Tried With Fire

The New Calvinism Considered: A Personal and Pastoral Assessment by Jeremy Walker, Evangelical Press, 2013, 128 pages. The New Calvinism Considered is Pastor Jeremy Walker's assessment of the recent trend toward reformed theology largely within American Evangelicalism. This short book gives an overview of the movement, commendations, concerns, and concluding thoughts. This is quite a task given the spectrum of people who would align themselves with New Calvinism (NC). Thus, Walker admits he is using a broad brush out of necessity. The author characterizes this movement by a return to the five points of Calvinism, God's sovereignty in salvation, and the influence of Jonathan Edwards via John Piper. The NC is shaped to a great degree by prominent pastors and theologians - Piper, D.A. Carson, and Tim Keller, organizations - The Gospel Coalition and Together 4 the Gospel, and bloggers - Justin Taylor and Tim Challies. There may be other key players as well, but names and ne...

The cult of celebrity in the modern West has infiltrated the church, so much so that we can seem to be presuming that the Lord is obliged to work or invariably will work when the right person or persons are present: get someone prominent to preach and people are bound to listen! But this is to forget, if not to ignore, that the Lord is not bound in this way... All too often there is mere capitulation at this point, a failure to ask what these men stand for, what they carry with them by way of endorsement or conviction (even if not openly stated in a particular environment) and - sometimes at least as importantly - what they will open the door to by way of association... [I]t is all too easy to suspend our own rational faculties when a word is perceived to have been spoke ex cathedra , wherever that seat of power may be. Christians in any [many?] circles readily go beyond the respect which ought to be legitimately afforded to proven men and become nothing more than children led a...