Category Salvation

For a Believer’s Baptism: Against the Sacramentalized Infant Baptism of Augustine

October 5, 2021 · by · in Augustine, Baptism, Barth, Sacraments, Salvation, W. Travis McMaken · 10 Comments

Augustine took infant baptism to a level it hadn’t been theretofore prior to his development of a doctrine of original sin contra Pelagius’ theology. My friend (who I had a falling out with some years ago), W. Travis McMaken, offers a nice sketch of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, and its necessary remedy through the Church’s […]

Addressing the Withering Assurance of Salvation Among the Saints: From a Position of Christ Concentration

October 4, 2021 · by · in Assurance Of Salvation, Barth, CD, Critiquing Classic Calvinism, Evangelical Calvinism, Salvation · 7 Comments

I once wrote something on assurance of salvation for publication, you can read that here. Assurance of salvation has always been an important soteriological locus for me; primarily because my dad struggled with this issue in very deleterious ways. I experienced struggles with this myself for a season of dark nighted soul, but came to experience denouement as I came to internalize […]

But that Sounds like Arminianism; that Sounds Like Universalism: Barth’s Relational-Universalism Funded by His Actualism

September 30, 2021 · by · in Barth, CD, George Hunsinger, Salvation, Vicarious Humanity · 2 Comments

George Hunsinger offers six helpful motifs in order to grasp the way that Karl Barth maneuvers in his theological developments. One of those, and significantly, is Barth’s so-called actualism. In this post we will see what that entails for Barth, according to Hunsinger; and then see an example of that from Barth, in his Church Dogmatics, as that pertains […]

Holy Communion: Remembering that Human Life is in Christ’s Blood

June 26, 2021 · by · in Devotion, Eschatology, John Webster, Sacraments, Salvation, Vicarious Humanity · 5 Comments

The late, John Webster, wasn’t just a Christian theologian par excellence; he was also a pastor. The following comes from part of a sermon he gave on Maundy Thursday. A major thrust of his sermon was to remind the parishioners that Holy Communion is not something that re-enacts or re-presents the death of Jesus Christ; […]

The Augustinian-Dualism of Leighton Flowers’ Provisionism

June 3, 2021 · by · in Augustine, Classical Theism, Critiquing Classic Calvinism, Leighton Flowers, Provisionism, Salvation · 2 Comments

Leighton Flowers of YouTube fame, with reference to his anti-Calvinist soteriological position known as Provisionism, asserts that his theological framework is genuinely ‘Christocentric,’ whereas his counterparts in classical Calvinism are not. The irony of this is too hard to ignore for me. Flowers’ premise is as follows: he believes that classical Calvinists’ theistic determinism keeps […]

Barth and Orthodox Theosis: His For and Against

May 18, 2021 · by · in Adam Neder, Barth, Eastern Orthodox, Salvation · 4 Comments

Here is a post that was originally two parts. I combined them, so now it is one long post (essay). Be built up! In light of Hank Hanegraaff’s Chrismation into Eastern Orthodoxy, I thought I would do a post on theosis; it just so happens that in my readings, apart from all of this, I […]

Barth Against the Semi-Pelagian Arminians and Renaissance-Man: What Hath Election to do With Christ?

May 13, 2021 · by · in Arminianism, Barth, CD, Salvation · 1 Comment

Barth, in the preceding section, to what we will be reading from him here, has laid down the gauntlet against the doctrine of election as found in Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Bullinger et al. He offers the right amount of praise, for all of them, insofar as they attempted to offer a proper christological reference in […]

Is Southern Baptist ‘Traditionalism’ or Leighton Flowers’ ‘Provisionism’, Semi-Pelagian?: An Engagement with Adam Harwood’s Essay

May 8, 2021 · by · in Leighton Flowers, Provisionism, Salvation, Semi-Pelagianism, Soteriology · 2 Comments

Is Provisionism or Southern Baptist Traditionalism semi-Pelagian? That is the question Dr. Adam Harwood attempts to answer in the negative. In other words, in a short essay he wrote for the Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry he sets out to demonstrate the way that Traditionalism or Leighton Flowers’ Provisionism definitionally elides the oft made charge that their respective soteriological position fits the […]

An Ontological-Relational Framing of the Bondage of the Will: The Vicarious Humanity of Christ as Antidote

May 4, 2021 · by · in Christology, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Predestination, Salvation, Semi-Pelagianism, Vicarious Humanity · 4 Comments

I am not a classical Calvinist; by now most of you know what I mean when I say that. I am not a classical Arminian; indeed, I’m not Arminian at all. I am Athanasian Reformed (aka Evangelical Calvinist). I affirm something like total depravity; I prefer to call that homo incurvatus in se, like Martin Luther did. Either way, I believe all of […]

God’s Free Electing Grace in Christ Concentration

April 27, 2021 · by · in Barth, Election, Human Agency, Salvation, Semi-Pelagianism · 3 Comments

I will simply refer the reader to a post I once wrote with reference to ‘freewill and human agency’ in the salvific reality. That post dovetails, quite nicely, with the post I am setting out to write thusly. In this post, rather than referring to Thomas F. Torrance, Karl Barth’s, greatest and best Anglophone student, […]

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