Mark Horne

Following up on this post.
According to “the judgment of charity” God had rescued the Israelites from Egypt and was going to take them to the promised Land because he loved them and loved the patriarchs.
In the Bible, rejecting “the judgment of charity” and accusing God of taking them from Egypt in order to kill them [...]

Sure it is true.  It is true in the same way it is true that God brought some people out of Egypt planning to kill them in the wilderness.
The people who doubted God’s faithfulness and disbelieved his good will toward them died in the wilderness.
So who gets baptized but is not finally saved?
Does baptism mean [...]

As someone who has dwelt long in the land of experiential pietism, to speak of “the heart” is code for the inner part of a person’s nature that no one can affect except God himself.  God gives a good heart allow an evil heart and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
But for the [...]

I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed [...]

And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also. But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ should suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Repent therefore and return, that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of [...]

A CREATION CONVERSATION
Eve: Adam, your face….
Adam: Huh? I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.
Eve: Lost in thought?
Adam: That’s a good metaphor.
Eve: Thank you. I wish I had one to describe your face.
Adam: Can’t you make a comparison?
Eve: Do you remember that pond we found and how still it was until you threw that rock into [...]

Jonathan Edwards was a famous preacher, pastor and writer during colonial times. He is still revered today by Reformed thinkers–by those who share with him a Calvinistic heritage in the Christian faith. Recently a historical scholar dealt with how Edwards would address “seekers.” You see, supposedly there are unregenerate people who are seeking God in [...]

One small thing I’d add (and I know Trevin wouldn’t disagree). Using the language of Scripture doesn’t make something biblical, and not using the language of Scripture doesn’t make something unbiblical. The most important thing is that we reflect the meaning (logic and intention) of Scripture. But it should certainly make us pause when we [...]

Did John Calvin believe in “Limited Atonement” – the L in the famous TULIP acronym, which teaches that Christ did not die as an atonement for the sins of the whole world, but only for the elect?
I don’t know.
There are contradictory signals in Calvin’s writings. At times, it seems very clear that he did not [...]

PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
I have no time for a comprehensive survey of every historical Reformed formulation on the extent of the Atonement, but it might be helpful to point out a few to show that there is more than one option. Let’s start with Calvin: In Book III of his Institutes, “The Way in Which [...]

PART ONE
PART TWO
Murray writes,
If some for whom atonement was made and redemption wrought perish eternally, then the atonement is not itself efficacious. It is this alternative that the proponents of universal atonement must face. They have a “limited” atonement and limited in respect of that which impinges upon its essential character. We shall have none [...]

[CONTINUED FROM HERE]
Murray asks, “Did Christ come to make the salvation of men possible, to remove obstacles that stood in the way of salvation, and merely to make provision for salvation? Or did he come to save his people?”[Redemption: Accomplished & Applied, p. 63] Now this question has plenty of teeth in it when used [...]

What happens when a Reformed Protestant sees an argument for Roman Catholic prayers to the dead? Or Roman Catholic suffering in Purgatory to make up for sins to merit Heaven? Or Eastern Orthodox arguments for icons? Or the rite of chrismation?
Pretty much, mocking ridicule, not just because the conclusion is wrong but [...]

[Despite the length of this post, I left out some thing I met to say.  I completed my thoughts about Gerstner's essay here.]
When the Westminster Confession writes “Of the Church” it defines it as both visible and invisible (chapter 25, first two paragraphs: invisible and visible respectively).
But when John Gerstner writes of the Church, he [...]

Murray insisted that the genuine offer was compatible, not only with the doctrine of reprobation (which it is), but also with the doctrine of limited atonement–”the doctrines of particular election, differentiating love, and limited atonement do not erect any fence around the offer of the Gospel” [“The Atonement & the Free Offer of the Gospel,” [...]

A major reason for the posts in this category is to remove imagined obstructions to Calvinists sharing the Gospel in true sincerity. A second major reason is to convince arminians that those imagined obstructions are indeed imaginary, and any imagined evidence from those called “Calvinists” is an accident, not some “essence of the system”–if [...]

Hypercalvinism is a commitment to only using the word “grace” for that which brings about eternal salvation.  Anything less than that must never be thought of or spoken of as gracious.
And that is exactly what we find argued.  The only grace worth mentioning is the “amazing” kind that leads infallibly for eternal life.
And like Hoeksema [...]

This argument has been going on in some way in all the posts in this category.  However, some posts are more directly involved than others.

A sermon I preached many years ago from Ephesians
The Genuine Offer of the Gospel
Hoeksema and Engelsma against the Genuine Offer of the Gospel.
Gary North against the Free Offer of the Gospel.
Grace, [...]

Gary North wants to make a decisive distinction between God’s “favor” and “favors”-only allowing the latter to the reprobate. Hoeksema maintains the same sort of division. In his self-interrogating catechism he writes:
9. Is it then, not also true, that in these things of this present life both the godly and ungodly receive tokens of God’s [...]

The texts Murray cites to prove that God sincerely desires the repentance of the reprobate are rather straightforward. Indeed, the issues are more or less settled by whether or not one acknowledges the reality of common grace. If God’s desires or pleasures can only be exhaustively identical to His decrees, then such statements as, “‘As [...]