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 ...
But if he does not interfere with your "free will" decision, then he is leaving your salvation up to chance. Isn't that true?
So how does God leave it up to you but not leave it up to chance?
If we have no choice in it, then the only critical link in our salvation is election.
Even if you have a choice in it, the critical link would still be election. Is it not?
Do you get to choose where you will spend eternity, or is God going to be the one who makes that determination?
If God makes that determination, then when in eternity did he make that determination?
Is it yet future?
Is he waiting on you to make the correct decisions, or is he already building a mansion for you in Heaven?
Thanks for your kind reply.
Well put.
When we read this sort of drivel from the mind of the accuser, spittled forth from the servant of the father of lies, it is apparent that the world's twisted definition of Christian is sourced in the father of lies a murderer from the start:
Oh yes, the defenders of the living [sic] God (is there any other kind?) have demonstrated their high moral standards on numerous occasions; their ruefulness and honesty too; their lack of pride and arrogance; they never tell a lie. That's about as believable as the very thing they are defending. And about as honest too. Hypocrisy rules. Kosta50
A massive and blatant strawman! Not one scripture passage I have ever read asserts that the transformation of a 'sotered' human makes an instant and complete turnaround so that no sin is ever committed thereafter. But the scriptures are filled with the teaching that a born again person is a new alive human spirit which is stricken when the person sins, yet the born again stands before God in a timeless manner not defined in modern Physics terms but real nevertheless, a forgiven/justified/righteous new being by the Grace of God in Christ.
The more the kosta50 poster pings to his nihilistic crap, the more convinced I am that the same spirit infecting Christopher Hitchens infects this poster. The arrogance and lack of discernment covered with bluster are common traits.
When one chooses to disbelieve the witness of many who interacted with Jesus following His resurrection, it is no stretch to impugn the written accounts, just as it is an awakened spirit which hears the truth when reading the passages, regardless of what language the Word comes through or the minor scribal errors which may be present.
God's Spirit accompanies His Word, but as we see with this disgusting, arrogant, blustering, nattering naybob, that Spirit can be spat upon--for the time being--by arrogant self-righteous pseudo authorities.
“So how does God leave it up to you but not leave it up to chance?”
I see you found the Institutes. Are they the original autographed edition that has been passed down to the Neeners?
I thought I had loaned them to xzins for some corrections but I must have left them at the last mud wrestling event. Are they still in pristine condition or did some of the thrown barbecue sauce get on them?
Well put.
Perhaps it might be postulated that dreams can be detected by REM sleep indicators on instruments or watching eyelids move.
HOWEVER, THAT IS NOT THE SAME as detecting one’s dreams consciously by one’s SENSES. The brain is not, per se, a sense organ. It registers the impulses from the sense organs and makes uhhhhh . . . sense . . . out of them . . . in, hopefully, most cases.
Touch, Taste, Sight, hearing, taste, smell . . .
brain is not listed.
Certainly one can train one’s self to be aware that one is dreaming while one is dreaming and even to make some decisions in the midst of said dreams.
Certainly one can wake up within 20 seconds to 2 minutes and remember a dream.
NEITHER awareness is from one’s SENSES per se.
Your point still stands.
This ballyhooed hypocritical screed !!!!DEMANDING!!!!! of Almighty God that ALMIGHTY GOD conform to prissy criteria for “proof” to the finite screecher is absurdity to the max.
Yet again this nonsense that only “provable” facts are facts.
Only data which makes it through the hoops and gauntlet of a certain set of artificial limitations on reality can ‘qualify’ to be labeled ‘reality’ . . . and this by folks usually given to denying major chunks of reality right and left.
God have mercy on them if they tried to live the rest of their lives with such prissy strictures on ‘reality.’
“No, Dear. I don’t know where you put the love-micrometer. I guess you’ll just have to accept my love on faith today. I don’t know where the love-scale is, either. No, the love-wave-length detector hasn’t been seen for months. Yes, I can hear the sounds of silence but I can’t detect the sounds of love. No, I have no grounds for labeling THAT exercise the sounds of love. That’s just utilitarian itch scratching.”
“No, now that you mention it, Dear, everything you do in my life is only construable as self-centered, self-serving utilitarianism. Grand fantasies of “love” are utterly groundless and archaic in the ‘SCIENTIFC’ age. As Skinner articulated so God-like . . . man is nothing more than a rat, a pigeon, a radish [or a rock].”
“Clearly, Dear, you are just another mindless cog in a mindless machine that functions by some mindless miracle . . . oh, Dear . . . minute after minute, millenia after millenia . . . now that IS a logical problem . . . Ah well, who said that super rationalists were really rational?”
Sorry, B-D, but we did take them to the Neener 7th Annual Servetus Barbeque and Pig-Pickin. Not only did they get basted with Barbeque Sauce but they got mistaken as original texts by the KJ only crowd, who hid them under the cole slaw and baked bean tubs and then carted them home.
snip: Dreams represent detectable elctrical brain activity and eye movemments. So, yes, we can detect dreams.
Spirited: Yes indeed, brain activity and eye movements can be seen and measured, but they ultimately prove nothing. For unless the dreamer confesses that he was in fact dreaming, not only are the detectable measurements worthless, but so too is your hair-splitting response.
Note that truth rather than moral relativism, equivocation, double-speak, and outright lies is the necessary foundation for science.
Ultimately, evolutionary materialism is an ancient superstition revised, revamped, and dressed up as ‘science.’ It has but one ultimate purpose: to deny the living, personal God, and by extension, man’s individual soul and mind, immutable Truth, Universal Moral Laws, sex norms, and of course-—reality.
snip: Oh yes, the defenders of the living [sic] God (is there any other kind?) have demonstrated their high moral standards on numerous occasions; their ruefulness and honesty too; their lack of pride and arrogance; they never tell a lie. That’s about as believable as the very thing they are defending. And about as honest too. Hypocrisy rules.
Spirited: Of course they do. True Christians, as opposed to the fake ones, know they are sinners and confess as much to God.
Your accusation reeks of disappointment. It says that Christians ought to be much better than nonChristians but they are not. Since you make this clear by your acrimony, then why don’t you show Christians how to live virtuous lives rather than judging and condemning them? In other words, get the beam out of your own eye and live up to the standards that you accuse Christians of not living up to.
“they got mistaken as original texts by the KJ only crowd, who hid them under the cole slaw and baked bean tubs and then carted them home”
DAM-, just DAM-! You can’t trust those KJ only Fundamentalist Baptist types. Here they said they only wanted to borrow some hot sauce. Then they wanted to join in the singing. They presented themselves friendly like the Methodist; dressed conservatively like the Presbyterians; sang loudly like the Baptists; and all the while they were drinking all our alcoholic beverages like the Episcopalians. They stole our beer and cut short the festivities just when they were getting Neener ripe.
If they are Baptist types they probably won’t be able to appreciate the Institutes since they were translated from French, not Latin.
snip: This ballyhooed hypocritical screed !!!!DEMANDING!!!!! of Almighty God that ALMIGHTY GOD conform to prissy criteria for “proof” to the finite screecher is absurdity to the max.
Spirited: The ‘finite screechers’ are guilty of narcissism, which the Bible calls idolatry: Idolatry of Mind, Idolatry of Flesh. The clay has elevated itself over the Potter and presumes to sit in judgement of Him.
Yep. If we sprinkled with Gallo and immersed in Bud, I'll bet they'd be with us in the time it takes a soft-dough pretzel to work up a thirst for a cold one.
So, how do we get our Institutes back? We'll probably have to appeal to the LHP for intervention.
Or to Obama for a buyout.
Brava, spirited irish! Brava!
Great advice. Do you think kosta will take it?
You can detect that a person's brain activity and eye activity fall into a range that past experience tells us matches up with dreaming. But that tells you nothing about the dream, or the dreamer. These are ineffable, yet very real, subjective elements which are indetectable to direct observation and measurement.
After walking with the Lord for many years, a Christian may look back on his life amazed at the difference.
That is certainly true in my case. The person I was before I became Christian was unloveable, unloving, self-serving and mean.
And we give the glory, because the fruits are His.
I am the vine, ye [are] the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. – John 15:5
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. - Matthew 7:17
He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet [given]; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) – John 7:38-39
How do you know "whom God rejected?"
At post 814, betty boop explains:
The scientific method likewise can only measure the physical effects of the mind. Dreams, minds, souls and indeed qualia (love/hate, pain/pleasure, etc.) cannot be subjected to empirical tests.
To the metaphysical naturalist, such things are not "real" because they are not physical. But that conclusion is absurd because physical laws themselves are not physical, neither is logic, nor information nor physical causation nor space/time - without which the metaphysical naturalist would have nothing to say in the first place.
And ironically the Higgs field/boson which the Standard Model suggests must exist to account for mass has neither yet been created nor observed though CERN is still trying. And so the metaphysical naturalist has faith in something which is yet unproven and may in fact be the shadow of extra-dimensional momentum components we cannot detect!
In sum, the metaphysical naturalist does not even approach reality with the albeit reduced framework of science which bases it work on methodological naturalism because science admits to such things as massless particles which have no direct or indirect measureable affects, i.e. they cannot be said to not exist.
Sure. Just filter Padre Pio out. He doesn't fit your "vision."
For me, Padre Pio is not an "unresolved controversy." Pope John Paul II canonized him Saint in 2002.
As to the cause of the stigmata, Padre Pio has described the event to which he was subject. So it seems to me reasonable to give the man the benefit of telling us what he thought happened to him. In short, if we aren't willing to give Pio the benefit of his own word, how can we justly say "we don't know why, and leave it at that?"
I think we have to deal with his account first, as told by Eileen Dunn Bertanzetti [Padre Pio's Words of Hope, 1999] as abstracted from his letters and other writings:
On September 20, 1918, while praying alone in the San Giovanni chapel, Pio trembled as an angelic creature materialized in front of him. Blood dripped from the creature's hands, feet, and side. Terror snaked through Pio at the sight, then he cried out as spears of light — radiating from the creature — pierced Pio's own hands, feet, and side. The young priest slumped to the floor. As blood dripped from his five fresh wounds, he thought he would surely die.But he didn't. Pio continued in this condition for another 50 years. And this has been "verified."
All of which is to say, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, my dear kosta.
Kosta50: Well, if it is a "fact' than it should be provable. Otherwise it's not a fact, but a hypothesis, or at best a theory.
Man cannot position himself outside “all that there is” to see it all at once.
As a metaphor, consider Max Tegmark’s Level IV Parallel Universe model. To paraphrase, the observer “in” space/time may see a pair of orbiting particles which to the observer “outside” space/time would be two strands in a double helix. The observer “in” space/time sees relative motion from his perspective. The observer “outside” space/time sees the geometry or mathematic structure. He perceives it all at once, beginning to end. In the case of the particles, strands. The observer “in” space/time is watching a movie, frame by frame. The observer “outside” space/time sees it all at once.
Demands for “proof” of God are blind to even this very basic insight of geometric physics.
As spirited irish said (paraphrased) the universe is not anthropomorphic. God is not anthropomorphic.
Man is not the measure of God!
you: So, God determined who will hear and who will not? Yet those who don't will be 'punished?' For what?
However, there is a kind of man who will be punished for cause. And that cause is that he willfully chooses to reject the knowledge of God which is given to all men. God gives such a one over to a reprobate mind. (emphasis mine)
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: - Romans 1:18-20
And even as they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. - Romans 1:28-32
Wow. That says it all, dearest sister in Christ! Brilliantly put.
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