To paraphrase Theodore Beale, if you aren't convinced that Arminians worship the god of this world rather than the genuine Christian God, you're probably not paying attention to their words:
Wesley's Jesus is a serial killer. He is a murderer, a slayer of children. The more I read of what Charles Wesley has written, the more I am convinced that he worships Satan in the cloak of Jesus, the more it is readily apparent that he worships an antichrist. If Wesley worships the god that he believes is responsible for committing such havoc throughout history for its own mysterious reasons, how can one possibly conclude that the man is anything other than a grievously deceived Satan worshipper?
This is rather confusing. The Old Testament specifically speaks of God using natural disasters to punish people (i.e. one time he made the ground open up and swallow a bunch of Israelite rebels), and I assume you agree with that?
ReplyDeleteAlso, you write that "Wesley worships the god that he believes is responsible for committing such havoc throughout history for its own mysterious reasons..."
Isn't that what you also do? Worship a God that you believe decreed every havoc throughout history, for His own sovereign reasons?
I believe he's making a bit of a tu quoque. He's attributing to Arminians what they themselves say about Calvin.
ReplyDeleteScarlet, read the post again, but this time with more sarcasm :-)
ReplyDeleteYeah, reading it as satire makes much more sense. Although, I do have to say that the point doesn't make complete sense.
ReplyDeleteFor Wesley taught that God causes natural disasters as judgment, rather than claiming that God causes sin. (Causing judgment versus causing sin - two different things).
Skarlet,
ReplyDeleteYou missed the allusion to this post:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/03/john-pipers-murderous-god.html
Steve, yes, I hadn't seen the voxday post before posting my first comment, but I did have a chance to read some relevant portions before posting my second comment. I think the guy's clearly wrong - we worship the same God.
ReplyDeleteWe worship the same monster :-)
ReplyDeleteTheodore was, I thought, a bit smarter than this post implies. Perhaps he's clinging to Arminianism before he finally slides into agnosticism?
ReplyDeleteA God who doesn't know all because He is limited by occurrences in time isn't omniscient.
A God who cannot act in the face of evil isn't omnipotent.
A God who will not act to thwart evil cannot claim omnibenevolence.
I'm also unsure why the God of John Piper (a God whose "fingers" tore across the landscape of America to render a few thousand people homeless) is so much more awful than the God of the Old Testament who saw fit to render a few thousand women and infants dead with the edge of a sword. Now I KNOW Ted's read the Bible, hasn't he?
That being said, I do sympathize with his empathetic distaste for Piper's sermon. Its tone was less "this was God's will for some ultimate better good" than "sometimes ripping up human life and property is just a jolly good time for Him and who knows why and you best not question it ... so there".
James,
ReplyDeleteJust to be clear: he is not an Arminian; he self-identifies as both a Pelagian and an Open Theist, and the two are not synonymous with Arminianism. He explicitly stated in one post that he cannot be called an Arminian. Failure to make these distinctions will not make for good dialogue.
>>That being said, I do sympathize with his empathetic distaste for Piper's sermon. Its tone was less "this was God's will for some ultimate better good" than "sometimes ripping up human life and property is just a jolly good time for Him and who knows why and you best not question it ... so there".<<
ReplyDeletePiper has explicitly preached the former--and many times--to my knowledge, but has never, to my knowledge, preached the latter.
Your analysis of his "tone," in these occasional comments, is subjective and not worthy of much, if any, attention.
Unless you feel your "tone" analysis is definitive of something.