Saturday, July 7, 2012

Recanting Calvinism

This youtube clip is by former Calvinist, Steven L. Hitchcock, and author of "Recanting Calvinism" and I thought that he did a nice presentation on Romans chapter 9. In fact, he has several youtube clips, offering his explanation on why he recanted from Calvinism:

http://www.examiningcalvinism.com/Audio3.html

I have offered my own thoughts on the book of Romans here:

http://www.examiningcalvinism.com/Pauline_Epistles.html

My next post will be a book review of "Calvinism: A Road to Nowhere", which is the author's explanation of why he felt that Calvinist arguments seemed to have a logical disfunction. Part of that disfunction brings to mind something that Calvinists sometimes will say: "Live like an Arminian, but think like a Calvinist." Having heard it espoused by my own Calvinist brother in Law, I wondered, "Why should an 'alleged' truth function, or misfunction, like that? So that will be something that I keep an eye on, as I review that book in my next Blog post.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Help I have a problem with a hardcore Calvinist, who happens to be my husband! He just turned into one, through a book by some guy named Erickson and listening to a guy named MacArthur. But I have no way to prove him wrong especially when they said that in John 3:16 the word "world" refers to something else (the elect) and in the passage in Peter that God is not willing that no one should perish but that all come to repentance, he says that "all" doesn't mean "all" but just the elect, How do you prove someone wrong when they say that it says something else that it doesn't say there??, what do I do?.

Unknown said...

Hello Maranatha,

It's very sad. I, too, have a family member who was duped by Calvinism. His perspective was one in which his peers were heavy handed in guiding him toward Calvinism, and ultimately he concluded that the Reformers like Spurgeon, Calvin and Luther could not possibly be wrong. He also listened to the very confident teachings of MacArthur, Phil Johnson and John Piper, and similarly concluded that they could not be wrong. Basically, he was counting heads. However, the good news is that they are wrong, and prayer changes things. So I recommend spiritual warfare, not against your husband, but against the dark influences of Calvinism and then for God's conviction of the sin of Calvinism. All that you need to do is pray, and show patient and long suffering grace, just as Paul stated, and know that the battle is not yours, but God's.

Richard Coords said...

Here is a link to the history of Calvinism, in which you can trace the demonic roots of Calvinism from Socrates (and his "familiar") -> Plato -> Gnostics -> Augustine -> John Calvin.

http://www.examiningcalvinism.com/files/Articles/History.html

Here is a link to an article on John 3:16 that you mentioned.

http://www.examiningcalvinism.com/files/Gospels/John3_16.html

Richard Coords said...

And there is one other thing. There is something called "The Cage Stage." It's when a person is first shown Calvinism, and the "fruit" of the Calvinist tree is demonstrated to being reckless arrogance. Even Calvinists are aware of this. Here is an article from Calvinist, James White, on the subject, in which he admits to this phenomena:

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php/2007/09/13/how-to-avoid-cage-stage-itis/