The Reformers and Church Fathers on Nature, Grace, and Choice

Vanity, vanity, everything is vanity | December 29, 2001 | Andrew Reeves (me)

[AndrewSshi]

There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance,
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance.

A planet of playthings,
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
“The stars aren’t aligned-
Or the gods are malign”
Blame is better to give than receive.
…
All preordained-
A prisoner in chains-
A victim of venomous fate.
Kicked in the face,
You can't pray for a place
In Heaven's unearthly estate.

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear-
I will choose Free Will.

--Rush, “Freewill,” ©1980.

When Martin Luther defied a Pope and proclaimed salvation only through the ineffable grace of God, he had no idea that he was rending the body of the ancient church that had for so long known only unity. As his revolution spread, though, all Christendom watched as the Church began to fracture like one of the rose windows smashed by a maddened Swiss mob. Northern Germany, Scandinavia, and a large portion of the Swiss cantons turned away from the faith they had known for centuries, causing no small consternation in a civilization that valued timeless truths above novelty, and which viewed the past as the repository of truth and the present and future as decay. When the reformers were accused by men like Cardinal Sadoleto of pulling away from their faith for the sake of unprecedented novelties, both Luther and Calvin responded that it was their medieval forbears who had introduced devilish novelties into the Church, and that they were merely restoring Christianity to its ancient form (“Reply,” 56).

Such claims and counter claims were absolutely vital in the spirit of those times. For if Christ had indeed left His authority with a body of believers upon his ascension, then any faction claiming to possess the true meaning of His scriptures would logically have to be in agreement with that original body that carried on Christ’s truth after His return to His Father. It is outside of the purview of the discipline of history to ask questions about the existence and nature of God or the supernatural claims of any institution. We can, however, examine the claims of historical continuity by the various parties involved: Were Doctors Luther and Calvin reclaiming an ancient theology obscured by centuries of scholastic decadence, or were they, as their opponents claimed, introducing novelties never before seen under the sun? I intend, through an examination of patristic sources in comparison to Luther and Calvin, to demonstrate that the reformers reclaimed certain Augustinian principles, but in carrying them to their logical extremes, went to lengths that were utterly without precedent.

In examining the Reformation and its dogmas, we must first understand the key fulcrum upon which the reformation turned. This point, though, is often obscured when navigating through a list of secondary issues like use of images, liturgical style, church property, etc. We would do well to note that all of these issues pale besides that which drove the reformers to the lengths they went—“Therefore it is clear that, as the soul needs only the Word of God for its life and righteousness, so it is justified by faith alone and not any works; for if it could be justified by anything else, it would not need the Word, and consequently it would not need faith.” The reformation stands or falls on the basis of the assertion that man is justified before God only through His ineffable grace, by faith alone.

At the outset, this should not seem like too much of a problem. Even the most adamant pre-Vatican II Catholic will acknowledge the corrupt nature of man and inability to approach the righteousness of Christ without divine grace. Why then, did the reformers’ preaching of grace cause such a stir? If we delve below the surface, the problem with sola fide soon becomes apparent. If salvation comes by grace through faith alone, then no works of man can have anything do to with his salvation. If that is the case, then, as Luther tells us, this discounts any act of the will, for if one were to be able to will oneself to believe, faith would simply be a meritorious work (Luther, 135). Calvin reaches a similar conclusion in his Institutes (XXI, 1), and such thinking leaves us with the uncomfortable notion that, if one is to be saved by faith alone, then man, shorn of his free will, is reduced to the role of a puppet dancing on God’s strings. This of course opens up a host of other difficulties, and the perplexed believer is left asking if God in His love also responsible for evil. In the end, the Roman Catholic Church rejected reformed dogma in order to defend the doctrine of man’s freedom (Tracy, 101).

This rejection then left the reformers in the position of standing against the ancient Catholic Church and demanding that they, rather than the ancient church, possessed apostolic truth. Erasmus of Rotterdam had this to say about Luther’s claim to have re-discovered the truth:

Even though Christ’s spirit might permit His people to be in error in an unimportant question on which man’s salvation does not depend, no one would believe that this Spirit has deliberately overlooked error in His church for 1300 years, and that He did not deem one of all the pious and saintly Church Fathers worthy to be inspired, with what, they contend, is the very essence of all evangelical teaching (Erasmus, 19).

Erasmus lays a fairly serious charge at Luther’s feet. The answer, then to the question of whether or not the reformers held views in concord with the ancient church lies in ascertaining Erasmus’s assertion that the denial of free will is completely alien to the historical record of the Church’s teachings.

Since Erasmus felt it meet to bring the Church Fathers into the discussion, I shall begin my examination with patristic sources. I intend first to examine the works of Justin Martyr, a second century convert and one of the first Christian apologists. I intend to examine Justin’s work as a case study for several reasons, chief of which are that his first and second apologies were written both to answer objections to the Christian faith and outline its basic principles, and, if we are looking for a picture of early Christianity as handed down to the apostles, we could do no better than to examine the product of a Church removed from the death of the last apostle by less than a century.

To properly comprehend the early Church’s positions on the freedom of the will, we must first examine the philosophical background of the classical world from which Christianity emerged. We quickly find that, as a general rule, the classical world was hostile to the notion of humanity possessing the free ability to choose. Democritus with his mechanistic view of the cosmos and the Eleatics with their monism both held that all events and choices were under the sway of a deterministic necessity (“Free Will”). Aristotle was a bit more optimistic, allowing for contingency, but then, with his cosmos brought into being by a primum mobile, it is hard to escape the notion that all subsequent causes must be dependent of the first cause (ibid). Nor did the stoics allow for free choice, which was precluded by their pantheistic picture of the universe (ibid). It was against such background that Christianity addressed the issue of man’s freedom.

In Chapters XLIII and XLIV of his Second Apology, Justin examines the question as to whether or not men are free. His conclusion is an unambiguous rejection of the classical world’s determinism. Martyr makes several arguments, one based on a usage of the term “devour” in Isaiah, and another on the dubious notion that Plato learned what he knew from the Hebrew prophets (Martyr, XLIV). We shall pass over these, though, in favor of the much more powerful argument of responsibility. He tells his reader “unless the human race have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions” (Martyr, XLIII). Justin hammers this point home further in stating that God made man, “not like other things, as trees and quadrupeds, which cannot act by choice” (ibid). For Martyr, the sinner would not be worthy of punishment if his action were not of his own volition, but a result of the condition in which he was made (ibid). He then quotes Deuteronomy 30:15, 19: “Behold before thy face are good and evil: choose the good” (1.2.5).

Augustine in his answer affirmed that man does evil through the use of his free choice (Free Choice, 1.16.35), and that evil comes not from God, but rather from a negation of His goodness, that is, in a man turning from the good that which is God to follow his own desires (ibid, 2.20.54). In agreement with Justin Martyr, he asks rhetorically, “How could a man be punished justly, if he used his will for the very purpose for which it was given” (ibid, 2.1.3)? He goes on to state that to be justly punished, sin must be committed by a free act of the will (ibid).

In this context, when Augustine speaks of the decrees of God, he speaks of God’s predestination as coming through the foreknowledge of His omniscience. Indeed, he goes out of his way to state that foreknowledge is not the same as compulsion (Free Choice, 3.4.10), and states that, simply because God has foreseen an evil does not mean that He is responsible (ibid, 3.4.11). He draws the notion of foreknowledge to its logical conclusion, stating that because God foreknows everything, then events must happen as He has foreseen (ibid, 3.3.8). This appears to satisfactorily wrap up the issue of God’s decrees.

All of the above would seem to create the impression that God’s only action in working out His will is in foreseeing that which will occur and thus working out His will through man’s will. But we must carefully bear in mind that Augustine is speaking of the origins of evil. We have not yet examined what Augustine taught from scripture concerning, not man’s reprobation, but his salvation. When we look to this issue, the picture of Augustine becomes much murkier.

Augustine notes that the first man fell through his own completely free choice. Adam, in Augustine’s thinking, was completely free to choose either good or evil, and opted for evil (Free Choice, 3.24.73). From this point, humanity was enslaved to original sin. The original sin came through free will, but subsequently, though still free, the will was subject to corruption, and thus, unable to rise to salvation. This can be summed up in the statement, “But, though man fell through his own will, he cannot rise through his own will” (ibid, 2.20.54).

At this point in his career, Augustine might have been willing to acknowledge that man can freely look for the grace of God in order to assist him in doing good, stating that man, though subject to concupiscence, nonetheless has the knowledge of God, by whose grace he might rise to a higher state (ibid, 3.19.53). If we were to cease our examination of Augustine here, we would find a ready partisan of Rome, affirming man’s free choice, predestination through foreknowledge, and the ability of man to choose God. Alas, the picture is not that simple.

For at the turn of the fifth century, the notorious heretic Pelagius preached that man in and of himself had the ability to be perfect, and that the fall of Adam, rather than plunging the whole of the human race into sin, served merely as a bad example (Nature and Grace, 9.10). To the dismay of the good Doctor, Pelagius and his followers sought to bolster support for their beliefs with Augustine’s very own writings on free will (Retractions, 1.9.3). Augustine’s response to this heretic’s teachings generated his later writings on the will, predestination, and divine grace.

It must be noted that Augustine’s later writings on original sin and predestination seems to show a markedly different posture from his earlier work on free will. While it has been argued that this hardened stance was due either to his reaction to the fall of Rome or the Pelagian heresy, it is more likely that his own views were gradually evolving under the influence of St. Paul, independent of external circumstances. I base my judgment on Augustine’s quotation of his Retractions in On the Predestination of the Saints:

I indeed labored in defense of the free choice of the human will, but the grace of God conquered, and only thus was I able to arrive at the point where I understood that the Apostle spoke with the clearest truth, “For who singles you out? Or what do you have that you have not received? And if you have received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it” (1 Corinthians 4:7, qtd. in Predestination, 4.8)?

The above taken into account, the later Augustine still believes that those who choose faith in Christ do so of their own free will, but with the important caveat that God has prepared the will of the elect to choose Him (Predestination, 6.11). Under these teachings of Augustine, free will alone is insufficient to believe in Christ, and indeed, if free will is enough for the believer to be saved, then “Christ has died in vain” (Nature and Grace, 40.47). The will of man is both corrupt and inadequate to seek salvation. The elect are not called because they believe, but so that they may believe (Predestination, 17.34). We see Augustine at his most Protestant when he further recounts his own changing views in stating “I said most truly: ‘For just as in those “whom God has chosen,” not works initiate merit, but faith…’ [Emphasis added.] But that merit of faith is also a gift of God…” (Predestination, 3.7) Here, then, the Catholic, to his dismay, sees what seems to be protestant doctrine issuing from the pen of the arch-Catholic.

We will be going too far, though, if we make Augustine a five point Calvinist. We must note that, for starters, when he issued a retraction concerning his first writings on the nature of evil, he stated that free will was inadequate for man to rise to God. He never, though, changed his statement that evil comes only from the free exercise of the will, and never denies that in choosing to do evil, Adam was under no compulsion. When he mentions predestination, he is quite clear that only by God’s predestination can man come to an efficacious and saving faith, but what is striking is that predestination is only mentioned regarding salvation. Those that are condemned do so merely because they follow their own corrupt will, and God justly punishes their evil deeds. Augustine takes his stand for grace and salvation through election, while at the same time avoiding the horror of double predestination.

For the next several centuries, the Church would follow this Augustinian path. The Church rejected the teachings of Pelagius, and a hundred years later at the Council of Orange, issued a series of canons affirming the Augustinian position on grace and predestination. Canon 4 states that if anyone contends that God’s cleansing of man from sin is contingent upon the will then he is in error; Canon 5 states that the beginning of faith itself comes from the grace of God rather than the will of man; Canon 6 states that grace does not depend on the cooperation of man (“Canons of Orange”). As the Church moved on through the centuries, she attempted to carry on in the steps of the African Doctor in straddling the fence between grace and free will. By the beginning of the High Middle Ages, though, the Church was pulling back towards a system that acknowledged the primacy of the human will. By the turn of the twelfth century, St. Anselm of Canterbury wrote in his De Concordia that free choice co-exists with divine grace and cooperates with it (Anselm, 453). With such pronouncements, The Church had arrived at a position specifically condemned by St. Augustine (cf. Letter 225). We shall now examine how well Luther and Calvin succeeded in their attempts to return to his teachings.

Luther would be in perfect concord with Augustine in his affirmation of salvation by grace through faith. In The Bondage of the Will, though, he arrives at Augustine, but then passes him completely, arriving in territory where none have trodden before. Augustine stated that man’s fall came through his choice, and the resulting corruption of human nature resulted in a will that commits sin of its own volition. Luther does the good doctor one better, though, and asserts that the wicked man sins “under the impulse of divine power” (Luther, 130). Luther even challenges Augustine in his definition of free will, stating that, if in a fallen state the will is unable to seek God, then it is not in fact free (ibid, 113), and that Augustine and others who have called such a will free are degrading the very word (ibid, 120). Luther goes to the extreme end of the spectrum, and then beyond the pale, but recognizes and embraces this: “Therefore, we must go to extremes, deny free will altogether, and ascribe everything to God” (ibid, 133)!

Indeed, his statement that a will unable to do good is in fact under compulsion makes fine logical sense, but the end result is a man with no freedom, and one whose evil must be the responsibility of divine omnipotence. Luther here returns to the Augustinian notion that in His omnipotence God allows but does not cause the workings of evil in order to further His divine plan (ibid, 130). It almost seems here that Luther is pulling back from the brink of a precipice to which he has been running headlong, staring into an abyss to which he dare not attempt to apply his own feeble reason. And indeed, though throughout this debate on free will with Erasmus Luther employs the techniques of reason and dialectic, in the end he felt that any attempt to use reason to fathom the mind of God was a fairly silly exercise (ibid, 129). As the reformation continued, though, another figure would arrive who would see no problem in attempting to apply human reason to the workings of the Eternal God, taking every statement on grace, sin, and God’s decrees to their horrifying ends, leaping joyfully into the abyss from which Luther held back. That man was Jean Calvin.

Even the extreme bombast of Luther’s Bondage of the Will does not take the horrific final step in the picture it paints of God’s omnipotence. Like Augustine, Luther admits that since the fall, man has been a slave to sin, but Calvin finally dares to examine from whence came the fall. His conclusion, unlike Augustine’s, is that God actively caused the fall of Adam and the whole human race into sin and damnation as part of His “wonderful plan” (Institutes, XXIII, 7). The ruthless Frenchman then goes on to state that God is nonetheless just in punishing the reprobate (ibid, XXIII, 4). Though this horribly contradicts both Augustine and Justin Martyr’s writings of responsibility, Calvin barely hesitates when he states that he is leaving behind the bulk of the Church’s traditions in favor of his alleged ruthless adherence to scripture (ibid, XXII, 1). Calvin has no problem in that asserting that, since salvation is not by works, then neither is damnation (ibid, XXII, 11), and that the reason for the eternal torment of the vast majority of the human race lies, not in their guilt, but in the arbitrary choice of God.

This horror, then, is the end result of the reformation: God has arbitrarily predestined some to eternal life, and has likewise predestined others to eternal damnation. Calvin then states that certain people might object to this, stating that it makes God a cruel tyrant, to which he responds that since God is both omnipotent and the creator of everything, then all that He decrees, ipso facto, is righteous, good, and just (Institutes, XXIII, 2). He then has the chutzpah to go on and tell the reader that his dogma is not one of absolute might, since God is “free from fault,” and the quintessence of Law and Right (ibid).

Jean Calvin then, has started from Augustine, who among the Church Fathers was most friendly to predestination, and taken the teachings of predestination to their logical extreme, crafting a dogma that would have caused St. Augustine to blanch in horror. Did St. Augustine believe in divine election and predestination of believers? Most assuredly. It was up to Jean Calvin, though, to add double predestination and eliminate Augustine’s free will theodicy in favor of a God who has decreed evil and suffering for his own amusement.

I submit, though, that such questions concerning free will and predestination would inevitably have come to the fore and been the cause of controversy even without Luther and Calvin. The reason for this is that Augustine loomed large over the western Church down through the centuries, and at times there seem to be two Augustines. Why is this the case? The reason that there seem to be two St. Augustines lies in the Bible itself, since there seem to be two St. Pauls*. We have the Paul who tells the believer in Romans Chapter 9 that God prepares some men for eternal life and some for damnation, answering the obvious objection to this with a “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God” (Romans 9:20)? On the other hand, we are also told that there is a loving God who “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Such contradictions in the Christian faith, then, were present at its inception.

Indeed, such difficulties are inevitable in any faith that attempts to posit a God who is all-powerful, all knowing, and all good. Paul, who likely never intended to be considered a basis for systematic theology, is all over the map when it comes to how to resolve such questions. As such, there is no pat resolution to these seeming contradictions. Perhaps the error of the church was to seek one; Luther is at his best not when he is glorying in the slavery of man, but when he is proclaiming the mercy of Christ.

Works Cited

Anselm of Canterbury, Saint. The Major Works. Eds. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Augustine of Hippo, Saint. Four Anti-Pelagian Writings: On Nature and Grace, On the Proceedings of Pelagius, On the Predestination of the Saints, On the Gift of Perseverance. Trans. John A. Mourant and William J. Collinge. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992.

---. The Problem of Free Choice. Trans. Dom Mark Pontifex. New York: Newman Press, 1955.

The Problem of Free Choice. Appendix. Excerpt from Retractions.

Calvin, Jean. Excerpts from Institutes of the Christian Religion. The Protestant Reformation. Ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968. 178-221.

---. “Reply to Sadoleto.” A Reformation Debate. Ed. John C. Olin. New York, Fordham University Press, 2000. 43-88.

"The Canons of the Council of Orange.” 529 A.D. Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics.

“Free Will.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Michael Maher. 1909. Transcribed 1999.

Martyr, Justin, Saint. “The Second Apology.” The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Eds. Alexander Roberts, D.D., and James Donaldson, LL.D. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899. 188-194.

Erasmus of Rotterdam. Excerpts from The Free Will. Winter 3-94.

Luther, Martin. Excerpts from The Bondage of the Will. Winter 98-138.

[the_doc]

Re: your thanks to CCWoody: amen.

[peabers]

God is completely sovereign. If He desires a man to repent and to serve Him, that man will repent. He may not like it. He may not want it. But, in the end, he will serve God if God desires it.

WHAT!? Haven't you heard of free will, the gift that God gave us all? It is up to us individually to choose between right or wrong, or as to whether we wish to follow God's laws. In the case of your argument, God could force us all to repent, but he doesn't. He doesn't force any man to repent.

What you preach is a vengeful God. God is love, not vengence.

[White Mountain]

Your #191:

I know that WM will claim that we are deluded

I am (or hope to be) much too charitable!

What about those who attack others and stir up contention, are they Christian, or just professing?

You quoted 2 Thessalonians 2:11. Let's look at it in context:

11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Verses 11 and 12 are for evil doers, like, for example, suicide bombers, and lots of other kinds of people who do bad things and take pleasure in hurting others. Be careful, you guys, that you don't ever fall into this category.

13 But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

Now this one, verse 13, is the one that applies to Latter-Day Saints who are meek and humble and live by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God, and maybe a Calvinist here and there if they shape up! 8=)

14 Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We Christians are called, by the good news delivered to us by the apostles, that we may obtain the glory of God (which comes to us, as we learn from other verses) through the grace of God, which He sheds forth on those who have faith in Him, who obey Him, who are faithful and true, etc.

Now what shall we be like, those of us who obtain the glory of God? (see comment on verse 13 :-) John says, "we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2), indicating that God has the power to make us like Him, solely through the grace of God, if we are faithful, humble, and obedient. Paul says that the Spirit bears witness that we who are led by the Spirit are children of God, "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:14-17), indicating that Christ's Sonship and our sonship are very closely related. So you criticize me without end, and here it is in the Bible the whole time!

The Bible does not say much more on the subject, but more is available from true apostles and prophets that God has sent, if you know where to look.

15 Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.

Stand fast, depart not from the truth we have been taught. The implication of course is that it is quite possible to depart from the truth. The New Testament has many examples of such departures, and they continued after the apostles were taken. How do you avoid this? Stay close to those whom God sends to you -- apostles and prophets -- and if you believe that there are none such on the earth today, ask God to send some, with a commitment on your part that you will give diligent heed to their teachings.

When God sends them, they of course have the authority to write Scripture, which you can study along with the Scripture you already have. Don't be in the position of those in Isaiah's time who said the Lord cannot sent a prophet to warn them of their impending captivity, or to testify of the coming Christ. (But Deuteronomy 4:2 says the canon of Scripture was closed in the time of Moses, you can't add or take away anything!) Don't be like those in Malachi's time who said the Lord cannot send a prophet to tell us of the coming of Elijah, and the Second Coming of the Messiah. Don't be like the Jews of 40 AD who said there had not been a prophet for 400 years and so the time was forever past for God to send a prophet, who would not receive Peter and Paul as prophets because they taught the Law of Moses was fulfilled and that animal sacrifice should cease because the Great and Last Sacrifice had been made.

16 Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace,

17 Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.

O my goodness! He used the word "work" in a positive sense! Just like James!

There are lots of things in the Bible that need to be read more carefully!

[White Mountain]

Your #202:

A fine post! Thanks!

[White Mountain]

Your #194:

You write: As far as I can remember Joseph Smith claimed to have been divinely instucted to set up the mormon church and not to join any of the traditional Christian denominations as they were "apostate".

There was a lot of back-and-forth in his neighborhood between the Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists. Four of his family joined the Presbyterians. He was leaning toward the Methodists. He asked of God which church he should join. He was told not to join any of them.

You can imagine what a serious thing it is in the Savior's eyes when He sends another prophet and apostle to the earth (see my #203 above), one who has been called from before the foundation of the world as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Peter, and Paul were, leaves him to choose good or evil, and having chosen good, reveals Himself from the heavens and issues the call, only to have that prophet persecuted, reviled, and lied about, with so-called ministers of the Gospel in his area spreading ignorance and prejudice, saying there is no such thing as revelations or apostles anymore. Why, they are slapping the Savior in the face! Can't God send a blessing to the earth without His children rebelling against it? If that is not apostasy, what is?

See Matthew 23:29-39. The Pharisees were the sons of those who killed the prophets. They themselves killed the Lord of Life. Jerusalem killed the prophets that were sent to her. But there are many lesser things you can do without being that evil. You can reject, you can attack, you can spread ignorance and prejudice, etc. All of these things interfere with God's efforts to bless humanity with more of His Word. Yet God's purposes shall be accomplished nevertheless.

Try to think of this in the generic sense, so that any prejudices you may have toward Joseph Smith and Latter-Day Saints will not interfere. If God decided to send another true apostle to the earth, would that be the right thing to do? Absolutely! By definition! Could you stop Him? Of course not. Would you want to if you could? The answer to that tells you a bit about yourself. Would you stand there and tell God, "You can't do that to us! You promised you would never do that again!" What would God say? "You have not understood the Scriptures. I promised no such thing." And He would be right, of course. He always is.

But I am sure you have noticed that I and my fellow LDS as we post here at FR do not attack people for adopting a certain faith, as we have unfortunately seen in recent posts. (We may criticize tactics and doctrine, especially when severely attacked ourselves, and there is evidence that the doctrine encourages attacking behavior.) We do not call the faith of others "apostate". We do not say everyone but us is going to hell. We do not consider that Christlike behavior. Your faith and your family are the most sacred things you have. Jesus can say that when He needs to, when people are going to persecute those He raises up. Are you going to do that?

What we do is testify to the world that Jesus Christ has sent true apostles and prophets to the earth, conferred upon them the Holy Apostleship and the Keys of the Kingdom by the hands of Peter, James, and John, and invite the world to partake of the resulting and offered blessings.

You write: He was then supposedly shown the "revelation" of the book of mormon which is supposedly free from error, whereas mormons believe the Bible is true "only in as much as it has been correctly translated".

In addition to what I wrote above, let me add that there is a chain of custody problem with the Bible. We in the 21st century do not have the original manuscripts. The manuscripts from which our Bibles were translated are copies of copies of copies of copies which have been out of the hands of apostles and prophets for many generations.

You write: why should it offend you if we do not consider you to be of the same faith as us?

It does not offend me that you do not consider me a Calvinist. But when so many of you falsely claim that I am not a regenerate Christian, you are saying that I have not accepted Christ and am headed for an eternal hell because of my faith. That is just flat wrong and you can surely understand that it should be extremely upsetting for anyone to be told that. It also calls into question the Christianity of those who so readily attack like that. Still, I am not offended, just determined to testify of the truth and not stand idly by while such important truths are denied as a way of rejecting the prophets and apostles whom God has sent in our day.

I think I have covered the major points in your post, although I have not quoted them all. I know you do not agree with my statements, but perhaps this can be an insight into the LDS perspective and view of things.

[RnMomof7]

By the way, Woody... I just want to thank you again for being our resident "cult answer-man" in our little Reformed/Calvinist apologetics crew. It's work enough for me to maintain our theological distinctives in trinitarian circles (Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Arminians, etc.); I simply don't have the time to keep myself abreast of the errors of the non-trinitarians and such. Good to be able to rely on you to take up my slack in that regard.

Amen to that Woody.I can not find my favorite shoes let alone find all the doctrinal errors in the many cults..

[fortheDeclaration]

Today ,other than the non canonical books the bibles that Catholics and Protestants read are the same...so this argument holds no water.

No, they are not the same! They come from two different texts!. Catholics are smart enough to understand this thats why they hate the King James/TR. It is a obstacle to their efforts to bring about ecumenicalism.

Even so, come Lord Jesus

[fortheDeclaration]

Remember when you fell in love with your wife? That sweet expectancy ,the desire to be together forever,the desire to touch and hold.That was compulsion ....but a sweet one. Why would anyone WANT to say no to such a moment of Grace?

The key is 'fell in love with your wife?' Did someone make you fall in love or did you choose to? Is love a choice or not?

Even so, come Lord Jesus

[fortheDeclaration]

...are enough to demonstrate that most, if not all, of organized Christianity, of every denomination, today is essentially laboring under the same load of false doctrine thrust into Christian dogma by Augustine's synchrotistic amalgam of Biblical teaching, Greek philosophy, and the teachings of the Manichees. The whole sinful nature, predestination, salvation without being saved from sin, heresy began with him, and has been swallowed by almost everyone since. How it is, that a man who believed salamandas could live in fire and that there are people in the world without mouths who get all ther nourishment from the air could have pulled of such a theological swindle is really amazing. I suspect few have actually read Augustine, or Calvin, for that matter

Amen and Amen!

Even so, come Lord Jesus

[fortheDeclaration]

Augustine lived in a time in which the natural sciences were nowhere near as advanced as they are today, but this does not discount his brilliance in other areas. Indeed, in Civitatis Dei, he quite clearly states, after speaking of salamanders, antipodes, and the like, that before speaking more definitively on such creatures, it might be a good idea to ascertain whether or not they even exist. Such feelings are not the product of a gullible credulity.

The real problem with Augustine is that he brought in the allegorical method of interpretation (Origen was its father) and was himself the father of the Roman Catholic system, believing in a postmillennial kingdom. Along with that, he advocated force be used against 'heretics'. As for Calvin, he was also postmillennial, and a user of violence against those who opposed the 'Church/State'. Their view of predestination was nothing less then an attack on the very essence of God, couched ofcourse, in oh so pious terms!

Even so, come Lord Jesus

[fortheDeclaration]

I do happen to know what the important Bible teachers have noticed from the Bible. But so what? I am merely open-minded enough to read their sermons thoughtfully to see if they are Scripturally correct. I don't think you are very open-minded. You just scoff at the Bible teachers in Church history, refusing the consider even the possibility that they were sometimes a lot more insightful than you and your own denominational movement. That's not a spiritually noble attitude. It is demonically smug. Sometimes the smugness is just characteristic of a weirdly carnal, unteachable Christian. Ah, but some "carnal Christians" aren't Christians at all.

So now one is 'carnal' and 'unteachable' because he wants answers from Scripture? Luther rejected the Church Father's with the retort, 'what saith the Scriptures'.

Even so, come Lord Jesus

[fortheDeclaration]

You side with a mental case like Luther? I would 'side' with Luther when he is following scripture and in the case of Justification by faith alone he was.

Even so, come Lord Jesus

[Romulus]

Since God is love (rightly understood), any incitement to authentic love must be understood as an experience of grace. Just as not all men accept Jesus, man always retains the power to reject grace (and, as Flannery O'Connor says, because grace effects change and change hurts, man is capable of rejecting just about any grace). To say that one chooses to love is meaningless to me -- about as meaningless as choosing to get grace on one's own hook. Grace is something that is extended, not earned, and is either received or rejected. It's there that choice operates, IMO.

Of course, for a Christian, the injunction is that we love not just those we find admirable, but "our neighbor." Love therefore proceeds not from mere reason or will, but from community -- and communion. This is a Trinitarian mystery, all the more mysterious for extending even to our enemies -- a deeply scandalous teaching that much have shocked its original hearers even more deeply than it shocks us. Reason can be perverted by will, however, and thus prevent us from receiving love, which is probably why we fall in love most easily with those who excite some sympathy or appetite in our own reason and will.

The notion that man has no power to resist the will of God strikes me as a fatalism resembling nothing so much as the resigned "Insh'allah" of Islam. The conviction that all that happens is the will of God -- hence, that nothing that happens, including our most extreme actions, can be contrary to his will -- reminds me of nothing so much as the extremest form of Muslim fanaticism.

[fortheDeclaration]

Regarding your post #109-Amen and Amen!

Even so, come Lord Jesus

[fortheDeclaration]

Now, if this verse is true, and it is, then the natural man, who does not have the Spirit of God within him, does not even have the ability to do good

I will not bring up the 'devout Centurian' in Acts 10 who was not even a believer (Acts 11), but are you saying that unbelievers are incapable of being kind, generous, forgiving, law-abiding? Even Calvinists concede that unregenerate man is not as evil as he can be. That conscience and christian influence play a role in restraining the old nature. The issue in depravitiy is that nothing good that man does can please God. God is only pleased by what His Son did. Hence, depravity means man is dependent on someone else saving him, he cannot save himself. Cain brought offerings to God but they were not the ones that God sought.

Even so, come Lord Jesus

[fortheDeclaration]

Jerome was indeed a godly man, but he used the Greek text to write the Vulgate. There is no such thing as a "catholic" or "protestant" Bible when you are talking about ORIGINAL. Be careful what you say, there are may be scholars reading.

Jerome used the right text for his Old Testament,(Masoretic) but used the corrupt Vaticanus (B) for the NT, which is where the aprocrypha books come from. He was told to translate a new vulgate to combat the Vulgate that was being used then, the one that had the Received readings in the New Testament.

Butler is right, there are two Bible texts, the text of the Protestant Reformation(Masoretic/TR) found in the King James and the text of the Catholic church, found in the Critical texts of Kittel(Hebrew) and Westcott and Hort(Greek). These are the texts that are the basis for all new translations.

even so, come Lord Jesus

[fortheDeclaration]

God predestines some to Salvation without regard to their merits. God predestines the rest to Damnation with specific regard to their moral demerits. This is the teaching of Scripture, which the regenerate, sanctified Mind accepts.

Very clever! Now, since the Scripture states that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, the real issue is why does God choose one and not another, espically since we know He is not a respector of persons!

Could it be that He sees who will believe when the Gospel is presented and who will not? Who God 'foreknew' He also did predestinate (Rom.8:28)

Might Rom 9-11 be parenthical referring to Israel (after all, that is where the statement is coming from?

No, the 'whosoever' of John 3:16 is really just God kidding us, it really means the 'elect', 'all' in 1Tim.2:4, 4:10, 2Pet.2:9 really means only the elect!

How simple it is to be a Calvinist! Just change every passage that shows that God died for all men (1Jn.2:2) and that all men are savable (Jn.12:32) if they will believe (Rom.10:13) to only the elect and run to Rom.9:19 and Eph.1:11 and state 'case proven'

Even so, come Lord Jesus

[fortheDeclaration]

God can do whatever He wants

As long it is consistent with His essence.

Even so, come Lord Jesus

[fortheDeclaration]

"Many are called, but few are chosen."

Now, any good Calvinist knows that whoever is called must be chosen. That verse does not fit Calvinism.

Even so, come Lord Jesus

[fortheDeclaration]

Okkkkkkkk I did not read the question the same way you did. I believe that the first thing God does is to change us so we do want him. What was dead ,now alive by His Grace.. seeks after the lifegiver. A dead man will not seek Christ. God knows those that are His...no man that has been "quickened " will reject Him..so it is a moot question..( at least in my mind ..for what thats worth:>)

There is big difference between Illumnation by the Holy Spirit to make the Gospel understandable so the individual can make a decision to receive or reject Christ (2Cor.4:6, Jn.12:32) and Irresistable grace. What pleasure does God get out of making someone accept Him? And why doesn't He make everyone accept Him. Oh, I forgot, we aren't allowed to ask those questions (Rom 9:20, Deut.29:29) God after is Sovereign what do the other attributes mean compared to POWER.

God is sovereign because of His other attributes, one of which is a Love that seeks the lost, not picks and chooses who will live with Him in bliss and the rest spend burning in the Lake of Fire. They choose that by their own free will. No creature will be in the Lake of Fire because God wants Him there, but because they chose to go there.

Even so, come Lord Jesus