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Lesson 3 of 7

Why Are People Attracted to Calvinist Theology?

The Historic Faith The Historic Faith

Lesson Transcript

Question from Charles Hood is, listening to the messages in the course entitled " A Grace Worth Saving, " I was very surprised to hear that there is a resurgence in Calvinism today, including among many young people. I would be curious to hear Finny's thoughts regarding why today's young people would be attracted to Calvinistic theology. Yeah. You touched on that a little bit. I touched a little bit on that, yeah, for myself. And I will say that it is, this is a great question, actually.

This is probably the best opening question that we can have about why we're doing this and why we're talking about this. So in general, I would say that we have the confluence of a number of factors that are leading to this growth. So the first is you have this self-propagating system where a lot of the best speakers, when I say best, I mean most eloquent speakers, most gifted speakers, they're often Calvinists. And they're often training up young ministers and young people to follow in their footsteps.

And so the paradigm of that would be someone like a John Piper. And so you have this whole ecosystem of people that have developed around that. And then institutions then develop supporting that. And you get this positive feedback loop that is really a function of people following these very articulate, very diligent, and in many ways very impressive men that a lot of us would admire aspects, at least, of what they do. And they have been so strategic about publishing broadly.

And so many study Bibles, by far, most of the books that are published in the general evangelical conservative community is going to come from Calvinists. They dominate the seminaries. There's a very strategic focus on cities. So ministers like Tim Keller, who's in Manhattan, he has been championing that cause for many years and others have followed suit. And so they have seminaries, publishers, they have these large churches dominated with young people in urban, urban settings, and so the movement grows.

There's an additional factor which is so you have this incredible strength over here, and then you have over here a more watery, goopy form of Christianity that is very common in a lot of America. And this pop Christianity that is very much one where God is a self-esteem coach. It's this kind of therapeutic. Jesus is your boyfriend. Jesus is your boyfriend type Christianity is it's something that I think a lot of people know deep down is just not how Christianity is supposed to be.

And so when you have this contrast between this very sick, watered-down Christianity where there's just not a lot of substance to it. And then over here you have this well-oiled machine with very eloquent people who have a lot of books, a lot of tools at their disposal. It's a natural magnet to draw people into that. And so that basic factor is going on to this day. And I will say, and this is probably also a good thing to affirm there. As critical as I am of Calvinism, I'm very critical of it.

I do think it's a deeply twisted unbiblical system. I think we can also say that we admire the resourcefulness and the diligence of those who are on that side. They tend to be very intentional. They tend to be very studious. They study communication. There's a sense of boundedness too, where they know who they are and they understand And can articulate it. And they can articulate it. And of course, the acronyms and the various systems that they've put out are impressive, right?

And that sense of belonging, that sense of this is my tribe, I know who I'm with, is powerful, right? And we as human beings are attracted to institutions and systems where there's this sense of identity defining systems that help us. And so for all those reasons, I think we have a very formidable system in Calvinism that those of us who are not Calvinists have to contend with all the time. And my hope is through things like the historic faith that we're In Sattler College.

And certainly Sattler College Scroll Publishing, that we're developing an alternative which will hopefully provide a place for people to similarly be attracted to. Yeah.

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