Trouble with Frank Page, part one

“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an orderly account and explanation concerning the things that have been done among us in the book, Trouble With the TULIP by Dr. Frank Page, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things in a mediocre manner from the beginning, to write an orderly account for you, O Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”

I know I’m late to the party, here, on this weighty tome, but for my own discipline and exercise of mind and heart I plan to do a chapter-by-chapter review of Dr. Frank Page’s book, Trouble With the TULIP. If someone else gets something out of this, then that’s a bonus. I don’t want to write book myself, so I’ll jump right in and try to exercise some word-count restraint.

INTRODUCTION

I note a couple of things right off the bat. The first is the size of this book. There are only 71 pages of text (!) and my quick estimation by counting lines per page is that it contains less than 22,000 words. I know that might sound like a lot if you were assigned that amount on a college research project, but for a published book that apparently aims to dismantle the core theology of the entire Protestant Reformation, that is laughably puny. Maybe it’s just me, but I think that’s a howler. I mean, we’ve had non-Calvinists leave comments in our metas that are comparable.

My own published book, which is not meant as a weighty work at all, is four times that size. And, sitting on my shelf right here, I have a copy of the Westminster Confession of Faith (a mere summary of Calvinism, not a defense or a careful exegetical explanation.) It is 99 pages in much smaller typeface. And that’s leaving off the two catechisms that go with it.

On top of that, we are informed in the Introduction to TWTT that Page will also show (somewhere in the process of dismantling Calvinism) why he doesn’t call himself an Arminian. I don’t know how many, or few, words that’ll take, but I’d guffaw about that if I was of that persuasion.

I also note that TWTT is published by Riverstone Group Publishing. This is a house that helps writers self-publish their books.

Now, as an author who has some experience with shopping a book around looking for a publisher, it’s hard for me to fault a writer who self-publishes. Well….no, it’s really not. Again, it makes me smirk a little.

My experience is this: Christian publishers are very reluctant to publish a book by a first-time author, unless the author is a well-known figure within evangelicalism, or pastors a large church, or else somehow has some mechanism already in place by which he might reasonably be expected to sell a large number of books quickly, based on who he is. My point is, Dr. Frank Page, recognized mucky-muck in the world’s largest Protestant denomination, has all of that stuff. He should have no problem getting anything published.

But here’s the other thing: Some publishing houses are radicals in that they still require that your book have some substance to it.

I don’t want to make too much of this minor point, but it is a question that pops into my head right at the get-go. Why did famous Frank Page have to self-publish a teensy weensy little book that packs enough dynamite to undo the Reformation?

Well, turns out, I don’t have to wait very long to start getting an answer to that.

In the second paragraph of the Introduction, Page describes Calvinists as people who “believe in a five point system of theology, developed by the reformer John Calvin and his followers.” [p.5]

As a Calvinist, I would never describe myself that way. I also, for example, would not describe Arminians as people who believe a system developed by Jacobus Arminius, as it was fed to him by certain Jesuits seeking to undo the spread of Protestantism. I would never do that!

Right from the beginning Page seeks to portray Calvinism as devotion to a man, and never hints that maybe Calvinists see “Calvinism” as a nickname for the gospel that the Bible reveals. It can’t be that we think the Bible leads us to certain conclusions.

In fact, that sort of assertion on our part is expressly disallowed on the next page, when he mentions that Calvinists have a “rampant” spirit among them which leads them to assert such outrageous things as Dr. Loraine Boettner did when he said,

“As will be shown, the Bible contains an abundance of materiel for the development of each [point of the TULIP]. Furthermore, these are not isolated and independent doctrines but are so interrelated that they form a simple, harmonious, self-consistent system.” [Quoted on p.7, parenthesis mine.]

Page seems irritated that Calvinists would claim to have the Bible on their side. Instead, he asserts that he will show us how to develop a pure, Scriptural soteriology and not “a system of logic” or “adhering in blind devotion to the teachings of any one scholar.” [p.7]

We also get a taste of what irks Page about the whole deal. He thinks doctrines like Limited Atonement paint a “not so pretty picture” picture of Jesus [p.6]. Of course, this is just the introduction, and he may go on to bolster his case later, but I’ll be waiting to see how it’s so much prettier to envision a Savior who didn’t actually secure salvation for anyone, but rather only made it a theoretical possibility; and why it’s ugly to think maybe He actually saved whole multitudes.