R. Scott Clark comments on episode 3 of Christianity Today’s podcast series on the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill: By any objective measure, Mark Driscoll was never Reformed. He was predestinarian, but he was never Reformed. I am sorry that Mike Cosper makes the assumption that all predestinarians are Reformed. That has never been true. With Augustine, Gottschalk, Aquinas and all the magisterial Protestant Reformers (e.g., Zwingli, Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, Calvin), the Reformed churches confess the mystery of predestination, but obviously Luther and Melanchthon were not Reformed. In the Modern period, people have assumed either that we invented the doctrine or that we alone hold it, and thus we have become uniquely identified with it, perhaps because we defended it, among other doctrines, at the Synod of Dort against the Remonstrants (1618–19). Thomas Aquinas (c.1224–74) taught the doctrines of unconditional election and reprobation as stoutly and as clearly as any Reformed theologian, but for obvious historical and theological reasons, Thomas was not Reformed. Read the full comment on The Heidelblog.
2021-07-11