A Diplomatic Review of "A Boisterous Polemic"

For whom did Christ die? A "5-point" Calvinist will answer, "for the elect only". A "4-point" or "moderate" Calvinist will answer "for everyone, but especially for the elect." "A Boisterously Reformed Polemic Against Limited Atonement", by Austin C. Brown, looks at the evidence for each answer and comes down on the side of the moderate Calvinist.
For the sake of brevity, I will use "5P" and "4P" to refer to the respective five point and four point positions.
My first observation, which should not be controversial, is that there is a typo in the Kindle version on page 190/191: "This happened to me twice. Once during the examination process to be become a deacon in the RPCNA and during my examination...". My remaining observations, save the penultimate, will be in areas where I think Brown could present a stronger argument. The next to last observation will be in the way of personal application.
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Paternal Grandfather
3M Datavision D-8000
The 3M Datavision D-8800 was a character generator for the television broadcast industry. It existed circa 1977-1986 and very little information about it exists on the web, outside of mentions in trade journals. There is a Wiki for character generators, but the entry for the D-8800 is mostly empty. A semi-technical marketing presentation can be found here1. A description of the product and its price2 is here3. A comparison of features between various brands of character generators from 1983 is here4. Several ads from the trade journals can be found here5, here6, here7, and here8. An article featuring a D-8800 in a studio is here9. Want ads from 1985 for people with D-8800 experience are here10 and here11. A used D-8800 was offered for sale in October, 1990, here12.
I worked on the software for the D-8800 from circa 1978 to possibly as late as early 1981. Memories fade after 45 years. But I kept the following material among my memorabilia:
- Product brochure
- Font brochure
- More Fonts
- Logo Compose software
- Billboard software
- Camera Compose option
- Computer Interface option
- Real-time Clock software option
The keyboard was a "beast". Not only did it have a QWERTY keyboard, it had a number of buttons for selecting fonts and colors, and for starting various operations such as roll (scroll multiple pages of text up or down) and crawl (scroll a line of text across the screen). There were lights that could be turned on, off, and flashed for operator feedback. There were four seven segment LEDs above the numeric keypad. Files were stored on floppy by number, 0000 (?) to 9999 and the LEDs were used to display that number to the user. There was an LCD screen for user instructions and feedback.
The two computers communicated via DMA. The video system had an interrupt for vertical sync which, if I remember correctly, was the only timer the system had. Because the display CPU had the timer, as well as the need to keep the video system fed in conjunction with vertical sync, it constantly told the system CPU what it needed and when. It would also ask the system CPU if the user had done anything it needed to know about. This caused one of the more interesting problems in my career. The system would lock up, but so rarely that the problem could never be reproduced. After a year and a half I discovered that the DMA register that contained the amount of data to transfer would not have the value that was written to it. So one CPU would wait forever for a transfer to complete. Suds then found that if the system was doing everything all at once that the voltage might drop below nominal levels causing the malfunction in the DMA register. Fixing the problem was easy - the length value would be written, then read back, until what was read matched what was written.

All tech products have a lifecycle. In 1984, 3M announced their BFA system, here13. But this at least was three years after I had moved on.
[1] Excerpted from the 1978 Proceedings of the "31st Annual Broadcasting Conference" of the NAB", pages 30-33.
[2] In all of the years I worked on this product, I never knew how much it sold for. $28,990!
[3] Excerpted from "Video Images, 1982", page 134.
[4] Excerpted from "BroadCast Engineering's Spec Book, December 15, 1983", page 48
[5] Excerpted from "Broadcast Engineering, March, 1977", page 41.
[6] Excerpted from "Broadcast Engineering, January 1979", page 21.
[7] Excerpted from "Broadcast Engineering, March 1981", page 145.
[8] Excerpted from "Broadcast Management/Engineering, October 1983", page 120.
[9] Excerpted from "Broadcast Management/Engineering, December 1985", pages 83-84.
[10] Excerpted from "Broadcasting, April 22, 1985", no page numbers.
[11] Excerpted from "Broadcast Engineering, December 1985", page 128.
[12] Excerpted from "Broadcast Engineering, October 1990", page 117.
[13] Excerpted from "Mix, November 1984", pages 132, 143.
Critiquing Calvinism

... the Remonstrants were concerned about the teaching that God forces his grace on sinners irresistibly. [emphasis mine]
...
Bending the will of a fallible being by an omnipotent Being powerfully and unfailingly is not merely sweet persuasion. It is forcing one to change one’s mind against one’s will.
...
God changing our will invincibly in irresistible grace brings to mind phenomena such as hypnotism or brainwashing.
...
Note the striking contradiction—God will “overcome all resistance and make his influence irresistible,” and yet “irresistible grace never implies that God forces us to believe against our will.” No attempt is made in the article to reconcile these apparently contradictory assertions.
I will try to reconcile these allegedly contradictory assertions. The idea that God forces the spiritually dead to awaken to life in Christ is common in Arminian arguments. But it simply isn't what God does. "Aha!" moments, "Eureka!" moments rise from the recesses of our minds and present to us a new way of seeing, a new way of thinking, and that new thing is so obvious that we wonder why we never encountered it before. Of course we embrace it. Why would we not? It has positively transformed a part of our life.
Lemke asks:
Why would there be a need to persuade someone who had already been regenerated by irresistible enabling grace?
God works through His word: written, oral, or otherwise. He gives sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf (Ex. 4:11). He gives transforming inspiration. Regeneration and persuasion go hand in hand. He regenerates through persuasion and persuades through regeneration.
I am reminded of the scene in "The Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy opens the door of her house and sees Oz in color. Before then, everything was in black and white. The external change of location which brought color into her life is a parallel to the internal change that brings new sight to the Christian. What Dorothy saw on the outside the Christian sees on the inside.
[1] The "marriage" argument. It is argued that Christ died for His bride, the Church, to "sanctify it, having cleansed it." [Eph 5:25-27].
There is an inseparable unity between Christ's death for the church and his sanctifying and cleansing it. Those from whom he died he also sanctifies and cleanses. Since the world is not sanctified and cleansed, then it is obvious that Christ did not die for it.
– Edwin H. Palmer, "The Five Points of Calvinism".
I don't think this argument survives Isaiah 54:5:
For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; ...
– NRSV
Which makes 1 Cor 7:15 all the more interesting.
2022 Reading List
1 Space Chanty R. A. Lafferty 2 The Witches of Karres James H. Schmitz 3 The Wizard of Karres M. Lackey, E. Flint, D. Freer 4 The Sorceress of Karres E. Flint, D. Freer 5 The Shaman of Karres E. Flint, D. Freer 6 The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism Jason Staples 7 Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep Philip K. Dick 8 Miami Blues Charles Willeford 9 New Hope for the Dead Charles Willeford 10 Sideswipe Charles Willeford 11 The Way We Die Now Charles Willeford 12 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 13 The Burnt Orange Heresy Charles Willeford 14 A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter M. Miller, Jr. 15 Gospel Coach Scott Thomas & Tom Wood 16 Solaris Stanislaw Lem 17 Not All Who Wander (Spiritually) Are Lost Traci Rhoades 18 The Mountain of Silence Kyriacos C. Markides 19 He Is There And He Is Not Silent Francis A. Schaeffer 20 The Region Between Harlan Ellison 21 True Spirituality Francis A. Schaeffer 22 The Orville: Sympathy for the Devil Seth MacFarlane 23 The Word for World is Forest Ursula K. Le Guin 24 Believing Philosophy Dolores G. Morris 25 The Epic of Eden Sandra L. Richter 26 Five Ways to Forgiveness Ursula K. Le Guin 26 The Westminster Assembly Robert Letham 27 Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context Brevard S. Childs 28 The Year's Best Science Fiction, First Annual Collection Gardner Dozois 29 The Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury 30 What Did The Cross Accomplish? S. Gathercole, R. B. Stewart, N. T. Wright 31 Howard Who? Howard Waldrop