As long as the evangelical community doesn't find out what bitter old cranks some of these guys are, such as RC Spoul Jr. who prayed that God would destroy the open theists, perhaps you are right.
And how about the divisive Calvinists who don't even consider the Arminians to be Christians such as Michael Horton. Could you imagine if Greg Boyd said that Calvinists weren’t Christians?
If we’re interested in purging the ets of
dangerous and
disturbing trends (evangelicals just love dangerous and disturbing trends), aren’t we going after the wrong people?
A lot of theologians don't care for these gung ho militant Calvinists and many of them such as my Hebrew prof who is not an ov'er think that this point of view is worthy of scholarly endeavor and tolerance in the ETS. They made a significant stand in at the ets when they put it to a vote.
"We believe the Bible clearly teaches that God has complete, accurate, and infallible knowledge of all events past, present, and future, including all future decisions and actions of free moral agents," the statement read. The resolution passed 253 to 66, with 41 members abstaining.
consider that a wopping 26 percent of evangelical theologians voted against the notion that the bible clearly teaches edf. 42 percent refused to vote for the statement. Its not a majority. What it is is significant. And it was a failure for what was attempted. The Calvinists were hoping for a 90 percent vote in favor of the statement and had they gotten it, they would’ve asked the leading proponents of the Open view to leave.
If the ets kicked out every minority view, it would get smaller and smaller because the evangelical church is very diverse and full of minorities.
Probably most of those who voted against the statement weren’t even open theists, but you can be sure that they are not interested in the political shiftings, divisiveness and virtual mccarthyism of many of the anti ov’ers.
Edgar, the ETS is the Evangelical Theological Society.
