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 ...
God is Spirit, and those worship Him must worship in Spirit and in Truth.
Without faith it is impossible to please Him.
Was it God's command that he would will those commands? uhhh...we're talking about his interaction with creation, remember? Hence his commands to man and will for man is the question at hand not some interaction within himself. sheesh.
Seems trivial if not naive. Wouldn't his appearance be sufficient proof to the rest of the world (including the Sanhedrin)? Anyone could have rolled away the stone; a resurrected Jesus with his wounds still intact would be convincing beyond any doubt.
It appears to me that you’ve known that as of a very long time ago . . .
. . . Certainly many pages and threads ago.
Please Try again.
That assertion was quite thoroughly unconvincing.
Are you saying that you wonder why He didn’t show Himself to the opposition?
If love is God's will then love will certainly happen, correct? But if God commands love does that mean all will love?
And he [Eli] said to them [Eli’s sons], "Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all the people. No, my sons; it is no good report that I hear the people of the LORD spreading abroad. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?" But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the LORD to put them to death
Well, for starters God is not a "what". Nature is a "what". God is a "who".
No, I just want to know what it is that people believe in.
There is no actual evidence for the existence of anything. For all we know everything is merely a figment of your imagination so if you are looking for evidence of God, and you are not willing to look for the supernatural outside of the realm of the natural, then nothing anyone can say to you or show you is going to convince you of the existence of God or what it is that he requires of us.
So I will ask you a question. What evidence, if any, would you accept to prove to you that God exists? What evidence would you accept to show that Jesus Christ was God incarnate?
In reviewing your posts, you seem to cast doubt on the eyewitness testimony of Christ's miracles and his resurrection. But there is more evidence for these events than there is for just about any other events in history. Not only do you have the eyewitness accounts, but you have the testimony of the people who knew the gospel writers intimately and who testified to the veracity of the gospel accounts.
Now if you are not willing to believe the eyewitness accounts because somehow they might be biased, then how can you believe anything? Your own experience is nothing more than your own eyewitness account of the things you have seen and done and read. Do you cast doubt upon your own experience? Are you an eyewitness to your own birth? You were there, but then again you still have to take the word of others that you were born where you were and when you were. Do you doubt the birth certificate that you have? Do you doubt your mother's testimony of when you were born?
If not, then why are you so skeptical of the eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus? Did not the authors of those gospel accounts give their lives in defense of their testimony? Doesn't that give them as much credibility as the doctors who signed off on your birth certificate?
Your posts read as angry indictments against God.
Provided that's what really happened, right? Again, all we have is a Bible story written decades later, in retrospect.
IIRC we were talking about the alleged internal inconsistency of Calvinists who claim that they do not believe in Fatalistic Determinism and Arminians who claim that they are not their own saviors.
So, no, I don't remember that.
Hence his commands to man and will for man is the question at hand not some interaction within himself.
Huh?
Ok, I'm just a cheap country lawyer, so you'll have to excuse me but I don't know what you are talking about.
INDEED.
And, sadly . . .
as some sort of implied indictment . . .
against those who would have the audacity to stupidly believe in God without
. . . ‘tangible scientific proof’ . . .
When the perspective of all the pseudo-super-rationalists I’ve ever had ‘dialogue’ with
was well entrenched in the strategy and rationale that
THEY HAD WALLED OFF ANY POSSIBILITY OF ANY ‘PROOF’ WHATSOEVER
UNLESS
GOD ALMIGHTY KOWTOWED TO, SUBMITTED TO,
THEIR construction on reality.
Talk about hubris! Sheesh.
Two thoughts occur to me: 1) that God would not stoop to such silly tests and 2) that many a magician could do that trick and demand she worship them.
Thank you for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!
Proof please.
Calvin understood [sic] the work and purpose of the Holy Spirit
Wow!
And since the Holy Spirit is a spirit and thus invisible
Proof please.
Don’t encourage him. It’s still Friday.
Prove you are Kosta. To my satisfaction.
So you're now arguing both for and against a stone?
~~”Didn’t dr stevej write a song about free will?”~~
FREE WILL IN HEAVEN
(Tears in Heaven — apologies to Eric Clapton)
Beyond the door,
There’s peace I’m sure.
And I know there’s got to be
Free will in heaven.
Would you throw a fit,
If He controlled you in heaven?
Would it be the same,
If He bound your will in heaven?
You must be strong,
And carry on.
‘Cause you know there’s no free will
Here in heaven
Right. There is a spectrum of beliefs about God’s interaction with creation with some claiming one set of conditions while others claim another set of conditions. Depending upon where you fall in that spectrum will disclose whether one is a fatalist, a demi-god, or neither.
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