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 ...
There are some jumbles of synapses in some craniums
that would not be persuaded even by such as
Josh McDowell’s
THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT
with it’s exhaustive documentation.
It is as though they are
DETERMINED to be as perversely given to
giving God the . . .
as possible.
AT some point
perversity becomes its own god.
Rejecting / dismissing even more through investigation than ETDAV. Denying the truth.
INDEED.
As though . . . Almighty God ignored such things . . .
given that . . . in all . . . is SOME awareness of Him
. . . however squelched and denied.
“If you can get K’s permission, then you have my blessing.”
Come to think of it, I really like roast duck.....but I wasn’t tempted...not in the least bit....no sireeeee bob!
It was witnessed by the disciples when Jesus came into the house later that day, as well as up to 500 at different times. And even to Paul who wrote -
1Co 15:14* And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
Are the apostles teaching a lie then kosta? Can you prove they are lying? Can you disprove every one of them - different times, different circumstances and locations and attendees.
Remember kosta, Paul is writing this within 30 years of the event. People HOSTILE to Christianity with eyewitness knowledge of the the claim are silent kosta. They could have produced evidence of a body if what they were preaching was false.
Please kosta tell us again why the High Priest didn't present the body - would have killed the movement in its tracks.
If Jesus never appeared to them or rose from the dead - why would these people go around and spread a lie - putting their lives in danger and even to death - for a lie THEY KNEW to be a lie.
INDEED.
However, rational evidence . . . is not really of interest to the irrational pseudo super rationalists.
kosta50: 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.
[Whereof] the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, This [is] the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.
Now where remission of these [is, there is] no more offering for sin. - Hebrews 10:14-18
If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. - I John 1:5-7
I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth [in] righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. - Isaiah 45:23
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of [things] in heaven, and [things] in earth, and [things] under the earth; And [that] every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ [is] Lord, to the glory of God the Father. - Philippians 2:10-11
The point being that it is man himself who brings about his own indictment. Hell exists for every man who chooses it.
Thank you oh so very much for your insights, dear sister in Christ!
LOLOL!
LOLOL!
I see evidence of God everywhere; but this is not the sort of evidence that can be directly observed and scientifically measured. Which is what you are asking me to provide.
The evidence that I find most persuasive is the seemingly perfect correspondence among God's four revelations: Holy Scripture, the Incarnation of Christ, the world of Creation, and the Holy Spirit with us.
INDEED.
And often I feel that the hurrider I get the behinder I get.
And Pastor had a couple of men pray with me last night about NOT STRIVING . . . resting IN THE LORD . . . flowing WITH HIS CHANGING ME . . . stopping striving to batter myself more into shape.
Certainly HE IS THE AUTHOR AND FINISHER OF OUR FAITH AND OF US.
Thx for the ping.
INDEED.
And I get more and more homesick for that day . . . at least by the week, if not the day.
It’s
WORSE
and MORE DELUSIONAL
to play games with God
AND PRETEND HAUGHTILY
THAT ONE AND ONE’S PSEUDO-SUPER-RATIONALISM
ARE
bigger than GOD ALMIGHTY!
THAT’S a terminal level ‘joke’ and God will have the last ‘laugh’ though it’s likely going to contain some tears.
If a person has "ears to hear," he will.
For the word of God [is] quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. - Hebrews 4:12
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: - John 10:27
Why do ye not understand my speech? [even] because ye cannot hear my word. – John 8:43
So then faith [cometh] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. - Romans 10:17
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. – John 5:24
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. - I Cor 2:13-14
Thank you for your kind reply.
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