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This is not Reformed theology. There absolutely IS a transformation, a real one. We are a "new creation". The old has gone, the new has come. A remnant still remains however. Thus Paul says that whatever he wants to do he doesn't, and whatever he does not want to do, this he keeps on doing. But Paul's message is not that we can't live for Christ. His message is very positive.

Forgive me, I can't keep up with all the Protestant beliefs... Unfortunately, I mixed Lutheranism and Calvinism there in my sentence. Disregard the "extrinsic justification" part. However, it is my belief that Calvinism crushes man so that God can 'retain' His sovereignty. Anything credit to man, even under the auspices of grace, is discounted by the 'reformed'.

I would say that we understand primary and secondary causes just fine. We just define and use them differently from you. (You may have seen some of the recent discussion of them in the context of the WCF.) Anyway, in the theater of sin, we say that God ordains it as a primary cause, but man carries it out as the secondary cause. Thus WE say that man gets the blame for it. You, OTOH, apparently say that primary and secondary causes do not apply to sin. But if they did, you would say that God as the primary cause gets all the blame, thus you accuse us of believing that God is the author of sin.

Really? Well, if man is the secondary cause of sin, why is it so difficult to understand that man is the secondary cause of his own salvation? I do not understand your refusal to attribute to man anything of value - although you claim that man is transformed and is a new creation in Christ - and cannot be so of his own effort, but of God.

Now, in the theater of salvation, you give credit for salvation to both God as primary cause and to man as secondary cause (grace + works = salvation). We, OTOH, give all the credit for salvation to God as primary cause. Thus, you say that for us man is "crushed" or "worthless" since we glorify God alone. We will never apologize for giving God all the glory.

IF you understand "primary" and "secondary" causes, then why is God alone glorified when it is God Himself who raises up man and saves Him? Why do you continue to not accept that secondary causes ARE real, and not abstract? Will man be saved if He refuses? Secondary causes are not fictional.

What are you talking about? The Reformers were the ONLY ones who clung to universals and antithesis. The Reformers combated the Renaissance philosophers and later modern philosophers, who were forced to give up their attempt to find a universal to reconcile man and God.

I think you need to consider that the roots of the Reformation PRECEDE the Reformation... Nominalism, that corrupted result of Scholasticism, an empiricism that wounded the mystery of the faith, was the philosophy that Luther and Calvin operated under. Ockham, for example, was Luther's hero.

For example, the Catholics were pushing the idea of an incomplete Fall, thus leaving man with an autonomous intellect.

Whether the Fall was incomplete or not does not take away the necessity of grace entirely dependent upon from God.

A philosophy with no absolutes that is controlled by relativism. Again, the Reformers were the ones who fought against this.

If that is not the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is. Protestantism is BUILT upon the individualism of relativism. The current Pope has strongly written against relativism. Meanwhile, more and more relativists form more independent communities based upon their OWN opinions. Apparently, Christianity is no longer a revealed religion, in their eyes, but one of relativism.

Please.

Well, to use a poker term, we don't split the pot. Man gets all the blame for sin, and God gets all the credit for salvation. We can't take any credit for coming to Christ because we don't use the stock heart to do that. We use the new and improved heart which we had nothing to do with creating or receiving.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by attributing "anything" of value to man. I acknowledge that we will be judged on our works (post salvation) for reward in Heaven. These works are still God working through us, but perhaps the secondary cause idea could come into play here.

Because there isn't any real contribution from man. When I come to the crossroads of total depravity, unconditional election, and irresistible grace, it's all of God and not of man. I "could" say that man must freely choose to be saved. That is a true statement, however, given what I think it means, I'm not sure whether it would be "honest" to call it a secondary cause. ---- Man will not be saved if he refuses, but we say that is impossible under the conditions we are talking about.

I could only find those accusations on Catholic websites. From everything I read on nominalism, Luther and Calvin would have had nothing to do with it. I did find something on Ockham, though, from what appears to be a neutral website. Nominalism -- Advanced Information:

"In the fourteenth century William of Ockham devised a nominalistic system of theology based on his belief that universals were only a convenience of the human mind. According to this view, the fact of a resemblance between two individuals does not necessitate a common attribute; the universals one forms in his mind more likely reflect one's own purposes rather than the character of reality. This led William to question scholastic arguments built upon such abstractions. As he argues in his Centilogium, systematization of theology must be rejected, for theology can ultimately be based only on faith and not on fact. Therefore, through grace and not knowledge, he accepted the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, bowed to the authority of the pope, and declared the authority of Scripture. His follower, Gabriel Biel, would carry his thought to its logical conclusion and declare that reason could neither demonstrate that God was the First Cause of the universe nor make a distinction between the attributes of God, including God's intellect and will. The reality of the Trinity, as well as any theological dogma, can be found only in the realm of faith, not in the realm of reason. This was diametrically opposed to the natural theology of medieval scholasticism. Nominalism continued to have an effect on theology. Its influence can be discerned in the writings of David Hume and John Stuart Mill. ---- D A Rausch (Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)" (emphasis added)

I mean, are you kidding me? You think Luther would go for this? No way, he stood for the opposite. This is the EXACT type of philosophy I talked about in my original post. With the Roman Catholic Church's blessing, faith was DIVORCED from reason. That killed any chance of finding a universal to reconcile man and God. This is what the original Reformers fought AGAINST!! Notice that Ockham accepted the Latin Church solely on faith, without any reason. We Reformers say that is preposterous, there is no such thing as blind faith. Therefore, I reject any suggestion that Luther or Calvin were part of the movement that they worked so hard to defeat! :)

Whether the Fall was incomplete or not does not take away the necessity of grace entirely dependent upon from God.

That's irrelevant. :) The point is that the Roman Catholic Church supported the humanism of man's autonomous intellect THROUGH the incomplete Fall. The Renaissance philosophers thought they were on solid ground with this to back them up. IN FACT, what they proceeded to do was to kill off grace ENTIRELY and replace it with the "leap of faith" (the non-rational). Reason was eliminated from God's place in the model (as illustrated in the above quote by someone I've never heard of). With reason gone, there was nothing left to explain God or His relationship to man. So, they filled in with blind leaps of faith or the "final Experience" (non-rational) of Karl Jaspers, all the way up until the drug-taking (to get the real meaning of life) of many of the modern philosophers. This has obviously led to a disaster as far as our society's current epistemology is concerned. I don't blame the Latin Church for everything, but they clearly contributed to the problem. It has definitely always been the Reformers who have been the ones to stand in the breach on this.

FK: "A philosophy with no absolutes that is controlled by relativism. Again, the Reformers were the ones who fought against this."

Ridiculous. :) This would only be right if you lumped us in with every other non-Apostolic faith that is running around out there. I hope you would agree that isn't fair. You CAN'T look me in the eye and say that all of the Reformers you know on these boards are any less on message than you and your Latin brethren. You just can't.

If the Pope has written against relativism then I applaud him, however, even recent news stories appear to say that it isn't taking effect. Just last week there was the story of the Bishop in San Francisco. He had two OPEN BLASPHEMERS appear right in front of his face, and yet he still stood in Christ's place and performed the sacrament for them. Considering that you have a monolithic and well organized faith, I would call that pure relativism. Now, is this Bishop going to get into any trouble for what he did? Of course not. That is MORE relativism. There are of course other examples which have been mentioned several times across these boards. One would think the bar should be higher for you because you are a monolithic faith, but it doesn't appear to turn out that way in actual practice.