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.
Calvin also invented jello, abdominal surgery and the electric blender.
Donchaknow...
The Gospel according to Petronski?
No such thing.
***Calvin also invented jello, abdominal surgery and the electric blender.***
A fine man, especially with the blender on ‘puree’.
He perfected the stern rudder, made the first paper from wood pulp and perfected ammonia-based air conditioning.
Oh, and if there were any justice in this world, we would know Lobster Thermidor as, you guessed it, Lobster Cauvinique.
***Gasp! ***
That is precisely the same reaction our Calvinist comrades and their Pentecostal cheering section have when presented with the Gospels. The message of Jesus is rather clear; I find it interesting that so many would only take a portion of it and construct their own theology from that portion.
***********************
I believe he also invented the hula hoop, but that was a number of years ago.
***He perfected the stern rudder, made the first paper from wood pulp and perfected ammonia-based air conditioning.***
So he had a cool head and could read directions while steering the ship from his behind? Remarkable man. I’m surprised that he didn’t set his sights further than the good burghers of Geneva. He might have made it to, gasp, Berne.
***Oh, and if there were any justice in this world, we would know Lobster Thermidor as, you guessed it, Lobster Cauvinique.***
I prefer my lobster in New Glasgow, Prince Edward Island - the best lobster that I’ve ever had anywhere in the world over nearly two decades. Since PEI is largely Catholic, justice is not served. Little Johnny Calvin needs to stamp his little feet.
***I believe he also invented the hula hoop, but that was a number of years ago.***
I’d rather not picture Calvin in a little grass skirt.
Why not? It might be an improvement.
***Heh. I find it more baffling than interesting.***
I think that it has a lot to do with pride and hubris. And the association of one with a socially elevated group.
The Calvinists associate themselves with God, identifying themselves as the elite and therefore they are better than anyone else. These lickspittle Pentecostals are associating themselves with the Calvinists hoping that their association with them will somehow bring them elevated status as well.
We Catholics tend to be humble, as we are all too aware of our shortcomings.
***Why not? It might be an improvement.***
Don’t look; I beg of you...
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/60/183829780_dc5bb59ee3_o.jpg
***We Catholics tend to be humble, as we are all too aware of our shortcomings.***
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!
Jesus tells us to pray constantly. Our schismatic friends tell us that they are above that.
What precisely is your criteria for going to heaven? Mine is you must believe in the Lord Jesus to be saved. I didn't know the Bible came with exclusions and waivers.
There is NOTHING from God that was not created for love. Nothing! That God hates nothing by Saint Thomas Aquinas...it is impossible for Him to hate anything.
It's not that God hate us. Rather WE hate God. The WAGES of sin is death. God would not be just if He did not give us our due wages and those wages are death and hell-something that we work for. There is no one that seeks to do His pleasure. God's wrath waits for those who hate Him, not because He hates us.
Therefore God wills the good of everything, and hates nothing.
No, all things works together for good for THOSE WHO LOVE THE LORD JESUS. God rains equally on the just and unjust, but He only makes the trials turn to good for who love His Son.
Some things however God is said, to hate figuratively (similitudinarie), and that in two ways. The first way is this, that God, in loving things and willing their good to be, wills their evil not to be: hence He is said to have hatred of evils, for the things we wish not to be we are said to hate.
With all due respect, it seems St. Tom got wrapped around the axle on this. What gobbledygook. If God willed "their evil not to be" then it would be so. There wouldn't be any evil. But we know this isn't so. There is also NOTHING figuratively about the Lake of Fire or the burning HELL that awaits those who do not believe in His Son. I wonder how St. Tom would square that one.
The truth of the matter is that mankind starting from Adam, showed a desire to hate the things of God. This has progressively gotten worst over the centuries. We are simply evil, wicked, stiff-necked people that God has decided to show mercy. If we could but understand how much God tolerate us, then we would probably be a little more humble.
So a child too mentally retarded to form a belief in Christ goes to hell? Is that your belief?
Evil cannot be a first cause of God because God wills everything good,dear brother.
Evil is a defect from perfection,thus if God willed evil to exist it would part of God's essence and first cause,thus God would have evil in Him and therefore would not be perfect.
Evil can only enter the world by God giving us a free will
That God cannot will Evil By Saint Thomas Aquinas
EVERY act of God is an act of virtue, since His virtue is His essence (Chap. XCII).
2. The will cannot will evil except by some error coming to be in the reason, at least in the matter of the particular choice there and then made. For as the object of the will is good, apprehended as such, the will cannot tend to evil unless evil be somehow proposed to it as good; and that cannot be without error.* But in the divine cognition there can be no error . 3. God is the sovereign good, admitting no intermixture of evil . 4. Evil cannot befall the will except by its being turned away from its end. But the divine will cannot be turned away from its end, being unable to will except by willing itself . It cannot therefore will evil; and thus free will in it is naturally established in good. This is the meaning of the texts: God is faithful and without iniquity (Deut. xxxii, 4); Thine eyes are clean, O Lord, and thou canst not look upon iniquity (Habi, 13).
Please note, I also will not state who went to heaven. And how do you know?
I don’t know.
But I’m not the one who is trying to say somehow that God might send retarded children to hell because they have not done something the cannot do.
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