The Passaggio Conference in Italy on the Sovereignty of God

The 14th annual conference of the Italian Reformed publishers ‘Passaggio’ took place in Misano Adriatico between 13th and 15th May. The title of the conference was ‘The Sovereignty of God: Election and Evangelism’ and the speaker was Dr. James White of the Reformed Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona, who is director of ‘Alpha and Omega Ministries’.

Passaggio, which was founded in 1993 with the purpose of making available sound Christian literature in the Italian language, soon began to organize conferences on various themes in order to encourage biblical thinking. There are now 32 titles that have been translated and published in Italian (and about 40,000 books have been distributed). These deal with various subjects related to the Christian faith viewed from a Reformed perspective, a position which is little known and sometimes opposed by Italian evangelicals. Passaggio felt the time was ripe to organize a public conference dealing directly with an important but very controversial subject, which is often tackled with a series of prejudices that prevent calm reflection. This is the first time that such an event has taken place in Italy and there was surely every justification in focusing specifically on a subject which has so often been relegated to the fringes of theological discussion.

In dealing with the theme, Dr. James White made particular use of the following Bible passages: John 6, John 8, Ephesians 1, Romans 8 and Romans 9. He was at pains to point out that a true understanding of the doctrine of election leads inevitably to a commitment to evangelism. However, such a commitment, founded on a correct understanding of the doctrine of election, relies exclusively on the convicting work of the Holy Spirit and not on any innate ability on the part of the one who preaches or the one who receives the message.

The committee of Passaggio believes that this conference served to encourage people to think seriously and biblically about this subject, avoiding the creation of barriers between Christians while at the same time not neglecting important biblical truths. The numerous questions that were put to the speaker showed the high level of interest of the participants.

As usual on these occasions, Passaggio presented their recently published titles: ‘Man’s Will, God’s Will and Free Will’ by Ernest Reisinger, ‘Family Worship’ by Joel Beeke, and ‘Why Believe the Bible?’ by John Blanchard. The next Passaggio conference has been arranged for October, 2005, when Larry McCall, pastor of Christ’s Covenant Church, Indiana, U.S.A, will speak on ‘The Priority of Prayer’ and God willing we will publish the following titles: ‘A Call To a Spiritual Reformation’ by D.A. Carson and ‘9 Marks of a healthy Church’ (booklet) by Mark Dever.

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