Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 12054 Few subjects provoke as much tension among Christians as family planning and reproductive choices. The silence of many churches on this topic has left believers to navigate deeply personal decisions with little biblical guidance, often absorbing secular assumptions without realising it. The question is not whether Scripture speaks to these matters, but whether…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 13005 The Five Points of Calvinism, commonly known by the acronym TULIP, are the theological positions defined at the Synod of Dort (1618-1619) in response to the Arminian Remonstrance. They represent the Calvinist system’s core claims about human nature, God’s election, the atonement, grace, and perseverance. Understanding what each point claims, and where it…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 06075 “Total depravity” is a term that has generated enormous confusion, largely because the word “total” sounds as if it means human beings are incapable of any good at all. The biblical truth the phrase is trying to express is both more precise and more important than that caricature suggests – and it is…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 7040 “Prevenient grace” is a term drawn primarily from Wesleyan and Arminian theology, and it addresses a question that no serious theology of salvation can sidestep: given that the fall has seriously affected human nature, how is it possible for any person to respond to the gospel at all? Understanding what the doctrine claims,…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07036 The debate between Calvinism and Arminianism is one of the most enduring in Protestant theology, and it touches on questions that cannot be avoided by anyone who takes Scripture seriously: Is salvation ultimately God’s choice or the human’s? Does God’s rule over all things override human freedom, or do they coexist? Can a…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07038 Irresistible grace — sometimes called effectual grace or efficacious grace — is the fourth point of the Calvinist TULIP system. It is the doctrine that God’s saving work in the elect cannot fail and cannot be resisted: when God determines to bring a person to salvation, He works in them in such a…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07034 Predestination is a word that makes many people uncomfortable, whether because it suggests a rigid determinism that leaves no room for human freedom, or because popular presentations of it have been unnecessarily harsh. But the discomfort is not a good reason to avoid a concept that appears repeatedly in the pages of Scripture….
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07035 The doctrine of effectual calling is one of the five points of Calvinist soteriology, and whilst the terminology is distinctively Reformed, the underlying question it addresses is genuinely biblical: how does a person come to respond to the gospel? Why do some hear the same message and believe whilst others hear it and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07033 Election is one of the most debated doctrines in Christian theology, and the stakes are genuinely high — because the way election is understood directly shapes how a person thinks about God’s character, human freedom, the gospel offer, and the basis of assurance. The word itself simply means choosing or selecting, and no…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07108 Arminianism is the theological tradition named after Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), a Dutch Reformed theologian who challenged certain aspects of the Calvinist system from within the Reformed tradition itself. It is often presented as the opposite of Calvinism, but this oversimplifies both traditions. Understanding what Arminius actually taught, where his followers developed his ideas,…