Three Streams

In 2004 I transferred to the Scottish Baptist College having studied Youthwork and applied theology at ICC. The Youthwork course had frustrated me no end theologically, at that time I thought my struggle in entering an evangelical theological college would have been over issues such as The Holy Spirit, I had no idea the battle lines would have been over the authority of scripture and the doctrines of the faith.

I rememember debating with one of my freinds on the course over the lack of biblical content, the down playing of sin, salvation and heaven and hell. During this discussion he blurted out ‘Why arent you a Calvinist?’ The question confused me, ‘well for a start, they are wrong’, was my reply, ‘but, why do you ask?’. ‘People like you are normally Calvinists’ was his reply and at that the conversation went elsewhere.

Looking back, I can see that that question was much more profound than I ever realised. I now understand Calvinism (or more accurately the reformed faith) as the logical conclusion or outworking of my core Christian experience and convictions. I always had a commitment to radical depravity and I always new that sinners prayers were futile unless the Holy Spirit had created the miracle of regeneration.

One night I picked up a book By John Metcalfe called Justification By Faith, in it I was challenged by his interpretation of Romans Nine. I have to be honest Romans Nine had been a passage of Scripture which I had been ignoring for a long time in the secret hope that it would go away! This led me to one of the only commentaries I had on Romans Nine, given to me by a freind, it was by Martin Lloyd Jones (God sure has a sense of humour!). Of course Lloyd Jones only reinforced Metcalfes position, basicly that Salvation was of the Lord and not of man. This disturbed me because I had always emphasised the cooparation of the human will in salvation.

As I entered the college I reralised two things, the lectureres were not reformed in their thinking but many of my fellow students were. I spent lunchtimes and break times debating with them and enjoying the banter. However I turned to the website of John Piper, I cant remember why, but I thought I’d see what he was saying about the whole thing. An article that he wrote seemed to resinate with my own experience.

But thanks be to God’s mercy and patience, at the end of the semester I wrote in my blue book for the final exam, “Romans 9 is like a tiger going about devouring free-willers like me.” That was the end of my love affair with human autonomy and the ultimate self-determination of my will. My worldview simply could not stand against the scriptures, especially Romans 9. And it was the beginning of a lifelong passion to see and savor the supremacy of God in absolutely everything.

WOW! This article really challenged me, I also found myself checking out what Spurgeon had to say on the matter. I had a secret affection for Spurgeons writings ever since I got saved and I knew he was a Calvinist, so I thought I’d look into his writings on the subject. He wrote a fantastic article called A Defense of Calvinism

“The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached, is the truth that I must preach to-day, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox’s gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again.”—C. H. Spurgeon”

Well he wasnt exactly tip toeing around the bush with his views! My reading at this time began to coincide with two other things, they were as follows.

1. The realisation that I needed to become more expository in my preaching inorder to be nore faithful to scripture.
2. My increasing disatisfaction at the quality of contemporary church’s theology and spirituality.

While I found guys like Macarthur and a few others to be true I couldnt help notice their inconsistancy when it came to an exegesis of Acts of the Apostles and the 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. It was sat this point one of my freinds pointed me in the direction of Sam Storms. I would say Sam is the leading Charismatic Calvinist in our day. He is vineyard in his pneumatology and and Reformed in his Soteriology and His stuff is some of the best that I have read.