Brought up as I was in a liberal church and converted in my teens chiefly through the witness of my grandmother, I was introduced in a natural way during the 1950s to the institutions of what is inexactly called “evangelicalism” in North America… .
Certainly most of the authors I was introduced to in those early days as theologically “sound” were staunchly Calvinistic…. Therefore, it is no surprise that I began my theological life as a Calvinist who regarded alternate evangelical interpretations as suspect and at least mildly heretical. I accepted the view I was given that Calvinism was just scriptural evangelicalism in its purest expression, and I did not question it for a long time.
I held onto this view until about 1970, when one of the links in the chain of the tight Calvinism logic broke. It had to do with the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, likely the weakest link in Calvinian [sic] logic, scripturally speaking. I was teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School at the time and attending to the doctrine particularly in the book of Hebrews. … The exhortations and the warnings could only signify that continuing in the grace of God was something that depended at least in part on the human partner. …
I began to doubt the existence of an all-determining fatalistic blueprint for history and to think of God’s having made us significantly free creatures able to accept reject his purposes for us. …
Link to Read the whole thing
ps Dr. Myron Houghton put together a great paper in response to Gregory Boyd's book. I'll ask his permission to post it here.
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The exhortations and the warnings could only signify that continuing in the grace of God was something that depended at least in part on the human partner. …
By the way, if anyone has thought about this issue. This statement brought to my mind something Dr. John III said about Calvinism (and he is Calvinistic). He said with regard to this issue, it seems that Calvinists take perseverance so far that they almost come to the same spot as the Arminians, we must hold on to be saved. Ben Eilers pointed out to me that there are two camps to this debate, those who see perseverance as active and those who see it as passive. In other words, one camp says I need to hold on for all I'm worth to prove I'm elect, and the other, if I do hold on that proves I'm elect. Maybe the biblical answer is more nuanced, but I do see a danger with being too Arminian in your Calvinism... if you know what I mean...
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