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 ...
Thank you so much for your wonderful insights, dear sister in Christ!
Holy is a state of being which when God created Adam He did not create Adam holy else Adam would not have sinned. In the act of sinning/disobeying God, Adam proved he was not holy and had not been holy. Got it?
The Socratic Method starts with the statement of a premise followed by questions to determine the validity of the premise. You have asserted no premise, and your questions about holiness and righteousness are completely irrelevant to the discussion that was going on before. Basically you just changed the subject. That is not a Socratic method. Changing the subject is just a way to avoid answering pointed questions.
Camus said that "there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." That's not the Triune God; that's unfortunate happenstance.
A better word than fate or destiny would be Providence which implies the sure and steady hand of the Creator.
Fatalism implies the inevitable downward tug of gravity. Christian predestination means God is in control and that's always a good thing to acknowledge.
Logically, it can be no other way, if God exists. From the moment of creation, God knew everything that would happen because He ordained everything that would happen. And if He had wanted something else to happen, it would have happened differently. But what happens is exactly what God wants to happen at the moment it is happening.
Is your name written in the Book of Life?
If so, when did God write it in there?
If it is written there, then what are the odds that you will make a Free will decision to reject Christ and die in your sins?
Thank you for all of your insights, dear brother in Christ!
Free will ≠
You’ve just described Christopher Hitchens and a rather well known Physicist.
Didn’t dr stevej write a song about free will?
Ping to joke about ducks in Heaven
Oh, funny. Thanks for the laugh.
INDEED.
Thanks for your kind reply.
I don't think so. Obviously you haven't read all the posts on this thread. I think there are posters who would not recognize the idea that they are sinners. I suspect most of the world thinks that their own good works outweigh any bad deeds they have done, if they are even willing to admit to themselves that they have actually done any bad deeds.
Why do you think people rationalize their sin by comparing themselves to others or saying they do more good than bad? Its because they recognize that they are sinners so they try to make excuses so they don't have to change. If people weren't aware of sin, they wouldn't even think about good works vs bad.
Lord, take this cursed free will from me! Mold my will to Yours. Enslave my will to Your will, Oh Lord and let the old things pass away so that all things become new!
Can you say that prayer?
I have prayed that prayer but to be honest, it scares me because I know that God will answer it. I may be a bit immature in my faith. This discussion is a bit tedious though. I think we agree about quite a bit but I am not going to become a Calvinist and I don't think I will change your mind. In the end, it doesn't matter that much. We both believe that we are saved through faith because Jesus loved us enough to pay the penalty for our sins.
MHGinTN wrote:
Holy is a state of being which when God created Adam He did not create Adam holy else Adam would not have sinned.
God said he created Adam very good and in his image. Isn't being righteous and holy acting according to God's commands? God is righteous and holy because he acts according to his own standard. So Adam having never sinned since his creation up until the time he sinned must have been righteous and holy before he sinned. In fact, Paul talks about renewing the image of God as being righteous and holy.
put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
So clearly being renewed is returning to our original condition in Adam which is righteousness and holiness.
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