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 ...
Define free will. Are you suggesting that man can exercise his own Free Will to come to Christ if he is free from the compelling influence of God?
Are you a Pelagian? If not, then how is your position on Free Will any different from that of Pelagius?
“So what made you better or more holy than the rich man or the guy who loved worldly goods?”
Different. Not better, or more deserving - all of which attempts to cast believing in Jesus as a meritorious work of the law, which it is not. However, Jesus said what he said. He told the parable of the sower. He loved the rich young ruler, but said his riches made it almost impossible for him to see heaven. He told the religious leaders they loved men more than God, and thus would not come to him to receive life.
He also said, “For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.”
He didn’t say “God didn’t change your mind”, or that “God didn’t give you life in a secret act to make you believe”, but that they did not change their minds and believe. THEY were responsible for their choice, not God withholding his grace because God had chosen to hate them from before creation.
“22When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 23 But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. 24Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” 27But he said, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”
If God elects people for salvation by individual name from before creation, riches should have no impact. If, however, riches make it easier to focus on this world, then we would expect it to be harder for a rich man to follow God.
In my case, I was a miserable, unhappy young teen who met some kids my age who were overflowing with love and goodness. They were not like anyone else I had met, and I knew whatever it was that made them different was what I wanted - because I didn’t like me.
Maybe I was like the prostitutes, or the woman at the well in John 4. In any case, Jesus said what he said.
“Are you suggesting that man can exercise his own Free Will to come to Christ if he is free from the compelling influence of God?”
I doubt it. Most of us believe God makes the rain to fall on the just and unjust, and think that has more meaning than just rain. And when God reaches out to man, man can reject him, or receive him.
“He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
By the will of God, those who receive him, who believe in his name, are given life and grafted on, a wild olive branch on the olive tree. (Romans 11)
And I cannot find a single verse about how God gives a secret, irresistible calling to just those he loves, while giving a public but impossible to obey calling to those he hates.
That would be dishonest, as would claiming it is about believing, and that we enter grace thru faith, if in fact it is all about having our names on the Happy List.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
If we are to obey Jesus and imitate God, we are to love those who hate us, and do good to those who are not good to us. “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.”
What made your calling irresistible? Was it your upbringing or an irresistible calling of The God who loved you and decided before you were conceived that you would spend eternity with Him?
Or was that your decision to make?
Nobody is ever free from the influence of God. It becomes compelling only to those who freely choose to accept it. For those who choose to hate God, deny and reject him, there is no compulsion, obviously, to believe, so they don't.
How is your position different from Pelagianism?
As I’ve pointed out, God’s calling, in scripture, is not irresistible.
Scripture doesn’t spend a lot of time discussing the why and wherefore, but Jesus gave several REASONS why some refuse to believe. I doubt his list was exhaustive.
God's general call to all men to repent is indeed resistible, but his effectual calling (his SAVING Grace) is irresistible to all who are saved.
Man's nature is to resist God. Only if God changes your nature can you answer God's call.
Where does scripture distinguish between God’s general call (which is always resisted, according to Calvinists) and God’s effectual calling?
If the public calling is impossible to respond to, and the secret calling irresistible, then we are saved by grace thru election...and Jesus is a liar. When Jesus says “Whoever”, it means whoever. And when Paul says “we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand”, I figure he meant faith, not a list of names.
Neither Jesus nor Paul sold used cars...
Of course, I’m not a learned theologian. I just reckon they said what they meant.
God calls. For those who believe, it is effectual. For those who do not, it is a call to condemnation, for they damn themselves. “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
No need to twist the words of God.
“Only if God changes your nature can you answer God’s call.”
Actually, Jesus said, “you refuse to come to me that you may have life” - note the order, come before life. And John wrote “and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Believe, and receive life. That is the order God’s Word gives. If your theology has a different order, I suggest aligning it with God’s word.
If you can do it without God changing your nature then you are your own savior. By nature you are good enough and smart enough to Make the good choice to follow Christ.
So are all those verses about the “natural man” just empty words? Or is natural man indeed incapable of independently turning to Christ and your whole premise false?
Your statement doesn't make sense. Allowing Jesus to save you does not make you your own savior, it makes Jesus your Savior. Accepting a free gift does not make you the giver of the gift. If you are offered a gift you didn't earn and don't deserve and you accept it, that doesn't mean you earned it. Accepting Christs gift isn't the payment for our sins, the payment was death on the cross.
The idea is to repent, not just confess, which means promise never to do it again.
It says that Christians ought to be much better than nonChristians but they are not
Well, when the Bible says they are "dead to sin" you'd think they'd hold themselves to higher standards that people who are not.
why don’t you show Christians how to live virtuous lives rather than judging and condemning them?
You got your order of things mixed up. You are the one who brought up virtue, accusing atheists and agnostics of being indecent, untruthful, and immoral, questioning and judging their motives, and now you try to turn the tables and play a victim?
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
Why should I live up to Christian standards? Christians should live up to Christians standards (if there is such a thing, since Christians don't agree on much), but they sure like to thump their chest so the whole world would think they do. Pharisees.
Simply test the ideas out by reading Scripture for yourself. Does the Bible say we're only "partially" sinful or "totally" sinful? Does Scripture teach that GOD is fully sovereign? Or do we determine our own destinies?
Regardless, it's not Calvinism that saves a person's soul. The doctrines of election and Divine Sovereignty are far secondary to that of faith and repentance. They're important, but not essential.
AMEN! "Who made thee to differ?"
To come to this realization that God set His love on us and dragged us to Him only because it pleased Him to do so is an astounding, liberating truth that actually fills our hearts and minds with the very best response a human being can give to God -- gratitude.
Calvinism is the casting of the soul wholly on the free grace of God alone, to whom alone belongs salvation. And, such being the nature of Calvinism, it seems scarcely necessary to inquire why its fortunes appear from time to time, and now again in our own time, to suffer some depression. It can no more perish out of the earth than the sense of sin can pass out of the heart of sinful humanity—than the sense of God can fade out of the minds of dependent creatures—than God Himself can perish out of the heavens..." "...For Calvinism, in this soteriological aspect of it, is just the perception and expression and defence of the utter dependence of the soul on the free grace of God for salvation. All its so-called hard features—its doctrine of original sin, yes, speak it right out, its doctrine of total depravity and the entire inability of the sinful will to good; its doctrine of election, or, to put it in the words everywhere spoken against, its doctrine of predestination and preterition, of reprobation itself—mean just this and nothing more. Calvinism will not play fast and loose with the free grace of God. It is set upon giving to God, and to God alone, the glory and all the glory of salvation. There are others than Calvinists, no doubt, who would fain make the same great confession. But they make it with reserves, or they painfully justify the making of it by some tenuous theory which confuses nature and grace. They leave logical pitfalls on this side or that, and the difference between logical pitfalls and other pitfalls is that the wayfarer may fall into the others, but the plain man, just because his is a simple mind, must fall into those. Calvinism will leave no logical pitfalls and will make no reserves. It will have nothing to do with theories whose function it is to explain away facts. It confesses, with a heart full of adoring gratitude, that to God, and to God alone, belongs salvation and the whole of salvation; that He it is, and He alone, who works salvation in its whole reach. Any falling away in the slightest measure from this great confession is to fall away from Calvinism. Any intrusion of any human merit, or act, or disposition, or power, as ground or cause or occasion, into the process of divine salvation,—whether in the way of power to resist or of ability to improve grace, of the opening of the soul to the reception of grace, or of the employment of grace already received—is a breach with Calvinism.
Allowing Jesus to save you does not make you your own savior
Sure it does because it gives you the final say-so in determining whether or not you are saved. God becomes passive, waiting for men to make up their minds.
That's not the God of Scripture.
"Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee" -- Psalm 65:4
If you are offered a gift you didn't earn and don't deserve and you accept it, that doesn't mean you earned it.
It means you are smart enough and wise enough and pious enough to know the worth of the gift and the depth of your own insufficiency. But the natural man does not possess the ability to know those things. Only the spiritual man can know the things of God, can feel true sorrow of his sins and repent of them, and this ability occurs after that man has been reborn by the Holy Spirit, according to the will and purpose of God, and not according to men's own running or willing.
"Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father." -- John 6:65
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.