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 ...
What does Calvinism deny?
A lot of things, but most of what they deny is probably worth denying. Where I believe Calvinism denies a truth is that Calvinism by and large denies that God can and very well may use his Foreknowledge (even of what he foresees in a man's life) as a basis for election. The simple fact is that Foreknowledge is stated as a reason for election and the term "foreknowledge" is not theologically defined in the Bible.
Arminianism denies that God has the sovereign right to completely and unilaterally change a mans free will to make him incapable of rejecting the gospel message and incapable of falling away.
IMHO Arminianism puts too much emphasis on free will and Calvinism puts too much emphasis on God's determined will apart from his foreknowledge.
Next question.
What can you possibly do which God has not foreordained from before the creation?
If it’s still lying around, it will have to be hard copy. If I recollect correctly, I did have it on digits but I was using either the 5 or 3 inch floppies in 95-96 timeframe, so it was even more than a decade ago.
Even if I found any floppies of any kind, I don’t have hardware to read that stuff anymore.
Maybe libraries still do???
This is a very strong post.
Here's what I don't understand. kosta comes on the RF and tries to debate religion and morality and whatever else, but he does not share the common ground upon which the posters on this forum can debate or discuss the issues and come to logical deductions regarding the religious issues at hand. The common ground that is essential to a religious debate are:
1) The existence of God
2) The fact that God has revealed himself to man
3) That this God expects something from his creation
4) That God has given us scripture in order that we may learn of him and
5) That given the evidence of scripture and creation that we can come to a more complete knowledge and love of the God who created us.
Well kosta does not seem to believe in any of the foundational principles for a reasoned religious debate. God does not need to prove his existence. By our very existence he has proven it sufficiently to any who would care to use the powers of reason that God has given to us. God did not begin his scriptures by postulating his own existence. He expects when we pick up the scriptures that we must acknowledge his existence.
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God....
He exsists. Period. What follows Genesis 1:1 is what God has chosen to reveal to us about himself. If you can't get past Genesis 1:1, then you can't really debate religious topics. If you can't get past Genesis 1:1, then you shouldn't even bother to put your two cents worth in here on the Religion forum. It is impossible to debate theology with a person who denies the very existence of the Theos.
It WOULD be nice to have 2000 years of wisdom.
However, I don’t want to go back and repeat any lessons from 2 months ago, much less 2000 years worth!
Goodness.
I didn’t realize were were that close on such a perspective! LOL.
Not that I’m trying to embarrass you or anything.
LOL.
Persecution of believers in Christ's resurrection and His divinity is very real evidence of something. Let's briefly look at what it is evidence for.
When rulers demanded that believers deny their belief in Christ as Savior and Lord, and the penalty was death if they did not reject disabuse belief, that these same people were put on trial in some cases, and summarily slaughtered in other cases is indeed evidence that they believed in His resurrection, even unto their own death!
Since the Bible tells us that Jesus was seen by as many as 500 at one time following His resurrection, we may accept that many of these same witnesses were the victims of this deadly effort to get them to reject Him in the role He taught them He came for. Indeed, the witness testimony of perhaps most of these witnesses to the resurrected Lord were the evangelicals of that day, and were no doubt responsible for the 'conversion' of thousands, many of whom were then the persecuted as the years rolled on.
Taking just the twelve Apostles and later the 'born out of time' Apostle Paul, every one except John the Beloved died horrific deaths for their steadfast belief and spoken eyewitness testimonies!
It is one thing to doubt the relating of the events, but quite another thing to reject the eyewitness testimonies of those who were slaughtered for their steadfastness in holding to the truth of His resurrection!
Paul seemed to anticipate the determined rejection of eyewitness testimonies when he explained how he received the Good News, and how often he consulted with James, Peter, and John--all three direct eyewitnesses of the resurrection, and one, James, who was determined to not believe right up until the resurrection, because James the brother of Jesus was a devout Jew.
It may be convenient to reject the stories of the miracles performed at the hands of the Apostles following the Resurrection of Our Lord, but it is quite irrational to so steadfastly reject the eyewitness testimonies of the twelve who died painfully for not rejecting their memories of seeing Him after His crucifixion!
The deaths of so many martyrs is indeed extra-Biblical evidence of an extraordinary kind, Historically verified, and we may accept that many of these were in deed direct eyewitnesses to His resurrection! ... And there are in fact secular sources which confirm the ministry and Resurrection of Jesus, but I sense that kosta50 would reject even secular sources since they do not engender his personally determined disbelief.
Ping a lin a ling
That means we're both heretics. :-)
Asking for various things—including proof—in and of themselves
is quite comfortable enough.
I don’t know of any on this side of the issues who’s infuriated at all.
We may find contradictions and evident word choice and sentence structure presented attitudes outrageous . . . that doesn’t mean we allow such outrageousness to control our emotions.
We may also find brazen contradictions and irrationality pretending to be scientific linear logic to be outrageous. Again, that doesn’t mean we allow such to control our emotions.
Actually, a good percentage of us probably enjoy the challenge of dealing with such slippery duplicity.
However, the weightier issues are what is behind all the slipperiness; the contradictions; the inconsistencies; the seeming hostility toward God.
And, whether for you or a list of folks like you . . . is there any remedy? Those are interesting issues to try and tease out . . . whether from you as the handy current local example or with a list of others.
I still say, it appears to be grossly the case that you do not appear to have a great deal of insight into your own perspective’s contradictions etc. That’s rather troubling to those of us who care about you and others like you.
In any case . . . Que sera sera . . . Cheers.
I pray God gives you whatever set of experiences you might need to submit to Him wholeheartedly and unreservedly.
I wish I were more hopeful about that.
I think that’s a set of very apt and accurate conjectures on the matter.
Thx.
I think Calvinism also denies that
GOD BEING GOD
HAS THE CAPACITY
to capsulize a given . . . reality . . . in some dimensions of ‘unknown’ as a Father might play a game or charade with his children.
That God has the capacity to at all times know everything is a given . . .
I think it may be less of a given that God chooses to ‘consciously’ know all things about every thing to the nth degree 24/7 in all context about all components, facets, factors.
INDEED.
WELL PUT.
THX.
LOL.
What else is new.
Thanks for the PING
My French Huguenot ancestors who followed the teaching of Jean Chauvin had to flee for their lives into England ..
They gave up their lands and wealth rather than deny Jesus...
I can freely choose to rebel against God's command and intend evil toward God and God had foreordained that my evil action worked out for the good. My intentions are freely chosen and God uses those actions for a greater good. God foreordained the consequences to be good while I freely chose to inflict consequences that work to the evil. My intentions are different from what God ordained. How many Biblical examples would you like?
Amen! I love it, Dr. E. Fatalism has no true master, but Divine predestination does. And just as you say, the recoil away from God's loving predestination comes from man's desire to be in control. That was me and so I laugh at myself for pushing away from the very thing that benefited me and could comfort me MOST. I can see a reprobate being theoretically against predestination, but the saved should embrace it. There is no higher level of security. If the saved truly trust God, then they should WANT Calvinistic predestination to be true. :)
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