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 ...
I said all of the Bible narratives not all of the definitions. The answer to your other questions is no and no.
Now go to 1147 and answer my questions.
What cheese would you like with your whine, troll?
Extra biblical support is present - in-spite of your attempts to poison the well. Do you want your vain attempts exposed again? You reject anything from the bible - why can't you admit it?
Some pseudo-super-rationalists
seem to have a fierce allergy to consistency . . . in thought or behavior.
Jesus answered that question in his parable about the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) vs. 30-31, “And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”
You ask good questions but the problem in answering is as someone has pointed out faith answers do not lend themselves to philosophic certitude. Mathematical proofs come close but even they, depending on the discipline, are taken on “faith”.
You are right in a sense that the bible does “beg the question” of who God is. Since it presumes to be God's word, it obviously must also presume that what it contains in it and what it says about God and His creation is true.
Also, since, as John stated, John 20:31, “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” God has preserved his word for us since it is the gospel.
But again, although the accuracy of the bible has been authenticated by archeologists and the preserved works of the early church fathers, it being the word of God is still a matter of faith; faith based on the evidences and the Holy Spirit.
Oh, just for you to reject those same appearances - LOL. An empty tomb with the stone rolled away is a very clear witness.
Anyone could have rolled away the stone;
Not when it is sealed and under roman guard
a resurrected Jesus with his wounds still intact would be convincing beyond any doubt.
And that occurred - yet you reject it - you reject the very evidence you demand.
Written decades later with HOSTILE witnesses still living - what is their traditions kosta - they try to explain what happened to the BODY - they accept the open tomb as fact.
And that occurred - yet you reject it - you reject the very evidence you demand.
#############
INDEED TO THE MAX.
I realize that with the education system having been increasingly dumbed down the last 110 years . . . that . . . cognitive dissonance ain’t what it used to be . . .
However . . . aren’t there LIMITS to what a mind can bear of cognitive dissonance
and still even pretend to function?
Amazing.
An actual, physical encounter with the risen Jesus.
An actual, physical encounter with the risen Jesus.
He spent 3 years trying to convince them, they made their choice.
As is usual with pseudo-super-rationalists . . .
there seems to be some terminal bone marrow rot in the thinking deep somewhere.
Hard to put a precise finger on it . . . hard to articulate . . . yet it seems brazenly and forcefully there very persistently.
Am I alone in sensing, seeing that in the posts?
Well jeepers, kosta, this thread has been "about you" for the past several hundred posts, and that didn't happen by accident. You yourself have been instigating this. As xzins noted earlier, you seem to like the attention.
As to this — my earlier statement to you —
[kosta] 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.That's not "mind-reading," kosta. It is simply a rational conclusion drawn from a mass of evidence. I'm not trying to "get in your head" in the above; I'm simply noticing what you're actually doing....
Would you like to read my mind, kosta??? Please do feel free to try.
I have answered your questions repeatedly. It's just you reject my premises and my evidence, and so disagree with me. [BTW, I haven't really seen your premises and evidence laid out as yet, kosta.] But don't say I have tried in any way to avoid your questions. That is simply not true.
And that certainly seems impossible.
So logically and according to what we know of heaven from the bible, there can be no free will in heaven.
I think it’s more than a little bit of a leap from one to the other.
Rejecting God is one thing . . .
Deciding to eat this heavenly fruit from tree A vs that fruit from tree B is a different order of thing.
Some pseudo-super-rationalists
do seem to enjoy the attention.
Others seem to primarily be interested in stabbing at God or trying to throw sand in God’s eyes [as well as those who dare to Love God outside of their pseudo-super-rationalist-reductionist script]. . .
for not running the multiverse according to their sensibilities and scripts.
There seems to be a fierce element of . . . retaliation or spite or vengeance or some such . . . can’t quite put my finger on it or articulate it precisely enough, to my satisfaction.
Have seen it with dozens of them, though.
Words like . . .
disdainful, haughty, prissy, affronted, snobbish, prickly, brittle, elitist, provoked, gritchy, . . . seem to be part of the general ball park of such folks.
Great question P-Marlowe. It seems kosta is very picky about evidence. It seems he dismisses any that does not measure up to his highly abstract criteria. I get the general impression that kosta wants to live in a highly abstract world; i.e., a world that exists only within his mind (like one of Heraclitus' "dreamers," the "private men"). And so I just mention this, because the type of evidence that you pointed to in your absolutely outstanding essay/post is just the type kosta rejects: for it is empirical, experientially-based.
Thank you so very much for your magnificent essay/post!
Indeed, take this from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2461074/posts?page=1143#1143
Yes. Why not convince them and preach the Gospel to them too if he expects you to do so?
So the demand is that the risen Christ should have shown Himself to all Israel - That resurrection proof would satisfy him. Jesus choses to reveal Himself to a limited group - well that is dismissed a priori.
You're 100% right. Adam and Eve did have free will. Exactly. And look where it got them.
Since the fall, men don't have the option of choosing righteousness on their own. On their own, they will always choose to sin against God. What is needed is God's free gift of grace through the Holy Spirit to change a man from God-defiant to God-compliant.
The change from the natural man to the spiritual man is a supernatural act of God's will, not men's. He determines whom to regenerate by the Holy Spirit whose leading will then enable that man to believe in Jesus Christ to the saving of his soul.
Kosta thinks he is being an objective analyst but in reality his method of examining the evidence is entirely subjective. He seems to have made up his own rules for examining the evidence. He refuses to look at anything other than natural empirical evidence in order to believe in the supernatural and then when confronted with the evidence, i.e., the eyewitness testimony of people who literally gave their lives in defense of their testimony, he shrugs it off as being "biased".
So in reality it appears to me that kosta is not really looking for reasons to believe, but looking only for excuses NOT to believe.
Calling the eyewitness testimony biased is not a reason, it is an excuse.
IMHO kosta is not being sincere when he claims he is looking for truth or looking for God. IMHO he is just looking for an excuse to confirm his own agnosticism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.