Respectable Arminian theologians?

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Stope

Stope

Puritan Board Sophomore
For the first time ever I found myself in a concersation with a brother who seem to really know the Word, yet he was an Arminianism with a focus on previent grace... I was taken back because I just assumed He was Biblical in His understanding of unconditional election. It caused me to wonder and ask you, are there any respectable Arminianism theologians?

Also, in passing he said to me that nobody believed like Calvin when he said "Calvin (and augustine before him - but by nobody for the first 600 years of the early church)"... I havent read much back them is he correct?
 
There are very few "pure" Arminian theologians, if by that we mean Arminius as the standard. I guess Roger Olson would come closest.

Thomas Oden was a fine scholar on the church fathers.
 
C. Matthew McMahon said:
He's probably regurgitating something he heard from some other higher level Arminian.
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I don't think this is really fair or charitable. You cannot really know this. It's not impossible to be intelligent and Arminian (even if you're wrong).

Stope said:
Also, in passing he said to me that nobody believed like Calvin when he said "Calvin (and augustine before him - but by nobody for the first 600 years of the early church)"...
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As Jacob noted, all this depends on what you mean by Arminian. Let's suppose you only mean denying unconditional predestination. If so, there are a lot of folks (perhaps the majority of Church history) that fall into this camp. I'm somewhat leery of trying to co-opt some of the Fathers as teaching justification sola fide and other doctrines. Not all they say is necessarily inconsistent with it. These just weren't questions they were asking and so to force them to answer them is wrongheaded (in my opinion). Nor, perhaps contrary to the sentiments of others, do I think that not believing sola fide makes you doomed to hell; if it is justification by faith alone, then it is not justification by believing justification by faith alone.

In terms of the historical point, he might be right. I haven't seen a lot of evidence for double, unconditional predestination in unambiguous terms before Augustine. That doesn't mean its wrong; just a historical point. Also, I don't think Augustine taught justification sola fide. Sola gratia, yes, but not faith alone. Perhaps one believes that sola gratia entails sola fide, and that Augustine was just simply inconsistent-- fair. My own two cents, also: bringing up the fact that the Latin verb iustificare means in Latin literally to make righteous (iustum-facere) I don't think fully explains what continued as the Church's position for so long. After all, the Greek east still read the Greek and they are almost more inclined to deny justification sola fide than the West.
 
Justified said:
I don't think this is really fair or charitable.
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Why do you think I said what I did? Do you think I was purposefully being unfair or uncharitable, or do I have something else in mind? Or are you being unfair or uncharitable?

Or is it that I've heard that argument before, and I KNOW why he's saying it?
 
True story: two students in a class at WTS were discussing an Arminian theologian who had recently died: they were trying to recall his denominational affiliation. The professor interjected in his broadest Scottish brogue: "He's Presbyterian now."
 
You might try looking to a Methodist or Wesleyan seminary or college to find men who confess devotion to Christ, but who (as we think of it) put too much credence in the power of the human will.

Ben Witherington http://benwitherington.com/ and Victor P. Hamilton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_P._Hamilton are respected scholars of NT and OT respectively at Absury Theological Seminary, an historically Wesleyan-connected institution. I don't know much about the former man aside from respectful references to him by evangelicals (in the broadest sense), but the latter has commentaries in the NICOT series (Genesis, 2vols) and Baker Academic (Exodus). I have the first set, which is excellent; and the second has high praise.

School affiliation will not tell you everything, and might not tell you enough. The men I mention are not in the business of Systematic Theology, but biblical exegesis. The better they are at that, the more we can't help but like them, regardless of how they come out on Arminianism.
 
Contra_Mundum said:
You might try looking to a Methodist or Wesleyan seminary or college to find men who confess devotion to Christ, but who (as we think of it) put too much credence in the power of the human will.

Ben Witherington http://benwitherington.com/ and Victor P. Hamilton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_P._Hamilton are respected scholars of NT and OT respectively at Absury Theological Seminary, an historically Wesleyan-connected institution. I don't know much about the former man aside from respectful references to him by evangelicals (in the broadest sense), but the latter has commentaries in the NICOT series (Genesis, 2vols) and Baker Academic (Exodus). I have the first set, which is excellent; and the second has high praise.

School affiliation will not tell you everything, and might not tell you enough. The men I mention are not in the business of Systematic Theology, but biblical exegesis. The better they are at that, the more we can't help but like them, regardless of how they come out on Arminianism.
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I think Keener is there whom I have found to be excellent... I wonder where he stands
 
It seems that the philosophy camp might have the upper hand on us, but those who exegete the Bible have the upper hand as Calvinists. At the end of the day, we must side with those who correctly divide the scriptures even if those truths are hard to embrace.
 
Stope said:
It caused me to wonder and ask you, are there any respectable Arminianism theologians?
Click to expand...

Some Arminian theologians that I have enjoyed reading are:

Roger Olson
J. Matthew Pinson
F. Leroy Forlines
Robert E. Picirilli

The last three listed are Free Will Baptists and are not Arminian in the Wesleyan sense.

(Disclaimer: by saying I've enjoyed reading these guys is not to say I agree with their views.)
 
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ReformedReidian said:
Explain. I"ve enjoyed some of his commentarires.
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What I mean is I LOVE Keener! I too have found his works, on many many subjects, to be ultra helpful and extremely edifying. But, to be totally honest, I cant even begin to see how a person who has truly given a reading of the Bible any significant time can truly arrive at the place where they think that there would be anything less than unconditional election...
 
Stope said:
What I mean is I LOVE Keener! I too have found his works, on many many subjects, to be ultra helpful and extremely edifying. But, to be totally honest, I cant even begin to see how a person who has truly given a reading of the Bible any significant time can truly arrive at the place where they think that there would be anything less than unconditional election...
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That would probably be most of the Christian world today. Reformed folk are in a minority.
 
Turning back the clock a ways, the Methodist theologian Richard Watson appears to have been held in relatively high esteem by some Calvinistic theologians. He appears to have been more orthodox than Adam Clarke, another Methodist who wrote a commentary on the whole Bible that has been reprinted many times through the years.
 
Norman Geisler is a name I'm surprised has not been mentioned. His taxonomy of Arminian and Calvinist views is quite misleading, but nevertheless, he is a very well-read scholar, and is generally respected.
 
Stope said:
But, to be totally honest, I cant even begin to see how a person who has truly given a reading of the Bible any significant time can truly arrive at the place where they think that there would be anything less than unconditional election...
Click to expand...

I think, though certainly erroneous, it makes sense to a degree. If we approach God from the standpoint of human weakness and limitation, we try to reconcile God's sovereignty with human responsibility and when we have trouble doing so, we start to sacrifice one for the other. Reformed theology generally accepts both with open arms regardless of our inability to fully comprehend these truths. On the other hand, the Reformed (used loosely) sometimes fall into the same problem as the Arminian camp when they start to think God is subject to their logical limitations and reason away human responsibility for God's sovereignty (e.g. Tobias Crisp).
 
Some Calvinistic Baptists who have tended to place more emphasis on hoping for revival have appreciated the writings of A.W. Tozer and Leonard Ravenhill. But they were moreso preachers than theologians, especially the revivalist Ravenhill. But at the time they were publishing their works, they were among the rare writers who confronted the fluff and nonsense among evangelicals head on. For a good while, contemporary popular level Calvinistic writers were few and far between. (That's one reason why A.W. Pink's books were so popular around the 50s-80s, even among non-Calvinists.)

On the philosophy/apologetics front, Ravi Zacharias is another one. I haven't listened to him in years, but I do know that he is a ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance, as was Tozer.

I haven't included dispensational writers from Dallas Seminary and some other places. That's because many of them, especially from what I'll term the first and second generation, were "4 pointers" who did affirm unconditional election, however inconsistently. Whether or not such people are in any sense Calvinists has been debated ad infinitum. Since the OP asked about those who reject unconditional election, I didn't include them. Geisler comes out of that camp, but despite the fact that he calls himself a "moderate Calvinist," (quite inaccurately, as Rev. Keister noted) from what I recall he doesn't affirm unconditional election in the way that Ryrie or Lightner would. I don't think that the latter two would write something like "God is trying to save as many as he can" as Geisler did.
 
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Pilgrim said:
Some Calvinistic Baptists who have tended to place more emphasis on hoping for revival have appreciated the writings of A.W. Tozer and Leonard Ravenhill. But they were moreso preachers than theologians, especially the revivalist Ravenhill. But at the time they were publishing their works, they were among the rare writers who confronted the fluff and nonsense among evangelicals head on. For a good while, contemporary popular level Calvinistic writers were few and far between. (That's one reason why A.W. Pink's books were so popular around the 50s-80s, even among non-Calvinists.)

On the philosophy/apologetics front, Ravi Zacharias is another one. I haven't listened to him in years, but I do know that he is a ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance, as was Tozer.

I haven't included dispensational writers from Dallas Seminary and some other places. That's because many of them, especially from what I'll term the first and second generation, were "4 pointers" who did affirm unconditional election, however inconsistently. Whether or not such people are in any sense Calvinists has been debated ad infinitum. Since the OP asked about those who reject unconditional election, I didn't include them. Geisler comes out of that camp, but despite the fact that he calls himself a "moderate Calvinist," (quite inaccurately, as Rev. Keister noted) from what I recall he doesn't affirm unconditional election in the way that Ryrie or Lightner would. I don't think that the latter two would write something like "God is trying to save as many as he can" as Geisler did.
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Revnhill makes sense but i didnt realize (i will say, I have been blessed much by reading him)... And I had no idea that Tozer was as well (he too has been a blessing to me - mainly in my younger years)... And it makes sense that Zacarias is, but never really thought about it...

That said, yesterday at the book shop I saw a 3 vol set of Arminus' (I think it was a systematic theology?), and it had me thinking, and now pose to you: does he have good things to say? As all I have ever heard about him was his views of God's sovereignty
 
Doubtless, what you saw was a collection of Arminius' "Works." He was a seminary professor, and minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. He obviously had (N.B. the Remonstrants) and continues to have people who honor his memory, methods, and the movement built upon his influence.

As for mining him for truth, you can do the same with D.Wilson. Or G.Boyd, the open theist. Or R.Warren/B.Hybels, the church-growth gurus. Perhaps, even the pope. The question is: why? When you have limited time and energy, where would you personally be best invested?

It's one thing to check out someone's work for research purposes, coming in with a critical regard. But we know of (and are pleased about) people who come to read Calvin for themselves, and are moved away from an inculcated auto-revulsion, to admiration. D.Wilson has a way with words also, and yet we regard such a gift as a snare.

Just as you have been drawn to Reformed theology based on a trajectory of life and thought; be aware that you may not have found your settled home--though it could be so if you make it so. Your curiosity may also spark an unhealthy interest (as we here would term it) in an alternate theological direction. I'm not picking on you; it could happen to anyone, including me.

I hope you are not half-way through a journey, of which Reformed theology is but a stage. But it is more dangerous for a man of fertile mind to ignore the bypaths that many other men--not so different from himself--have taken. Paths you may not believe (today) could ever appeal to you. Until you have tasted them. Some men simply fail to consider the possibility.

There is in theological inquiry an element of self-discovery. This is reflected in the insight found in Calvin's first lines of his Institutes, "We know God by that same first act by which we know ourselves." Some men have found their inner Calvin or Luther through seeking God. Others have found their inner papist, or Barth, or Arminius. Even an inner atheist, at times.

The heart of a man... "who can know it?" Don't assume you know who you are; pray you will be settled forever where you should be, and that this Reformed theology would continue to be the taste of green pastures and still waters for your soul. And as you read Arminius, or D.Wilson, or J.Osteen, or B.Ehrman, pray you will see accurately the dangers others see.

J.G.Machen went to Germany to enhance his learning and preparation. He sat under the teaching of the liberal scholar Wilhelm Herrmann, whose influence was incredible in those days. Machen was spellbound by the man, who displayed an enviable piety. He taught his students devotionally, and Machen confessed in letters he was nearly carried away.

But he found his footing, somehow; it was surely by the grace of God. And in the end, he shook off the rhetorical and philosophical influence of the man and of that whole modernist movement, the end whereof was bleakness (as K.Barth also discovered; but he ended up co-creating neo-modernism with a new generation of theologians, rather than returning to the old-paths orthodoxy).

I'm neither encouraging nor discouraging you from reading Arminius. I'm talking to you about human nature, about the wisdom of a bit-and-bridle on the charger that is your intellect. There is a kind of man who dispenses with all discipline, and who rides out into the wilderness determined to be led only by his impulses and instincts. A few such men return.

Meditate upon the metaphor.
 
Stope said:
Revnhill makes sense but i didnt realize (i will say, I have been blessed much by reading him)... And I had no idea that Tozer was as well (he too has been a blessing to me - mainly in my younger years)... And it makes sense that Zacarias is, but never really thought about it...

That said, yesterday at the book shop I saw a 3 vol set of Arminus' (I think it was a systematic theology?), and it had me thinking, and now pose to you: does he have good things to say? As all I have ever heard about him was his views of God's sovereignty
Click to expand...

The 3 vols may have been the works of Arminius, some or all of which may be online in some form. I'm more familiar with Wesleyan Arminianism than I am of the "Reformed" or "Classical" Arminianism of Arminius. There are some differences, and maybe not just on sanctification, with Wesleyan's traditional emphasis on entire sanctification and second blessing. But perhaps someone else here can provide some help. It also depends on what you're trying to do. I don't know that picking up something like that would be advisable unless you're wanting to dig really deep. There is a lot of Arminian stuff online now as well. [EDIT: See Rev. Buchanan's post above. By "dig really deep" I basically meant someone pursuing a doctorate in theology. Most people who have to work a regular job (and even many pastors) and have family responsibilities don't have time to really dig into that kind of stuff, especially when there is plenty of material to study from your own tradition, assuming you have a settled one at this point.]

But one thing to know is that the "real" Arminians (whether Wesleyan or Classical) actually believe in original sin as well as maybe a form of depravity that isn't total but is closer to that than the average non-Calvinist preacher. They get around this with their teaching of prevenient grace, which is universal instead of particular. It is a calling that is not not necessarily effectual and is resistable, (as opposed to the Calvinist irresistible grace and effectual calling) but they nevertheless teach that man cannot come to God without the aid of the Holy Spirit. Early on in my walk I attended a Wesleyan church where the pastor was really closer to Calvinism in his doctrine and practice than he was to the average Southern Baptist preacher. He simply couldn't get around the warning passages in Hebrews and couldn't embrace the Calvinistic view of the perseverance of the saints. (That being said, he wasn't really on board with some of the emphases of Wesleyanism either, such as entire sanctification, so that probably made a difference.)

Many Baptist preachers and similar types (along with some in officially Arminian churches) are really more accurately termed Semi-Pelagian than Arminian. Even if they aren't quite Semi-Pelagian, they are closer to that than Arminianism. If you ask the right questions or listen to the right sermon, they often talk as if man can come to God completely unaided by the Holy Spirit even though they often deny it if you ask them directly. You can see this in the "Traditional" SBC statement on soteriology that was produced about 5 years ago as well as the discussion that followed. Many of them deny original sin or what they would call original guilt, and say that man is not held guilty by God until he reaches the age of accountability. They seem to do this because they think that affirming original sin means that all dying infants and others who cannot make a decision for Christ due to cognitive issues go to hell.

One of these days, I'm going to ask one of these folks (i.e. a typical non-Cal Baptist) about their belief in eternal security, which traditional Arminians reject. "What's happened to your almighty free will now, friend?" In their system, you can check in any time you like, but you can never leave even though the virtues of libertarian free will are endlessly praised.
 
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Stope said:
That said, yesterday at the book shop I saw a 3 vol set of Arminus' (I think it was a systematic theology?), and it had me thinking, and now pose to you: does he have good things to say? As all I have ever heard about him was his views of God's sovereignty
Click to expand...

That might be partly Pop-culture Calvinists (or what I call Conference Calvinists) fault. there is a tendency to reduce everything to the 5 Points. Yes, Arminius deals with far more than just God's sovereignty. I would actually recommend getting Richard Muller's book on Arminius: God and Creation.
 
Contra_Mundum said:
Doubtless, what you saw was a collection of Arminius' "Works." He was a seminary professor, and minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. He obviously had (N.B. the Remonstrants) and continues to have people who honor his memory, methods, and the movement built upon his influence.

As for mining him for truth, you can do the same with D.Wilson. Or G.Boyd, the open theist. Or R.Warren/B.Hybels, the church-growth gurus. Perhaps, even the pope. The question is: why? When you have limited time and energy, where would you personally be best invested?

It's one thing to check out someone's work for research purposes, coming in with a critical regard. But we know of (and are pleased about) people who come to read Calvin for themselves, and are moved away from an inculcated auto-revulsion, to admiration. D.Wilson has a way with words also, and yet we regard such a gift as a snare.

Just as you have been drawn to Reformed theology based on a trajectory of life and thought; be aware that you may not have found your settled home--though it could be so if you make it so. Your curiosity may also spark an unhealthy interest (as we here would term it) in an alternate theological direction. I'm not picking on you; it could happen to anyone, including me.

I hope you are not half-way through a journey, of which Reformed theology is but a stage. But it is more dangerous for a man of fertile mind to ignore the bypaths that many other men--not so different from himself--have taken. Paths you may not believe (today) could ever appeal to you. Until you have tasted them. Some men simply fail to consider the possibility.

There is in theological inquiry an element of self-discovery. This is reflected in the insight found in Calvin's first lines of his Institutes, "We know God by that same first act by which we know ourselves." Some men have found their inner Calvin or Luther through seeking God. Others have found their inner papist, or Barth, or Arminius. Even an inner atheist, at times.

The heart of a man... "who can know it?" Don't assume you know who you are; pray you will be settled forever where you should be, and that this Reformed theology would continue to be the taste of green pastures and still waters for your soul. And as you read Arminius, or D.Wilson, or J.Osteen, or B.Ehrman, pray you will see accurately the dangers others see.

J.G.Machen went to Germany to enhance his learning and preparation. He sat under the teaching of the liberal scholar Wilhelm Herrmann, whose influence was incredible in those days. Machen was spellbound by the man, who displayed an enviable piety. He taught his students devotionally, and Machen confessed in letters he was nearly carried away.

But he found his footing, somehow; it was surely by the grace of God. And in the end, he shook off the rhetorical and philosophical influence of the man and of that whole modernist movement, the end whereof was bleakness (as K.Barth also discovered; but he ended up co-creating neo-modernism with a new generation of theologians, rather than returning to the old-paths orthodoxy).

I'm neither encouraging nor discouraging you from reading Arminius. I'm talking to you about human nature, about the wisdom of a bit-and-bridle on the charger that is your intellect. There is a kind of man who dispenses with all discipline, and who rides out into the wilderness determined to be led only by his impulses and instincts. A few such men return.

Meditate upon the metaphor.
Click to expand...
Wow. That was very kind and insightful. Thank you for taking the time to write that.
 
Bill The Baptist said:
I'm not sure that he's charismatic, although he did attend Assemblies of God theological seminary. I doubt he's any more charismatic than many of the popular new Calvinist types.
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Charismatic connotes the Benny Hinn types. Keener is most certainly a continuationist. He is very clear on that at his blog.
 
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