This Week in Calvinism - June 27, 2014

• Last week, Tom Chantry explained why New Calvinists are antinomian. This week, he explains why New Calvinists are legalists.
  
  
• Oh, and New Calvinists are also obsessed with celebrity.
  
  
• Shane Kastler offers an explanation of why sinful man is both totally depraved and without excuse.
  
  
• Matt Tuininga on "imperial Calvinism."
  
  
• Dr. Lawrence Cross criticizes the Australian prime minister's administration for being too Calvinistic, i.e. protecting the rich at the expense of the poor. Yeah. That's exactly what Calvinism teaches.
  
  
• Timothy Paul Jones discusses the manifold meanings of the term "Calvinist," and concludes that "if the term 'Calvinism' is used at all, it ought to be reserved for theological perspectives that stand in clear continuity with Calvin's own teachings."

This Week in Calvinism - June 20, 2014

• Some religion professor you've never heard of thinks the problem with Bowe Bergdahl may have been his Calvinist church.
  
  
• According to Briallen Hopper, the current resurgence in Calvinism "is a far cry from the Calvinist revival that burned through the Northeast a few centuries ago during the Great Awakening." He concludes, "The loss of ecstasy and the diminishment of bodily experience in American Calvinism is a real loss."
  
  
• Roger Olson asks, "Is this the best of all possible worlds?" He thinks the Calvinist must answer "yes."
  
  
• Well, what do you know? Some Southern Baptists disagree on theology, but agree on the urgency to evangelize.
  
  
• Is New Calvinism "rampant with antinomianism"?
  
  
• The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) takes a bigoted stance on marriage by voting overwhelmingly to limit marriage to only "two persons."
  
  
• FLOWER FIGHT!!!

This Week in Calvinism - June 13, 2014

• John Calvin was also known as Jean Chauvin. Does that make me a chauvinist?
  
  
• "Traditional" Southern Baptists counter Calvinism.
  
  
• David Brat, who unseated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, is apparently a Calvinist Catholic.
  
  
• The danger of hypo-Calvinism.
  
  
• Another ill-informed rant on the "imperfect God of classical Calvinism."

Romans 1:21

The fact that this woman can't see the irony in doing a pro-abortion video while her kids play in the background speaks volumes.

This Week in Calvinism - June 6, 2014

• D. G. Hart on Presbyterianism, Calvinism, and Scottish Independence.
  
  
• "There are many crazy and dangerous cults operating today, not many worse than Calvinism," writes one contributor in the Thinking Atheist forum. It's obvious the forum places much more emphasis on "atheist."
  
  
• Tim Challies on unanswered prayer.
  
  
• Tullian Tchividjian clarifies his apology following his departure from The Gospel Coalition.
  
  
• Doug Wilson schools N. T. Wright on evolution and theology.
  
  
• Matthew Westerholm discusses God's extraordinary work through our ordinary means.

Should we fast?

Fasting wasn't just for ancient Israel or the early church; it is a powerful tool for believers today. David Mathis of Desiring God writes:

What makes fasting such a gift is its ability, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to focus our feelings and their expression toward God in prayer. Fasting walks arm in arm with prayer — as John Piper says, she is "the hungry handmaiden of prayer," who "both reveals and remedies."

She reveals the measure of food's mastery over us — or television or computers or whatever we submit to again and again to conceal the weakness of our hunger for God. And she remedies by intensifying the earnestness of our prayer and saying with our whole body what prayer says with the heart: I long to be satisfied in God alone! (When I Don't Desire God, 171)

That burn in your gut, that rolling fire in your belly, demanding that you feed it more food, signals game time for fasting as a means of grace. Only as we voluntarily embrace the pain of an empty stomach do we see how much we've allowed our belly to be our god (Philippians 3:19).

And in that gnawing ache of growing hunger is the engine of fasting, generating the reminder to bend our longings for food Godward and inspire intensified longings for Jesus. Fasting, says Piper, is the physical exclamation point at the end of the sentence, "This much, O God, I want you!" (Hunger for God, 25–26).

He concludes:

Fasting, like the gospel, isn't for the self-sufficient and those who feel they have it all together. It's for the poor in spirit. It's for those who mourn. For the meek. For those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. In other words, fasting is for Christians.

It is a desperate measure, for desperate times, among those who know themselves desperate for God.

I think a better question is "Why don't we fast?"

A men's conference to skip

It's not a written rule, but I typically shy away from any men's conference that features as its headline speaker a liar directly responsible for the senseless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, and who denies the exclusivity of Jesus Christ.

Way to go, LifeWay.