I have pended this material concerning New Calvinism until I have time to further develop my thesis I realized that I have failed to describe Calvin's core belief in Union with Christ which does a great disservice to what he believed and wrote. And without a core understanding of Calvin's orthodox understanding of such matters, we cannot put any modern iterations of Sonship Theology (and any errors to which it disposes modern adherents) into proper perspective.
My issues rest with the distortion of traditional beliefs and the errors that such beliefs produce - not with faithful understandings of Scripture.
Both Calvin's model and Luther's model (and Dispensationalism, for that matter) fall within the pale of Protestant orthodoxy. We are different individual Believers in Christ in nature and experience, and certain approaches to understanding the Bible appeal to each of us more strongly. My issues are not with the faithful application of those approaches to Scripture and the Christian life.
In upcoming posts, I hope to elucidate where New Calvinism (the Young, Restless, and Reformed or neoPuritains) get ti wrong, ultimately remerging justification and sanctification to defend their own freewillism. And this explanation is dependent on points of theology, consideration of history, and how contemporaries have attempted to solve theological problems that have arisen -- particularly in the US during the 20th Century. I cannot give that topic justice in a single blog post.
