Dr Paul Allen

Human character is clearly tainted by sin, but the debate is about the extent of that taint. The Roman Catholic Church holds the position that man’s character is not completely tainted, but that he retains a little island of righteousness. However, the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century affirmed that the sinful pollution and corruption of fallen man is complete, rendering us totally corrupt. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about just what the Reformers meant by that affirmation. The term that is often used for the human predicament in classical Reformed theology is total depravity.  People have a tendency to wince whenever we use that term because there’s very widespread confusion between the concept of total depravity and the concept of utter depravity.  Utter depravity would mean that man is as bad, as corrupt, as he possibly could be. I don’t think that there’s a human being in this world who is utterly corrupt, but that’s only by the grace of God and by th...

English: Natural disasters in Rio de Janeiro in April 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.” ROMANS 7:5 In our fallen, cursed world, disasters are commonplace. Fires, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters happen somewhere every day. Added to those natural disasters are the man–made ones, such as war, acts of terrorism, plane crashes, train wrecks, etc. But far greater than any of those disasters, and the one from which they all stem, was the entrance of sin into the human race. Sin renders fallen men spiritually dead, cuts them off from fellowship with God , and consigns them to eternal punishment in Hell . In today’s verse Paul introduces four words that describe man’s unregenerate state: flesh, sin, law, and death. Those four words are interconnected: the flesh produces sin, which...

Roman Catholic Church in Gerse (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Imagine a circle that represents the character of mankind . Now imagine that if someone sins, a spot—a moral blemish of sorts—appears in the circle, marring the character of man. If other sins occur, more blemishes appear in the circle. Well, if sins continue to multiply, eventually the entire circle will be filled with spots and blemishes. But have things reached that point? Human character is clearly tainted by sin, but the debate is about the extent of that taint. The Roman Catholic Church holds the position that man's character is not completely tainted, but that he retains a little island of righteousness. However, the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century affirmed that the sinful pollution and corruption of fallen man is complete, rendering us totally corrupt. There's no part of us that escapes the ravages of our sinful human nature There's a lot of misunderstanding about just what the Reforme...

One of Piper’s great strengths in representing and defending Calvinistic theology has been in not merely defending this doctrine, but in making it lead to wonder and to worship. “My experience is that clear knowledge of God from the Bible is the kindling that sustains the fires of affection for God. And probably the most crucial kind of knowledge is the knowledge of what God is like in salvation.” Of course this is what the five points of Calvinism are about—“not the power and sovereignty of God in general, but his power and sovereignty in the way he saves people,” which is exactly why these doctrines are commonly referred to as  the doctrines of grace . He insists that he does not begin here as a Calvinist who sets out to defend a system, but as a Christian who holds the Bible above any system of thought. As with many modern Calvinists, Piper does not love the TULIP acronym that has become synonymous with Calvinism. He steps away from the acronym and the stand...

Image via Wikipedia Because the carnal mind is enmity against God ; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be (Rom. 8:7). One of the most common objections to the doctrine of election is that it “violates man’s free will.” To answer this, we must look at man’s ability to choose and what is meant by free will. Once again we turn to the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689: “Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation, so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to commit himself, or to prepare himself thereunto” (chap. 9:3). Earlier this century Gresham Machen wrote, “A man’s choices are free in the sense that they are not just determined by external compulsion. But they are not free if by freedom is meant freedom from determination by the man’s own character.” People possess free wills in the sense that everyone acts ac...