Friday, November 19, 2010

See Bobby Grow

This popped up on the site meter:

Bobby Grow

I would like to steer you clear of the Triablogue crew. They are certainly intelligent sharp cookies, but they are roundly centered in the ‘kind of Calvinism’ that this blog severely opposes in orientation.

http://evangelicalcalvinist.com/2010/10/13/my-evangelical-calvinist-testimony/#comment-1914

I’m not suggesting that Steve doesn’t argue forcefully and cogently, but it’s exactly that that in my mind does not substantiate his Calvinism (his logical/causal reasoning) — and he thinks it does.

http://evangelicalcalvinist.com/2010/10/13/my-evangelical-calvinist-testimony/#comment-1932


A few quick comments:

1. It’s true that at a substantive level, my five-point Calvinism, with its supralapsarian theodicy and all, is probably the antithesis of Bobby’s Barthian/Amyraldian synthesis, filtered through Kendall/Torrance/Bloesch et al.

2. But in another respect I find his comment a bit odd. From what I can tell, one of his primary targets is the Confessional Calvinism espoused by Scott Clark. However, Triablogue is a very different beast from Heidelblog.

3. Apropos (2), methodologically speaking, Bobby’s blog shares an ironic degree of affinity with Heidelblog.

Like Scott Clark (as well as Richard Muller), Bobby’s penchant is to cast the major issues in terms of historical theology rather than exegetical theology. He has an essentially Hegelian methodology. The history of ideas–in their dialectical refraction.

By contrast, I’ve offered far more exegetical support for my theology than I see Bobby doing on his blog. His master’s thesis has an exegetical orientation, but that’s hardly front and center on his blog.

4. It’s true that I sometimes argue on purely “logical” grounds, but that’s chiefly when I’m fielding “logical” objections to Calvinism by Arminians.

7 comments:

  1. Not to mention that not all of us who post on Triablogue are named Steve Hays. Nor is every topic we discuss about Calvinism or Arminianism.

    But where would we be if we couldn't generalize everything? :-D

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  2. No, Peter, you're just a character in my cosmic dream. The moment I awake, you will go poof!

    (Thankfully, I do have certain recurring dreams.)

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  3. It’s true that I sometimes argue on purely “logical” grounds, but that’s chiefly when I’m fielding “logical” objections to Calvinism by Arminians.

    Steve is much more charitable to Arminians than they are to him. See, he just admitted Arminians have logical objections to Calvinism :-)

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  4. Geeesh, supra! Grrrr, I'm infra!

    Now I am really really suspicious!

    But, one has to agree that your flavor of Christianity is Biblical, or so it seems:


    Luk 6:26 "Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

    :)

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  5. Triablogue is on his blogroll.

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  6. I went back and forth with Bobby for awhile some months back. One thing I noticed is how amazing it is that the seminary professors he had just happened to have the exact same approach to biblical doctrine that Bobby now doggedly propounds. What are the odds of that? Amazing.

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  7. @The Puritan, just saw this. I don't understand how or why that seems strange to you? When someone goes to seminary and bible college (or any higher education), the students often reflect at least certain aspects of their teachers' moods. In fact it would be weird if they didn't; what are you paying them for? That said, I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to. I pretty distinct from my seminary profs at this point. But ten years has passed since then. Even then though, I had already moved pretty far away, because of Barth/TFT from my mentor, Ron Frost (to an extent). We still share the same perspective about who God is; what the real reason was for the Reformation (which I certainly was alerted to by him and his RESEARCH) etc. Anyway, your comment is kind of strange to me.

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