You're a Calvinist, Right?

I've been reading Fred Sanders's blog for a long time, and when his book, The Deep Things of God, came out, I was eager to read it. He's a good writer, he loves and quotes the Puritans, he's a reasonable thinker, and he knows how to do careful exegesis.

He's also a Wesleyan.

I don't mean to declare that so menacingly. But the first time I learned Sanders---associate professor at the Torrey Honors Institute of Biola University---was a Wesleyan, I was a bit surprised. It's not that Wesleyans and Arminians can't be careful interpreters and reasonable thinkers---I just don't often resonate with their writings and conclusions quite the way I do with Sanders'.

And so, I had to know: For a guy who loves, quotes, and depends upon Calvin and Calvinists, why isn't Fred Sanders a Calvinist? We corresponded, and he explained the one thing he wished Calvinists would stop accusing Wesleyans of doing and why Wesleyanism is only the opposite of Calvinism in a very small thought-world.

A good many Calvinists grew up in the Reformed tradition, but many of us became Calvinists later in life, when we had to make our faith our own and make sense of what the Bible says for ourselves. How did you become a Wesleyan? What about the tradition attracts you?

I grew up as a free-range evangelical, in pentecostal and baptistic churches of various kinds. But I actually got saved as a teenager when a revival broke out in the youth group at the local United Methodist church. I got an MDiv at Asbury Theological Seminary, a great interdenominational school with definite Methodist roots. So my conversion and my early theological training were in Wesley territory.   Continue at John Starke