Welcome to Sochiology 101. An article was released by the gospel coalition just recently,

listing the top 25 influences on what they call the gospel-centered movement. Now, sounds great,

but when you realize very quickly that the author here, Jared Wilson, is equating this quote-unquote gospel-centered movement with Calvinism,

then it becomes a little bit difficult to swallow for those of us who don't believe Calvinism is correct.

For example, and let me just show you here where he actually says this,

he's given shape to the still developing movement, sometimes called young, restless and

reformed, neo-reformed, gospel-centered, etc. And this is one of the things that Calvinists have

done really well. They've attached themselves to certain words like the word reformed, even though

there are those who are not Calvinistic, who are a part of the Reformation, as we've

talked about in other episodes, they have a tendency to grab certain labels like the gospel or

the doctrines of grace, as if we don't hold to or believe in doctrines of grace, and therefore

making their worldview seem like it's itself the gospel. Now, to their defense, this has been

done in the past. One of the most notable Baptist in the past is Charles Spurgeon, and he has a

quote that's very famous of saying Calvinism is the gospel and nothing else. But I think we should

take that in

context of also understanding that during that day, the issues surrounding Calvinism

in contradiction with the Armenianism of that day was a little bit different than what we are

seeing today. I can almost quote Charles Spurgeon as much in favor of Calvinistic doctrine as I can in opposition to things that you would hear from John Piper and others.

And so Spurgeon, though yes, Calvinistic leaning certainly, he also was not a very consistent form of Calvinist by any stretch of the imagination.

However, things like this, these kinds of quotes,

oftentimes can be more divisive for obvious reasons when you're equating a

systematic or a way of thinking that's very controversial and that most Christians haven't

...