This Week in Calvinism - December 12, 2015

• In an item I had missed last week, The National's Chris Bambery wrote an article comparing Scotland's 17th century Calvinists to modern Islamic terrorists (Daesh/ISIS): "But for all their heroism and sacrifice they were fighting for a land ruled by the Presbyterian elect – with no room for unbelievers. Their dream for Scotland was not so far from Daesh's for its Caliphate."
  
  
• Some of Bambery's readers voiced their frustration with the article.
  
  
• To get in the last word, Bambery responded to their responses:

  Lastly, I am not going to debate theology with my critics but in response I cannot resist quoting a man from Fettercairn, Kincardine, who was threatened with excommunication in 1748.
  
  He responded: “What care I? The Pope of Rome excommunicates you every year ... and what the waur are ye o' that?”

  
  
• Speaking of comparing Calvinists to terrorists, Andreas Whittam Smith believes the turmoil in the Middle East is no worse than what happened in Europe during the "era of Calvinism."
  
  
• Leighton Flowers thinks he has found a quandary in compatibilism: if God has ordained all things according to his unchangeable decree, then is he not restraining his own unchangeable decree every time he restrains evil?
  
  
• William Birch writes, "If God has decreed sin and evil, from before the world was created, then God is the worse (sic) sinner in the known universe." The only alternative I see is that God was powerless to prevent sin and evil from entering into the world. Which means what? That we have to choose between an evil God or a weak God?