What Arminians Have Helped You Most?
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00:00:05.000 | Podcast listener Ian writes in to ask this interesting question.
00:00:09.000 | Pastor John, who have been the most influential Arminian writers in your life?
00:00:15.000 | I think I'm going to fudge a little if I understand the question.
00:00:20.000 | I have read Arminians dead and alive, but they have not, by and large, been very influential.
00:00:28.000 | The reason for that is that I don't find the Arminian wing of the church to be the most careful exegetes.
00:00:36.000 | They tend to be philosophical in their approach to the Bible rather than exegetically rigorous.
00:00:43.000 | Over and over, it's the Calvinists, in my experience, who seem to deal with the Bible most thoroughly and deeply and rigorously and carefully and in detail.
00:00:57.000 | So my forays into Arminian writers don't tend to yield the fruit I find in the other direction, because I'm a Bible guy.
00:01:08.000 | Tell me what the Bible means by this sentence.
00:01:11.000 | Don't tell me what your general opinion about the love of God implies.
00:01:14.000 | I want to know what the Bible means.
00:01:17.000 | Now, I could give numerous examples of articles and books that I've read over the years trying to see the other side from where I stand, only to be regularly disappointed by the absence or the weakness of exegesis of particular texts.
00:01:34.000 | But the question doesn't ask me about which ones didn't influence me.
00:01:41.000 | The question says, "Which Arminian writers have influenced you the most?"
00:01:49.000 | And there are a few, so I will answer this question.
00:01:53.000 | But there are not many, but they are significant.
00:01:57.000 | Right in the front of the line stand John and Charles Wesley, especially Charles, because I have sung his words hundreds of times.
00:02:07.000 | And how can you not be influenced by "And can it be" or "O for a thousand tongues to sing" or "Jesus, lover of my soul" or "Come thou long expected Jesus" or "Christ the Lord is risen today."
00:02:31.000 | How can you not go from season to season for 60 years and not be influenced by Charles Wesley?
00:02:40.000 | So, thank you God for this Arminian who wrote such magnificent truth about the things we hold in common that I have zero hesitation to be blessed season in and season out by the hymns of Charles Wesley.
00:02:58.000 | And his brother John didn't write the poems, but good night.
00:03:05.000 | What an inspiration from his life, mainly.
00:03:09.000 | Not so much from his writings or his sermons, which I've read some of, but his life.
00:03:15.000 | He was the Arminian counterpart to George Whitefield during the Great Awakening, and what a passion they shared to preach the gospel in season, out of season, outdoors, indoors, to a dying culture in Britain and America, and to dying people.
00:03:33.000 | Wesley was unparalleled in his tirelessness.
00:03:38.000 | And I say that even with Whitefield in mind just because he outlived Whitefield.
00:03:42.000 | Whitefield died early.
00:03:45.000 | Wesley lived forever.
00:03:47.000 | I mean, he was riding his horse and writing on his horse and preaching from stumps into his 80s.
00:03:56.000 | And so he's a model for me of incredible passion for the gospel, incredible sticktuitiveness, suffering, and the overcoming of amazing obstacles.
00:04:07.000 | A couple of obstacles I think about that have always inspired me is he was short.
00:04:11.000 | What was he, 5'2"? I didn't look it up, but something like that.
00:04:14.000 | Now, you can picture a barrel-chested Whitefield and a barrel-chested Spurgeon heralding the gospel to 3,000 or 30,000 people.
00:04:23.000 | You cannot picture a 5'2" skinny man heralding the gospel to 30,000 people, and he did.
00:04:29.000 | How in the world did he do that?
00:04:31.000 | I would rather, I think, if I had one choice to hear Wesley address 20,000 or Whitefield address 20,000, I would almost choose Wesley for the phenomenon of it.
00:04:42.000 | Whitefield, I'd rather hear what he said and watch his emotions, but how in the world can a person that diminutive, which has always helped me.
00:04:50.000 | I went in for a physical checkup the other day, and she said, "How tall are you?"
00:04:54.000 | She said, "Never mind. I have it here, 5'7".
00:04:56.000 | I said, "5'7"? I used to be 5'9".
00:05:00.000 | Where did you get that?
00:05:01.000 | She said, "That's what the nurse said."
00:05:03.000 | I'm shrinking, which means that, I mean, everybody who's short, like, okay, I'm just kind of short average, but others are short or short.
00:05:12.000 | We should be so encouraged.
00:05:14.000 | Who cares, right?
00:05:16.000 | Wesley made a massive difference for the gospel in his little shortness.
00:05:23.000 | And the other obstacle I thought of is his marriage.
00:05:26.000 | It was awful, and it was so dysfunctional, and how many people would have just given up entirely in ministry with this difficulty, and he didn't.
00:05:38.000 | And one last thing.
00:05:39.000 | I said two.
00:05:40.000 | There's more than two.
00:05:41.000 | He was utterly devoted, as I want to be, to a simple lifestyle, a wartime lifestyle, so much so that I think I read when he came to the end of his life, and they were taking stock of his estate, he didn't have hardly anything.
00:05:55.000 | He'd given it all away.
00:05:56.000 | I think he had a few silver spoons left over, and that's just the way I want to live and the way I want to leave, like Wesley did.
00:06:05.000 | And I said I was going to fudge a little.
00:06:09.000 | Here's another fudging on this question.
00:06:11.000 | I'm going to include here G.K. Chesterton and George MacDonald.
00:06:16.000 | Now, I know Chesterton's a Roman Catholic.
00:06:18.000 | George MacDonald, he just hated Calvinism because he grew up in it.
00:06:22.000 | So did Chesterton.
00:06:23.000 | Chesterton mocked Calvinism.
00:06:26.000 | George MacDonald mocked Calvinism.
00:06:28.000 | So they qualify as non-Calvinists at least, and I mention them because of the impact that they have had on--I almost included Lewis, but Doug Wilson made such a strong, compelling case for the reformed thinking of Lewis at our conference a couple years ago that I'll leave Lewis out, because
00:06:52.000 | Lewis is massively influential to me, and he's not your run-of-the-mill Calvinist.
00:06:57.000 | But Chesterton and MacDonald were verbally abusive of Calvinists, and I have found this one thing, their aliveness to the wonders and the paradoxes and the surprises and the oddities of the world in which we live.
00:07:18.000 | So that when I read Chesterton or MacDonald, and MacDonald wasn't even orthodox on his view of the cross.
00:07:27.000 | I mean, he just falls short of Arminianism.
00:07:29.000 | But when I read those two men's sense of wonder in the real world in which we live, I am brought more alive to the Bible, more alive to the wonders in which I live.
00:07:43.000 | I feel like a healthier human being.
00:07:45.000 | In fact, I wrote about this on the blog.
00:07:49.000 | It's back there somewhere a couple of years ago, I think, called--I think it's called "The Sovereign God of Elfland, Why Chesterton's Anti-Calvinism Doesn't Put Me Off," or something.
00:08:00.000 | So if somebody wants to see more of what I mean by the influence of Chesterton and MacDonald, they can look there.
00:08:06.000 | That was fun.
00:08:08.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:08:09.000 | And Doug Wilson's conference message mentioned earlier is titled "Undragonned," C.S. Lewis on the gift of salvation.
00:08:17.000 | You can find audio and video of that message at DesiringGod.org by searching on the title.
00:08:23.000 | Also see Pastor John's post, "The Sovereign God of Elfland," which is also available at our site.
00:08:29.000 | We're starting to get a lot of great sermon clips from you, the listeners, but none have been suggested more than the one we'll play tomorrow,
00:08:37.000 | a clip that was made popular by a hip-hop artist.
00:08:41.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:42.000 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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