Christianity,  Theology/Bible

PBS profles “new Calvinism” and the SBC

PBS’s “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly” recently profiled New Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention. They focus on Sojourn Community Church here in Louisville and include interviews with Daniel Montgomery, Steve Lemke, Albert Mohler, and Adam Greenway. Watch above or read here.

7 Comments

  • Matthew Abate

    There’s only so much that can be explored in less than seven minutes. I found the story to lean slightly toward the concerns of the professor from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Calvinism of any stripe goes against the prevailing cultural tide of secular humanism…always has and always will. It’s a theological system that clearly places man in a second position.

  • James Bradshaw

    Calvinism is tidy, I will give you that. It neatly explains most theological problems (such as the problem of suffering and evil) through its five points, each of which buttresses the other.

    Here’s the thing: the God of Calvinism can’t really be said to be omnibenevolent or all-“loving”, at least in terms of humanity. He doesn’t love everyone: He created some (most?) of humanity only to condemn them. That is: He created them (along with Satan) merely to display His ability to punish them eternally, as it is said this gives Him glory in some fashion. If this is an expression of “love”, I’d say that the word has been so stripped of any meaning we could relate to that it is incoherent. We can only say “God is we know not what”, and we worship Him solely out of fear of refraining from doing so (as if pleas for mercy would carry any weight with such a Being!).

  • Timothy Keene

    It is slightly misleading to say that “Byassee says that Wright’s work also offers a massive revision to traditional Protestant faith” when what he said was “Wright’s goal in his teaching and writing is to massively revise the way Christianity has been articulated for generations.” It is the articulation rather than the faith which is revised.

    It is also problematic for Byassee to argue that “The church has misread Paul so severely, it seems, that no one fully understood the gospel from the time of the apostle to the time a certain British scholar started reading Paul in Greek in graduate school”, when that is equivalent to what Protestants were saying in the 16 century.

    Wright confirms a huge amount of the traditional understanding of the church. What is new is that he provides a way of understanding it that makes it easier to see how it emerges from the text of the Bible. Surely this is a good thing. Two benefits are that it makes it easier for us to read the Bible and that it makes it easier to see how the Bible might deal with issues of today rather than feeding the Bible through issues of a bygone era.

  • Suzanne McCarthy

    “@rachelheldevans Regarding homosexuality, if you’re right, I’m hurting people’s feelings. If you’re wrong, you’re leading people to hell.”

    Just had to comment on this tweet and hell. I was raised PB and the sin against the holy spirit was being a priest, as in clergy of any kind. So, as PB, one could say,

    “Regarding having clergy in your churches, if you’re right, I’m hurting people’s feelings. If you’re wrong, you’re leading people to hell.”

    http://www.stempublishing.com/authors/darby/ECCLESIA/01003E.html

    People can say anything at all. Once you realize that, it is very freeing.

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