But how will you know? He's a master of disguises.
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 ...
All of course . . . with negligible to 0.00000% insight into such yourself.
In order to deny God, you must first recognize that He exists. Otherwise, there'd be nothing to deny. You know very well that He IS, kosta. WHAT God is — is the 800 pound gorilla in the room that you are pretending is not there. You're just playing games with us.
Those who were not given the 'ears' must be the rejects, or else they would have been given to them.
Ultimately that is true. But life is long and none of us knows where God intends anyone to be tomorrow, let alone 10 years from now. So we preach the Gospel to all men, confident those who are His will, at a moment in time and place chosen by God, know his salvation has been obtained for him by Jesus Christ, second person of the Triune God.
This Scriptural perspective makes for a lot less anxiety. Anyone who seeks Christ with a repentant heart given by God will find Him. Those who don't seek Him, do not want to find Him.
http://www.comicbookreligion.com/char?ID=52&Wolfsbane_Rahne_Sinclair
Neeners don't like ducks; Neeners can't abide ducks.
When John Michael Curley, the ex-Mayor of Boston was serving time in the Federal Penitentiary for bribery among other things, he was visited by his son Francis, a Jesuit Priest. During the visit Father Francis asked his dad about his philosophy of life since Mayor Curley was known for his generosity towards his friends and his legendary animus towards his enemies. Father Francis said there was a pause in the conversation while he collected his thoughts and then Mayor Curley said “Well, I have always tried to do what the good book said. ‘If you cast your bread upon the waters it will return to you many times over’. Then he leaned forward and grasped both his son’s hands and in a serious quiet voice said, “Son, but every time I cast my bread upon the waters, those damn ducks ate it.”
There will be no ducks at the next Annual Servetus Barbecue and Mud Wrestling Event. None, Nada, Zilch, Zip, Zero
As to supernatural causes, neither does the inexplicability of Pio's condition rule them out. As for the possibility of hoax, the Church itself was alive to this possibility. The first thing the Vatican did on getting wind of Pio's condition was to place him in a sort of internal exile that continued for nearly two years. In this period he was barred from hearing confessions, saying mass, administering the Eucharist — in short, barred from any exercise of his normal priestly duties.
Also in this period, the Church had him examined by doctors, scientists, "experts" for the sole purpose of falsifying Pio's claims. They couldn't do it, though they certainly could not falsify the existence of the physical wounds. Pio was a "scientific curiosity" for 50 years. He continued to be seen by members of the medical and scientific community over this period. If there had been a hoax involved, one would think it would have been discovered by now.
No, never was.
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?
First, thank you for asking. To me sin is makes sense only in terms what we do here on earth to other living things on it. As citizens of this planet we have the same birthright to be here and to pursue our happiness. Abrogating that right deliberately and consciously is sin as far as I am concerned. Consideration is a key factor, knowing the limits of our freedom and our space and not vioalting others'.
What does forgiveness mean? To me, forgiveness is giving someone a chance to change his or her ways, after they pay a penalty for their wrongdoing. There is no free lunch and there should be no free forgiveness for deliberate sin. When we pay for something we value it more than when it is free.
If all people conformed to the Christian ideal this would be a better world in terms of not violating our rights as citizens of this planet, in terms of being more responsible towards each other, in terms of being more compassionate and helpful as a human community, etc. That part of Christianity is attractive. The dogmatic part, fire and brim stones, the religious pride, self-ritheousness, arrogance, dividing people into those who have been granted the 'ears' and those who are destined to hell because God doesn't want them, etc. is not.
Amen. Well said, Dr. Eckleburg!
Excellent observation, spirited irish!
Thank you so much for this insightful essay/post!
Oh no, betty boop, you got that backwards. You claim that something exists. I say prove it. That is not denial of God, that is doubting your claim. It is not the doubt but the claim that is burdened by proof.
You know very well that He IS, kosta.
Really? And how do you know what I know? Mind reading?
You're just playing games with us.
And what do you call when someone claims that something is, can't describe, it can't define it, measure it, weight it, see it, or in any way prove that it is, yet you insist that it is, and also that I know that it is?!
But how will you know? He's a master of disguises.
Pelagius had several controversial doctrines. If you are speaking of the one where he believed man can be holy of his own free will, then, no, I don't believe that. If you are speaking of one of his other doctrines, it would help if you were more specific. Otherwise, I do not think of myself as following any man. I follow Jesus Christ and I am a Christian. Why the need for labels so much?
“No Mr R, those scripture are entirely consistent with what xzins said. Your deceitful heart must be changed before you can receive Christ.”
Odd. What it says is:
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand...”
Access means entry - we enter into grace thru faith.
Think about it. What is the one critical thing Calvin teaches gives us everything else? Election. If you are elect, everything else is included. And no one can enter unless they were picked by name before creation. Our salvation depends on God picking our name, and nothing else. If picked, God will give us every other benefit.
But scripture says the one critical thing is faith. How do we gain access to the SS Christ, destined for Heaven, with the passengers coming to be like Christ? Thru faith - believing in Him. If we have faith in Him, we will receive all the benefits:
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Therefore remember...that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”
Here is a review of what John says about believing and life:
Jhn 3:15 “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
Jhn 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Jhn 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Jhn 4:14 “but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Jhn 5:24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
Jhn 5:39-40 “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”
Jhn 6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
Jhn 6:40 “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Jhn 6:47 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
Jhn 6:51 “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Jhn 6:54 “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Jhn 20:31 but 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.
We receive life when we come by faith. We do not receive life, and then receive faith as a gift.
“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?”
“”But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father...”
Did the father come and give his rebellious son life, or did the son realize what a sinner he was and repent? “But when he came to himself...”
I can show you uncounted verses where faith is something that we do in response to God. Can you show me one where God gives faith as a gift after regeneration? Other than as a special gift of the Spirit for the edification of the congregation?
While Paul uses ‘dead’ as a description of us, he also describes us as “separated from Christ, alienated...strangers...having no hope and without God”.
snip: 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.”
Spirited: The first question to pop into my God-given spiritual mind, as opposed to the mindless material-brain of the body-called-kosta, is: “Now how on earth can the body-called-kosta presume to speak of that of which it cannot possibly know if godless-evolutionism of any variant is true?” The simple answer is that it cannot.
If godless-evolutionism is paradoxically true, the answer is that the body-called-kosta is a nonbeing at the mercy of the forces of nature. In short, because it is ‘one with’ irrational forces of nature,it is completely ‘caused and determined’ by them in other words.
Apparently an irrational unseen entity of nature hovering close by in the vicinity of the nonbeing-called-kosta has spoken through its’ mouth.
snip: ‘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.
Spirited: Considering that unseen irrational forces of nature are speaking through the mouth of the body-called-kosta, we ought not be surprised when gibberish spews forth.
The notion of ‘collective mind’ is the particular gibberish of evolutionary monism, which today has three permutations: atheist-materialism, idealist-pantheism, and the highly developed materialist pantheism known as Buddhism. At bottom, all are based on the scientifically discredited notion that life and consciousness somehow magically emerged from nonlife. All three deny ‘being’ as well.
In reality, kosta straddles two antithetical worldviews. With one foot in the Christian worldview, he uses his God-given mind to argue against his own Creator, while with the other foot in godless evolutionism-—which negates his mind— he arrogantly spouts scientistic nonsense in the belief that it must be as awe inspiring to us as it is to him.
It appears that the ‘entity’ receives perverse pleasure from speaking gibberish through the mouth of kosta.
That's above my pay grade. I am only the "Keeper of the Institutes" (temporarily misplaced). This is a job for one with the lofty gift of discernment; one who has been severly tested at Castle Anthrax and survived, yet so as by fire; only the LPFOKETT GAHCOEEP-w/o* is able to select the true Servetus!
OR
Oh Phil, may the LPFOKETT GAHCOEEP-w/o* choose right!
You are not paying attention, kosta. I thought I had made myself clear when I said (repeatedly) that God is not subject to the type of proof you are insisting on. You seemed to have acknowledged this in an earlier post, when you said, "you can't measure God or detect him with a microscope."
So, given proof of this type is unavailable, what is it you want from me?
What’s wanted?
!!!!SUBMISSION!!!!!
The thrill of saying . . .
“I’M RIGHT, YOU’RE WRONG!” to anyone that’s not a
pseudo-super-rationalist . . .
Okay, but that wasn't the question. I also never claimed I knew whom God rejected. What I did say was, based on what AG wrote, that some people are saved because they were given the 'ears' and others are damned because God chose not to give them the spiritual ears.
I do understand that the Bible commands you to preach the Gospel, but it is not your preaching (which is works) that gives 'ears'; rather it is God who does. And he decided that before the foundation of the world and not as a result of your preaching. Because preaching is works of men, it can not be an instrument of salvation, lest one is saved by works.
This Scriptural perspective makes for a lot less anxiety.
Okay, so does chewing gum.
Anyone who seeks Christ with a repentant heart given by God will find Him
But God doesn't give a repentant heart to everyone, does he? Ergo, he rejects some, doesn't he?
Those who don't seek Him, do not want to find Him.
That's "soft Calvinism" in my opinion, Dr. E. Seeking is works, and seeking does not save. I think your fellow Calvinists would say that you are either saved or not, no matter what you do or think and that what you do with your repentant heart is not your will but God's.
In other words, I think Calvinists would say that if you don't seek it's not because you don't want to find him but because God doesn't want you to find him! Ultimately, who gets saved and who doesn't is God's decision and doing, not yours.
I dunno. Kosta's argument just seems like so much gibberish to me. But it's true — kosta very much has a foot in the Christian worldview. He was raised in the Christian tradition, in an orthodox confession. I imagine he's steeped in it, consciously and unconsciously. He's turned his back on it, and is using scientistic nonsense to justify his apostasy.
I'd like to point out that, without the Christian tradition, it is highly unlikely that science as we know it could have arisen in the first place. Notice that systematic science is a legacy of the Christian West; it did not arise in the pantheist East; for pantheism offers no rational principle on which science could be founded. Thus kosta is abusing science to destroy the very tradition that makes science possible.
JMHO FWIW.
Thank you so much for your excellent essay/post, spirited irish!
Why not? because you say so? Why is it that some believers think they can just lay down the rules and everyone just has to accept them, just because they say so?!
Imagine if just came out and said "God is green. Everyone knows that. It's not subject to proof, that's just the way it is. It's in my scripture and I know it's the word of God. If you don't believe it, you are forever lost." You'd think I am nuts.
Why should I say "oh sure betty poor, it must be true?" because you say so? You are pontificating here, telling me that I know there is God and that I am playing games...
All the absolutist statements without a shred of justification or proof. This is incredible arrogance and presumption. It's one thing for someone to believe; it's another thing for that same someone to delegate what is truth and what is not.
Get real. The world doest have a clue what God is. That's why we have all these different religions, each claiming to be the 'true' one.
So, given proof of this type is unavailable, what is it you want from me?
Something more than just "because I said so." Anything, even "because I just believe but don't know what it is." Anything would be intellectually more honest that "You know God IS."
Besides, a duck floats, and a Servetus doesn't. Therefore, I say we throw DrE into the water and see if she can float as long as a duck. The first to sink is the Servetus look-alike.
(I must admit, however, that your DrE kootchie toon with cross and neuveau presbyterian look has already been warmed up in the fire.)
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