Author Archives: Arlan

Blind to Certain Lights

Free will is experientially undeniable. Even if we sometimes feel as though we can’t help ourselves with a specific action, most of the time we generally recognize some level of choice available to us in every situation. Often we don’t like many of the choices that we have, or we consider the choice inconsequentially different. You may be free to Read More


Free Will Can’t Save God

Here’s the problem with Calvinism, or the doctrine that God has determined in advance who will be saved: it means that in the end those who perish apart from God never had any chance. Nothing they could do or could avoid doing would have made any difference. They had no chance and no choice. How could God punish or destroy Read More


As A Hedge

The blogs I admire most tend to have a strong element of personal transparency balancing the instructive or assertive elements. Bailey at My Holy Joy fits that preference. I admire the honesty of writing. It’s been especially interesting to observe the transformation of her perspective from stridently conservative to determinedly open and, lately, a bit of a reprise. Several of Read More


A broken mind

I started living with my grandparents in autumn of 2002 when I began attending the nearby university. When I got there Grandpa was an independent man who could drive us down back country roads that would turn out in some small town where the Methodists were having a $6 supper. During the course of my college education Grandpa developed symptoms Read More