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Since this line of argument was not thoroughly fleshed out in the Corinthians thread, I figure it's best to create a new thread for discussion of the argument that the Reformed articulation of the gospel does not constitute good news for all men because the death of Christ did not save...

Strictly speaking, a proposition is only irreconcilable with its negation. A is irreconcilable with !A. This is Aristotle's law of non-contradiction: A is not not A. A is never irreconcilable with B simply on the face of it. To conclude !B from A, we need a minor premise stating If A, then !B...

Since it seems a common theme of late to allege that Calvinists assert God is doing something to keep people out of heaven, we're going to have a little variant on a Turing Test here. A Turing Test is an examination designed to distinguish which respondents are computers and which are humans. By...

As people come and go on these boards, from time to time I repeat a contention which I have never heard satisfactorily answered. The Bible doesn't say we're justified by choice. The Bible doesn't say we're justified by will. The Bible says we're justified by faith. To get free will into the...

It is my contention that John 3:16 is perfectly correct in modern English Bibles, but that it has come to be interpreted otherwise than what the English text means for two reasons. First, vernacular English no longer uses words quite the same way that the more formal, slightly antiquated...

In several threads recently it's been asserted or implied that saving some people but not others is unfair. It patently isn't, but it struck me, society at large is fairly confused on the concept of fairness in general. Redistributive income taxes come to mind, among other things. So I'm going...

English verbs can be expressed with two voices: the active and the passive. The subject of an active verb does the action of the verb, and the subject of a passive verb receives the action of the verb. Thus, "I hit" is active, and "I am hit" is passive. Greek possesses a third voice, the middle...

That which is commanded is commanded. That which is not commanded is not forbidden by virtue of not being commanded. Only that which is forbidden is forbidden. This seems pretty straightforward, and doubtless many of you will not see the point of saying something so obvious, but I would...

1) To speak of conversion, or the point at which the sinner is justified, in terms of either free or bound will is categorically incorrect. Humans are justified by faith. One essential element of faith is intellectual assent, or belief. We do not choose our beliefs. Belief is not, strictly...

Pick any digit within the previous number, and add it to the previous number. So, to give us a number with multiple digits to start with, I'm going to start us with 125.

Once again I see a common thread running through a lot of threads here, and since I haven't seen a good place to specifically address it, I'll do it here. We Calvinists believe in an efficacious, particular redemption. This is often termed a Limited atonement. What we mean by that is this...

Since we've been seeing a lot of posts recently on the topic of whether Christ effectually saved or enabled salvation, there's an issue that I want to bring up, but I don't see a specific thread it fits most appropriately in, so I'm going to handle it here. I'll try to make this simple, but it's...

For the first three Christmases I was on this forum, every Christmas I'd see several threads started here aiming to prove that Christmas, particularly the date of December 25, comes from paganism, and therefore we ought to eschew it, or something like that. Last year I thought I'd try to head...

I've seen from time to time discussions on struggling with assurance that I haven't stuck my nose into because I didn't really know how to judiciously approach the subject. Recently, however, a blog which I follow posted an excerpt on this subject from Spurgeon's autobiography which I have a...

In 221 A.D., Sextus Julius Africanus wrote in his Chronographai that Christ was conceived on the first day of spring, March 25 according to the contemporary calendar. Add the average nine months and it isn't hard to see where December 25th comes from. In 354 A.D., the Calendar of Philocalus...

It used to be in years gone by that people in Churches believed God should be obeyed because he's God. Across the board, the "because God says so" answer was judged a good enough reason to do anything. Christ said "if you love me, obey my commandments," so we do. It seems at least a weekly...

There is a single divide that separates all theories of the atonement into two fundamental camps: those theories wherein Christ took our sins, and those wherein He did not. On this topic, I would submit the following: Yes or no?

The law of the excluded middle states more or less that a proposition is either true or false - there is no third option. What this means is that if you are presented with two choices between affirming or denying a proposition, you have to choose one or the other, there is no third option for...

For those who do not accept Sola Fide, but do accept the Biblical statement "everyone who believes will be saved," how do you see these two teachings as different? This is not a debate, this is not a trap, this is just a question, and I expect people who do believe in Sola Fide to not take...

I've been getting into this topic heavily in GT and Soteriology recently, and it strikes me that there seem to be two major and quite different Reformed positions about how free will interacts with predestination, but I wanted to run this past the rest of us before I start spouting off stuff...