All Articles For Bolt, John

This article was first published in the November 2023 issue of the Calvin Theological Journal, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the Calvin Theological Journal. The first installment was reprinted in the April 2024 issue of the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal.   In the first installment of this article,1 I tried to show that the statement of the 1924 CRC Synod on the doctrine of common grace, specifically its First Point, using the so-called “well-meant offer of the gospel” as a ground for God’s general or common grace shown to “His creatures in general,” was hastily formulated...

This article was first published in the November 2022 issue of the Calvin Theological Journal and is reprinted here with the kind per­mission of the Calvin Theological Journal. For this reason Scripture quotations are from the NIV. Bolt’s second installment, printed in the November 2023 issue of the Calvin Theological Journal, will be reprinted in a future issue of the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal. Following the reprinting of the second article, the PRTJ will provide a response to these articles.   The Christian Reformed Church’s Synod of 1924, held in Kalam­azoo, Michigan, is one of the defining events in the...

It is definitely out of the ordinary for a Christian Reformed seminary professor to have lectured at the Protestant Reformed Theological School—about the events of 1924, no less!—and now to have that lecture published in its Theological Journal. Of course, I am not a stranger to this topic, having written three essays on the subject over the last fifteen years.2 What may have surprised some is the extent to which I have been critical of my own church’s dealing with common grace and sympathetic to much of Rev. Herman Hoeksema’s critique of the doctrine. I acknowledge that these three articles...