Posted on 08/10/2012 9:01:57 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
CRC = Christian Reformed Church.
This discussion has nothing to do with us lurking Catholics.
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Actually it does. As it would turn out I do happen to know a few calvinist. Yes this article fits them!
However could someone explain what the author was talk about when he spoke of squabbles in the Church of Christ back in the 90’s? Newsletter wars? I don’t recall that then again was never Church of Christ. However I do know some of them too!
Yes, Christian Reformed Church.
Its not their fault, they were predestined to be that way. Although there are some who don’t seem that way to me. Perhaps the humble ones aren’t really “elect” but just think they are.
I have found Arminian teetotaler/Prosperity gospel/Charismatics-Pentecostals more arrogant than anyone in Reformed Churches.
Arminian churches of any kind are naturally arrogant, self-congratulatory, and humanistic.
In this absolute predestination concept where does the Holy Spirit fit into the mix as in conviction of sin and repentance?
Uh, yeah.
You think Reformed folks don't think conviction of sin and repentance is part of the process?
All Catholics are Christians.
"The devil and wicked men are so held in on every side with the hand of God, that they cannot conceive, or contrive, or execute any mischief, any farther than God himself doth not permit only, but command. Nor are they only held in fetters, but compelled also, as with a bridle, to perform obedience to those commands." (Calvin's Institutes b. 1, c. 17, s. 11.) TCalvinism is to heresy what HIV is to infection: it is something that attacks the theological body at the most fundamental level--the level of meaning.
"...when God makes angels or men sin, he does not sin himself, because he does not break any law. For God is under no law, and therefore cannot sin." (Zwingli, Sermon on Providence)
The gospel according to Calvinism:
- a God who so loved the world becomes the cause of misery and death,
- a God who is righteous and causes no man to sin or tempts anyone to sin becomes the source of all sin,
- faith or belief become “works” that can’t save you,
- they’re not a door to salvation that can be opened by anyone (because what living person is not able to believe) but a “gift” given to mark someone who was unconditionally elected and regenerated from the death of sin to which God had previously consigned him before he ever knew what was going on,
- “whosoever will” becomes a tiny elect from the entire human race throughout all time “who cannot ever,”
- human will and purpose and moral responsibility become illusions floating on a sea of preordained necessity,
- man, a real, though limited, being created in the image of God becomes a ghost in the machine,
- a loving God and Father of an eternally existing Son turns away from the love relationship that existed between them since before the foundation of the world to create a universe dedicated to the eventual torture, abandonment, and death of that Son for the purpose of glorifying the Father and bringing him praise (but glory before whom and praise from whom?) and
- it turns a beautiful story into a sick and perverted horror flick.
Once upon a time, before anything was created, when God in three persons dwelt happily in and of themselves, God the Father said, "Hey, I've got a great idea. We're going to create a universe by and through you, God the Son, and I am, before you create anything at all, going to determine how every single bit of it, from start to finish, from the beginning to the end, from the least quark to the biggest bang, is going to go. We will create an entire human race from an original male and female that I will cause to be tempted and sin and, because of that, subject the rest of the human race to untold millennia of misery and suffering and death and tell them it's their own fault, all for my greater glory because it seemed good to me, all the while promising them a means of salvation from that misery I've imposed on them as a result of their sin against me that I will have preordained.
"And a really neat thing is that we will tell them that if they listen to what they are told and follow it faithfully, we will hear them and answer them and forgive their sins and heal their land, but they won't know that in actuality they won't be able even to try unless we make a few of them do it and the vast majority we will keep in the bondage of sin and degradation and then hold them responsible for not doing what we created them to be unable to do.
"And the best thing of all, God the Son, is that because the sin (that I will ordain and set into motion to the very degree and extent that is my good pleasure according to the unfathomable counsel of my will) cannot be forgiven without a sacrifice and since none of them is able or capable or even willing because I will have made them unable, incapable, and unwilling, YOU are going to have to enter the human race and grow up among those who, but for the few I will have made to act to the contrary, won't listen because I will have made them unable to hear, who won't see because I will have blinded them to the truth, and who won't ask for forgiveness for something they were hopeless to avoid doing because I will have made them incapable of doing so and then have the ever loving crap beaten out of you, scourged to within an inch of your life, before being made to carry the instrument of your torture before crowds jeering at you, because I will have made them do so, to the place where others, because of my decree before the foundations of the earth according to my own good counsel, will drive spikes through your wrists and hoist you up to hang between criminals--and the best part of all, at that moment, just as you are about to die, I'll turn my back on you!
"But that's cool, because in three days, I'll raise you from the dead so that we can say that this proves you are who we already know you are without ever the necessity of our even creating a universe or a human race and then use faith in that as the ostensible means by which we confer saving grace on the humans without telling them, until John Calvin comes along, that what they think is turning to us in faith to freely receive the gift of forgiveness and salvation is, in actuality, every bit as programmed and inevitable as the majority of the human race on their way to burn and suffer eternally in the lake of fire for refusing to believe that which I will have made them unable to believe since before the foundations of the earth and all for my praise and glory. How does that sound?"
And does God the Son say, "Wait a second, you're going to create a universe with a world of conscious beings made in our image, screw them over in the most horrendous ways imaginable, hold them responsible for what you're going to compel them to do, and then, near the end of the whole shebang, make ME suffer for every sin they ever committed without their ever having had the capacity to decide otherwise, and die so that those who don't even have the capacity to make anything but a faux choice will be "saved"? And that will make the relationship that you and I and the Holy Spirit share right now better how?" or does he say, "Hey, that sounds great and we'll call that the GOOD NEWS!"
Paul says ‘some’ were chosen/’elected’ ‘before’ the foundation of this world. Now this word foundation is actually a verb that means ‘the casting down - overthrow’, and world is age. This would mean the soul was already created before the formation of flesh bodies. And some stood with the Heavenly Father when the devil rebelled.
Did not Christ Himself say that many are called but few are chosen/elected. How would that statement already be known before the rest of us pass through this flesh journey?
I am not sure how “All who call on the Name of the Lord will be saved” and “He chose us before the foundation of the world.”
I do see the ‘free will’ of man and the sovereign chose of the Almighty as two sides of the same coin. My mind is finite and if I know 1% of all knowledge - I probably doing well. God is infinite and I leave this centuries old debate to Him.
“Jacob I love and Esau I hated.”
I also realize that my thoughts are set in a history/time frame. God is not constrained by time. He can hear all prayers - everything is in the ‘now’ to Him.
A hard truth to understand, but so is eternity. I still wrestle getting my mind around the concept that God has had no beginning and will have no end or that heaven is everlasting.
Without the Holy Spirit even ‘elect ones’ would not comprehend the Gospel. They also would not realize they were sinners and the gravity of sin, the justice of God (maybe, in human thinking, the Menendez brothers should get off free for murdering their parents - because they are orphans now), and without the HS I also would not understand the absolute purity/holiness of God.
The law of averages don't apply here. Causing a child to be born into (or adopted into) the Covenant family is one of the ordinary means that God uses to bring His own to Himself. While there is no guarantee that a child who is baptized into the covenant, and who is brought up in the church is, in fact, one of the elect (and we all know of tragic cases to the contrary) there is a strong basis for hope that the child will be of the elect.
Perhaps he was in one of the leading edge CRC. While that denomination's chase after the other liberal mainline churches has appeared to be later and steeper than, say, the PCUSA or the Episcopals, there had to be some pastors promoting the 'progressive' views earlier on.
Not all members of the Roman Catholic church are Christians just as not all members of Protestant churches are Christians.
I have 'meditated' over your words here to attempt to understand what you are saying. I do not understand. Christ told us in Mark 13:23 But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things.
Granted He did not say any or all would understand all things, but, 'time' and what it means to God would be included in all things. Some things are appointed in His time, and Peter told us the method in which time is kept by the Heavenly Father. My personal opinion is there could be no such thing as 'faith' IF a date certain of specific events foretold would be was given. However, as it is Written, we can know the 'season' of events by what is taking place in the here and now. The reappearance of Sodom and Gomorrah as national culture is kind of a benchmark to me. And much is said about the reemergence of the modern era being even worse than the days of Sodom and Gomorrah.
I’m sorry. I was not as clear as I could have been. In that God is not constrained by time - I did not have to exist before the creation of the world (in some spirit form).
“Before I was formed in my mother’s womb - (He) knew me.” He knew I would come into existence. He knew everything about me. He now knows what will take place in my future. He ‘forgives all my sin’ - past, present and future.
If He can hear all the prayers going up to Him this minute - then it seems that, in the minute that we understand, He has as much time as He needs to listen, answer, and give peace to each and everyone of us.
I think in a time frame and am constrained by time. He has no such constraint. Thus, for Him to know me before the foundation of the earth, or chose me before the foundation of the earth, does not mean that I had to exist in some form back then. I just need to ‘exist’ in His foreknowledge.
This, too, probably does not answer your question very well. I have thought about these things in the past but I have not ever put them into writing.
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