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To: drstevej
Frequently this view is based on controversial passages like Hebrews 6:4–6 and 2 Peter 2:20–22.

Heh heh heh. Yeah, those "controversial" passages. As a Bible teacher said with respect to one of them, "If only the writer hadn't said that!" The theological difficulties offered by Jacob Harmensen are minuscule compared to those dumped on the world by John Calvin. Compare the "prevenient grace" not being in the Bible with Calvin's hidden counsels of G-d. There is nothing in Armininianism (or even in Islam) that comes anywhere close to the ghastliness and utter wickedness of John Calvin:
"God of his own good pleasure ordains that many should be born, who are from the womb devoted to inevitable damnation. If any man pretend that God's foreknowledge lays them under no necessity of being dammed, but rather that he decreed their damnation because he foreknew their wickedness, I grant that God's foreknowledge alone lays no necessity on the creature; but eternal life and death depend on the will rather than the foreknowledge of God. If God only foreknew all things that relate to all men, and did not decree and ordain them also, then it might be inquired whether or no his foreknowledge necessitates the thing foreknown. But seeing he therefore foreknows all things that will come to pass, because he has decreed they shall come to pass, it is vain to contend about foreknowledge, since it so plain all things come to pass by God's positive decree." (Calv. Inst., b. 3, c. 23, s. 6.)

"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." (Calv. Inst., b. 1, c. 17, S. 11.)

"[Adam] fell not only by the permission, but also by the appointment, of God." (Calvin Responsio ad Calumnias Nebulonis cujusdam ad Articulum primum.)

"God not only foresaw that Adam would fall, but also ordained that he should." (Calvin's Inst., b. 3, c. 23, sec. 7.)

"He sinned because God so ordained, because the Lord saw good." (Calvin's Inst., b. 3, c. 24, sec. 8.)

"I confess it is a horrible decree; yet no one can deny but God foreknew Adam's fall, and therefore foreknew it, because he had ordained it so by his own decree." (Calv. Inst., b. 3, c. 23, sec. 7.)

"They deny that the Scripture says God decreed Adam's fall. They say he might have chose either to fall or not; and that God fore-ordained only to treat him according to his desert: As if God had created the noblest of all his creatures, without fore-ordaining what should become of him!" (Calvin's Inst., b. 3, c. 24 sec. 7.)


150 posted on 05/14/2002 7:30:43 PM PDT by aruanan
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To: aruanan
There is nothing in Armininianism (or even in Islam) that comes anywhere close to the ghastliness and utter wickedness of John Calvin:

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Check out Jonathan Edwards, The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners."BTW, Edwards was the President of Princeton and considered one of America's greatest thinkers. Worth a read.

157 posted on 05/14/2002 11:09:24 PM PDT by drstevej
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To: aruanan
A sample to whet your appetite

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God's justice will appear in your greater destruction. Besides the guilt that you would have had if a Saviour never had been offered, you bring that great additional guilt upon you, of most ungratefully refusing offered deliverance. What more base and vile treatment of God can there be, than for you, when justly condemned to eternal misery, and ready to be executed, and God graciously sends his own Son, who comes and knocks at your door with a pardon in his hand, and not only a pardon, but a deed of eternal glory; I say, what can be worse, than for you, out of dislike and enmity against God and his Son, to refuse to accept those benefits at his hands? How justly may the anger of God be greatly incensed and increased by it! When a sinner thus ungratefully rejects mercy, his last error is worse than the first; this is more heinous than all his former rebellion, and may justly bring down more fearful wrath upon him.

158 posted on 05/14/2002 11:14:02 PM PDT by drstevej
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