Dispelling Caricatures

Russell Moore offers a clarifying portrayal: If today John Calvin were discovered alive and in suspended animation, frozen in a block of ice somewhere in the French Alps, most people probably wouldn’t consider this good news. After all, the unfrozen Calvinist lawgiver rarely is thought of as the kind of figure modern audiences would want [...]

Angry Calvinists?

Calvinists are often stereotyped as austere, ungracious, unloving, and sometimes just plain mean.  My personal opinion is that this reputation is mostly caricature and/or misunderstanding.  However, I also recognize that Calvinists do indeed share some of the blame for their bad name. This realization is what led me to write a series of posts entitled “Humble Calvinism,” [...]

Election Keeps No One Out of Heaven

A helpful explanation of the biblical doctrine of divine election: …God stands at the door of heaven with His arms outstretched, inviting all to come. Yet all men without exception are running in the opposite direction toward hell as hard as they can go. So God, in election, graciously reaches out and stops this one, and [...]

9/11 and the New Calvinism

Trevin Wax has written a thought-provoking piece exploring the possible impact of the attacks of Semptember 11, 2001 on the recent resurgence of Reformed theology among American evangelicals.  His main points are as follows: 1. September 11 forced “the problem of evil” to the forefront of theological reflection. Terrorism brought the concept of “evil” back [...]

Conspiracy Theories and Calvinism

Doug Wilson: As Jonathan Kay has observed, one of the basic features of the conspiratorial mindset is a deep belief in the hypercompetence of the evil cabal that runs the world. But the Calvinist believes that the Holy Spirit runs the world, and that the conspiracies that do exist to resist Him are to be [...]

Augustine & Calvin – Part 4

See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Presdestination vs. Foreknowledge Much of the theology discussed relating to Augustine and Calvin has been very similar.  As noted earlier, Calvin himself quoted Augustine hundreds of times in his all-encompassing Institutes of the Christian Religion, obviously considering him a trustworthy authority from which to support his own [...]

The Heart of the Arminian/Calvinist Debate

Now the Calvinist contends that the Arminian idea of election, redemption and calling as acts of God which do not save cuts at the very heart of their biblical meaning; that to say in the Arminian sense that God elects believers, and Christ died for all men, and the Spirit quickens those who receive the [...]

Election According to Arminians and Calvinists

God’s act of election was defined by the Arminians as a resolve to receive to sonship and glory a duly qualified class of people – believers in Christ.  This becomes a resolve to receive individual persons only in virtue of God’s forseeing the contingent fact that they will of their own accord believe.  There is [...]