by Michael S. Horton.
"For example (I’m musing here because I’m not sure about this): It seems to me that most 5 point Calvinists I know seem bound and determined to believe anything they think the Bible says regardless of how horrific that may be. In other words, IF they became convinced that somehow they had been overlooking something in Scripture (as they think I do) and, in fact, God and the devil are actually the same being such that God is evil, they would believe it because the Bible says it."
It seems right that we trust God as much as Calvinism says we should - even if it seems his actions and attitudes towards humanity are horrific, terrible or just plain mean. But what if there is another way? What if the seeming moral dilemmas that God's horrific actions present us with are actually designed by God to be a paradox?
What is the role of the paradox in Scripture? The paradox - Martin Luther said that Christianity was a religion of paradoxes - is a dilemma that causes us to seek resolution but doesn't give it, because his thoughts are not our and his was are not our ways. So, would it be ok to just accept that the actions of God that we have a hard time accepting are paradoxes and not just realities to accept or not accept. The third option is that we start by throwing our hands up and seeking the paradoxical solution - "I don't know."
Check out the counterpoint books - Against Calvinism by Roger Olson and For Calvinism by Michael S. Horton.
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