It was the one Imonk mentioned in a blog a few pasts.

It is called Arminian Theology

I got barnes and noble to order it

I read it in about a day and 1/2

It is a very good and easy read

I had always considered myself a pretty strong Calvinist.

Turns out I’m more of a classical Arminian, as are most of the baptist preachers I grew up listening to.

If Michael would not mind our getting off-topic a bit, which of Olson’s books did you read and is it one you would recommend over other books of his if you have read his other books? Thanks.

And in the same play, Hamlet after seeing his father’s ghost, invokes St. Patrick when talking to Horatio. Why St. Patrick? A Danish prince in an English play swearing by an Irish saint?

Because everyone would have associated St. Patrick with Purgatory (thanks to Lough Derg, where he was supposed to have found an entrance into the Underworld) and connected this invocation with the Ghost.

I am dubious about the more enthusiastic of my co-religionists enlisting Shakespeare as “one of us”; it reminds me too much of gay activists reeling off a long list of famous historical personages in the arts and sciences, claiming “And they were gay, so that means we’re better!”

His parents certainly were of the generation that was Catholic; he grew up in those blurred, confusing times when the pendulum swung between reform and Reform, and the English church was swayed between those who wanted to import the Continental reform and pure Protestantism and those who wanted to keep a toe-hold for traditional Catholicism. I think myself he was yet another ‘bright country boy goes to big city, mixes in higher social circle than his home, becomes sophisticated and gives up all that old-tyme religion’ – whatever religion he may or may not have practiced. A heritage of Catholic tradition in the back of his head, like so many others, which is why he could make the St. Patrick allusion with no need for heavy-handed explaining.

Certainly I don’t think Shakespeare was a flat-out atheist like Kit Marlowe, but I imagine him with a kind of cocked eyebrow of scepticism about all the changes being arbitrarily imposed according to who was riding high in the saddle of state power at the moment, and being very careful (like any prudent person growing up under the Tudors) not to say anything that could be construed as critical of the Monarch, whoever that might be at the moment, and whether he or she was Papist, Protestant, or in-between.

Pax.

I just finished reading Olson’s book and my understanding is that he believes that infants go to heaven as well. They do have original sin,but that original sin is sort of put on hold by God’s grace until they reach and age of knowledge

hope that helps

Austin