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Calvin’s Confusion about Predestination: 5 Exodus, Pharaoh, Mercy and Hardening
God: (1) Wants all people to be saved. (2) But has mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills. I do not know how those two truths fit together logically because God does not tell me. John Calvin introduced confusion into the Reformed churches by trying to explain how they fit together logically.…
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Calvin’s Confusion about Predestination: 4 Genesis, Malachi, and the Line of Promise
God wants all people to be saved, and so he chose a particular nation through which he could give his Son, Jesus, as the saviour of the whole world. John Calvin, and many who followed him, was confused about this, thinking that God’s election of the nation of Israel meant God did not create all…
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Calvin’s Confusion about Predestination: 3 Summary of Romans 9-11
John Calvin, and so many who later followed him, was confused about predestination, thinking that God chose some people to be damned. But God wants all people to be saved and takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. This is the third in a series of posts responding to Calvin’s explanation of predestination…
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Calvin’s Confusion about Predestination: 2 What Calvin Said
John Calvin, the most influential theologian of the Reformed tradition, was confused about predestination. Because he thought God wills (which means wants) some people to be damned. God has never willed the damnation of anyone. He wants all people to be saved. That’s what he tells us (1 Timothy 2:4)—and we believe him. This is…
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Calvin’s Confusion about Predestination: 1 Defining Predestination
John Calvin was confused about predestination. As a result, many Christians today are also confused about it, and believe God predestined some people for damnation. This is serious. Because that idea is terrifying. It would mean Jesus didn’t die for everyone. It would mean the most important thing in your life is not to look…
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The Tyranny of Visible Fruit
The reality of life is that people implicitly assess Christian ministry through visible fruit, institutional momentum, relational success, and perceived stability. Even when they explicitly deny that—they do it. Even Christians who highly value the Bible do it. Because, as much as people may say that faithfulness is measured by the Bible: when pressure is…
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Even Manchester’s Mayor Wants a Job in London
You are drawn to success. We all want comfort, success, glory, prestige. And temporal kingdoms offer that. Throughout history there have been “great cities,” climbing to the sky, offering a tower to commune with greatness: Babel, Nineveh, Babylon, Rome. And, of course, here in the UK—London. Andy Burnham once said: “[politics] has been too London-centric…
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Promises for a Ruined Reputation
You may be reading this because you know the huge pain of a ruined reputation. The Bible doesn’t shy away from how difficult this experience is: Reproaches have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. (Psalm 69:20) Here,…
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Why hasn’t the church collapsed?
The church is full of rubbish people. People making mistakes.People struggling with doubt.People who behave badly. How on earth is it still here? That is the question that Mark answers at the end of his Gospel. I was taught my whole life that the end of Mark’s Gospel is not original. Because the ending is…
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When God Commanded Genocide: 2 Jesus Died for Every Amalekite
God commanded ancient Israel to commit genocide. You and I are rightly troubled by that. In our first post, we looked squarely at the most clear and difficult passage in the whole Bible on this, 1 Samuel 15:1-3, where God commands Saul to slaughter the Amalekites: every “man and woman, child and infant, ox and…