A Review Article What Love Is This? -- By: David M. Doran

Journal: Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal
Volume: DBSJ 08:1 (Fall 2003)
Article: A Review Article What Love Is This?
Author: David M. Doran


A Review Article
What Love Is This?

David M. Doran1

What Love Is This? Calvinism’s Misrepresentation of God by Dave Hunt. Sisters, OR: Loyal Publishing, 2002, 436 pp. $15.99.

The debate over God’s sovereignty in salvation has reached a new low with the publication of this book. Having heard rumblings about it, I purchased a copy in order to read Hunt’s arguments for myself. Honestly, having read little more than the introduction and first chapter, I set it aside, believing that my time could be much better spent—I was only nineteen pages into the book before it was clear to me that this was not a serious book. Yet to my great surprise, over the next few months I kept hearing reports that it was being recommended as a profitable book. Apparently, others were taking this book seriously, and if that was the case, then I needed to give it a serious evaluation. Reluctantly, therefore, I picked it up again and worked my way through it. I wish I could say that my original assessment was off target, but I do not believe it was. That anyone would treat it as a serious work on this very important subject is quite alarming. That it is recommended to others as profitable should be a matter of great concern to those of us who care deeply about the spiritual and theological health of fundamentalism. It is that concern which has driven me to invest the time and energy required to prepare this review article.

The task of writing a review article based on this book has been challenging. The book does not lend itself easily to the task. Hardly a page of my copy is not annotated with some matter of concern regarding Hunt’s assertions or method. Cataloguing all of these is a difficult job, but communicating them without boring the reader is harder still. The circular style of Hunt’s approach makes the reader wade

through the same argument time after time.2 The repetition may have some rhetorical value, but it does not improve the argument.

The kinds of arguments that Hunt makes genuinely test the patience of any reader that disagrees with him—this is a book that may preach well to the choir, but is not likely to convince those who believe some of the things that Hunt is writing against. It should not surprise anyone that this book has provoked a very negative reaction among those who believe in God’s sovereignty over the matter of personal salvation. When their understanding of the Scriptures is labeled as blasphemy (p. 132), it is bound to stir a strong response. While I suppose there should be comfort in Hunt’s concession that he “believe[s] Ca...

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