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 ...
It is amusing to make a chart of the parents' intelligence (vertical) over the life of the child (horizontal.)
In the early years, the parent's IQ is at the highest - mommy and daddy know best. When the kid hits middle school, the parents' IQ drops to below average. During high school, the parents are complete idiots. But somewhere in the kid's twenties, the parents start getting smarter and they keep on getting smarter.
I am not a Calvinist. I have been accused of being one because I often find myself making the same arguments against free will worshipers that Calvinists make. Free will is not so much a gift as it is a curse. Your free will can never save you, but from an Arminian point of view it sure as Hell can condemn you. So what good is a free will anyway? We should all be praying that God remove this accursed free will from our lives and make us slaves to Christ.
Thank you oh so very much for your outstanding insights and that wonderful excerpt, dearest sister in Christ!
Obviously? I had no idea that this was the focus of our discussion. Why don't you just state your premise and then see if anyone wants to play Socrates?
While you are composing your premise, why don't you answer this: Who is in control of your destiny?
God’s commands are not God’s will.
Thank you so much for your encouragements, dear sister in Christ!
Again, exstrabibical witness is lacking. You stubbornly repeat what's in the Bible, as if that somehow "proves" it, and I keep saying it cannot be corroborated because there is a conflcit of interest, but must be believed on faith alone. Why can't you just admit it?
INDEED.
Thanks for your kind reply.
Huh? Is that a premise?
Was it God's will that he would issue those commands?
What a great line!!
If not true, then why in the world do we sing, "I Surrender All"? Perhaps we should sing, "I Surrender All for Now".
The bottom line is that we're much better off as slaves of Christ than as captains of our own ship.
INDEED. INDEED.
I am simply asking questions. Why is that "sowing seeds of doubt?"
What is your goal in posting here?
I want to know what is God, so I ask those who claim they know God. The presumption is that one knows what it is that he or she believes in, what is God.
Is it merely to state your opinion or is it to encourage others to think like you; to doubt everything and believe nothing?
No, I just want to know what it is that people believe in.
We come up on New ComMANDment Thursday (Man(u)d(y) Thursday), and you don't think that it is God's will?
"A new command I give give...that you love one another"
"Beloved let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who loves not knows not God, for God is love."
So....love is not God's will? Are you really going to go there?
Mama don't take my Kodachrome free will away.
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