Posted on 08/30/2004 7:37:41 PM PDT by Nevski
From "Orthodoxy":
"The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny bit is infinitely circular. But there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base and slavish eternity. *It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists of to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himself.*"
"This chapter is purely practical and is concerned with what actually is the chief mark and element of insanity; we may say in summary that it is reason used without root, reason in the void. The man who begins to think without the proper first principles goes mad; he begins to think at the wrong end. And for the rest of these pages we have to try and discover what is the right end. But we may ask in conclusion, if this be what drives men mad, what is it that keeps them sane? By the end of this book I hope to give a definite, some will think a far too definite, answer. But for the moment it is possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching what in actual human history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say "if you please" to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. *As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.*"
Commentary at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9094/againstcalvinism.html
Against Calvinism
A critique of the greatest heresy.
"When tallying who the greatest heretic in Christian history might be, or at least, the greatest heretical doctrine, there are certainly a few sterling examples. Some might start with Saint Paul himself, oft cited as the originator of Christianity. It was Paul who, with his scholarly Jewish mind and particular spiritual vexations that turned the experience of Christ into a full religion. But I think one needs to better understand Paul's context to know his motivations and to read his works effectively and fruitfully. . . ."
"If I were obligated to pick one, which I guess in truth is presumptuous of me, then I would have to pick John Calvin. The influence of his life - from French lawyer to Reformation theologian to facist Genevan politician - may not have been so great. But the reverberations from his theology echo through history to our present state where Christianity may be entirely subsumed by his spiritual heirs (or "errs", as the case may be)."
"Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Calvin is that he almost got it right. He understood, correctly, that because of sin and human finitude, we cannot be active agents in our own salvation. The only active agent is God Himself, calling us through grace to be united to Him. God chooses to save us, we do not save ourselves by works or choices."
"Unfortunately, Calvin treats the subject the only way, I suppose, a lawyer could treat the subject. Martin Luther, who had the roughly same idea about salvation, was an Augustinian monk and therefore, rather than being true Reformation thinker, was much closer to Mediaeval ideas about God and spirituality. The Mediaeval period was one motivated very much by internal spiritual experience: the personal experiene of the Divine that lead one to internal transformation. In touch personally and intimately with God, the supreme Love of God becomes very clear. Indeed, Love becomes understood not merely as an attribute of God, but as a synonym for God."
"Calvin is very much a Reformation thinker, however. When the Black Death ended the Mediaeval era, the intimacy of God seemed very far off. As a reaction, society founded the Modern era, based on the principle of externality... Internal experience did not save people from the plague, so they instead sought to understand all the forces outside themselves, pursuing external knowledge. The promise of the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment was that through external knowledge, we could gain control over the forces affecting us. Indeed, the last 600 years of civilization have been naught but an immature knee-jerk reaction to the Black Death."
"The Reformation was not so certain that we could obtain control. It did, however, maintain the emphasis on external knowledge. God was just as far off for the Reformers as He was for the Scientific Revolutionaries. Luther's great objection was to any form of righteousness, such as the sale of indulgences, that did not lead to internal change and intimacy with God. Calvin responded that your internal state is irrelevant. His objection was to what he perceived to be a misinterpreted set of rules."
"Let a lawyer interpret Scripture and this is what you get. Rather than view Scripture as testimony to the faith of those that had gone on before us, the love affair of these writers with the Word, Calvin viewed Scripture as a legal document in need of proper interpretation. This legalistic approach further infects his theology: just as the Bible is a legal codebook, God is a transcendent Judge, with Whom and regarding Whom Love has no meaning."
"Calvin's great heresy, then, is divesting God of Love. In the entirety of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, the word "love" only appears twice, and both times it is in reference to the love we owe God. Without Love, Calvin reduces God to brute power concepts and legalistic approaches."
"God as the active agent in salvation ceases to be the transendent Being of passionate love for humanity, abiding patiently with each person until they eventually find their solace in Him... Instead, He is replaced by a version of Himself that chooses who is saved and who is damned without rhyme or reason except to exert His own power. Everything is oriented towards God's glory, His every action to assert His glory, our every religious devotion to praise that glory. He is an egotistical God, absolutely corrupted by His own absolute power."
"Unfortunately, the reaction of Christianity to Calvin was disasterously wrong-headed. What ended up happening with the Evangelical movement was the dismissal of those parts that Calvin actually got right and the retention of that which he got wrong. The Evangelicals insisted, as they do to this day, that humans are the only active agents in salvation. God has nothing to do with it, but instead, one is saved by "making a decision for Christ". They sought in this Decision Theology a gracious escape from Calvin's loveless God of arbitrary damnation."
"But because these reactionaries were also products of the Modern era, they kept the emphasis on external knowledge. They still insist upon reading Scripture as a legal codebook in need of proper interpretation and therefore continue to view God as an essentially loveless Judge. God's Love, once exaulted by mystics and theologians as God's primary and defining characteristic, has been reduced to subservience to God's Justice. Theirs is a God who imposes punishment upon people for breaking His rules, and Love once again has been subordinated and effectively eliminated as a characteristic of God's at all."
"In many Evangelical minds, God's Love is expressed by His desire to committ violence against us. Yet it is also expressed by God providing the legal loophole by which we can avoid His violence: Jesus Christ. Luther might object that Decision Theology does not cause inward change nor breed internal experience, but is rather a way of externally controlling and compelling God to save us through a legal clause."
"As I suggested at the outset, Calvinism in-and-of itself is not as influential as Calvin's Modernist approach to the faith. This approach, carried on in Evangelicalism, now threatens to subsume all of Christianity. Through media communiations, the message of Evangelicalism has managed to spread, convincing millions of people that theirs is the only true and valid form of Christianity. Even those who do not believe in Christianity have accepted that Evangelicalism is the "true" Christianity and often have disdain for those Christians who do not conform to Evangelical standards. This is what I mean when I say that Calvinism is the greatest heresy the Church has ever faced."
"How would I respond to the Calvinist, though? Not easily, since Calvinism by nature reduces the framework of discussion and has justified itself in tidy dogmatic packages. Calvinism only allows theological discourse in terms of dissecting a legal code, analyzing Scripture chapter-and-verse to determine the correct dogmas. Suggest that God is Love, and a Calvinist would ask 'what Bible verse says that?'"
"If one were to bring up any number of the verses that describe God's Love for humanity, then these would be neatly disposed of in favour of a theology built on other passages of judgement and wrath and power. Calvinism is a very, very tight doctrine... Coiled up as tight as a snake eating its own tail."
"Catholic journalist, columnist and humourist G.K. Chesterton once went about describing lunacy as a circle that is just not wide enough. There may be no way, logically, to prove to an asylum inmate that they are not the rightful heir to the throne of England. The horror of lunacy, he insisted, was not that the subject has lost all their Reason, but that they have lost everything but their Reason... They have tidied everything up in a perfect logical circle, impenetrable to attempts to puncture with Reason."
"Chesterton's solution? 'Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic's theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument.'"
"In the same manner, one might respond to the Calvinist that their theology make a quite tidy circle, but it is a very small circle. Chesterton even speaks specifically of Calvin when making his case of logic being the mother of lunacy: 'Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin.'"
"There is a circle quite larger than the circle of Calvinism. It is the circle that understands the infinity of God's Love. It is the circle that reads Scripture and, without needing or necessarily being able to point to a single proof text, recognizes that the message of the Gospel is Love. It is the circle that allows Scripture to move us to an inward change and internal experience of God rather than forcing it to feed back on itself as its own object."
"It is a circle that is able to repsond to perhaps the grestest objection of the heresy - the lunacy - of Calvinism: When asked about the Love of God, His supreme and sacrificial Love for humanity that caused Him to send His Son to die so that we may be united to Him, His Love which created us for Love and His Love which sustains us for that cause, many Calvinists state that it is presumptuous and arrogant of us to think that we are so important. Why should we be so significant that God should Love us so much? The response is simply that we do not know why God should care so much about us in our utter insignificance, but He does, and that is grace."
Nevski http://www.novaemilitiae.squarespace.com/
ShadowAce -
Actually, I am curious about your understanding of the term "for all" in 1Timothy 2:5-6. According to what I have read from your posts so far, I am guessing you think that "for all" means all mankind that has lived and will ever live on this earth?
Let me follow the logic of this belief and correct me where I stray...
If Christ died for all, this must mean that His death was payment for all sins of all men - past, present, and future. Not sure if this covers the sins of Satan, but I would guess that Satan is part of "all" as well since he is a being.
So then, if all sins were paid for, we are all righteous in God's sight since Christ has covered our sins. This implies that all men will spend eternity with their Father in Heaven as adopted Sons of God.
Hard for me to understand why the book of Revelations was written if all this is true. Why does Christ speak of eternal punishment if none actually exists? This seems to defy a great amount of scriptural reference!
How can this "for all" mean literally all, as you profess?
P.S. I like your screen name -- not so subtle that a 'rat would misunderstand..... Good on yer, mate!
Funny, P-Marlowe. I've asked you if you were responsible for getting some of the Calvinists banned and was meant with silence. Yet you still persue this "retread" line. Are you trying to get another Calvinist banned? Just how many have you've been involved with?
If this is a game for you it's the worst sort. Your history of hatred for the Calvinist belief is well documented along with your goading. I'd like to know how many have you lead into saying something only to turn aroung and ping the Rel Mod or Jim asking for a ban? I'll take any further silence as admission of guilt.
that would be me - not marlowe
had they obeyed the posted rules - there would have been no problem -
Steve got 5 breaks
woody was just plain belligerent, and IMO wrigs should have stayed
All means all.
However, in order for it to be effective, man must accept that sacrifice, accept Christ into his heart, and repent. Thus not all men will spend eternity in heaven.
As for Satan--he's already rejected both the Father and Christ. He had his chance, and blew it.
Oh, I see. So that personal message you sent me about hoping that I was Dr. Warmoose and you were glad I was back was just a plain lie. What you were really doing is probing to see if you could find some reason to be the town crier and get me banned.
I wonder if there is any posted rule about trying to continually bait other people and make personal accusations that they are hyper-Calvinists (which is another flat out lie from what I've seen and I do have the expertise to know the difference).
In the service of the Lord,
Christian.
If someone is belligerent I just walk away. God may chose to make me share an apartment in Heaven with them someday.
Thanks, so then this is what we have...
1 Timothy 2:5-6 (NASB) says:
5 For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time.
Bible says (literally):
Christ died for all.
ShadowAce says:
Christ died for all whom accept His sacrifice.
SKUB says:
Christ died for all whom God elects.
They way I see it, both you and SKUB have added an interpretation to 1 Tim 2:5-6 that is not literally in Scripture. I have no problem with this approach, since I agree that Scripture must be interpreted as a whole and not line by line. But, none-the-less, neither of you are taking 1 Timothy 2 at face value. I would contend this particular passage proves neither side of the argument.
The same logic would be true of all Scripture that implies universality.
Perhaps--but my interpretation comes from John 3:16--more scripture:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Where does his come from?
My point is, that your 1Tim 2:5-6 scripture reference is not a proof-text for your interpretation.
Now if you purport that John 3:16 is your proof text, that must be addressed independently...
The Bible is THE Word of God. It cannot (should not) be studied in disparate parts without referring to other portions for understanding.
In other words, a study of 1 Timothy (or any other book) without referring to other scriptures for reference, confirmation, restating, etc. is pretty useless for understanding what is being said.
1 Timothy and John work together to bring us the message of hope that all men have.
NO ONE has gotten Calvinists banned except the Calvinists themselves. They all were warned multiple times.
Harley, I don't see you as one of the GRPL game players. We may disagree, but I respect your knowledge and your opinions. There are quite a few GRPLs with whom I can disagree violently yet still respect in the morning.
Then there's a handful...well, let's just leave it there.
I cannot ban anyone. Except for some obvious trolls on the politcal forums, I have not recommended that anyone be banned. Those people who have been banned have been guilty of repeatedly violating the posting rules and for repeatedly mocking the authority of the religion mod or the Admin mod or the sidebar mod.
Ephesians2:10 has been banned for being a retread more times than I can count. I have pushed the abuse button on several occasions, mostly to have a post pulled because it simply went over the top. If the mods banned someone over some vicious post directed at me, then I suppose I was responsible.
No, I take the entirety of Scripture into account.
The Atonement was a propitiation, which is a removal of wrath. If God's Wrath was removed from the reprobate, then they are Atoned for and saved.
You have reached the same conclusion as the unitarian universalists.
You are so right.
There is no way we can ban anyone, or even suspend anyone.
Of those from the grpl who've been banned, I haven't been present at the time that any of those occurred. Nor did I complain about any of them.
I do report trolls on both the political and religious forums (fora?). Some don't like that, but I've been above board about it for 6 years now.
Thanks, with so many walking around in a fog these days, I find subtleness on grave matters to be fruitless.
A good dose of shock treatment is often needed to bring some out of being hypnotized by the media and conditioning of postmodernists philosophy. :-)
No, I haven't.
Their game is blatant. As for me, I'll not enjoin their games. I have much better things to do than play silly child's games.
Your history of hatred for the Calvinist belief is well documented along with your goading. I'd like to know how many have you lead into saying something only to turn aroung and ping the Rel Mod or Jim asking for a ban? I'll take any further silence as admission of guilt.
"Silence" only applies as guilt when they are making the accusations, double standards, hypocrisy and all that.
So let us look at John 3:16 in more detail...
John 3:16-18 (NASB):
16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
The main question in these passages would be, from where does this belief come? I have no qualms with what the effects of belief would be - the above scripture seems to be clear in that regard. I see the object of the belief (Jesus Christ) and actor of the belief (whoever), but I don't necessarily see the origin of the belief. Was this belief an inherent ability in man or is it given to us just as faith, God's Holy Spirit, and eternal life are given to us?
Just earlier in this same passage, Jesus says that you must be born again:
John 3:3 (NASB)
3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."
The term born again appears to be a much more stringent requirement than believing (assuming the source of belief comes solely from man).
Have you considered that belief is given by God in this reference in John 3:16?
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