Sunday, October 25, 2009

Grace acronyms

Courtesy of an e-mail from Keith Pavlischek, and courtesy of First Things's Evangel blogger, we have a bunch of exceedingly clever acronyms for the word GRACE. In fairness to First Things blog, I won't just copy the whole thing here. You should go read the whole list over there. But if you're familiar with God's Riches at Christ's Expense, this is a set for every kind of Christian (and/or groups claiming to be Christian, including Barthians and Emergentists) you can imagine. A sense of humor is required to appreciate these, and some knowledge of various Christian denominations and sub-denominations, too. Here are a few of my favorites:

For Open Theists:
God Reconsiders, And Cooperates Exquisitely

For evidentialist apologists:
General Revelation And Convincing Explanations

For presuppositional apologists:
Gospel Repentance Accomplished, Circularity Ensues

For theonomists:
Gospel Requires Absolutely Crushing Enemies

For the emergents:
Generational Resentment Against Conservative Evangelicals

It's hard to choose one best one, but given my present church membership, I shouldn't leave this one unmentioned:

For Anglo-Catholics:
Getting Ritualistic After Cranmer’s Execution

Heh.

8 comments:

  1. You want my real answer or the wussy philosopher's answer?

    Okay, my real answer: Whatever he may say to the contrary, an open theist is somebody who doesn't believe in Divine foreknowledge. Yep, despite all the clear scriptural teaching that God knows the whole future.

    In other words, and open theist is a heretic. But I've known some nice ones, nonetheless.

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  2. No Divine foreknowledge? So, like, when the Second Person decided to become man, he didn't know what the outcome would be? (i.e., crucifixion, resurrection, etc.)

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  3. As I understand it, the idea is that he knew it, but only as purely probabilistic prediction based on knowledge of human nature, etc. Not in any special, infallible, Divine way.

    The reason for this _supposedly_ is that the open theist does not believe that the future presently exists, hence God cannot "see" it, so God cannot know about it with certainty.

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  4. So the fact that the crucifixion went pretty much according to plan, his sacrifice saving us from our sins, was to some degree a matter of luck?

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  5. My impression is, yes, to some degree. What you might call a well-informed prediction that came out true in the event.

    I think it's a crazy position, but it's become kind of popular lately.

    Tim thought of an acronym for Puritans for the list:

    God Rarely Approves Christian Ebullience.

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  6. I like it. Here's one for Mormons:

    God Reappeared After Christianity Ended.

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  7. That one would work for Moonies, too. :-)

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