KINGDOM VISION AND ARMINIANISM v. CALVINISM

Not long after Reggie NcNeal appeared at IMPACT and I read his book, The Present Future, I met a local pastor for the first time and, as we were getting to know each other, he asked me, “So, Bill, where do you come out on the Calvinist/Arminian issue?”

What I realized in the brief pause in our conversation as I considered my answer was a watershed moment in my life.

I discovered five things about myself.

1. I hadn’t thought about that stuff for a long, long time.
2. I used to care about it, perhaps more than anything else that I believe.
3. I didn’t care about it any longer.
4. I no longer considered the issue to matter in any significant way.
5. I had come to believe that to care passionately about the issue was wrong.

I’m not even sure how I answered my colleague that day. I went very deeply inside myself. I was asking myself who I had become and how I became that and what it meant. My recollection is that I said something like, “You know, I haven’t even thought about that for a long time.”

And, if you asked me today—even if the authorities in my region would ask me under penalty of loss of credentials—I’m not sure what I’d say.

I embrace a theological paradigm so radically different than the one that I used to hold dear that I very simply no longer care about the issue. Not in the slightest. Not at all!

Trust me! This is not a dodge. It is a firm theological conviction based in an understanding of church history that is one of my most strongly and passionately held beliefs.

I believe that the Reformation, with all its promise, deteriorated and crumbled in an argument over the doctrine of soteriology. I believe that the Synod of Dort, in which the Calvinists and Arminians faced off to settle the issue once and for all in the Dutch Reformed Church, is one of the darkest moments that forms the pre-history of the CGGC.

Have you ever wondered why, in a Church History Survey course you spend oodles of time in the 1500s and then quickly shuffle through the next century until you get to the Great Awakenings?

You do that because the 1600s were consumed by the writing of Creeds and arguments over doctrine. Nothing important happened for the Kingdom in that century because, in the Reformed Churches at least, Calvinists, who prevailed over Arminians at the beginning of the 1600s spent that century beating Arminians over the head with doctrine and writing newer and better creeds that defined "Denominational Orthodoxy" with a precision that would make those afflicted with OCD proud.

And, the kingdom languished.

My own study in history is the study of revivalism beginning with the era in which Jesus followers resumed Kingdom Building and stopped dotting ‘i’s and crossing ‘t’s over the most incredibly insignificant points of doctrine.

It is characterized by the collaboration of John Wesley, an ardent Arminian, and George Whitefield, a devoted Calvinist, in awakening Great Britain and its American colonies. These two guys got it that they serve the same Lord gave them a Great Commission that has absolutely nothing to do with resolving issues regarding predestination and election and apostacy. They set aside the inconsequential and took the Good News to the world.

It is characterized by John Winebrenner's close friendship with United Brethren minister Jacob Erb who was asked by Winebrenner to baptize him even though Erb was not, nor would he ever be, a part of the Church of God movement.

One way to understand the history of the Church of God after the death of Winebrenner is that we very quickly lost his core passions for the making of disciples and for the establishment of the church on the New Testament plan so we could take his 27 points, which he created "pro bono publico" (for the benefit of people outside the movement as a point of information), and turn them into points of doctrine to beat each other over the head with.

Certainly, Winebrenner was uncomfortable with the Calvinism of the German Reformed Church but, in my opinion, if you think you are building on his foundation by spending time away from Kingdom building to argue the issue you are very tragically deceived.

If I care at all about the Calvinist/Arminian Debate, it is because my heart breaks over the endless hours of time spent arguing about it because, when you give your passion to something like this, you are neglecting the building of the Kingdom.