Leaning, Not Falling: Navigating Advice and Divine Understanding

For the past year, Proverbs 3:5 has been thrown at me whenever I disagree with advice. It usually happens when well-meaning people believe they are speaking on God's behalf.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And do not lean on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5, NASB)

The problem is, when I disagree with them, I don't believe I am "leaning" on my own understanding. I am simply trying to weigh what I see and hear against Scripture and reality, separating truth from what I want to be true.

Of course, I am not perfect at this. But just because someone claims God revealed something doesn't mean He did. Scripture provides checks and balances. While God often uses other believers to speak into our lives, I personally require internal resonance—a validation that the message is truly from God and not just a breach of my boundaries. I cannot count the number of times I have acted against my conscience and regretted the consequences.

So, how do we deal with this tension? What do you do when someone you love claims to have a word from God for your life, but your spirit does not resonate with it? Or worse, when it contradicts what you know God told you?

It gets complicated. But if you live long enough, you will experience it.

A Deeper Look at "Leaning"

To find concrete standing, I went back to the original Hebrew text.

The phrase "your own understanding" comes from the word binatecha (root: binah). This word implies mental discernment—the ability to separate and judge reality intellectually. It is our human capacity to analyze.

Interestingly, the word translated as "lean" is tishsha'en, which means to support oneself or to rest one's full weight upon something. The writer of Proverbs is warning us not to prop ourselves up entirely on our own mental perceptions. However, he is not telling us to blindly prop ourselves up on the perceptions of others.

The command is to lean on Yahweh.

The Test of Faith

How do you know when your understanding is aligned with God? From my perspective, if God wants me to follow a specific path, He will make it plain. If I have hesitation, I believe the correct action is to wait.

Paul addresses this tension between personal conviction and external pressure in Romans 14:22-23:

“The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God... whatever is not from faith is sin.”

Paul was discussing disputable matters—like eating meat sacrificed to idols—but the principle applies here: You must have your own conviction before God.

I was raised seeing this principle in action. My paternal grandmother was a Seventh-Day Adventist who believed that not going to church on Saturday was a sin. My parents, however, attended church on Sunday. Whenever she visited, my parents didn't force their view on her, nor did they violate their own conscience. They went to church with her on Saturday out of love, and then attended our home church on Sunday out of their own conviction.

There are so many examples like this. The key is making sure you do what God told you to do, even if it isn't what other people are telling you. What God tells you will never contradict Scripture, and it will eventually resonate with the faith He has given you.

Quote of the Day: Voddie Baucham

Whatever you're suffering, remember it's temporary, and it's not worth comparing to that which lays ahead of you. pic.twitter.com/WWcyPhSnh7

— Voddie Baucham Sermon Clips (@VoddieClips) June 5, 2025

Radio Free Geneva: Responding to Flame on Romans 9

The Context of Romans 9 🤯

AMAZING Overview of The Book of Romans in 90 Minutes!

FacePlant of the Day: Debunking Christianity: Is the Church really filled with hypocrites? No.

Well, David Madison is at it again - trying to take down Paul's letter to the Romans and demonstrate that his conclusion that it is bad theology and that people should ignore it. He has already written three attempts and this is his third. The last two points were failures of a faceplanting nature. Let's ee if his third attempt is any better at showing how bad Paul's thinking it is.  SPOILER: Madison fails a third time. My comments in red He is coming out of Romans, chapter 2.

Even in Christianity-soaked northern Indiana where I grew up several decades ago, there were cynics: those who gave wide berth to the church because, as they put it, “They’re just a bunch of hypocrites. Those people show up on Sunday, then forget about their religion the rest of the week.” Having been a pastor of two churches myself, I’ll side with the Christians on this one. I don’t think the blanket charge of hypocrisy is fair. But yes, there are those folks who preach one thing but do another.
One thing I wish is that Madison had defined "hypocrisy". Paul is talking about a person's actions being contrary to what they say they believe. Therefore I will use that concept to define hypocrisy. And using that definition, every  human being is a hypocrite.

It seems to been an ancient problem as well. The apostle Paul spotted the hypocrites and comes down hard on them at the start of chapter two of his Letter to the Romans. The second chapter is the topic of this post—as we make our way through all 16 chapters of Romans—one post at a time.

Paul does indeed point out the hypocrisy of condemning another person for the same acts you yourself doing.  But I think Madison misses Paul's larger point in this chapter.

“Why bother?” you may ask. Well, this epistle has been idealized and idolized forever by Christian scholars, who obsess about its potential for revealing the mind of the Almighty. Just scratch the surface—in fact they go far deeper than the surface—and the word of God is sure to come
seeping out. But Paul was a mediocre thinker and a bad theologian; couldn’t God have done better? There is so much bad stuff in the Bible, and it doesn’t hurt to keep pointing out that some of the most treasured Christian texts deserved to be sliced out. Thomas Jefferson took his scissors to the gospels to cut out the nonsense; I’m sure he would not have been kind to Romans.

I truly think this a worthwhile exercise to closely examine Paul's writing in Romans. But I disagree that Paul was a mediocre thinker and he was not a bad theologian. In order to demonstrate this,  Madison has to show evidence in Romans. This he has failed to do so far. Might this be the post that shows Madison is right?  Naaaaaaah.

Paul goes on this rant against hypocrites although he had never visited the congregation in Rome. Near the end of the letter, in chapter 16, he says “hi” to quite a few people whom he knows there, so maybe he had reports of unsavory conduct. In 1:11 he had written, “I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.” Hence his strong words against hypocrisy; maybe he’s giving advance warning?

 Advanced warning of what? Paul's point does not apply just to the church at Rome but to every person. The interesting thing is that it applies not just to them but to anyone at any time as well.

We can give him credit for impatience with hypocrisy, but then nasty Paul resumes the rant. God will run out of patience: “…for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does
evil” (vv.8-9). Wrath, fury, anguish, distress. Paul’s message here reminds us of John the Baptist’s severe words for the religious leaders who came out to hear him preach: “You brood of
vipers! Who warned you to flee the wrath to come? …even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 3:7-10) Yes, there are Hallmark moments in Paul’s letters, but there is uncompressing [sic]
severity as well. Don’t get carried away bragging about a ‘god of love’ in the New Testament.

So, Madison give Paul credit because he does not like hypocrisy, but calls him "nasty" because Paul said that those who are selfish and doe evil are going to suffer?  Huh? Whether you agree or not that God punishes bad people, I think everyone wants to see evil people be punished for the bad that they do especially when it is personally directed against us. How is this nasty or bad? If someone killed your child and laughed about it, would it be uncompromisingly severe for them to be punished for it? I don't think so. Paul is talking more about that. He's talking about everyone who has ever lied on you, stolen from you, and every other wrong befallen you. It goes both ways also. You deserve the same punishments for all the evil you have perpetrated against others. This is  Paul's point.

Can It Be? A Hint at Secular Ethics?

Again,to his credit, Paul saw that being in God’s favor didn’t depend on being Jewish, i.e., in the company of those who had heard God’s law for centuries. “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified” (v. 13). No matter who you are, you can qualify, and I find vv. 14-15 startling; did Paul really realize what he was saying: “When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness…”Do instinctively…written on their hearts…their own conscience bears witness? Atheists who argue that we don’t need religion to behave morally embrace these very concepts.

I think this is where so many people get confused. Secular ethicists make a startling assumption that people are capable of fulfilling moral law. Paul's not arguing from that point of view. In order to be justified by law one has to obey it completely and faultlessly. He's not saying that the gentile that does the right thing without having the law is perfect.. He is only saying that he/she is better than the Jew in those areas where their consciences are aligned with God. but the jew who has the law that does not obey it. No where does Paul say that anyone is righteous by obeying the law and in Chapter 3, he goes into why no one is righteous.

But Paul is caught in a major contradiction here, because he really doesn’t mean what he says in verse 10, i.e., that glory, honor and peace are for everyone who does good. The heart of Pauline theology, so earnestly embraced by Luther, was justification by faith, as stated so bluntly by Paul in Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” No amount of ‘doing good’ will do the trick. British scholar Michael Grant: “Paul commits flagrant self-contradictions, which caused
Augustine, among many others, the deepest anxiety.” (St. Paul, 1982, p. 6)

Paul is not caught up in a contradiction. The problem is that Madison does not understand what Paul said. He's not arguing that anyone is justified by the good that they do. He's pointing out that's it is better to follow the law than to disobey it but he doesn't argue that you just stop there. If he was suggesting that we all just obey the law, Romans would have been much shorter. I wonder if Madison has read chapter 3 yet because the rest of the letter is Paul explaining how he is not setting up a contradiction between faith and works. Madison seems to be getting ahead of Paul who has not even brought up "faith" yet. If you are gonna critique a man then at least follow his arguments more closely.

The Invasion-of-Privacy God

No surprise: personal monotheism is stated here with a vengeance. Paul is
confident that, on the Day of Judgment, “…God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.” (v. 16) God will judge your thoughts! The theologians who came up with this idea discovered the formula for terrorizing people. Jesus was in the same camp (at least as depicted by those who created the fictional Galilean peasant); he claimed that the hairs of our head are numbered—and the deity knows as well the thought-crimes inside our skulls: lust is the equivalent of adultery.

Exactly. This is why we know Paul is not  arguing for Justification by works. WE all know not one us can be justified by those standards. 

I once had a parishioner who was worried that people were watching her through the TV. Crazy, yes, but just drop the TV, and that’s what personal monotheism is: God is always watching you.

Given what's come out how the camera's on your phones, tablets, and game consoles (not to mention all the cameras in public) maybe she ain't that crazy.

Who thinks it’s cool to have cameras—installed by the state, our boss, landlord or a god—spying on us in our bedrooms and bathrooms—indeed, everywhere? And with the capacity for getting inside our heads. This evil theology should be off-putting to decent people. As for the folks who have lost their faith and mourn its passing, Christopher Hitchens asked why—why would you want it back? Personal monotheism is totalitarianism: you can’t even have ‘secret thoughts’ without God knowing. Heaven, Hitchens said, is a celestial North Korea. He couldn’t imagine anyone yearning for it.

The problem here is equivocation. God is more than right to expect us to act the way God says we should act. He is not another human being equal to us. How is it evil to recognize it. Sure you might not like it but not liking something does not make it evil. I don't like Brussels sprouts so does that mean you and all of  humanity should call Brussels sprouts evil?! Who's crazy now?

Paul and Jesus should rub people the wrong way because they claimed to be on a first name basis with the Invasion-of-Privacy god. Beware all who position themselves this way—and posture accordingly. They rate themselves as supremely qualified to tell the rest of us what to do. As
we go through the Letter to the Romans we will see that Paul specializes in just that.

Paul did not rate himself better than anyone else. He once referred to himself as the "chief of sinners". He just said what had been revealed to him. As for Jesus he has every right. He is positioned above us. He is better than you and me. His more than qualified to tell us how to live and how to think. Her made you. You are accountable to him. So am I.

A Positive Note at the End

Paul had little patience with the notion of Chosen People. So being circumcised was irrelevant; this outward mark on the flesh counted for nothing: “Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God” (v.29).

Praise is not the same as salvation. Notice that Paul did not say that such a person who is spiritually circumcised has earned salvation.If you think a person can earn salvation on the basis of their own merit that you completely misunderstood Paul.

A nice sentiment indeed—now if only Paul’s theology had not been excessively infused with magical thinking, i.e., the notion that believing that a holy man had risen from the dead was the key to winning eternal life.

The only way anyone could prove that Paul's theology is bad is to show that he was wrong about Jesus. Good luck with that. Otherwise, all Madison has managed to do is to show that he does not understand Romans 1 or 2 and that he does not like being held accountable for his sin - welcome to reality.

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years and has a
PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. His book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, was published last year by Tellectual Press.

Keep paying for David Madison.

Debunking Christianity: Is the Church really filled with hypocrites? No.

Faceplant of the DaY: Debunking Christianity: Maybe It’s Not the Worst Book in the Bible…

Well, I thought that because it took so long for David Madison to do a follow-up post on Paul's letter to the Church at Rome that maybe he wised up about his critique of the book. I was wrong. But on the other hand, I think that such posts that objectively evaluate Paul's letter to the Romans would be useful. I found Madison's evaluation really poor and fails to support his claims that the book of Romans is flawed. His words will be in black while my comments will be in red.

Maybe It’s Not the Worst Book in the Bible…

By
David Madison


at
1/26/2017

0 Comments

…But It’s a Contender

It would be such a relief—such a gift to the cause of compassionate religion—if Christians (especially of the paid-apologist variety, e.g., theologians, priests, ministers) could get over Paul’s Letter to the Romans..

I wonder if Madison thinks that all Christian clergy and apologists get paid for their work? If he does then he needs to meet more Christians. Also why should we chuck Romans under the bus? The only reason we should is if it is false and cannot hold up to scrutiny and does nothing to help us. Let's see if Madison can prove that the book of Romans is indeed false and unnecessary. 

In my post on this blog 14 October 2016, I characterized this 16-chapter patch of scripture as a ‘toxic brew of bad theology,’ and stated my reasons for doing so. I also announced my plan to write analyses of each the 16 chapters, my atheist critique to be wrapped by January. I fell short of that goal: here I am starting in January. So, here goes, my take on Romans 1.

This post is not a faceplant because Madison failed to finish his chapter-by-chapter commentary by the end of  January. It's a faceplant because it fails to demonstrate that Romans is a ‘toxic brew of bad theology,’ I am willing to agree that if he could have shown that Romans chapter one was as bad as he says it is we should throw out the whole letter and everything else Paul wrote. However, Madision is unsuccessful in making a single meaningful comment toward his thesis.

Scholars suspect that Paul’s opening paragraph was based on a liturgical formula current at the time (1:2-5), more or less summing up basic Christian thought, one key point being that Jesus Christ was a
descendant of King David. So I begin with a digression: There is little doubt that Paul belonged to the school of thought that Jesus had been conceived/born the same way everyone else is. We search in vain throughout his letters for any mention of the virgin birth (which would have canceled “descended from David”). Matthew’s famous proof text, Isaiah 7:14, “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son” was the furthest thing from his mind. He would have laughed it off.

Paul is not writing his letter in a vacuum. We know he got a lot of his interpretations from what Christians believed at the time. He was not making stuff up so vs 2-5 in chapter one is of couse something that would be definitional of Christianity. 

Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, ^[a]called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, ² which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, ³ concerning His Son, who was born of a ^[b]descendant of David according to the flesh, ⁴ who was declared the Son of God with power ^[c]by the resurrection from the dead, according to the ^[d]Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord, ⁵ through whom we have received grace and apostleship ^[e]to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name’s sake, - Romans 1:1-5 (NASB)

It is of course not a given conclusion that Paul did not believe in the Virgin birth. Just because he did not talk about it directly, does not mean that he assumed or taught that Jesus was conceived through sexual intercourse just like everyone else. Instead Paul focused on Jesus pre-existing his own birth in his letters - just like the Apostle John also said in John 1:1.  For example, look at  Colossians 1:16-20

¹⁶ For ^[x]by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. ¹⁷ He ^[y]is before all things, and in Him all things ^[z]hold together. ¹⁸ He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹ For ^[aa]it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the ^[ab]fullness to dwell in Him, ²⁰ and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in ^[ac]heaven.

Paul is saying that Jesus is everything that Jesus says He is in the Gospels. I find it impossible to assume that Paul did not believe Jesus had a miraculous birth given that he believed that everything that makes the Father God dwelled in Jesus Christ. This isn't a question of if Paul was right or wrong when it comes to what Madison wrote. He seems to imply that it's a unanimous conclusion that Paul would have rejected the thought of a virgin birth, but Paul himself never says anything of the sort. Faceplant number one. (I might keep a running count of his faceplants, but I have not decided yet).

Also look at the NASB translation of  Romans 1:3. Paul does not in any way claim that Jesus is Joseph's son. However "born of a descendant of David" could refer to Mary. Faceplant number 2.

Notice how explicit he is in 1:4: Jesus was declared son of God by his resurrection. That is Paul’s obsession; virgin birth would have diluted resurrection as the only credential that mattered. The birth narratives in Matthew and Luke (representing the minority school of thought in the New Testament)
indulged this fantasy that seeped into Christian thought decades after Paul wrote; some of the pious assumed it would be cool to graft the pagan his-mother-was-a-virgin idea onto the Jesus story. Those who want to adore Mary will not find an ally in Paul—who never so much as mentions her.

A lot of front-loaded assumptions here. Paul taught that Jesus was the Messiah that the Jews have been waiting centuries for. For him the Resurrection was proof, but there is no reason that the virgin birth would have taken anything away from the message. Madison only asserts without proof that the virgin birth belief was added to Christian belief decades after Paul wrote Romans. Where is the proof of that? Sure a lot of people today are teaching that  but that does not mean it's true. I'm not going to get very far into the fallacy that Jesus' birth story was stolen from pagan myths because Madison does not bother to prove it so I'm gonna just ignore this fourth faceplant and just count this assertion that the virgin birth is a fantasy and the failure in asserting that the virgin birth detracts from the Resurrection as one faceplant - faceplant number three.

Matthew, by the way, insults our intelligence in the first chapter of his gospel. He begins by tediously listing Jesus’ ancestors back to King David (gotta have that pedigree!) then drops the story of the virgin birth on us: Nope, Jesus didn’t have a father. How come the original readers didn’t catch this glaring non sequitur? And how come this is not the point that Christians today realize that Matthew was a fraud and toss the New Testament into the trash?

Matthew was writing to a primarily Jewish audience and wanted to show that Jesus was the Messiah whom had to be a descendant of  King David.Who said that Jesus had to be that descendant by a father? Mary was (from what I understand) his biological mother and a descendant of David. Also recall that Matthew's genealogical chapter is rather interesting in that it lists some women in the record and does not list every single individual in every single generation. This points to the face that one can't just ignore the women who played the part in bringing our Lord and Savior to earth. Faceplant number four.

End of digression.

Good maybe we will finally get a good argument. 

If I ever get around to writing a secular commentary on this dreadful epistle, I have the title ready: Paul’s Letter to the Romans: God Is Wrath. After his unctuous flattery of the Roman congregation (1:8-15), he gets down to business, to his flawed, ugly theology.

I want to mention four points.


No, God is not obvious by looking around at nature


In verse 20, Paul lays the groundwork for condemning unbelievers: “Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse.” So God’s power and nature can be “understood” through what he has made? Actually, precisely because God’s nature and power are invisible, they are not understood. Presumably Paul had the natural world in mind, but theologians with a couple thousand years of practice know that this is feeble: indifferent nature shows no mercy to humans. I suspect Paul didn’t give enough thought to this, because in his letters he explains endlessly what God expects and demands. So rules of conduct to convictsinners aren’t at all so obvious from the “things that God has made.”

Faceplant number 5: Just because something is invisible does not mean it can't be understood. We know something of God's character and power from what God has made just like we can look at a piece of art, not matter the medium, and know quite a bit about the artist's skill, abilities, tastes, and personality. All of the earth, the stars, and everything we can see, count, and measure is in the best possible place for us to not just be sustained in our existence but to also be observed. Science, by it's very nature, depends on the assumption that the universe is intelligible and something that we can figure out. Atoms are invisible to use but we can not only detect them but use them to do amazing things technologically. We can find black holes by observing how they affect visible stars around them. Mathematics is not made up by us but discovered.This is why we can use it to describe nature to the point that we can make accurate predictions. We can tell what stars are made of and what kind of atmospheres distant planets have by studying the light coming from them. All of this points to the kind of God we have. No, it does not tells us about his expectations and commands  or rules of conduct - that is what the rest of Romans is about. Paul never tells us it is enough to stop at the first chapter and you know everything about God  What we are without excuse about is the fact that there is a God.

God can’t wait to get even



Because people resorted to other gods, especially idol worship, God kicks them to the curb. In verses 24, 26 and 28 Paul states explicitly that God “gave them up”—and we get insights into Paul’s tormented personality by his list of things that God gave people up to: (1) the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies; (2) to degrading passions; (3) to a debased mind and things that should not be done. Hmmmm…obsessed about sex much? More about that on the next
point. Suffice it to say here that Paul’s concept of God is weighted heavily toward revenge and punishment: God himself gives people up to sin. All this because people did not see fit to “acknowledge God.” No slack given here to folks who didn’t see eye-to-eye with Paul on
religion, those who—and this was the big no-no for Paul—cheerfully embraced lust (we’d all be better off if Paul had given it a try). Paul doesn’t seem to have heard the stories about Jesus
hanging out with sinners.

Faceplant number six: God has every right to give people over to themselves. Do not forget. Paul just argued that we have no excuse for not acknowledging God. Also those are thing that God keeps people from. Paul is not pretending that he is some saint who deserves God's mercy. He is building the case that that if you deny God, God has every right to turn you over to yourself. All the lusts and degradation that Madison seems to think that Paul is wrong in casting in a negative light are things that will destroy you if you are caught up in them. They are what is wrong with our society and they are why Donald J Trump is President of the United States. These things are the consequences of God allowing us to have what Madison says he wants - God gone out of the public sphere. It's not a punshment but consequences of what the unregenerate and unrepentant want. Makes me wonder if Madison has ever bothered to read the rest of the letter.

Knee-jerk disgust about women loving women, men loving me


Now, full disclosure before I get into this one: I am gay, so it’s no surprise that I have no patience with Paul’s rant against same-sex love. Sure, we can cut him some slack since his thinking was influenced by severe teaching in the Old Testament—and he lived centuries before human
sexuality had been studied. What would we expect? But the folks who want to point to these verses in Romans 1 (vv. 26-27) as binding “word of God”—because “saint” Paul said them—are blind to their own hypocrisy: they don’t notice that Paul shuddered at heterosexuality as well!
Everything in his writings about sexuality screams dysfunction! And we have the impulse to scream at Paul, “Get a life!”

I disagree. Paul did not hate sex and the Bible in no way - anywhere - casts sex as evil. It does put limitations and commandments on how sex should be practiced. Because God has given humanity the gift of sex he has every right to tell us how to use it properly so we don't destroy ourselves. We know that there are right ways and wrong ways to have sex.  For example God says don't have sex with your close family members. Is that because it's icky and disgusting or is it because it will destroy your family? Would not an omnipotent and omniscient deity know better than you do about what to do with your genitalia? I would think so. The point is that God does want you to have a life. Your best life.

Paul disdained men loving women: “It is well for a man not to touch a woman.
But because of cases of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” (1 Corinthians 7:1-2) You read that right: marriage is okay because liability to immortality should drive you to it. Or how about this gem: “And those who belong to Christ
Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). And this: To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am” (I Corinthians 7:8). True enough, Paul’s delusions about Jesus returning soon warped his thinking: “…the
appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none” (I Corinthians. 7:29).

Madison has made this flawed argument before and it's just wrong. Faceplant number 6. Paul said that if you can remain unmarried and not be tempted by sexual immorality (sex outside of marriage) stay unmarried.  He did not say that you are less saved or immoral or angering God because you want to get married. Paul had nothing against marriage.

Outside of the most pathetic cults, you will never find a marriage counselor who urges couples to follow Paul’s advice. So please don’t quote him as an expert on love, marriage or
sexuality—hetero or homo. And since he was so wrong about so many things (see my 14 October 2016 post), don’t credit him with being tuned into God’s thoughts—about anything. Yet Paul remains the default authority on homosexuality for so many today. No doubt with Romans 1 in mind, the
Catholic Church cannot budge from its official position that gay people are “disordered.”

Paul's point is entirely missed. Madison again fails to point a single thing Paul got wrong. Of course, Madison can disagree with Paul, but it sure would be nice if he could explain how Paul is wrong. Paul is building up to chapter 3 demonstrating that all of us - gay and straight - are sinners and disordered. 

Paul’s long list of those who “deserve to die”

Full stop, Christians. How can anyone read the ending of Romans 1 and say, with a straight face, that Paul should be called a saint? Or that this text merits inclusion in “the good book”? Here he shows us his full venom: “… they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish,faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die…”

I wanna ask Madison: "Do you wanna be around people who are "gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish,faithless, heartless, ruthless"? Honestly? I do not. Yet we are. At some point, you, me, Madison, and everyone you know has  been guilty of at least one of these. It's not that all of them deserve to die - we are all guilty.

It’s a common Christian dodge that the nasty god of the Old Testament gave way to the loving God of the New Testament. But Paul does his best to keep the wrathful god alive and hovering over hapless humans. He includes gossips and rebellious children among those who deserve todie—according to God’s own decree. I guess it’s actually a good thing that—apart from obsessive scholars—the Letter to the Romans is pretty much ignored by the faithful, for whom The Man Upstairs is a benevolent
figure, a cosmic buddy. Hildegard of Bingen is a saint with far moreappeal than Paul: “”God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God.”

I agree that many Christians do try to dodge the force of  Madison's argument but thst unnecessary because Paul is not arguing that people who do evil things deserve to die for their sins and people who believe in his teaching do not deserve to did because they are better people. Paul's argument is that every person is a sinner in need of a savior.. He is building a case starting wit the simple fact that you should at least recognize that you have a creator to whom you are accountable.

One of those obsessive scholars was C. H. Dodd, who wrote in 1939 that The
Letter to the Romans is “the first great work of Christian theology.” Please, say it ain’t so.

Dodd makes a valid point that Madion has failed to disprove.

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years. He has a
PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. His book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, was published last year by Tellectual Press.

Keep praying for him

Debunking Christianity: Maybe It’s Not the Worst Book in the Bible…

FacePlant of the Day - Debunking Christianity: Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Toxic Brew of Bad Theology

With the title of this particular article recently posted on Debunking Christianity I was expecting a thorough explanation and proof of Apostle Paul's "toxic" and "bad" theology. I am very underwhelmed. I think it's easy to see a very to see this as a true faceplant of epic proportions. I want the article to speak for itself and will annotate the article in red.

Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Toxic Brew of Bad Theology


A number of years ago, in conversation with a Christian friend, I mentioned Paul’s Letter to the Romans. “I don’t know it,” she responded. I suppose I shouldn’t have been all that surprised, since the Letter to the Romans is not an easy part of the Bible to get through and understand—which is why very few Christians even give it a try.

I do not need to rebut or even try to refute this. I was raised in a Christian household and been in church all my life and I have been hearing, reading, studying and digesting the Epistle to the Romans my whole life. I do recognize that this isn't the same for all Christians, but it still amazes me that some people have not read it. It is sad. We, as Christians, need to do better.

The gospels have far more appeal and get a lot more traffic. But still, such ignorance of basic Bible material surely isn’t a good thing for believers who aspire to be—or even assume they are—Bible-based Christians.

Agreed. But this isn't true of all Christians that I know. If this is true about all the Christians that you know I would have to suggest you should get out more and meet more people.

No  matter the indifference of laypeople to the Letter to the Romans, it is a source of bewilderment to secular thinkers that Christian theologians have been obsessed—and I do mean utterly obsessed—with the Letter to the Romans, for centuries. Those of the Protectant [sic] persuasion might be aware that Martin Luther urged Christians to memorize it, but I suspect that ordinary folks in the pews would be dumbfounded to learn that every syllable, word and verse of Romans—every jot and title—has been scrutinized and analyzed, over-analyzed, super-analyzed, painstakingly, exhaustively, by Christian theologians. They tease out, squeeze out the tiniest bits of revelation that might have sparked from Paul’s mind onto the scroll…as if the fate of the Cosmos were hanging in the balance. But I guess, of course, for those in the Christian cult, that’s what Romans is about.

I think that this is where the faceplant starts.  I don't think its weird at all to scrutinize Romans or any of the Bible. If it is truly the word of God it would be stupid not to look at it carefully. If you don't look at it carefully, how would you be able to determine if it is God's word or not? That is why I'm interested in going through Romans with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. The fate of the universe does "hang in the balance".  If Paul was a liar or insane then he and the other Apostles were wrong. Jesus was wrong and Christianity is a waste of time. It would be sheer stupidity to be sure. This is not a matter of faith (as defined by John Loftus and many other wrong Atheist as being "believing despite and instead of evidence). The point here: Is the Bible true in general and Romans in particular? The writer of this article and Atheists in general would argue that the Bible is not true. It falls to them to demonstrate something the Bible is wrong about. David Madison in this case has to show Paul got something wrong is some way and not merely just assert that Paul was wrong. He has to show the toxicity and badness of  Paul's theology.  Let's examine the article to see how he does. Spoiler: a major faceplant.

 Do I exaggerate about the ‘utter obsession’? Well, Ben Witherington’s 400-page analysis of Romans (Paul's Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, 2004) includes an 18-page bibliography of scholarly works on Paul and Romans, a list he says that “could go on for miles.” In 1996, evangelical scholar Douglas Moo published a 1,000-page commentary on Romans (The Epistle to the Romans), one of a series, the New International Commentary on the New Testament, “loyal to the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God.” A thousand pages on the sixteen chapters of Romans? The legions of Christian scholars, who can’t get enough of this dense patch of scripture, assume that scholar and theologian C. H. Dodd, got it right when he declared in 1939 that Romans is “the first great work of Christian theology.”

Another great paragraph full of nothing to disagree with.  

But, of course, it’s not. Because Paul was a crank. In my book I argue that he was a ‘delusional cult fanatic’—but ‘crank’ is good shorthand. He was the prototype for Christian crazies who have shown up repeatedly in the centuries of the Christian era.

Almost every great thinker throughout history was considered a "crank" at best by his or her detractors. Do you know what separates a "crank" from a "genius"? The genius is right about the thing(s) so many others thinks they are wrong about, Can Madison prove the theology that Paul wrote down in Romans was wrong?

 How so? I mean, really, how can anyone take this guy seriously? 

So...Madison thinks that Paul's ideas should not be taken seriously. Why not?

 (1) Paul assured one of his congregations that, when the Lord came back, their dead relatives would pop out of their graves to meet Jesus in the clouds—with musical accompaniment, no less (I Thess. 4:16-18).

Just because Madison considers  the rapture ridiculous does not mean that it's not going to happen. Where's the evidence and argument that Paul is wrong. This is just an assertion.

(2) Paul scolded Christians for taking one another to court; didn’t they know they were qualified to settle their disputes? Why? Because one day soon they would be judging angels—after Jesus’ return (I Corinthians 6:3).

Use context much?will be judging angels.  Also because we should be treating one another with love and esteeming each other higher than ourselves (Philippians 2:3) we should be able to settle our disputes without going to court. True that most Christians have not lived up to this but it is what we are supposed to do. Unbelievers should not not hold the failure of Christians against the Bible. If you think you can do better, come show us how to do it.

 (3) He advised married Christian men to act as if they no longer had wives, because “the appointed time has grown short”—i.e., Jesus would arrive soon (I Corinthians 7:29); this matches his advice in Romans 13:14: “…put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.”

 That's not really true. Why did Madison fail to refer to the whole passage. Read the whole Chapter and you will see the Paul never said to married men to live like they no longer had wives. This contradicts verses 10 and 11.

¹To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.

If you are going to bad-mouth Paul I expect something way more factual.

(4) Paul had no interest in good government (or in art, culture or education, or that matter).He assured his readers—this is in Romans 13—that all leaders are in power because God put them there.

No Paul told his readers to obey the laws of the land because God put the leaders in charge. How is this crazy. Is Madison and anarchist? Paul most definitely was not. Paul was reminding believers that our trust - our faith - is in God and not any particular government. Go back and read Romans 13. 

 (5) He embraced a magic formula for eternal life that sounds straight out of Hogwarts: “…if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). This is just a start, but I rest my case: Paul was a Jesus groupie and nothing else.

If putting all my egg into Jesus' basket, like Paul did, makes me a  "Jesus groupie" I'll gladly represent that remark. If Jesus, Paul, and all the believers from Adam to today are right, there is no other sane response. It's not magic. If one thinks Paul just made up Romans 10:9 out of no where then one has misunderstood the whole book of Romans. Go back ans start with Chapter one. You will not understand Romans 10 if you did not understand Chapters 1-9

 Randel Helms (Gospels Fictions, The Bible Against Itself) has said that the Bible is self-destructive artifact, and the Letter to the Romans is Exhibit A in making the case that this is so. It has land mines in almost every chapter. Christians can see theology exploding in their faces if they venture to step through these chapters, unaccompanied by apologists.

More assumptions. The thing about the book of Romans is that it is not a simple picture book. It has deep theology and philosophy and requires much study. It's not a Twilight novel.

 During the coming weeks—spilling over into January, I suspect—I will offer a few reflections on each of the sixteen chapters in Romans. I will make the case that this over-adored epistle is indeed a
toxic brew of bad theology.

Oh goody - more entertaining faceplants to read!

Ben Witherington, by the way, undermines any confidence that Romans is revelation, when he warns his readers on page one of his 400-page work, “…the goal of understanding this formidable discourse is not reached for a considerable period of time.” So God planned it that way?

How does the fact that it took a lot of time to understand Romans (and still learning from it) undermines the letter as being revelation from God. Everyone is growing in different rates and I know I am still learning from Romans and I have read it multiple times.God did plan it that way. Recall that Christianity is a relationship with God. Relationships grow and we learn more and more. God does not grow because he does not have to. We do.

Why would we have to work so hard to grasp revealed information? Did you get my hint of ridicule when I mentioned Douglas Moo’s huge tome above? Yes, I am baffled by his efforts. Lest I be accused of anti-intellectualism, however, in scoffing at a 1,000-page book on Romans, let me say that, of course, academicians who specialize in antiquities are justified in pursuing their passions. Our heritage is enriched because there are countless weighty tomes about the works of Solon and Homer, about the hieroglyphed walls in Egypt and the pornographic murals in Pompeii. The authors were motivated to understand human genius and creativity, to increase our quotient of enlightenment. But the motivation for obsessive study of Paul is to figure out a god. The scholars who do this are on a holy mission.

It makes sense that God tells us to study. Why would it be easy? We can only do it with God's help.Why would we think our finite minds could easily and quickly comprehend the infinitude of God? I'd say it is like putting the pacific ocean into a thimble. Not going to happen.

Sadly—can’t they admit it?—Paul was not channeling a god in his hallucinations. He was an obsessive-compulsive mediocre thinker and bad theologian.

I'd like to see Madison prove that.

 He churned out reams of theobabble, which, by an accident of history, were elevated to the status of scripture. The academicians who study Paul are determined to distill the essence of God’s will, to discover the divine mind. They are on fool’s errand.

Where's the beef? Madison at this points makes a lot of assumptions without no evidence to prove them.

Their pursuit is as worthwhile as studying the minutia of old letters written by medieval astrologers or alchemists. I am not anti-intellectual; I just have so little patience with the faith-blinded assumption that digging through this ancient text will yield data about a god. When scholars also happen to be ordained ministers, it’s hard to overcome the faith-blindness.

I'd agree with Madison if the book of Romans did not tell us anything about God and his reconciliation  of humanity from sin and death but it does.

No, we don’t have to believe C.H. Dodd’s glowing assessment: “…this great epistle, into which [Paul] has packed the ripe fruits of many years of thought and work, of preaching, controversy, and the cure of souls, of trial, suffering, and spiritual experience.” The Letter to the Romans deserves to be at the bottom of the scrapheap of history. Paul is an embarrassment.

Madison indeed does not need to agree with Dodd but if he cannot demonstrate that Paul was wrong then this series is just a faceplant and an embarrassment.

David Madison was in the Methodist ministry in Massachusetts for nine years. He has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University, and is the author of Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith (Tellectual Press).


Debunking Christianity

FacePalm of the Day - Debunking Christianity: Why Do Christians Disagree?

John Loftus has posted his opinion again. This time arguing that there could not be a God because Christians don't agree with one another on several doctrinal issues. He wites

Why is it Christians cannot agree to the point where they have condemned each other to hell and/or slaughtered each other because of doctrinal differences that other Christians don't think are essential for salvation? My answer is that Christianity is man made, and as such, doctrinal differences are due to different human ways of understanding the Bible. There is no divine mind behind the Bible, otherwise God should have communicated his will much better than he supposedly did. That's the major reason why there is no doctrinal Christian unity. These different doctrinal understandings continue to be used by denominational leaders to differentiate between Christianities for financial gain and power. Christian, what's your answer?

A truly facepalm inducing paragraph causing groans to match. I'm amazed at this. Apparently to John Loftus, anyone who claims to be a "Christian" is just as "Christian" as anyone else, no matter what they believes. In  order to even begin such a silly argument, this presupposition must be in it's centerpiece. Along with the the thought that all denominations of Christianity are so different that we can't even begin to live peaceably. Another false canard. I'm not saying that there haven't been wars fought and mistakes made - but these were human mistakes not God's. Also I am not saying that there aren't important differences, but none are important enough to kill another over. The reason why we have so many problems because we have refused to obey the word of God. On nonessential issues this what the Bible says:

 ¹ Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. ² One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. ³ The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. ⁴ Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
 ⁵ One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. ⁶ Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. ⁷ For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. ⁸ If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. ⁹ For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
 ¹⁰ You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. ¹¹ It is written:
   “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
   every tongue will acknowledge God.’”
 ¹² So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
 ¹³ Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. ¹⁴ I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. ¹⁵ If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. ¹⁶ Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. ¹⁷ For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, ¹⁸ because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.
 ¹⁹ Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. ²⁰ Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. ²¹ It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.
 ²² So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. ²³ But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin. - Romans 14

Debunking Christianity: Why Do Christians Disagree?

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Brennon's Thoughts: William Lane Craig on Romans 9

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Brennon has posted the following quote from William Lane Craig summing up the meaning of Romans 9.

Paul's burden, then, in Romans 9 is not to narrow the scope of God's election but to broaden it. He wants to take in all who have faith in Christ Jesus regardless of their ethnicity. Election, then, is first and foremost a corporate notion: God has chosen for Himself a people, a corporate entity, and it is up to us by our response of faith whether or not we choose to be members of that corporate group destined to salvation

.

Read the entire article this comes from here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6675

I admire William Lane Craig a great deal. I believe he loves Jesus and that he is saved. i do have to differ on how he is reading corporate election into Romans 9. I mean is it possible to choose a group of people without also designation who is in that chosen group? Is it really like two empty rooms with an open doors, and God says, I'm saving all those who choose to go in to that door and all those in the other room are going to hell? That is what I understand Dr. Craig to be saying. There are two problems. One: no one has the ability to go into that room for salvation, nor wants to go into that room, unless God enables him/her. (John 6:44). Two: The truth is that hell is the default destination for each and every human being. Often times we make it sound like a person's eternal destiny is up in the air until they make a choice for or against God. The Bible teaches that each one of us chooses to reject God from the get go. How we change unless God "takes out that heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh"? We don't. A better picture is an empty room that God fills with those selected - predestined - from outside the room who are on their way to hell - us.

11In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. 13And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1:11-14

1As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:1-10

Okay, given what Paul wrote to the Ephesians, I can't see how he intended to give us the idea that the elect was something you joined of your own free-will in Romans 9. It is true that God is telling us that it has nothing to do with who your daddy is but His choice in choosing you. He's not rejecting those who are no chosen, they are doomed before there is any choice is made.

Brennon's Thoughts: William Lane Craig on Romans 9

Arminius' Works - NINTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS

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 I've had a chance to examine a letter Arminius wrote to Gellius Snecanus about exegeting Romans 9. I admit that I'm impressed to how Arminus mind worked. He was much better at explaining Romans 9 then many people today. I found that I agreed with much of what he wrote in the letter. I see that I have greatly misjudged the man before reading his works. I think he nailed the main point of the chapter when he wrote:

I come to the subject itself. In the first place, the scope of the chapter is the same with that of the whole epistle: That the Gospel, not the law, is the power of God unto salvation, not to him that worketh, but to him that believeth, since, in the Gospel the righteousness of God is manifested in the obtainment of salvation by faith in Christ. This chapter performs its part, and indeed is peculiarly engaged in the support of that proposition. It defends the proposition against the objections of the Jews, who, with all their power endeavour to overturn it as hostile and destructive to their own views, and so defends it as to confirm its truth more and more, and, by refuting those objections, adds strength and stability to the foundation already laid, in that very divine word and purpose, which the Jews were strenuously wresting, in their own favour, to the overthrow of Paul's doctrine.

I find myself in total agreement, as I'm sure all Christians would. The disagreement comes in interpreting what Paul is saying is the reason why some people are lost and some people believe. Paul discusses this point in the context of  the fact that most Jews of his time (as well as now) reject Jesus as Messiah does not negate the fact that the Bible is true. It's at this point that I see Jacob Arminius takes the same tactic as some do today. Instead of seeing the examples given in the dynamics of Isaac vs Ishmael and Jacob vs Esau as being applicable to individuals, they are taken as types.

Here we must repeat what was said before, as a general remark, that Esau and Jacob are to be considered, not in themselves, but as types, and so that which is attributed to them, is to be accommodated to the antitypes, or rather to the things signified. Hence, also, the antitypes are to be considered, before a conclusion, similar to the former, can be deduced from them, to the refutation of the sentiment of the Jews and to the confirmation of that of the apostle. But what those antitypes are, may be gathered from the end or design which the apostle has added, in these words: "that the purpose of God, according to election, might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth." That is, God, in those words, "the elder shall serve the younger," addressed to Rebecca, "the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil," designed to indicate nothing else than that He had formed, in His own mind, from eternity, a purpose to communicate righteousness and salvation, not one which should embrace all the posterity of Abraham universally, but which should be according to election, by which He would distinguish between these and those, not considered simply in their own nature, as pure or corrupt, but in respect to the condition, by which righteousness and salvation were to be applied, as the apostle shows in the following words -- that this purpose, according to election, might stand not of works, but of him who calleth, in which words is contained a description of the antitypes, which had before been given in the phrases "children of the flesh" and "children of the promise." Here it is more clear, for the children of the flesh and those of the promise are, such, by their own peculiarity, defined by the apostle, in this passage, since the former are "of works," the latter of faith, by which obedience is rendered unto God, who "calleth." Therefore, the apostle says that the purpose of God, which is according to election, has reference to those who have faith in God who calleth, and who trust in Christ, not to those who seek salvation by the works of the law. The conclusion can be drawn from these things against the objection of the Jews in favour of the doctrine of the apostle concerning justification by faith, in this way: "If the word of God and His purpose is according to election, by which the former is rejected, and the latter accepted, then it follows, even if some of the Jews are rejected, yet that word and purpose is not in vain; rather indeed, if that purpose, which is according to election, should be said to embrace all without any election, it would be in vain; -- But this word and purpose is according to election; Therefore, even if some of the Jews should be rejected, yet that word and purpose does not, on that account, fail; it is, indeed, rather confirmed from that fact, because it is its nature to exclude some, as it is according to election, by which one is rejected and another accepted."

Romans 9 in its entirety makes the case that God chose Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau. Why? Not because of anything in them but because of God's sovereign choice. The point of Arminus letter seems to be on the fact that we are saved by faith not of works or who our biological father is - and I completely agree. I will need to spend more time in this library cache online to see if  I can find how Arminius answers the question of why those who believe believe and those who don't believe don't believe.

Arminius' Works - NINTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS

Romans 9 from Great Falls Conference

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I am always interested as to how people understand Romans 9. To date i have heard no better exegesis than the Way James White does it. I'd be really interested in hearings an exegesis from an Arminian viewpoint, because when I read Roman 9 I am forced to concur with James White.






Romans 9 from Great Falls Conference