STRIKES AGAIN!
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 ...
They have been, however, made a whole lot happier and more secure in their faith through the Calvinist perspective of the doctrines of grace.
Salvation is of the Lord. All of it.
No of course not. We can't see "inside someone' head," so to say. In other words, we can't see what other people see. The only way we know if for them to tell us. :) Luckily, they can describe their dreams.
We can say, for example, that in our dreams we see, even feel ourselves flying, being chased, talking to people, etc., etc. In other words, dreams have a description of things we can relate to in real life, even if they sometimes look a little 'garbled' or bizarre/distorted.
In other words, we humans have a consensus and a description of what a dream is: images we see in our sleep. We all testify to have them, we can all relate to them, we all agree they "exist," i.e. that they are seen in our sleep. We can even mechanically detect their activity if not their content.
With God, there is no consensus, no universal agreement among humans, believers and nonbelievers alike. There is no description, no definition, and no image. And, as I am reminded, you can't measure God or detect him with a microscope.
Yet so many of you claim there is God, that you know him personally, intimately, that he "dwells" inside of you, that he interprets things for you, that God is a 'he,' and so on.
How, then, do you recognize what is "divine?" How do you know it's not a figment of your imagination, or even a nondescript dream or worse, insanity of sorts? How do you know and recognize something, if you don't know what it is?
So, I ask you again, for the nth time, what is God?
Those who were not given the 'ears' must be the rejects, or else they would have been given to them.
First, it's not just my vision but a view of many others, just as yours is yours and that of many others. Second, if his condition was not explicable does not automatically prove 'supernatural' causes. Third, it does not eliminate a possible hoax.
As I said I will not get into this because it would be another long and protracted charged offshoot. But it's not for lack of material on the subject. It's just that I am already spread thin on several other threads and spend way too much of my time on them. I don't need another one. Interested individuals can do their own research.
All of which is to say, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, my dear kosta.
My philosophy? What philosophy? We are talking about Padre Pio, and there are dissenting opinions by many as regards the Catholic version. Why don't you give us more details about the Vatican pharmacist, the affiliation and names of the doctors who were involved, the actual findings, the types of tests used, the autopsy report and an explanation why his body was drained of all blood, etc.? Betetgr yet, why don't you start a new thread?
“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.
God draws all men to Himself and wants for none to perish but for all to repent. Ultimately, we have the choice to accept or reject his payment for our sins. That payment was death on the cross, not our faith in him. We are saved by faith because He died for us. It seems like you are playing word games. Having the final say does not equal dying on the cross and therefore doesn't equal saving ourselves.
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.
No it means that we have free will. God draws us to himself but we can decide to reject Him. Why is it so hard to believe that God would give us free will? That for His glory, we can chose to follow Him?
So, are you a Calvinist but just not on the list? ;)
I haven’t followed the entire thread so I don’t know if you posted this earlier but I was wondering what you thought about sin and the need for forgiveness. Even though you don’t believe, do you in any way feel drawn to Christianity?
snip: “How do you know whom God rejected?”
Spirited: Your question is not only incomplete but assumes omniscience on the part of man, which is not surprising given the towering narcissism of these days.
Of all lifeforms on this planet, only man is endowed with conscience and moral freedom to choose to do right, i.e. speak truth, or conversely to choose to do wrong, i.e. choose to lie. The beasts, on the other hand, do as they must do, for example, breed during breeding season.
Conscience and moral freedom (free will) are self-evident truths known to man by natural knowledge. In other words, he needs no empirical methodology to prove to him that he has these psychic endowments.
By extension he knows that a moral law exists and that he is not its’ creator, hence an unseen Law Maker obviously exists and that he (man) is uniquely different from all other lifeforms in light of both his psychic endowments and the existence of moral law.
In short, in that this knowledge is knowable to every man naturally, for him to say that he cannot know is inexcusable. For in the claim thereof, he has used his moral freedom to make a choice against his own Creator and against truth. In short, he has abused his free will to choose deception: to lie to himself and to others.
The point being that it is man himself who brings about his own indictment. Hell exists for every man who chooses it.
I said choice, not chance. God deliberately gives us that choice, rather than making it for us.
Marlowe is right in noting that whether it is chance or choice leaves the question of explaining chance or not alive. If the "who grabs the rope" analogy matched the reality in numbers of who accepts Christ, then how could it not be chance if the decision to grab the rope really is the person's alone to make without coercion or interference. Some would grab the rope, but most would not.
Yes, this means we are not chosen for salvation before creation, although the end result is known before creation.
That would seem to define a chance outcome if God makes no decision concerning individual salvation before the foundations.
And this makes all those verses about needing to believe, and about our receiving life by believing, and about entering into the grace on which we stand by faith meaningful verses.
No, they become less meaningful because they diminish God's sovereignty in choosing His sheep. But when read in light of God's sovereignty they are meaningful because they explain how God implements His decisions to elect.
If we have no choice in it, then the only critical link in our salvation is election. If elect, according to Calvin, we are predestined to salvation no matter what, and the verses about belief are a lie - for we don’t receive life by believing, but by being elect.
The verses about belief do not become lies because they do not HAVE to be read as supporting random salvation. As I have been saying, election is a package deal. Believing is a part of that package and must and does happen in the normal course. Therefore, it is possible to say that we receive life both by believing and by being elected. For both to be simultaneously true just means that God's promises are equally sure as any fact which has already occurred in the past. Technically, though, eternal life is given to those who already believe. So, while it is true that there are currently plenty of elect who do not yet believe, and thus do not technically have eternal life yet, it is an inviolate truth that they will at the time of God's choosing. If we were talking about my promises, this would all be a load of baloney sandwich. But because we are talking about God, certain liberties concerning certainty are fine IMO.
We enter into grace, not by faith, but by election. We are saved by grace thru election, not thru faith.
We do not argue that. Election comes first, then grace, then faith. We could say that we are saved IN election BY grace THROUGH faith.
If your heart could do this good thing of sincerity prior to its being regenerated, then your heart was not "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked..."
Why was your heart not deceitful above all things and others have hearts that were deceitful above all things?
And why does the Bible proclaim a sinful heart to be the birthright of all humanity, for it clearly says that "no good thing resides in me."
I'm assuming they do, but I really haven't looked. I'll try to pay attention next time.
My current order of preference goes as follows: 1. Warsteiner Dunkel (there really isn't a better beer, imho)
2. Franziskanner HefeWeizen
3. Killian Red
4. Little Kings Cream Ale
All will be amply supplied at the next annual Neener Servetus Barbeque and Pig-Pickin'.
If I'm putting out the money for the beer, then you have to bring the Servetus look-alike.
I recommend Dr Eckleburg. After all she probably is a Servetus look alike. Consider: First, she's definitely incendiary, and Second, she keeps posting toons of busty Presbyterians in kootchie tights. I don't think we really even need to do the trial. (I know...I know...that is the FUN part.)
I'm just sayin'....
“But when read in light of God’s sovereignty they are meaningful because they explain how God implements His decisions to elect....The verses about belief do not become lies because they do not HAVE to be read as supporting random salvation.”
I disagree. In Calvinism, there is only one critical step in the plan of salvation - election. If elect, everything else is given you. If not, nothing can or will happen. Election is critical, the rest is, as you say, part of the package.
However, scripture, hundreds of times over, says believing is the critical step. If you believe, you are placed in Christ and receive everything. If you don’t, you won’t.
Thus it is faith (a word that means one person believing in another) that gives us access (entry) to grace, as Paul explicitly states.
This isn’t a matter of your opinion or mine. Our opinions mean nothing. What does God say, in scripture? And what God never says is that election is the critical step - what gives us access to God’s grace. God never says, “I came to save the elect”, or, “I came to give life, that they might believe”.
John Calvin clearly teaches that only one thing matters - election. God teaches that only one thing matters - believing in Him. This isn’t up for discussion. Your philosophy & mine is meaningless. What God says is all that matters - and God says believing (faith) in Him is critical. Period. And He does so, not 6 times, not 23 times, but over 400 times in the New Testament alone!
“No, they become less meaningful because they diminish God’s sovereignty in choosing His sheep.”
God’s sovereignty is no less diminished by his setting his condition. If that condition is election by name before creation, it is his decision. If it is those who respond in faith, it is his decision.
Except God says otherwise - explicitly.
"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."
"these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."
If you accept the fact that you were born with a sinful nature and that your nature was in rebellion against God, then you would naturally be incapable of accepting God's gift because the thought of that alone would be as pleasing to your natural heart as the thought of eating a bowl of strawberries covered in syrup of ipecac.
In our natural state we are all Christopher Hitchens. We are born with natural enmity against God. So therefore in order for us to accept this Gift, our nature must be changed from one of enmity against God to Love and Fear of God. If God makes the change, then God and God alone becomes our Savior. However if God does not change our nature and somehow we can muster up within our own selves and through our own nature the ability to turn our enmity against God into a profound love of God such that we are now willing to turn from our sins voluntarily and repent and follow Christ, then we are in effect our own saviors.
In other words, what you are suggesting is that Christ is the General Savior (i.e., He made it "possible" for you to be saved), but you are your own "Particular Savior", i.e., you changed your own nature and through your own sacrifice or work, i.e., turning to Christ (violating your own nature) and repenting (again violating your own nature) and developing within your own heart (that black heart of stone you were born with) a profound Love of God and acknowledgment of his tremendous sacrifice on your behalf (something that is basically anathema to our sin nature) and then to seal the deal, you accepted Christ and secured your rightful place in Heaven.
You are to be commended then for your personal insight, your personal work in changing your stone heart into one of flesh, your personal acknowledgment of your sins and your personal acceptance of his gift. Congratulations on being your own Particular Redeemer.
On the other hand, if all those changes were the result of God changing your nature and God turning your heart of stone into a heart of flesh and God turning your natural enmity against him to a profound Love and a deep sorrow for your sins, then God alone is your Savior as Christ not only died for your sins, but he changed your nature such that you not only had the ability to turn from your sins to follow him, but that it was inevitable that you would.
So if you want to argue that your salvation was something you "achieved" by you somehow changing or rebelling against your own sinful nature without God intervening and making it happen, then you saved yourself.
But I think deep down you must recognize that you didn't save yourself (unless you are a full blown Pelagian). It was either your work or the work of God. I suspect that if you are truly saved, that you will recognize that it was entirely the work of God and that it was a miracle that you ever turned to Him and that you could possibly Love him. But if it was just in your nature to turn to him and love him and God did not violate your free will to bring you to him, then I don't think you can escape the conclusion that you saved yourself.
So which was it?
No Mr R, those scripture are entirely consistent with what xzins said. Your deceitful heart must be changed before you can receive Christ. So the question becomes whether or not you changed your own heart to make it yearn for Christ, or whether God changed your heart to make it yearn for Christ.
Did you change your own evil heart and did your yearning for Christ come from within your deceitful spiritually dead stone cold heart, or did it come from a heart for God which was spiritually changed before you ever turned to Christ and received him?
If you did it yourself, if you were good enough and wise enough to do it, then congratulations. If God did it, then He is to be praised.
Har-dee-har-har.
Servetus and I have nothing in common except our bangs. Here's a picture of him recently discovered in a trash can outside the Vatican...
That's not correct. Scientific method also involves human inquiry which deals with verbal descriptions and definitions of mental phenomena in "real" terms. It is the so-called "spiritual" terminology that departs from the reality of this world.
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.
You are mixing apples and oranges, dear AG. Dreams, feelings of hate or feelings of pleasure are not the same as 'mind,' or 'soul.' Dreams and emotions are observable and definable mental experiences. We can detect their occurrence and we can describe their contect. They are also every bit physical/chemical in nature.
'Mind' is a collective concept that represents an observed characteristic way a person appears to operate in the world to given situations, how he or she answers questions, reacts, etc. It falls in the same category as 'experience,' which is another general conceptual term. We can observe how someone does things and we can conclude that he or she has 'experience.'
'Soul' is none of that. In the Platonic sense, the 'spirit' or life force plus 'nous' or mind in a physical body = human being. The ancients believed that the 'breath' was the spirit, or life force (a "battery" of sorts) that moved or quickened the body. When the body 'gives up' the breath, it dies, becomes motionless, stops breathing. The ancients also used to believe that the heart contained emotions, that you think and feel with the heart (probably because the heart gets a little "busy" when we get emotional or otherwise exerted).
But the soul or spirit cannot be described in real terms, cannot be detected (it ain't the breath!), so we really don't know what the 'spirit' is; it's neither mental nor subjective, nor is there a consensus about it in terms of real life experience. Rather, it appears that the spirit is a human invention to explain some things ancients couldn't explain.
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 they do. They balance out the formula. Remember that everything science does is a working model. For example, 19th century scientists postulated aether as an invisible 'medium' of space to explain propagation of light because they couldn't explain how light could move through vacuum. It was a convenient theoretical concept that balanced out the formula.
Modern science does the same thing. That's why we have new theories every several years to keep up with newly observed phenomena that cannot be explained by conventional models. Theoretical science is theory.
Practical science is a working model. It doesn't aim to reveal how the world really is, but to be of practical value for us here on earth. What do I care if Newotnian physics become meaningless in outer space?!
Save for cosmology, science deals with practical matters that make our lives more comfortable, safer, etc. by providing working models and inventions that makes use of the world as we see it, and the world we live in. That's a heck of a lot more that what the 'spiritualists' or cosmological prima donna physicists have to offer.
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.
LOL! Physical 'laws' are just concepts how the real world works based on our observations. Does that mean they are generally/universally true? Of course not. They are limited by the observer. Their aim is not to uncover the universal or then 'ultimate truth,' but to work. And they do work! I mentioned the Ptolemaic navigational system based on geocentric universe. It still works even thought the universe is not geocentric, and the planets do not 'dance' around in epicycles! :)
Thank you, Godzilla!
However, it seems to me . . .
you play fast and loose and quite inconsistently
with ‘scientific inquiry’ . . . strictly according to your preferences and sensibilities as convenient to such.
All the while demanding of others a strictness and narrowness you refuse to follow for yourself.
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