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Wednesday, January 11, 2006

"Calvinism's Unassuring Assurance"?

***QUOTE***

I'm monitoring several Calvinist blog sites and continue, sadly, to note how Calvinism simply and clearly does NOT put Jesus at the center. Note the discussion by Even May about assurance of salvation. Note how he talks about salvation and assurance of salvation, but...no Jesus! How tragic.

Link: Triablogue.

It is sufficient that I believe I’m saved, and that I have adequate grounds for so believing. Or, to recast this in negative terms, it’s sufficient that I have no good grounds for doubting my salvation.

http://cyberbrethren.typepad.com/cyberbrethren/2006/01/calvinisms_unas.html

***END-QUOTE***

i) First off, I want to warmly commend Dr. McCain for his excellent taste in reading material (“I'm monitoring several Calvinist blog sites”). At least he knows where the action is.

ii) He attributes to Evan (not “Even”) something that I (Steve Hays) said.

iii) In the post which he hyperlinks, I was not attempting to lay out the grounds of assurance in Reformed theology. Rather, I was responding to an antinomian critic of Reformed theology. My replies were pegged to his objections. That’s how polemical theology works. Your replies parallel the objections you’re responding to. A pretty elementary point.

It’s true that my reply wasn’t centered on Jesus. That’s because my opponent wasn’t centered on Jesus. I was tracking his own line of reasoning.

iv) Notice that Dr. McCain doesn't show where my reasoning is fallacious. Instead, we have his formalistic appeal to Christocentricity. All he ever does is to talk "about" putting Christ front and center without actually doing so.

BTW, this is a typical defect of sacramentalism. If you think that you’ve localized Christ in a wafer, like a fly in amber, then the way to be Christocentric is to dispense the communion elements. You end up with vending machine piety. Just pop your God-pill once a week for your regular dose of spiritual vitamins and minerals. Far from being Christocentric, it’s quite perfunctory.

v) As a matter of fact, I have discussed the grounds of assurance from my own starting-point in a recent post.

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2005/10/election-assurance.html

You will see that the discussion is Christocentric from start to finish.

vi) It would also be nice to see if Dr. McCain, who’s very fond of attacking others, is capable of offering a positive alternative. Does Lutheranism have a doctrine of assurance? Does its version improve on Calvinism?

I trust that Dr. McCain will not refer the reader to the sacraments since a Lutheran can be a validly baptized church member and regular communicant of the Eucharist, validly administered, yet still be a nominal believer or eventual apostate. The pioneers of liberal Bible criticism were Lutherans from the cradle of Lutheranism.

3 comments:

  1. And I'm equally impressed that you are such an avid follower of my Cyberbrethren blog site. Your near instantaneous response to my comments tells me you love me, and that warms my heart immeasurably.

    The amusing flapping about in your response was also entertaining.

    The bottom line is that it remains quite disturbing that you Calvinist chaps can carry on conversations about "assurance of salvation" or "election" without mentioning Jesus.

    But that is pretty much par for the course from you sort of Calvinists, you love to listen to yourselves blather on with all sorts of arguments, but somehow, somewhere, you leave Jesus behind.

    But that's also typical...since Jesus is stuck up in heaven now anyway, incapable of being present with us.

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  2. The least he could have done was spell my name correctly...

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  3. You are right in saying this is a sad thing. If you want to monitor a different bread of Calvinism I recommend http://www.desiringgod.org/ the ministry of John Piper.

    I praise God that you want Jesus at the Center, I can't think of anything more important.

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