Pinnock and Scripture

Before I go any further in to this travesty of theology, I want to explore some things Pinnock has said in this book and in his pneumatological treatise, Flame of Love.

In Flame of Love, Pinnock immediately declares that he appreciates Jurgen Moltmann's attempt to "recover a more experiential basis for the doctrine of the Spirit."[1] Later in his introduction he says that in his book “we will be dipping into the testimony of Scripture and into insights from the ecumenical church”[2]. “We have to be sensitive to things that are only spiritual discerned,” he says. To complete his turn away from Scripture, Pinnock concludes his introduction by saying, “This book is not really a biblical study but moves beyond exegesis to historical and theological reflection…Exegesis alone cannot provide the full perspective required by the church. There has to be a wider sweep of investigation that takes into account other dimensions—historical, theological, philosophical, cultural, and mystical”[3].

Pinnock makes similar statements in The Grace of God and the Will of Man. “Here is a meaty debate… and in it both sides can appeal to rich scriptural, logical, and experiential data,” he opines.[4] He admits that whole chapters of his book result from “rational speculation.”[5] In the chapter that recounts his autobiographical pilgrimage he says, “I had known experientially all along in my walk with the Lord, that there is a profound mutuality in our dealings with God.”[6]

Calvinists do not rely on experiential data for good reason. We are fallible, flawed, impure. We assume too much of ourselves. We give ourselves too much credit. The God of the Universe is the God of the Universe. To presume that our base, limited capacity could ever possibly come to correct conclusions apart or distinct from divine revelation, as revealed in enduring and tested Scripture, betrays a staggering height of arrogance. Experiential data does not inform theology. Certainly it does not correct clear, unequivocal declarations of Scripture. If “insights from the ecumenical church” differ from or contradict what Scripture plainly says, they must be tossed out. The Church is flawed because we are the church. There is no consensus of historical minds within the Church that God gives authority to. In this world, He has given authority to his word, to his Son, and nothing else. We should suspect any data that is based primarily or exclusively on personal or even corporate experience. We are prone to failure, bias, and the deception of an enemy whose capacity and ability far exceeds our own.

Of Scripture Paul said, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3.16). Of men he said, “Fools” (Romans 1.14, 22; 2.20; 1 Corinthians 1.20,27; Galatians 3.1,3). Of Scripture Peter said, “No prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God’ (2 Peter 1.21). Of men Peter said, “Lustful. Ignorant. Newborn babies. Disobedient” (1 Peter 1.14; 2.2; 3.1). We do not seek God apart from Scripture. We do not conclude who he is or who we want him to be apart from Scripture.

---

[1] Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), page 10.

[2] Ibid, 13.

[3] Ibid, 17.

[4] Clark Pinnock, The Grace of God and the Will of Man. (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1989), x.

[5] Ibid, xiii.

[6] Ibid, 19

Jeremiah

From The Kingdom of God, John Bright, 1953, Abingdon Books

Jeremiah had confronted the awful realization that God and the plain moral right of the matter were no longer on the side of his country. God has parted company with the Kingdom of Judah and wars against that kingdom. To take this course cost Jeremiah a terrific struggle. Here we see a soul at war with itself and with God; so much so that Jeremiah did not hesitate to hurl at his God the bluntest accusations of unfairness. It is quite clear that denouncing his people gave him not the least pleasure. He reminded God that he had never wanted the job of prophet anyhow. The butt of jeers, he lashed out at God in well-nigh blasphemous language, charging that God had "seduced" him, and he had let himself be taken in; he had struggled against his destiny, but God had simply overpowered him. Was that not a great victory for so mighty a God! Ostracized and lonely, he felt like a man suffering from an incurable wound. His spiritual resources were at an end. Yet he could not quit, try as he might; the compulsion of the divine Word was upon him:

And if I say, "I will not mention him, not speak any more in his name," then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I wear myself out trying to hold it in, but I can't!

The human spirit is not made to endure such tension. The end of it is despair unparalleled, despair which outruns all words and yet for which Jeremiah found words surpassingly moving. Jeremiah did not want to live.

Within there was a boiling tempest; but without there was an impregnable "wall of bronze". Within was all manner of fear and despair; without was a man who, so far as we know, never gave back so much as an inch! Here, indeed, we learn what faith really is: not that smug faith which is untroubled by questions because it has never asked any; but that true faith which has asked all the questions and received very few answers, yet has heard the command, "Gird up your loins! Do your duty! Remember your calling! Cast yourself forward upon God!"

In this connection, Jeremiah refutes the popular modern notion that the goal of religion is a "complete person", freed of its fears, its doubts, and its frustrations. Certainly Jeremiah was no complete person. It is doubtful if to the end of his tortured existence he ever knew the meaning of the word "peace". We have no evidence that his internal struggle was ever ended. The feeling cannot be escaped that if Jeremiah had been complete, it would have been at the cost of ceasing to be Jeremiah! A man at peace simply could not be a Jeremiah. Spiritual health is good; mental assurance is good. But the summons of faith is neither to a complete person nor to the laying by of all questions, but to the dedication of personality--with all its fears and questions--to its duty and destiny under God.

Introduction to Works of Arthur Pink Volume 1

I grew up reading scripture. I had—have—this ancient New International Version New Testament, published in 1975. The subtitle is “Illustrated Children’s Edition with Memory Margin”. This New Testament measures 6 and a half, by 9 and an eighth, by 1 and a quarter inches. I estimate the font to be about 14 pt. Maybe I was partially blind when I was a child. By New Testament standards, this book is very large. Not sure where I was going with this. I also had a complete bible. This other bible was a children’s edition sprinkled throughout with pictures of various events. That thing is lost forever.

I’m guessing I learned to read about the same time as most other children. The Bible being one of the first books I possessed, that was what I read. One of the earliest stories I remember reading was “David and Goliath”.

Like many of the stories in scripture, we find in this story much that inspires us. David tended sheep. He was young, probably in his early teens. He was handsome. He was brave, even perhaps a little obnoxious. The details and the conflict between David and his older brother lend to the credulity of the story. David went to the frontlines of the battle between the Israelites and the Philistines and brought food to the soldiers. There, he heard the challenge of the Philistines’ gigantic champion, Goliath, as he defied the armies of God, and God himself. “Who does this guy think he is?”, David asked. We all know how the story ends. David executes an unconscious Goliath with his own sword. That is how the story of David and Goliath ends. The future king of Israel, the ancestor God chose through which he would send the Savior of Mankind—David the Shepherd executed an unconscious man without trial or pretense of any kind.

“But this was war,” you object. Exactly right. The gory, violent details give the story credulity. Unlike the gory, obscenely perverse details of the Grimms’ fairy tales, the details in scripture match the overarching narrative. In war, the victor executes the defeated.

Scripture contains many details that we choose to ignore, or that we forget, or that we decline to emphasize with equal weight as the “inspirational” details:

Men are depraved. Jeremiah 17.9

God controls what we think and desire. Proverbs 21.1

God hates certain groups of people. Psalm 5.5; Proverbs 6.16-19.

God hates certain individuals. Malachi 1.3; Romans 9.13

God destines some to eternal destruction. Romans 9.22; 1 Peter 2.8

Why do we expect the Creator of the Universe to be eternally benign, inoffensive, and ever-pleasant? Do we know any human beings like this? If we do, do we honestly trust that this is who they are?

Arthur Pink refused to ignore any single part of scripture that he found unpleasant. The Sovereignty of God describes a God who rules all, every detail of all of creation, every action, every event, every decision of every man, woman, and child. The sovereignty of God must be our starting point for all of scripture, for all of theology. Without it, there is no scripture. If God is not sovereign, then his word has no meaning. How can he keep his promises? How can we trust him? Why even bother to worship him, if anything we decide can thwart whatever he decides? If our measly and minuscule intentions, these things we do daily by happenstance or stupidity or ignorance, can ruin the plans of the God of the universe, what is the point of God? What meaning is there in anything we do or say or believe? But if God is sovereign, then everything has meaning. Every failure, every thought, every intention that enters our heart has a purpose, and the purpose is not our purpose, but God’s. If God is sovereign, then he can be trusted, and his word can be proclaimed without fear and without compromise.

Introduction to "Pelagius, Augustine, and the Plague of Free Will"

https://www.amazon.com/Pelagius-Augustine-Plague-Free-will-ebook/dp/B074QN4RSF

I grew up in the First Assemblies of God denomination. The Assemblies are a Pentecostal denomination. I first “experienced” God at an Assemblies church. I was about 4 years old. My parents were new believers. My mother had converted from Catholicism, and my father had no prior church experience. He was a deacon, or an usher. I’m not sure. He wore a suit every Sunday and I would watch him diligently polish his black leather shoes every Sunday morning. We lived in San Jose, California, and the church we attended was set atop a tiny hill in a suburb.

I remember watching the movie "666", which was based on a book by Salem Kirban. The movie remains the most terrifying experience of my life. The heroine in the movie wakes up one morning and finds that her significant other has vanished while shaving. The world is in chaos. Millions of people have inexplicably disappeared. Soon the events described in Revelation become reality. Plagues, destruction, world government, the Mark of the Beast, all of it. But that’s not the terrifying part. The governing authorities, now a tool of the AntiChrist, begin to hunt all the Christians who refuse to accept the Mark. The movie ends as the authorities lead the heroine to the guillotine and execute her, who then wakes up from this nightmare to find her boyfriend has vanished.

This movie scarred me, and for years, whenever I was lost, or I couldn’t find my parents, I naturally assumed God had abandoned me, Christ had returned, and I was not worthy.

There’s no time to change your mind
The Son has come
And you’ve been left behind

Those words are actual song lyrics. I believed them. What did I know? I was a toddler. I understood words well; I just didn’t understand God well.

Pentecostal and other Charismatic denominations frequently use fear to motivate Christians. They believe that if they teach Christians about the grace and love of God, then Christians will abuse God’s grace and live in sin. For them, fear keeps Christians in line. Charismatic denominations traditionally believe that a Christian can “lose” their salvation. If you sin enough times—we don’t know how many times, but God does—then you will fall away from God and burn for eternity in hell. You have abandoned God. These churches have “altar calls” and “rededication ceremonies” every week. Catholic churches have similar ceremonies, called “confession”. There are a lot of theological similarities between Catholic and Charismatic churches.

Charismatics, Catholics, and many other Protestant denominations believe that a Christian can lose his salvation by a simple choice. They believe this because they believe the Christian originally decided to choose to believe in Christ. If he can freely, through his own volition, believe in Christ, then he can freely choose to stop believing. It’s a perfectly consistent belief. It’s just not biblical.

The core of the problem is this notion of free will. Freedom is very Western, but not very biblical. God is not a westerner. He is not Socrates or Plato. He wasn’t created with the birth of Athens and he doesn’t subscribe to our beliefs. He commands us to submit to his, and the first notion that we must accept is that, because of Adam, we are dead in our sin.

I do not deny that we all make choices. Every day, every one of us makes choices. Our choices are limited by certain factors, however. Our environment limits our choices. All of us do not choose to walk to school, or to wear warm clothing throughout the year, for example. Our personality limits our choices. I will never choose to use hallucinogens or run shirtless through the mall. Our will is not absolutely free, yet we are free to make many of the choices we want to make: where we live, what we eat, who we love, etc.

The theological controversy surrounds our ability to believe in God. Do we freely choose God, or does he sovereignly (some say arbitrarily) choose us? The implications of both options present different dilemmas. If we freely choose God, then what does God do? God responds to our wishes, and we effectively become the Initiators of this Divine Covenant. We decide who God loves and doesn’t love. We hold life and death in our will, eternal salvation or eternal damnation. If God chooses us, then what about those he doesn’t choose? Why does he choose some and damn others? What about our freedom? What about his love? Does he even love everyone?

Many Christians believe that the controversy regarding free will is largely irrelevant to the whole of the Christian life. Most Christians remain completely unaware that there is a controversy at all. The truth is that what a Christian believes about free will and election relates directly to what they believe about sin, grace, and redemption. Free will places in man a spark, however small, of original righteousness. Free will says that we are not sinners at our core, but saints, for we choose to trust in God not by his Spirit, but by the strength of our moral character. With this belief, we become righteous at our core, apart from Christ. Consequently, we need neither grace nor redemption.

Free will flagrantly elevates man to a position equal with God. Theologians who believe in free will not only believe that man can thwart the plans of God, but that God is subject to the whims of man. Free will ventures beyond placing man and God on an equal plane; the doctrine of free will places man in a superior position to the God of the universe.

When a Christian believes that he is responsible for his salvation through the glorious strength and magnificence of free will, he assumes responsibilities that only God can be responsible for. This believer is now responsible for his continued justification, lest he deny God through ongoing sin and lose his salvation; for his sanctification through daily acts of prayer, Bible study, worship, etc.; for the salvation of his loved ones, and for the Gospel command of making disciples of the entire world. Only God has the power and wisdom to accomplish these and guide us through them. We are responsible to trust in God, and to act obediently through this trust, but only God can keep us in salvation, bring us through sanctification and present us holy before him, and guarantee the salvation of those he has elected.

If we believe that we choose God, rather than he choose us, we remove his sovereignty. God sits and waits for us to choose him. He becomes passive. Scripture does not describe God in this way. God sovereignty rules the universe in absolute sovereignty. He builds, he tears down, he uproots and he plants not only men but entire nations.

The Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind, and bestows it on whom he wishes, and sets over it the lowliest of men. 

Daniel 4.17

If we remove his sovereignty, we set ourselves in his place. We now rule our destinies, and we decide who enters the Kingdom. Many theologians believe that God willingly removes his own sovereignty to respect our free will.[1] If God is not sovereign over the will of man, none of his promises can be trusted, for his promises involve the world, and the world is shaped and influenced by our decisions. If God is not sovereign, God is not God.

This absence of sovereignty allows entire denominations and even the entire Catholic Church to create whatever doctrine they see fit. If God is not sovereign, then his word cannot be trusted. Scripture cannot be trusted. Therefore, we can change, twist, add, subtract, or rewrite as we see fit. The Catholic Church, among many other unscriptural teachings, teaches that we are saved by faith and works. Many denominations ordain practicing homosexuals. The so-called Prosperity Gospel teaches thousands (possibly millions) that God acts as a personal wish-granting machine. If God is not sovereign, man is, and within the church that teaches free will, men have become their own god.

[1] This is the whole point of The Grace of God and the Will of Man. Clark Pinnock, editor, Bethany House Publishers, 1995.

Introduction to "What is Calvinism?"

https://www.amazon.com/What-Calvinism-Arthur-Pink-ebook/dp/B076KK8LFX/

I discovered “Calvinism” through a friend many years ago. He never used the words Calvinism, John Calvin, or even Reformed in our conversation. What he did say was something regarding election. I don’t even remember exactly what he said. All I do remember is that I disagreed with him.

I possessed some familiarity of the reformed doctrine of unconditional election, and this doctrine offended me. I had been taught that God chooses us based on his foreknowledge of our choice of him. God chose those whom he saw had a “heart for him”. This version of election made sense. Bill Mooney’s version did not. God chooses his people freely, and without any influence on our part. We had this conversation in the Christian bookstore where I was working at the time, and as Providence would so arrange things, I had access to all the reformed theology I could get my twenty-two-year-old hands on.

I completed my 45^th year only two days ago. The past twenty-three years, among other things, have been an intense theological journey. Actually, the journey to Calvinism was a brief one. I was immediately convinced of its validity after reading John Piper’s The Pleasures of God, and upon a thorough reevaluation of the Scriptures I had read since I was a child. My true journey has been toward the construction of this particular book you now read.

I have written and re-written a “Calvinism Primer” over and over and over, again and again and again for the past twenty-three years. I have studied John Calvin’s Institutes. I have read Luther’s Bondage of the Will. I have read the Puritans and I have read Edwards and Spurgeon. I have discussed with friends and I have “debated” online. I have questioned not only Calvinism, but my very belief in God many times over the past two decades. My opinion on the branch of Protestant theology known as Calvinism has not changed. What I have learned is that the branch that is not Calvinism is plainly not the Gospel. If I were to contrast Calvinism with everything in popular, current Christian “doctrine”, it would look something like this:

Calvinism Man is a sinner, completely and utterly enslaved to sin, wicked, and depraved, an enemy of God to his dying breath.	Not Calvinism Man is a sinner, yet somehow enough of a saint to choose what is the highest and greatest possible good: to trust in God.
God sovereignly, without respect to man, to his desires, his sinful character, his selfishness, or his hostility to God, chooses to save some of humanity.	God submits himself to the whims of man and chooses those whom he foresees will choose him.
In spite of our frailty, our fickleness, our sin, and our pride, God keeps in his care those he has chosen for all eternity.	In spite of their weakness, selfishness, and inability to continue in grace without his assistance, God allows those he has chosen to perish for eternity after passing some threshold of unrighteousness unknown to them.

This is obviously a slanted simplification, but it is not an oversimplification. There are other issues. Not-Calvinism answers many questions that Calvinism raises:

·        Why does God choose some and not others?

·        Does God love everyone?

·        Why evangelize if God is completely sovereign?

·        Why pray if God will only do what he wants regardless?

The problem with these questions, and any of the questions that non-Calvinism answers, is that they are entirely anthropocentric. These questions are not concerned with God’s glory (which is what the Bible is concerned with, by the way), but instead are concerned with satisfying the concerns and dilemmas of a person who refuses to trust in the God as revealed in the Bible.

This brings me to my main concern: we do not accept what is known as Calvinism because we do not accept the God of Scripture. Frankly, he is offensive to our pride. He does what he wants and not what we want. He condemns us as soon as we are conceived. He does not rescue all of us from our sin. He uses us for his purposes and does not treat us as the free-thinking, sentient, sovereign, agents of human glory that we believe we are. But we are not, according to Scripture.

I will not likely complete my “Calvinism Primer”. Much wiser men have done so, far before I was even conceived. I have done my best to present their words here to explain Calvinism, or rather what I have come to know as the Gospel of the Glory of God.

Alejandro Gonzaga

October 13, 2017

Burn it all down

As I read Clark Pinnock’s Flame of Love, I came across this sentence:

I hope the reader will sense how in love with God I am.

and I couldn’t help but chuckle. In reality, a discerning reader will sense how in love Clark Pinnock is with his theology. Clark Pinnock does not love God, at least not the God revealed in scripture. Pinnock loves the God that he has created. Behold the scorecard of The Grace of God and the Will of Man[1]:

Chapter 1: Pinnock’s religious autobiography, or how he changed his mind from unpleasant scriptural truth that he didn't understand to anti scriptural pleasant doctrines that made sense.

Chapters 2-4: God’s salvation is universal.

Some of the chapters are written by theologically suspect Seventh Day Adventists, by the way.[2]

Chapter 5: God sovereignly limits his sovereignty. Also, God knows everything that will be, and because of this, he can allow humans their wonderful freedom by responding to them as they freely live their free lives of freedom.

Chapter 6: God doesn’t know everything because if he did, that knowledge would limit humanity’s freely living free lives of freedom. We prefer our freedom over God’s. If the future doesn’t exist, how can God know it, all claims of divine prophecy not withstanding?

Chapter 7: But God does know everything, just differently. If God knows all possible outcomes, then we can still be free and God can still be omniscient, because he doesn’t know exactly what free choices we will freely make.

Chapters 5-7 are all speculation.[3]

Chapters 8-10: God is not sovereign (part the second). Arminians are better Christians unless you consider the faith teachers, the legalists, or the Catholics.

Chapter 11-13: God doesn’t choose arbitrarily. In other words, he doesn’t do what he wants. God doesn’t choose individuals, but he has chosen Jesus, and this is not a weird or redundant thing to say at all. Election is corporate with regards to us. Also, let’s take a break from speculation and talk about experience.

Chapters 14-15: God is not sovereign (part the third) because we don't understand how he possibly can be and still be just. God is also not sovereign because we can't possibly understand how he can be sovereign and men be responsible simultaneously. Also God is subject to moral law.

We don't claim to have the last word but we do know that God absolutely does not.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Grace of God and the Will of Man.

[1] Clark Pinnock, General Editor, The Grace of God and the Will of Man, (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House Publishers, 1989).
[2] Pinnock’s own admission. Page xi.
[3] “The debate about foreknowledge is speculative.” (page xiii)

Clark Pinnock's Flame of Love

Book Review: Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit

Alejandro Gonzaga

April 21, 2018

THEO 546

Clark Pinnock (February 3, 1937—August 15, 2010) was Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at McMaster Divinity College and explored varying schools of theological thought before his death. He tackles the difficult subject of pneumatology in The Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. From his introduction, Pinnock reveals his bias against a purely-scriptural theology, and instead declares that he will “provide the full perspective required by the church” by moving “beyond exegesis”[1]. Pinnock attempts to reconstruct the Gospel in order to make it more attractive to men, but only succeeds in diminishing the glory of God.

Pinnock begins his introduction with a prayer that asks, “Help us to overcome our forgetfulness of Spirit” [2]. Pinnock distinguishes between three different theological traditions and says that “in both Catholic and Protestant theology the place of the Spirit has surely been diminished”[3]. He says this because Western traditions neglect the experiential side of the Spirit. This point cannot be overstated. In his introduction, Pinnock states repeatedly that his book will forego a scriptural basis for pneumatology and strive to discover what other avenues have to say about the Holy Spirit. Pinnock alludes to finding a “more experiential basis for the doctrine of the Spirit”[4]. He wants to not only use Scripture, but “insights from the ecumenical church”. He says that we have to be “sensitive to things that are only spiritually discerned” as opposed to scripturally discerned[5]. He believes that “knowing the Spirit is experiential”[6]. Finally, as to drive the point home that Scripture is insufficient for his task, Pinnock says, “Exegesis alone cannot provide the full perspective required by the church. There has to be a wider sweep of investigation that takes into account other dimensions—historical, theological, philosophical, cultural, and mystical.”[7]

Pinnock aims to examine “the Christian vision from the vantage point of the Spirit”[8]. His book explores this through seven chapters:

• 1.       Spirit and Trinity
• 2.       Spirit in Creation
• 3.       Spirit and Christology
• 4.       Spirit and Church
• 5.       Spirit and Union
• 6.       Spirit and Universality
• 7.       Spirit and Truth

Chapter 1 covers the Holy Spirit in his relationship with God and Christ in the Trinity. Chapter 2 covers the Holy Spirit as Lord and Giver of Life. Chapter 3 explores how the Holy Spirit “anointed Jesus of Nazareth to heal human brokenness”. Chapter 4 dives into the presence and activities of the Spirit in the Church. Chapter 5 examines the goal of salvation, living in union with God through the Holy Spirit. Chapter 6 explains how God desires all men to be saved and the Holy Spirit is “present with every person in every place”[9]. Finally, in chapter 7, Pinnock explains how the Spirit leads the church in its mission to spread the Gospel.

If the Gospel tells us that God sent his Son to earth to save us from his wrath, then Pinnock has written this book to rewrite this Gospel. Pinnock consciously moves the focus of the Gospel away from God’s glory and directly towards man’s dignity. God’s love for man, and not God’s glory, is the central theme of Pinnock’s Gospel. In Chapter 2, instead of acknowledging God’s power to create conscious, living, thinking humans, Pinnock attributes the existence of humanity to evolution. He says, “The orderliness of the world is amazing—especially the capacity of nature [emphasis added] to produce living, conscious, personal beings.”[10] While the psalmist believes that the purpose of creation is to “declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19.1), Pinnock says that “theology declares that humanity is the goal of creation”[11]. In Chapter 3, Pinnock attempts to remove God’s wrath from the Gospel. He claims that the satisfaction of God’s wrath on the cross is “strange” and that God does not actually hate sinners and is not humanity’s enemy[12], but we know this is false (Prov 6.16-19; Romans 5.10). In attempting to state that the Gospel does not preach individual guilt under God’s law, Pinnock uses Philippians 3.6 to say that “Paul did not have a guilty conscience”[13]. This is a blatant distortion. Paul intends to say that if he were to be judged superficially by the Old Testament law, he would be guiltless, but regardless, his so-called perfection under the law does not matter in view of living for Christ. Pinnock often takes scripture intended only for believers and applies it to everyone. He says that “humanity is not destined for wrath, but for salvation”[14] (1 Thess 5.9). Chapter 6 is dedicated completely to asserting that the Holy Spirit is present everywhere, working salvation in men who do not hear and do not respond to the Gospel. He says, God “is the reconciler of the whole world” and “there is no general revelation or natural knowledge of God that is not at the same time gracious revelation and a potentially saving knowledge.”[15] Despite appearing to avoid claims of universalism, Pinnock plainly states that “Spirit works everywhere in advance of the church’s mission,”[16] and that even if someone is not a Christian, they are saved.[17] Pinnock’s aims to preach universalism and declare that everyone will eventually be saved.

Pinnock slants this book heavily toward a glossy view of humanity, and for this reason and others, I cannot in any way recommend it. Humanity is infected with sin and that to the core. We are dead in it and enemies of God. God’s is rightfully angry with us. Scripture teaches that we are sinners by nature and not by a conscious and completely “free” choice. If anyone is to be saved, God must save them, yet he does not save everyone. God remains perfectly justified in saving some but not all, for grace is elective, but wrath is obligatory. Pinnock desperately strives to rebuild the dignity and freedom that Adam and Eve had before the Fall, but he must completely shipwreck scriptural teaching in order to do so. Pinnock is not committed to scripture, but to his opinion, and for this reason, his book fails as theology.

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[1] Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, IL: Zondervan, 1996), page 17.

[2] Ibid, 9.

[3] Ibid, 10.

[4] Ibid, 10.

[5] Ibid, 13.

[6] Ibid, 15.

[7] Ibid, 17.

[8] Ibid, 18.

[9] Ibid, 18.

[10] Ibid, 67.

[11] Ibid, 71.

[12] Ibid, 107.

[13] Ibid, 156.

[14] Ibid, 109

[15] Ibid, 187.

[16] Ibid, 192.

[17] Ibid, 194.