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Showing posts from January 21, 2018

Is Calvinistic Universalism the Best of All Possible Worlds?

By: Thomas F. Booher I had a wonderful discussion with a Christian who I would best describe (based just on one extended conversation) as an Anglo-Catholic in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), and a big fan of C.S. Lewis. He is a philosophy professor, and with him I probably had the most stimulating conversation about God and Christianity that I've ever had with a non-Calvinist.  In fact, he said the one thing he was pretty sure that he wasn't, was a Calvinist. A lot of other things were still on the table for him, but Calvinism probably wasn't (but we'll see). Yet in a real sense, this didn't bother me too much. It is akin to our admiration as Reformed believers for C.S. Lewis (who was also very much like an Anglo-Catholic) or G.K. Chesterton, both of whom explicitly rejected Calvinism as making God into something evil, not unlike my philosophy friend.  I'd like in a separate post to talk about justification by faith alo

The Passover and Household/Infant Baptism

By: Thomas F. Booher I was late in coming to embrace covenant theology and household/covenantal/infant baptism (I did so in Bible college, despite growing up in a PCA church), but one motif in Scripture that strongly persuades me of the position is the Passover in Exodus 12. Note Matthew Henry's words on the meaning of the paschal lamb and the application of the blood. "Now, without doubt, there was much of the gospel in this ordinance; it is often referred to in the New Testament, and, in it, to us is the gospel preached, and not to them only, who could not stedfastly look to the end of these things, Heb. 4:2 ; 2 Co. 3:13 .1. The paschal lamb was typical. Christ is our Passover, 1 Co. 5:7 . (1.) It was to be a lamb; and Christ is the Lamb of God (Jn. 1:29 ), often in the Revelation called the Lamb, meek and innocent as a lamb, dumb before the shearers, before the butchers..." "The sprinkling of the blood was typical. (1.) It was no