I’ve just returned from an excellent conference, Building Bridges: Southern Baptists and Calvinism, hosted by LifeWay Christian Resources at their Ridgecrest Conference Center.
Southern Baptists have long had mixed feelings about Calvinism. On the one hand, you can’t honor the Scripture as God’s Word without submitting yourself to doctrines also affirmed by Calvinists. On the other hand, the rationalistic zeal of some Calvinists leaves many people cold. Some of them leave you with the distinct impression that their theological system is lord over Scripture, rather than the other way around.
The conference was a breath of fresh air in a debate that usually reeks of misinformation, misrepresentation, stereotyping, caricaturing, arrogance, and name-calling. If you are at all interested in sorting out the issues of atonement or election, or if you would like to understand more about how Calvinist theology has influenced Southern Baptists, I would commend the podcasts from the conference, which you can find here.
One of the conference elements I appreciated most was something Danny Akin, the president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, offered in his closing address.
Akin, who identifies himself as a compatibilist (someone who affirms the majestic mystery of both divine sovereignty and human responsibility) read a fairly lengthy quote from Charles Spurgeon, the great pastor/theologian well-known as a Calvinist with a heart for lost souls. The quote poses a great challenge to the either/or mindset of so many who argue over whether people are predestined to heaven/hell or free to choose our own fate.
The quote below is from Spurgeon’s sermon Sovereign Grace and Man’s Responsibility, based on Romans 10:20-21 and delivered Aug. 1, 1858.
I see in one place, God presiding over all in providence; and yet I see, and I cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions to his own will, in a great measure.
Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act, that there was no presidence of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to Atheism; and if, on the other hand, I declare that God so overrules all things, as that man is not free enough to be responsible, I am driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism.
That God predestines, and that man is responsible, are two things that few can see. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory; but they are not. It is just the fault of our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other.
If, then, I find taught in one place that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find in another place that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is my folly that leads me to imagine that two truths can ever contradict each other.
These two truths, I do not believe, can ever be welded into one upon any human anvil, but one they shall be in eternity: they are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the mind that shall pursue them farthest, will never discover that they converge; but they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.
kainos 
My dad used to quote Spurgeon on those issues. He would say “Gods truths in their fullness are eternally bigger than any finite mind could handle” Present day: Our christian culture wants truth encapsulated in a sound byte (my old guy take on what I see from my cushy Sunday meetin chair)
I like much of what Spurgeon wrote; I am not a fan of some who love to quote Spurgeon! Our simplistic “either/or” mindset on many issues has driven us to place our own opinions about the text of Scripture and created great divides in the Body. If a person cannot take “my mind is finite and fallible” as a starting point of their theology, they will inevitably wind up in one ditch or another!
So true. It also runs us awry if we focus on our beliefs to the jot and tittle and never spend much time getting to know our savior personally, intimatly, walking daily. Not the “God is my buddy stuff tho”