Kevin DeYoung | Why Grace Is Worth Defining and Defending

As part of The Gospel Coalition’s 2019 National Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, Kevin DeYoung led a breakout session entitled “Grace Defined and Defended: The Continuing Relevance of the Canons of Dort 400 Years Later.” In this session, DeYoung argued for theological precision-the wise measurement of the words used to describe God’s interaction with his people-via a close look at why and how the Canons of Dort came to be. When it comes to the doctrines of our faith, we ought to hunger for the specifics because they matter deeply.

[@thegospelcoalition]

The Gospel Coalition Podcast features keynote and breakout sessions from our national, regional, and women's conferences. Learn more and subscribe at www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/tgc-podcast

[@alohawhy]

Listening from PH. 🙏🤗

[@godswordisastory8448]

Canons of Dort! Woo Hoo!

[@HearGodsWord]

Very interesting and informative. TGC should have released this sooner. Grateful for Kevin's insights.

[@philipjbenjamin]

To come to know God more deeply we need to become more theological - but only in so far as the ideas we derive from the Bible and from books are testified to us to be true personally by the Holy Spirit. In humility we must limit what we say we “know” to that which we both know intellectually and experience to be true. We need the Holy Spirit to draw us to the heart of scripture - because it’s being at the heart of scripture that will help us to see the relationship of issues that may appear small (but actually aren’t) to the truth. And the only way we will experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit is through repentance - no “work” (repentance is not a work - it’s a decision) can cause the Holy Spirit to be more real in us (Gal 3:2). But then we need scripture to teach us about the purposes and boundaries of the Holy Spirit so that we don’t claim incorrectly that the Holy Spirit is doing something that he is not.
This two way process is something we’ve learnt a lot about in recent years - The way we decide whether we believe something we read on the internet is true is by going through a two way process - we initially compare what we read against other authorities we’ve come to judge as reliable to decide whether to accept it, but then having accepted it it becomes something that influences our opinions about whether something else is true.