The confessions don't speak with one voice. They are more like a cluster of closely-related but distinct voices - a kind of choir, if you like.
Oliver D. CrispIt is often reported that the Five Points of Calvinism are the conceptual hard-core of Reformed thought. That is very misleading. The Five Points supposedly originate with the Synod of Dort in the early seventeenth century. Yet we find important Reformed leaders who were signatories to that documentation who don't think that limited atonement is the right way to think about the scope of Christ's saving work. How can this be? The answer that recent historical theology has thrown up is that the canons of the Synod don't require adherence to the doctrine of limited atonement.
Oliver D. CrispHow many people in the pews know that [ Jonathan Edwards] is both a founder of evangelicalism and, say, an idealist who denied that the material world exists?
Oliver D. Crisp