So then, for those who persevere, how they subjectively receive grace is part of what has been objectively given. We are to work out our salvation because God is at work in us to will and to do for His good pleasure. My continued subjective positive responses tomorrow must be considered as part of His …
Heart Change
Eventually, the view that natures are unchanged (or non-existent) has to go one of two directions—either we must minimize how bad unbelievers are, or we must emphasize how bad believers still are. Either way gets us into trouble, and the only alternative is to stick with some notion of the traditional evangelical and reformed notion …
Video or Snapshot?
Affirming the absolute need for personal regeneration is the sine qua non of historic evangelicalism. Affirming that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church is the sine qua non of historic catholicity. Deny the former only, and the end result is the deadly nominalism found in many quarters of the institutional Church. …
A Continuing Witness
Once a staunch Presbyterian was shipwrecked on a desert island, just like Robinson Crusoe. He was of the rock-ribbed sort, and being a thorough-going predestinarian, took this sort of thing in stride. When it came to suffering adversity, he was at his best. But of course, he also had to deal with some of the …
A Handy Guide for Navigating Theological Controversies
For all those interested second-year seminary students who are watching the varied logomachies being undertaken on their behalf by their elders in the gates of Zion, it seems that someone ought to have prepared a handy guide like this long before now. But they haven’t, and you know how it goes. But you can’t tell …
Logic 101
Throughout their book, Robbins and Gerety show a genuine inability or unwillingness to engage with the arguments I present for the objectivity of the covenant. For example, one of my common illustrations for what I am talking about is the covenant of marriage. A husband is covenantally a husband, and whether or not he is …
The Scribes and the People
Because of a successive series of synods, ecumenical councils, general assemblies, and graduating classes of the seminaries, the Christian people of the land were greatly impoverished in their souls. Because of this, a great lament arose, and the people of all the congregations were greatly discouraged and wept most copiously. A traveler from another region …
Call It Regeneration
In order to take all baptized covenant members as participants in Christ in the “strong sense,” we would have to distinguish what is objectively given in Christ, and not what is subjectively done with those objective benefits. Perseverance would, on this reading, be what was subjectively done with what God has objectively given. In this …
A Different Father
In fact, biblically speaking, “nature” is not captured by a static Hellenistic definition, but rather something that is revealed through the process of generation. The nature of the father is found in the nature of the son. In order to acquire a different nature, I must acquire a different father.
According to Nature
Our interest in such passages should not have to do with the wickedness as such, but rather has to do with the divine “paternity suit” that follows on the basis of it. If some covenant members are children of the devil and others are not (as the quotation from 1 John indicates), then there must …