CAN'T

Can't continue with the detailed review of Frank Page's Trouble With the Tulip.

It's too infuriating, and it feels like wasting a bunch of time answering objections that are too purile to deserve any time at all.

If there was any, and I mean any, meaningful interaction with the text of Scripture in this entire book, I'd feel differently.

But here's what I think is the most egregious example of Page's "closer examination" of the issues.

On page 56, he is trying to prove his assertion that God actively desires to save every single individual.

He writes, "Can these verses be any clearer?"

And then he simply quotes 2 Peter 3:9, 1 Timothy 2:3-4, and 4:9-10.

End of discussion. No exegesis at all. The verses must obviously mean what he thinks that they clearly mean.

The thing that winds up bugging me the most is the subtitle of the book:

A Closer Examination of the Five Points of Calvinism. That's what it claims to be. In actuality, as I have said, the Scripture is not interpreted, but merely quoted (infrequently) and more often simply referenced in the form of proof-text addresses.

This doesn't even rise to the level of a popular introduction to the issues.

A closer examination? I want to scream, closer than what?

I am left disappointed and mildly infuriated. Dr. Page has only proven that he is more Pelagian than the average, educated Arminian; and he's displayed huge lapses of scholarship, with regard to precision and argumentation. What's more, for one who is still lauded for his part in the SBC's "Conservative Resurgence," which is billed as the battle for the Bible, Dr. Page can't seem to trouble himself to actually use the Bible to make his case, or to show in any detail why the Calvinist's interpretations are wrong.

I've been reading a lot of blogging lately which laments the low state of Bible knowledge and doctrinal understanding among Southern Baptist laymen, and it occurs to me that maybe it's because the shepherds can't lead where they themselves refuse to go.