Solparvus
Puritan Board Senior
For the first time ever I found myself in a concersation with a brother who seem to really know the Word, yet he was an Arminianism with a focus on previent grace... I was taken back because I just assumed He was Biblical in His understanding of unconditional election. It caused me to wonder and ask you, are there any respectable Arminianism theologians?
Also, in passing he said to me that nobody believed like Calvin when he said "Calvin (and augustine before him - but by nobody for the first 600 years of the early church)"... I havent read much back them is he correct?
It's an uphill battle to defend a position just because the early church believed it. Yes, we get some foundation for our own doctrines from them, but even where they were right their ideas are largely undeveloped and incomplete. There are also many things the early church taught which, thankfully, orthodox Christianity has left behind. Examples would be baptismal regeneration, Platonic views of the nature of God, confusion on the nature of Christ, incomplete ideas on justification and original sin, the practice of penance, monasticism, failure to affirm man's complete wickedness, among other things. Appealing to the early church as the authority doesn't hold much weight doctrinally.
As to the early church on soteriology and man's nature, their views on free will could just as well have come from Greek philosophy as from a misunderstanding of the teachings of the Bible. The first rounds of teachers and apologists attempted to harmonize the Bible with Greek philosophy, and that is one reason they held what we might call (forgive the anachronism) non-Calvinist views on free will.
Christ hadn't intended in the first place that the first few centuries would develop the full body of truth that we would need for all time. The intention of Christ according to Ephesians 4 is that the church would grow and mature like a child grows into a full adult. We leave nothing behind which was good, but we don't roll forward anything which wasn't.