There exists within the Southern Baptist Convention, a network of college ministries which go by the names “Christian Challenge”, “Baptist Student Union (BSU)”, and “Baptist Collegiate Ministries (BCM)”. The network I come out of consists of colleges from New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. What distinguishes our network from other collegiate ministries is a focus on 1 on 1 discipleship. Our intellectual debt is owed to Dawson Trotman, founder of the Navigators, and to one very Godly man, Dr. Max Barnett.
Max felt called by God during his college years to disciple students on college campuses throughout the country. He began his ministry at Texas A&M and eventually moved to the University of Oklahoma where he launched a group of men onto the Big 10 campuses to start their own disciple making ministries. From there, Christian Challenge ministries began popping up all over because of the faithfulness of Godly men to carry out the ministry.
Today, there exists countless of Christians worldwide because of the faithfulness of Max to obey God’s calling on his life. I certainly owe much to this man for his personal investment in my family as well as his investment in other men who have also invested in my life.
That being said, Max is still a man and an imperfect man with blind spots just like the rest of us. In 2016, he published a little booklet titled The Truth about Calvinism which revealed one such blind spot. This little booklet can be purchased by contacting The Real Purpose of Life Publications at (405) 329-2990. Or if you are a student involved with Christian Challenge, BSU, or BCM, you can ask your staff to get a copy of the book and they should be able to get it to you.
In a series of posts, I plan on tackling his little booklet in little chunks at a time for the sake of rooting out error and sharpening one another as one man sharpens another in brotherly, Christian love.
In his preface on page 3, Max says this:
A book should be judged on what it is, rather than what it is not. This is not a scholarly work with a myriad of footnotes. This booklet is not designed to go into the complexities and intricacies of their explanations or the myriads of writings of the Calvinists.
In light of this and out of respect Max, I will attempt to do just that. My desire is the same as his desire:
…to focus on what the Bible reveals. I cannot deal with every verse they use, but you should always consider a passage of Scripture in light of the context and what the whole of the Scriptures teach. p. 3
Max closes his preface saying this:
What Jesus said to some Jews long ago applies to us today: “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:2). The beliefs of the Calvinist need to be evaluated in light of the Scriptures.
Yes and amen. We ought to be Bereans when men present the teachings of the Bible to us. So I will also evaluate the beliefs of Max in light of the Scriptures. I will also deal with instances of poor argumentation in his booklet, and poor uses of the facts of church history.
Then go and study for yourself. Dive into the depths of God’s Word and seek out the immeasurable riches found within its covers. Weigh both sides of the argument and hold them up to the Bible and believe what our Creator and Savior has revealed to us.
To wrap up this post, I will now summarize the preface and Chapter 1 of Max’s book. His preface contains some of his arguments and I want to highlight them here. I won’t pick them apart as that will be taken care of as the chapters are assessed.
Chapter 1 contains a historical inaccuracy and gives definitions for the acrostic TULIP. I will only address the historical inaccuracy as his definitions are good enough.
In following posts, I will dedicate one or two posts for each chapter of his book, with the goal of fairly representing and responding to Max’s main arguments in each chapter.
Let’s begin!
PREFACE
The purpose for Max writing this booklet is summarized by these quotes:
I do not want to see Calvinism spreading among students in colleges, universities, seminaries, nor among pastors and laymen…This writing is a[n] effort to make Calvinism understandable for any believer and to reveal its dangers (p. 2, 3)
Here are some of the arguments which will play out through the booklet:
The Calvinist has to come up with all kinds of terms to try and make his views fit with the Scriptures. (p. 1)
Although the Calvinists may speak of the glory of God, I do not believe the picture of God they present glorifies Him. (p. 1)
It grieves me that the horrible sufferings and death of Christ on the cross are not adequate to deliver some men from hell, according to the Calvinist, because the Father chose to deny them the benefits of Christ’s death for their sins. (p. 2)
These arguments, especially the last one, will occur multiple times in Chapters 2-8.
CHAPTER 1
Max summarizes the origin of the TULIP acrostic this way:
In the years of 1618 and 1619, a conference known as the “Synod of Dort” was held in Holland, a country known for its beautiful tulips. From that conference came the acrostic “TULIP” which has marked Calvinism ever since. (p. 5)
Above I called this an inaccuracy. While the facts are technically correct, the framing and presentation is not. The Synod of Dort was no ordinary conference like we think of today. Rather, it was a gathering of the leading Christian pastors and theologians in response to 5 objections made by a group led by a man named Jacob Arminius about the church’s doctrine of salvation.
Their 5 objections were:
Free Will/Human Ability - Man is able to save himself by choosing God for himself
Conditional Election - God only elected to salvation those who he knew would choose Him. Thus election is conditional on the choices of the individual
General Atonement - Christ’s blood only made it possible for every person to be saved but did not actually save anyone
Resistible Grace - Man can resist the call of God to be drawn into everlasting life
Falling from Grace - Man who was once truly saved can by his own actions fall away from grace and lose the salvation he once had
In response to these came the now well known acrostic TULIP which stands for
Total Depravity - Because of man’s sinful nature, he is unable to choose God apart from God regenerating his soul.
Unconditional Election - God chooses who He will save because of His good pleasure, not because of any choice of man.
Limited Atonement - The blood of Christ actually saves all whom He died for. He has a perfect batting record in other words.
Irresistible Grace - Man cannot resist the power of God to bring him to salvation
Perseverance of the Saints - Those who are Christ’s sheep will never be lost, though they may backslide into sin
The framing of Max’s description of the Synod of Dort conveys that the Calvinist understanding of salvation originated here. This is not the case. In fact, the Calvinist understanding arose first to prominence with Augustine of Hippo who had to deal with the heresy of Pelagius who asserted that the Fall of Adam did not corrupt the nature of man. Augustine lived from 354 - 430 AD and did not rely on his own wisdom to fend off Pelagius, but rather reasserted the teachings already existing in his day.
This concludes part 1