Ask Cooper Anything 2: Arminianism vs. Calvinism

"Arminianism vs Reformed(Calvinism) and why?"
- Tim M.

I'm going to start this off by admitting that, until very recently, I couldn't have told you what the differences between Arminianism and Calvinism were. I had certainly heard of these terms, but I was not familiar with the details of the beliefs. I have now read over the entry found on Wikipedia. It was an interesting and informative read. For those who may also be somewhat unfamiliar with these theological concepts, here is a snippet from the Wikipedia article that summarizes the differences between Arminianism and Calvinism.

• Nature of election – Arminians hold that election to eternal salvation has the condition of faith attached. The Calvinist doctrine of unconditional election states that salvation cannot be earned or achieved and is therefore not conditional upon any human effort, so faith is not a condition of salvation but the divinely apportioned means to it. In other words, Arminians believe that they owe their election to their faith, whereas Calvinists believe that they owe their faith to their election.
• Nature of grace – Arminians believe that, through grace, God restores free will concerning salvation to all humanity, and each individual, therefore, is able either to accept the Gospel call through faith or resist it through unbelief. Calvinists hold that God's grace to enable salvation is given only to the elect and irresistibly leads to salvation.
• Extent of the atonement – Arminians, along with four-point Calvinists or Amyraldians, hold to a universal drawing and universal extent of atonement instead of the Calvinist doctrine that the drawing and atonement is limited in extent to the elect only, which many Calvinists prefer to call 'particular redemption'. Both sides (with the exception of hyper-Calvinists) believe the invitation of the gospel is universal and "must be presented to everyone [they] can reach without any distinction."
• Perseverance in faith – Arminians believe that future salvation and eternal life is secured in Christ and protected from all external forces but is conditional on remaining in Christ and can be lost through apostasy. Traditional Calvinists believe in the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, which says that because God chose some unto salvation and actually paid for their particular sins, he keeps them from apostasy and that those who do apostatize were never truly regenerated (that is, born again) or saved. Non-traditional Calvinists and other evangelicals advocate the similar but different doctrine of eternal security that teaches if a person was once saved, his or her salvation can never be in jeopardy, even if the person completely apostatizes.

After reading this, it was rather easy for me to determine that my beliefs line up much closer with the Arminian side. Basically, I believe that all humans have the chance to be saved, and that salvation requires some human effort. All that effort consists of is the belief in Jesus Christ as your savior. I believe we are saved because of the decision in our heart to follow Christ, not the other way around.

I believe that humans have free will to choose to either follow or reject Jesus. Humans have the ability to choose this world over Christ, and many do every day. Even if they feel the nudging from God, and there are people in their life that are pointing them in the right direction, they reject the notion of following God and instead choose the narrow path of the world. You can choose to have the world as your god and ignore the true God. This is part of free will. God wants each of us to choose to follow Him, but if our salvation is granted by predestined election, then it is not a choice for either the believers or the unbelievers. The first step in salvation was Jesus dying on the cross, but the second step is for each of us to make the choice in our heart to follow Him.

I believe atonement to be universal, available to all the world. Jesus died for every man and woman in the world, regardless of who you are or what you've done. I'm not special enough to be one of the "elect" that God chose to save; I'm saved because I've admitted that I am a sinner, and accepted that the blood of Jesus is the only thing that can save me. I feel eternally blessed that I was born into a loving, Christ-centered family, but that was a blessing and, frankly, quite lucky. I was not born into that family because I was "elect."

I also believe in the Arminian idea that one's salvation is secure, and yet, if one chooses to abandon their beliefs and turn their back on God, they can lose it. I would say, though, that once somebody has a true experience with God, and they come to a point where their mind takes their salvation from being belief to being fact, it would not be possible for them to turn around and then completely reject their faith. From my perspective, I will never turn my back on God. I have based so much of who I am and how I live my life on my belief that there is a God and He loves me. To disbelieve that would be to change who I am, to my very core. That core is the way it is because I see the existence of God as an unquestionable fact. I believe in God more than I believe in gravity. The proof of God is everywhere, from the peaks of the mountains to the depths of the sea, to the kaleidoscope of human diversity to the amazing animal and plant life in the world. To stop believing in God would be to betray everything I see and everything I feel. Atheists may scoff at this, but to stop believing in God would betray my own logic and rationale. It would break everything I know to be true.

I would contend that those who are in the faith and then leave it never actually allowed themselves to be fully immersed in the love of Christ. The question becomes this: were they ever truly saved? I find a hard time believing that anyone who was ever truly saved would then reject Jesus. That would be like rejecting oxygen and deciding it would be better to breath in dirt.

Ask Cooper Anything 1: Evolution vs. Creation

"What is your view on Genesis and evolution? Do you take a literal view of Genesis in 7 days?"
- Erik C.

In preparation for this entry, I watched the entirety of the debate between Ken Hamm of the Creation Museum and Bill Nye the Science Guy.  Now, I am not, nor will I ever be, a scientist.  When I was of grade school age, I did have thoughts of becoming an archaeologist or an astronomer.  However, as you may notice, I am neither of those things, so I'm not going to delve too incredibly deep into the science of it all.  Anyway, the debate itself was interesting, though it did not quite capture the two opposing sides that I am considering.  It pitted Ken Hamm, a Christian and young-Earth creationist, against Bill Nye, an atheist who believes the Earth is billions of years old.  I am coming to this issue with one unquestionable truth: there is a God, and His hand was at work in the creation of this universe and this planet.  The question is whether he simply spoke things into being, or if he used processes such as the big bang and evolution to allow for the universe, the planet, and the human race to arrive at their current existence.

On one hand, I truly want to believe the literal Genesis creation story.  If I take the story as literal truth, it makes a lot of sense to me.  There are certain Biblical things that I would have issues reconciling if evolution is true.  For instance, as Christians, we accept that Jesus was a real person, flesh and blood.  The Bible lays out his genealogy, following His ancestral trail back through King David, back to Jacob and Abraham, back to Methuselah, and back to Seth, and back to Adam.  According to the Bible, Adam was the first man created.  Now, if you're an evolutionist, and you accept Jesus, and accept the people before Him in the ancestral line, what about Adam?  Was he a real person? 

If he was a real person, then he would have simply been the next generation.  He would have had parents and grandparents, and yet God chose Adam's generation as the first important enough to mention.  Would he really have done anything important?  Or was his name just chosen by the writer of Genesis as the scapegoat for bringing sin into the world? 

If evolution is the way God created humans over millions of years, was there one generation that did not have a soul, but their offspring did?  One generation not made in God's image, while the next generation was?  Did they know that they had a soul, and thus needed to worry about things like afterlife and righteousness, and sin, while their parents did not?  Did their parents have free will?  If the first sin brought death into the world, and thus there was no death in the world before that moment, and evolution happened over millions of years, would not every being that had been created before that moment still be alive up until the first sin?

If Adam was not a real person, then why was he included in Jesus' genealogy?  Why was it recorded that he lived 930 years, and that he was the father of Cain and Able and Seth?  Why would the genealogy of our savior include fictional characters?  If that part of the genealogy is not accurate, does that not bring into question the whole ancestral line?

On the other hand, I understand that the evidence to support evolution and the big bang are convincing.  Stars are moving away from each other - the universe is expanding.  There are mutations in nature, and new species do spring up.  There are fossils that seem to show changes over time. 

After watching the debate, my mind hadn't changed on one thing: I don't think this question is something we can truly answer.  We can look at the science and make observations, but those observations are based purely on the physical universe.  Like I said earlier, the one unquestionable truth in all of this for me is that God created the universe.  He had his hand on whatever process caused all of this to come into being.  I find it completely illogical to believe that, if there was a big bang, that it happened by itself, for ultimately, there needs to be a source.  There cannot be nothing, and then an explosion, for there was nothing there to explode. It makes no logical or rational sense.  So, we're dealing with a physical universe, in which we can only observe its physical attributes, and yet it was created, in part, by the actions of a limitless, incalculable supernatural being.  If you accept that God created everything, then you cannot be limited only by what can be physically explained.  If there was a big bang, the He started the fire.  If evolution was the path used to get us here, then He guided that path.  There may be things in nature that we cannot explain, because it was not created or affected by something natural.  I see God's handprints everywhere in nature, but I certainly don't believe that we can see all of God's handprints.  Science is a wonderful thing that should be embraced, but it can't and never will explain everything, because not everything is physically explainable.

I certainly cannot say that I unquestionably believe it was done in a certain way, but I have a harder time believing in evolution.  That's more of a personal bias though.  I don't like the idea of evolution.  That being said, at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter, because the foundation of my faith is not affected by which method God used to create the universe.  I can accept the fact that I do not know, and that some of my assumptions may be misguided or completely wrong, and that would be okay.  The only thing I can say I believe without question is that God is the great creator, and that it was His hand that created this amazing universe and this diverse planet.  I'll wait for Heaven to be sure of the details.

Ask Cooper Anything

As part of my desire to keep an active blogging life (and to counter the fact that I often have trouble coming up with topics), I've decided to see if there is anything my wide reader base (sarcasm) has any thoughts on what I should write about.  So here is your opportunity to send me questions concerning any topic you have on your mind.  I am posting this on both my personal blog, Chromiden's Chronicles, and my more serious-natured blog about life, Don't Feed the Hypocrite.  The type of question it is will determine which blog the response gets posted to.

So ask me anything - about the goings on in my life, my opinions on certain issues, general advice, my views on certain aspects of the Christian life.  Or whatever.  I'll answer pretty much anything, openly and honestly.  Feel free to post these questions as blog comments, Facebook comments, or send me a Facebook message or an email [ cooper [dot] joel [at] gmail [dot] com ].

It's quite possible that I won't get a response from this, and that's more than alright, I just thought I'd give it a try.  :)