NORMAN L. GEISLER, (1932- ) Christian apologist, speaker, and prolific author.
Dr. Norman Geisler is president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. Southern Evangelical Seminary was co-founded in 1992 by Ross Rhoads--Philadelphia College of the Bible, Fuller Theological Seminary, Greenville College, evangelist and former pastor of Charlotte's mega Calvary Church [of Graham fame]. Dr. Geisler has also served at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Dallas Theological Seminary. His errors are spread far and wide.
Currently, he is Professor of Theology and Apologetics. Dr. Geisler holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Wheaton College, a Th.D. from William Tyndale College, and a Ph.D. from Loyola (Jesuit Catholic) University in Chicago.
Geisler erroneously reasons, "Irresistible force used by God on his free creatures would be a violation of both the charity of God and the dignity of humans. God is love. True love never forces itself on anyone. Forced love is rape, and God is not a divine rapist!" If we extend Professor Geisler's humanistic analogy, the New Heavens and the New Earth spoken of in the book of Revelation cannot be an improvement over the Garden of Eden, since God neither can be a divine prison warden. Such is the fruit of humanistic reasoning.
Dr. Geisler seems to have difficulty attaching moral responsibility to anything short of indeterminism--as defined as "the power to always make a contrary choice." "God then is totally sovereign in the sense of actually determining what occurs, and yet humans are completely free and responsible for what they choose." Emphasis mine. The problem is always framing concepts of 'freedom' in terms of extremes. So he paints himself into a philosophic antinomy.
As an apologist, Dr. Geisler has developed a definition of "self-determinism" as an alternative to either determinism or indeterminism. His views are 1) expressed in his article God Knows All Things, PREDESTINATION & FREE WILL, p. 63, IVP, 1986, 2) outlined under the heading of FREE WILL in the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Books, 1999, and 3) further advanced in his book, Chosen, But Free, Bethany House Publishers (Arminian/Charismatic), 1999. Norman Geisler has also written Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal, Baker.
Like Billy Graham, Norman Geisler is a integral "evangelical" link to the realm of Roman Catholicism and thus consequently considers Catholicism a valid expression of Christianity.
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