# What happened to Clark Pinnock?



## Jon 316 (Mar 14, 2009)

So this dude is like seriously Reformed then turns seriously not reformed. hmmm He is now like an open theist. Anyone know what happened?


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## Poimen (Mar 14, 2009)

He was Reformed in his soteriology but became Arminian because he couldn't reconcile Hebrews 6 & 10 with his current convictions. He then moved from Arminianism to Open Theism. 

Thus less of a slippery slope and more like falling off the edge of the cliff. One wonders if he has yet to reach the bottom however.


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## fredtgreco (Mar 14, 2009)

Poimen said:


> He was Reformed in his soteriology but became Arminian because he couldn't reconcile Hebrews 6 & 10 with his current convictions. He then moved from Arminianism to Open Theism.
> 
> Thus less of a slippery slope and more like falling off the edge of the cliff. One wonders if he has yet to reach the bottom however.



Not yet, Daniel. The bottom of Open Theism is the pit of Hell.


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## ww (Mar 14, 2009)

fredtgreco said:


> Poimen said:
> 
> 
> > He was Reformed in his soteriology but became Arminian because he couldn't reconcile Hebrews 6 & 10 with his current convictions. He then moved from Arminianism to Open Theism.
> ...



Unfortunately I know someone who was deceived by this drivel. Praying that God would be merciful and enlighten them once again to the Faith once delivered.


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## DMcFadden (Mar 14, 2009)

When I was a freshman in college, Moody Press published his defense of inerrancy: _Biblical Revelation: The Foundation of Christian Theology_. Over the years of my ministry I watched him inch, shift, and lurch to the left. My original mentor in ministry is a devotee of Pinnock, even doing a sabbatical in Canada to study under him! Yikes! 

Pinnock is one of my case studies in what is wrong with modern evangelicalism. Unfortunately, the noetic effects of the fall are very much with us whether we recognize them or not.


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## Whitefield (Mar 14, 2009)

1 John 2:19?


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## bookslover (Mar 14, 2009)

I was at an ETS meeting in 1989 in San Diego where Pinnock was a main speaker. After his talk, he took questions from the audience, many of which were hostile (this was right around the time his original book on open theism was published). I was amazed to see how, after each question, he grew angrier and angrier. Eventually, he was shouting and yelling at the audience. I thought the guy was going to have a stroke.

Bad theology will do that to you, I guess...


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## Craig (Mar 14, 2009)

Amazingly, I knew nothing of Pinnock until I entered Huntington University...there, John Sanders used to teach (William Hasker still does, to my knowledge). I was surprised to find out that Pinnock used to be a Calvinist.

I have no idea how anyone could go from Calvinism to Open "Theism"...atheism makes more sense to me than this. Suffice it to say, I don't think Pinnock made the switch based on careful exegesis.


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## Jimmy the Greek (Mar 16, 2009)

Here is a Banner of Truth article on the Teaching of Clark Pinnock with insight into his theological journey into error. I believe it was written in 2000, but can't find a date.

Banner of Truth Trust General Articles


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## FenderPriest (Mar 16, 2009)

whitway said:


> fredtgreco said:
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> > Poimen said:
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There is hope brother. This was the error God delivered me from during my years as a philosophy major at Auburn University. I started school as an open theist and ended as a Calvinist.

(Also, I accidentally thanked our post... not that I don't appreciate it, just not what I intended to click! -Sorry!)


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## SolaScriptura (Mar 16, 2009)

fredtgreco said:


> Poimen said:
> 
> 
> > He was Reformed in his soteriology but became Arminian because he couldn't reconcile Hebrews 6 & 10 with his current convictions. He then moved from Arminianism to Open Theism.
> ...



Indeed. 

But you know what? In a strange way I'm kind of thankful for Open Theism because it shows where you have to go if you want to affirm a truly consistent notion of Arminian free-will.


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## PMBrooks (Mar 16, 2009)

I went to seminary and now teach where Pinnock was on faculty (New Orleans Baptist Seminary). I will share a few of the stories I have heard over the years concerning him and his journey, at least from the non-theological side of things. 

My mentor was mentored by Paige Patterson, who was mentored by Pinnock (got that?. Pinnock came to NOBTS as a 5-point Calvinist and an ardent defender of biblical inerrancy. From what some have told me, Pinnock was the inspiration to the first-generation of the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC (hence his influence on theologians like Paige Patterson). Pinnock taught at NOBTS from 1965-1968, and then went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. 

The fight over inerrancy was quite ugly at NOBTS during the late 60s and into the 70s. It was so bad that a professor failed a PhD student just because he was the grader for another professor (they eventually found a compromise to allow the student to pass). 

The story goes that Pinnock was turned off by how he saw some inerrantists acting during the controversy. Though I have not heard a causal relationship between the two, I believe it was during this time that Pinnock started his drift toward liberalism. He did not stay on NOBTS long after that. 

He has been all but forgotten at our seminary, even with his fame as an open-theist nowadays. I bring him up in my theology classes and students are shocked to find out that he used to teach at our seminary. 

In my humble opinion, Pinnock never had a theological mooring anyway. He has been all over the theological map. My mentor did his PhD dissertation on how Pinnock merely "baptized" some of the theology of Vatican II and made it his own. Perhaps that he been his theological methodology for most of his life...taking the theology that interested him at the time, altering it a little, and trying to make it his own heresy.


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## BlackCalvinist (Mar 16, 2009)

This thread is interesting for other reasons than Pinnock.

I've seen someone make this very same trek (though he's heading more toward liberal theology and the social gospel than OT)......he's still 'traveling'.

-----Added 3/16/2009 at 12:29:05 EST-----



FenderPriest said:


> whitway said:
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> 
> > fredtgreco said:
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That's new. I had no idea you used to be OT, Jacob.


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