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 ...
Okay, but what good is preaching if God doesn't give you the ears to hear? Clearly preaching is not something that determines your salavtion.
Now I'm aware you might very well respond that the Scripture I offer constitutes no real proof of anything
No need for that. I was simply inquiring into the Calvinist theology, not biblical veracity. Thank you for your input.
I think if it was empty then the authorities would either come to worship him or would mount a massive man hunt.
They did both.
1. The persecutions and the house-to-house arrests.
2. The stole the body story
3. Many became believers
LOL!
(Presbyterian baptism?) :>)
Actually if the duck is Servetus, then that must be a Unitarian Baptism.
kosta: how do you know your God is the true God and theirs is not?
Spirited: Paul tells us that there are only two foundations for all religions and/or belief systems. He defines them like this: either you will worship and serve (mindless) nature or you will worship and serve the (personal, living, rational) Creator of nature.
Under the first heading falls all nature religions and practices such as witchcraft, divination, alchemy, necromancy, Hermeticism, theosophy, animism, astrology, shamanism, the Ancient Mystery religions, atheist Buddhism, atheist materialism (reinvented animism), green environmentalism and New Age (animism, spiritism, brazen satanism, occult).
Common to all of these systems, whether religious or slyly defined as science, is the denial the living, personal Creator and the denial of being. Being-—mankind’s individual psychic endowments—have been transferred to nature, whether it be called Gaia, Elan Vitale, the Force, absolute spirit, atheist-evolutionism, omnipotent chance and natural selection, the sun, moon, stars (astrology), memes, thinking matter, and so forth. In this view, man is merely a part of mindless nature. And as Herme’s magic formula says: As above so below. This means that if ‘above’ is mindless nature, then below is mindless man.
It is not that the personal, rational, living Creator is ‘our God,’ as you mistakenly framed the issue. It is that though He is the Creator of everything and everyone, from the very beginning, many have chosen to reject Him.
This means that from the beginning, there have always been two general categories of men: those who willingly seek Truth, to which they will submit, and those who willfully choose not to, for they elevate ‘autonomous self’ above all. These two categories can be further characterized like this: Those who seek the living, personal Creator and those who feel more comfortable speaking of impersonal, irrational energies, forces, and spirit/soul.
The Christians taking part in this Great Debate are seekers of Truth, hence seekers of the living, personal Creator. He, and He alone do we worship and serve.
All others seek not Truth but self-delusion and personal power. In this category are for example, Nimrod, the Pharoahs, Caligula, Nero, Hegel, Comte, Nechaev, Bakunin, Darwin, Marx, Engels, Hitler, Jung, Mao, Che, Castro and the legions who have essentially worshipped and served them.
Tell me, since you are so smart, is that according to his will, or against it?
According to whom? The unbiased, fair and balanced Gospel stories?
You left out Obama.
Is there even one verse of scripture in the entire Bible which you accept as "truth"?
How many?
I hope you realize that even when Christianity became the official state religion some 300 years later it wasn't because of mass numbers but because of Constantine's superstition.
The ones that can be verified on more than "faith alone."
How about an example? Is there one?
How about we start at the beginning?
Genesis 1:1. Is that verse true?
Can't think of any. Can you?
Let me ask you this kosta. The Bible says that in order to be saved you must have Faith. Apparently you don’t accept anything on faith, so would you agree that if what the bible says about faith is true, i.e., that it is a necessary element in your salvation, that you are NOT saved?
All of the data is part of the written record.
House to house searches, Kosta, when they could have just arrested them at the Temple. Think about it.
Just out of curiosity, WHY ON EARTH do you present yourself as a believer of the Orthodox Church persuasion???? This is not a hostile question. I’ve never been hostile to you, so you know that to be true.
How many of the leadership believed that the body was available for inspection or was not available? I’m not sure of your question.
“Actually if the duck is Servetus, then that must be a Unitarian Baptism.”
Three women die together in an accident and go to heaven. When they get there, St. Peter says, “We only have one rule here in heaven: don’t step on the ducks!”
So they enter heaven, and sure enough, there are ducks all over the place. It is almost impossible not to step on a duck, and although they try their best to avoid them, the first woman accidentally steps on one. Along comes St. Peter with the ugliest man she ever saw. St. Peter chains them together and says, “Your punishment for stepping on a duck is to spend eternity chained to this ugly man!”
The next day, the second woman steps accidentally on a duck and along comes St. Peter, who doesn’t miss a thing. With him is another extremely ugly man. He chains them together with the same admonishment as for the first woman.
The third woman has observed all this and, not wanting to be chained for all eternity to an ugly man, is very, very careful where she steps.She manages to go months without stepping on any ducks, but one day St. Peter comes up to her with the most handsome man she has ever laid eyes on ... very tall, long eyelashes, muscular, and thin. St. Peter chains them together without saying a word.
The happy woman says, “I wonder what I did to deserve being chained to you for all of eternity?” The guy says, “I don’t know about you, but I stepped on a duck!”
Saved from what?
Asking for proof is not denying God. Thomas doubted and he wasn't condemned for it. So far I have been told by ordinary human beings that the Bible is true. Why should I believe them?
Again, if the body mysteriously disappeared on the third day, that would have been major news considering that Jesus was allegedly executed for claiming to be the Son of God.
However, no extra biblical sources record anything of the sort; just the biased, not fair and balanced, Gospels with a a clear agenda, some 30-50 years later, c. 70-80 AD.
Notice that the earliest writer, Paul, whose letters span 40-60 AD, makes no mention of the empty tomb.
If you think about it, if the resurrected Christ walked through the walls, why was it necessary to move the stone at the tomb? For effect? As a proof? Imagine that! Wouldn't just Christ's appearance before the apostles be proof enough?
If you read Matthew 28:17, apparently not.
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