Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Picking fights with allies

At the Gospel Coalition site a Calvinist interviews an Arminian, specifically, Fred Sanders, a professor at Biola. The full interview is here. In one section Sanders was asked to complete some sentences. Two of them:
If you think Arminianism is semi-Pelagian, then...

You need a more flexible vocabulary of heresiology. John Wesley's longest treatise was on original sin, and he affirmed it, right down to the bondage of the will. He put a sermon on the subject into his Standard Sermons. The Wesleyan emphasis on sinners being enabled to respond to the gospel has nothing to do with a high view of human abilities, and everything to do with an optimism of grace and a trust in the Holy Spirit's prevenient work.

Perhaps anti-Wesleyans do this because they are hoping to make the error of Arminianism more obvious by exaggerating it into its supposedly logical conclusion. But if you think Arminianism is an error, you should just call it "the heresy of Arminianism." If you have to exaggerate its flaws to make it seem terrible, you probably shouldn't.

It may also be that some anti-Wesleyans are tempted to characterize Wesleyans by their worst exemplars. There have indeed been Pelagians and semi- demi- hemi- Pelagians in the Wesleyan tradition. I don't know any other way to interpret Charles Finney. But it's a basic rule of fair discourse that you should meet your opponent's views at their strongest and most central, not their weakest and most peripheral. Calvinism has generated its fair share of antinomians, determinists, theocrats, anti-evangelicals, and formalists. Anti-Calvinists shouldn't attack on that front, but at the places where the tradition is strongest.

The one thing I wish Calvinists would stop accusing Wesleyans of is...

Being anthropocentric in their soteriology. Caring more about human free will than God's glory.

I also wish Calvinists would resist the urge to think of Wesleyanism as the secret to Reformed self-definition. I don't mind sharpening a position by contrast, but Calvinists need a better foil than Wesleyanism. Only if you live in a very small thought-world is Wesleyanism the opposite of Calvinism. A more instructive opposite for Calvinism probably ought to be Roman Catholicism, if we're going back to origins. About 200 years ago, I believe the Reformed in Europe still thought of Lutherans as their opposites. I would think today's evangelical Calvinists would think of liberals as their opposites. But if you think "there are two kinds of people, Calvinists and Wesleyans," you're on a false trail; your devil is too small (to paraphrase J. B. Phillips). That will lead you to pick fights with other conservative, evangelical, Protestant Christians who really are on your side of the net in the game that counts. .... [more]
You’re a Calvinist, Right? – The Gospel Coalition Blog

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