I recently had the privilege of guest lecturing at the University of Texas on the topic of the Resurgence of Mission & Reformed Theology in America. Eileen Delao-Flynn, Professor and Religion writer for the Austin American-Statesman, was kind enough to extend me the invitation to address her Journalism & Religion class. The entire lecture would be too long to reproduce here. However, I have included a section on “Resurging Calvinism” below.

The "New Calvinism"

In an article entitled “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now,” TIME magazine numbered the "New Calvinism" as the third most influential idea changing the world in 2009. In an effort to explain this "New Calvinism," New Calvinists are laboring to shake off a fundamentalist, religious image and articulate the old gospel in fresh, biblically faithful ways. They are making five important distinctions:

1. Gospel/Religion:

New Calvinists point out that the Gospel is not Religion. This came as a surprise to some of the students. Religion says, “You must impress God,” but the gospel says, “Jesus impressed God for you.” Religion says, “Perfect yourself and God will be happy.” The gospel says, "We are all imperfect people, but Christians cling to a perfect Christ who obtains the pleasure of God for them." The gospel is good news, but religion is burdensome news. Religion tells us to perform for God, but the gospel reminds us that Jesus has performed perfectly on our behalf. The Gospel is not Religion.

2. Us/Them:

The Gospel makes a distinction between arrogant separatism and humble evangelism. It doesn't exaggerate an Us/Them mentality. New Calvinism doesn't evangelize out of superiority but empathy. We recognize that we all need Jesus before the judgment of a holy God. The only difference between true Christians and non-Christians is that Christians are recipients of God’s grace in Christ. But we all are equally in need of that grace. There's not one person in this world who needs God's saving grace more than anyone else. The New Calvinism does not pit the human race against one another—Us versus Them—but views all humanity in light of our standing with God.

3. Big/Small:

New Calvinism is recovering a gospel that is bigger than "fire insurance" from hell. It is articulating the gospel as “good news” for the whole world—society, culture, people, and the environment. The gospel is not an LCD, a lowest common denominator of the bare minimum facts you have to believe to get into heaven. Rather, it is a TOE, a theory of everything that addresses God’s purpose for humanity, society, culture, cities, environment, justice, and the future. It possesses an explanatory power that addresses everything from human motivation to environmental concerns. New Calvinists are embracing all goodness, truth, and beauty as God’s truth, goodness, and beauty, and redemptively engaging those things that are false, ugly, and evil. The gospel is much bigger than people think, but it is not smaller than personal redemption.

4. Conservative/Liberal:

New Calvinists are distancing the gospel from politics. They are not preaching a political gospel, though the gospel does have political implications. In short, Jesus is not a Republican or a Democrat.

5. Urban/Suburban:

New Calvinists are returning to the city, to engage the beauty and brokenness of urban life. They are recovering a commitment to justice and mercy in the city, returning to cities from the white suburban flight.

Where Do These Distinctions Come From?

These distinctions are the direct result of a high view of the sovereignty of God—his reign over all of life, not just in so-called religious matters. These distinctions flow from a big gospel that can be articulated as the good news that Jesus has defeated sin, death, and evil through his own death and resurrection and is making all things new for those who hope in him. The dying-rising-from-the-dead Messiah alone has the power to break the back of evil, redeem sin, and exchange life for death. It is the gospel that awakens us to this marvelous news.

Continuity from the Old to the New Calvinism

Much more could be said regarding this resurgence. One student asked what remains the same between the "Old Calvinism" and the "New Calvinism." There is much more continuity between the New Calvinism and John Calvin than with some of his followers. However, what essentially remains the same is the soteriological core—God's sovereign grace in redeeming broken sinners, which has been popularly captured by the TULIP acronym: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints (limited atonement appears to be more negotiable among the New Calvinists). This understanding of God’s sovereignty over salvation extends into a life lived under his sovereignty post-salvation.

The TULIP is flowering more vibrantly than it has for some time in the U.S. The Reformed resurgence has led to a missional resurgence that is set on holding the formerly "liberal" and "conservative" agendas together with the gospel, promoting robust engagement of social, cultural, and spiritual spheres of life. In this regard, the New Calvinism has more in common with the Calvinism of Abraham Kuyper, who argued that Calvinism is not merely a soteriological system, but an entire life- and worldview. The New Calvinism is broader than some of its narrower conceptions. All in all, I believe this resurgence is a very positive resurgence, a winsome Calvinism for the 21st century that advocates a whole gospel for the whole person and country.

Re:Sound

The musical arm of the Resurgence offers music that is theologically unified, stylistically diverse, and musically excellent. Find out more.

In this video, Pastor Mark Driscoll asks Dr. R.C. Sproul a theological question from Facebook: "Does God really want all people to be saved?"

Click through to the Resurgence if you can't see the video.

Religion Saves

Check out Pastor Mark Driscoll's newest book: Religion Saves: And Nine Other Misconceptions. Find out more.

God's decrees foreordain, and his creative act brings into actuality, beings other than God. Creation marks the beginning, therefore, of non-divine "otherness." Now of course otherness does exist eternally within the divine nature. But creation is the beginning of something new: a non-divine otherness, a creaturely otherness. Creatures are the work of God, fully planned by God, dependent on him, and under his control. But they are not God, not extensions of God's nature.

The Aim of the Chapter
My aim in this chapter is to show from Scripture that the simultaneous existence of God's will for "all persons to be saved" (1 Tim. 2:4) and his will to elect unconditionally those who will actually be saved is not a sign of divine schizophrenia or exegetical confusion. A corresponding aim is to show that unconditional election therefore does not contradict biblical expressions of God's compassion for all people, and does not nullify sincere offers of salvation to everyone who is lost among all the peoples of the world.

#1 Hezekiah's Repentance and 15 Added Years

Isaiah 38:1-5

In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, "Thus says the LORD, 'Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.'" 2 Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, 3 and said, "Remember now, O LORD, I beseech You, how I have walked before You in truth and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in Your sight." And Hezekiah wept bitterly. 4 Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah, saying, 5 "Go and say to Hezekiah, 'Thus says the LORD, the God of your father David, I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.'"

"Determinism, Chance and Freedom," for IVP Dictionary of Apologetics.

Determinists believe that every event (or every event in a certain category) has a cause that makes it happen exactly as it happens. Among the varieties of determinism are the views of (1) Plato, who held that one's ethical choices are determined by his view of what is good, (2) B. F. Skinner, who believed that stimuli, dispositions and motives govern all human behavior. (3) Democritus, Hobbes, Spinoza, and many others, who have held that every event in the universe is determined by a physical cause. Of special interest to us are (4) theological determinists, who hold that all events occur exactly as God has foreordained them. These would include Calvin and others in his tradition. The classic exposition of theological determinism is Jonathan Edwards' Freedom of the Will. Note that it is possible to be a determinist in sense (4) without being a determinist in sense (3). That seems to be the position of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which says in 3.1 that "God did... ordain whatsoever comes to pass," but also says in 9.1 that man's will "is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil" (compare 5.2).

In his book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Chicago: InterVarsity Press, 1961) J. I. Packer argues that the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man is an antinomy. He defines "antinomy" as "an appearance of contradiction between conclusions which seem equally logical, reasonable or necessary" (p. 18). It "is neither dispensable nor comprehensible...It is unavoidable and insoluble. We do not invent it, and we cannot explain it" (p. 21). God "orders and controls all things, human actions among them"...yet "He holds every man responsible for the choices he makes and the courses of action he pursues" (p. 22). "To our finite minds this is inexplicable" (p. 23).

If you are reading this article it is most likely for one of a few reasons. First, like me you are struck by the shear numbers that have died as the result of last months (December, 2004) disaster in the Indian Ocean, and secondly you are searching for answers as to why this happened, and what kind of God do we believe in? Then I believe there is a third potential for reading this post; you are a skeptic looking for canon fodder to lash out in righteous indignation against all the "morons" that could conceive of a god that would allow this to happen. Well I write to all of the above, and am fully aware that no matter what I write, the skeptic will not accept it (nor do I expect them to), and this post, as you will see, is clearly not an attempt to make soft sell apologies for God, but an attempt to bring the light of truth from God's word on such a horrible subject.

Sooner or later, every believer in the sovereignty of God's grace comes face-to-face with a two-edged theological problem that has great practical implications. One edge is this: "If God is really sovereign, then why pray?" In other words, why should we pray if God has already predestined whatever will come to pass? Will He not do whatever He pleases anyway without consulting us? The second edge is this: "If we are commanded to pray, how can it be said that God is sovereign and has foreordained everything that will happen?" How do we reconcile divine sovereignty and human responsibility in this thorny dilemma? And how do we pray with real feeling and passion with a clear view of God's sovereignty?

My theme is "The Grace of God," and to deal with it I am going to focus on a very short story. It is a moving one, but I do not intend to leave you on an emotional high. That would be bad for you and for me too. To avoid that I want to finish with some applications that will bring us back down to earth.