This Week in Calvinism - November 9, 2007

Tom Ascol lists five marks of a healthy church.

Stan puts the Walking Fish through the wringer.

Bob Hayton invites non-Calvinists to not just write Calvinism off as a "man-made philosophy," but to take a serious look at the evidence and "try to understand how we arrive at our conclusions."

Tim Challies gives a very positive review of The Five Dilemmas of Calvinism, by Craig Brown.

B.C. McWhite may not be viciously dogmatic on all five points of Calvinism, but you're in for a fight if you attack the doctrine of perseverance/preservation of the saints.

Trevin Wax "will not confuse second-order doctrinal distinctives with first-order doctrines. Once we journey down that road, we'll eventually start confusing third-order doctrinal distinctives with first order doctrines, and we'll wind up as isolated, irrelevant, and shrill as our independent friends."

Tom Conoboy enjoys living "life for life's sake, learning through experience, through joy, through discovery." He sees that as an antidote to the "cold, harsh, granite hatred of life that Calvinism instilled in generations of people like me." I guess I'm not sure where he got that idea. Knowing that there is a sovereign Creator in control of all things, who chose me before the foundation of the world, came to earth in the flesh, lived a perfect life, shed his blood for my sin, rose from the dead, drew me by his Spirit to a saving faith in Christ, and has secured for me a place with him for all eternity has instilled in me a warm, comforting, passionate love of life.