God Changes The Past All The Time

Roger Olsen has an interesting post wondering why calvinists don't think it limits God if he cannot change the past.  But both Olsen and his calvinist sparring partners are wrong, God changes the past all the time, it is just no one ever notices because he changes our memories too! 

However, there are some tell tale signs that this goes on more than we realise.  For example, thousands of years ago when Moses wrote Genesis the world had only taken 6 days to make, but today if you examine the planet and its surrounding environs you can see it took around 40 Billion years to make.  Or if you read ancient documents you would see that the Sun used to rise up in the sky and go down at night, but today it is Earth which rolls around the Sun.  The only possible explanation is that what used to be really was then, but then it got changed retrospectively and now we are living with a new version of the past.  QED.

Of course the nice thing about having a changeable past is that when we argue about what really happened back then, we can both be right!  And as far as I remember I never lent you that $20.

Olsen on the "Two Evangelicalisms"

Wow, Roger Olsen is really saying what he thinks, he is even arguing an amicable split would be better than trying to continue together under the same label. I'm particularly interested that he traces this division to Whitefield and Wesley,

This is a reason why I increasingly view evangelicalism as two movements rather than one. We are like ships passing in the night even though we both call ourselves evangelicals and stand in that movement’s historical trajectory. Wesley and Whitefield have been pitted against each other. Indeed. Thank God they could both serve as catalysts for the Great Awakening, but their profoundly different views of God largely kept them apart. Wesley’s hermeneutic was captivated by God’s love revealed above all else in Jesus Christ. Whitefield’s hermeneutic was captivated by God’s glory revealed above all else in God’s sovereign election of individuals to heaven or hell.

Is this descrition valid, or does it obscure more through over simplification?  It strikes me as making sense, but then my knowledge of Whitfeld is limited and of Wesley only slightly less so.   Is this just another example of using complex historical situations as blunt instruments to pigeon hole opponents? But, interestingly, I think the target of Olsen's critique would probably be quite happy with his typology.

What do you think?

Roger Olsen's Anti-Militant-Calvinist Manifesto

. . . is well worth a read.  He starts like this,

For many years I had no particular bone to pick with Calvinism. I required my students to read Calvin (as I still do) and Calvinist theologians, and invited Calvinists into my classes to explain their theology (as I still do). Some of my relatives are Calvinists, as have been many of my friends. Then something new began to happen. One day in the early 1990s I read an article on line in which a leading Reformed theologian stated that a person cannot be both evangelical and Arminian. He equated Arminianism with Roman Catholic theology and called it semi-Pelagianism.

If this were an isolated incident that would be one thing. But relatively quickly this sentiment about Calvinism and Arminianism began to sweep through evangelicalism. And the Calvinism being promoted as synonymous with evangelical Christianity itself was and is a particular strain of Calvinism that highlights and underscores double predestination.

You can't comment on the webpage so feel free to do so here! :-)

CS Lewis' Purgatory was about Sanctification not Justification

Roger Olsen has posted some valid thoughts about the half baked way reformers Calvin, Zwingli and Luther, and along the way wonders if CS Lewis' modified doctrine of Purgatory might provide an answer to his dilema.  This sent a number of folks in a tizzy, not least Michael Patton.  What they both miss, in my humble opinion is that Lewis' doctrine was more concerned not with "are you saved, can you come into heaven?" but with "how can you enjoy heaven if you are not yet fully sanctified?"  Which is a very different question.  I'm not saying Lewis was right about this, but if there is to be some sort of continuity between the fallen sinful human being who dies and the the glorified one in the Father's presence, there must presumably be some process by which they are transformed that maintains their identity.  Few of us believe total sanctification is acheivable this side of death (I certainly don't) but if it is the case that we will suddenly without process be transformed into our new selves at the moment of truth why bother with sanctification now?  The truth is, many of those in the half way reformed traditions are so focussed on justification that discipleship or sanctification gets passed over as a secondary matter to salvation, which is a great pity.

By the way if you have never read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, drop everythng and do it NOW!

Let me know what you think :-)

Quote of the Day: Olsen on Inerrancy

When I deny inerrancy I am not necessarily denying anything many inerrantists believe.  It may be, and I think is the case, that I am only denying that the word “inerrancy” is the most helpful or accurate term for what they and I believe in common.

 Go here for the full article, well worth a read, HT Chris T.