Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone! It is now the year 2011, and we find ourselves at the start of a new adventure. I pray that everyone had a blessed Christmas, great New Year's Eve, and a glorious New Year's Day today. If you're like me, you've enjoyed the holidays...but now, it's time to get back to work. Satan, evil, and sin are still alive in 2011, and we don't know what the future holds...so it's time to get back to the work we've already begun.


2011 will hold surprises unlike any other. Here at the Center for Theological Studies (CTS), I will still bring to you great research and great responses as I've made it my constant aim to do. As of this moment, I do not have insight into what new surprises I will bring to the blog this year. However, I will say that we are blessed to have the "Faith and Film" section here at CTS. The "Faith and Film" section will explode this year. One surprise for 2011 (there is one, after all!!!) is that I will begin to blog on "The Matrix" movies pretty soon. I've watched them, taken meticulous notes, and hope to transform notes into insightful blog posts in the coming days.


On another note, I start a January class this coming Monday called "Critical Thinking and Argumentation" with the distinguished Dr. Greg Welty. Pray that my class goes well and that I please the Lord with my studies. I certainly do need prayer for this...after all, who wants to get up for two weeks and have class everyday from 8am-12:30pm?


Now, on to the glorious news...I, your blog writer here at CTS, will graduate this coming May 2011 with her Master of Divinity Degree in Apologetics and Biblical Languages. I look forward to graduation day and all that it will bring. The best part is...I'M NOT DONE WITH SCHOOL YET! :-)  Spring 2012 is right around the corner (even though it's a year away), and I hope to start next Spring in my Master of Theology (ThM) program here at Southeastern Seminary. Dr. Ken Keathley has graciously agreed to be my mentor...and I am so honored that he would take up the challenge of dealing with me for another two years. Dr. Keathley needs prayer, too: I can be quite a handful at times (yes, I have my imperfections).


Aside from this, all is well. To my readership, I wanna thank you all from the bottom of my heart. You have made my time at the Center more exciting than I ever knew it could be. I have also been blessed to talk to folks on campus who are reading me (people I never knew would ever read my work). Hearing fellow seminary and college students say, "We're reading you," is a joy and a delight. They bless me by doing so, proving to me that my work is of eternal worth...and that others are being blessed by it as well. One thing that I always attempt to do is be faithful to the text. I am Classical Arminian not because I like the idea that I can fall away from the faith, or because I secretly wanna be Open Theist...or because I just don't like Calvinism. I am Classic Arminian because I believe that Dr. James Arminius's theology is faithful to both the text and sound hermeneutics. When I read warnings about falling away, I take those as providing warnings to believers who are openly (and unconfessedly) living in sin, while the promises still provide assurance for those who are striving to be like Christ (as well as motivate believers living in sin to wake up from their spiritual slumber and stand firm against the deceit of Satan). I think that both promises and warnings can be accounted for in the Classical Arminian system...and I think that Calvinists and Molinists struggle to accommodate the divine warnings into their systems. And if divine sovereignty has selected some and not others, then there is no responsibility. This explains why both Calvinists and Molinists hold that the warnings apply to fake believers. In those two systems, the warnings can only apply to disingenuous (fake) believers because God keeps His own...God makes them persevere...they are guaranteed perseverance and its end (eternal life) because God "claims responsibility" for them and preserves them. In other words, there is no human responsibility for the eternally elected children of God. Instead, there is only divine responsibility. What does this mean for human responsibility? We are left to wonder...


Once again, thanks to all who have supported me from my infant blogging days until now. If you think you've seen all of God's work in my life, get ready for 2011--- you ain't seen nothin' yet...