Hey, be a good little mormon and maybe moroni-claus will bring you the book:
Published by the NY Times no doubt.
Posted on 12/10/2003 4:11:16 AM PST by drstevej
Good response.
PING to self-search for forthcoming commentary (now that the DSL connections here in the Keys are, after 2 days, apparently working again).
Thanks, OP
What does it take to affirm one is a Calvinist? I'm so confident of my election I call myself a saint. That I take no chances by availing myself of the sacraments of the apostolic church speaks not to a lack of faith but to an innate conservatism. Do I qualify?
I don't suppose you have a Bible verse that states that God subscribes to the theology of John Calvin? I thought not.
Let us assume that for purposes of God will being done on earth as it is in heaven, that God is a "Calvinist." Well if it is true that God is a Calvinist, he has created man to be an Arminian inasmuch as he accomplishes his will through the limited free will he has freely granted to us. The exercise of our free will certainly does not interfere with the exercise of God divine will, so there is no contradiction to God granting free will to man and God's perfect will being accomplished in that grant.
Here is an interesting explanation of the process by Charles Sebold:
"Foreknowledge" is dealt with in Romans 9. Christianity has filled its doctrinal and theological textbooks with discussions about Calvinism vs. Arminianism, about whether people have free will or not. The Jewish answer starts with Isaiah 55:8-11:
Is. 55:8-11: "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it."
The implication here is that the Lord's frame of reference is different enough from our own that the way in which He sees His will being carried out will be different from the way that we see it take place. What He wants will take place, and we will not understand how it happens. I have sometimes summarized this idea irreverently in the sentence "God is a Calvinist, and human beings are Arminians." That is, we have free will within the confines of our understanding, but beyond this world and the limited human perspective, God is ultimately in control of everything. This is only a paradox if you do not believe that God's "ways" and "thoughts" are higher than ours, that is, beyond our understanding. People who persist in thinking that God's logic and conceptual framework are going to be identical to ours will not be able to get past this idea, which is paradoxical to our way of thinking. One way to start to open your mind to this idea is to realize that your free will is never absolute. I could will myself to fly like Superman, or to own a Cadillac SUV, but my circumstances (gravity, my checkbook balance) do not permit my will to be in any way possible. My will is limited to the reality of my situation. Now, some of these circumstances could change; if I had made different choices in my life, I might have enough in my checking account now to buy a Cadillac. But other things will never change; I will not be able to leave the ground bodily under my own power in my lifetime. So, I am partially responsible for some of the latitude of my free will, but not all of it; I could never have created the universe or designed natural law in such a way to allow myself to fly. Even the question of whether I could have saved enough money to buy a Cadillac could be moot, because no matter how hard some people try, they will never achieve certain goals, through no fault of their own. Ultimately everybody's free will is bounded by their situation in life, over which they will never have complete control. God, having created the universe and knowing the future of every process He set in motion, made choices to allow everything to take place; it is only in our world that free will means anything. The other side of the coin is this: to us that free will is ultimately very important. Our lack of perspective causes our choices to be the only thing determining our salvation or ultimate rejection of God, hence the numerous injunctions in Scripture to obedience, to choosing life over death and blessing over curse.
If you want to deny God's Sovereignty with legalistic manipulations of God's Word, have at it. You can read your own "implications" into scripture that are clearly not scriptural, but I will follow the letter of God's word.
BTW, have you ever stopped to think that man's way, which for the sake of argument, I will call Armininism, is not God's way? Have you ever stopped to think that man's sense of "fair" and "free will" are not God's way? That is what I see in your quoted verse. God runs creation, not you or I.
Your #624: the Swarm uses the term "Calvinism" in a different way than the theology of John Calvin. We use the term Calvinism to describe God's Sovereignty as laid out in Scripture from Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 22:21.
(Editing out blasphemy and the ill-advised raising of private interpretations above Scripture, we have:)
God is God.
The Bible is the Word of God.
Just ran into this little gem. Hopefully, you were trying to be humorous, but it is not a joking matter. Given the abyss of natural-man behavior into which you professing Christians descend, I take it rather seriously.
To me, this represents the very depths of apostasy, putting people to death because they don't believe the "right thing", an attempt by tyrants, centuries ago, to impose their "orthodoxy" upon a cowering public, on pain of death at the stake. Those tyrants were in theory professing Christians, but apostates in fact.
They put Bible-believers to death because they would not adopt uninspired "orthodox" man-made creeds. Such creeds are an abomination in the sight of God, because they were used to put people to death who believed the Bible instead of those creeds, and are still used today in failed attempts to exclude people from Christianity and salvation.
(Notice that I didn't name any names. My purpose is to talk about behavior.)
It is too bad that spirit of apostasy and persecution still lives today, or I would not need to bring it up. I consider it my duty to speak out against it whenever I run across it.
Thank goodness for our US Constitution.
You were saying?
Until you work with your potentates in Utah to make reparations and a formal apology admitting the mormon responsibility for this crime against God, I don't want to hear your self-rightous rants.
A Utah Massacre and Mormon Memory
New York Times/May 24, 2003
By Sally Denton
Santa Fe, N.M. -- As families tramp all over the country this summer, visiting historic sites, there's one spot - Mountain Meadows in southwestern Utah - that won't be on many itineraries.
Mountain Meadows, a two-hour drive from one of the state's popular tourist destinations, Zion National Park, is the site of what the historian Geoffrey Ward has called "the most hideous example of the human cost exacted by religious fanaticism in American history until 9/11." And while it might not be a major tourist destination, for a century and a half the massacre at Mountain Meadows has been the focus of passionate debate among Mormons and the people of Utah. It is a debate that cuts to the core of the basic tenets of Mormonism. This, the darkest stain on the history of the religion, is a bitter reality and challenging predicament for a modern Mormon Church struggling to shed its extremist history.
On Sept. 11, 1857, in a meadow in southwestern Utah, a militia of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, attacked a wagon train of Arkansas families bound for California. After a five-day siege, the militia persuaded the families to surrender under a flag of truce and a pledge of safe passage. Then, in the worst butchery of white pioneers by other white pioneers in the entire colonization of America, approximately 140 men, women and children were slaughtered. Only 17 children under the age of 8 - the age of innocence in the Mormon faith - were spared.
After the massacre, the church first claimed that local Paiute Indians were responsible, but as evidence of Mormon involvement mounted, it placed the sole blame for the killings on John D. Lee, a militia member and a Mormon zealot who was also the adopted son of the prophet Brigham Young. After nearly two decades, as part of a deal for statehood, Lee was executed by a firing squad in 1877. The church has been reluctant to assume responsibility - labelling Lee a renegade - but several historians, including some who are Mormon, believe that church leaders, though never prosecuted, ordered the massacre.
Do you suppose they were needing new wives?
I agree that it's biased 8o), and yes, it is biased.
Hey, be a good little mormon and maybe moroni-claus will bring you the book:
Published by the NY Times no doubt.
Official Seal of the GRPL
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