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 ...
That is what the Bible says.. Have you read Job?
In Job, Chapter 2; God says, "Have you considered My servant Job? And he says, Let me at him again." And so in verse 6 chapter 2 the Lord said to Satan, "Behold he's in your hand, this time you can hit him but you can't kill him....you can't kill him. Satan went right out of the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to his crown."
, Satan stands at the throne of God accusing the brethren, as he did with Job here. But God must give permission to Satan before he can act.
Not only that in Job we see God not only permit the testing of Job, God Himself suggests Job
Consider the role of God in the temptation of Christ.
Mat 4:1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
That temptation was foreordained, Satan acted only with the permission of God
Consider this well known verse
1Pe 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
He may not just devour anyone. God uses Satan for his purposes.
Is God God of all His creation or only God over some of His creation? Are we dualists believing that Satan is an equal warrior to God ?
How then can you be sure that in the end Satan will not win? __________________
Because it is an unexpected truth in this world where every man thinks he is god
That was just a hollow ploy by Calvin to establish his sinless bona fides in the face of so much damning evidence. By making all sin the fault of God he could claim to be equal to or superior to Jesus and His Church.
Did you ever hear the argument that we’re not robots because robots don’t know that they’re robots but we do? That one cracks me up.
“Correct, to a point. One must define what sovereignty means first. If by sovereign, one means that God is the Creator and has set up the Universe for us, that is one thing.”
The fact of God’s creation of everything that exists is
different than His sovereignty and omnipotence. He is
more, however, than just the Creator. I am a creator too,
but am not sovereign or omnipotent (or any of the other
great attributes that have been revealed about God).
God did more than the deist believes - setting up the world
and letting us go along our way. He has true sovereignty and
omnipotence over that creation. It will progress and end
in exactly the way He chose.
“If by sovereign, one means that God is the ultimate computer programmer who has created a universe of robot slaves, that is another.”
I might lean toward considering that a straw man argument,
since I did not argue that.
When I use sovereign to describe God, I am using it in
the identical sense He is revealed as Sovereign in the
Scriptures - the most exalted power that is above all other
powers (supreme power over all other powers) - and this
to an unlimited extent, since He is also Omnipotent.
Satan is a created being. Man is a created race. Each has
limited choices, which God has allowed. He doesn’t choose
for them... and they will bear the consequences of their
choices. He allows this as part of His creation and it
does not diminish that He remains Sovereign and Omnipotent.
All of history is moving toward the conclusion He has chosen
- satan doing evil along the way.
I worked the game out painstakingly when I was a youth by starting with only two cards left, then going to three, then four, etc., and recording the pattern of how many cards had to be removed in order to win.
I think I remember learning later that in the movie, the winner makes a mistake but then corrects it in the next round. God of course would not make a mistake.
It is easy, on the other hand, for someone who does not know the pattern to make a mistake.
Calvinists would disagree with you understanding of what they believe.
Incidentally, if Calvinism posited a robotic/mechanistic creation as you seem to think, then there could be no good or evil. There would just be the behavior of the machine.
The following statement makes Calvinism ultimately a denial of NT Christianity:
Calvinists were never in any real danger of going to hell.
Well said. But you won’t get anywhere: they are elect,
and are predestined to believe that.
I always say that I will be more willing to listen to
a Calvinist who says he believes in the 5 points and
that he is not one of the elect.
Well said. But you won’t get anywhere: they are elect,
and are predestined to believe that.
I always say that I will be more willing to listen to
a Calvinist who says he believes in the 5 points and
that he is not one of the elect.
The article is correct when it quotes Al Mohler that "The moment someone begins to define God's [being or actions] biblically, that person is drawn to conclusions that are traditionally classified as Calvinist."
And as the author of this article says, it will be interesting to see if "during these hard times, more Christians searching for security will submit their wills to the austerely demanding God of their country's infancy."
Calvinists are confident that exactly as many as God has determined to submit their wills and lives to God will do so by the free gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
God is all holy; He is not the author of sin. But it is equally true that all things, including Satan, are under the hand, will and purpose of the Triune God. How could that not be true and God still be God? Satan is, after all, a created being.
And he is before all things, and by him all things consist." -- Colossians 1:16-17"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
"All things."
Therefore the Christian who has been given God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ should boast only in the Lord, and not in anything in himself. Because salvation is of the Lord. Alone. And that is the true focal point of our confidence in His love -- that He loved us before we loved Him, "before we could do anything good or evil." (Romans 9:11.)
All that being true, then we are able to trust God when our lives are happy and likewise to trust Him when sadness prevails. Because it is ALL by God, for God, through God, one way or another, to bring His children to Him.
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." -- Romans 8:28
"All things."
Amen! Those are the questions that lead men from Arminianism to Calvinism, from the world and the ego to His word alone, by His grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for His glory alone.
And you heard that where?
Exactly
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:
I realize this is radical information to us who have been steeped in the fever dreams of our own ability, but it is the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ. His righteousness alone, mercifully imputed to us, saves us and not our own righteousness.
"For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." -- Philippians 2:13
Men are saved by mercy and not debt. We have not chosen Him; He has chosen us.
Read Romans 8-9. Read John wherein Christ tells us who believes and who is saved and why...
" I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine... Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word" -- John 17:9;20 "But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you." -- John 10:26
Yeah, so. God is sovereign; He does what He pleases. Why be so arrogant as to say that God can have this attribute but not that one. Who created who?
Do you also have a problem with Romans Chapter 8?
28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
"For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." -- Philippians 2:13
Still waiting to hear the verse in scripture where we are given faith as the result of our regeneration (born again), not born again thru faith.
"38Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. 39Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." 40Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?" 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me." 43When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." 44 The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." 45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him..."
"3In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it..."
"in whom also having believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of the promise"
“those God foreknew...”
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