Jerry Vines
Jerry Vines explains: “God’s knowledge of the future doesn’t determine the future any more than man’s knowledge of the past determines the past.” (Calvinism – A Baptist and his Election, emphasis mine)
Jerry Vines asks: “If you’re Born Again before faith, what does faith accomplish?” (Calvinism – A Baptist and his Election)
Peter Lumpkins of SBC Tomorrow responds to the attacks from the Calvinist community after the sermon by Jerry Vines.
In his sermon, Dr. Jerry Vines shares with his audience that this is the first time in his entire preaching career that he had preached from a manuscript. After having listened to him, I can say that this was also one of his finest sermons ever. This is a terrific addition to the debate over Calvinism. If you have the opportunity, I encourage you to purchase the DVD linked above.
Overall, I felt that he did a masterful job in presenting his reservations for Calvinism, and how he personally dealt with Calvinists in his own Church. Nevertheless, I would like to offer two objections. One is minor and the other is a little more significant. The minor issue is that he indicated that Jacob Arminius and the Remonstrants had taught that you could lose your salvation, which is actually not true. The Remonstrance clearly states that they took a neutral position on the matter of Eternal Security, which was likely a compromise in order to ease tensions within their own group, in order to maintain unity and focus on confronting the more significant challenges posed by Calvinism. The second concern is that Dr. Vines embraced the Calvinist doctrine of Unconditional Election. Though Calvinists may be a diverse group, it is this one doctrine that unites all Calvinists. The problem is that once you go down the path of Unconditional Election, the rest of Calvinism must logically come with it, in one form or another. Calvinist, Charles Spurgeon, once prayed: “Lord, hasten to bring in all Thine elect—and then elect some more.” (An Intimate Interlude) However, when you consider the eternal aspect of Election, according to Ephesians 1:4 and 2nd Timothy 1:9, such a statement seems logically absurd, which just goes to show that when you embrace the “U” in TULIP (with the possible exception of “L”, Limited Atonement), trying to reject the rest of TULIP will succeed only in making you into a salmon in the hands of a hungry bear, as a determined Calvinist will theologically pick your bones clean. For if you embrace Unconditional Election, obviously only the “elect” in such a system, can be saved, and thus the rest of humanity has to have Total Inability to one degree or another, while the predetermined “elect” must ultimately be saved, which can only lead to an Irresistible Grace, to one degree or another. Logically speaking, there is simply no way around it. For once you start down that path, there is no turning back, until you reach all of its logical conclusions.
Here is a Blog discussion on Dr. Jerry Vines.
