I often find myself baffled as I consider the state of the church in our day. People often ask me, in light of the radical unbelief that infests the pulpits of so many mainline churches, why these "pastors" bother to pretend to be Christian. What benefit do wolves get from masquerading as shepherds? But such questions betray a misunderstanding. The men and women who embrace theological liberalism operate under the premise that words have no meaning. They are not pretending to be Christians, they are re-imagining the meaning of the term "Christian." People who have no respect for the history of the church will not have respect for the history of words. In our post-modern world if a word still carries the scent of goodness, all the baddies will claim it for their own. Thus the homosexual crowd lobbies for gay marriage, even though marriage has always been defined as a union between a man and a woman.

When the Roman religion codified a false gospel at the Council of Trent, dogmatically teaching that those who affirm justification by faith alone are worthy of damnation, the true church had a problem. We had two groups, each claiming the word "Christian." The two sides taught mutually exclusive views of a cardinal tenet, the doctrine of salvation. So the Protestants, instead of just holding onto the name "Christian," added the terms "Protestant" or "evangelical" as qualifiers to their understanding of what a Christian was. To be sure, they affirmed that there were no non-Protestant, or non-evangelical Christians, just non-Protestant, non-evangelical people and institutions who wrongly claimed the word, "Christian."

J. Gresham Machen made much the same argument when he titled his monumental work Christianity and Liberalism. He took great pains to argue that theological liberalism was not a variety of the Christian faith, but another faith altogether. The liberals, however, did not give up the term.

Within that group which took the name Protestant there are sub-groups. There were Lutherans, and there were Reformed people; there were Mennonites, and there were Anglicans. There were Calvinists, and there were Remonstrants. Many of the terms have faded from use, but some remain. And one of the oddities is how the term Calvinist has come to be used in the modern American church.

For many in the modern visible church to identify someone as a "Calvinist" is akin to saying that such a person is worthy of the death penalty. The ghost of Servetus still haunts us. Just as in our age of hyper-sensitivity no one can make fun of any other group (unless, of course, that group is comprised of evangelical Christians), so it seems that within evangelicalism political correctness decrees that we speak ill of no one else (with the possible exception of those Calvinists). We (for alas, in the sovereign outworking of God's decrees, I am one of them) are presented in caricature. We are the dour crowd, pinched lips, plain clothes, ready to burn our enemies at the stake. Calvinists, for good or for bad, have a reputation for being smart. We are the ones ever so adept at crossing our theological "t's," and dotting our soteriological "i's." We are the proud owners of cold, dead orthodoxy, with minds aflame, and hearts of coal, or so it is said.

This consideration might help us to understand a rather curious phenomenon in the modern church. We now are having to deal with "moderate Calvinists." It is my suspicion that a "moderate Calvinism" is the theological equivalent of a "compassionate conservative" in the political realm. That is, it can involve an element of double speak. The "compassionate conservative" candidate for public office wants you to see him as a person who wants to cut your taxes while at the same time raising your benefits. "Compassion" speaks to the benefits, "conservative" to the taxes, and in all the confusion we forget that we're talking about only one pile of money. Place your bets on "compassion" not on "conservative," and remember, they're compassionate with your money.

I believe those who describe themselves as "moderate Calvinists" are playing the same game. "Moderate" means not so mean-spirited, not given to hard rhetoric on the sovereignty of God, not quite so stingy on free will, while "Calvinist" maintains the air of intellectual rigor and respectability.

Dr. Norman Geisler (perhaps having grown weary of his previous oxymoronic self-description as a "Cal-minian") has not only taken to calling himself a moderate Calvinist, but has weighed in with a book, Chosen But Free, designed to lay out for the reader this "you can have your cake and eat it too" system. As so often happens, "moderate" eats up "Calvinism."

Apart from mislabeling his own views, Geisler makes a spirited defense of historic Arminianism, and in the process seeks to paint historic Calvinism as not only "extreme," but false. Dr. Geisler is no intellectual lightweight. His book however carries no punch. One makes little progress when battling the rock that is the Word of God.

Martin Luther argued that we are all Pelagians by nature: we have a natural propensity to see ourselves as having a propensity for good. And so, we should not be surprised if Dr. Geisler's book will find a welcome audience, which is perhaps why Dr. White took up the challenge of answering Dr. Geisler. In The Potter's Freedom, Dr. White follows in the tradition of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Edwards, fighting for the angels, and more importantly, for the unassailable sovereignty of God in our salvation. He works his way by moving between two important books, the error filled work of Dr. Geisler, and the inerrant Word of God. Point by point, paragraph by paragraph, Dr. White shines the light of Scripture on Chosen But Free. Along the way he shows us that the views espoused in Chosen But Free are not only not Calvinism of any stripe, but not biblical, and therefore not true.

It seems that while we are all born Pelagians, most of us are reborn as semi-Pelagians. That is, we come into the kingdom as Arminians. Dr. White will, God willing, help many progress to what Spurgeon said was but a nickname for biblical Christianity: Calvinism.

R.C. Sproul, Jr.
Editor-in-Chief
TableTalk Magazine

What is Dr. Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free?... A new cult? Secularism? False prophecy scenarios? No. Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called "Calvinism." He insists that this belief system is "theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant."

This book is written as a reply to Dr. Geisler, but it is much more: it is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself! In a style that both scholars and layman can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so-called "extreme Calvinism," defines what the Reformed Faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture.

Above Material Copyright © 2006 Calvary Press