It has been suggested by some bloggers that exegesis is on the side of the Calvinists while logic is on the side of the Arminians. This suggestion sounds plausible since the majority of Christian philosophers today are either Arminians or Open theists. The bloggers are correct in acknowledging that Calvinists offer robust exegesis to support their arguments which is evident in the works of Thomas Schreiner, John Piper, Sam Storms and James White. However, the suggestion is mystifying since historically Calvinists have been accused of imposing of a rigid logical system onto Scripture. We can only conclude that the bloggers who suggest that Calvinists lack rigor in logical analysis have never bothered to read Calvin and his successors like Francis Turretin, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards or Dutch Reformed theologians like Wilhelmus Brakel and Petrus van Mastricht. A quick glance of Richard Muller’s 4-vol (2176 pages) work on Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics should immediately impress the reader of both the acuity and logical brilliance displayed by the Calvinists. It was precisely because the doctrinal disputations of the Reformed Scholastics were dominated by austere logic, where conciseness and clarity trumps readability that Calvinism has been accused on putting logic above Scripture. Continue reading “Reformed Critique of Middle Knowledge (Molinism/Arminianism). Part 1 by Petrus van Mastricht”
Month: August 2019
It’s Someone Else’s Fault! Thank you, Freud
I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed,
To find out why I killed the cat and blacked my wifie’s eyes.
He laid me on a comfy couch to see what he could find,
And this is what he dredged up out of my unconscious mind.
When I was one my mommy locked my dolly in the trunk,
And so it follows naturally I am always drunk.
When I was two, I saw my father kissed the maid one day,
And that is why I suffer now from klep-to-ma-nia.
At three I was ambivalent toward my younger brothers,
And that’s the reason why, to date, I’ve poisoned all my lovers.
And I’m so glad since I have learned the lesson I’ve been taught,
That everything I do that is wrong is someone else’s fault.
Actually, we can appeal to a more ancient and venerable authority to justify our blame game. Re: Genesis 3:12-13 – The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Continue reading “It’s Someone Else’s Fault! Thank you, Freud”