4 Comments so far

1. Joanie D on September 14, 2007 6:55 am

   As you may expect, Michael, I lean towards Boyd in his response to the collapsing of the bridge.

   Joanie D.

2. michaelp on September 14, 2007 12:28 pm

   I think that, even as a Calvinist, I find much to commend concerning Boyd’s comments. I really like Boyd, even though he is an open theist.

   Piper’s response was more expedient and prophetic than theological. Therefore, I think Olson and Boyd need to cut him some slack.

3. greg on February 5, 2008 11:30 am

   I think Greg Boyd is completely at a loss in viewing the Bible as a whole. Why does God punish someone after the death of Christ? Are you kidding me?

   Not punished for their sins? He has made a big mistake in assuming that Jesus atonement was designed to take away the sins of the whole world without exception. If it was, then it would SUCCEED and UNIVERSALISM would be true. But it’s not and it wasn’t the point of it. Jesus repeatedly said in John that He laid down His life for ‘my sheep’, ‘my people’, etc. God told Paul in Acts ‘go and preach’ in a city for “I have much people in that place”. Election was the key to Paul’s success. Paul could know that if he obeyed God, the result God would give would be to bring salvation to many.

   Ananias and Sapphira fell down DEAD for lying to the Holy Spirit. (Talk about being punished AFTER Jesus death).

   Many more examples in the New Testament could be shown of people God judged for their sins including much of the book of Revelation.

   Yes, the part about Satan’s punishment of being thrown down from heaven is past, but those in the churches that didn’t obey, their judgment was future without repentance.

   What about 1 John 5 where John spells out there are even sins professed CHRISTIANS can commit that LEAD TO DEATH and he says he doesn’t say to pray about those, but to pray for brothers caught up in sin, etc.

   Boyd has a man-centered theology which fits in well with America’s self-centered, country-centered viewpoint. Unfortunately, it is NOT the fault of godly pastors like John Piper that men don’t get the lessons God has for them and that those in the Bible times were better taught in the Scriptures and knew that God held all things in His hands.

   If a person had wealth, that came from the Lord. If a person had nothing, God would provide for them, like He did the flowers of the field, etc. (Jesus taught this as well in Matthew).

   If a person had long life, it was due to God being gracious and giving them good health. (Even if someone was a reprobate, it was God’s common grace that kept them that much longer out of judgment and enjoying God’s sunshine and rain which HE makes to fall on the just AND the unjust.

   If HE makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust (or can just make it fall on the unjust, as He did with those in the time of Noah), if HE can make fire fall on the just and the unjust like happened on 9/11 when the towers caught fire or can chose only unjust like Sodom and Gomorrah, if He clothes the flowers that are tomorrow THROWN IN THE FIRE and knows every hair on our head and when every sparrow falls (dies)….if HE’S that knowledgeable, involved, etc., what makes Greg Boyd think that God couldn’t hold up even a weakly constucted bridge if it was in His purpose?

   What Boyd misses is that it’s HIS (Boyd and other ministers of the gospel)JOB to educate people that God is still alive and judges sin and that the Holy Spirit is here for sin, righteousness and judgment…to convict the world of these things…faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of the Lord.

   Preach God’s Word instead of the doctrines of men, Mr Boyd, and people will know that God is not shaken to the core whether something is as well built as the Titanic or as pourly constructed as supposedly the dam was in New Orleans.

   It doesn’t excuse shoddy workmanship and it doesn’t discount people’s responsibility in tragedies to say that God is still on the throne and is teaching people that all everywhere should repent when ANY accident or even natural disaster happens.

   Jesus didn’t sit there telling the people about the tower of Siloam ‘well it was because the workmen did a shoddy job that the people died, don’t get the wrong idea fellows. Don’t think that those killed by the tower were judged by God because that was man’s fault. God couldn’t help it that men made the tower badly.”

   No, He said ‘the tower didn’t fall in judgement on those people, but if you don’t likewise repent you will all enter the judgement’

   Why do man-centered people think that God can’t handle tragedies and realize that many people including believers deserve the judgment of earthly death. Jesus saved and is saving us from SPIRITUAL death, but it is appointed for all men to die once and after this THE JUDGEMENT.’

   That’s what Piper was talking about. He could have faced the judgement if it was God’s time for him to go. His own mother was taken in a car accident.

   And Piper has more of God’s compassion in his pinkie than Boyd’s false view of God has in it’s entire theology. The only way the lost will be found is if GOD saves them. They won’t save themselves, find God, and therefore God will elect them. Get out of the fool’s paradise of this world and the ruler thereof.

   No man seeks after God they have all (especially in these last days) become corrupt. They all look only for their own interests and not for God’s.

   God’s means: preaching His Word. So get out and preach His Word and stop demeaning God fearing preachers that have done more for the advancement of God’s kingdom than you ever thought of doing.

   Demeaning your brethren by means of worldly philosophy is not correcting them in love. It is using Satanic means to demean their theology but without scriptural support.

   In other words, Mr. Boyd, your criticism doesn’t hold water in the light of scripture. God judged and took the lives of many AFTER the death of His Son and He will take many more who follow their own desires and hate God and His Son.

   Only those that follow Christ will be saved from the ultimate judgment, but all will face earthly death. Only a small handful escaped it to this point (Enoch,Elijah….)

   Whether a badly or well constructed bridge, car, boat, plane or tower, God’s time of judgment may come at any hour, but it will be at the hour and time of God’s chosing and Jesus said no one even knows the day or the hour of His return but the Father and the Son, much less do we know the hour when we will enter the first death, but God the Father and Son know. I take comfort in that and I hope Mr. Boyd can too as Mr Piper was encouraging his daughter to do.

4. hawk on December 2, 2009 4:52 pm

   to equate arminians to open theists is just silly. Arminius agreed with Calvin on virtually everything except monergism and Gods character is the main ingredient in the difference not free will. Calvininsts divine neterminism leads to double predestination leads to double atonement and therefore God being the author of sin. Whole not all calvinists are supralapsarianists or infralapsarianists, those ones must believe God is the author of sin. Sovereignty permits which is different that foreordains sinners. God did not foreordain Adam to sin.