"The Grace of God in the Gospel" and my becoming a Calvinist

Upon my first introduction to Calvinism, I recall ardently using the arguments of John Wesley, whom I had been studying at the time, to counter the views being presented to me. My wife’s uncle, though, whose name was Stanley Berry and who was a Christian bookseller in Glasgow, would send me via his sister (my mother-in-law, Joyce Lowe) books published by the Banner of Truth. And inexorably reading these and the Scriptures brought me to embrace four of the so-called five points of Calvinism (I resisted embracing any form of particular redemption until 1983).

If there was one book in particular that led to my becoming a Calvinist, it would have been this book whose cover is above, The Grace of God in the Gospel (London; Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1972), written by four Oxford University undergraduate students who were all members at the time of the Executive Committee of the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union: John Cheeseman of Oriel College, Philip Gardner of Jesus College, Michael Sadgrove of Balliol College, and Tom Wright of Exeter College. Tom Wright, of course, is none other than N.T. Wright, the famous New Testament scholar.

I read the book numerous times—sometimes even in the bathtub (the apartment that my wife and I were renting did not have a shower). At the same time [1982], I had begun teaching church history at Central Baptist Seminary in Toronto and some of my students (only a little younger than I)—particularly Barry Howson, Bill Hubbard, and Scott Dyer—asked me questions that I could not answer and whose solution also pushed me towards the Reformed Faith.

And so, slowly but surely, that glorious truth of free unmerited grace bestowed upon sinners for the sake of the crucified and risen Christ gripped my soul and has never left it.

PS I should note that my embrace of particular redemption came about a year or so later, in 1983, after a long telephone conversation with Scott Dyer.