It is messy. Processing the way a person gets saved provides challenges no matter which way you slice. Who is really in charge? Are we just robots? Does God really love us? Is God fair? Do we assume too much about ourselves?

I was not raised under reformed teaching. I do not even call myself a calvinist, though I do subscribe to the Doctrines of Grace that reformed pastors have taught for centuries. I have several friends, some in Sojourn, that are processing reformed theology. I encourage them to take their time and not feel pressured. Study scripture. Clarify the difference between their personal theology and reason. Do not be afraid of the tension. Embrace it. Shoot for a high view of God’s sovereignty and a proper vantage point of the human condition.

If you’re intimidated by the postmodern challenges to the Church, yet you don’t want to abdicate responsibility for reaching 21st century cultures, then perhaps this conference is for you … Westminster Seminary in California is hosting a missional and reformed conference in mid-Jan.

Michael Patton has an interesting blog on the day he bcame a Calvinist. As for me, it was more of a slow metamorphsis lasting several years as I read through the whole of Scripture several times.

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Check out the differing views of Open Theism and the Classic Reformed Understanding on the Minn. Bridge Collapse. (Boyd is probably the best know contemporary proponent of Open Theism.)

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Southern Baptists who don’t understand that the SBC is classified theologically as a reformed tradition need to check out some SBC historic documents. Maybe you need to get back to your roots.

IVP is getting ready to publish the Reformation Commentary on Scripture. “The Reformation Commentary on Scripture (RCS) will be a 28-volume work that presents comments by Protestant Reformation figures on the entirety of the Bible, chapter by chapter.” The first of 28 volumes will begin publication in 2009. Two to three volumes will be produced each year until the series is complete.

Michael Patton does a superb job of defining faith from the Reformed perspective. In our contemporary culture “faith has been redefined in the Church to the point that it is in danger of relegating Christianity to irrelevancy, having equal pluralistic status with all the other major belief systems in the world.”