Friday, April 12, 2024

Useless Labels

Calvinist. Arminian. Premillennialist. Amillennialist. Pre-tribulationalist. Preterist. Dispensationalist. Complementarian. Credobaptist. Fundamentalist. Zionist. Anti-Zionist. Reformed. Cessationist. Charismatic. Liberal. Progressive. Creationist. Evangelical. Pelagian. Covenantalist.

I subscribe to none of these and I'm finding more and more that broad theological labels are useless. They are used to put others (or ourselves) into boxes, to summarize sometimes complicated points of view, but the main issue is that with a lot of these, is that the meaning of them is subjective. Some of them are straight-forward, sure, like 'pre-millennialist'...the belief that mankind is currently living in a period of time BEFORE the millennial reign of Jesus. Or how about 'cessationist'...the belief that the spiritual gifts (prophecy, healing, speaking in tongues, etc) ended with the Apostles. Fairly straight-forward. But many of these have ceased to be useful terms. 'Dispensationalist' for example - you see many different definitions of this. Some people mean that label as saying that God has dealt with mankind differently at different times/dispensations. Other argue that no, the actual hallmark of dispensationalism is the idea that God has two plans of salvation, one for the Jew and one for the Gentile. To the first definition, plenty of theological systems argue that God dealt with people at different ways at different times... 'Zionist' is another one -- it seemingly means something different to everyone who uses it. Same with 'evangelical'. Politically liberal folks use the label to mean 'anyone that is politically conservative that goes to Church'.

Monday, April 1, 2024

There are other gods.

Just finished "Supernatural" by Michael Heiser. I had read "Unseen Realm" a couple of years ago, but wanted a quick refresher and Supernatural seemed perfect for that. The same thought occurred to me this time around, as last time around:

How hollow is first commandment of "Thou Shalt have no other Gods before me" if there are not actually any other gods?

God is 'Yahweh Elohim', literally, "God of Gods"...but the Bible uses 'elohim' all over the place, not referring to God. I don't agree with Heiser on everything, but there is a lot I agree with him on - I particularly like his presentation of the two-part Yahweh idea and also the way he unpacks the 'Deuteronomy 32 worldview', which in my opinion, is critical for an accurate understanding of what all of Scripture is saying. Quick read, good short summary of Unseen Realm, highly recommend.

Useless Labels

Calvinist. Arminian. Premillennialist. Amillennialist. Pre-tribulationalist. Preterist. Dispensationalist. Complementarian. Credobaptist. Fu...