Good points Aaron.
Jonathan, I just checked out your site. It is incredible … a treasure chest … exactly what EU needs!!! And I am not even sure I am an EU. Although earlier today told my pastor (after more than a year of study and dialogue with him, a pastor in our parent church, and other Calvinist and Arminian defenders of traditional hell) I “can’t believe it [meaning ECT] anymore”. (The truth is believing in ECT is slowly killing me.) We did not have time to talk more today. I will probably detour from my talks with the pastor at the parent church and go back to speaking with him. (See also Out In The Open .) Your site will be such a valuable resource.
I only spent about 20 minutes reviewing it but from what I can tell it is well organized, well written, easy to navigate, thorough, and respectful. It is also aesthetically attractive. I like how you consider both the Calvinist and Arminian perspectives and how the tension between them can be resolved by EU. I appreciate your focus on addressing the contradictions and absurdities that arise from each approach.
What is especially appealing to me is your references to Tim Keller and the “missional” mindset of many of today’s churches. Both figure prominently into the culture and rhetoric of our church and will certainly resonate with my pastor, though I know he will not appreciate your conclusions. In any case, it is interesting how the Keller/missional message so often feeds right into EU.
BTW Your open letter to Tim Keller (godslovewins.com/blog/?page_id=2) is great and really puts him “behind the 8 ball.” It would be great if he responded in some way.
Thank you. I’m a fan.
Wow, Jonathan!
You have a haunting eye for design. I LOVE your opening page and especially the poignant catch-phrase! Can’t wait to read it all.
Blessings, Cindy
Thank you everyone for the feedback regarding the website. It’s been a long but very invigorating project. You are basically the first eyes to judge it and I appreciate all the encouraging words! You are describing exactly what I had hoped to create. I did send it to Talbott and he called it “irenic”. (I had to look it up) : )
I have listened to quite a few Driscoll sermons and gone to conferences where he and Keller spoke together. Driscoll always introduced him as Dr. Timothy “Killer” Keller so he’s obviously the linchpin for most of the neo-Calvinists. So I feel that if Keller could be challenged then the other “dominoes” would at least teeter.
Interestingly I stumbled upon an online tutorial Driscoll provided for pastors coaching them through how/what to preach on Easter Sundays since there were likely to be more unbelievers in attendance. It was very detailed but ironically he never brought up eternal hell nor even alluded to it. It had been posted a few years ago and when I listened to the podcast of the Mars Hill Easter service this past year, right after Bell’s book had come out, I was wondering what he was going to say. The pressure was on and he did speak firmly but briefly about EH but it was soft by reformed standards and then he totally invalidated the seriousness of the subject by a joke he made shortly after about the Seattle weather being “like hell” (comic relief?). (There were 16,000 in attendance BTW.)
Also during the interview he did with “Nightline” when asked about his Calvinism, and predestination in particular, he evaded the question altogether and said, “Yes, I believe God saves people. I believe in Jesus and I believe in the Bible. I believe people are really going to hell…” That was his explanation of election. (Then Bell gets the heat for having trouble in some of his interviews.)
So yes, I do pray for these guys too. I believe we still need them (ideally minus the ECT view of course). For me and others they brought us to the very brink of UR. In fact I can listen to whole sermons and hear the full gospel of restoration because they often never mention EH and never qualify their statements. They are so close!
This is a great forum and I appreciate the warm welcome…
Grace and peace,
Jonathan
godslovewins.com
I want to respond to everyone’s comments but I am new and still learning the system (how to highlight quotes for one!)
Alex…I look forward to your website! …I am wondering how you are faring in the CRC as an EU (?)
Thank you Aaron for the response to Driscoll’s points…more clarity.
And firedup, I sympathize with your sentiments about ECT slowly killing you. That has been true for so many of us. It wears you down and wears you out, that is if you let yourself think about and process it.
There are a few ways. e.g. in a reply if you press the “Quote” it inserts {quote}{/quote} (except with square brackets), which is just a blank quote. However, if you changed it to {quote=“Alex”}Hello{/quote} when you post it, it would appear as
(You can put whatever you like between the " ", it just adds “wrote:”)
From what people are saying about your’s, I might not need to make it after all 
Surprisingly well! Fortunately my minister is excellent; Gospel focused, mature, loving and willing to read anything I send him. Not only that, the elders who know my position (This is what I gave them when I first attended a few months ago) and are ok with it, so long as I don’t hassle young Christians at church, which I had no intention of doing!
Hi Alex,
I read your statement of faith and all the constructive criticism to help hone it. That was great. That was helpful for me. I know I will be tweaking and changing things on the site to continually clear up potential misunderstandings. If you profess EU you are under the microscope that’s for sure. One stray word and they are all over you…!
That’s amazing that your leadership is dialoguing with you and allowing you to remain in the church. We told our former A29 pastor and he acted very open to discuss it and was initially very supportive to our family but eventually there was obvious strain and caution around us and we felt we ought to leave. We realized he couldn’t be too sympathetic or, as he said, he would lose his job!
They did a sermon a few years ago on the topic of social justice that absolutely knocked me over. The parallels between temporal justice and God’s ultimate justice that should have been drawn were absolutely staggering. I just thought to myself, it’s just a matter of time before the tension of the conundrum gets too much and they look for a solution. I thought the same thing when Rob Bell wrote in his first book how “everyone in hell was forgiven”.
We now attend a missional minded non-denominational church that is more Arminian. But after being in Reformed churches for so long we are drinking in hearing so often how Jesus loves the whole world and died for every single person that ever lived! And then the unqualified statements they make constantly about the restoration of all creation etc., Loving it!
PS Thanks for the tutorial Alex. I tried what I thought you were saying but I didn’t get it. I will work on it later : )
To clarify a possible bit of confusion regarding Alex’s instruction about the “quote” button: there are two quote buttons!
On is at the top-left of the composition window when working on a comment (or an originating post) for a thread (or for a private forum mail), just to the right of the Bold Italic and Underline buttons. Clicking that Quote button inserts a {quote}{/quote} bracket set into the window at the cursor location (except with square brackets of course for BBCode formatting). Alternately, if a portion of text has been selected already, clicking the button drops the bracket code set around the portion. So if I selected “a portion of text” in the previous sentence, and clicked the Quote button, the result would look like this: {quote}a portion of text{/quote}, and the system would print that on screen inside a quote block.
Adding an equal sign and then simple double-quote marks enclosing a description =“like this”, inside the original quote bracket, after the word ‘quote’, will tell the system to print “like this, wrote” as an introduction to the block quote.
So using the prior example {quote=“like this”}a portion of text{/quote} (except with square brackets instead [which look like these]), will result in:
All that can be done manually, too (as I just did when writing this, since I had to substitute something other than [these square brackets].)
Be aware that composing a message somewhere else (which is otherwise recommended in order to keep from losing it due to software or hardware glitches!), may result in the quote marks being specially formatted to be open and close quote marks. The system software doesn’t recognize those at all, and will think you intend for everything to be printed out.
The other Quote button can be found at the top right of any thread comment or original post. Clicking on that button will open a reply composition window, with the whole previous post already included within a valid set of quote format brackets. In effect you’ll be quoting the whole post in followup–which is actually rather impolite to do on the internet (unless you’re sourcing from another page) as it adds completely redundant length. But you can erase what you aren’t directly referring to, and it’s a handy way to copy-paste a valid opening-quote-command to other places you want to refer to (although you’ll have to manually type a closing {/quote} command when you’re ready to stop quoting.) I use this process quite frequently.
…um, there! All qualified, with no confusion! 
Philip, ( — or is it Jonathan? I’m confused …)
On quoting, in addition to what others have said … when you are writing a reply, there is a “Topic Review” section below the reply box. You can scroll through the whole thread there, and each post has a Quote button in the upper right corner. If you click that button, the entire post will be quoted in your reply box. OR you can highlight the portion you want to quote and then click the button and only that part will be quoted in your reply.
HTH,
Sonia
Thanks everyone for the help. Wow, the pressure’s on…now I had better get it right!
Sorry about the confusion. “Phillip MacDonald” is a pen name for the site as most of us involved with the site are remaining anonymous at this time. We have family members that we are protecting from the undue reactions and accusations brought about by confessing this view. We are waiting on the Lord for the right timing.
I will eliminate further confusion by using “Phillip” from now on.
I’m glad it was helpful, it was surprisingly difficult. Although I reckon I’ll need to refine it some down the track as I learn more.
I was surprised too, but enjoying the blessing while it lasts 
Sorry to hear that, that kind of thing sadly happens too often. We must keep praying God opens people’s eyes and that people would be brave enough to even loose their jobs for the sake of God’s name, the truth and the removal of the stumbling block of ECT.
I know that feeling, I’ve often heard sermons and have been astonished that the penny hasn’t dropped 
I bet, that sounds great.
Hi Phillip, Just adding my appreciation for your godslovewins site. Just been browsing through and I think you have done an awesome job. I’ll certainly be recommending people take a look and engage with your questions and study materials. Thanks! Drew
Looks great so far. Funny that you didn’t mention one Jason Gray song. 
God Bless you all. I am in your boat. Undercover lover of all.
Thanks Drew for the encouragement. Much appreciated as we are just embarking out on the territory and wondering what the reception will be (!) Please feel free to push on anything that needs to be challenged or needs clarification. We need to “midrash” over the material more broadly as we are only an isolated group. What an awesome thing to have this forum where this Jewish practice can take place, globally!!
Nimblewill wrote:
I am familiar with only one Jason Gray song and that is his latest, More Like Falling in Love. I had planned to link it to my page on the gospel but just haven’t done it yet. When I loaded it on my ipod I noticed that the Album is entitled, "Everything Sad is Going to Come Untrue". I was quite excited to find this out! So yes, I understand why you are wondering why he isn’t featured on the site given our quote on the home page of the site. I listened to the song and I probably need to give it more time but I didn’t think the song really delivered the message of the quote adequately. I thought of sending Jason the link to the site just because I think we should hold him accountable for his words and ask him, do you believe that or not? (who knows what might come of it?)
I love your tag, “Undercover lover of all”. That’s what we are! Except I am keeping it no secret with the world…it’s such a joy to be able to tell them the news that God loves them and I therefore love them too! (now that I am “allowed” to love them).
Grace and peace,
“Phillip”
After reading I realized that you probably weren’t talking about the Jason Gray song. Sorry. Give him a listen. He has written some stuff about Rob Bell at rabbitroom.com I get lots of encouragement from the songs of these guys. Give Andrew Peterson’s “All shall be well” song a listen. I look forward to more exploring at your site.
Yes, the line, “Is everything sad going to come untrue?” is a line from LOTR. Keller has used it as a finale in some of his sermons including the one he did the Sunday after 9/11. It’s an incredible reality. Somehow we gravitate and cling to Tolkien’s lines more than the Bible’s… “I am making ALL things new”.
I will check out Jason Gray’s stuff further. And Andrew Peterson…I used to be a BIG fan and saw him in concert when he was opening for Fernando Ortega (long time ago!) I have lost track of him. I will definitely look up the song you mentioned. If you have any more, send them my way! I believe music is a big player in this revelation of God’s ultimate restoration. Our songs are running far ahead of our theology!
Phillip
Phillip,Wow, what a beautiful blog, with a powerful Gospel message! I just read your post “thoughts on free will” and your journey from Arminian, to Reformed theology, and the wrestling with the implications really mirrors mine. The need for rest from the heavy responsibility of my own salvation and that of everyone I knew, was too much to bear (so much for the yolk is easy and burden is light stuff) That I ran to Calvinism when I found out about it!! Unfortunately, that , in the end was a bigger trap for me!
Keep up the good work!
MT
Nice! God" loves" them by sustaining them in their sin and deception, so they can store up more and more wrath so their eternal torment can be so much worse! With love like that, who needs enemies! I will pass, thank you. I am so ashamed that I ever professed 5 pt calvinism !!!