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.
He's actually more of a postmillenialist since he writes with such joy about this life as well as the one to come.
Another false tradition of men.
lol. Inept posters who simply hit-and-run without adding anything of substance to the discussion are to be expected.
Isaiah 64:6 is a rebuke of "works alone," but the Catholic Church doesn't teach "works alone."
It's wonderful Scripture, it just doesn't accomplish what you think it does.
Who pulled that out of context and fed it to you like that?
PETRONSKI: Another false tradition of men.
And again you display a sad lack of Scriptural awareness...
Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." -- Ephesians 2:8-10"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
We are saved "by grace through faith." This grace is not of ourselves, "it is a gift from God."
This is a discussion? I can’t wait til the artillery shows up. :-0
So are you saying that as a human father I have more compassion on my children than God?
Hey now...the Reformed view of amillennialism is very distinct from the Catholic view. Calvin simply opted not to throw out the baby with the bathwater ;)
Quite the opposite, actually. I am displaying a joyful rejection of your own personal interpretation of Scripture.
Yes, you have misinterpreted that Scripture over and over again. But faith without works is dead.
What salvation be granted you for a dead faith?
Also, making the thread "about" individual Freepers is a form of "making it personal."
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
Take Prov. 20:24, “Man’s goings are of the LORD; how can a man then understand his own way?”
As you have no clue to what it means you then pounce on it as reinforcing and consistent with your predetermined ideas.
What does Christ have to say?
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
He called a little child and had him stand among them.
And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 18:1-4
Why did he use the metaphor of a child? If children are born sinful little creatures (I'll never forget the day I heard Jill Briscoe use the pedophile’s argument that children are guilty (sick)), why would our Lord and Savior pick a child as an example of how to enter into the kingdom of Heaven? What do children uniquely have that adults do not?
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
I asked you this before, but maybe you missed it:
Why is it a curse?
I was using the “you” in English language usage meaning a general “you” not a specific or individual “you”.
As in everyone has no clue to what a [particular scripture]means you (everyone) then pounce(s) on it as reinforcing and consistent with your predetermined ideas.
That is not mind reading, it is SOP for human nature. The hard part is to stand outside of your context and read it like a child - fresh and new without any preconceived notion or interpretation. Hence my post and its intended meaning.
If you wish it to be academic or arms length, then avoid the personal pronouns, e.g. "Some have no clue to what it means and then pounce on it as reinforcing and consistent with their predetermined ideas."
When you are interested in a serious discussion about the Scriptures, let us know...
Fine, but if you read my entire post in context I believe it is obvious.
I’ll be more careful next time. Sorry.
LOL.
Really, which characteristic of a little child is Christ himself referring to?
Children generally have several things that adults generally do not. One of them being a propensity for trust that is not tempered by years of experience of the treachery of the world.
The problem we're going to have here is that you probably differ from my insofar as what we believe the characteristic is that Jesus is putting forth, and this argument will ultimately boil down to a matter of authority, and thus will begin the feedback loop we always encounter.
Although I do like your feedback loop comment. I'm right, no I'm right really isn't much of a discussion.
I can only imagine what an atheist would say.
Amen.
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