Calvinism versus Arminianism in the SBC

Some independent churches and many entire denominations (i.e. Presbyterian, Anglican) are founded on Calvinism.  They view themselves as the keepers of orthodoxy for the Protestant Reformation which most Protestants view as the event in Christian history that rescued the church from the corruption of Roman Catholicism.  Curiously, key personalities of the Reformation (i.e. Calvin and Luther) were at least as sinister, diabolical and cruel as those they sought to replace.  Other churches (i.e. Nazarene, Wesleyan) completely reject Calvinism.  Still others (i.e. Calvary Chapel, Bob Jones) refuse to take a position because they believe only God comprehends the meaning of His own sovereignty.  The Southern Baptist Convention is bipolar on this issue and, like a great pendulum, is slowly swinging back toward its Calvinist roots.  Southern Baptist congregations are discouraged, by pastors, from even discussing Calvinism.  Anyone who raises the issue risks being labeled as “divisive” or “having an agenda.”   Meanwhile, Southern Baptist Seminaries and Bible Colleges are funneling a new generation of Calvinist pastors into the denomination.

Southern Baptists were predominately Arminian “hybrids” for most of the 20th century.  They embraced all but the last one of the “Five Points of the Remonstrants” which are paraphrased by:

• True faith cannot proceed from the exercise of our natural faculties and powers, or from the force and operation of free will, since man, in consequence of his natural corruption, is incapable of thinking or doing any good thing.  It is therefore necessary to his conversion and salvation that he be regenerated and renewed by the operation of the Holy Spirit which is the gift of God through Jesus Christ.

• God, from all eternity, determined to: (1) bestow salvation on those who, as He foresaw, would persevere unto the end in their free will faith in Jesus Christ and (2) inflict everlasting punishment on those who would continue in their unbelief and resist His divine grace.

• The substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ covered the sins of all mankind in general and those of every individual in particular; however, none but those who believe in Him can be partakers of that divine benefit.

• The Holy Spirit begins, advances and brings to perfection everything that can be called good in man; consequently, all good works are to be attributed to God alone.  Nevertheless, this grace does not force man to act against his inclination but may be resisted and rendered ineffectual.

• Those once united to Christ by faith may, by turning away from God, lose the great gift of salvation.

Rejecting this last point, the Traditional Southern Baptist believed that, once saved, no man can exercise his free will to reject God and thereby lose his salvation.  This put all Traditional Southern Baptists in the precarious position of wearing the shoes of an Arminian except that one shoe didn’t quite fit!  Given a carefully defined set of axioms, Arminianism offers a logically tight, self-consistent soteriology.  The same can be said of Calvinism.  But mixing the two doesn’t quite work.  Loose ends appear.  For example, why would God squelch your free will to reject Him?  Nevertheless, the Traditional Southern Baptist fully embraced the Arminian concepts of Total Depravity, Conditional Election, Unlimited Atonement and Resistible Grace.  He also embraced the essentials of Prevenient Grace as defined by Arminianism. 

The upper echelon elite in the Southern Baptist hierarchy are essentially conducting a great twenty first century experiment to make Calvinism and Arminianism co-exist in a single denomination.  History does not bode well for success but failure portends denominational split.  SBC Seminaries and Bible Colleges are riddled with Calvinist faculty sending a steady stream of Calvinist pastors into predominately Arminian congregations.  If the Calvinist pastor has the courage of his convictions and tells the truth about his beliefs, he will either fail to find employment or split a church.  A new strategy has evolved based on stealth, subterfuge, deceit, guile and duplicity employed, of course, with God’s approval for the “greater good.”  This strategy is to suppress the issue of Calvinism/Arminianism in all local churches.  If the topic surfaces in a church in spite of the pastor’s best efforts to suppress it, he may try to convince the congregation that each individual’s choice is simply a matter of personal preference, like whether to wear brown shoes or black shoes to church; no one must be allowed to express the possibility that Calvinism is blasphemy at its core.  Because some local churches may see through this subterfuge, other strategies have been introduced with the hope of “tap dancing” around the core conflicts.  These strategies include: (1) undermine all discussion and teaching on this issue and thereby maintain a level of ignorance within congregations and particularly within pastor search committees, (2) subordinate the importance of this issue to church growth, music, other entertainment and family ministries, (3) argue that the seriousness of the conflict is contrived in the sense that an Arminian pastor is really no different than an evangelical Calvinist pastor who believes in unconditional election, limited atonement and irresistible grace, (4) utilize Seminaries and Bible Colleges to convert Christians to Calvinists, (5) avoid Articles of Faith that clarify the denominational position, (6) assert the simultaneous validity of both Calvinism and Arminianism using a type of logic popular among intellectual elite called “positive tolerance,” (7) claim to be above the fray by just “believing in the Bible” and (8) assert the sovereignty of God and the free will of man are like two parallel lines that meet at infinity.  The true battle lines have been drawn, however, and do not meet at infinity.  The Calvinist believes, “God did will all happenings.”  The Arminian believes, “God did not will all happenings.”  One is true, the other is false.