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Tag: Philosophy

Succumbing To A Very Unchristian Idea (Post 2 of 2)

Last week I shared that recently two ministry leaders asked me for input (one on a book he is writing and another on a speaker he is hosting). I had bad news for them. This week I’ll share the email I sent to my friend writing the book on doing business as a Christian (removing any identifying features). I hope that you will more easily spot this unChristian assumption, bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment, and now so deeply entrenched in our culture that it is often hard to resist.

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Succumbing To A Very Unchristian Idea (Post 1 of 2)

Recently two Christian leaders asked for my advice, and I had to give them some bad news. This week and next I’ve decided to share with you my advice (removing names and other identifying information). I do so to surface again how insidious and pervasive non-Christian thought patterns are in our culture, and how easy it is for us, if we are not vigilant, to begin thinking “unChristianly” about important issues, rather than thinking Christianly about everything.

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Predestination or Free Will? (Post 14)

We all desire to become better people. And so we work toward this goal. This includes choosing the beliefs and desires we will embrace and act upon. These choices in turn form our character. This common experience must fit our view of freedom. Yet, this reality doesn’t fit well with the soft determinist’s understanding of freedom. This is another external conceptual problem for soft determinism, and therefore, for Calvinism, which depends on soft determinism’s definition of freedom being true.

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Predestination or Free Will? (Post 13)

We are exploring external conceptual problems that make Calvinism less plausible than its alternative–Arminianism. Last week, I outlined one external conceptual problem based on our default understanding of freedom. This week, I’ll look at a second external conceptual problem for Calvinism from philosophy: the fact that we have souls.

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Predestination or Free Will? (Post 11)

One of the best ways to learn something is listening to others with different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. We often gain insights in our quest for truth only after their “outside” input. This is because we need one another to fill out our understanding and correct our errors. This is certainly the case as we wrestle with the question of predestination or free will.

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