***From this quote I see no sense at all of God requiring evil. I see God making choices. Whatsoever came to pass was His choice, not because He was forced or compelled to by need. The “freely” is the giveaway.***
Moving off center, are we? The Reformed God requires evil to exist in His Creation.
***The second part of the paragraph talks about second causes, which negates your above assertion. God did ordain that evil will happen, but He did not create it as if it was a “thing” to be created. He set the circumstances to get the desired results, not based on need.***
Yes. The Reformed God created evil as a part of Creation and utilizes it.
***ne holds to simple logic of course it does (the WCF says that logical deductions from scripture are fine). If SOME are predestined to Heaven, and only THOSE go to Heaven, then it means that SOME are NOT so predestined and there is only one other destination.***
That is why the elimination of the Magisterium from interpretation is so wrong. Calvin interpreted one way, Luther another, Mary Baker Eddy yet another and so on.
All of them different and all of them to one extent or another, wrong.
I am distinguishing between God requiring evil in order to fulfill His plan as He wants it, and God requiring evil because He is lacking of something. I think the latter was being asserted as a Reformed belief and so I objected to it.
That is why the elimination of the Magisterium from interpretation is so wrong. Calvin interpreted one way, Luther another, Mary Baker Eddy yet another and so on. All of them different and all of them to one extent or another, wrong.
The ultimate test is always scripture of course. If teachings are not consistent with scripture, as so many from the Magisterium are not, then we can know they are wrong. Calvin and Luther were obviously very close in the great majority of their interpretations. They had in common a desire to follow the scriptures, so they were led in the same direction.