Robin Parry sets forth to slay the dragon of Calvinism (apparently without divesting himself of Scholasticism)

The clang of the bell triggers the boxers in their corners to arise from their stools and to move again to the center of the ring to encounter the fists of the ()ther.  Evangelical Universalists want cucumber sandwiches with their tea (I am desperately circumlocuting the phrase "tea party"), but in their ever so polite obsequies they are itching to jam a fistful of love into the eyes of the Calvinists, apparently not even knowing that there is old-school Calvinism and neo-Calvinism in the living stream from Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, for many thru Herman Dooyeweerd and DHTh Vollenhoven, to Hendrik Hart and James Olthuis, neo-calvinists who say "God is love."

What this reformational tradition says is that the Scholasticism of the Calvinist tradition entraps it in false dilemmas, which are its ruination if allowed to thrive.  Soteriological universalism and Rob Bell's concerns about our evangelical doctrines of death, heaven and hell -- regarding which he seeks a renewal and re-orientation theologically -- will only create permanent bipolarization among us, were we to fail to overcome the source in both universalism (salvation) and particularism (election) without coming communally to a clearer doctrine, philosophically rich,  of the Interim State between death and everlasting life in our lord Jesus Christ.

I have attempted to point to such a coherent and consistent appreciation of the Interim State in my previous posts on this blog regarding the Bell contretemps in which the Evangelical world especially has become embroiled.  Robin Parry may help us all to a clarity beyond the hereticizing pugilism into which we coud devolve.

-- Owlb

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