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 ...
DAM_! Just dam_! (I figure if Baptists can use that shorthand, we "conservatively dressed" Presbyterians should be able to get away with it.)
Dam_, I say! So Methodists are as friendly as the Welcome Wagon and Baptists warble like songbirds, but Presbyterians are supposed to look like Elmira Gulch???
Do I have to bring out the visual aids again?
Indeed. It seems to me our dear kosta has a serious logical problem right there. For given the statements he repetitively makes, he evidently thinks himself as somehow "outside" the order of divinely-constituted reality/creation. To such an extent that he alleges he already knows who God [in Whom he does not believe] will save, and how many [what disorder of mind thinks itself capable of reconciling two such irreconcilable statements i.e., "no God" AND simultaneously knowledge of His Judgment?] . But he never explains to us HOW he has personally come to occupy such an exalted position.
I'd like to hear that story.
Thanks ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your most perceptive essay/post!
Now now . . .
expecting logical consistency
of . . .
super-rationalists . . .
has to be a rather irrational construction on reality.
LOL.
Plenty true.
Good points.
WELL PUT.
THX.
Well put.
I find your comments here absolutely side-splitting, I'm laughing so hard!
We try. :^)
Thanks for your kind words.
I try to avoid sticking my talent in the ground or hiding it under a bushel. LOL.
“So, how do we get our Institutes back?”
We need a lawyer!
Maybe that guy on the street corner in the overcoat who sold me the original signed and autographed copy of the Institutes can get another signed copy. But of course this means that we will all have to cash in our empty beer cans again. Which means that we will first have to empty them.
Hey xzins, they still drink Stroh's in Ohio?
Yeah, I remember the old inscription: "Martin, say hello to Mike Servetus the next time he drops by and be sure to tell him he's invited to the next BBQ in Geneva. John"
The missing piece may be that there is something that occurs in between enmity with God and that moment a person opens his heart to truth. God says he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. When I asked the Lord for the truth, and he knew in my heart I was sincere, he revealed the gospel to me and I recognized it. Did God give me the ability to "see" the truth when I heard it? Yes. But, by no way glorifying myself, I had to be open to hear it.
Well put on your posts betty boop, and Alamo-Girl
From a personal point of view I would like you to think about this before you respond and tell me, before you came to Christ, did you seek God, or did God first seek you?
For me, I was dragged kicking and screaming to the Cross of Christ. Hence the words from the song by Third Day ring true for me:
Who is this King of Glory That pursues me with his love And haunts me with each hearing Of His softly spoken words My conscience, a reminder Of forgiveness that I need Who is this King of Glory Who offers it to me
As I look back on my salvation experience, I can say with assurance that I was not seeking after God, but He was pursuing me and eventually dragged me kicking and screaming to the cross. Left to my own "choices" I would never have chosen Christ. Does that mean I am a Calvinist? No, it does not. Does that mean I understand the Calvinist concept? You bet it does. I am a product of exactly what they preach; a God who pursues men and who soverignly violates their free will at every turn until they come face to face with God's "irresistible grace".
I don't know why God would pursue me with his Love, but He did. Although I accept that ultimately my "free will choice" was to "Choose Christ", it was not until my own free will had been sufficiently destroyed by God's intervention that I was made capable of making that choice. At that point it was irresistible. I was in a corner from which the only exit was through the cross of Christ. God put me in that corner.
I know that each person's experiences are different. I was most definitely NOT dragged "kicking and screaming" to the Lord. I was baptised as a Catholic, first communion, catechism, confirmation, Catholic school for several years...the whole shebang. But even as a little kid, something inside me "knew" I was not hearing the whole shebang. I knew there was something else to God than what I was being told. I asked God to show me the truth, whatever truth was. Certain things happened in my life soon after and I heard the gospel for the first time. John 10:27-30 to be exact. The light went on and I recognized it was the truth because it came from God's own written word.
So to answer your question, did God seek me? Yes. Did I seek God? Yes. Did he reward my search for the truth with the truth? Absolutely, yes! I think your real question may be, did God place within my heart the desire to know him in the first place regardless of my upbringing? And again, I will say yes. I also believe he does the same for all mankind, but we make a decision when we hear the gospel. Some will reject it due to any number of reasons and some will accept it joyfully or, in your case, because you had no other choice but to accept it, you surrendered to him. Either way, he is glorified! Praise the Lord!!!
Which event occurred first?
did God place within my heart the desire to know him in the first place regardless of my upbringing? And again, I will say yes.
So much for your "free will". If God places a desire for Him in your heart, then it is not your will, but God's will that is being done.
Some will reject it due to any number of reasons
I think objectively the main reason why someone would reject God is because God did not put a desire in his heart to accept him. God put that desire in my heart and he put it in yours. Why you? Why me? Why not Christopher Hitchens?
A bit late for me, but until tomorrow...
“If God places a desire for Him in your heart, then it is not your will, but God’s will that is being done.”
God calls most, but most reject his call. God draws, but man is not compelled to accept.
Why do I say that?
Jesus also told them other parables. He said, 2 The Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a king who prepared a great wedding feast for his son. 3 When the banquet was ready, he sent his servants to notify those who were invited. But they all refused to come!
4 So he sent other servants to tell them, The feast has been prepared. The bulls and fattened cattle have been killed, and everything is ready. Come to the banquet! 5 But the guests he had invited ignored them and went their own way, one to his farm, another to his business. 6 Others seized his messengers and insulted them and killed them.
7 The king was furious, and he sent out his army to destroy the murderers and burn their town. 8 And he said to his servants, The wedding feast is ready, and the guests I invited arent worthy of the honor. 9 Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see. 10 So the servants brought in everyone they could find, good and bad alike, and the banquet hall was filled with guests.
11 But when the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man who wasnt wearing the proper clothes for a wedding. 12 Friend, he asked, how is it that you are here without wedding clothes? But the man had no reply. 13 Then the king said to his aides, Bind his hands and feet and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
14 For many are called, but few are chosen.
While God calls all - “God overlooked peoples ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him.” Acts 17 - not all are willing to be clothed in his righteousness. So yes, God calls. We can refuse.
“I think objectively the main reason why someone would reject God is because God did not put a desire in his heart to accept him.”
Jesus gave several reasons why people rejected his calling. They include wealth - a love of the things of the world - and caring more for the opinion of man than of God. There may be others, but Jesus specifically gave those two reasons.
It isn’t that God didn’t call, but men refused to come. “...you refuse to come to me that you may have life...How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”
That isn’t my opinion, but the words of Jesus.
As to which event occurred first, of course God sought me and then I responded to his revelation of the truth. I still fail to see how God overrode the free will he endowed me with.
So tell me, what would be the point of Jesus commanding his disciples to "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to EVERY creature?" if God will only grant faith in a chosen few? Did he just want us to have some "busy work" to keep us occupied until he returned? And, Mr. Hitchens isn't dead yet, so you never know. :o)
So what made you better or more holy than the rich man or the guy who loved worldly goods?
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