Calvinist Flyswatter

Founders vs Calvinism

FLOUNDERS on "CALVINISM,"
"ANTI-" & "NON-CALVINISM"

The Flounders have made the elaborate pretension that they are "the" Calvinists of this age, and they have taken to branding those who reject their phantasmagoria as "Anti-" and "Non-Calvinists."

C. H. Spurgeon once said that "there is nothing upon which men need to be more instructed than upon the question of what Calvinism really is" (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volume 7, page 300).

This certainly applies to the Flounders. They not only do not represent Creedal Calvinism, they in reality more appropriately might be called the "Anti-" and "Non-Calvinists" when measured by the Calvinist confessions of faith and notable persons who have been Calvinists.

Furthermore, their Hybrid form of "Calvinism" diverts from the primary purpose of the church in preaching the Gospel to the conversion of lost souls. At no time since the origination of the Flounders in the 1980s have they become known for evangelism.

Iain Murray, the virtual "father" of this "movement," fitly describes the Flounders' "evangelism" when he said in the Preface of his 1995 book, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism:

>>
. . . it is apparent that the recovery of doctrinal Christianity is not necessarily our chief need today. . . . it would appear that THE PRIORITY WHICH SOUL-WINNING HAD IN SPURGEON'S MINISTRY IS NOT COMMONLY SEEN TO BE OUR PRIORITY. The revival of DOCTRINE has scarcely been matched by a revival of EVANGELISM. . . . it may well be that we have not been sufficiently alert to the danger of allowing a supposed consistency in doctrine to OVERRIDE THE BIBLICAL PRIORITY OF ZEAL FOR CHRIST AND SOULS OF MEN.

Doctrine without usefulness is no prize. As Spurgeon says, 'You may look down with contempt on some who do not know so much as you, and yet they may have twice your holiness and be doing more service to God.'
>>

I know of no better description of the Flounders than what Iain Murray has presented in these excerpts.

posted by Bob L. Ross @ 8:29 PM