It came in the mail today. I almost didn’t bother looking at it. I mean, who knows better that Dave Hunt has no interest in speaking truthfully about Reformed theology than I do? I’m overwhelmed with preparations and details in reference to next week’s events, so why even bother looking at Hunt’s new little anti-Calvinism book, the one he did not need to write because, of course, he’s said all he needs to say (that’s his excuse for backing out of debating me live, in front of an audience)? But I made the mistake of picking it up, and on every page I ran into eye-rolling foolishness. Just a few examples.
Hunt holds to the Wilkin anti-Lordship nonsense, and uses it as a bat to beat on Calvinism. Such may please his cadre of followers, but it would not work well in debate. Hunt promotes the “dead faith saves” concept so that you have “absolute certainty”; then, on the basis of this, continues to run with the simply ridiculous “Calvinism is crypto-Catholicism” nonsense he pushes on a regular basis.
Next, I somehow had missed this awe-inspiring subtitle, “Calvin’s Weakness as an Apologist.” I had to force my eyes to the next few paragraphs…yep, Hunt displaying still more stultifying ignorance of basic apologetic issues (i.e., epistemology, presuppositionalism, etc.). Followed, of course, by the wonderfully logical follow through of how this proves Calvinism is all wrong.
I don’t know…maybe it is because I’ve been spending so much time in Crossan and Wright and on issues like harmonizing Synoptic parallels and Q theories and Second Temple Judaism’s view of resurrection and the presuppositional nature of the approach used by the Jesus Seminar, etc., but going from Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God to the dishonest, simplistic, and just plain silly arguments of Dave Hunt, is a bit of a challenge. It is truly distressing to see such blind Crusaderism on the part of an “evangelical” who is clearly ignorant of the issues and utterly beyond correction. And yet, the temptation is to just dismiss his meanderings for that very reason. Yet, the task of the Christian scholar is not to dwell upon what is most “interesting” to himself, but to always keep in mind the benefit of the people of God in general. And so I force myself to interact with the repeated errors of Hunt, even while seeking to be prepared to respond on a completely different plane to the Crossans of the world.
