Joshua Shields

Well, Calvinism had a good run. But It has now been formally condemned at the Council of Twitter. Flowers, Ellis, and D’Souza were all present for the official proceedings. After deep exegetical analysis and study that would make the Reformed scholastics blush, they joined together and delivered their solemn condemnation with such eloquence and theological depth that I suppose even the Puritans couldn’t begin to compete. The anathemas included: “If God sovereign, man robot.” "Calvinist God big meanie.” “But muh autonomy.” “If God no give grace to all, He not fair" There were also some elaborate explanations of foreknowledge by D’Souza, where he demonstrated the profound theological principle: “God know thing, not mean he cause thing.” A severe blow indeed. Hopefully, with the help of those who have gone before us and through laborious study of the Scriptures, we can somehow weather this storm and formulate answers to these devastating objections of such laser-focused exegetical precision. After all, objections like these have surely never been raised in the entire history of the church. Perhaps, if we search hard enough, we may discover that someone, somewhere, has thought to answer them before.

The cliché, God hates the sin but love the sinner, is false on the face of it and should be abandoned. Fourteen times in the first fifty Psalms alone, we are told that God hates the sinner, His wrath is on the liar, and so forth. In the Bible, the wrath of God rests both on the sin (Romans 1:18ff) and on the sinner (John 3:36). —D.A. Carson