Part VI-E: The Witness of Historical Theology

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

An argument from Scripture does not need the church's great teachers to be true, but a position that no serious theologian has ever held deserves suspicion, and a position the tradition has repeatedly approached deserves a hearing. This section places the argument within historical theology, honestly, including the points at which the tradition stops short of it.

In this section

• Augustine: grace before faith, and a correction the tradition had to make
• Calvin: God is not bound to means
• The confessional watershed: Westminster 10.3 and the 1689 Baptist Confession 10.3
• Shedd, Hodge, and Warfield: the boundary already crossed
• Gill, Kuyper, and Bavinck: immediate regeneration as a dogmatic position
• Zwingli and the wider-hope minority