[quote author="Diana"]
What I see happening on FAF with regards to doctrine scares me. I do not understand it, but if it scares me, I do not get involved. The intolerance shown toward the person who is going to the SDB church really bothered me.
Diana, somehow I missed what you said here in my first reading of your post. I share your concern about what is happening with our friends on FAF. The only doctrine worth defending over there seems to be that which paints Adventism in the worst possible light, to the point that even a committed Christian attending a Seventh-day Baptist Church must be convinced to abandon his practice of worshiping on Saturday. This leads to a mindset where leaving Adventism is seen as the greatest possible step one can take toward Christ, but it ignores God’s sovereignty to save people even within the Adventist church. We should not be uncomfortable that some sincere Christians have come to a different conclusion than we have about worshiping on Saturday. We should not be as threatened by their Sabbatarian beliefs as they may be about our non-Sabbatarian practices. Only the Good Shepherd knows who His sheep are, and we make a grave mistake if we use the day of worship as a test for who belongs to Christ.
Today I received a mailing from John MacArthur’s “Grace to You” ministry. MacArthur made some very important observations that apply directly to this situation and the topic of this thread.
[quote author="John MacArthur"]
The vast majority of the thorny, persistent, mind-boggling questions that Christians struggle with are directly related to the sovereignty of God, election, predestination, perseverance, and the question of “free will.”
Those, of course, are doctrines associated with Calvinism. Both the label and the doctrines have been highly controversial for nearly five hundred years. As a matter of fact, I normally prefer to avoid using the term Calvinism because it often provokes too much emotion and too many misconceptions to be useful if the goal is real understanding rather than merely vigorous debate.
Besides, my preference has always been to deal with the doctrines of election, free will, predestination, and related ideas from the standpoint of the Bible, rather than all together as a theolgical system with a man’s name attached to it.
I have no slavish devotion to John Calvin, the man. I do admire his skills as a theologian. Even more important than that, he was (usually) a superb and very careful Bible expositor. He didn’t get everything right, of course. I wouldn’t agree with his views on baptism or Bible prophecy, for example.
As for the major teachings people so often label Calvinism, I usually prefer to speak of them as “the doctrines of grace.” These start with the sinner’s complete inability to free himself from sin’s bondage, and they include divine election, substitutionary atonement, God’s gracious work in drawing sinners to Himself, and the security of every believer’s salvation.
All of those are vital to a sound, biblical understanding of the gospel. But they are admittedly not without difficulty. And in order to sort out our understanding of those truths, we need to look to Scripture–not human tradition, personal feelings, debate forms on the Internet, or even Calvin’s own teachings. What does the Bible say? That’s my only real concern.
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You may have heard me say this before, but it’s worth repeating. Doctrine matters. What you believe about God, the gospel, the nature of man, and every major truth addressed in Scripture filters down to every area of your life. You and I will never rise above our view of God and our understanding of His word.
This is so well-said, I can’t add to it. Doctrine matters. Even people who minimize doctrine have a doctrinal belief–their doctrine is that doctrine should be minimized! This is what I fear is happening in some segments of the former Adventist movement, and yes, it is scary.
Greg
