I am no expert on World War II, but I have read about the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, which took place from mid-September of 1944 to February of 1945 on the German/Belgian border. By the accounts I have read it was a fierce battle, which caused 33,000 casualties on the American side and around 28,000 on the German side. Bloody. Brutal. And according to most of what I have read, largely unnecessary. Charles B. MacDonald, an Army historian who also served in the Battle of Hürtgen called the battle “a misconceived and basically fruitless battle that should have been avoided.”
Evidently, as the war escalated, the Army failed to realize that there was little value in that battle, that fighting this battle was not helpful in winning the war.
When I was in Taiwan last summer, I had several chances to talk with missionaries from all over the island and from various mission organizations and denominations. One thing I noticed is that they had almost no interest in the issues that we spend so much time arguing about on the blogs. They were interested in evangelism, church planting and growth strategies, church health and such issues. There was interest in theological things, but it was muted and less passionate than I was used to.
I believe that it is important that we seek to understand scripture, that we study theology and that we attempt to fine tune even the finest points of theology. If I did not believe that, I would not do what I do. But it also seems to be a unique American blessing that we have the time to engage in such battles. People on the front lines of spiritual warfare are often too busy fighting the forces of darkness to bicker with other Christians about tertiary issues.
I wonder sometimes if blogging doesn’t become, periodically, our own little Battle of Hürtgen forest. We start discussing a topic and it escalates and suddenly we are going to the mattresses about something that is not nearly as important as we make it.
Does it matter whether we are Calvinist, non-Calvinist, Traditionalist or whatever? Of course it does. It is a doctrine worth discussing. But if we believe that the Bible is God’s Word, that Jesus is the only way, that the gospel is the only hope, and that we are here to be on mission for God, does it really matter as much as we make it matter? Look at all the invective and derogation that has gone on in this battle (from both sides and toward both sides – both sides are more the aggressors than they admit and less the victims than they claim). It seems to me that a legitimate debate over soteriological issues too often becomes a tragic friendly fire massacre.
I read an article from a major blog that was basically an ad-hominem attack against a position I hold. My initial reaction, one made out of pique more than passion for Christ, was to write a scathing response. But then I realized that the issue doesn’t matter enough to fight that fight. I could enter the fray and drive our hits up through the weekend, but would there be any gain to the kingdom? Was it a battle worth fighting?
Do the issues we argue on Baptist blogs matter? Most of them do, at some level, at least. I think it is good to talk about them, exchange ideas, even to disagree over them.
But do they matter as much as they sometimes matter to us? I really doubt it.
We need to be careful not to allow our discussions to become unnecessary and bloody battles. Drawing those lines and making those decisions is more of an art than a science and necessitates the guidance of the Spirit, likely precluding a set of clear rules.
But we need to be careful that our discussion topics on blogs do not become bloody reminders of the Hürtgen Forest.
Well written. I live in a spiritually dead community and I pastor a stagnant church. I do wish maybe somebody would blog about evangelism and church renewal than fighting the evils of Calvinism
Absolutely. Well said.
I would tell you that we do, in fact, publish articles about ministry and evangelism, but often they tend to get overlooked as people focus on the more controversial topics.
I will admit to you that it is a struggle, as the one who manages this blog. I want to see quality articles on a variety of topics, but it is true that more provocative topics drive traffic.
But I will tell you Andrew, that I hear your heart and I agree completely with what you say. Hopefully, you will find some good things to help you at this site. And, there are some other good sites as well.
Andrew. Your situation is not unique. Renewal can come but it is never easy and never sure.
Draw a circle around yourself and ask God to begin a great revival inside the circle. Make sure you are Doing evangelism not just preaching it.
Again. It won’t be easy. I am in a similar situation myself after 37 years in ministry. It is the hardest battle of my life to date.
God bless you as you bless others.
Ps. Get a good biography of a tall man of faith. Jerry Falwell’s life as told by his wife was a real encouragement to me. I forget the title.
David: You are getting all bent out of shape over a reality left to us by our ancestors and predecessors. The originals were the Sovereign Grace five pointers, consisting of Separates and Regulars. These united in 1787, and they allowed for preaching that Christ tasted death for every man would be no bar to communion. They allowed this as a few of the Separates (John Waller was one) preached that text from Heb.2:9, not discerning the contextual reality of “many sons” in verse 10. They allowed it because the advocates of “every man” had suffered with them in the religious persecution to which all Baptists had been subjected during the State Church era (Anglican in Va.). However, the majority of the Separate Baptists were like the Regulars, full-fledged Calvinists. Even as late as 1814, the Mt. Pisgah Church from which came our first missionary to China, Matt. T. Yates, in its articles of faith, noted that Christ died for the church, not a thing was said about Him dying for the whole world and every last soul in it. Back then they argued just as hard as we do today for the issues we hold dear, but it is better that we just argue and continue to work together than split and neglect our calling to do missions. The union of Separate and Regulars led to the practice of Calvinists who were three or four pointers, who held to Sovereign Grace and a efficiency – sufficiency theory of the atonement, based roughly upon Andrew Fuller’s Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. I pastored a church established on that approach in when it was found by Elder J.B. Longan in 1827 He is so noted in Duncan’s History of Missouri Baptists, While every one screams and cries about the threat of calvinism to missions and evangelism, the truth is a goodly number of associations and churches in Tennessee and Kentucky were founded on the old Regular views of the Phila and London Confessions which are more toward John Gill’s views of Tulip. He wrote a tract on the five points bearing the title, The Cause of God and Truth, in which he established by citations the evidence for those truths in the early Church Fathers during the first 2-5 centuries, effectively nullifying the nonsense that nothing was heard about such views until Augustine. I have that work in my library. He also produced his commentary and Body of Divinity which were recommended to the minister of their Churches by the Charleston Baptist Association…Duh! Finally, we had the prototype of our modern traditionalists in the Life and Times of Elder Rueben Ross who was won to Christ by a Calvinist and whose funeral was by one (J.M. Pendleton), but Ross was just like our modern traditionalists. He knew nothing about unconditional election or irresistible grace. Southern Baptists had all three positions present in the Convention, but it was primarily the strict calvinists in the 1800s as is evidenced in the fact that the most elected president of that period was P. H. Mell whose work on Predestination is also in my possession. Likewise in that period J.P. Boyce published his Abstract of Systematic Theology, and I have it.
In the 20th century, E.C. Dargan, J.M. Frost, B.H. Carroll, W.T. Conner, and others were within the Sovereign Grace view, while my ordaining pastor, Dr. Ernest R. Campbell was self-proclaimed supralapsarian and hyper-calvinist (his words from the pulpit and person to person). Dr. Campbell was as evangelistic as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. He founded the American Race Track Chaplaincy while pastoring the FBC of Hialeah, Fla. He once preached a revival in Georgia in which one hundred souls were converted. I preached in the same church 40 years later, and a deacon from the FBC of Augusta who had been one of his converts in that revival visited the church and told me about his conversion. Dr. Campbell once pleaded with a member of my family to look to Christ until tears ran down the man’s face.
All three positions are still extant among us to this day, though some wish to exclude hyper-calvinists (because they never knew any that were evangelistic or missionary), but Dr. Robert G. Lee thought so much of Dr. Campbell that he put it in his Will that Dr. Campbell preach his funeral. Dr. Lee had about 5 preachers for his funeral, but, as Dr. Campbell use to laugh and say, “The only one that was legal was me.”
Contrary to popular views, Dr. Lee gave some evidence of holding all five points. There is a thesis on the Rise and Demise of Calvinism in the SBC in the Univ. of Louisville where one of the pastors interviewed checked all five points of the tulip outline and then checked you may not use my name. Guess who? And then read his sermons a little more closely.
Also We have missionaries from the get go who were and are Calvinists. The first convert William Carey baptized was Krishna Pal who was won to Christ by Dr. John Thomas who was called a Hyper-Calvinist. Strangely, Dr. Thomas went insane with joy at the evidence that Pal would go all the way and be baptized (which would open him up for persecution). And then there was Rev. Luther Rice who clearly identifies his Sovereign Grace views and presided as chairman of the Sandy Creek Committee in 1816 which sets for the depravity of man, man’s impotence to do anything to save himself, and the effectual/irresistible grace that makes the difference. All of this while enlisting Sandy Creek in the Great Century of Missions. On that committee was the man, Basil Manly, Sr., who would suggest and then lead Southern Baptists in the founding of our Mother Seminary, Southern, a man who is clearly Sovereign Grace in his views and preaching. His preacher boy (the fellow sat under his ministry from childhood until college and was converted under Richard Fuller – if my memory serves correctly) would be the first president, Boyce noted for his calvinism.
Now as to the theology itself. For years prayer has been offered up, I dare say, longer than I have been alive…and I offered up such for it will be this fall of 2013 forty years for a Third Great Awakening. Others have prayed and we enter into their prayers. Spurgeon prayed, too, for the conversion of the whole earth…I do the same, practically every day. Now I pray for the whole earth and every soul on it and for it to begin in this generation and continue for a 1000 generations, that is, 20,000-1,000,000 years and millions of planets with their inhabitants, too, should man reach the stars as I expect.
As to the subtleties of the theology of Sovereign Grace, even the strongest positions, not many today are acquainted with the subtleties of counseling, that is, like the technique of therapeutic paradoxes. One who helped me to get hold of it was the fellow who wrote an introduction to his translation of William Ames’ Marrow of Divinity, the first text book used at Harvard Univ., stating, that “Predestination is an invitation to begin one’s spiritual pilgrimage,….” I started looking to see if all five points were used evangelistically, as invitations, and I think they are. Compare, Luke 4:16-30 and Matt.15:21-28. Our Lord set the example of using such truths as invitations. In any case, these and other truths of the Bible make the true Bible believer the True liberal, the one who is willing for God to do the persuading, not willing to use any unethical means to win a soul to Christ.
The Lost are often won by the ethical means and repulsed by the unethical methods or even misled by them. The subtleties of biblical theology constitute an intellectual challenge as they are meant to do, because God’s creation was to be an intelligent response, a willing worship out of knowledge and understanding. The first requirement of the Gospel is for a change of mind based upon reflection, that is, repentance, a fact that escapes most of our modern folks who think it is simply turning around; it is that in the end, but it is an informed turning, a turning made as the result of a rational decision, a logical choice.
O to return to the theological issue, even Dale Moody would find that Southern Baptists were not willing to go the way of some free will Baptists and all General Baptists and even give up the eternal security and perseverance of the saints. The reason for the particular redemption idea is that THE POWER IS IN THE BLOOD…not in man’s choice. As Sandy Creek’s confession affirms, Man is utterly impotent to do anything of his own free will or ability to save himself.
Finally, let me say that the doctrines all have two sides to them, two poles which will enable one to be balanced, flexible, creative, constant, and magnetic. They were designed to cope with man’s fallen situation – even the most desperate situations. And God’s view shall win the day by persuasion. Nothing is harder to resist than the open hand of one will to meet us in our situations…even the doctrine of total depravity and inability is like an invitation to the paralytic to stand up and walk, or to stretch forth his hand or for the dead Lazarus to “Come forth.” Depth, brother, depth, that is attractive, winsome, compelling, entertaining, inspiring, inviting, urgent, pressing, charming, drawing, magnetic, wonderful, wooing, beckoning, and more, the theology of the Bible for a 1000 generations, at the very least, all so God can say, the number of the redeemed is a number no one can redeem (Rev.7:9). Surely, an expression of humor to cheer suffering saints with the hope of such a triumph!
Exactly what did I say that you would classify as “getting all bent out of shape?”
I think it was about where you asked, “But do they matter as much as they sometimes matter to us? I really doubt it.” On the issue of the nature of the Gospel and of the theology which produced the First and Second Great Awakenings and the launching of the Great Century of Missions they matter as much as the Chaplain with Patton’s Third Army, the Rev. William Schillinger, who spoke German like a native, due to his germanic descent in the city of Philadelphia (his grandfather was an immigrant and on his maternal side he descended from the German Moravians of North Carolina, one ancestor being the theologian for that church at Salem). Rev. William Schillinger was staying in the home of a German family and was preparing to leave, when they said (due to liking him and being able to talk with him in their own language), “We have some maps here, left by the other army. Would you like to have them?” He took a look at them and realized that they were plans for a battle. He took them to Patton’s G-2 (an individual who was interviewed by the Sanford North Carolina Herald many years ago…I saw the article one time). They were the plans for the German’s Offensive that we call the Battle of the Bulge. This was two weeks before the battle began. So when you see Patton saying, “I can have my men out of the line of battle and on the road to Bastogne in 48 hrs.,” he actually had been preparing for that very thing for nearly two weeks. A little bit of truth makes a great difference. I speak up, David, not because I think you make egregious mistakes. In fact, I like a lot of what you say as it vindicates what our predecessors and ancestors said and decided long ago, but I also want to keep the truths essential to that Third Visitation that shall win the whole earth fresh before us, especially as I draw near to the end of my pilgrimage in this world. The reason is simple: I want to promote, push, prod, focus attention, stun with the reality of the word of God, every reader possible in order that they might be moved to study and explore and find what I had found and be likewise inspired to pray for this blessed event as I have it will be this Fall for 40 years. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, so I understand, prayed for such a revival all during his ministry, but he never saw it. The Evangelist Rolfe Barnard came close to seeing such a blessing several times in his ministry. He had some astounding successes and some miserable failures, but he reflected the theology of our origins.
You will pardon me, I can hardly talk of this great possibility without tears. I feel at times that no one has been exposed to the knowledge that I have by my many years of research. If you all but knew. If you only knew. To think that God set me on that course by a Black Historian back in the Spring of 1963, would lead me to write a Master’s Thesis on the subject, “The Baptists & Ministerial Qualifications: 1750-1850,” which involved Philadelphia, Sandy Creek, Charleston, Elkhorn, and two (later) Primitive Assns., and then would place me as a pastor in the Sandy Creek Assn. of a church where the pastor who founded it in 1827 was the first named member of the Committee on the Confession of Faith chaired by Luther Rice and having as a member the clerk of the Assn., one Basil Manly (later Senior), who would go on to pastor the FBC of Charleston and suggest the founding of our parent seminary, Southern, and lead Southern Baptists to found it. I say, if you knew, if you all only knew what I have read and the notes I have taken (and I just scratched the surface), you all would demand that the SBC commission its Baptist historians and put them to do research. Just think how the Awakening played leap frog, jumping from North Carolina to Tennessee and Kentucky and thence to Arkansas and Missouri. I should also mention Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas. That continuing awakening and its theology of Sovereign Grace and its spirit of liberal openness which enabled the early Baptists to work with such political statesmen as Washington, Henry, Jefferson, Madison, and others, to convert General Baptists from their lackdaisical spirit in missions and evangelism (and this while holding to a General Atonement) to a Particular view of the atonement and turn them on to evangelism and missions and bless them with the Second Great Awakening, the uniting of Separate and Regular Baptists, the first rumblings of that unity that would produce the SBC, allowing for differences. If you could see what I saw, the educated and uneducated working together, who could argue to beat the band, so that an Episcopalian thought they were doing nothing else, all the while they were securing religious liberty, starting one of the early anti-slavery movements (Friends of Humanity), starting our educational institutions, and launching the Great Century of Missions, see them as the Avant Guarde of the thinking of that period (just note Roger Williams, Dr. John Clarke and others like John Leland and Elijah Craig, leading in religious liberty). I could continue, but I will cease. The glory of that era is still glowing in my mind and heart, if only from what I have read in the primary sources.
Just consider that I pray for the conversion of the whole earth and a 1000 generations of converts and perhaps millions of planets. All of that from the supposedly narrow theology of John Owen and Andrew Fuller and even the old, later, Primitive Baptist, Ambrose Dudley, the first named member of the committee to unite the Separates and Regulars, though he likely repudiated it later. Even so you have to take a man at his best for the blessing he really produces. Even our Lord took David, the Adulterer and Murderer and made him out as a Prophet and THE PATRIARCH in the sermon on the Day of Pentecost.
Dave,
I have to agree with you on this. Sometimes it seems that people are just out to make a battle out of everything. I’ll give you an example.
A week or so ago, an essay I wrote late last year was posted on another site. It neither attacked Calvinists per se nor Calvinist soteriology, but instead focused upon two matters: (1) speculation that the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement might be approaching its peak* in popularity, and (2) expression of the idea that Calvinist soteriology logically spreads into other areas of doctrine with implications for one’s view of the Father, the Son, sin, church government and the role of the Holy Spirit in salvation, among other concerns.
( *In discussing this “peak” I did mention two non-Southern Baptist reformed leaders dealing with well known public scandals, which I view in the same vein as discussions of Bakker and Swaggart in the 1980’s.)
Few of those responding bothered to interact with the two theses of the essay, namely the historical bubble of attention and popularity that often bursts in any movement, and the theological spread from one doctrine to another of interrelated ideas, and its possible impact on our denomination.
Though not true of everyone, many people saw attacks on Calvinists and Calvinism where there were absolutely none to be found, but merely conjecture about its future role in American Christianity and an observation about the way one doctrine, namely soteriology, can spread into many other areas as well.
I agree with you there should be no reason to fight to the death about these matters. I wish people would read much more carefully in order to discern if the writer has truly attacked their position or, as in my case, simply questioned its future and its impact upon logically corollary doctrines.
Perhaps 1 Corinthians 11:19 has some applicability .. “No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval”. That also might explain why some folks get so upset, even though there is never any excuse for invective and derogation. None. Ever.
Incidentally I just quoted from the 2011 NIV.
(Ducking under desk)
NIV 2011? Do you hate puppies?
It’s the default at Biblegateway.com (which is owned by Zondervan now.)
Maybe they hate puppies too.
Well, Zondervan also owns NIV…
Not to mention vv 17 & 18 (I grabbed 1984 NIV and requoted 19 just to assuage Bob’s conscience):
’17 In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. 18 In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. 19 No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval.’
Conscience? I’m a Pentecostal Calvinistic Baptist. How could I POSSIBLY have one of THOSE?
Let me know when you write “Blogging and the War of Jenkins’s Ear.” I’d like to read that one.
Thank goodness for Wikipedia, which informed me there.
I will see what I can do.