Posted on 06/19/2009 7:09:41 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
For the non-Calvinists or anti-Calvinists among us who may worry that this issue of WORLD has several articles about John Calvin, be not afraid: It happens only once every 500 years. July 10 brings the 500th anniversary of John Calvin's birth—and the great theologian, even with his warts, deserves a better press than he has typically received in recent decades.
Calvin was a fallen sinner, as all of us are, but was he especially mean-spirited? He taught that God created the world out of love and loved the world so much that Christ came down from the glorious kingdom of heaven and plunged into this world's muck. Calvin saw God as a generous giver and His mercy as an abundant resource. Jehovah's Witnesses would later insist that heaven has room for only 144,000, but Calvin understood that God's grace is infinite.
Did Calvin emphasize in-group harshness toward the poor and the alien? No: He wrote, "We cannot but behold our own face as it were in a glass in the person that is poor and despised . . . though he were the furthest stranger in the world. Let a Moor or a barbarian come among us, and yet inasmuch as he is a man, he brings with him a looking glass wherein we may see that he is our brother and neighbor." Everyone is created in God's image and worthy of respect.
Did Calvin want us to abstain from all material pleasures? He wrote that God "meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer. . . . Has the Lord clothed the flowers with the great beauty that greets our eyes, the sweetness of smell that is wafted upon our nostrils, and yet will it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected by that beauty, or our sense of smell by the sweetness of that odor?" He opposed any doctrine that "deprives us of the lawful fruit of God's beneficence."
Calvin also opposed doctrines that deprive us of political liberty. His understandings—that God-given laws are superior to those of the state, the king, and any other institution, and that individuals have direct access to the Bible, without dependence on pope or priest—are common now, but compare them to the political and theological theories fashionable before his time. In ancient times, pagan states revered leaders as semi-divine. Those who argued with such bosses were seen as deserving death. In medieval times, the interpretations of church officials often trumped the words of the Bible itself (which few people could read). They identified God's kingdom on earth with a church monopoly, and hanged, burned, or decapitated some with other ideas.
Calvin and other Reformation leaders, though, separated church and state while emphasizing the importance of believers working to lead the state. Calvin contended that, since God reigns everywhere, His followers should be entrepreneurs in every strategic institution, including government, civil society, commerce, media, law, education, the church, and the arts. This emphasis led directly to what has become known as the "Protestant ethic," with its unleashing of individual initiative and its emphasis on hard work in purportedly secular areas. Many kinds of labor are equally worthy, Calvin argued, and those in charge of one activity should not dictate to others.
Calvin's writings also had an implicit anti-statism. Since fundamental law comes from God, obeying the law means obeying God, not necessarily the state. Rebellion against an unlawful state act, led by "lesser magistrates" such as local leaders, is really a justifiable maintenance of true law. One Calvin disciple in 1579 wrote Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos ("Vindication Against Tyrants"), which emphasized the limits of power.
Would freedom ring? The English jurist Blackstone called "the power and jurisdiction of Parliament transcendent and absolute . . . sovereign and uncontrollable." English lawyers joked that "Parliament can do everything except make a woman a man, or a man a woman." (Some of our jurists and legislators are more ambitious.) But generation after generation of Calvinists read Vindiciae and emphasized that government must be under God. According to John Adams, its doctrines greatly influenced Americans of the 1760s and 1770s.
Calvin's birthday comes six days after the Independence Day that owes much to his teaching. Bake a cake and know that Calvin was not against enjoying it.
This is the very nature of God and how He deals with man. And it's a very key principle. If one can understand this, they understand the makeup of God. There is nothing binary about it.
Why would God want "free will"??? He is perfect. Everything He does is perfect. Every action He takes is the best, true, and right action. There is no reason to make choices.
Saint Paul could have rejected Christ.
According to Paul he was set apart from his mother's womb:
Gal 1:15 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called [me] by his grace,
Saint Aquinas backs up almost everything with scripture
Funny, I don't see much scriptural support in the discussions above by St Aguinas.
Cauvin’s misinterpretation of Scripture is of no use to me.
I'm not sure I understand your point. Is God obligated to save everyone that He created? Is there something wrong with God damming people to Hell? Or are you a universalist, believing that no one will be dammed to Hell?
Cordially,
Calvin teaches that god creates souls pre-damned to hell, predestined to perdition.
He claims to describe the God of the Bible, but it is not so.
Reformed churches TEACH from the word of God. The directive given the church is to make disciples, that is to teach. If the church is following that directive, Christians mature in the wisdom and knowledge of God. Would mature Christians vote for Obama? Of course not ~ so is Rome not following the directive or what?
Hi, Harley!
If only you were as smart as you try to sound.
so obviously contradict God's word found in both Testaments.
If it were so obvious would you even be having this debate? LOL.
That is actually funny.
Plus the weak attempt at moral equivalence at the site. Good post.
She’s quoting one verse, out of context, from a book her Bible tries to hide. Then she completely misunderstands it—or misrepresents it—and we’re supposed to be impressed.
Why is it a curse?
Why is it a curse?
lol. The voice of reform was heard for centuries before Calvin and Luther, but Rome could not comprehend it. It's heart had waxed gross, and its ears were dull of hearing, and its eyes remained closed to the truth found in God's word.
Jan Hus and John Wycliffe predated the Reformation by two centuries. For his righteous efforts, Hus was burned at the stake.
Oooh, okay, by your take, not 1500 years, but 1300.
That really totally destroys my point!
LOL
Cauvin’s misinterpretation of Scripture is of no use to me.
The dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church on faith and morals are far from liberal.
the majority of its membership voting of B. Hussein Obama.
If true ,it would be because they are NOT following the teachings of the Church. (I don't trust the liberal controlled media's polls either)
Reformed churches are overwhelmingly conservative because they are bound by the clear, unambiguous word of God.
What you think is conservatism is actually modernism.
More from Chesterton..
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types -- the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. — G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874-1936)
Are you referring to the Catholic Church?
If so, you're wrong. Bad science. Not truthful. Baloney.
Took the bait.
If God willed evil to exist it would be His Essence,thus making God have evil in Him according to the reformed
That the Will of God is His Essence
GOD has will inasmuch as He has understanding. But He has under- standing by His essence (Chap. XLIV, XLV), and therefore will in like manner.
2. The act of will is the perfection of the agent willing. But the divine being is of itself most perfect, and admits of no superadded perfection (Chap. XXIII): therefore in God the act of His willing is the act of His being.
3. As every agent acts inasmuch as it is in actuality, God, being pure actuality, must act by His essence. But to will is an act of God: therefore God must will by His essence.
4. If will were anything superadded to the divine substance, that substance being complete in being, it would follow that will was something adventitious to it as an accident to a subject; also that the divine substance stood to the divine will as potentiality to actuality; and that there was composition in God: all of which positions have been rejected
What good is automatic, robotic love?
I am reading “Witness” by Chambers and this:
“And the church at Rome attempts to take away the freedom from God and give it to man” sounds eerily like his definition of Communism. hmmmm
Only if you don’t understand Chambers OR Catholicism.
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