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 ...
Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they [also] which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. - Revelation 1:7
I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth [in] righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. - Isaiah 45:23
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of [things] in heaven, and [things] in earth, and [things] under the earth; And [that] every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ [is] Lord, to the glory of God the Father. - Philippians 2:10-11
The Potter does not tell us why He chooses to form some lumps of clay into beautiful vases and others into ashtrays. What He DOES tell us is THAT He chose some, but not all. Scripture is crystal clear that not all are God's children.
I could never be a Calvinist because that would mean I was accusing God of being the author and cause of all evil and sin.
In order to be a Calvinist you would have to REJECT the idea that God is the author of sin. It sounds like that would be easy for you. :) God does not exert any force or power upon a person to cause him to commit any particular or general sin. However, I do not mean to say that sin occurs randomly. God has control over all sin that occurs, although He does not author it.
I will not accuse God of sinning through me when I know that I was given free will and am responsible for my own actions.
Calvinism says that God never sins in His own right or through anyone else. Calvinism also says that you are indeed responsible for your own sins.
If Calvinism is true, then God is evil.
No, if Calvinism is true, then men are evil and God is sovereign.
Thankfully, God is good and true and Calvinism is just another lie.
Regardless of what your understanding of Calvinism is, I am thankful that we can agree that God is good and true.
Thank you very much. :)
I like it so much I’ve just added it to my homepage. Thanks again.
snip: evidently we are supposed to submit ourselves, not to God, but to the self-selected “anointed ones.”
Spirited: That is the definition of the Gnostic. Irenaeus described them as the ‘lawless ones.’ They acknowledged no ‘law’ but their own, no ‘truth’ but their own.
Gnosticism is truly the
‘demonic inversion’: Lucifer over God the Father, death over life, immoralism over morality, lie over truth, Cain over Abel, Judas over Jesus Christ, androgyny over male-female sex norms, chaos over order, fantasy over reality.
Not surprisingly, Gnostics were the first Progressive Liberals and fellow travelers such as the Bolsheviks.
They are the ‘systems builders’ of second realities.
PLENTY OF TRUTH in your well put assertions.
Indeed!
Care to name which Bolsheviks were Gnostcis?
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