Kevin DeYoung hat das Buch von Autin Fischer “Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed: Black Holes, Love, and a Journey In and Out of Calvinism” rezensiert. Ich bin beeindruckt vom soliden Vorgehen DeYoungs. Für mich stachen zwei Fragen heraus:
1. Was ist das Kernargument des Autors?
The remedy to this problem is to start back at square one, and for Fischer that means beginning with the belief that Jesus is God. This is the heart of Fischer’s biblical argument against Calvinism. If Jesus is the exhaustive revelation of God’s character (41), we are obligated to test all of our ideas about God against the picture of Christ we see in the gospels. With a Barthian view of inspiration in place and a Moltmann-inspired approach to the incarnation, it’s a natural step for Fischer to ask the question he poses on page 44: “Does the God of Calvinism accurately depict the God revealed in Jesus?” The answer is a resounding no. Jesus shows us a “crucified-for-sinners God” while Calvinism gives us a “creates-sinners-in-order-to-crucify-them God” (49). Therefore, we cannot accept the predestinating Calvinist God whose chief end is to glorify himself, because “At the center of the universe, there is not a black hole of deity, endlessly collapsing in on self, but a suffering, crucified, mangled lamb, endlessly giving away self” (50, emphasis in original). That’s the central thesis in Fischer’s argument.
2. Wie lautet der Haupteinwand gegenüber dem Autoren?
Die Antwort erstaunt nicht: Ein salopper Umgang mit Bibeltexten.
Most problematically for Fischer’s case is his penchant for dealing in biblical generalities rather than getting into the weeds of the text. For example, he affirms that “the Bible talks about God’s self-glorification a lot” and cites nine passages in an endnote. But then the rest of the book criticizes the black hole of a glory-seeking God. What about those texts Fischer learned when he was Reformed? What do they mean now? You can’t acknowledge that “the Bible talks about God’s self-glorification a lot” and then write a book purporting to debunk the whole notion of a glory-seeking God without looking at any of those glory texts.
