I’m always fascinated by the way in which God brings people to himself, and I just read one conversion story that wonderfully illustrates the variety of means God uses. Guillaume Bignon is a French atheist who met an American Christian woman on vacation in St. Martin. He liked her but her faith dictated that they […]
When people argue that Jesus was a “representative” for sinners but not a “substitute,” I always find their statements puzzling. Much as I have tried, I have never been able to grasp their point. So I was delighted to read some comments by N. T. Wright this morning, as I read a fine review of […]
The western world is increasingly diverse religiously, and so it has become more urgent that we have a well formulated understanding of how we should view and relate to the religions of the world and their adherents. This fact has not escaped the attention of either theologians or missiologists, […]
Monergist and Synergist soteriologies Calvinism is monergistic in its soteriology, as evidenced particularly in two points in the well known acronym, TULIP – unconditional election and irresistible (or efficacious) grace. These points identify salvation as God’s sovereign work, in which God chose to glorify himself by saving particular people, in Christ, without any conditions on […]
Calvinists put a great deal of emphasis on the grace of God. What makes our theology problematic to many synergists is that we frequently preface God’s grace with the adjective “sovereign,” to indicate that God has the right to be gracious to whomever he wills and, since by definition no grace is “deserved,” no one […]
When I was born, my father was interim pastor of a church in Ontario. The congregation understood that my parents were headed for India as missionaries, but in 1944 it was not simple to travel, and they were still developing a support network. Both my mother and father had a passion for getting the good […]
Matthew Barrett examined an “inclusivist” reading of Acts 2 and 10 and found it wanting, in his 2011 ETS paper. He has done good work and his critique deserves consideration and response. Matthew Barrett’s critique of inclusivist readings Barrett studies Acts 2 because he has met inclusivist proposals that “the Spirit poured out on all […]
Robert Letham concludes his fine book with a chapter that describes the eschatological entailments of the union of members of Christ’s church with himself. Letham’s presentation Though our current experience of union with Christ is wonderful, its gloriousness will only be fully manifested at his return when we are […]
Having described the effects of our legal change in status through union with Christ, Robert Letham proceeds to discuss the internal transformation that results from our union, in the fifth chapter of Union with Christ: in Scripture, History and Theology. A recap of Letham’s presentation Letham summarizes the key […]
Some time ago, I spoke about the aha experience I had, while leading an evangelistic Bible study in the home of a Roman Catholic family, when I first began to ask myself whether it is possible to be justified by faith if one does not know that justification is by faith. That came back to […]