Tag: Jerry Walls

Methodists and Roman Catholics Together

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

Looks like Jason and the Callers need to rethink their call to Protestants. Their pontiff just declared hostilities between Protestants and Roman Catholics to be sin:

Catholics and Evangelicals should not wait for theologians to reach agreement before praying and working together, Pope Francis recently told a group of Pentecostal Anglican bishops in Rome.

To continue to focus on differences between Christian denominations is “sinning against Christ’s will,” the pontiff said, because “our shared baptism is more important than our differences.”

In the light of Bryan Cross’ comment about the authority of the magisterium, I wonder if he needs to reformat his Call to Communion to conform to Francis’ understanding of Protestants:

The Church does not lose her authority when her claims don’t make sense to us, because otherwise there would no “seeking understanding” to “faith seeking understanding.” Rationalism would be true; the Church would have ‘authority’ only when we agree with what she teaches. Rather, when the Church, exercising her authentic teaching authority, teaches something that does not “make sense” to us, it is we who must trust and seek to grow in our understanding, not the Magisterium that in such cases must instead conform to our understanding.

Still, it sounds like Jerry Walls is making it easier for Methodists to break bread with the Bishop of Rome:

This Sunday (Nov. 2), on what is known as All Souls’ Day, Roman Catholics around the world will be praying for loved ones who have died and for all those who have passed from this life to the next. They will be joined by Jerry Walls.

“I got no problem praying for the dead,” Walls says without hesitation — which is unusual for a United Methodist who attends an Anglican church and teaches Christian philosophy at Houston Baptist University. . . .

Walls is a leading exponent of an effort to convince Protestants — and maybe a few Catholics — that purgatory is a teaching they can, and should, embrace. And he’s having a degree of success, even among some evangelicals, that hasn’t been seen in, well, centuries.

“I would often get negative reactions,” Walls said about his early efforts, starting more than a decade ago, to pitch purgatory to Protestants. “But when I started explaining it, it didn’t cause a lot of shock.”

Now if only Walls could be as generous about limited atonement.

Can Arminians Enjoy "The Wire"?

Published on by D. G. Hart42 Comments

Thanks to the video going round on the world-wide interweb, I’ve been thinking about aspects of Calvinism that had been safely buried in old files from seminary. This is the relationship between Arminianism and Calvinism and the old objections to Reformed Protestant teachings on election, the atonement, and divine wrath. The video above by Jerry Walls is quite clear in presenting an argument that Calvinists don’t believe God is love. The implication is that Arminianism is superior (and true) because it teaches that God is love. Arminians really take John 3:16 seriously.

Here’s an instance of the complaint against Calvinism from Roger Olson:

Arminian: “You Calvinists don’t really believe in God’s love.”

Calvinist: “Oh, but we do. You’re so wrong! The Bible is clear about God being love.”

Arminian: “But you don’t believe God loves all people, so how can you believe, as the Bible says, that God is love?”

Calvinist: “God loves all people in some ways but only some people in all ways.”

Arminian: “Uh, you seemed to be in a trance as you said that. Are you sure you didn’t just hear that somewhere and are repeating it like a mantra—without really thinking about what you’re saying?”

Calvinist: “No, that’s what I really believe!”

Arminian: “How does God love those he predestined, foreordained, to hell?”

Calvinist: “He gives them many temporal blessings.”

Arminian: “You mean he gives them a little bit of heaven to go to hell in.”

I can certainly appreciate Olson’s point. One of the harder aspects of Calvinism to fathom is the notion of election. It is not a consoling doctrine if you are looking for charity and equality as most humans conceive of these ideals.

At the same time, I can’t imagine Arminians with their view of divine love ever convincing the likes of Woody Allen that God is love. Granted, Calvinism wouldn’t be persuasive either. But it is not as if secular folks like Allen don’t notice other features of existence that give pause to believing in a loving God. Human suffering is evidence that in this world not every human being experiences a slice of heaven before receiving their ultimate reward. Would Arminians really have us believe that a loving God makes sense of disparities on both sides of death?

For instance, if God is love, why do the penguins have to march and swim as far as they do to reproduce?

Or, if God is love, why does he allow people like Jimmy, Bunk, Omar, and Stringer Bell to live in as dysfunctional a place as 1990s Baltimore?

Or, if God is love, how do Arminians make sense of what Joshua and the Israelites did to the inhabitants of Jericho and Ai?

Everywhere you look, we don’t see a “wonderful day in the neighborhood.” So maybe the current crop of Arminian promoters need to switch from PBS to HBO where they could ponder circumstances that suggest a dark side of God, a deity who so loves the world that he sent his beloved son to bleed and die on a cross.