Posted on 02/28/2010 8:30:39 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
John Calvin's 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism's buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism's latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination's logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time's dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision.
Calvinism, cousin to the Reformation's other pillar, Lutheranism, is a bit less dour than its critics claim: it offers a rock-steady deity who orchestrates absolutely everything, including illness (or home foreclosure!), by a logic we may not understand but don't have to second-guess. Our satisfaction — and our purpose — is fulfilled simply by "glorifying" him. In the 1700s, Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards invested Calvinism with a rapturous near mysticism. Yet it was soon overtaken in the U.S. by movements like Methodism that were more impressed with human will. Calvinist-descended liberal bodies like the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) discovered other emphases, while Evangelicalism's loss of appetite for rigid doctrine — and the triumph of that friendly, fuzzy Jesus — seemed to relegate hard-core Reformed preaching (Reformed operates as a loose synonym for Calvinist) to a few crotchety Southern churches.
No more. Neo-Calvinist ministers and authors don't operate quite on a Rick Warren scale. But, notes Ted Olsen, a managing editor at Christianity Today, "everyone knows where the energy and the passion are in the Evangelical world" — with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper of Minneapolis, Seattle's pugnacious Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention. The Calvinist-flavored ESV Study Bible sold out its first printing, and Reformed blogs like Between Two Worlds are among cyber-Christendom's hottest links.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
And when Obama knew it.
This is what kosta refuses to accept "in principle" — i.e., without "proof" satisfactory to himself. Sigh....
And thus you are so right, P-Marlowe: "It is impossible to debate theology with a person who denies the very existence of the Theos."
Thank you so much for your beautiful essay/post!
Well said, dear brother in Christ!
On kosta's view, they all died needlessly for a lie. Does this make any sense?
Plus if Christ had not been resurrected, there would have been no empty tomb. Simply producing the Body would have constituted irrefutable proof that he was simply another dead mortal; that would instantly have ended all speculation regarding His resurrection — and divinty.
Thank you ever so much for your beautiful essay/post, MHGinTN!
TNX Quix; thanks for noting that it is a conjecture....
Oh well.... maybe a topic for another time!
So do you want to change your yes to a no?
Why would I when I have just proven yes?
snip: This is what kosta refuses to accept “in principle” — i.e., without “proof” satisfactory to himself.
Spirited: The key words are ‘satisfactory to himself.’ Pride of Mind has seduced many people today into believing that whatever nonsense invented by their over-heated imaginations is the final word on everything. If they say the words it must be so and everyone else must-—without question-—accept their revelations as if from the Oracles of Delphi.
What we are witnessing here in America with its’ epidemic of narcissism is the hardening of the heart brought on when the soul turns inward away from God. As the soul turns inward there is increased fixation on ‘self’ and a corresponding blindness to reality and to ‘others.’ The inward turning soul is increasingly a dark soul unlit by the still, small voice of conscience. This in turn leads to the death of morally informed reason and the liberation of inflated, disordered passions and impulses, obsessions, neurosis, paranoia, and megalomania on whose behalf morally-dead reason is used. Solipsism is the usual result. Though the intellect still functions, the individual is in fact morally insane.
A wise man once said that it is impossible to reason with the quite literally-—unreasonable.
You just proved “no”
try reading my question again and then rereading your answer
I believe I clearly proved that, yes, I did an evil action that lead to evil consequences while God did not foreordain those consequences to be evil but good.
How can a truth still be "can and very well may"? Either it's a truth in which a set of propositions prove it or it's just a conjecture thus not proving that Calvinism denies this "truth".
In this case sure it does, because God does not control the outcome, He only sets the conditions. Imagine that you set the conditions of rolling a fair pair of dice 100 times. Wouldn't the results be random because you did not control the results? How is this different from God setting the conditions for salvation (free will accept or reject) and then purposely not controlling the results, but simply writing down the results and calling it "predestination", as synergists do?
Remember, we are talking about the actual names of the saved from God's POV. From your synergist POV you can say it is not random because you are in control and you choose. However, from God's POV it WOULD be random since He would not be in control, so as not to offend your sovereignty. The synergist view leads to random results as far as God is concerned, and demonstrates a God who couldn't care less which of His creations actually spends eternity with Him in Heaven.
He foreordained the actions not merely the consequences, isn’t that true?
If so, then your answer is no.
So what is it?
Calvinism declares a truth which may not necessarily be the truth. Tell me do you know what God was thinking when he elected you?
God foreordained the consequences that lead to my actions but I still freely performed the actions.
Yes, my actions were done freely and God did not force me to do them.
Which is it?
Congratulations on being so special that God chose you. What criteria did He use?
I could never be a Calvinist because that would mean I was accusing God of being the author and cause of all evil and sin. I will not accuse God of sinning through me when I know that I was given free will and am responsible for my own actions. If Calvinism is true, then God is evil. Thankfully, God is good and true and Calvinism is just another lie.
Again we are similar.
Love your explanation.
Hope the familiarity doesn’t start to breed contempt! LOL.
Thanks for your kind and understanding reply.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.