Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 7045 Scripture repeatedly and plainly states that Jesus died for all people, and yet it is equally plain that not everyone will be saved. For some, this seems like a genuine tension requiring a theological resolution. Understanding how the biblical picture holds together not only resolves the apparent difficulty but opens up the full…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07039 Limited atonement — also called particular redemption or definite atonement — is the third point of the Calvinist TULIP system and, arguably, the most contested. Even within Calvinist circles, this doctrine has generated significant debate, with many who accept the other four points declining to follow the argument here. The doctrine claims that…
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 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 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 07032 The phrase ordo salutis is Latin for “order of salvation,” and it refers to the logical sequence of the various elements involved in a person coming to salvation and continuing in the Christian life. It is a theological framework rather than a biblical phrase, but the question it addresses is thoroughly biblical: does…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04100 Salvation is the work of the triune God: the Father who planned it, the Son who accomplished it, and the Holy Spirit who applies it. The Spirit’s role in bringing everything the Father purposed and the Son secured into the actual experience of the individual is perhaps the most practically immediate dimension of…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04105 Before a person can receive the gospel, something must happen to them. The good news of forgiveness is only recognisable as good news to someone who knows they need it, and that recognition, the deep, personal awareness of sin before a holy God, does not arise naturally in human beings. It is the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 02014 The phrase “God hates the sin but loves the sinner” has become so familiar in Christian circles that most people assume it must be in the Bible somewhere. It is not. The reality the Bible presents is more complex, more demanding, and ultimately more searching than that popular summary allows. Getting this right…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 06057 The connection between sin and suffering is one of the oldest questions in Scripture. Job’s friends were convinced they knew the answer: suffering is punishment, so suffering on this scale must mean sin on this scale. They were spectacularly wrong, and the whole book of Job exists in part to demolish that simple…