Sola Scriptura by A.A. Hodge (1823-1886)

PLEASE READ THE ARTICLE AND MEASURE THE INSIGHT TO THE WORD.

GOOD MORNING SAINTS!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1687523/posts

Thanks, but no thanks.

-Theo

Man, those Romans are touchy lately. Two caucuses in two days disrupted by the Holy Roman Empire...

Matthew 5:43"You have heard that it was said, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR (BF)and hate your enemy.'
44"But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
45so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
46"For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
47"If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
48"Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Our Father,

Please forgive these mistaken people, lost to your Word and teachings. Please lead them back to your way, and away from the world. Please let our hearts be softened so that we may ignore our own pride and teach them with the loving-kindness that your apostle Paul spoke of.

In the name of your Son, Jesus, in whom all our hope rests,
Amen

Define "Reformed".

http://www.apocalipsis.org/reformed.htm

Who gets to define what "reformed" is?

THE LINK I SENT HAS 95 ARTICLES,BOOKS, AND ESSAYS.

HERE IS THE LINK TO CALVIN COLLEGE E-LIBRARY,I BELIEVE THEIR ARE OVER 6000 LINKS.

http://www.ccel.org/index/author-A.html

CALL WHEN YOUR DONE READING.

This is a Well-Written and Well-Thought-Out Essay, Backed Up Masterfully by Scripture; Hodge did an Excellent Job Laying Out the Contrasts Between Protestant and Catholic Theology. Thank you for this Good Read, Brother Alpha!

So Calvin College defines who is "reformed?"

I was Doing a Search on the Reformation, and Stumbled Onto a Ludicrous Site that Attacks the Doctrines of the Reformation, and Even Attacks Pastor John, which is just Appalling. :( I Wrote them a Short E-Mail, Proclaiming Christ Alone as our Salvation, which they will Probably Not Answer. Some of the Things on the 'Net in the "Christian" Realm are Sure Awful. :(

YOU HAVE BEEN ON F.R FOR YEARS.
I WOULD THINK BY NOW YOU WOULD KNOW WHAT THE REFORMATION WAS.
WHAT IS THE POINT TO YOUR QUESTION?

This thread is designated a "Reformed Caucus" - do not challenge Reformed theology on this thread, it is closed - post challenges to open threads.

This thread is designated a "Reformed Caucus" - do not challenge Reformed theology on this thread, it is closed - post challenges to open threads.

The article appears to be a general protestant article on Sola Scriptura. I frankly would like to know who would be considered "reformed" so that they can participate. I consider myself reformed inasmuch as I subscribe to most of the points of the reformation particularly in regard to the five solas.

The reason I asked is that there are some who insist that only those who believe in particular election or particular atonement can be numbered among the "reformed." those are not included in the five solas, so I am not sure if adherence is required for this particular caucus.

Quite frankly I am not sure what the term means in today's lingo so I don't know whether or not I am invited to participate.

I WOULD THINK BY NOW YOU WOULD KNOW WHAT THE REFORMATION WAS.

Arminius was a reformer.

DID HE BELIEVE SOLA SCRIPTURA?

SINCE THAT IS WHAT THE THREAD CONCERNS,HAVE YOU MADE YOUR POINT?

"Arminius was a reformer". Maybe. Or maybe he had a different agenda:

Planting Poison in the Well – Jacobus Arminius.

The Counter-Reformation was in full swing. Jesuit spies and agents began to infiltrate Protestant schools, and actually landed on the coast of the United States in the 1530’s and the 1540’s. In order to defend the Romanist religion, as well as the Pope (who Catholics are taught is actually “Christ on earth”), the Jesuits began their war plan for a battle on many fronts, but a full attack on the Doctrines of Grace would be necessary if Rome was to ever prevail. In 1560, unknown to the Jesuits, one of their greatest proponents was to be born in Holland. His name was James Harmenszoon, but he would come to be known as Jacobus Arminius.

Arminius lost his family during a war with the Spanish in 1575. As a fifteen year old orphan, he entered the University of Leyden, and under scholarship by the government of the City of Amsterdam, he was sent to the Theological school in Geneva for studies at the feet of the great reformers. At Geneva, Arminius studied under a professor named Theodore Beza, the man who had assumed the leadership role of the Protestant movement in Switzerland from John Calvin. For some reason that seems to be lost to history, Arminius did not like Beza, and found his forceful defense of the Doctrines of Grace to be harsh and unyielding.

Here is where our mystery gets increasingly interesting. Back in Amsterdam there was a movement of “counter-reformation” begun supposedly by a rich merchant named Dirck Coornhert. Coornhert was a dutch humanist who was enamored with the teachings of the Catholic humanist Erasmus and a Spanish Jesuit monk named Luis de Molina. Coornhert disdained the reformation teachings on Grace, and sought to confront them wherever he found them. Coornhert had read with growing affections the teachings of de Molina regarding Free Will and Predestination. The Jesuits had hit on a brilliant way of dismantling the debate, they would preach that BOTH were true, and that a good God who was truly sovereign surely might have given his creations a freedom of the will in order to allow them to choose to be saved. Luis de Molina was creating a doctrine that would eventually be called Media Scientia or “Middle-Knowledge”. Eventually this heresy would be called Molinism. In an article on Luis de Molina entitled, Contending for the Faith, Rev. Bernard Woudenberg said of de Molina, “Being a Romanist, he was forced to honor the theology of Thomas Aquinas with its acceptance of divine sovereignty, but at the same time, as a Jesuit, he was committed to defending the papacy against the growing influences of Calvinism. And so de Molina set forth to steer between these by proposing his original and highly influential concept of the media scientia, or "middle- knowledge." In this he proposed that “between God's knowledge of the cause and effect relations which He had implanted in the universe, and that of divine freedom whereby He remains free at any time to do what He wills, there is an area of middle-knowledge which God provides for man in which man is granted freedom to do whatever he chooses without outside necessity or predetermination of any kind.” The Hegelian dialectic was in full force. The Catholic lie on justification had been countered by the true doctrine of Salvation by Grace through faith, so an evil “compromise” was now offered to the reformed churches, and by deceit and subterfuge, the compromise would eventually become the predominant teachings in all the churches of the world.

Back in Geneva, Theodore Beza at this time had reason to suspect that his student Jacobus Arminius was not what he proposed to be. Questions were being asked about comments that Arminius was making to fellow students, and there were still questions about his support from the rich, aristocratic merchants of Holland. Apparently Arminius was able to lie well enough to get past Beza’s questioning, a skill that would come in handy years later when he would be looking for a teaching job in Amsterdam. Beza then asked Arminius to answer and refute the teachings of Dirck Coornhert. Although Arminius completed the task, he later claimed to be convinced by Coornhert’s arguments, and he became ardently opposed to the teachings of the reformers. In 1586, Arminius was released from Geneva, but instead of heading back to Amsterdam where he was under contract to the City to labor in order to pay back his tuition, he headed to Rome for a “vacation”.

Generally, most Calvinists believe that it was during this time in Rome that Arminius was recruited by the Jesuits to their point of view. That allegation cannot be proven, and I believe that there is enough other evidence that Arminius was compromised long before his pilgrimage to Rome. By this time, he had become a private student of the writings of de Molina, and in 1588, the same year in which Arminius was ordained a minister (by the endorsement of Beza), de Molina published his treatise on the will entitled A Reconciliation of Free Choice with the Gifts of Grace, Divine Foreknowledge, Providence, Predestination and Reprobation. What the Jesuits were loathe to admit, was that Molinism was nothing more than a rebirth of the ancient Pelagianism heresy, although it actually more easily likened to “Semi-Pelagianism” which contends that man cannot be saved apart from God's grace; however, fallen man must cooperate and assent to God's grace before he will be saved. The Jesuits recognized that the Protestants would never embrace the teachings of a Catholic Spanish monk, so they capitalized on the growing and open debates taking place within Protestantism. Molinism would be recast as Arminianism, and eventually, it would take over the ecclesiastical world. A famous quote from de Molina eerily fortells of the Jesuit lie that proceeds from the mouths of “evangelical” leaders today: “all human beings are endowed with equal and sufficient divine grace without distinction as to their individual merits, and that salvation depends on the sinner's willingness to receive grace”. The Catholics say of Molinism: “Molinism is an influential system within Catholic theology for reconciling human free choice with God's grace, providence, foreknowledge and predestination. Originating within the Society of Jesus in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it encountered stiff opposition from Bañezian Thomists and from the self-styled Augustinian disciples of Michael Baius and Cornelius Jansen.” - Alfred J. Freddoso, Catholic Professor at Notre Dame

Upon returning to Amsterdam in 1590, Arminius married the daughter of one of Holland’s wealthiest aristocrats. To see how far Jacobus had fallen from his original reformed ideals, we note that in 1591, he was hired by his wealthy benefactors to draw up a church order that would subordinate the church to a place of dependence and obedience to the state. That particular belief is now the most prevalent abuse of both Christians and the scriptures taught in “churches” today. The policy of abusing Romans 13 for the purposes of enslaving Christians to tyrannical civil magistrates had found a hero in Jacobus Arminius. The Catholic church, even today, admires Arminius. Here is what it says about him in the Catholic Encyclopedia: A leader was sure to rise from the Calvinistic ranks who should point out the baneful corollaries of the Genevan creed, and be listened to. Such a leader was Jacobus Arminius (Jakob Hermanzoon), professor at the University of Leyden.” – Catholic Encyclopedia

In the early 1590’s, Arminius had become an acquaintance and some would say an admirer of a Jesuit named Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. Bellarmine was engaged in one of the other battlefronts of the war on the Reformation. At the time, one of the biggest battlefields for the Jesuit army was in the area of eschatology. As Christians around the world began to read the Bible for themselves, it became evident to many of them that the Catholic Church figured prominently in prophecy. The teaching that the “Mystery, Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots” of Revelation 17:5 was actually the papist Church of Rome was gaining steam. In 1590, a Jesuit named Francisco Ribera had begun to write commentaries explaining away those scriptures that plainly taught of the Catholic Church as an element of the Anti-Christ system. Specifically, Ribera wrote a commentary in 1590 that placed a whole new “spin” on Daniel 9:27. Ribera became the first theologian in over 1500 years to teach that the “he” in Daniel 9:27 who confirmed the covenant and put an end to sacrifice was actually “antichrist” and not the Messiah. It had been the uniform teaching of the church since the death of Christ that the “he” who had put an end to all sacrifices on the Cross was Jesus Christ. But the Jesuits needed to create a NEW antichrist, one that was not so easily identified with Rome. By creating the concept of a seven year tribulation, transported way into the future, Ribera was able to divert attention from the most blatant antichrist that had his seat in Rome. Ribera’s ideas were taken and expanded by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine who blatantly taught that Paul, John and Daniel had prophesied nothing whatsoever concerning Rome. We might point out that Bellarmine had a tendency to be famously wrong. It was Cardinal Bellarmine who, as inquisitor, threatened Galileo so convincingly that the scientist recanted of his findings that the earth actually moved around the sun! Bellarmine was subsequently declared a “saint” by the Roman Church.

Stay with us, because this mystery splits off in various and interesting directions.

In the late 1590’s Jacobus Arminius was back in Amsterdam, teaching his Pelagian/Molinist lies. Enough questions had been brought forth concerning his anti-Grace teachings, that a strict Calvinist by the name of Franciscus Gomarus was called upon to interview Arminius to test his orthodoxy. Arminius was applying for a professorship in Theology at the University of Leyden, and the occasion of his job interview would allow his belief system also to be tested. Apparently, Arminius had either become so skilled a liar or his skills in evasion and escape had become so attuned by this point, that he passed the test with flying colors. The question of why Beza and Gomarus, both strict Grace and Election adherents, had both approved of Arminius is unclear, but both were likely blinded by their belief in honor and integrity amongst theologians. During a time when men were willing to die for their faith, the thought that someone would patently lie about his beliefs in order to receive promotions and to avoid detection would have been far from the minds of these two reformers. But lying and deceit were well within the oath and charter of the Jesuits. We will see that these traits are also widely accepted by the intellectual heirs of Jacobus Arminius.

Arminius died in 1609, long before the upheavals caused by his teachings would erupt in full force. In 1610, the disciples of Arminius signed a “Remonstrance” or a petition to the government for protection of their Arminian views. In their Remonstrance, the Arminians put forth their theology finally for the entire world to see. It existed of five main points:

Conditional election. The Remonstrants held to the Molinist view of Middle-Knowledge. Election was conditional on both God’s foreknowledge, and the free will of humans.
Universal atonement. The Remonstrants held to the Jesuit/Molinist view on the atonement, as pushed by the Catholics in the Council of Trent. The redemptive blood of Jesus Christ was available to all mankind, and God had not applied or given this atonement to any specific “elect”.
Total depravity. The Remonstrants held on to the view of original sin, but believed that since humans were HUMANS, and not sticks or plants, there was enough human left in them to enable them to believe on Christ, or reject Him. In effect, humans were not TOTALLY depraved.
Sufficient but resistible grace. The Remonstrants believed that Grace was sufficient to save, but that this Grace could be resisted by man. Thereby man could thwart the will of God (which evidently was to save ALL men) by refusing to be saved.
Uncertainty about the perseverance of the saints. The Remonstrants believed that a truly born-again believer could cast of that Grace by certain behavior and subsequently go to Hell.
I will tell you that what you have just read is the common teaching of the Protestant churches throughout the world, with very few exceptions.

I will tell you that what you have just read is the common teaching of the Protestant churches throughout the world, with very few exceptions. I will also tell you that these beliefs, commonly called “Arminian”, are cogent, logical and ultimately WRONG. I say that they are cogent and logical in order to tell you that the only thing WORSE than the Arminian viewpoint, is any viewpoint that attempts to COMPROMISE between these points and the Doctrines of Grace as taught in the Bible. Challenges to the Doctrines of Grace are usually predicated by the attempt to label them as “Calvinism”, although Calvin AND Arminius were gone by the time this Remonstrance was published. What the enemies of Grace term as “Calvinism” or now the more hated “Hyper-Calvinism” was actually just the Gospel response to the Remonstrance of 1610! It is as if a man named Gomer created a new doctrine called GOMERISM, in which he proposed that we all evolved slowly from dirt particles on the eyelids of gnats. If another man named Goober published a biblical challenge to this stupid doctrine, it is as if folks ran about for another 400 years preaching against Gooberism (or worse, Hyper-Gooberism) as a contrivance of that heretic Goober!

In 1611, the true preachers of the Gospel answered with the Contra-Remonstrance of 1611. Robert Godfrey writes, “It it surely ironic that through the centuries there has been so much talk of the ‘five points of Calvinism’ when in fact Calvinists did not originate a discussion of five points. Indeed Calvinism has never been summarized in five points. Calvinism has only offered five responses to the five errors of Arminianism.”

Let us return to our mystery.

The Jesuits were not done with their work. Although they had planted the seeds of their papal tares in the Lords ground, they had not yet seen their crop come to fruition. In the 1700’s, the doctrine of Arminianism would be fully embraced and rapidly distributed by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Wesley wrote a defense of Arminianism entitled, “What is an Arminian”. The folly of Arminianism was also challenged, and rightly so, by that Great Christian thinker Jonathan Edwards, who published his treatise “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in 1741, a sermon that profoundly trounced the foolishness of Arminian doctrine. Edwards became president of Princeton in 1758, but “mysteriously” died of a smallpox vaccine within weeks (see the oath of the Jesuit above).

In 1826 Dr. Samuel Maitland (librarian for the Archbishop of Canterbury) wrote a book attacking the Reformation. In it, he used the Jesuit Francisco Ribera’s NEW interpretation of Daniel 9:27 in order to defend the Papacy.

In the 1830’s two movements erupted that would play an important part in the unfolding mystery. One was the “Oxford Movement”. In 1850 John Henry Newman wrote his “Letter on Anglican Difficulties”. In it he revealed that the “Oxford Movement” of which he was a part, had as its goal to finally absorb “the various English denominations and parties” back into the Church of Rome. After publishing a pamphlet endorsing the Jesuit view of Daniel 9:27, Newman joined the Catholic Church and eventually became a Cardinal. The second movement that burgeoned at the time was one led by John Nelson Darby, called the “Plymouth Brethren”.

At about the same time, there appeared a Scottish Presbyterian minister named Edward Irving (the acknowledged forerunner of both the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements). Irving was pastoring the huge Chalcedonian Chapel in London. He had readily accepted the Jesuit prophetic teachings on Daniel 9:27 proposed by Maitland, and the Jesuits Bellarmine and Ribera. Irving began to teach the unique idea of a two-phase return of Christ, the first phase being a secret rapture prior to the rise of the Antichrist. It is rumored that Irving received this prophetic “revelation” when it was given in a vision to a young Scottish girl named Margaret McDonald. McDonald’s prophetic revelation vision is eerily similar to the way that Ignatius Loyola received his vision of warfare against the Protestants.

One of the leaders of the Plymouth Brethren in Plymouth England was a lawyer named John Nelson Darby. Darby became the “Father of Dispensationalism”, and used the teachings on Daniel 9 by the Jesuits Ribera and Bellarmine as the foundation of his rapture teaching. Darby is a great subject in our study of that poison in the well. Although Darby taught many great things (he insisted on the infallibility of the Bible, and voiced his opposition to the Catholic Church as well as the formalism and manipulation in the Protestant Churches), he had consumed the Jesuit bait, and in turn, he became the bait that would eventually ensnare most of the “Christian” world. Darby visited America 6 times in the late 1800’s and by the close of that century, most of the denominations had imbibed from the same poisonous Jesuit well.

GOOD READ,DO YOU HAVE A LINK?

TRY THIS BOOK:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0595252974/sr=1-3/qid=1156774502/ref=sr_oe_3_1/002-8726152-3824807?ie=UTF8&s=books

DID {ARMINIUS] BELIEVE SOLA SCRIPTURA?

Yep.

SINCE THAT IS WHAT THE THREAD CONCERNS,HAVE YOU MADE YOUR POINT?

I'm just wondering if I'm qualified or otherwise permitted to make any comments on this article.

I'm thinking that a starting point for what "reformed" means is the original Augsburg Confession penned by Luther, read by the princes, and heard by the emperor.

Anyone have a copy of the original?

This is a reformed caucus thread, and I think what alpha really meant was a "grpl" thread or a "dort" thread, or something like that. I don't say it disparagingly. The Reformation had many branches, and maybe the thing that held it together was "sola scriptura." Their very lives depended on their "perfect" reading and interpreting of the scriptures that had been put into the language of the people.

Now, it strikes me that DrE told me that Martin Luther was both reformed and that he and Calvin might not be more than a pinch different if at all. Maybe she's right. I am now convinced, though, from my reading of Luther that he didn't consider discussion of predestination to be a critical pursuit.

He had a tough life and deserves a lot of credit for his courage.