Underground Exiles

Augustine Refuting A Heretic

Since I’ve been on the subject of heresy in the last few days, I thought I’d dig a little deeper - to explain where heresy originates.  In order to do that, I’m going to have to cover some basics to start out.

The entire body of revealed truth, as contained in the Bible, which is inspired and God-given, is the great bulwark against all wicked power and evil supernaturalism.  Implicit faith in its teachings and approval of its precepts constitute the only, but all-sufficient, guarantee against Satanic subtlety and demonic cunning.  As long as Scriptural truth is accepted and followed, Satan and his minions are stripped of their power to harm or lead the child of God astray.  It is only when revealed truth is neglected or rejected, either in whole or in part, that the powers of darkness have opportunity to inflict damage and work havoc upon the Christian.

It’s not surprising, with that in mind, to find that Satanic and demonic assault is directed particularly and relentlessly against the Word of God, nor is it amazing to discover that attack against the veritable citadel of revealed truth is perhaps the most conspicuous and potent role played by demons.

There are two great mistakes that are made by the majority of Christians.  The first is to refuse to believe that there is any such thing as demons; for me, it brings to mind the great quote from The Usual Suspects “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”  Satan and demons are real, and that must be kept in mind.  The other great mistake is to go the route of the extreme charismatics, and blame everything on demons and the Devil.  Hence the reason I’ve put “biblical demonology” in the title; our goal is to be biblical in how we view the work of Satan and demons.  Which brings us back to our subject.

Read more…

Now that we’ve covered the necessary background to understanding salvation itself, we can move on to understanding what eternal security is, and defending the doctrine from its critics.

Before I go any further, there is a question that I think need to be answered, and then we’re going to plow into a few texts.

• Can true believers ever lose their faith completely?

This needs to be addressed.  Is continual faith through out ones life a necessary indication that one is truly “saved”?  To put the question another way, can one be a true believer and lose his faith?

My answer is categorically “no”; there are no conditions of any kind on our eternal security.  Salvation is an unconditional gift, according to Romans 11.29, and while continued faith and its fruit of good works is a manifestation of true faith, it is not a condition of it.

That being the case, then, what are the arguments for eternal security?  (I intend to answer the arguments against in a subsequent post.)  The Bible is absolutely full of affirmations that salvation can never be lost, and I’m just going to give you a sampling of these texts without attempting to be exhaustive.

Read more…

Founders Ministries | John Calvin on Evangelism and Missions.

Another good examination of John Calvin’s emphasis on evangelism and missiology, this time written by Founder’s Ministies of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Read and enjoy!

CalvinTeacherOfEvangelism.pdf (application/pdf Object).

While doing some research, I stumbled across this PDF file on John Calvin and Evangelsim.  Worth reading, and afterwards I highly doubt you can still make the argument that Calvinism and evangelism are mutually exclusive, as many well-meaning but ultimately wrong-headed individuals are doing.

I recently interviewed with a church on the South Carolina coast, and the conversation with the gentleman I would have been working with left me a little upset.

On a good day, at most I’m a four and a half point Calvinist.  Other days, I’m maybe a three-point or at most four-point Calvinist.   I still just can’t figure out where I fall on the Limited Atonement question, so I often oscillate back and forth.  I didn’t become a Calvinist by just jumping on a bandwagon; I arrived here after throwing myself against the Gospel of John and the Letter to the Romans for about 2 years.  For reasons of biblical faithfulness, I hold to a Reformed theology.

The gentleman I would have been working for on the coast is an all-out Arminian.  These two teams of Calvinist and Arminian have been holding different theological positions for several hundred years - the argument between them ain’t new by any stretch.

So as I sat and talked to this man, he was the most hostile person to Reformed theology that I’ve ever met.  I was actually taken aback at the amount of venom he spoke with; to be honest, I was shocked, since I’m not that angry about folks holding to Arminian theology.  I believe since I arrived at being a Calvinist by a lot of theological reflection, then obviously an Arminian must have as well.  I think that stands to reason.

At any rate, our conversation got me thinking down a particular vein: why can’t we get along?  I’m convinced that there are good, biblical reasons to be Arminian in your theology.  I don’t think that the Arminian position says anything the Bible doesn’t say, I just don’t think it says everything the Bible does.  Nevertheless, it’s not heresy; this is an in-family debate.  I can’t think of a single Calvinist I know personally that would berate or browbeat someone of a Wesleyan Arminian theology.  Why is it then that Calvinists have the reputation of being bullies, when it’s the Arminians I know that are hostile?  I just don’t understand it.

There are only three questions I have to have answered to be able to work with someone:

1. Do you love Jesus?
2. Do you love the Bible?
3. Do you desire to see people reached with the gospel?

As long as the answer to all three questions is yes, I can work with you, no matter what you believe about election and predestination.  As long as we both love the Bible, we can disagree, and still have a place to go back to to settle our disagreements, since we both hold Scripture to be the final authority.

Has anbody else experienced this?