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Thursday, October 30, 2014

Arminians and Calvinists on inerrancy


As I've noted on more than one occasion, Arminians–especially in academia–have a center of gravity that's typically to the left of Calvinists. It's interesting to see Ben Witherington admit this, as well as Blomberg's explanation:
6) Inerrancy is an issue that seems to be more of an issue among Reformed Evangelicals than Arminian ones. Why do you think that is? 

The classic exponent of comparatively recent American inerrantism was B. B. Warfield, a Princeton theologian and Presbyterian and Reformed scholar of about a century ago. Mark Noll, a prolific American evangelical church historian, has pointed out that the more Calvinistic wing of Christianity valued higher education and theological education earlier and more widely in the settling of American than the more Wesleyan-Arminian wing. And these debates tend to go on among scholars much more so than among the average Christian, unless those Christians have been provoked by scholars they trust into making it a big issue. That doesn’t mean inerrancy isn’t a very important topic, but it is at least, I think, a partial answer to the question of why it is more of an issue among Reformed than among Arminian evangelicals. 
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2014/10/22/blombergs-can-we-still-believe-the-bible-part-one/

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