4.95 on the "Calvinist" Scale?

- another ~Billy Goat~ rant.

For a number of years I've considered myself a full blown five point Calvinist, whatever that means, and the "whatever that means" is the whole point of this article. What do you mean when you say you are a "5 point" or a "4 and a 1/2 point" Calvinist? To simply say it refers to how you stack up when measured by the "5 points of Calvinism" assumes there is an objectivity to those points that allows such a comparison. But is it really that simple?

There are some in the world of Christianity that would say I am no "Calvinist" at all because I hold to the free and full offer of the Gospel to each and every person, elect and non-elect (including Judas Iscariot). But that is exactly the point. Is it more important to be a "5 point Calvinist" or to be Biblical?

Frankly, I am at a point in life where I really do not give a big fat rat's rear end where I rank on the "Calvinist" scale. Nor do I care a whole lot where anyone else might place me on that scale. That's your problem for trying to fit me into your nice neat little categories that keep you from letting the Bible be the Bible.

In my own assesment, I woke up one morning and realized I was a 4.95 point Calvinist. No, I am not going to try to explain that. It just is, so live with it.

I also find I no longer have any patience with the "supra" and "infra" -lapsarian debate (having to do with the order of God's decrees in eternity past as they relate to salvation and the elect). When you have descended into that debate, you simply have gone beyond what the Bible reveals, and you have set your theological reasoning above the Scripture. It's my observation that the infra-supra debate is a mark of those groups and denominations that have stagnated into a Reformed confessional scholasticism to the detriment of Biblical Theology.

I could go on. God loves all people and God hates the workers of iniquity. Don't try to reconcile that with your idea of election. Let the Bible be the Bible and live with the tension. And it would not be the "end of the world" if you did live with that tension. In my own mind, the fact that God loves and hates the same people is not a tension. If there was never any love at all, there would never had been any hatred. We can only hate as deeply as we have loved. "For God so loved the world..."

~ The Billy Goat ~