Daily Archives: 13 Jul 2012

John Gill v. John Wesley- On Predestination

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I’m reading through Gill’s works (what a nice writer he was) and I’ve arrived at his ‘The Doctrine of Predestination’ which commences as follows:

Mr. Wesley having declared himself the author of the Serious Thoughts upon the Perseverance of the Saints, to which I lately returned an answer; has been pleased to shift the controversy from perseverance to predestination: contenting himself with some low, mean and impertinent exceptions to a part of what I have written on the subject of perseverance; not attempting to answer any one argument advanced by me in vindication of it; and yet he has the assurance in the public papers, to call this miserable piece of his, chiefly written on another subject, A full answer to Dr. Gill’s pamphlet on perseverance; any other man but Mr. Wesley would, upon reflection, be covered with shame and confusion; though to give him his due, in his great modesty, he has left out the word full in some after-papers; as being conscious to himself, or it may be, some of his friends pointed it to him, that it was an imposition on the public, and tended greatly to expose himself and his cause since he has left me in tile full possession of all my arguments; which I will not say are unanswerable, though I think they are; and it looks as if Mr. Wesley thought so too, seeing he has not attempted to answer one of them; yet this I may say, that as yet they are not answered at all, and much less is a full answer given unto them.

Yes- that’s one sentence! Gill’s loads of fun and the paper at hand is really a fine crushing of Wesley’s silly Arminianism. Theologians these days are just boring compared to those of past centuries.

The Episcopal General Conference is Nuttier Than We Knew

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As is made stunningly plain here where the Conference’s treatment of various Bible translations is described and discussed.

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It was bad enough this week when General Convention decided to open all positions in the Church—clergy, lay and volunteer—to all those for whom their sex (gender) is like their apparel, i.e., chosen to fit the mood and the occasion. Then it voted to violate ECUSA’s Constitution by authorizing a “rite” for same-sex blessings which, until it also amends the Rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer, it has no power to authorize.

But the low point of the week was surely when the House of Deputies decided to attack a certain Bible translation (the English Standard Version) for using the word “homosexuality” to translate a passage from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. The contortions they went through in trying to avoid dealing with that reality say all one needs to know about the place of Holy Scripture in today’s Episcopal Church (USA).

The piece is rather long but it’s very much worth the time.  (HT Daniel Stoddart on the G+)

Summer Olympics Stuff I Care About

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I admit to liking gymnastics a lot and am always impressed by the nearly Calvinistic self control those athletes are able to manage.  Gymnastics is really the most Calvinistic sport of all.

On the other hand, I do love football too; and I would classify it as the most Zwinglian sport.  It’s frenetic and exciting and brilliant fun to watch.  And for good reason called ‘the beautiful game’.  So that’s what I’ll be most interested in when the games roll around in a few weeks.

I like swimming too but least of all the top three.  It’s the Lutheran sport because its participants are immersed in liquid and nothing says Luther like swimming in pools of booze.

As to the rest of the sports featured in the Summer Olympics, they’re all pretty much nothing but Anabaptism: boring, uninspiring, and really populated by the least engaging athletes.  To the rest of the games I can only give a big yawn.  They’re snoozers.

So there you have it- the games I care about are gymnastics, football, and swimming.  The rest I won’t be watching.  They’re the summer equivalent of curling.