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To: Spacewalker
Too often, some dispensationalists and fundamentalists have wrongly smeared Calvinism and its belief in covenant theology, which they call replacement theology, as being anti-Semitic. Certain authors, such as Dave Hunt and Hal Lindsay, have accused covenantal theology as contributing to the Holocaust (ignoring the fact that Hitler and his henchmen were pagans who knew how to throw out Christian sounding language, as Bill and Hillary do today).

Calvinists have had a long history of friendship towards Jews. The Calvinist Netherlands took in many Sephardic Jewish refugees, and the first Jewish settlement in America was in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, now New York. During the English Civil War, the Anglican Cavaliers accused their Puritan Roundhead opponents of knowing the geography of the Holy land better than that of Britain. When Cromwell became Lord Protector after the Puritan victory, he permitted Jews to return England, from where they had expelled over three centuries earlier. Both Britain and many American colonies granted Jews full civil rights before Catholics received them. New York City had an operating synagogue for over a century before there was an open Catholic church. Dutch and German Reformed believers and English, Scottish, and American Presbyterians and Puritans gave their children Old Testament names.

Where Hunt and Lindsay err is in their projection of the "blood libel" against the Jews characteristic of some elements of Catholicism (nowadays confined to the anti-Vatican II traditionalists) or Luther's anti-Semitic rantings onto covenant theology. As the article attached to this thread explains, Calvin's emphasis on total depravity and the sovereignty of God took away the medieval emphasis on scapegoating the Jews for the death of Christ. Covenantal theology actually creates a greater understanding of the role of Christians as a people set apart from the world, as the Jews were. The writings of the Puritans, Presbyterians, and the Huguenots provide ample evidence of the self-identification with the Jews.

15 posted on 11/21/2006 5:50:34 AM PST by Wallace T.
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To: Wallace T.

I think this article makes the difference between Lutherian and Calvinist theology very well...

I will say I am very partial to the Calvinists: they saved the life of my beloved uncle by taking him from the south of France to Switzerland during WWII. When it was time to be counted, they were! While the majority of French people were joining Pétain and the Nasis, the Huguenots didn't...


16 posted on 11/21/2006 9:19:10 AM PST by Spacewalker
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