John Calvin — A Lawyer not a Theologian
Dr. Donald Haynes, former director of United Methodist studies at Hood Theological Seminary, writes:
My father died of cancer when I was 12. When I was 19 and a pastor, I had the funeral for a child who was killed on a bicycle. Years later I buried a young doctor and his father who were drowned at the beach. Next, it was a young family of four killed by a drunken driver.
When national tragedies occur, such as Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 terrorist acts and the current floods in Iowa and Missouri, some preachers inevitably go on camera to interpret these events as evidence of God’s punishment.
These experiences compel me to speak out against an increasingly common belief: that our destinies are pre-determined.
Whenever we face tragedy or personal loss, we ask, “Why?” Or perhaps, “How could a good God let this happen?” We figure that either God is good, but too weak to prevent tragedies, or all-powerful but capricious in inflicting disease, pestilence, natural disasters, economic hardship and even death.
The easiest, the most logical and therefore generally accepted belief about why bad things happen is that God causes them because God is in total control. In Christian theology, this belief is called “Calvinism,” having been systematized by a 16th-century Swiss lawyer named John Calvin….
Check out, in its entirety, Dr. Donald Haynes’ most recent article for the UM portal exposing the lie of Calvinistic predestination–the doctrine of devils: United Methodist Arminianism
July 17, 2008 at 12:53 am
Facile.
July 17, 2008 at 3:14 am
Woven.
Christianity is woven throughout our entire nation, being the very fabric that makes up these islands. It keeps the judgement of God from falling on us that is why we have been preserved from the many wars that have buffeted our shores.
We need never feel that the darkness that comes upon us is permanent, for the light of Christ will always prevail by dispersing it with his glory. We need not be troubled by wicked people, for our God is surely dealing with them. I am amazed when I see Christianity in all our great institutions, I cannot begin to speak of all our workforce, builders, lawyers, nurses, miners, factory workers, who make our nation so great and confess Christ Jesus as Lord, Well, the list is never ending, where God’s people can be found, Christianity is literally everywhere. It cannot and will not ever be removed from these islands.
Do not listen to doom prophets, when you hear them say things for example, like the abortion issue, they say, “surely this will bring God’s wrath upon us all, for that wicked thing that people do to our unborn children.” Well, God’s judgement will fall on them that commit such horrific killings, but I assure you, the righteous will not be included in God’s judgement.
We remember how God’s mercy is shown to us in Genesis 18:24-26, I quote,
“Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked that be far from thee: Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? And the Lord said, if I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.”
You can see from this scripture that God will surely spare our nation, because there are more than fifty righteous Christians living here. Now Jesus has told us that this world is inhabited by the children of the kingdom and the children of the wicked, and that He will not bring final judgement on the wicked until the end of the world, because He will not destroy the wicked while the righteous are here.
At the end of the world Jesus said in St Matthew 13: 41, – 43, “The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”And so, that is how we can be confident that God will not let us be overwhelmed by these recent troubles that we face in our nation. Praise God, for every born-again believer that God has placed in our lands.
EVANGELIST BILLY BOLITHO
http://www.evangelistbillybolitho.blogspot.com
July 21, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Thanks for the comment Billy.
July 24, 2008 at 9:59 am
Just for the record, Calvinism is not the same thing as Hypercalvinism. And, after reading the entire article you’ve posted, it is obvious that Dr. Haynes doesn’t care to know the difference between the two. His argument passed them off as one and the same.
‘Hyper’ typically means ’something in addition to’ but that is not the case with Hypercalvinsim which is why C.H. Spurgeon (a Calvinist himself) claimed that Hypercalvinism is not an extension of Calvinism but another entity altogether.
“Who has the right to define Calvinism? Shall we leave it to those who attack and redefine the doctrine as though The Westminster Confession of Faith was nonexistent; or that theologians such as the Hodges, Warfield, Shedd and Machen never wrote a line in explanation and defense of the doctrine under discussion or that the preaching of preachers such as Bunyan, Spurgeon and J. C. Ryle were unknown?” (A. Allison Lewis – http://www.christianbeliefs.org)
July 24, 2008 at 10:09 am
I forgot to add the Rick Warren is not a Calvinist so to use his words as an example of it is hillarious!
“Purpose Driven Life” is a joke to anyone who holds to what had come to be called Calvinism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgJ4uV–kec&NR=1
This is a link to a 4 minute video on why we need to have a “Promise Driven Life” not “Purpose Driven” … Dr. Michael Horton is a Calvinist and is the person speaking.
July 25, 2008 at 11:31 am
This is going to be a LONG comment (I already know) and I will try to behave. One thing I can’t help but wonder why after all this time I haven’t seen many if any post about Calvinism on your blog but now that I’ve embraces it you post this…
Donald W. Haynes is a proud Methodist that considers trouble a mystery. Ok! So, why attack Calvinism? Why not Fundamentalist? That has been a running theme on your blog!
Dr. Haynes would have his pupils believe that “when national tragedies occur,” the preachers that “inevitably go on camera to interpret these events as evidence of God’s punishment” are Calvinist rather than Fundamentalist Dispensational Right-wing Futurist Televangelist looking for signs of the times to justify their eschatology!
Dr. Haynes goes so far as to claim that Calvinism is “the easiest, the most logical and therefore generally accepted belief” about God’s Sovereignty. But if that’s the case why don’t more people consider themselves to be Calvinist? More than 85% of Christians say that they are NOT Calvinist because they do not agree with the five points of Calvinism (or as I’ve come to know them as the five counter-points of Arminianism).
If I had to judge by this article alone, I’d be forced to draw “the most logical conclusion” that Dr. Haynes is a far cry from being an expert on Calvinism. His ignorance on the subject is magnified when he says things like, “Rick Warren’s amazingly popular book, The Purpose-Driven Life, is an example of popularized Calvinism.” Rick Warren is NOT a Calvinist (as I pointed out in my last comment) and his book more than proves that fact. Unlike Dr. Haynes and Rick Warren, Calvinist believe Scripture should be used to interpret Scripture and that you can’t just pick and choice a passage here and there to prove your point. (Rick Warren used Scripture out of context throughout his book to support his opinion and Haynes used less than one paragraph from Rick Warren’s entire book to support his “Calvinistic book” review.)
If Haynes were a Calvinist he’d know that “God’s Sovereignty” and “human responsibility” coexist. His straw man arguments are rather obnoxious.
Haynes obviously wants his readers believe that he is describing Calvinism when he said, “Think of making God responsible for crack babies, multiple children born to single young women and the teen moms, for whom high schools now have childcare centers!” Followed by a comforting statement that Methodism cannot go there, as if Calvinism does.
Calvinist will be the first to point out that evil is the absence of good! As fallen humans separated from God we are bad (total depravity). God is not evil and for Haynes to paint a picture in this light is unbiblical. We as human beings are very much responsible for our actions and the consequences of those actions. But then again, if Haynes were a Calvinist he’d know that God’s Sovereignty and human responsibility do in fact coexist.
But, his argument doesn’t stop there!
He uses one misunderstanding after another to characterize Calvinism as a large group of insensitive people that follow the teachings of a lawyer not a theologian. Not once does Haynes use the word “hypercalvinism” or let his audience know that he uses the word “Calvinism” when he really means hypercalvinism. Over and over again he does just that!
There is a difference between the two (as I indicated in my first comment) and just for the record John Calvin was not a hypercalvinist and not many if anyone who has ever read or adheres to the teachings of John Calvin would fit the description of a hypercalvinist.
Dr. Haynes is not describing Calvinism but hypercalvinism when he said, “If we pressed this to its logical conclusion, we would never go to a doctor, never have surgery, never worry about habits, foods or safety. If somewhere there is a ticking clock set to ring out the timing of our death, why do we make any effort to prolong our lives?”
H-Y-P-E-R-C-A-L-V-I-N-I-S-M is not biblical and it’s not Calvinism which is biblical and grounded in Scripture.
I couldn’t help but laugh at this passage… “John Wesley warned that Calvinism can tend to destroy our zeal for good works. We sing, ‘Rise up ye saints of God, have done with lesser things; give heart and soul and mind and strength to serve the King of Kings.’ Someone once said that Calvinists should sing: ‘Sit down ye saints of God, there’s nothing you can do. God is in charge of everything and has no need of you.’”
Why laugh? Because, the very next thing he said is that “Theologically, this is called ‘predestination.’” No, it is not! This is called humor. John Wesley’s warning about the tendency that Calvinism COULD destroy someone’s zeal for good works is a good reason to look into what Calvin REALLY taught and draw your OWN conclusions.
If that was Wesley’s only warning, that’s one thing but to use it to lead into a joke and into predestination is another. Especially considering almost every single conclusion he has come to so far have been hyperbolic and skewed.
I won’t try to touch on everything in his article because I’ve wasted enough time already. But, there are couple more things I’d like to scratch the surface of.
And, I’ll leave my gloves on!
Did Dr. Haynes fail to give an example of a Calvinist in the following illustration or is it just me? “We also see a rather capricious view of Calvinism when some preacher says that 9/11 was God’s punishment of America, whether the preacher is a fundamentalist who says God inflicted the punishment because of homosexuality or a liberation theology preacher who says God inflicted the punishment because of white oppression.”
He said a “fundamentalist” and “a liberation theology preacher” and then tied it into his already blurred view of “Hypercalvinism and Fundamentalist Dispensational Right-wing Futurist Televangelism” that he keeps trying to pass off as Calvinism.
Based on his prior definition of a Calvinistic books (which included Purpose-Driven Life), I think it is safe to say that Haynes really needs to go back and study Calvinism if he really wants to consider himself an Armininian. Especially after he said, “With doctrines like this on our television screens, and in the Calvinistic books being studied in United Methodist Sunday school classes and small groups, this old Wesleyan feels compelled to raise again the banner of our Armininian theology.” From experience, I will be the first to point out that it is hard pressed to find a Calvinistic book in the Family Christian book store and (other than Sproul, MacArthur, and Piper) it is hard to find Calvinist on your television screens. So, that goes to show that the “doctrines like this” that Dr. Haynes is mentioning are that of “Fundamentalist Dispensational Right-wing Futurist Televangelist” not Calvinist.
“Methodism does not believe in Deism!” That’s a good thing. The tragedy is that Dr. Haynes (a Methodist) passes hypercalvinism off as Calvinism and chooses to remain blind about how Amazing God’s Grace truly is.
I’ll end on a lighter note …
You are a dear friend. And, we may disagree on some things, but you would be astonished at how much we have in common now (verse even 3 months ago). Our past are very differnt and so are some of our views todays but we worship the One True God of the Bible and have two amazing friends in common. Both of which are probably terrifed that me and you won’t be able to get-along long enough to make it to the front of the church (arm-in-arm) without finding something to fight about! I’m still learning and growing (along the lines of sactification … I haven’t arrived yet and won’t on this side of Heaven).
Please forgive me for our past disagreements and if you get a chance I’d love to read about your eschatology views in one of your next blogs … I’m starting to appreciate Post-trib and Ammilinialism more these days (now tht I understand Exegetical Eschatology)!
July 26, 2008 at 11:35 am
Hey Jessica. Thanks for the thought-filled comment. I already have a couple of posts listed under the eschatology category that express some of my views, but I’ll probably blog a few more eschatological posts in the near future. Perhaps we may actually agree on some of that, especially if, as you say, you are not an adherent of Premillennialism.
I also appreciate your passion for theology and theological discourse. The Lord be with you…
August 12, 2008 at 2:19 pm
http://www.pbministries.org/articles/Spurgeon/a_defense_of_calvinism.htm
This is link to “A Defense of Calvinism” by C.H. Spurgeon