The Book of Romans: A Study in Justification and Sanctification

By Douglas R. Shearer

The resurgence of Five Point Calvinism has aroused my concern along several lines of thought - each of which is related to the other:First, we have the horrifying portrait it sketches of God: a deity who, as reformed theologian James Montgomery Boice reluctantly acknowledges, assigns human destinies with an apparent indifference that calls into question his compassion and love. It's a portrait that Calvinists, try as they may, can't soften - not at least on an intellectual level. And, indeed, if that were the portrait an accurate exegesis of the New Testament sketched, then that's the portrait we'd be stuck with - regardless of how repulsive it might seem. Simply put, however, it's not a portrait an accurate exegesis sketches out.Second, Five Point Calvinism inevitably denigrates the Cross. For Calvinists, it's election and reprobation that most vividly display God's mercy and his wrath, with the second a necessary foil against which the first is cast into bold relief. But that runs completely contrary to the whole corpus of the New Testament - which, in no uncertain terms, teaches that it's the Cross, a single event occurring at a single point in time, that most vividly reveals God's mercy and his wrath: his mercy poured out on mankind, and his wrath poured out on Christ. Third, Five Point Calvinism assigns both mercy and faith only bit roles in the drama of salvation. The featured role is reserved exclusively for God's sovereignty; mercy and faith are little more than corollaries of God's sovereignty and can boast no independent reality of their own. In light of the importance Paul gives both mercy and faith in the Book of Romans, that's an awfully hard pill to swallow. Fourth, Five Point Calvinism makes evangelism superfluous - at least from an intellectual standpoint if not from an ethical one. For Calvinists, the drama of personal salvation is a fiction - because the outcome has already been determined. Yes, many Five Point Calvinists make a real effort to underscore the need for evangelism, but not because it will make any genuine difference in the lives of those they're evangelizing, but only because it's an all too obvious moral imperative woven into the fabric of the New Testament. That, however, begs the question, "Why would God send the church off on a wild-goose chase to evangelize the already chosen and the irrevocably damned?" To say the least it seems a bit odd, and strongly suggests on its very face that Calvinists have "got it wrong."Finally, Five Point Calvinists, with but a few exceptions, have never been on "friendly" terms with premillennialism. They have historically aligned themselves with either amillennialism or postmillennialism - eschatologies that lend little if any legitimacy to perhaps the two most miraculous events since the Day of Pentecost: the rebirth of the state of Israel in 1948 and the capture of Jerusalem in 1967.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1514827417
• ISBN13: 9781514827413
• Release Date: November 2015
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"