Quotes from Jerry L. Walls

Then suddenly—or so it seemed to me—in the past two years Calvinism began emerging as an issue everywhere. Perhaps I am just waking up, but it seems to me that this peculiar doctrine is being promoted far more widely and aggressively now than I was ever aware in the past.4

Life, laughter, and pleasure will be the last word rather than death, crying, and pain.

Since Protestant theology makes no claim that the Bible is crystal clear beyond that minimal knowledge necessary for salvation, it implicitly acknowledges that Christians may differ without having to accuse each other of intellectual weakness or moral corruption.

It is perhaps not as self-evident as our desire for happiness, but it is nearly as obvious that normal human beings have a deep yearning to love and to be loved. The countless love songs that pervade our culture, as well as the love poems and songs from centuries past, are eloquent testimony to the human longing for love.

Does God determine, solely according to his own unilaterally established will, exactly who will be saved and who will be lost?

To put the point another way, these beliefs provide rational reinforcement for our instinctive moral feelings. This is a significant observation for the obvious reason that we also have feelings and desires that are contrary to moral action. If rational considerations do not support morality but even undermine its rational credentials, it is likely that our moral commitments may be unsettled by thoughtful reflection and awareness.

Where Calvinism and Arminianism may lie on a map in relation to this or that heresy generates an interesting discussion but little illumination.

Recently, however, Calvinism seems to be staging a remarkable comeback. Consider the words of popular author Dave Hunt, explaining why he chose to write a book on Calvinism despite the controversy it might cause.

However, it does seem theologically objectionable to think God's attitude toward us would change in anything like this manner merely because we had died. There is no obvious reason why justice requires God to cease having mercy at death and to punish those who have not repented by that time.

It is hard to see how repentance after death trivializes this life and our previous choices if repentance at the last moment of life does not do so. Repentance at the moment of death would not trivialize this life, so the argument goes, but repentance the moment after death would. Can a single moment of time have this much moral significance?

Southern Baptists are at a crossroads. We have a choice to make. The choice is between the deep-rooted, God-centered theology of evangelical Calvinism and the man-centered, unstable theology of the other perspectives present in the convention."7

Accounting for morality in terms of heavenly truth claims not only allows us but inspires us to admire the Jean Valjeans of the world without suspecting they are mad or misguided in any way.

Notice, there is a fundamental difference between providing a biological explanation of why we are inclined to accept a given moral principle and showing that we should accept it. If the ultimate explanation is biological, it is far from obvious that such principles truly obligate us to follow them.

But the question I am pressing is how the "dagger" can continue to serve its purpose once we have seen through the fact that it is a shadowy illusion.

At worst, the notion that such utter disinterest represents a higher or more admirable standard is pagan hubris.

Purgatory is hope.

One may hope that in the very moment of death, lost souls turn to God, and instead of passing through the gates of hell to hopeless eternal misery, they go instead to purgatory.

While the blustery Luther, with his categorical denials of any ambiguity in the Bible, stands as the champion of the humble reader, the reasoning Luther stands within the stream of creeds and scholarship that defines more soberly and narrowly the scope and nature of the Bible's clarity.

In his analysis of what was wrong, the author of this article identified in his final paragraph a profound ambivalence in the American soul. America, he noted, was deeply double-minded, even as the nation sought to restore some sense of moral integrity: "The longing for moral regeneration must constantly vie with an equally strong aspect of America's national character, self-indulgence. It is an inner tension that may animate political life for years to come.

To believe in God is to believe not only that love is stronger than death but also that joy is stronger than boredom.