Put on the hunting tartans. We don't eat til we track it down.
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 ...
Go to “view selection source” and then right click the highlighted portion, copy it and paste it into the box. Viola!
Uh oh. That makes my previous post a "personal attack".
Maybe.
"And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." -- Mark 16:15-16 "The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them." -- Proverbs 20:12
Yep. The ones I’ve met fit the old joke: “Last year I was conceited...but, this year I’m perfect.”
Maybe they’re just trying to impress a Methodist. 8~)
I am fully aware Scripture says to preach the Gospel. However, if one accepts that Calvinist position that a person is either among the elect or among the damned (and that this determination was made at the foundation of the world), it seems unnecessary.
Under Calvinism is salvation based upon election or is it based upon believing? Now, I understand that some say the elect WILL believe, but wouldn't this happen regardless?
AMEN!
"That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been" -- Ecclesiastes 3:15
My guess is that you are using IE, as I just tested it.
Loved the comic strip.
Now I want to see how it turns out, though. :>)
Methodists are too easy to impress. That couldn’t be it.
http://www.comicbookreligion.com/char?ID=52&Wolfsbane_Rahne_Sinclair
Well, that certainly convicted me for being a Baptist. I am now a Presbyterian, Scottish at that. When’s the next social?
You na' have t' ask, Duncan; all is pre-set
What's the point in praying if God already decided a trillion years ago that he's going to die?
because God saw him praying a trillion years ago
Why would it be "unnecessary" when God tells us the preaching of His word is the ways and means of how the Holy Spirit renews a man's mind to know the things of God?
None of us knows the names of the elect, but God. So we preach the Gospel to all men, confident that those who are His will respond in the true faith God gives them.
Under Calvinism is salvation based upon election or is it based upon believing?
Election is the name for the will and purpose of God which determine who will believe since all men are fallen and none can be righteous unless and until God gives them a new birth by the Holy Spirit which imputes Christ's righteousness to them.
Faith is the evidence of that merciful imputation, the good fruit of the free gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Now, I understand that some say the elect WILL believe, but wouldn't this happen regardless?
Paul answers your question...
For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!" -- Romans 10:12-15" For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.
The preaching of the word is how God reaches His children. Therefore He instructs us to preach the Gospel to all men and thereby to be confident every one of those children will hear the truth and respond in true and saving faith at a time and circumstance appointed by God for His glory. That assurance is enough for me.
For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day." -- John 6:37=39"All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
It ma' be pre-set, but ya still ha' to be told!
Put on the hunting tartans. We don't eat til we track it down.
“Faith is the evidence of that merciful imputation, the good fruit of the free gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit.”
Scripture reference, please.
Means.
Love and love for the commands of God.
Despair for the lost.
Did I say "means"? Means.
GREAT answer. Ping to earlier comments. (I'm a miserable pinger)
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