This Week in Calvinism - June 26, 2009

• Barry Wallace longs to see the church "passionately move forward in God-glorifying, laziness-jolting, one-other-inflaming obedience in our worship."
  
  
• What we can learn from a different Calvin.
  
  
• William Birch asks, "So, when a Calvinist is angry at false teaching, or false religions, or atheists, or child molesters, or adultery, or nudity, or America's moral decline, should he not really be angry at his God, for it is He who has foreordained whatever comes to pass (as the Westminster Confession teaches)?" I'll let Jonathan Edwards answer:
  
  Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all. If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired.
  
  
• Damien Garofalo recaps the Sovereignty of God Conference.
  
  
• Tom Ascol recaps the 2009 Southern Baptist Convention.
  
  
• A list of some of the events around the world commemorating the 500th anniversary of John Calvin's birth.