Posted on 03/16/2006 7:42:26 AM PST by Gamecock
Calvinism is false because it is extrascriptural theological speculation at odds with the faith of the fathers of the Church. It is not wrong because Calvin was possibly a homosexual and no one on this thread implied otherwise.
Vladimir did exactly that by putting forward no theological or other historical arguments.
Yes, after studying the two views this was the only conclusion I could honestly decide; God's decrees were given simultaneously. Understanding this principle, the problem I have with Dabney's statement is as follows:
Trying to take a middle of the road approach is extremely difficult. But there is a tenuous balance here between God's sovereignty and God's love for His creation. Somehow God elected and reprobated mankind at the same time He effect His creation. This is all very confusing> It's like trying to figure out how God could call the universe into existence with a word.
I don't see how mentioning an aspect of Calvin's character says anything about Calvin's theology, especially if no theological argument accompanies the character allegation.
"St. Augustine was a fornicator". Did I say anything about St. Augustine's theology?
If Vladimir made such an illogical link, show us where, and at any rate this is something you should dispute with Vladimir.
I, as a Catholic, would agree with this statement. Otherwise, would we then judge the veracity of Christianity based on those who fail to live up to it?
Finally, there is the fact that those who live in glass houses shouldn't cast stones. It is entirely hypocritical for a Catholic to claim that Calvinism is false because Calvin was allegedly a homosexual when the Catholic church itself has systematically hid pedophile priests itself.
Fortunately, the first Christians did not judge Christianity based on what Judas Iscariot did... Calvinism stands or falls based on its comparison to Christianity that came before it, not on the type of man Calvin was. Lots of people didn't think much of Jesus, either.
Regards
I think the facts of the Fall militate against the supralapsarian position in that the Depravity Curse did not hit man until man had sinned apart from being depraved.
My point is that the doom of mankind, which hit mankind in time only after man had sinned, is tied to man's deservedness of doom. This seems to be true even if there are a few verses (e.g., in Romans 9) that do not explicitly mention the fact that man deserved the doom that man got.
It would therefore appear that any doom that God contemplated for the race before the race was even created was somehow coupled with His view of man as deserving doom.
This was Spurgeon's position, too, of course. And he offered basically the same argument as Dabney offered. In other words, Spurgeon did not seem to think that the supralapsarians have any Scriptural right to retrofit their own order into the decrees of God.
In short, supralapsarianism is not logically necessary, nor is it clearly taught in Scripture. We therefore default to infralapsarian. And in defaulting to infralapsarianism, we have a system that agrees with the Biblical data while also blocking potential objections by the Arminians.
Yes, I like your argument.
As long as we know the default position is not always correct.
Your reputation has preceded you.
But notice what I said earlier: Supralapsarianism is not logically necessary, nor is it clearly taught in Scripture.
If that is the case, then teaching supralapsarianism as dogma is a violation of Sola Scriptura.
We can say that God created people whom He also foreordained to hell--i.e., double predestination is definitely true if predestination is true at all--but we cannot say that God's determination to damn a people had no immediate regard for them as sinners deserving damnation.
Besides, God's foreknowledge of events involves His Being serving as a kind of determinative source of all events. If that is the case, how can He not think of sinners-to-be as sinners while He is purposing to damn them? (His foreknowledge of events precedes His predestination of events, and since His foreknowledge is that of Omniscience, He cannot separate their certain future status as sinners from His determinate counsel to damn them. This suggests that the position I argued as a necessary default position is theologically demanded.)
No, but the default position - the one which makes the fewest assumptions, or the least unsubstantiated assumptions - is more likely to be correct.
I'm still digesting Dabney's argument. It seems as though he is saying that the six factors, which supralapsarianism insists upon, are better understood as a gestalt whole. That has the ring of simplicity.
In either case of supralapsarianism or infralapsariamism, one has a set order of events; they're just arranged differently. I personally think it's far easier for our minds to comprehend a set order of events locked in time than it is to take a holistic approach. But somehow I feel the holistic approach is probably the best explanation to this riddle. A biblical example of this complex process is creation itself. God speaks but a world the the universe exists. A lot of things happened with but one word from God. (One could also make the argument that there were six distinct events in creation as well.)
If the holistic view is accurate then I would have to agree with Dabney's interpretation.
My question is simple. Did God for all eternity know all that is? Did he know the names of the reprobates for all eternity?
HARLEY: Yes, I like your argument.
Why? That statement actually supports supralapsarian, and once again points to the infra-position as actually cloaking an Arminian POV.
WHY does God see man as deserving doom?
Because He created some "VESSELS OF WRATH FITTED TO DESTRUCTION" and some "VESSELS OF MERCY, WHICH HE HAD AFORE PREPARED UNTO GLORY."
Even Calvinists struggle with God being God. We all deserve "doom" because we are all fallen creatures, according to the will of God. Some receive mercy, according to the will of God.
And both those realities are exactly as God predestined, ordained, determined, decreed and willed them to be. There never was a time when reprobates were not doomed. And there never was a time when the elect were not saved.
And that's the mystery we cannot comprehend. We say Adam was created sinless, but obviously he was as "sinless" as the baby born this morning. He was created no differently than you or me. His sin nature is our sin nature -- from the beginning. As it was supposed to be.
And YET the saved are different from before the beginning.
"The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." -- Psalm 58:3
And YET...
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." -- Psalm 139:13-16"For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.
The same fallen nature, yet different from the womb.
It seems a somewhat simplistic fix to say everything is "contemporaneous." Of course that's true. God is the infinite beginning of everything.
But if one is choosing between infra and supralapsarianism, my vote goes to the latter because it most clearly upholds the definition of God as found in Scripture.
The question is: did God decree both election and reprobation before the fall? Supralapsarians would say yes, particularly in light of Ephesians 1...
Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." -- Ephesians 1:4-6"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
"Chosen" before the fall.
Saying God chose us before the fall in light of His awareness of the fall is actually saying God reacts to something.
But God reacts to nothing.
For several years the Web site of his Catholic Apologetics International (www.catholicintl.com) offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could disprove geocentrism and prove heliocentrism (a sun-centered solar system).
This is the same source for the ridiculous allegations that John Calvin was convicted of sodomy.
Good catch.
You wrote: "This is the same source for the ridiculous allegations that John Calvin was convicted of sodomy."
Untrue. The source of the allegations that John Calvin was convicted of sodomy was a legal document found in the archives of Noyon, France. What you find at Robery Sungenis' website is a translated article, originally published in Europe, that a reader sent in in answer to a query about Calvin's homosexuality. One reader asked about it, Sungenis (actually Ben Douglass) said he knew nothing about, another reader sent it in to show there is reason to believe it is true.
What evidence do you have that the allegation is ridiculous? Do you have evidence that the original document was a fake? Didn't exist?
Here's how things were posted at CAI:
1) Question 33- Calvin
I heard that John Calvin was a homosexual. Is there any truth to this and if there is, where can I find creditable sources?
Vincent Frattaruolo
B. Douglass: Vincent,
I am unaware of any sources claiming that John Calvin was a homosexual. If they are out there, I'd be no better at finding them than you.
JMJ,
Ben Douglass
2) Question 45- Calvin's Sodomy?
Hi Bob,
Here's some information about Calvin's sodomy. This letter was published in the 1/06 issue of CW.
Steve Dalton
Dr. Jones,
In "Degenerate Moderns" you prove modernity is rationalized sexual desire. You make Luther the first modern man, but you forgot one important figure in your book and articles. John Calvin deserved to be in your chapter on Luther in DM, for he was the co-founder of modernity. And he was, like all the other reformers, sexually disordered. According to St. Alphonsus M. Liguori. Calvin "was addicted to immorality. at all events in his youth, and Spondanus says, he was charged even with an unnamable offense, and Bolsec even says in his life of him, that he was comdemned to death for it in Noyon. but that through the intercession of the bishop, the punishment was changed to branding with a ret-hot iron. Varillas says that in the registry of Noyon a leaf is marked with this condemnation, but without mentioning the offense, but Noel Alexander says positively, that both the certificate of the condemnation and the offense was preserved in Noyon' and it was shown to and read by, Berteler, SEcretary to the Republic of Geneva, sent on purpose to verify the fact. Cardinal Gotti says, that when he taught Greek in Angouleme rhe same charge was brought against him by his schlars, and he was condemned there likewise. Ligouri then says, " Such are the virtues attributed to the pretended Reformers of the Church." ( Ligouri, The History of Heresies & Their Refutation St.Athanasius Press, 133 Slazing Rd., Potosi, WI 53820 1-800-230-1025 http://www.stathanasiuspress.com\) It is oblivious the "unnamed offense" is sodomy.
Bolsec, who was a Carmelite monk who turned Protestant, but later returned to the faith, says in his "Historie" that Calvin was a sodomite. His book is only available as used in the original langauge. But if you can't find it at the Notre Dame library, Bookfinder.Com has several copies listed. I hope you consider this worth looking into,
Steve Dalton
3) Question 60- A response to the Calvin question
What are we to think of Calvin?
Rev . Fr. Philippe Marcille
The influence of John Calvin (1509-1564) has been immense, perhaps even more so than that of Luther. Certainly, without the bellowing revolutionary Luther, Calvin would not have been able to do anything; yet without Calvin, the revolt would not have had the political impact that it did in France and especially the United States.
Origins
He was born in Picardy, France, in 1509. His parents were well-to-do people. A very gifted student, he received a benefice from the Church and continued his studies at Paris. He was not well liked by his classmates: they nicknamed him "the accusative." He readily scolded others and tattled on them, while remaining aloof and bitter. But when in public, he would lose all his reserve and stand out in debates. An anti-Lutheran, defender of authority, he approved the legal actions brought against the most strident Lutherans.
The Personal Crisis
In 1532, at the College of France, he was still Catholic. By the end of 1533, he had suddenly turned Protestant, sold his benefices, and begun the life of an itinerant preacher. What happened?
Protestant hagiography has sought to explain it by edifying conversations in his room that would have taken place between Calvin and a Protestant cousin. Recent studies, however, have shown that the two were hundreds of miles apart at the time. A key, though, was left in part by Calvin himself:
Each and every time I entered within myself, a horror so great came over me that neither purifications nor satisfactions could have effaced it. The more I considered myself the more my conscience was pricked with sharp darts, so much so that only one consolation remained, and that was to deceive myself by forgetting about myself ....bewildered by the misery into which I had fallen, and even more so by the knowledge of how close I was to eternal death (Letter to Sadolet).
It is only fair to wonder what could be the nature of such a burning self-reproach. There is one answer, based upon serious evidence, one that has always been passionately denied by the Protestants. In 1551, a Catholic controversialist revealed that the archives of the city of Noyon, Calvin's birth place, contain the record of a condemnation against Calvin, at age 18, for sodomy. He had by then already received the tonsure. His parents obtained clemency from the bishop, so that instead of being condemned to death as the law demanded, he was branded as a sign of infamy. The Catholic controversialist presented the evidence signed by all the eminent personages of the city. The English scholar Stapleton went there to examine the archives during Calvin's lifetime, and vouched for the fact. The contemporary German Lutherans spoke of it as an established fact (Schlusselburg, Théologie calvinienne).
At twenty-four, Calvin was at a crossroads. He had to choose between confession or Lutheranism. He chose: "Only believe, and you are as sure of your own eternal salvation as of the Redemption of Christ. Only believe, and despite all the crimes, not only will you remain in the grace of God, in justice, but you will always remain in grace and you will never be able to lose it" (Bossuet's summary of his doctrine in "Variations").
The Heresiarch
His career began. He wandered to Strasbourg, Basel, Ferrara, and finally settled at Geneva in 1536 as preacher. There he was to show his full worth, not only as a preacher, but also as a political virtuoso. In five years, he was able to solidify his authority over the Consistory the Council of the Ancients, a disciplinary tribunal that passed sentence on all public sinners]; first as leader of the Protestants in exterminating the Catholics (half the city fled, ruined, all their property and possessions confiscated), then as president of the Council that voted on the right interpretation of the Bible, and finally as chief of the tribunal and the army of informers and police in charge of morality and doctrine.
The Tyrant
He began obsessively multiplying laws of public morality. Death was the penalty for high treason against religion as well as for high treason against the city, and for the son who would strike or curse his father, and for the adulterer and the heretic. Children were whipped or hanged for calling their mother a devil. A mason wearily exclaimed "to the devil with the work and the master," and was denounced and condemned to three days in prison. Magicians and sorcerers were hunted down. They always confessed, of course. According to the city register, in 60 years, some 150 were burnt at the stake.
The years went by; Calvin's obsession gripped the Genevans. The number of dishes that could be served at table was regulated, as well as the shape of shoes, and the ladies' hair styles. In the registers are to be found condemnations such as these: "Three journeymen tanners were sentenced to three days on bread and water in prison for having eaten at lunch three dozen pates, which is a great immorality."
That was in 1558. Drunkenness, taverns and card games were punished by fines. The city's coffers filled up and served to pay new informers. For there were ears everywhere in the republic of evangelical liberty, and the failure to inform was itself a misdemeanor. "They are to be stationed in every quarter of the city, so that nothing can escape their eyes," wrote Calvin. Sermons were given on Thursdays and Sundays. Attendance was obligatory under pain of fine or flogging. Not even children were excused. The spies would verify that the streets and houses were empty. Every year, the controllers of orthodoxy went house-to-house to have everyone sign the profession of faith voted that year. The last Catholics disappeared by death or exile. None spoke of changing religion, for Calvin had had a law voted punishing by death anyone who would dare question the reforms of the "servant of Geneva."
Calvin's City
Outwardly Geneva become an exemplary city where an iron morality reigned. Inwardly it was rotten. The population had been augmented by refugees of all sorts: Protestants chased from France, but also delinquents seeking impunity. Calvin's law allowed divorce: people hastened to Geneva from Savoy and the province of Lyons to get remarried. The Protestant Genevan Galiffe, a genealogist, concluded from his studies that the Geneva of Calvin's time was the gutter of Europe. And Calvin knew it:
Out of ten evangelists, you will scarcely find a one who became evangelical for any other reason than to be able to abandon himself more freely to drinking and dissolute living.
Calvin humbly took the title of "servant of Geneva," but God, he held, spoke by his mouth. "Since God has deigned to make known to me what is good and what is evil, I must rule myself by this measure..." And everyone else, too! One morning the city awoke to find gallows had been erected in all the public squares, to which a placard was attached: "For whomever shall speak ill of Mr. Calvin." A letter from the dictator sums up his attitude: "It is necessary to rid the land of these damned cads who exhort the people to resist us, blacken our conduct ...such monsters must be stamped out."
Absolute Power
Calvin's life was not snow white: there are stories of seized inheritances, "spontaneous gifts" made to the great man by merchants, considerable sums sent from the queen of Navarre or the duchess of Ferrara or from other well-off foreigners destined for the poor of the city, but which disappeared into the poor pockets of the great man; marriages arranged for members of his family by threatening rich refugees with expulsion.
Lampoons were circulated: woe to whomever the evangelical police seized in possession of one of them. Some escaped from torture or death by fleeing in time. Calvin then had their wives banished and their goods confiscated. For security's sake, he had the death penalty voted for whomever would even speak of recalling the exiles from their banishment.
Daniel Berthelier, master of the Mint of Geneva, had learned at Noyon the truth about Calvin's past, and had kept written evidence at his house. He was discovered, horribly tortured, and finally beheaded.
It was the execution of Servetus that consolidated the dictator's power. Calvin had cleverly had his adversary's book sent to the hive of Protestant popes, all of whom, including Melancthon, congratulated him on instigating the condemnation of this horrible heretic. Calvin immediately exploited this fleeting prestige to have appointed as electors a multitude of the men who had taken refuge in Geneva, for reasons which were not always based on religion, whom he called "the confessors of the faith." He soon controlled an absolute majority on the Consistory. He then had his last adversaries hunted down, exiled, or educated. It was 1554: before him were ten years in which to exercise absolute power.
There was no more resistance. Even the most powerful citizens could be forced to walk bare-footed around the city, clothed in a shirt, a candle in- hand, crying out "Mercy to God," the ordeal ending by a public confession made kneeling before the Consistory.
When not consulting the spies' reports, Calvin wrote his own book of revelation entitled Institutes of the Christian Religion. He worked on it incessantly, rearranging it, augmenting and re-editing, until it reached a thousand quarto pages. Woe to the critics, whose criticism would elicit from the author a rain of invectives. His ire was as likely to inveigh against Protestants as Catholics. Of Lutherans he was provoked to say: "They are quick tempered, furious, fickle, inconstant, liars, full of canine impudence and diabolical pride."
The quality of Calvin's cold hatred was terrible indeed. It is manifested especially in the affair of Michael Servetus. This learned doctor, a closet Protestant, amused himself by picking out all the blunders and errors that he could find in Calvin's pride and joy, The Institutes. He then sent the book with his own annotations to Calvin. That was in 1546. Calvin clenched his teeth: "If he comes hither and I have any authority, I will never let him quit this place alive" (Letter to Viret, a preacher of Lausanne). He awaited the moment of vengeance for seven years. In 1553, Servetus published anonymously an anti-trinitarian treatise. Calvin, who knew all the publishing channels of Protestant books, was able to discover the author's identity. He denounced him, furnishing proof to the Inquisition, which condemned Servetus, and then helped to obtain the mitigation of his punishment in light of all the good he had done as a physician. The unfortunate Servetus fled to Geneva, where he was arrested on sight. He was made to rot in prison two months. He pleaded to be allowed to have clean clothes and linen, but Calvin opposed the request. He was condemned to be burned alive. Calvin himself arranged the pyre: the pile of faggots was disposed in a circle around the stake so as to make the condemned man be burnt slowly. Calvin remained for two hours at his window listening to the man's screams. He received the approbation of the Protestant hive.
After 1559, the spleen that he had vented on his enemies seemed to be concentrated in his own entrails: stomach aches, intestinal pains, nephritic colic, bloody coughing racked him. His successor Theodore Beza confined him to his room and maintained the legend of the great man. But he confided that his master was becoming daily more imperious and tyrannic. He had unforeseeable fits of anger. Nothing satisfied him. He scolded; he threatened; he inveighed against all the pastors. He made the members of the Consistory confess publicly before him.
He died on the 27th of May 1564 after, it seems, thanking God for his evangelical mission. Was he a prophet, as the Protestants think? Maybe, in the final analysis, the prophet of religious democracy, the Antichrist's democracy. As he lay dying, though, he never had upon his lips the final cry that graced the lips of his dying victim, Michael Servetus: "Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me."
(Translated from Le Bachais, No. 35, November-December 1999, the publication of the Priory St. Pierre Julien Eymard, France).
R. Sungenis: Chris, thank you for this information.
End pastes.
Thus, the allegations about Calvin's sodomy did not begin at CAI, but at in old books written by those who studied Calvin's life centuries ago.
If you want to deny this about Calvin that's fine, but don't make things up (e.g. this allegation came from CAI). Stay honest.
Like you actually read the book. You just googled, cut, and pasted.
Regardless, the book's allegations are unsubstantiated. Produce the records, or primary source documents, or shut the eff up. "Catholic Apologetics Int'l" has about the same amount of credibilty that Dave Hunt and Jack Chick have (they're freakin' geocentrists!!!!), nor does a 15th-century pamphleteer have any historical credibility.
But let's not forget, Jude, we were told it was an "old book," no doubt a very dusty pamphlet discovered late one rainy night somewhere in the Vatican basement.
You'd think there would be enough to debate without these kinds of creepy, scurrilous lies.
It's verses like the ones you pointed out that lead me believe there is a holistic approach to this. Clearly God created the wicked and the righteous. Our Lord Jesus' mission (and ours) is to seek the lost. There is also evidence that He calls us out before we are born. I like the infralapsarian position that God decree creation and then man's fall but it can't negate God creating the elect and the reprobate.
Frankly, I'm not interested in attempting to counter some Arminian argument if the scriptures are clear. If Arminians can't understand that God can ordain something and still not be the "author of evil" then that's their problem-not mine. Most of their view is "La-la God is Love" dribble anyway so does anyone expect them to understand this deeper concept? The simple things are mysteries to them anyway. How much more so when we have a REAL mystery. (Ooooh, I hope no Arminians are reading this.)
It is a poor reason to select a veiwpoint solely on the basis of countering arguments. However, I don't believe the_doc or any of our infralapsarian friends are suggesting that. I think if you view the events happening simultaneously you get a far greater and grander picture of God. He elects and reprobates, yet people fall on their own accord. It's the parallel of God hardening Pharaoh's heart and Pharaoh hardening his own heart. This is the gospel although I'm at a lost to fully explain this.
Perhaps someday, if the Lord so wills, I may retire and sitting on the porch swing I may come up with the solution. Then in my excitement I'll probably slip on a banana peel, fall over the porch rail and this great truth will be lost to the ages. All according to God's will.
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