I was reminded, just recently, how impacting the Calvinist and Arminian debate still is. Given the advent of N. T. Wright, and other thinkers within Christendom today, I think it is all too easy for some of us to forget that most North American Evangelicals (of which I am one) have never heard of N. T. Wright; and more importantly ;-), most Evangelicals have never heard of Thomas Torrance or even Karl Barth. There is a whole demographic of Evangelical people (at the popular level) who are still embroiled, one way or the other, in this binary of Calvinism versus Arminianism. Indeed, within this demographic there are some who I would characterize as rather antagonistic and vociferous; it is these, who for the most part, I have no real desire engaging with anymore (a waste of time, usually). But there are many, many who are not antagonistic, and who are not vociferous, but who sit under the teaching of these aforementioned vociferous types. It is these voiceless (or timid) souls who motivate me to continue to engage in this kind of ‘fight’ for what I think is right and fruitful for those most weary among us.

There is so much confusion about who God is among Evangelical Christians. Indeed, I would suggest that this is the biggest problem we have. We don’t really know who God is. We have a view of God that comes straight to us from the pages of the scholastic Calvinist. A God who remains much more performance driven, much more Law-based, and a God who we really can find no rest in (just demands). I am not advocating that we completely evacuate all that has come before us in our Christian past, just the opposite! Instead, I want to continue to resource what is available from the Christian past for the present. I think the past (even if that is the recent past), has a rich tapestry of resource just waiting to be retrieved and redressed in a way that I would think most Christians (who are stuck in the wilderness of the scholastic God), would finally find refreshing and hope producing in regard to their own daily walk and spirituality.

So this is why I will probably always be here, posting on why people need to repudiate their classical view of God, and instead adopt a paleo-classical view that has been redressed through the articulation of people like Karl Barth, Thomas Torrance, and John Webster et. al.