The Evangelical Calvinist
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Hello my name is Bobby Grow, and I author this blog, The Evangelical Calvinist. Find new and emerging voices join senior Reformed scholars in presenting a coherent and impassioned articulation of Calvinism for today's world. Evangelical Calvinism represents a mood within current Reformed theology. The various contributors are in different ways articulating that mood, of which their very..
The Evangelical Calvinist
1d ago
The biblical languages often come with a perception of objectivity, like math or something. But the biblical languages are, indeed, languages. Language is fluid, and highly contextual. Learning the biblical languages can be very helpful for studying the Bible; but they aren’t definitive in regard to establishing this or that theological doctrine as true or false, per se. The more significant languages to learn are the theological languages; indeed, what could be called a theological ontology. This is not separate from biblical study; indeed, it establishes it, one way or the other, in a supra ..read more
The Evangelical Calvinist
1d ago
Charles Partee in his book Calvin and Classical Philosophy, by way of introduction, offers a nice treatment on the entailments of a mediaeval Christian Humanism versus a theological Scholasticism, as both of those were present in the early formation of the Protestant Reformation; with, of course, particular reference to John Calvin. I am going to share a long passage from Partee because it is rather pertinent to the way I see myself operating; as far as both mood and method goes. I will provide the passage, and then offer up some closing thoughts (the usual).
In the sixteenth century, however ..read more
The Evangelical Calvinist
2d ago
Quae Genus at Oxford, from “The History of Johnny Quae Genus, The Little Foundling of the Late Doctor Syntax”, November 1, 1821. Artist Thomas Rowlandson. (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)
In order to be an accredited school in America in the 21st century, per the US Department of Education, both the recognized accrediting agencies, and the schools accredited by those agencies must submit to and integrate DEI statutes and protocols into their procedures as institutions. Without such submission said schools (and their accreditors) are not recognized by the US Department ..read more
The Evangelical Calvinist
3d ago
Just to reiterate, once again, the way scholastic theology, particularly with reference to Thomas Aquinas directly, and the scholastic trad after Thomas (whether Catholic or Protestant) indirectly, affects the way contemporary orthodox theologians do theology, let me share a passage from David Kelsey as he sketches the entailments of scholastic methodology vis-à-vis the ‘revelation’ found in Holy Scripture. In this instance it is with reference to the way that Aristotelian metaphysics are deployed in an effort to explicate the loci deposited in Holy Scripture. What is of import for our purpose ..read more
The Evangelical Calvinist
1w ago
An abstract notion of saving faith, based on an abstract, or even undefined doctrine of election, always must attempt to make itself concrete. It must seek a way to fill in the gap created by a notion of faith wherein the believer believes out of an idea of faith that is seemingly inherent to them, or individually gifted to THEM.
The antidote to this abstract notion of faith is to come to understand that people believe or trust out of Christ’s vicarious faith for us. It is by His poverty for us that we have become rich; that we can become rich; by saying Yes and Amen in echo of his Yes and Ame ..read more
The Evangelical Calvinist
1w ago
Okay, seriously, my final word on this. The drama has almost spun out of control, seemingly, at this point; but it hasn’t really. The ThD degree I was awarded, which had been tied into what came to be a fraudulent university, has been re-awarded to me. Indeed, the seminary it had been awarded through was always a school called International Faith Theological Seminary in Nairobi, Kenya. It is the school that Dr. Fred Maina Macharia is, and has been president of for years. It is also one of the seminaries that makes up the Concordia Academic Theology Consortium, Intl. of the General Lutheran Ch ..read more
The Evangelical Calvinist
1w ago
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. –Judges 21:25
The human heart has never changed. Ironically, in our secular times humanity, in the main, has come to believe that we have “progressed” beyond our primitive forebears. Secular humanity of the 21st century generally maintains that it has moved beyond the religious platitudes and superstitions of the pre-critical past, and moved onto greener and more enlightened pastures. But the secular age, in fact, is really just a mythology that needs to be demythologized by the lights of sound and theolog ..read more
The Evangelical Calvinist
1w ago
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in-generate in their inner and eternal being. Some want to think in terms of an origin of relation, and thus call the Father in-generate and the Son and Holy Spirit, following, generate. Here we get the notion of “eternal generation,” with the Father as the aitea or source of the Godhead. I affirm eternal generation, but only in a liminal way. That Father isn’t anymore the Father than the Son is the Son in relationship to the Father and vice-versa. This is a necessary and eternal relationship that resists, ultimately, the idea of generation and even in-gen ..read more
The Evangelical Calvinist
2w ago
The Father is not God by Himself, then the Son and the Holy Spirit on the side. This is a common mistake; a view that Christians, often, subconsciously, make. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are One in Three / Three in One; the three persons in interpenetrative subject-in-being relationship constitute what is called the Divine Monarxia (Godhead). To think the Father as the top God, and the Son and Spirit, as the under Gods is to think in terms of what is called subordinationism and or also tri-theism (a type of “Christian polytheistic” false-doctrine). These are historically considere ..read more
The Evangelical Calvinist
2w ago
Matthew Barrett, Craig Carter, and many others are attempting to renew the church through retrieving their reading of the Protestant Reformation. All they are really doing is retrieving Roman Catholic neo-Thomism, and the attending medieval categories therein, as the balm of Gilead they believe such retrieval will accomplish for the failing evangelical church. And yet this is the irony: they are simply promoting a substance metaphysics, and the decretal God therefrom, which the OG reformers were intent on dismantling in the name of Christ and revelation. TF Torrance underscores these matters ..read more