Would Calvinism be improved if it dropped all this talk of ‘double election,’ the doctrine that God chose some from before all time for salvation and the rest for damnation? Rev. Alvin Hoksbergen, a retired minister in the Christian Reformed Church, proposes in The Banner that a major retooling of election-speak from Reformed pulpits is […]

Jason Stellman, at his provocative blog De Regnis Duobus (Concerning the Two Kingdoms) recently composed a fascinating reflection on Protestant confessionalism entitled “The Complexities of Confessionalism”. Stellman writes: The options, as I see them, are as follows: confessional denominations like the PCA [Presbyterian Church in America] ]can either (1) broaden our theological parameters to make […]

In his third book of the Institutes of the Christian Religion (chs. 21-24), Calvin articulates his developed doctrine of predestination and reprobation. In chapter 21 in particular, Calvin denies that God’s prescience (“foreknowledge”) is the cause of predestination.

Covenant or Federal Theology became formally articulated in the Calvinistic theological tradition, beginning in the 17th century. This was the era of “Reformed Scholasticism.” Beginning especially with Theodore Beza, Aristotelian methods of theological speculation began to take root in Calvinist circles (whether they were conscious of it or not). As a result, Calvinism in the […]