Posted on 02/28/2010 8:30:39 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
John Calvin's 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism's buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism's latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination's logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time's dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision.
Calvinism, cousin to the Reformation's other pillar, Lutheranism, is a bit less dour than its critics claim: it offers a rock-steady deity who orchestrates absolutely everything, including illness (or home foreclosure!), by a logic we may not understand but don't have to second-guess. Our satisfaction — and our purpose — is fulfilled simply by "glorifying" him. In the 1700s, Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards invested Calvinism with a rapturous near mysticism. Yet it was soon overtaken in the U.S. by movements like Methodism that were more impressed with human will. Calvinist-descended liberal bodies like the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) discovered other emphases, while Evangelicalism's loss of appetite for rigid doctrine — and the triumph of that friendly, fuzzy Jesus — seemed to relegate hard-core Reformed preaching (Reformed operates as a loose synonym for Calvinist) to a few crotchety Southern churches.
No more. Neo-Calvinist ministers and authors don't operate quite on a Rick Warren scale. But, notes Ted Olsen, a managing editor at Christianity Today, "everyone knows where the energy and the passion are in the Evangelical world" — with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper of Minneapolis, Seattle's pugnacious Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention. The Calvinist-flavored ESV Study Bible sold out its first printing, and Reformed blogs like Between Two Worlds are among cyber-Christendom's hottest links.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
“Everything is great. I am just asking hard questions, the kind that many lurkers would ask but hesitate to do so.”
Yeah, but the first section on the Multi-State is always true or false or multiple choice type questions.
Ok, I'll rephrase it:
1) If God hated Esau but his hatred was not based upon any foreknowledge of what Esau would or would not do during the course of his long life, but merely because he chose to hate Esau because of the pleasure of his Good Will, then if Esau had died as an infant he would have been condemned to Hell.
A) True
B) False.
“If Calvinism is true to the core, then there are millions upon millions of people who have repented and believe (as they understand those terms) who were never intended to either repent or believe (as you understand those terms).”
No, those people repented of and believed in the wrong things exactly as they were intended to repent of and believe in. Thus your statement is incoherent.
Objection: Form. The question is like “can God create a rock bigger than himself”. The answer is God cannot contradict his nature. God’s nature is righteous, just and not arbitrary or capricious so “the pleasure of his Good Will” would necessarily have to correspond to his nature.
Did I ever tell you about flunking 1st year Psychology 3 times because, in addition to a frat party mistake, I could never answer “true or false” questions?
So--what you're saying is that they did not sin, as they are doing exactly God's Will.
???
They were born in sin and did exactly what they chose to do. God uses those sinners for his purposes in the same way he used Judas (See Acts).
I was just gigglng at the good doc’s contrived assertion that “Roman Catholics have shown consistently that they put Mary on the cross with Jesus”
There are some who do, but my relatives don’t and most theologically minded on these pages do not.
There is a group that is so over-wrought about Mary that they “in effect” have her as part of the Godhead.
You know the type I’m talking about.
Correct on all points. But that's not what they were intended to do.
agreed all-around
In other words, it is quite possible that a reprobate can be deceived by his own heart into believing that he has truly repented, when in fact his sincere belief in Christ (as he believes it) and his sincere belief in his repentance (as he understands it) is a false repentance and a false belief and that it was God's intention all along that he believe wrongly and that he repent wrongly in order that he might be cast into hell as vessel of wrath fitted for destruction.
And you wonder why non-Calvinists recoil at the claims of Calvinists about the nature of God.
God didn’t ‘hate’ Esau. That verse comes from Malachi, written nearly 2000 years after Esau lived, and referred to the tribe that he started. The promise passed thru Jacob, but it wasn’t about individual salvation.
God treated Esau better than he deserved, based on how he lived.
Then why would he "HATE ESAU" without reference to his foreknowledge of Esau's life as a whole? It was stated earlier on this thread that God must have hated Esau even as he was a child and therefore his wrath would have had to be directed at Esau merely by the fact of his birth rather than any consideration of how Esau would ultimately turn out.
Hence if God hated Esau as an infant merely by the circumstance of his birth and without regard to what foreknowledge he had of his life and his ultimate destiny, then God would have no compunction about sending all the children of Sodom or all of the Amelekite children to the same hell to which he sent their parents.
How can you claim the truth of Calvinism and yet deny this premise?
“But that’s not what they were intended to do.”
There is several senses in which you could frame the intention of God. If it is framed to ask if man in his original state of righteousness was created to sin then the answer would be no.
If the question is pushed back to God’s eternal decrees before the foundation of the world and his plan for how he would be glorified then the plan includes using sin to glorify God. Paul explains that pretty thoroughly.
“And you wonder why non-Calvinists recoil at the claims of Calvinists about the nature of God. “
No, I wonder at the false caricatures of the Non-Reformed. Of course you want to frame the question in such a way that makes it look abhorent and, incidentally, try to conform God to your image of how he should run his creation.
The pertinent question is what do you mean by “sincere belief in Christ”? Christ told us that there will be many that call on his name that were never his servants. So we must mine the biblical data to understand how those who call on his name can at the same time not be regarded as his servants.
The biblical data is clear that those who try to add anything to the work of Christ truly do not have a sincere belief in Christ. If one truly trusted Christ and his work why would anything more need be added? He did it all. Full stop. Full belief.
And Calvninsts do not have any false caricatures of Arminians or Catholics????
Of course you want to frame the question in such a way that makes it look abhorent and, incidentally, try to conform God to your image of how he should run his creation.
I am just asking questions which naturally flow from the statements of Calvinists about their own theological construct. You cling to your construct as if the Institutes or the Westminster confession are the equivalent of scripture itself and then when the underlying implications of your theology are exposed, you cry foul and claim that it is the non-Reformed who are twisting what the Calvinist is saying rather than the fact that they are simply analyzing the statements as to their true implications.
The biblical data is clear that those who try to add anything to the work of Christ truly do not have a sincere belief in Christ.
And what do you mean by that? That a person who believes that Faith without works is a dead (unsaving) faith is somehow not saved themselves because they have a different understanding of that scripture than you or Calvin had? And who died and made you Pope?
I suspect that in one way or another everyone is guilty of attempting to add to the work of Christ. It is in our nature. The Catholic may believe that works can somehow be of help in securing their salvation, and you seem to think that a correct understanding and belief in Reformed doctrine is somehow essential to salvation (or an essential element of election).
I think God treated Jacob a lot better than he deserved, based on how he lived.
“God must have hated Esau even as he was a child and therefore his wrath would have had to be directed at Esau merely by the fact of his birth rather than any consideration of how Esau would ultimately turn out.”
I trust you have a wide screen today, otherwise I will eliminate the paragraphs and make this just one to fit one screen.
God’s foreknowledge is according to His predetermination and providence and is in keeping with the voluntary choices (choosing what we want or desire most). Esau’s choices actual or possible) are exercised voluntarily but the circumstances that bring about these choices are through divine determinism (see Acts 2:23 & 4:27-28). If Esau had died as an infant, God in His omniscience knew what choices Esau would have made in the circumstances determined by God.
We are all under sin from conception; all under condemnation and a sentence of death. We have nothing to merit grace nor can we compare ourselves to anyone else and say we deserve what they get, except condemnation.
Rom. 9:13-23,
“As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.
Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,”
Chuck Smith has a great sermon on this passage, I don’t agree with everything he says, but for the most part he is right on.
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