Arminianism & Calvinism: What’s the Essential Difference?

The essential difference between Arminianism and Calvinism has recently been described to me by my good friend, Dr. Robert Ferris of Columbia International University. This question plagues many Christians; and I think that Dr. Ferris’ explanation is very helpful.

The only one of the 5 points of Calvinism that is agreed upon by both Arminians and Calvinists is the first doctrinal statement—the total depravity of man. Mankind, on his own, is totally incapable of responding to God’s call for faith, which will result in his salvation. Necessary for men to be saved is a special work of God in granting him the grace necessary to respond in faith. Without God’s initial act, men can never approach God in a way that will result in their salvation. Upon that point, both Calvinists and Arminians agree.

The main point on which these two camps in fundamental Christianity disagree is the point about God’s sovereignty. Calvinists believe that God controls everything; and Arminians believe that God has the RIGHT to control everything. Arminians believe that God gives His empowering grace to everyone on earth. Arminians also believe that God voluntarily and within the bounds of His own sovereignty, gives man the power to respond to his free gift of grace. Thus, man can voluntarily respond to God—but, he needs the empowering grace from God to do this first.

Both Calvinists and Arminians believe that man is responsible for his decision to reject God and go his own way in life. The Calvinist says that man is responsible for his own decisions, but he is totally incapable of doing otherwise. That makes no sense—nobody can be responsible for something that is impossible for him.

In the Arminian system, man becomes actually responsible for his own rejection of God. In the Calvinist system, man cannot really be held responsible for rejecting God because he is totally incapable of responding positively.

There is a lot more to this argument than I can write in a blog post; but I have not enough space for further discussion, now. I invite my readers to comment on these thoughts.

To Have Children or Not to Have Children—the Question

An article in the Wall Street Journal dated 19 June 2010 attempted to show that families with lots of children are happier and generally more satisfying than families with no children or with few children.

The author, Bryan Caplan, Professor of economics at George Mason University makes the point that many modern people think that having children is too expensive, too much trouble, and very likely to impinge upon their own happiness—is all that true? Caplan points out that there is a kernel of truth in all this. He indicates that according to the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey, in parents with only one child, that child makes their parents 5.6% less likely to be happy than those people without any children. After the first child, there is a narrow difference in happiness criteria between those who have children and those who do not. The childless seem to be slightly happier than people with children. Every additional child that the parenting group has makes them “1.3 percentage less likely to be ‘very happy.’” The first child seems to do most of the damage to happiness criteria.

The above survey showed that the real boost in happiness criteria came about with marriage—married adults are 18% more likely to be happy than the unmarried. If the data is stratified and controlled on age, marital status, and church going habits, it turns out that the older, married, and church going are happier than their counterparts—and they have more children.

The crucial question in this kind of research is “If you had it to do over again, would you or would you not have children?” Parenthood wins out hands down in this kind of research question. A Gallup poll in 2003 found that only 24% of childless adults over the age of 40 wanted to be child-free.

Many parents think that their pressure, encouragement, money, and time are the only things that stand between their children and failure. According to Caplan, research shows quite the opposite. Long-run effects of parenting on child outcomes are much smaller than one might initially think; and, therefore, parents do not need to fear the necessity of putting too much time into the raising of their children. Caplan cites several studies by behavioral geneticists that seem to indicate that parenting efforts have little to do with child raising outcomes in the long term. Parenting efforts do affect the short-term outcomes of child raising, but as children become mature adults, they often adopt different life styles and values from their parents.

This whole study seems to demean parenting and says that whatever parents do to raise their children well really does not matter—children will do as they please, anyway. Common sense says something different from all this. For instance, where do people learn to play the piano? In childhood, of course—and from their parents. What is the source of the disconcerting effect of good home schooling? College entrance committees and scholarship boards are telling the whole country that home school students are outstripping public school students in academic performance. That home school training on the part of parents is evidence that parenting efforts do pay off. Also, Caplan’s line of reasoning flies in the face of the biblical admonition that if we “Raise up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

I do not disagree with Caplan when he says, “…good parenting is less work and more fun than people think.” But he misses the point that growing old without children is a lonely experience. One of the main joys of this life is raising children and having the satisfaction of seeing them develop into productive, healthy, Christ-honoring adults. Too many people, these days are spending all their young adult years, when they have energy and strength, on themselves and their personal pleasures of travel, sports, and a myriad of other things which have no lasting value. They take birth control pills and finally decide at the age of 35 when natural fertility is waning and when they no longer have the flexibility to deal with children, that they finally want a family. It is too late, then, for many couples. The very best time to have children is in the early 20’s. Well nurtured children are life’s greatest satisfaction. Furthermore, good parenting does count. The results are frequently very good and children, well raised, are the source of much pride, as they continue to grow and add strength and joy to the family.

Look At Both Sides of All Issues

Most of us tend to read only things with which we already agree. Liberals read the New York Times; and conservatives read the Wall Street Journal. How can we expect to grow in understanding if we continue doing that?

An editorial by James P. Rubin in the Wall Street Journal dated 14 June 2010 presented both sides of the controversy over President Obama’s foreign policies, however. Rubin was an assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration.

He pointed out that the Republican attitude toward the Obama foreign policies is that they see him as “an unreliable friend (of our allies), and a faint-hearted adversary (to our enemies). U.S. allies in Europe no longer treasure their ties to the United States. Turkey defies us without paying a price. China’s leaders question our fortitude. Iran’s nuclear weapons program continues unchecked.” And, I would add, Russia extracts a weapons reduction agreement from us without an equal reduction in their arms stores and both Russia and China continue trading in oil and arms with Iran over our weak, only verbal, arguments.

On the other hand, Mr. Rubin claims that Mr. Obama’s administration has “restored strained alliances and friendships around the world while weakening the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.” He has restored “respect for international rules on prisoners and acceptance of responsibilities associated with climate change, transformed America from a lonely superpower often seen as a threat to international order back to an indispensable leader in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.”

I have a hard time buying Mr. Rubin’s attitude, especially in his praise for the good relations built up in Europe. I feel sure that the emotions felt in The Czech Republic and in Poland by Obama’s decision to quit the construction of the missile defense shield there have not endeared those Eastern European peoples to the United States.

Never the less, I think that we all should try to look at both sides of all issues before we jump to any conclusions.

America Not Prepared for Disaster

The inspector general of the federal Justice Department, issued a statement in late May, saying the department is not prepared to ensure public safety in the days or weeks after a terrorist attack in which nuclear, biological or chemical weapons are used. That is certainly a fine state of affairs for a country that has had nine years after 9/11to prepare for a terrorist disaster.

"The Department is not prepared to fulfill its role . . . to ensure public safety and security in the event of a WMD incident," says the 61-page report. Justice has yet to assign an entity or individual with clear responsibility for oversight or management of WMD response; it has not catalogued its resources in terms of either personnel or equipment; it does not have written plans or checklists in case of a WMD attack. A deputy assistant attorney general for policy and planning is quoted as saying "it is not clear" who in the department is responsible for handling WMD response. Workers interviewed said the department's operational response program "lacks leadership and oversight." An unidentified Justice Department official was quoted: "We are totally unprepared." He added. "Right now, being totally effective would never happen. Everybody would be winging it."

It is true that the federal government has done a good job in prevention of future attacks; and we hear not infrequently how individual terrorists have been apprehended. But…what will we do if one of them deploys a biological, chemical WMD or if one of them should fire off a dirty bomb, spreading nuclear material all over a large metropolitan area. Such a weapon can be carried in a suitcase and exploded in New York’s Central Park.

Many are of the opinion that it is absolutely unthinkable that anyone in their right mind would ever deploy one of these WMD in America. How naïve!! Ronald Reagan has been quoted as saying, “Man has never had a weapon he didn't use.” The question is not whether a terrorist would use such a weapon against the United States. The question is, rather, WHEN.

The above report from the Justice Department needs to be brought to the acute attention of our legislators in Washington. Write to them now and ask them if they are aware of the dangers we face from WMD. If we have another 9/11 all Americans will suffer. Our Congress and Senate are in the worst state of public opinion that has ever existed. If a disaster such as the deployment of a WMD happens, they will all be kicked out of Washington.

This blog post was excerpted from an editorial by Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal 11 June 2010.

Against Whom are We Competing—the Muslims??

There seems to be a great fear among Western peoples that we are soon to be over-run by hoards of Muslims whose civilization is more vital and powerful than ours in some ways. Let’s look at that idea for a moment.

There are nearly a billion and a half Muslims in the world, but their footprint on world events is small. Computation and communication technology has changed many things in the world; but the Islamic world has lagged far behind in developing that kind of technology.

According to a World Bank estimate, the total exports of the Arab world other than fossil fuels amount to less than those of Finland, a country of five million inhabitants. Not one scientific discovery of note, innovative firm of international importance, or contribution to universal culture has come from the Muslim world in the past century. In 2008, only 133 patents were filed in Muslim-majority lands, about a tenth of the number in Israel, while the Israeli total exceeded that of India, Russia, and Singapore combined.

But what about the population decrease that many have noted in Western countries due to falling fertility and birth rates? That is all true, and it portends trouble for the countries involved—there are soon to be too few wage earners and tax payers to pay for the burgeoning numbers of elderly and retired persons. Will this not cause the West to succumb to Muslim population expansion? While it is true that Western countries are experiencing dropping birth rates, the birth rates of the Muslim countries are falling even faster. Muslim countries still have a higher birth rate than most Western countries, but their birth rates are falling at a faster rate. Iran is the most extreme case in the Islamic world with the fastest drop in births; but Turkey and Algeria are not far behind.

America’s fear of the Muslim world may be ill founded. The Soviet Union, which liberal thinkers thought was invincible, fell before the economic and cultural power of the United States under Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, America has elected a President who has no faith in the American system nor in the strength of our country. He seems bent on apologizing to the Muslims; and his obvious deep sentimental attachment to the Muslim world is plain to see. The only thing we have to fear from the Muslims is our own fear, itself. We need to stand up and proclaim the truth that we have the character and the strength to lead this world into a veritable principle that individual freedom and enterprise can bring about great blessings to all peoples.

I am reminded of the beginning of the Reagan administration. America had been humiliated for months by the tiny regime of Libya, which was in the business of blowing up passenger planes over the Mediterranean. President Carter had faced that problem by sitting in his office and wringing his hands. When Ronald Reagan came to office, he sent one or two fighter bombers over Libya, dropped a bomb on the factory producing explosives in Libya, and the whole problem ceased. We need another Ronald Reagan in the White House!!

Parts of this post were excerpted from First Things, the Morality of Self-Interest, June 2010.

Constitutional Changes of the Future—Part 6

Ninth Amendment

Another looming constitutional battleground concerns the meaning of the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People.” Many modern constitutionalists understand this amendment to say that there is some unknown array of unremunerated rights that lie fallow in the Constitution, waiting only to be unearthed by far-sighted judges.

Professor Thomas Grey of the Stanford Law School has suggested, for example, that the Ninth Amendment constitutes a “license to constitutional decision makers to look beyond the substantive commands of the constitutional text to protect fundamental rights not expressed therein.” Rights to abortion, contraception, homosexual behavior, and similar sexual privacy rights have already been imposed by judges “detecting” such rights in the Ninth Amendment. The problem is that, in the words of Justices Stewart and Black, this understanding of the amendment “turns somersaults with history” and renders the courts a “day-to-day constitutional convention.”

The more conventional understanding of the Ninth Amendment has viewed it in the historical context of the Bill of Rights, of which it is a part. By this understanding, it was written to dispel any implication that by the specification of particular rights in the Bill of Rights, the people have implicitly relinquished to the new federal government rights not specified. Like the Tenth Amendment—which serves as a reminder that powers neither given to the federal government nor prohibited to the states in the Constitution are reserved to the states or to the people—the Ninth Amendment was adopted to emphasize that our national government is one of limited powers. Its principal purpose was to prevent an extension of federal power, not to provide an open-ended grant of judicial authority that would have the opposite effect.

This post was excerpted from Imprimis, April 2010.

Constitutional Changes of the Future—Part 5

Political Questions:

In areas that were once viewed as inappropriate for judicial involvement, federal courts have begun to assert themselves in an unprecedented and aggressive manner. The limited role of the judiciary, for example, with regard to matters of national defense and foreign policy is not explicitly set forth in the Constitution, but such matters have from time immemorial been understood to be non-justiciable and within the exclusive responsibility of the elected branches of government. As far back as Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall recognized that “Questions in their nature political…can never be made in this Court.”

Yet just in the last several years, the Supreme Court, in a series of 5-4 decisions, has overruled determinations made by both the legislative and executive branches regarding the treatment of captured enemy combatants. Most notably, the Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush (2008) that foreign nationals captured in combat and held outside the United States by the military as prisoners of war—a war authorized by Congress under Article I, Section 8, and waged by the President as Commander-in-Chief under Article II, Section 2 (both parts of the Constitution)—possess the constitutional right to challenge their detentions in federal court. Thus, in yet one more realm of public policy—one on which the sovereignty and liberty of a free people are most dependent, national defense—judges have now begun to embark upon a sharply expanded role.

If there is no significant realm left of “political questions,” if there are no longer any traditional limitations upon the exercise of the judicial power, then, every matter coming before every president, every Congress, every governor, every legislature, and every county commission and city council can, with little difficulty, be summarily recast as a justiciable dispute, or what the Constitution, in Article III, Section 2, describes as a “case” or “controversy.” As a result, every policy debate taking place within government , at every level, will become little more than a prelude for judicial resolution.

This post was excerpted from Imprimis April 2010.