The Anti-Manichaeist

29th of November, 2005

A New TULIP

Posted by dlw in Uncategorized at 4:02 am | Permanent Link

I decided to write my own version of the Calvinist TULIP. A version that follows the original from a thematic standpoint.

Total divine Trust in human receptivity to and transmission of the Word of God and the leadings of the Holy Spirit.

Uncompromising Divine Pursuit of Reconciliation with and among Humanity.

Limited Atonement for the Receptive Faithful.(The elect is a set of individuals, not a specific set of specific individuals.)

Inevitable Victory of Christ’s Church over the Gates of Hades(Matthew 16:18).

Perseverance of the Church, despite our ability to fall short as we most certainly have in the past and present, particularly with the Constantinization of Christianity.

It’s a bit different from the usual fare here, but the usual fare tends to be quite broad-ranging as it is…
dlw

2 Responses to “A New TULIP”

1. dlw Says:
   The 7th of December, 2005 at 12:33 pm

   Here’s what a British Reformed Baptist friend of mine wrote in response to my TULIP over at TWEB.

   Suffice to say that a) your formulation bears consideration, if only to formulate my own post-calvinist TULIP for want of nothing better to do, and b) I think you are right in suggesting that any neoTULIP should at least be in keeping with the spirit of the former, conceptually, else it becomes pointless and merely a parody. Any one can come up with words to fit an acronym, but to have the whole be something of substance takes a bit of thought.

   So for instance, the T in the original addresses the situation of humans. So any new T should probably try to do so, as TULIP is a soteriological statement, as was the arminian controversy that lead to its creation. The following ofur then address the work of God in the face of that situation.

   It should be remembered that for Calvin, the doctrine of predestination was not a matter of curious knowledge about God’s intentions, etc, to be discussed under the rubric of God’s Eternal Decrees, etc, but was a matter of Christian Assurance, and as such the discussion of it appeared in the Third Book of his Institutes, on the Christian Life. He was writing in the face of the chronic lack of assurance in Roman Catholic doctrine, as manifested in Trent with its anathema against sure and certain assurance of salvation. Luther faced the same battle - as a pastor and minister of the word, not as an ivory tower theologian; both were pastors who spent their time training men for the ministry, some of whom would face almost certain death in France in Calvin’s case. This was not ‘dancing on the head of the pin’ argumentation, this was real pastoral work, and theology on the hoof - as the repeated and enlarged editions of the Institutes reveal. I accept that OVT comes from the same pastoral quarter, on the basis of the biographical details I have read of Sanders and Pinnock, although there it appears to have more to do with the problem of suffering, than discipleship. But I am willing to be corrected on that.

   I replied
   

   It is good to understand Calvin better in his context.

   My TULIP deemphasizes some the Soteriological , because I think the Christian Church in Europe has overemphasized it, historically. And later Calvinists may have undone Calvin’s similar attempts to deemphasize the soteriological in his theological system.

   My reaction to the historical pattens of the RCC in Europe is not so much theological, but rather practical. I see a strong deviation from the communication methods of Jesus that made Christianity into something that it was never meant to be:an elitist religion that permitted the masses to remain immersed in their paganistic practices. As I understand it, this deviation in method stems from the fact that Jesus’s teachings were not meant as an instrument of control over people’s lives, but that’s what he was being used as.

   dlw

2. dlw Says:
   The 7th of December, 2005 at 12:53 pm

   Here’s what another person wrote…

   T - Total inability of man to come to Christ without God’s drawing
   U - Unlimited offer of salvation to all men
   L - Libertarian free choice of each man to believe and receive after being drawn
   I - Indeterminate elect, based upon those who choose to believe
   P - Perserverence of faith required to receive eternal life.

   I don’t like it’s use of masculine language and individualistic and soteriological focus.

   The poster is not a friend, but he is a dispensationalist open view theist. I guess this goes to show how I don’t really fit the extant definitions of open view theism, anymore. My theology professor described my view as a middle knowledge view.

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