Over dessert, you should also mention that God and deity are not really distinct, as the simple God is not composed of essence and subject.

“God's love is neither aroused nor conditioned by his people's goodness or conduct. Through all things and despite all things, this love goes out to meet them, not only to purify them but also to win them back.” - Emmanuel Durand

Make this the Thanksgiving you finally tell your family that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not separate things that add being to God’s simple divine essence.

For a briefer summary of many of these issues, see this post on @Heidelblog01.

Thankful for the brothers of @GraceRefNet and their courage to clarify and stand firm against teachings that depart from the orthodox and fundamental doctrines of God and Christ. In our latitudinarian and tribalistic age, this is a reason to give thanks.

Too many preachers handle Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels as if Jesus Himself didn’t believe in the very vicarious work for which He had come. Brothers, the Gospels are about the gospel.

NB, God is a gospel issue.

7/ Sanlon is right about separating Calvinism & divine simplicity: “While the Calvinist will affirm more fully God's sovereignty, where this is unsupported by [divine] simplicity it will be a brittle doctrinal claim, unable to maintain its consistency under close examination.”

6/ “neither was he less happy, or content, in that eternal duration before the existence of any creature… only free and unexcited goodness moved him to create all things, that he might impart being and happiness to the creature, not enrich his own.” - William Bates

5/ “As there was no matter, so no motive to induce God to make the world, but what arose from his goodness: for he is an all-sufficient being, perfectly blessed in himself. His majesty is not increased by the adoration of angels, nor his greatness by the obedience of nature;

4/ “All of our giving, praising, and serving add nothing to Him. His essential glory admits no increase or decrease.” - George Swinnock

3/ “God has given to everyone all that they possess, but no one has ever given anything to Him. When we give Him our love, awe, and trust, we actually give Him nothing. We can give nothing to Him because we owe everything to Him.

2/ “We must believe, then, that God has no need… even of man’s righteousness, and that whatever right worship is paid to God profits not Him, but man. For no man would say he did a benefit to a fountain by drinking, or to the light by seeing.” - Augustine (City of God, X.5)

This is a good example of how “Calvinism” is distorted by separating it from confessional theism. 🧵 To separate God’s love from His glory is to misunderstand God. His aseity and simplicity assure us that God’s love is genuine and free - He never gives to gain.

Everything NT Wright has to say he puts in the form "you've got this wrong, everyone's missed it, here's an overlooked thing, everything's backwards until this book I wrote." The cumulative effect is that he's become the least surprising, most predictable NT scholar imaginable.

3/ “If learning and devotion are as antagonistic as that, then the intellectual life is in itself accursed and there can be no question of a religious life for a student, even of theology.” - B.B. Warfield

2/“Why should you turn from God when you turn to your books, or feel that you must from your books in order to turn to God?

Warfield on devotion and doctrine🧵 “Sometimes we hear it said that ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. 'What!' is the appropriate response, 'than ten hours over your books, on your knees?’

“Perhaps this is part of the explanation for so much resistance to the classical doctrine of God: it takes too much effort to understand the teachings. Far easier to caricature it as unrelational and unloving.” - Peter Sanlon

"... we risk the danger of inverting the very message of Jesus' teaching here. We risk making this message a Christian species of the very Pharisaical approach that Jesus was warning against. And it is a truly tragic irony that where preachers most often miss the Gospel is in the