Posted on 04/29/2009 3:00:47 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
Dutch people in their 20s are more likely to have a Calvinistic approach to life than any other age group, according to research by Trouw.
Calvinism, named after the French religious reformer John Calvin, is associated with a sober, hardworking approach to life and stresses the rule of God in all things.
Young people are more conservative than older people, they are more orthodox in their approach to religion and voted for the Calvinist CDA party at the last election, researcher Joke van Saane of Amsterdam's VU university told the paper.
'It is back to basics. Young people feel the spirit of the times,' Van Saane said.
Since January 70,000 people have completed the Calvinism test put together by Van Saane and Trouw, to mark 400 years since Calvin's birth. The average score out of 100 was 56, but people in their 20s scored an average 65.
But many of the attributes associated with Calvinism no longer hold true in the Netherlands, she said. Dutch people are not anti-sex, they like nice clothes and good food. 'But borrowing money for luxuries is going too far,' she said.
And little remains of the Calvinist work ethic. 'I really noticed how many people said 'I already work hard. I am not working any harder',' she told Trouw.
“Young people are more conservative than older people, they are more orthodox in their approach to religion and voted for the Calvinist CDA party at the last election, researcher Joke van Saane of Amsterdam’s VU university told the paper.”
Best news I’ve learned all day. Maybe they’ll effectively counteract the entrenched secularism and the rise of Islam. Tell some of these young Calvinists to move over here to the U.S.
Well, you and I will have to differ there. The mottoes of the Reformation were Sola Scriptura, Solo Christo, Sole Fidele: “the Bible alone,” “Christ alone,” “Faith alone.”
In other words, our only authority is the Bible, our only Mediator is Christ, and we are saved by faith in Him alone, not by our own works, lest any man should boast.
Have you sinned Petronski, since you’ve been a Christian? If so you didn’t go forth and sin no more. So what saves you?
Faith in Christ. God’s free gift of salvation yours for the taking through faith.
Your posts are not very informative or forthcoming. Weak, like you’ve gone out into deep water and really don’t want to be there.
Calvinists believe that faith makes you want to please God, and that the ability to repent is a gift of God. A person who is not saved doesn’t even know enough to repent without the gift of salvation.
Christ saves me. My sins are absolved in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
One out of three ain't bad. Sola Scriptura and Sola fide are false traditions of men.
OK.
What sources (other than the Bible) do you believe are direct revelation of God to us, instructing us what to believe and how to behave.
And what besides faith in Jesus do you believe will save us from our sins?
The Sacred Traditions of the Church He founded for us.
And what besides faith in Jesus do you believe will save us from our sins?
Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. --John 6:53
Wait: "besides?"
No. "...in addition to..."
“The Young are the Most Calvinistic”
It is also true that the young are the most liberal and Democrat.
...just sayin
Yeah, gay marriage (since 2001 !), legal drugs, assisted suicide, involuntary euthanasia in many cases, an illegitimacy rate almost as high as that of white Americans and one of the highest rates-of-increase in illegitimacy in the developed world ... the Netherlands is virtually a Calvinist paradise. (not)
I'm glad the young people are (allegedly) "more conservative" and "more orthodox" than their elders, but it would be hard for them to be less conservative or less orthodox.
“And little remains of the Calvinist work ethic. ‘I really noticed how many people said ‘I already work hard. I am not working any harder’,’ she told Trouw.”
Well, maybe they DO work hard enough.
Besides, the Nethwelands is the most thoroughly un-Christian country in the West. As a Catholic apologist, I’d love to blame their pathetic state on the Calvinists, but as a Catholic apologist, I’m also committed to the truth. So I have to admit that the Catholic Church in the Netherlands is pretty wretched. Maybe we can all blame the PCUSA? ;^D
I can tell you’re a Calvinist. I’ve never heard anyone besides Calvinists mention Arminians.
No, if he taught we are saved by faith in Christ alone, he is wrong. That is no-where in the bible. Luther added the word, “alone.” We are saved by Christ. If we do as he commands, we grow in faith. If we have faith, we do as he commands. The two cannot be seperated.
... of course to be clear, he commands us to worship him, not to run off, poorly formed, and try to earn our way into heaven.
The Netherlands? Le Pays-Bas? Land of the Orange?
Hmmmmm. Where could the blame lie?
>> What sources (other than the Bible) do you believe are direct revelation of God to us, instructing us what to believe and how to behave. <<
The Catholic Church upholds public revelation, as made known to us through the bible and sacred Tradition, as being what we are obliged to believe. But the bible is not separate from sacred Tradition, for sacred Tradition commended to us what constituted the bible, and the bible preserves the sacred Tradition.
Protestants misunderstand Catholic faith in the bible and Tradition, supposing that they are at odds with one another, but it is sacred Tradition which informs us how to understand the bible, and the bible which confirms to us the veracity of the sacred Tradition; they are purely interdependent, coming as they do from the same public Revelation of Christ.
OK, I’m gonna don my flamesuit and jump right into this:
The problem with Calvinism is this:
The Calvinist doctrine of absolute depravity ends up not only affirming the doctrine of original sin, which is true, but an absolute denial of prevening grace. Prevening graces are ways God works in a sinner’s life to draw him towards salvation, before he actually is saved. For instance, a just society bans pornography and extra-marital sex by the grace of God through the virtuous stivings of the saved. An un-regenerated sinner therefore avoids addiction to pornography or sexual promiscuity and therefore is less hardened against Christianity.
In addition, there’s the notion of “once saved, always saved.” Even if someone thinks they’re saved, if they commit a grave sin, they must have only intellectually assented to salvation, and therefore be mistaken.
The result of these two doctrines is a black and white world which works well for youth. And I don’t mean to say that black and white is inherently fallacious; I think we need more willingness as a society to see certain things as inherently, objectively good and others as inherently, objectively evil.
But even the saved sin. Catholics call this “concupiscence.” Christ has removed the eternal stain of original sin, but we still have a tendency to commit our own sin. So Catholics believe in confession, and practices designed to lessen concupiscence, such as mortification of the flesh through fasting, abstinence, etc. (In fact, many Calvinists also practice such means of perfection, but as mere worship, not purgation.) Recognziing the need for constant spiritual purification and the existence of prevening grace, Catholicism still retains black and white moral values, while recognizing that the unsaved may be progressing towards salvation, while the saved may still falter.
The Calvinist has no such recourse. At youth, this is a great motivator towards sinlessness. When he commits a grave sin, the Calvinist can by redoubling the sincerity of his faith assure himself that he is now saved, even though he once was a wretch. The problem comes as the Calvinist gains experience. He sins, he repents, he sins again. If he holds that he was not a true Christian before committing a sin, then nothing he did before that sin had any merit. That’s a bitter pill to swallow. If he’s young, he will still have profound developmental stages he can pass through and suppose that on the other side of a stage, he wasn’t truly saved but now he is. But as he attains stability, it becomes harder to accept that his life was pure black before his sin, and pure white after. With each grave sin, he is more and more challenged to find some way to prove to himself that his life is somehow radically different than before his sin.
On the other hand, if he is once and for all saved, then the sin must not have been a grave sin. Aaahhh, there’s the downfall. Worse, it can’t be a matter of trying harder, because, remember, there is nothing he can do to cooperate with grace, according to Calvinism.
Masturbation? Who is hurt, and where does the bible specifically condemn masturbation?
Divorce? Moses wouldn’t’ve allowed it if it were really that evil... you must be misinterpreting Jesus.
Pre-marital sex? It’s an expression of love. As long as it’s not adultery. OK, it’s a sin, but not a grave one.
Homosexuality? Well, there’s one we can all agree on. Well, those of us who are heterosexuals, anyway.
The problem is that it’s all these elders who have compromised their idealism that make up the church leaders. Of course, there’s plenty of issues that they can agree on:
Funding Israel is evil.
Using paper bags is evil.
Eating fatty foods is evil.
Fox News is evil.
All this nonsense, of course, drives away all the young ones to form their own denomination, or go non-denominational.
pinging myself to reread this reply and try to understand it.
I’m going to have questions, ‘cause I just ain’t getting what you’re saying. I think I have a general idea, but...
I’ll get to it in a few hours.
Charity. Listen to "St. Paul on Justification" (here).
- A8
No good works are a PREREQUISITE for the gift of salvation, but are results of having received that gift.
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