This Week in Calvinism - August 15, 2014
- Bobby Grow sums up how he, as an evangelical Calvinist, can attend a Calvary Chapel church: a belief in universal atonement.
- Roger Olson admits that God is in control of man's sinful actions: "How are sins 'accomplished by God' according to his consequent will? No creature is totally autonomous of God; no creature can act without God's permission and even aid." And yet only Calvinism makes God into a "moral monster."
- Olson does assert God's sovereignty, "However, once God decided to created the world (I realize that language is philosophically problematic but it is biblically faithful nonetheless) he voluntarily became dependent on the world for some parts of his life experience."
- Peter Lumpkins is back to slamming James White.
- Tim Challies invites you to join him in reading Overcoming Sin and Temptation, a slightly modernized version of John Owen's The Mortification of Sin.
- Those Dutch Calvinists were responsible for apartheid. And apparently even Jesus himself was racist.
- Trevin Wax reflects on the the Gospel Project Panel: Soteriology and the Mission of God.
- Evangelistic Calvinism: the doctrines of grace in the sermons of George Whitefield.
How can anything that is rightly called "Calvinism" sit comfortably with Calvary Chapel's current theology? Universal Atonement aside, it seems that any theology acknowledging God's absolute Providence, or even His unconditionally electing love and irresistible grace (not to mention Perseverance of the saints), will never find favor with rabid anti-Calvinists like George Bryson and company. I am thoroughly unconvinced by Bobby Grow's article. Unless "Evangelical Calvinism" is actually a misleading name for "anti-Calvinism," there is not the remotest possibility that Calvary Chapel will buy into it. Although it would probably be better for them if they did.
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