Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

Eucharist As A Means of Grace … It’s Meaning & Frequency (Receptionism)

Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Acts 20:7 – On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them intending to depart on the next day and prolonged his speech until midnight.

I Cor. 1:17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

In these passages we see the controlling dynamic of worship. In that early Church we read of how the Church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” That phrase reminds us that the Word preached was central to worship. The Apostle reinforces that in I Cor. Where he writes about his assignment to preach the Gospel. In the Acts passage the other central dynamic of worship is contained in the phrase “breaking of bread,” which many scholars believe is a reference to communion.

The two of these together – The Word preached & the Sacraments administered have long been considered and called, among the Reformed as the “Means of grace.” So, as Reformed folks we affirm the fact that there exist two (some say three) means of Grace. These are Word and Sacrament, with some also insisting that prayer is a means of grace. By the phrase “means of grace” what we mean is that we hold to the conviction that God convinces us of His favor, and grows us in the faith (sanctification) by way of His gathering us to attend on the Word preached and the sacraments received. We also recognize that there is only one place where these means of God’s grace are to be found and that is in God’s church. Hungry Christians — Christians who desire to be showered with grace therefore gather on the Lord’s Day where the Word is proclaimed by those set aside and ordained to the end of being God’s spokesman to speak grace and administer the sacraments and to pray.

Thus far we have only said what our Heidelberg Catechism teaches in LD 38. We are taught:

That, especially on the day of rest,
I diligently attend the church of God2
to hear God’s Word,3
to use the sacraments,4
to call publicly upon the LORD,5
and to give Christian offerings for the poor.6

I submit to you that one reason that the importance of attending Worship is that we are no longer convinced that it is in Christian Worship alone where we find God’s favor conveyed to us in a unique and promised way in the Word preached and the sacrament administered.

So, as we have said one reality that we find as we gather week by week is the means of grace — that is the Word proclaimed. In older language it was the goal of the minister to “preach Christ into his people.” This was the passion of the clergy. To help God’s people by putting Christ on display. To provide to God’s people solace, encouragement, and steel via the preaching of the Word. To not let them leave without reminding them of God’s favor in Christ and God’s standard established by Christ. To bless them with God’s blessing so they might be better able to navigate the rough waters of life.

Alas, the Word preached as fallen on hard times as we have increasingly become a people who are controlled by the image, unlike our forefathers who were word oriented. Because we have been mesmerized by moving images coming at us with rapidity we seldom have the patience to follow the careful argumentation that used to be characteristic of the pulpit — a careful argumentation that required the listener to follow points, sub-points, and sub sub points of a sermon that resulted in a thorough understanding of subjects preached on. In such a way the means of grace that was the Word proclaimed formed and shaped generations. The Word proclaimed … this preaching Christ into God’s people resulted in the health of individuals, families, churches, and social orders. This preaching Christ into God’s people yielded the byproduct of wholeness and holiness into a culture. Christian cultures started with the Preaching of God’s Word. A people convinced of God’s favor were set free to live to the glory of God in all their living and it all started with the means of grace God appointed for worship.

Today our preaching, exceptions notwithstanding, is more image oriented than it is word oriented. More sensational, and so more shallow and considerably briefer — attention spans being what they are.

The result of all this is a Christian who is malnourished and comparatively stunted in growth compared to previous generations.

Yet here we are and the cure for this decline is the Means of grace. The cure is the Word rightly proclaimed and the sacraments properly administered as taught in Acts 2 and elsewhere through Scripture.

We have emphasized thus far the Word preached but the Sacraments administered were also the means of grace. The Fathers here used to say that in the Sacraments we don’t get a better Christ but we may well get Christ better. Preachers fail… stumble in preaching the word … but in the Table and the Font there Christ is revealed in such a way that is more difficult for the preacher to confound. When we come to the table we are reminded that Christ is our sufficiency… that Christ is our answer to God’s previous just wrath that justly was upon us. When we come to the table we are remind that God is for us for the sake of our benevolent champion Elder Brother, Jesus Christ. How can we not find ourselves lost in wonder, love, and praise when we are reminded both in Baptism and the Eucharist that despite the truth we see about ourselves – sinners that we are – still we are received in the beloved Christ and being received we don’t have to be burdened with the silly attempt to work off our sins by some kind of penance system dictated to us by a tyrant church?

Historically, when the Reformed church talked and wrote about Word and Sacrament – the means of Grace – and the relationship between the two our theologians would teach us that the Sacrament, being a symbol, depended upon the Word for explanation. So, the Word preached was given pride of place because in order to understand what the drama of the Sacraments were teaching we needed the Word to provide the context of the drama that is the Sacraments.

So, historically, the Reformed adjudicated that the proclamation of the Word to be absolutely essential to Worship, while the administration of the Sacraments was reflexively essential. The Word that is the whole counsel of God from justification to sanctification can stand alone, while the Sacraments lean upon the Word and their meaning from it. Our Father’s styled the Eucharist as; as “visible sermon.”

So, both Word and Sacrament are together means of grace.

That brings us to the issue of frequency of the Eucharist. Clearly, if the Word Preached is absolutely essential then you’d expect that you would need to hear it preached every time God gathers us for worship. However, if the Sacraments are only reflexively essential than the argument might be made that they are not necessary week in and out. And this is the way that some argue, and while we might not insist that the frequency of the table is not a hill to die on, we still have some observations here.

First, we would say that if one is convinced that the Sacraments rightly administered is a Means of Grace then why would one not want to have the opportunity to avail themselves of that Means of Grace God has set aside in order to shower His people with His blessings of favor? Why would we with neglect a frequent pursuit of the Eucharist where God promises to meet with His people.

We have to understand that when we come to the table that what we do here is not first and foremost our performative act. When we come to the Table we understand that before it is about our faith act in reception it is about what God is doing. As in the Word preached where God is the one speaking so in the Sacraments God is the one feeding us with life eternal. If it was only about our doing … our remembrance then perhaps attending the Lord’s table once quarterly or once a year would be acceptable. However, keep in mind what our Catechism teaches us about the Supper. We are taught that the effect of the Eucharist is;

to be united more and more to his sacred body through the Holy Spirit, who lives both in Christ and in us.2

The HC cites John 6 here,

55 For My flesh is [a]food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.

This passage indicates that the Catechists saw that the Eucharist as more than a mere memorial and teaches the Calvin doctrine of receptionism. This understanding of the Sacrament taught that the bread and wine do not change physically, thus distinguishing it from a RC or Lutheran understanding. However, at the same time we confess that in the bread and wine Christ is spiritually present so that when we eat in faith as given to us by the Holy Spirit’s power we to partake in the body and blood of Christ. The emphasis is that the body of Christ is spiritually present to the believer during the Eucharist. This understanding distinguished the Eucharist from a Zwinglian (Baptist) bare memorial understanding as if all that happens in the table is between our ears. In this understanding the Eucharist is a visible sign that is more than a sign since the sign has the reality in the sign.

All of this begins to explain why the Heidelberg Catechism continues on in LD 28;

Therefore, although Christ is in heaven3 and we are on earth, yet we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones,4 and we forever live and are governed by one Spirit, as the members of our body are by one soul.5

So… to enlarge on what we said a few minutes ago, we quote from Scottish Reformer Robert Bruce;

Therefore I say, we get no other thing in the Sacrament than we get in the Word. Content yourself with this. But if this is so, the Sacrament is not superfluous.

Would you understand then, what new thing you get, what other things you get? I will tell you. Even if you get the same thing which you get in the Word, yet you get that same thing better. What is this “better”? You get a better grip of the same thing in the Sacrament than you got by the hearing of the Word. That same thing which you possess by the hearing of the Word, you now possess more fully. God has more room in your soul, through your receiving of the Sacrament, than he could otherwise have by your hearing of the Word only. What then, you ask, is the new thing we get? We get Christ better than we did before. We get the thing which we had more fully, that is, with a surer apprehension than we had before. We get a better grip of Christ now, for by the Sacrament my faith is nourished, the bounds of my soul are enlarged, and so where I had but a little grip of Christ before, as it were, between my finger and my thumb, now I get him in my whole hand, and indeed the more my faith grows, the better grip I get of Christ Jesus. Thus the Sacrament is very necessary, if only for the reason that we get Christ better, and get a firmer grasp of him by the Sacrament than we could have before.

Robert Bruce
The Mystery of the Lord’s Supper

So, we have wandered somewhat from where this section started. We started with the issue of frequency of the Table, and where we have traveled in the last few minutes I trust you’ll see why some would choose, like John Knox did do, to want the Table whenever the Word was preached. Calvin himself, though he didn’t exactly get his wish in Geneva, desired to have the table in every worship service.

Now, let us round off by considering a possible objection that is commonly heard when increasing the frequency of taking the table. Often the objection is this;

“If you have the table too often it will become common… routine, and cease to be special or precious.”

Well, first we would say here that if this line of reasoning was true we would think the same thing about commonly and routinely coming for worship. We might well say the same of the Sermon. If we took this logic into marriage husbands might reason …”Well, I don’t want to kiss my wife too often lest it becomes routine or common.”

Still, we admit that the human heart, being what it is, could well begin to treat the Eucharist as routine and common. However, if that happens might the problem not be the frequency of the sacrament but rather a frequency of undisciplined minds as well as the failure of the pulpit in the Word being proclaimed?

We want to round off by saying again, that we are not going to think ourselves superior to others who don’t take the table weekly. We understand that the Scriptures are not unmistakably clear on the issue of frequency. Good men disagree on this subject. We also might well conclude after a period of weekly communion that for whatever reason weekly communion isn’t working.

Let us though end with a passage that many have considered one which strongly points in the direction of weekly Eucharist;

Acts 20:7 – On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them intending to depart on the next day and prolonged his speech until midnight.

If the phrase “break bread” here is a reference to the Eucharist then this passage would prove the issue. However, while that phrase might well refer to the Lord’s Supper it might also refer to a common meal shared by that fellowship.

 

 

Rev. Joe Spurgeon On Whites Being Replaced; Right Message – Wrong Messenger

Stick with me here. The irony comes at the end.

Rev. Joe Spurgeon (RJS) writes;

“Everyone wants to talk about demographics change but very few are willing to tell the truth about where much of the blame lies.”

Bret responds,

The issue here that Joe is bringing to our attention is the problem the West is having with demographic change. When you peel this back, that problem is that the West (and the US) is becoming less white. That Joe is focusing on White people not replacing themselves is seen in the multiple times he uses the word “White.”

RJS writes;

White Americans do not have a replacement level birth rate. The total fertility rate for white women in the United States sits well below 2.1 children per woman. That means the population is shrinking on its own, before immigration is even part of the equation.

Bret responds,

Here Joe brings out the failure of white people to replace themselves. Clearly Joe thinks this is a bad thing. I agree with Joe that it is a bad thing.

RJS writes,

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of white babies are aborted every year. Roughly a quarter of all abortions in the United States are performed on white women. That is an entire generation being erased before it ever sees daylight.

Bret responds,

Joe once again focuses on the white babies aborted. Joe is clearly zeroing in the collapse of White America. I agree with Joe that this is horrid.

As an aside… it is interesting that though America, demographically, remains 61% white, only 25% of abortions in these united States are done by white people. That means the abortion industry thrives off of the minority community.

RSJ writes,

Add to this the widespread use of birth control (which is itself abortifacient). Millions of white women are on the pill alone, intentionally preventing conception for years at a time. Children are delayed, downsized, or avoided altogether in the name of convenience, autonomy, or lifestyle preservation.

Bret responds,

Again, I completely agree with Joe here.

Joe writes,

A people that kills its children in the womb and refuses to have enough children to replace itself will not survive.

Bret responds,

Keep in mind that the “people” that Joe has been talking about is white people. It is white people who will not survive because they are not replacing themselves. This is the demographic change that Joe wrote of in his opening salvo.

Joe writes,

This is not primarily something being done to white Americans. It is something white Americans are doing to themselves.

Bret responds,

Note again… it is white Americans that Joe’s whole piece is about. Again, I agree with what Joe says here.

RJS writes,

A civilization cannot be sustained on abortion, sterility, and self hatred. If a people wants to endure, it must choose life, marriage, and fruitfulness again.

Bret responds,

Joe talks about (white) people wanting to endure. Joe talks about the need for white people to choose life, marriage, and fruitfulness. I agree.

The kicker here is that Joe writes all this as a white man who has not replaced himself. Joe hasn’t aborted his children. Joe did choose life and Joe did choose fruitfulness. However, what Joe did not choose was the very thing he is lecturing white people on … Joe did not choose replacement. Joe as a white man has not replaced himself. Joe married a non-caucasian woman and had many children who can not be considered replacements for Joe.

So, Joe complains (rightfully) that white people have sinned in not replacing themselves… Joe complains (rightfully) about demographic change, and yet Joe has four fingers pointing back at him as Rev. Joe points at white people for the sin of not replacing themselves.

So, I am to understand that a man who married a non-White woman is now lecturing other white people on their sin of not replacing themselves because of inadequate birthrates?

I want to make something clear here. I get why some people might marry outside their race. I get that there are going to be situations where that happens. I am glad for Joe that he has a radiant wife and many children. Further, I’m confident that all those children are Christian children.

What I don’t get is how such a guy can have the stones to complain that their race of origin is not replacing itself, when in point of fact, Joe has contributed to the demographic change that he is lamenting. If it is sin for white people to pursue death by not replacing themselves then that has to include not only abortion, and abortifacients as causes of white people not replacing themselves, but it must also include, as causative, large numbers of the population marrying outside their race and having non-white children.

The truth that has to be added to all the truth that Rev. Joe Spurgeon brought is that if Whites want to halt the demographic change in these united States they have to cease with interracial marriage because interracial marriage as well as abortion and abortifacients contributes to the demographic change here that Joe rightly laments.

Bottom line here … Joe has given us the right message, but he is the wrong messenger.

Addendum

1.) Someone has argued that white miscegenation compared to white abortion is akin to comparing the Himalayas to a molehill. I concur that abortion and abortifacients are a far larger problem however, consider that 17% of all new marriages in the US are interracial and by 2050, it is projected that 1 in 5 newlyweds in the US will have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity, indicating a continued rise in interracial relationships.

So… the Himalayas to molehill analogy doesn’t really work.

2.) Also on this matter we have to consider that one abortion kills one white child, while marrying outside one’s race prohibits many potential white children being birthed.

3.) Dan Brannan notes on this subject;

Both miscegenation and abortion remove a member of the nation. But one (miscegenation) also adds a member of an outgroup in amongst us. One (abortion) is murder of an individual. The other (miscegenation) is essentially murder of the nation.

Cultural Marxism Is The Worldview That Has Replaced Christianity In The West

“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” “wokery,” “Cultural Marxism,” “political correctness” are deceptive nomenclatures employed for concealing the facts about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.

The Frankfurt School, disproportionality staffed by Jews, adapted Karl Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was twofold. First their goal was to reshape the subconscious of Western (white) men and women and thus create a new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds, even to the point of supporting positions that would eventuate in the destruction of the Christian faith and the Christian White man. This brings us to the second goal of the Cultural Marxist which was, in the words of Cultural Marxist, Willi Munzenberg;

“We must organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink. Only then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat”

They achieved this via their long march through the Institutions. Cultural Marxism, via the messaging of Government schools and Universities, Media outlets of all varieties, and the “Christian” church championing a false Christianity using false guilt in order to re-orient the hoi polloi concerning right and wrong and good and bad. Together they created the new Western Soviet man by instilling in Western man a false consciousness that might be rightly called, “A Will For Death.”

Cultural Marxists (the rank and file of the Frankfurt School) encourage Zionism, abortion, birth control, divorce, LGBTQ, “carrier women,” with its attendant feminism, drugs,  miscegenation, the destruction of the traditional family via sexual promiscuity and perversion, and unrestricted immigration of racial foreigners into white countries. All of this is derivative of and reflective of what the Cultural Marxist’s preach:

1.) White reproduction is evil, and that which prevents white reproduction is good.

2.) Christian White culture is oppressive and bad and that which breaks up and destroys Christian white culture is good.

Cultural Marxism is the driving ideology that explains the death of the West. If Biblical Christianity is that cultural faith that was turned away from, the Frankfurt School, with its Cultural Marxism, is the cultural faith that was turned to and embraced. Most of your conservative Christian clergy that you will meet today have reinterpreted their Christianity through a Cultural Marxist grid. People like Doug Wilson, James White, Kevin DeYoung, Jeff Durbin, Andrew Sandlin, R. Scott Clark, Mike Horton, J. V. Fesko, David Van Drunen, T. David Gordon, and many many more, to one degree or another, given their opposition either to a decidedly Christian Nationalism or their support for Zionism, or their support and/or encouragement of prolific miscegenation, are all drinking  from the well of Cultural Marxism. If this continues the continued steep decline of these united States will continue apace. If this continues the Christian faith and the Christian Church will be found only in remote and tucked away places.

The Devil Went Down To Moscow — With Apologies To Charlie Daniels

The Devil went down to Moscow
He was lookin’ for a soul to steal
He was in a bind ’cause he was way behind
And he was willin’ to make a deal
When he came across this old man
Writin’ a piece and workin’ it hot
And the Devil jumped upon a Palouse stump

And said, “Doug, let me tell you what”

“I guess you didn’t know it, but I’m a blog writer, too
And if you’d care to take a dare, I’ll make a bet with you
Now you write pretty good, old boy, but give the Devil his due
I’ll bet a book of gold against your soul

‘Cause I think I’m better than you”

The codger said, “My name’s Dougie, and it might be a sin
But I’ll take your bet, and you’re gonna regret

‘Cause I am the best that’s ever has been

Dougie, get your pencils out and and scribble fast and hard
‘Cause Hell’s broke loose in Moscow and the Devil deals the cards
And if you win, you get this shiny book made of gold

But if you lose, the devil gets your soul

The Devil cracked his knuckles, and he said, “I’ll start this show”
The fire flew from his fingertips as the words began to flow
And he swept his fingers across the keys, and they made an evil hiss
And by the time the piece was done, it read something like this

But when the Devil finished, Dougie said, “You know you’re pretty good old son
But you just look over my shoulder right now, And I’ll show you how my bloggin’s done”

Fire on the Palouse, run, boys, run
The Devil’s in the house of the Pale Ale Son
Chickens in the Cross-Politic, making lots of dough
Dougie, is your dog Jew? No, child, no

Well, that old  Devil bowed his head cuz he knew that he’d been beat
And he laid that golden book down on the ground at Dougie’s feet
Dougie said, “Devil, come on back if you ever want to try again
I done told you once, you son of a gun, I’m the best there’s ever been

Doug wrote, “Fire in the Palouse, run, boys run
Devil’s in the house of the Pale Ale Son
Chickens in the Cross-Politic, making lots of dough”
Dougie is your dog Jew? No, child no

Open Theism As The “Solution” To The Arminian Problem?

I grew up Arminian (Wesleyan). I know their theology well as I studied it in Undergrad earning one of my Bachelors in an associated field (Religion-Philosophy). I still have the blue test books from those Theology classes in my file cabinets. In those test books I received top score for my ability to slice and dice Calvinism, along with praise from the Professors.

Along the way, resisting as much as I possibly could, I gave up Arminianism and was born again, again. I became a Christian (sometimes known as Calvinist).

One of the hurdles I could not get over, thus pushing me towards Calvinism was the problem found in all standard Arminianism. Evangelical Arminianism, teaching Hypothetical Universalism (the idea that Christ died for all people without exception) had to likewise hold that all men has libertarian free will. If Christ dies for everybody, but everybody isn’t saved than that factors that divides those who are saved and who are not saved, per Arminianism is the fact that some cooperated with prevenient grace while others did not cooperate with prevenient grace. The reason that some cooperate with prevenient grace (the grace that goes before salvation) while others don’t cooperate is the result of some using their Libertarian free will to choose to be regenerated while others use their Libertarian free will to say no to God’s resistible grace.

The Arminians have this problem though. If man has this kind of Libertarian free will to tell God to “go pound sand,” as the Spirit of God intends to convert them, then Arminians can no longer teach that God is sovereign and so controls all things. Still, Arminians would teach that while God may not be exhaustively sovereign such as their Calvinist foe’s teach God still did foreknow all things that would come to pass even if God didn’t predetermine or predestine the beginning from the end the way the Calvinist insisted.  So, as it pertains to individual salvation, per the Arminian God knows (but does not determine) how each person will use their Libertarian free will in order to either accept or reject the “Gospel Invitation.”

The problem that eventually presented itself to the “smarter than the average bear” Arminian is that they understood that if God foreknows everything that happens or will happen, God thereby renders that thing He foreknows as certain. God in foreknowing all that will happen has in that foreknowing made certain all that will happen. If God foreknew from eternity past that I would mock Arminian theology in 2026, then that mocking had to happen. I would not be free to not mock Arminian theology. This is true even if we, along with the Arminian, reject that God makes everything happen. The relevant point is that God’s foreknowing of an event to occur before it occurs makes it certain that the event will occur even if God is not the causative source of said event happening.  Even if there is some other causality to my mocking Arminian theology, God foreknew that the other causality would lead me to mock Arminian theology and so the mocking of Arminian theology in 2026 by me would by necessity come to pass. Exhaustive divine foreknowledge necessitates determinism, whether or not determinism is the result of divine causality. The nub of the matter is that some Arminians began to understand they were on the horns of a dilemma here. What to do?

Well, there really are only two choices. The Red Pill solution was “become a Calvinist,” and deny Libertarian free will. Forty years ago plus, I took the Red Pill. However, some former Arminians took the Blue Pill and so denied foreknowledge. The Blue Pill allowed the Arminian to become more consistently inconsistent. By taking the Blue Pill the Arminian moved from Arminianism to Open Theism. The Arminians joined the Open Theists (a form of Socinianism) and so rejected the idea of the Arminian doctrine of God’s foreknowledge. For the Open Theist if God was sovereign He was sovereign quite apart from any exhaustive foreknowledge. Of course the idea that God can be sovereign without either Calvinist sovereignty or Arminian foreknowledge is just a surd.  The Arminian by choosing Open Theism became more consistently inconsistent inasmuch as he now has found a way to consistently embrace Libertarian free will. However he has done so at the cost of magnificently gross inconsistency inasmuch as he has embraced a God, who by definition, has been drained of all that makes God, God. As it were the Arminian, when affirming Libertarian free will, was already worshiping a emasculated god. However, in moving to Free Will Theism (Open Theism) he is now worshiping a emasculated man as god said loudly. The Arminian has embraced anthropological consistency at the cost of theological inconsistency.

It seems like, to a certain degree, Open Theism has been beaten back. However, Arminianism remains the major report in terms of numbers as among American Evangelicals. Very few people believe in a muscular doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Most Evangelicals … even most Reformed, in a De facto sense, embrace enough of the shards of Arminianism to bring into doubt their Calvinistic bona fides.

And thus the Church in the West continues to limp along.

Addendum:

Touching Libertarian free will we would note that for every bit of Libertarian free will that you give to man you take that much from the Triune God. Man cannot have Libertarian free will without God not having Libertarian free will.

The Scripture exhaustively teaches that God exhaustively controls all things (Lamentations 3:37-38;  Rom. 8:28, 11:33-36; Eph. 1:11). As that control extends to our free decisions we read in Scripture wherein God controls the free decisions of people. (Joseph’s Brothers – Gen. 45:5-8; Cyrus – Isa. 44:28; Judas – Lk. 22:28, Acts 2:23-24, 4:27-28, 13:27.)

Now, that people do what they want to do while it still being the case that God is in exhaustive control is taught by the doctrine of Compatibilism. Compatibilism teaches that man does what he wants to do and is not coerced in his decision making. Man’s decision are voluntary. Compatibilism further teaches that man’s freedom presuppose his nature. Fallen man is free to choose all kinds of option  but because of his fallen nature, fallen man can never choose not to sin. Compatibilism teaches that whatever it is we voluntarily choose it does not mean we had the freedom to choose otherwise. We were pushed to choose whatever we choose consistent with pre-existing influence, inclination, or disposition. In choosing nobody starts from neutral in choosing what they choose. Considered from the macro understanding though, compatibilism affirms that all wills are in bondage to God’s sovereignty.