Posted on 02/28/2010 8:30:39 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
John Calvin's 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism's buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism's latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination's logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time's dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision.
Calvinism, cousin to the Reformation's other pillar, Lutheranism, is a bit less dour than its critics claim: it offers a rock-steady deity who orchestrates absolutely everything, including illness (or home foreclosure!), by a logic we may not understand but don't have to second-guess. Our satisfaction — and our purpose — is fulfilled simply by "glorifying" him. In the 1700s, Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards invested Calvinism with a rapturous near mysticism. Yet it was soon overtaken in the U.S. by movements like Methodism that were more impressed with human will. Calvinist-descended liberal bodies like the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) discovered other emphases, while Evangelicalism's loss of appetite for rigid doctrine — and the triumph of that friendly, fuzzy Jesus — seemed to relegate hard-core Reformed preaching (Reformed operates as a loose synonym for Calvinist) to a few crotchety Southern churches.
No more. Neo-Calvinist ministers and authors don't operate quite on a Rick Warren scale. But, notes Ted Olsen, a managing editor at Christianity Today, "everyone knows where the energy and the passion are in the Evangelical world" — with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper of Minneapolis, Seattle's pugnacious Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention. The Calvinist-flavored ESV Study Bible sold out its first printing, and Reformed blogs like Between Two Worlds are among cyber-Christendom's hottest links.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
When they are two and when they turn twelve you usually see the devil.
Have some kids, . . . Then you’ll see Him.
######
OR HIS harrasser—the king of hell or his imps . . .
in my observational history . . . seemingly . . .
whichever ‘wolf’ (good vs bad) has the upper hand IN THE PARENTS.
. . . highly likely . . . statistically . . .
in 63 years . . . have seen less than a dozen parents do it really well . . . to the point of no teen rebellion . . . individuation, yes, not rebellion, however.
ATTACHMENT DISORDER or the absence thereof has a huge role in such things.
. . . as well as what do the parents model.
I dunno P-Marlowe. Maybe it's really just a cry for help? In disguise?
It seems to me dear kosta has gotten himself into a severe pickle. His position seems to be "anything that I cannot know for a certainty is something not worth knowing." He needs "proof" of God, because that is what constitutes "certainty" for him. If he can't get "proof" of God, then he doesn't have to take Him seriously.
It seems that kosta is in a sort of egophanic revolt — a term Eric Voegelin uses to denote "the epiphany of ego leading to the death of God." I gather he lands in this position by virtue of his insistence on certainty in a world that is thoroughgoingly uncertain in every way imaginable, save one.
The life of man is really burdened with the well-known miseries enumerated by Hesoid. We remember his list of hunger, hard work, disease, early death, and the fear of the injustices to be suffered by the weaker man at the hands of the more powerful — not to mention the problem of Pandora. Still, as long as our existence is undeformed by phantasies, these miseries are not experienced as senseless. We understand them as the lot of man, mysterious it is true, but as the lot he has to cope with in the organization and conduct of his life, in the fight for survival, the protection of his dependents, and the resistance to injustice, and in his spiritual and intellectual response to the mystery of existence. The burden of existence loses its sense, and becomes absurd, only when a dreamer believes himself to possess the power of transfiguring imperfect existence into a lasting state of perfection. — Eric Voegelin, "Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme""Dreamer" in the above context is best understood in the sense of Heraclitus, as idiotes, a person who rejects the Logos "one and common" and thereby "turns aside" into his own "private world."
One could say this is a form of existential alienation, one which involves a "refusal to apperceive" Reality as it is, and a Ciceronian "contempt for reason" as evidenced by the refusal to apperceive....
It seems to me the more sectors of reality that kosta must exclude because of his insistence on "proof" and "certainty," the more alienated and isolated from the world of Reality — personal, social, natural — he becomes.
Let me wrap this up: Because the world of human existence is thoroughgoingly uncertain from first to last, and all our knowledge of Reality is partial and contingent, all the more reason to trust in the eternal Revelations of God — Holy Scripture, the Incarnation of Christ (Logos, Alpha and Omega), the world of Creation (the natural world), and the Holy Spirit with us. They are God's Word, told "truthfully, but not exhaustively," a light unto the human mind and spirit.
Thank you so very much for writing P-Marlowe!
It seems to me dear kosta has gotten himself into a severe pickle. His position seems to be “anything that I cannot know for a certainty is something not worth knowing.” He needs “proof” of God, because that is what constitutes “certainty” for him. If he can’t get “proof” of God, then he doesn’t have to take Him seriously.
###############
INDEED.
WELL PUT.
Arminians seem to make the claim that they save themselves by their choices while at the same time denying that they really have anything to do with their salvation. Calvinists, OTOH, make the claim that while their salvation was determined at the foundation of the earth entirely independent of anything the person does or thinks during their lifetime, that their destiny is not the result of fatalistic determinism. Just saying.
If by "fatalistic determinism," you mean determined by chance or an impersonal God, then no, Calvinism doesn't teach that.
If you mean by "fatalistic determinism," that God determines everything from the color of our eyes to the next breath we take to the day we die and everything that happens to us from birth to death and beyond, then yes, that is Calvinism.
What you're perceiving is not a crack in Calvinism, but the ever-exasperating attempt to articulate God's sovereignty while still encouraging men to believe.
But the frustration is ours; not God's. We argue and cajole and urge, and some men respond and some don't. But God doesn't feel any sense of uncertainty. He's already determined the outcome of our preaching.
What I've found to be one of the real bonuses of Calvinism is that it lends a profound and rock-solid sense of security to the Christian. And that confidence is what we preach, rather than dwelling on men's supposed "free will" choice to believe. Because truth is easiest to apprehend in hind-sight. So while we plead our case to everyone, we know that all true believers will look back on their lives and see the hand of God everywhere.
Nobody explains it better than Boettner...
Calvin emphatically repudiated the charge that his doctrine was Fatalism. “Fate,” says he, “is a term given by the Stoics to their doctrine of necessity, which they had formed out of a labyrinth of contradictory reasonings; a doctrine calculated to call God Himself to order, and to set Him laws whereby to work. Predestination I define to be, according to the Holy Scriptures, that free and unfettered counsel of God by which He rules all mankind, and all men and things, and also all parts and particles of the world by His infinite wisdom and incomprehensible justice.” And again, ”.., had you but been willing to look into my books, you would have been convinced at once how offensive to me is the profane term fate: nay, you would have learned that this same abhorrent term was cast in the teeth of Augustine by his opponents.”2 Luther says that the doctrine of Fatalism among the heathen is a proof that “the knowledge of Predestination and of the prescience of God, was no less left in the world than the notion of divinity itself.” 3 In the history of philosophy Materialism has proven itself essentially fatalistic. Pan theism also has been strongly tinged with it. "...Predestination therefore differs from Fatalism as much as the acts of a man differ from those of a machine, or as much as the unfailing love of the heavenly Father differs from the force of gravitation. “It reveals to us,” says Smith, “the glorious truth that our lives and our sensitive hearts are held, not in the iron cog-wheels of a vast and pitiless Fate, nor in the whirling loom of a crazy Chance, but in the almighty hands of an infinitely good and wise God.”1
So here we learn that Calvinism is neither fatalistic nor anti-evangelical. And we see that Luther even used "fatalism among the heathens" as evidence that all men have a sense of the truth of predestination. I hadn't thought of that before, but it's an interesting approach. Makes sense to me.
No man can be a consistent fatalist. For to be consistent he would have to reason something like this: “If I am to die today, it will do me no good to eat, for I shall die anyway. Nor do I need to eat if I am to live many years yet, for I shall live anyway. Therefore I will not eat.” Needless to say, if God has foreordained that a man shall live, He has also foreordained that he shall be kept from the suicidal folly of refusing to eat.
That's a great defense. I'm going to remember that one.
This doctrine,” says Hamilton, “is only superficially like the pagan ‘fate.’ The Christian is in the hands not of a cold, immutable determinism, but of a warm, loving heavenly Father, who loved us and gave His Son to die for us on Calvary! The Christian knows that ‘all things work together for good to them that love God, even to them that are called according to His purpose.’ The Christian can trust God because he knows He is all-wise, loving, just and holy. He sees the end from the beginning, so that there is no reason to become panicky when things seem to be going against us."
AMEN.
It's modern man who seeks to suppress the notion of God's predestination because he really really likes to be in control. "Just do it."
lol. Yep. “All things.”
Not true. Calvinism would only be fatalistic if it were claimed that no creational means were used in applying that salvation. But since Calvinism clearly describes creational means as an important factor then it cannot be said to be fatalistic.
In our case, two and 12 were pretty sweet. It was 16 that taught us patience and the power of the enforceable threat.
Amen. It’s all about “who” does “what” to “whom.”
I can see how a person could vow to be a follower of truth whenever and wherever he finds it.
I can not see how a person could live with the vow that he’ll not proceed unless he has certain truth about every step, every situation, every question...
It really sounds like one who is refusing (or afraid) to engage life.
In our case, our kids went to a liberal public school. They were so surrounded by screaming liberals that much of their teen-aged rebellion was channeled into rebelling against that. lol. Their inborn contrarian nature surfaced in adopting a more conservative approach to life. So we're having the last laugh...so far. I suppose they could still go off the rails and vote democrat. But then we'd have to lock them in the basement til they reconsidered.
And the smartest advice I ever got for raising kids was to know that you can't love a child too much. You can over-indulge them which is not good. But it's impossible to love them too much. The more, the better. And the best thing you can do for a child's self-esteem is to be sure they know you really really enjoy their company and that they matter more to you than anyone in the world because they were God's gift to you in the first place. And God doesn't make mistakes.
If a child knows that, nothing can hurt them irrevocably.
Pickle indeed, how can a life be lead with that level of certainity? How can one be certian of ANYTHING. What level of 'proof' does one use when eating food that it is not contaminated. What level of 'proof' does one use for any other day-to-day action.
That's a great phrase. We either "engage life" or we remain on the periphery.
Creational means? Creational means? What does that "mean"?
~~I stepped on a duck.”~~
ROTFLOL!
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.” — Emily Dickinson
Then Calvinism is not internally inconsistent. The inconsistency problem then is not with Calvinism as a theology, it is just with the Calvinists who deny the idea the Calvinism actually teaches fatalistic determinism.
Likewise perhaps the internal inconsistency with Arminianism is not with the theology itself, but with those who preach Arminianism on the one hand and then deny that they do believe they are, effectively, their own Saviors.
It would be different if Thomas had remained in doubt.
But Thomas eventually believed.
So Marlowe's question is important. If you never believe, what does that say about your salvation?
fa·tal·ism (f t l- z  m)n.
1. The doctrine that all events are predetermined by fate and are therefore unalterable.
2. Acceptance of the belief that all events are predetermined and inevitable.
. Based on that definition, what is it about Calvinism that is NOT fatalistic? |
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