Saturday, March 08, 2014

Follow-up: Lutherans Coined the term "Calvinism"?

Recently I posted Lutherans Coined the term "Calvinism"? which suggested that it may have been the early Lutheran theologian Joachim Westphal that came up with the term. Concurrently with this entry I posted the same information on the CARM Lutheran board, because it was after reading a number of Lutheran vs Calvinist interaction there that made this little factoid jump out at me. I've spent about a month now interacting with the Lutherans over there.

I was reminded that with Internet interactions, there is often no end in sight. One discussion leads to another, various rabbit trails are spawned with each post, and multiple people interacting leads to a tangled web of polemic and confusion. What I found interesting is that not one of the Lutherans interacting with me had any real aversion to this sort of panoply of verbal drudgery and confusion. They appear to warmly embrace it as an opportunity to champion their position. I suggested that I would be open to taking a specific theological topic with one specific Lutheran and having an exchange with word limit restrictions modeled after this exchange I had a few years ago. Not one of them saw any value in this sort of method of dialog.

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