Rose Colored Semi-Gothic Chasuble
Rose is one of lenten colors, thanks. My priest wore it last Tuesday.
Posted on 03/16/2006 7:42:26 AM PST by Gamecock
Do you have a scripture on that ?
Your post, # 378, is essentially meaningless.
I was discussing full Christianity. That's a concept as well as a real thing. Christians do not expect to see every concept or reality, no matter how true, listed in the Bible in the exact words used by a layperson in a conversation. Where in the Bible do you see "canon" used as we use it today to mean the complete collection of inspired books? Is that word, "canon," ever used in the Bible that way? How about "total depravity"? Is that phrase used? It might be, but I don't remember ever seeing it. If it isn't in scripture does that mean it is wrong for Reformed Christians to use it?
How about "Bible"? No where in scripture do you see the word "Bible". I guess you will no longer use it or discuss it right?
Now, specifically about the verses you chose: Unless you are in union and communion with the Church that is Christ's Body and Bride then you are not fully IN HIM. Christ founded and sent ONE Church. It isn't your sect. That doesn't mean you're not a Christian. It just doesn't mean you have the real thing.
You wrote:
"Why? There is no documented proof of sodomy. The only place that I can find these charges are with the Unitarian websites;"
Sheesh! How about reading some books?
"...those who hate Calvin and love Servetus. And even there they'll admit on the flimsiest of evidence, it is rumored that he fell in love while in seminary with a priest."
Dig deeper. You might find more -- don't you think?
"Even if true this only shows the homosexual problems and Catholic priests praying (if I may use that term) on younger individuals is not limited to today's environment but has a historic track record within the Catholic Church."
No, actually one would have nothing to do with the other. We're talking about cases separated by centuries Harley.
"What are you guys doing to clean up 500 years of abuse?"
There is no "500 years of abuse". Incidents 500 years apart do not show a trend, or 500 years of anything. They merely show one incident then and a number of them now -- separated by 500 years and with no link whatsoever.
"Passing edicts that says not to do it?"
?
"And, yes, if your going to scrutinize Calvin's behavior let's look at the Popes' behavior as well which is just as relevant since they hold the keys to the Kingdom."
Actually it would be completely irrelevant. Calvin was not pope. If we are talking about Calvin it is completely irrelevant what any pope did. The only way it would matter would be if a pope forced Calvin to do something or if Calvin was a pope. Neither was the case.
"As a historian I would be greatly interested in hearing your historical analysis of Sex Throughout the Priesthood and Ages."
As a professional historian discussing the actions and behavior of Calvin I would never even bother since it has nothing to do with Calvin.
"Shall we talk about the love lives of the Popes;"
Was Calvin pope? No. The discussion you suggest is, therefore, irrelevant.
"...the bastard children they had and the illicit love lives they maintained all the while telling others that they should be chasten and passing edicts from Peter's Chair?"
Are you suggesting that Calvin was a bastard child of a priest? Are you suggesting that Calvin was the illicit lover of a priest? Unless you are then those ideas are completely irrelevant in a discussion about Calvin's actions and behavior.
"That makes very fine reading."
So you enjoy reading about such illicit sexual things? Why does that not surprise me?
"See, Calvinists aren't shocked by unsaved people's behavior because we understand that the heart is wicked and man is depraved."
Spoken like a man with a beam in his eye. So only the unsaved commit sexual sin? are you suggesting that only unsaved people EVER sin in that way or any other way? Don't even bother answering that question. You can do nothing now to save your argument here.
"Even if the charges are true, God who is rich in His mercies saved John Calvin out of convorting with homosexual priests."
You know this for a fact? How do you know that his friends in Geneva were not homosexual ministers? I realize that was probably not the case, but isn't as likely as what you just suggested? Yes, it is. And if you are saying that the priests of his day were homosexual then the charge against him was all the more likely to be true then isn't it?
"There is no sin that God cannot overcome. If true if anyone would have understood the depravity of man and what original sin is all about, it would be John Calvin and, btw, Augustine, the great Catholic Church father who lived a very rambuncious life himself, sleeping with married women before coming to the faith. This he documented himself."
Are you sure about that? When he was only a teenager he met a woman he would stay with until almost the time he became a Christian and became celibate. "I lived with only one woman and kept faith with her bed" (T 4.2). He was with her for 15 years. His mother told him that, whatever sexual sin he might commit, Augustine should never, ever have an affair with a married woman (T 2.6). He himself talked about his problem with chastity, but adultery? Possible, but I don’t remember seeing that in his Confessions. If you have the citation please post it.
“I'm sure you would join me in giving thanks that God was so merciful to spare these two great men of faith.”
I have no reason to believe Calvin was spared since he committed apostasy. Augustine was indeed spared.
“Fortunately for the Church of that time and unfortunately for Mr. Calvin, he could not form a class action lawsuit.”
?
Pro 17:15 He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD.
I'm guessing, therefore, that the reason that the esteemed Forensic Debate Team of the Catholic University of America gets beaten like a red-headed step-child by the buck-toothed, back-water Fundamentalists of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University -- each year, every year -- is simply that y'all Roman Catholics are just so busy "thinking deep, complex thoughts", that you are unable to condescend to the level of us mere mortals, and actually bother to occasionally win a Debate.
Surely that is the explanation for the consistent -- nay, constant -- Failure of the very creme-de-la-creme of young Roman Catholics to best (or even equal) their Protestant opponents in direct intellectual contest.
You're just so busy thinking those deep, complex thoughts, ala Jack Handy.
(It could not possibly be, of course, that Calvinists can read their Aristotle and Augustine and Aquinas quite well, and have simply rejected the Catholic syncretistic methodology of incorporating Aristotle and Augustine as being a haberdashery unworthy of Theology, "The Queen of Sciences"; preferring instead a Bibliocentric Model which demands exacting, Precisionist evaluation. Surely not!!)
Well, annalex, take consolation in this -- the Roman Catholic University Notre Dame remains, together with the locally-worshipped University of Oklahoma Sooners (since I have moved back to OK, I am required to pay homage to the Local Religion), one of the only two top-division Universities ever to win seven National Championships in College Football.
So, maybe y'all can't Debate worth a tinker's damn, but at least you can throw a pigskin around and run into people.
Hey, at least that's something.
Best, OP
LOL!!! We get a lot of stuff thrown around here but I don't think it's a pigskin. ;O)
Interesting. Is this the beginning of the unravelling of the lament that "the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind"?
So was Abraham. So was Philemon.
King David was a murderer and an adulterer. King Solomon, an exponential polygamist.
This does not change the rectitude of their writings, where they were right.
Bulverism, "shooting the messenger", does not serve us Calvinists well. It is the tactic of the Arminians; and it was for the purpose of dispensing with their constant Bulverisms against the person of John Calvin that I penned my Article, Arminianism -- False Doctrines of the "Pope" of Modern Pelagianism. However, while it can be a useful counter-offensive tactic against Arminian Bulverisms to point out, "well, your own beloved Arminius was a Caesar-Worshipper who sanctified State Totalitarianism", that's not the sort of argument I'd want to see from my fellow Calvinists.
We're better than that; we can read and evaluate a Pastor's expositional sermons independent of his own personal failings. Indeed, as Calvinists, we should know to expect Personal Failings.
"Hypocrisy is the Ally, not the Enemy, of Virtue; for without Hypocrisy, no fallen Man could ever preach Virtue". -- OP (apparently)*
Proceeding on...
I don't think so. The Fall precedes from God's originating awareness of His creative actions. God creates every being with the perfect causative knowledge of that creature's end, albeit reprobation or salvation. ~~ Dr.Eckleburg
In the first place, Doctor, I am going to respectfully assume that you DON'T mean that "The Fall precedes" the rest of God's Creative Actions. After all, were you to maintain that the Fall precedes the rest of God's Creative Actions, then you should be the MOST "INFRA" of Infralapsarians whom I have ever known (indeed, I think that Infralapsarianism can go too far also; witness our soft-hearted but also theologically-indulgent brethren, the Amyrauldians).
I shall instead assume that you mean that "The Fall proceeds from God's originating awareness of His creative actions; God creates every being with the perfect causative knowledge of that creature's end, albeit reprobation or salvation." -- BUT IN THAT, you are incorrect, in assigning the Decree of Reprobation and Election without reference to The Fall.
The Decree of the Fall does not "Proceed" from "God's originating awareness of His creative actions", as the classic Supralapsarian contends; rather, as Dabney correctly maintains, "God's decree has no succession; and to Him nonsuccessive order of parts; because it is a cotemporaneous unit, comprehended altogether, by one infinite intuition." The Fall does not "proceed" from "God's originating awareness of His creative actions"; in fact, "The true statement of the matter is, that in this co-etaneous, unit plan, one part of the plan is devised by God with reference to a state of facts which He intended to result from another part of the plan; but all parts equally present, and all equally primary to His mind."
God does indeed "create every being with the perfect causative knowledge of that creature's end, albeit reprobation or salvation" (Dr. Eckleburg, #285); but He ordains the end of each creature with intrinsic reference to His Own Decree of The Fall (which is infralapsarian logic), not without reference to His Own Decree of The Fall (which is supralapsarian logic).
I honestly don't think that there is any way around this.
Supralapsarianism claims that the Decree of Election and Reprobation logically preceded the Decree of the Fall.
However, once you admit Dabney's Argument that "God's decree has no succession; and to Him nonsuccessive order of parts; because it is a cotemporaneous unit, comprehended altogether, by one infinite intuition"... it then becomes logically impossible that Reprobation should be ordained "prior to" The Fall, or without reference to The Fall, as the Supralapsarians maintain.
If God "is in One Mind", according to the Bible, and God's Right Hand knew what His Left Hand was doing, then there is no escaping the Logical Fact that Reprobation was Ordained with reference to to Ordination of The Fall. Infralapsarianism thence becomes the only Logical possibility.
I've always found this a strange way for a Calvinist to think. Is there a possibility that God could have decreed that mankind would fall, and yet He wouldn't reprobate men to damnation based on that decree? Of course not. Just like Adam, we were created to fall. Some were created to be redeemed. Some not. Vessels of wrath. Vessels of mercy. The problem with Infralapsarianism is that it implies there is a smidgen of time when God is a reactor and not the Creator, as if God is waiting to see how the Fall plays out. -- Dr.Eckleburg
Why is this a "strange way" for a Calvinist to think? Why should it be "strange" for God to make the accomplishment of Some of His Decrees contingent upon the accomplishment of His Other Decrees? Why should contingent logic be an Obstacle to the Almighty who absolutely determines the Drawing of the Lots?
Dabney, again (with my comments): "It does not seem to me that the Infralapsarian scheme makes the decree conditional. True, one result decreed is dependent on another result decreed; (Decreed by God; are you Supralapsarians DOUBTING that He controls the Lots?) but this is totally another thing. No scheme can avoid this, not even the Supralapsarian, unless it does away with all agency except God's, and makes Him the direct author of sin.
Well, duh. Who disagrees with that? When a man offers this line of reasoning to settle the infra/supra debate, he's lost it already. ~~ Dr. Eckleburg
On the contrary, my good Doctor.
Think about it. By re-framing the Debate as a question of Logical Reference, rather than Logical Order, Dabney has singularly out-flanked every Supralapsarian Apologist ever to take the field.
Versus, by comparison, the Classic Logical Order of Infralapsarianism...
If you will kindly note: Classical Supralapsarianism maintains (and has always maintained) that the Decree of Reprobation is established precedently and independently, as a matter of pure creative exercise, from the logically-subsequent Decree of The Fall.
By comparison, Infralapsarianism maintains that The Decree of Reprobation HAS logical reference to The Decree of The Fall. Classically, it is a matter of Logical Order; but as Dabney points out, it is foremost a matter of Logical Reference. Either God Decrees Reprobation with reference to His Decree of The Fall (Infralapsarianism), or else He Decrees Reprobation without reference to His Decree of The Fall (Supralapsarianism -- Ahh, but that is to UnBiblically Divide the very Mind of God!!)
When you acknowledge, "Well, duh. Who disagrees with that?", you are giving Dabney the whole of the Argument.
Supralapsarianism stands or falls upon the contention that the decretum horribile is conceived independent of The Fall. To acknowledge that God's Plan is conceived as a Co-etaneous Unit Whole, and that God's Decree of Reprobation is therefore (necessarily!) conceived with logical reference to God's Decree of the Fall (Assuming Cotemporaneity of Providential Decree, operant order doesn't really matter; referential correspondence is the key point), is to concede Dabney's Argument that the entire contention is not a matter of Logical Order, but rather of Logical Referent; and that Dabney is in fact RIGHT!
And that's why Infralapsarianism is the established, orthodox Doctrine of the Calvinist Reformation; that's why Infralapsarianism is the professed Doctrine of all the Calvinist "Greats", while Supralapsarianism is at best tolerated; and that, my amicably-beloved good Doctor, is where the Fat Lady Sings.
Best, OP
"Whoever thinks he understands divine Scripture, or any part of it, but whose interpretation does not build up the twofold love of God and neighbor has not really understood it." - St. Augustine
What separates this entire discussion about infra- vs. supralapsarianism from the debates about geneologies that were proscribed in Tit. 3?
The difference is the tune one dances to. One tune has God boxed into the human condition of needing and action first before one can have a result, and not knowing until that action what the result will be. Man leads and God follows.
Some people call that synergism.
Only if you use "synergism" as an insult for anything that you don't agree with.
Synergism has a discrete meaning - the belief that God's work + man's work = salvation. Infralapsarianism is light years away from this. It believes only that God must have logically ordained creation and a fall before he could logically ordain election or reprobation. I.e., in order to elect salvation, you've logically had to decide to create and to allow something to be saved from.
IT does us no good to blow this debate out of proportion. This is quite an intranicene debate.
Actually, no. Frankly, bollocks on that.
To take the best example -- Princeton University, that former pinnacle of Presbyterian Scholarship in matters both Earthly and Heavenly, is too far gone to be retaken.
Our objective, as Calvinists, is NOT to re-establish our "intellectual credibility" with the Catholic University, and Harvard, and all the other decaying and decrepit institutions of Ivy League Academia.
We must consider them as already lost, already dead. The time for Counter-Revolution has begun; indeed, it is already long past time, but we Calvinists are suckers for a challenge. Re-establishing our "intellectual credibility" with the Secularists and State-Worshipping Whores of Modern American Higher Education is pointless. Home-schooling, Private-Schooling, Church-Schooling, kicking their teeth in on the national Collegiate Debate circuit... We must seek only their defeat, and our victory. America is too far gone to screw around with anything except direct counter-attack.
But it is Dominion we are after. Not just "a Voice".
It is Dominion we are after. Not just "influence".
It is Dominion we are after. Not just "equal time."
It is Dominion that we are after.
World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less. ~~ Dr. George Grant, Executive Director Coral Ridge Ministries, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church
Patrick Henry College, a fully-accredited University in Purcellville, Virginia, was established under the Presidency of Calvinist Home-Schooling Champion Dr. Michael Farris by, of, and for Calvinist Home-Schoolers, with essentially only one true Academic Purpose: deliberate Cultural counter-attack.
As established, the University granted only three Degrees: Government, Journalism, and Education (although I believe that the Education degree has now been expanded to include history, literature, and classical liberal arts) -- the three spheres of Society perceived by Calvinists as most Liberal-Dominated, and therefore the first Targets of Calvinist Counter-attack. It is, in essence, a fully-accredited University, dominated by Calvinists, and custom-engineered for War.
Christ College, in Lynchburg Virginia, has since been formed under the Presidency of my old Liberty University Poli-Sci Professor, Dr. Kevin Clauson. He's a Calvinist Reconstructionist, I'm a Calvinist Libertarian (perhaps more like his brother, Dr. Mark Clauson)... but when the challenge is to stand in front of the onrushing Leviathan of the State-Media Complex, waving a Bible and yelling "Bring it on!", I'm inclined to forgive a few differences over the miniscule Government functions of which we do approve. I expect that my old Professor will follow in the footsteps of Dr. Farris, "reconstructing" his College into another Calvinist-dominated Academic Institution, custom-engineered for War.
Not to put too Partisan a point on it, but the time to "Lament the Scandalous Deficiency of the Evangelical Mind" was about 70 years ago, when the PCUSA excommunicated its own most highly-regarded Scholar (Dr. Machen, founder of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church) for daring to breach the Liberal-Modernist front.
But we can't turn the clock back now; For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country. (John 4:44)
Our objective is no more the reclamation of credibility amongst the elites. Since the Leftists are intent on destroying their biological ability to propagate through the sanctification of homosexuality and abortion, what we Calvinists really need to focus upon (at least in this present world) is cutting off their non-biological means of propagation -- government, journalism, and education.
Cut those avenues off, and we'll be lamenting "the death of the Secularist Mind"...
...except, I shan't be lamenting.
Best, OP
Rose is one of lenten colors, thanks. My priest wore it last Tuesday.
"Since the Leftists are intent on destroying their biological ability to propagate through the sanctification of homosexuality and abortion, what we Calvinists really need to focus upon (at least in this present world) is cutting off their non-biological means of propagation -- government, journalism, and education."
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I couldn't agree more!
The problem I see is the growing entitlement class that draws benefits (through Govt.) that are taken from a smaller and smaller % of Americans. Also, church attendance as a whole is in decline. Yes, there are churches that are growing mostly Evangelical but we also have an increasing number falling away.
Definitely. Matthew 19:16-26 regarding coming to Christ, and regaridng hope, Matthew 12:21, also Romans 8:24; 1 Corinthians 13:13 (already quoted), and throughout St. Paul's epistles. Humble hope is set as an example of Christian virtue in Luke 18:13-14.
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