Calvinism Part Six: 1 Timothy 2:4
Theology on the Ground
by Matthew Kent
3y ago
Having looked at a rough overview of the history of the debate as well as the major Calvinistic passages in previous weeks, we now turn our attention to the major Arminian passages.   Not only are these critical to establishing the Arminian position, they are frequently used to try to argue against the passages that we have previously looked at. You’ll hear people say things like “that can’t be true because 1 Timothy 2:4 says…”   Unfortunately, the verses that we will look at are just that, individual verses. We will look at them in their context, but the verses that Arminians use to ..read more
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Calvinism Part Five: Ephesians 1 and 2
Theology on the Ground
by Matthew Kent
3y ago
We’ve arrived at our final passage that we’ll examine in defense of Calvinism. I promise you it won’t be as long as the last one.   The introduction to the book of Ephesians is one of the most majestic passages in all of the Bible. In the Greek text, verses 3-14 of chapter one are one long, elegant sentence describing the blessings that all three persons of the Trinity shower on the believer.   The verses actually make a very interesting and very unmistakable Trinitarian progression, with verses 3-6 devoted to the role of God the Father (election and adoption), verses 7-12 devoted to ..read more
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Calvinism Part Four: Romans 8 and 9
Theology on the Ground
by Matthew Kent
3y ago
Having already covered how both John 6 and 1 Corinthians 1 clearly and compellingly teach what might be called Calvinism, we now turn our attention to the two chapters that are often considered to be at the very center of the controversy, Romans 8-9.   Perhaps more than any other book in the Bible, the book of Romans is something of a continuous exposition of the gospel. I’ve covered this in great detail in a previous post, but it’s useful here to give a brief recap to orient ourselves in the book of Romans.   Romans is the book about the gospel. The whole book hangs off of the word ..read more
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Calvinism Part Three: 1 Corinthians 1
Theology on the Ground
by Matthew Kent
3y ago
If you were to poll a large number of Calvinists to ask them to name the four most important passages in establishing their position, this one would certainly get left off of more lists than any of the others I selected. The other three passages would be included on the vast majority of lists, but I think 1 Corinthians 1 would only make a handful. In fact there are probably several other passages that would get mentioned more often. Some people would (with good reason) say that Romans chapter 5 should be included due to its importance in establishing original sin, others might say the extended ..read more
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Calvinism Part Two: John Chapter Six
Theology on the Ground
by Matthew Kent
3y ago
When I first started thinking about Calvinism, it mostly stayed on the back of my mind. I looked into it here and there but I hadn’t really tackled any of the major passages. One day, I randomly stumbled across a Facebook status where someone I didn’t know said that he wanted to leave Calvinism, but couldn’t with a clean conscience because he was devoted to the Bible and couldn’t explain John 6 from an Arminian point of view. He sincerely asked his Facebook friends to help explain it to him. At the time I wasn’t even aware how important John 6 was to the debate. One of my Facebook friends had ..read more
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Calvinism Part One: The Sovereignty of God in Salvation
Theology on the Ground
by Matthew Kent
3y ago
In the upcoming series, I want to deal with a very controversial topic: Calvinism vs Arminianism. Some of you might be new to this controversy, some of you might be grizzled veterans of this epic debate. This post is just designed to introduce the debate and give some historical context, in the next several posts we will take a deep dive into the Bible to evaluate these two positions. With this year being the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, I figured this would be a good time to tackle this issue. Now, a couple of things to keep in mind before we get started: Just to be up fr ..read more
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The Doctrine of Justification
Theology on the Ground
by Matthew Kent
3y ago
One interesting thing about important theological terms is that a lot of them don’t start out as theological terms. Ask anyone today, and they’ll tell you the world “baptism” is mostly a religious term, but the Greek word translated “baptize” in the New Testament just means “to dunk” (if you look it up you’ll get a definition more like “to dip or immerse,” but let’s face it, the better word for those phrases in modern English is “dunk”).* At some point these terms become so associated with their Theological function that they take on a mostly theological meaning. Sometimes the timing can even ..read more
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True Love Doesn’t Exist Outside of Marriage
Theology on the Ground
by Matthew Kent
3y ago
I know that’s a controversial claim. I’m not backing down from it.   I first started thinking about this one April morning in 2017. My coworker, who was 24 and single, mentioned that he wanted to find love. Nothing at all weird about that, but what surprised me was that he went on to say that he thought he had already found it once.   To be honest, I would have expected him to say “I thought it was love, but it just wasn’t the real thing.” That seems to line up pretty well with our culture’s view of love. That view is problematic, but I think his view of being “in love once” is too ..read more
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The Terrible Doctrine of the Wrath of God
Theology on the Ground
by Matthew Kent
3y ago
  The scariest phrase in the Bible is just three words long: “God is love” (1 John 4:8).   Love is the most beautiful thing that there is, but love is also extremely dangerous. If you love what is good, you will hate what is evil.   This means that if God is love, if it is essential to his character, if he loves goodness, and justice, and mercy, he must be opposed to most of what goes on in our world, he must be outraged by it.   He must.   The wrath of God may not be a popular topic today, but not only is it a logical necessity, it is a definite Biblical reality as we ..read more
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“Many Convincing Proofs” of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Theology on the Ground
by Matthew Kent
3y ago
     There’s a phrase that I’ve always loved concerning the Resurrection of Jesus. It comes from Acts 1:3 where Luke says that after Jesus died he appeared alive with “many convincing proofs.” What an amazing thing to say. I’ve often wondered exactly what Luke was thinking of when he wrote that.        Looking at what is revealed to us in the Bible, I think we can come up with at least a few of the things he might have been thinking of. So I invite you to look at the Scripture with me and to ask yourself the question, what were the convin ..read more
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