Monday, December 28, 2009

New Donald Ross paper

James Harvey has recently completed a paper that explores "the doctrine of salvation held by Donald Ross". From his blog post, he hopes that the essay will help the following groups of people:
  • Brethren who appreciate teachers like John Piper and John MacArthur and their high view of God, yet feel that such bold Calvinism is somehow inconsistent with received or legitimate Brethren theology
  • Brethren who view Calvinism as an unwelcome intruder, a threat to robust evangelism and a divisive doctrine of no great importance about which a few mostly irrelevant older Brethren erred
  • Non-Brethren believers who may benefit from a warning about the change that only a few decades can bring in foundational doctrine–even among a conservative communion of churches as informally organized as Open Brethren
I haven't read this paper yet, but according to the conclusion, the following are common misconceptions whose times are up:
  • That Calvinism is a recent and alien intrusion into Revival Brethren theology
  • That vigorous evangelism is fundamentally incompatible with Calvinism
  • That among Brethren, only Exclusives have held a Calvinistic soteriology
  • That Calvinism, if ever taught by early Revival Brethren at all, was always a minority view
  • That even if some early Revival Brethren were Calvinistic, they never strongly held these doctrines

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mike, thanks for the link. It's nice to see some historical theology being done in the brethren movement.

I read through the paper this morning and plan on reviewing it briefly on my blog. It would be nice to discuss it once you've had a chance to read it.

God bless,

Joel