Posted on 10/31/2001 8:11:42 AM PST by AnalogReigns
Let me get this important doctrine straight. I can't accept Christ (and let Him work His salvation for me) because my 'will' in accepting Him would somehow taint God's power. BUT if I (and other reprobates like me) disobediently refuse to "... spread the truth, nobody can be saved."
That's what's wrong with Calvinism. The drawing power of love to accept Christ is 'too weak' and man-like and it taints God's power (so they say), but the driving necessity of 'obedience' is just necessary cooperation. Talk about turning the Gospel of Christ on its head. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were also long on 'obedience' and short on 'love.'
I'll take Jesus, thank you.
I respectfully disagree but will have to discuss it later since I have to leave. I will simply state that you again are relying on man's limited understanding and concluding what God can and can't do. Again it is God's baptism and His power knows no boundaries.
Finally, guessing what a Calvinist would or would not like to see added to the Gospel is not helpful. I don't want to tamper with the Gospel. Those I know don't want to tamper with the Gospel. All true Christians don't want to tamper with the Gospel. So please, limit your beliefs about what Calvinists want and don't want to what they profess they want and don't want.
Well, it was not his intention to divide the church but to bring them out of incorrect teaching. In any church, unity is good, but truth is primary. That is why the division came about. Both the RC's and Luther believed they were speaking/teaching the truth. First you have to decide which view is truth, then you can decide if he was right to do what he did. He only invited discussion, and for standing up for what he believed was truth (and of eternal impact) he was deemed a heretic.
He didn't want his "followers" to be called Lutheran either. He did *not* want to divide the church. This kind of thing goes on every day in churches across the land. Schisms occur for similar reasons. It happens because at least one party is incorrect. One can't decide whether it is right to stand by one's views even if it causes a schism, unless first one decides which view is right.
LOL!
OK, let me call you and raise you: "To believe that sprinkling (or pouring or dunking in) water on anyone is, apart from that person's personal assenting relationship with Christ, of any spiritual effect to that person is superstition and nothing more."
Baptism is valuable ONLY as an outward testimony of an inward transformation theretofore having occurred and nothing more. Period. [And, by the way, there are many ways to give that testimony other than baptism as well.] That's why Christ never baptized anyone.
John 3:5
Jesus answered Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he can not enter the kingdom of God.
"The Church recieved from the Apostles the tradition of giving Baptism even to infants. For the Apostles, to whom were committed the secrets of divine mysteries, knew that there is in everyone the innate stains of sin, which must be washed away through water and the Spirit."-Origen 2nd century
Acts 19:4Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.
19:5When they heard [this], they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Baptism is an outward sign of an inward transformation..it is a source of Gods Grace (as is the Lords supper)..
It is a sign to all that you have died and rose again with Christ....
Some churches use Baptism as a "sign" of membership in the community.I have no problem with that.But to attribute to it some supernatural ability to regenerate is totally unscripitual!
I make out of it that it is written 170 years after Christs death,without infallible scripitual support. I see it as self serving retrospect.
"In respect to the case of infants, which you say ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after birth, and that the law of ancient circumcision should be regarded, so that you think that one who is just born should not be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day, we all thought very differently in our council...we ought to shrink from hindering an infant, who being lately born, has not sinned, except in that, being born after the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of the ancient death at its earliest birth, who approaches the more easily on this very account to the reception of the forgiveness of sins-that to him are remitted, not his own sins, but the sins of another (Adam)."-Cyprian of Carthage, martyred 258
I sense you are a warm-hearted Christian who would shy away from giving the Calvinist construct the pride of place given it by some of your fellows, so don't take offense.
Here's how Calvinism is vicious. Christ spent His earthly ministry inviting all He encountered (in an undifferentiating way -- so far as we can tell from the Gospel accounts) and castigating ONLY those who refused. Moreover, He singled out on several occasions a apecial status for 'little ones' -- innocent children. I take those as contextual truths.
Now along comes the construct and it neatly consigns the vast majority humanity to Hell (from the foundation of the world) without any opportunity to choose and including large numbers of children and even infants who never heard the Gospel.
Now, that, my friend, is a viciousness inconsistent with Christ and inconsistent with His express teaching. Were it otherwise, He would have threatened with a worse-than-millstone future those who hindered "only those of all these little ones who are predestined from the foundation of the world to be saved." And, BTW, such a statement would be deprived of meaning in any event since (if the Calvinist construct were true) there would be nothing His hearers could do to "hinder" the little children anyway.
The Calvinist construct is, in short, just that; a nifty little theological construct overlaid over the Gospel in an effort to answer a few questions we don't need to answer. But in doing so it turns the Gospel of Christ into something we cannot recognize -- a prideful, vicious, exclusive little club -- and the Saviour of Mankind into a befuddled prophet making pronouncements to all which He knows don't apply beyond a few.
You will pardon me, but I will take the Christ of the Gospels and the New Testament, not the Christ of the Calvinist construct. God bless.
I would say show me in scripture where baptism is a source of regeneration
I think we agree, but I am troubled by the first statement quoted above. It is not a source of God's grace. That is the RCC position and is wholly necessary for them to purport to "control" the "means" of grace.
It is rather a testimony to or, as you put it, a sign of God's grace, but no more.
Similarly, the Lords' Supper is a remembrance -- no more. "Do this in remembrance of me ...."
"I believe that I cannot come to my Lord Jesus Christ by my own intellegence or power. But the Holy Spirit call me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith,"
Not sure where you're getting that Martin Luther believed in a free will. I think the last we saw of free will was in the Garden of Eden before the Fall of man into sin.
to believe in His Son or not to, and even if believing in His Son, to nevertheless reject the salvation that His Son's blood offers.
Huh?
Sola Scripture unfortunately teaches in effect that believing by definition means relinquishing one's free will
Well surprise surprise... that's what the Bible says too. We can be slaves to sin or servants of righteousness. We are bought with a price, etc.
2 Timothy 3:15And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 3:16All scripture [is] given by inspiration of God, and [is] profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 3:17That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
One thing ALL of Christianity agrees to is that scripture is infallible,so it must remain the basis for doctrine.
Revelation 22:19And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and [from] the things which are written in this book. 22:20He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
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