Thread: Is Calvinism the Foundation of the Protestant Faith? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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On a different thread, Zach82 referred to Calvinism as "the foundation of the Protestant faith."
Really?
There are no Protestants who aren't Calvinists? Or maybe they're fallen-away Calvinists? Or come from branches of Protestantism that used to be Calvinist but no longer are? Maybe Arminians aren't "True" Protestants?
Was Luther a Calvinist?
What on earth does it mean to call Calvinism the foundation of the Protestant faith?
Earlier in the thread, Zach82 gave as what appears, in context, meant to be a definition of Calvinism:
quote:
Calvin ultimately imagined himself to be saying that salvation was a matter of what Christ has done on our behalf, rather than anything like trying to earn salvation through works. The Cross and resurrection have accomplished the Kingdom. God just gives us the grace of that Kingdom, for free, out of His profound goodness and love, and we as Christians can have faith in that grace in this life and the next.
There seems to be a good bit more to Calvinism than this. If this is Calvinism then all Christianity is Calvinism, which is absurd.
This is all the more surprising coming from Zach, since he is usually a stickler for using words according to their definitions.
Posted by irish_lord99 (# 16250) on
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Many Charismatics and Pentecostals are non-Calvinist, often the dividing line is that they believe that one can lose their salvation.
There are a lot of other Protestants that are either pseudo-calvinistic or not Calvinist at all.
I'm not even sure how many Calvinists are truly Calvinist anymore? Some, it seems to me, have taken his teachings and extrapolated from them things which he never taught. Certainly the attitude behind Calvinism has taken some malicious turns (though not in all denominations, surely) since Calvin's time. Not that Calvin himself wasn't a bit cruel in some of this thoughts, but there is a spectrum across which his thoughts are applied which ranges from benign to Westboro Baptist.
Add to that the fact that Calvin believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary and refered to her as "the Mother of God" and you've got an even wider rift between Calvin and many modern Calvinists.
Posted by PD (# 12436) on
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No, Lutheranism is the bedrock of Protestantism because it is the tradition that came up with the five solas.
Calvinism is the effete froggie version of Protestant. Logical, as cold as ice, and total bollocks uness it agrees with the truth as revealed in the Bible.
PD
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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It's complicated, mousethief!
I rose to the bait here a few years ago (a challenge thrown down by Call me Numpty) and spent ages reading the Institutes. I came to a couple of provisional conclusions.
1. Calvin was a lot more nuanced than he has often been presented.
2. In particular, the T.U.L.I.P summary has effectively taken over a wider consideration of the range of thought in the Institutes. Well known of course, but here is the summary.
quote:
Total Depravity
Unconditional Election
Limited Atonement
Irresistible Grace
Perseverance of the Saints
That summary has had profound and pervasive effects but I'm inclined to the view that it has extracted from Calvin's theology, rather than summarised it, and it has also over-simplified his thought.
TULIP Calvinism is not the foundation of the protestant faith. The foundation of protestantism is protest against certain Traditional understandings and expressions. The hope was reform, not schism. The result was schism and a range of different understandings of what might constitute a reasonable reformed theology. Our forefathers were rather more in agreement about what they were against than any systematic theological expression of what they were for.
We've been playing Calvinism v Lutheranism v Arminianism (and various variations on those themes) ever since. We're a rowdy lot.
Although this summary does not tell it all by any many of means, there is a quite useful table in this Wiki article re Lutheranism
Scroll to the para entitled "Comparison among Protestants."
[ 22. June 2012, 07:34: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on
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Calvinism does not equal Calvin. they are two very different and distinct things.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
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Many in the Reformed tradition, as represented by TULIP, are what I'd call sub-Calvinists, just as many respected Roman Catholic theologians of the C19 and early C20 are what I'd call, sub-Thomists. Neither group are a credit to their claimed master.
Having said that, I don't think Calvin, real Calvinism or sub-Calvinism are the foundation of the Protestant take on the Christian faith. An ingredient, yes, but only an ingredient.
Posted by Ancient Mariner (# 4) on
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All these years and we still argue over systems, none of which are consistent with all that is revealed in scripture. Is that saying something about our longing for certainty and firm structure when God seems to deal with humanity, as the whole Bible suggests, in a far more random and subjective way?
JAT
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
irish_lord99: I'm not even sure how many Calvinists are truly Calvinist anymore?
The Dutch Reformed Church (now incorporated in the Protestant Church of the Netherlands) is officially Calvinist, but in practice it has moved away quite far from his teachings. I'd even venture that most of its members know very little about Calvin. Once in a conversation with some church members, I tried to explain a bit of what he taught, and they were actually quite shocked!
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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You're a mystic, AM.
Is the real enemy the reductionist effect, rather than the clarifying effect, of systematic theology(ies)?
Probably!
[Actually, I think that's probably an Orthodox thought. We have to have some structures to hold and express our knowing in part, but I think they only have value to the extent that we recognise their incompleteness, rather than wrap ourselves too tightly in them.
"The practice of inner prayer aims at union with God on a level beyond images, concepts and language?". "All of our theological riches are filthy rags?"
Scary - and maybe liberating?]
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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To be honest, I was quite surprised at Zach82's outburst on the other thread ... because, as both Mousethief and Fr Gregory have acknowledged, his (somewhat truncated?) definition of the Calvinistic position is one that almost everyone can sign up to - at least, almost everyone with a relatively conservative 'take' on the Christian faith.
No, it should have been obvious from the context that the term 'monstrous' was being applied to those aspects of popular Calvinism that even Calvinists themselves wriggle at ... the full-on TULIP stuff.
I used to be fairly TU IP or perhaps TUlIP ... but gradually found all the petals beginning to drop off ...
Whether that means that I'm no longer really a Protestant but haven't quite woken up to the fact or acknowledged it yet, I don't know ...
Fr Gregory will correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect the 'monstrous' bit referred to Dort and to double-predestination.
As to Zach82's question about whether God is right or justified to 'condemn' certain people etc ... well, as Fr Gregory says, that ain't our call. I have absolutely no idea how God will apply his mercy. It's not my call to judge or comment. Even speculation on this point - interesting as it might be - seems futile.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
Gamaliel: I used to be fairly TU IP or perhaps TUlIP ... but gradually found all the petals beginning to drop off ...
She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not...
I wonder where you'll end up ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
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The answer to the OP is "obviously not" because the beginings of hte particular styles and traditions of Christianity that later got called protestantism go back to the late 14th century, including Wyclif and Hus. The Reformation may have happened in 15-whatever. but it had been very likeley that something like that was going to happen since the Council of Constance went pear-shaped.
As it is now? Although I'm happy, even pround, to identify myself as a "calvinist". I don't think so. The painful thread on American evangelicals and the poo, with all that business about stereotyped American evangelicals supposedly thinking themselves being better or different or stronger than the bloke lying on the side of the street in need of care, shows how far some strands of Protestantism are from the good news of salvation by the grace of God through faith in Jesus.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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You'll know better than I do, ken, but didn't Calvin himself refer to his own predestination scheme as a 'dread decree'?
He seemed quite embarrassed by the implications of it.
I think you're right historically, the roots of Protestantism do go back further - to Lollardy, the Hussites, Waldensians etc - although I doubt if all of these groups would have signed up to what later emerged ...
George MacLeod (MacDonald?) of Iona Community fame once said that 'Calvinism is a virus, you never quite recover from it ...'
For what it's worth, I think the broader Reformed tradition gives us a lot to be proud of ... so I wouldn't be at all snarky about you being proud of your Calvinistic roots. But it's a position to hold through gritted teeth at times ...
I'm not sure I want to go around with gritted teeth though. But I'm sure other traditions have other reasons to grit their teeth ... in order not to have to inhale the smell of their own shit.
Shit is shit. It's just different shit in different traditions within Christianity.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Sorry to double-post ...
I've been thinking about this some more ...
There's a reluctance to abandon Calvinism on the part of many Protestants because there's an almost (often unspoken) sense that Calvinism IS the Gospel ... rather than elements/aspects of it being commensurate with the Gospel - such as the parts that Zach82 has run up the flagpole and which both MT and Fr Gregory have saluted ...
It's the trailing banners that dangle from that particular flag that have caused them to put their hands back down, it seems to me ...
It's axiomatic, of course, that Calvinists believe that their 'take' on things is the correct one, they wouldn't be Calvinists otherwise ... but I dunno, I suspect it goes further and gets more psychobabble-ish than that.
I used to read Calvinistic publications like Evangelicals Now or Evangelicalism Today - one was more hard-line than t'other and it used to tickle me how one of them always included an article about some visit to some part of the world or other - Finland, Indonesia, wherever ... where the authors encountered forms of Protestantism that needed to be put straight on 'the doctrines of Grace.'
These articles almost invariably ended not in the 'I made my excuses and left' way that salacious News of The World stories did but with the authors giving a sermon to a Brethren or a Pentecostal assembly or some other outfit and putting them right on things ...
It was all rather quaint.
When I first encountered the Orthodox, just to use them as an example, I was both relieved and somewhat shocked to encounter a body of believers that weren't apparently shaped by Calvinism in any way, shape or form. Poor old Cyril Lukaris, I thought, he'd got to the bottom of things at last, and look what happened to him ... ![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif)
Part of me thought (and still thinks to a certain extent) 'How liberating to have a take on the Gospel free of cold, cold Calvin ...'
But equally, 'Is it really the Gospel? Surely the Apostle Paul was some kind of Calvinist? It's there in Romans in black and white ...'
I suspect, but I might be wrong, that this is what lies behind Zach82's knee-jerk reaction to Fr Gregory's comments.
I suspect there's an element of it with Johnny S too, 'Nah, you kidding me, the NT clearly portrays God as very, very angry indeed ...'
So the question remains, is Tradition at variance with scripture at this point? Or are us Proddy types simply reading the scriptures through Calvinist lenses (with varying prescriptions in terms of strength) ... ?
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
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quote:
Originally posted by ken:
The painful thread on American evangelicals and the poo
Some day soon there'll be fields for it...
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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The "foundation of the Protestant faith", so far as I am aware, is a refusal to accept things as true merely because someone in a nice hat says they are.
All the doctrines and theologies it has thrown up - Calvinism included - are simply a result of different people working things out for themselves rather than accepting what they're told. They aren't foundational in the same way.
(None of which is to say there aren't a lot of protestants who blindly follow what their church leaders say, of course!)
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
You'll know better than I do, ken, but didn't Calvin himself refer to his own predestination scheme as a 'dread decree'?
Decretum horribile.
Chesterton talked about those who tried to "bind omnipotence in the chains of syllogism".
Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on
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As Gamaliel has pointed out, some of the more starchy Reformed types would indeed argue that calvinism is the essence of evangelicalism, which is in turn the essence of Protestantism. Other forms of evangelicalism are seen as deficient, man-centred rather than God-centred etc etc. In fact they spend more time eye-rolling about things like the Alpha Course than even the Ship does ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
They would to varying degrees believe that they have a duty to set other evangelicals straight when the opportunity presents itself (non-evangelicals are Not Proper Christians and therefore not worth bothering with ). They are generally a pretty intense, charmless bunch however, so I'm not sure they get much opportunity.
[ 22. June 2012, 11:53: Message edited by: Yerevan ]
Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on
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PS One publication Gamaliel has sadly missed out on is The Evangelical Times, which is forever lamenting the lack of a 'Reformed witness' in Micronesia or Burkino Faso or wherever.
Posted by parm (# 9287) on
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Well, Methodists are usually considered protestant, and we're pretty squarely in the Arminian camp, at least.
(I saw 'we'; I'm not an especially big fan of Arminius' Remonstrance, as it appears to more strongly preclude the Universalist tendancies I drift towards than Calvin's five points, but I like where Arminius is coming from [man's unimpaired free will] more than Calvin)
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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Peter may be the rock on which the Roman Catholic Church is built, but it is really Augustine and Thomas Aquinas that form the foundation of its theology.
Likewise, Martin Luther and Jan Huss may have started things rolling, but it was Calvin that really set the intellectual agenda for Protestantism. Not everyone agreed with every point, but they were the points that everyone talked about. Even the Arminians agreed that God predestines the elect- they just thought human will had something to do with it.
Was Martin Luther a Calvinist? If Calvinism refers to the doctrine of Predestination, then yes he was. He indeed referred to the doctrine of Predestination as the make-or-break doctrine of the Reformation.
To repeat what I said in the other thread, do we have to agree with or even like Calvin? NOPE. Personally I greatly disagree with Calvin on the sacraments. Is he unfairly maligned by anyone and practically everyone that fancies himself theological? Yep.
[ 22. June 2012, 12:11: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by Bostonman (# 17108) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Was Martin Luther a Calvinist? If Calvinism refers to the doctrine of Predestination, then yes he was. He indeed referred to the doctrine of Predestination as the make-or-break doctrine of the Reformation.
This is a topic on which I'm quite ignorant, so this is not meant to be a pointed or sarcastic reply but rather a sincere question: Isn't that rather like saying that Marx was a Leninist, if Leninism refers to the doctrine of proletarian revolution? In other words, I was under the assumption that Luther predated Calvin with enough distance not to be significantly influenced by him. Or am I just way off base there?
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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I am not saying Calvin invented the doctrines of the Reformation. Heck- Thomas Aquinas believed in predestination. Calvin was the one who made Protestantism a coherent system and gave it its intellectual agenda. He is why Protestants looked to Geneva as the center of Protestantism.
That's what I meant. If that isn't what you want to call the "foundation," then I apologize for the confusion.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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I might be missing something, but I thought Calvin had a reasonably 'high' view of the sacraments, Zach82, certainly more so than many of those who followed in his wake ...
And I've always taken you to be similar in your take on these things ...
Just shows ...
@Yerevan - yes, you're right, but it was The Evangelical Times I had in mind.
It was the one I was alluding to but had forgetten the title. I do remember all those articles about them attending services in Burkino Faso or Papua New Guinea or wherever it happened to be and putting everyone straight ...
With about as much charm as a turd pasty ...
Posted by CSL1 (# 17168) on
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I think the Cal-Arm debate misses the point, I think the parts of the NT that seem to be heading in two different directions on this are a sign that we're trying to understand with human minds a God who cannot rightly be put into a box with a tidy acrostic.
One thing I've noticed about the neo-Cals is they sure don't have much humility for a group that's so committed to their own Total Depravity.
Posted by Balaam (# 4543) on
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Isn't Calvinism based on Augustine too, Zach?
Reading through City of God I found that what I was not so sure about seem to have a longer history than the reformation.
But there is the question of the sovereignty of God which is stronger in Calvinism than other strands of protestantism which I can't let go of.
Balaam - Closer to Calvinism than anything else.
Posted by anteater (# 11435) on
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Balaam:
quote:
Isn't Calvinism based on Augustine too, Zach?
Exactly, which also explains why the Orthodox church is different, although I can't claim expertise here.
I'm not sure Calvin added anything to Augustine in terms of Soteriology, and when I was a calvinist it was commonly believed that his main contribution was to the understanding of the Incarnation.
It is absurd to say that protestantism is based on calvinism. Why would anyone think that when only a minority of self claiming protestants also would identify as calvinists?
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
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I disagree with Zach. Luther was not a Calvinist. He wasn't a proto-Calvinist. He wasn't a slow-learning Calvinist whose deficient theology just needed some fixing up from the master. (I've come across all three attitudes among Calvinists when it comes to Luther.)
First of all, Luther did not embrace double predestination. His thinking on the subject went like this: Scripture tells us that God wills all to be saved. From our human perspective, that doesn't seem to be the case, even within the Christian community; and Scripture also implies that some people will not be saved. There's no way to resolve the paradox, so we don't. We trust God's promises to save those who have faith in God, commend us all to God's care and let God sort us out.
But more importantly, Calvinism isn't only predestination. Calvinism involves other theological assertions and practices. If you pick the TULIP petals, so to speak, you'll find disagreements between Luther and Calvin on other points. The two also had different ideas about Eucharistic theology and about worship in general. Someone once compared the Church during the Reformation to a chest of drawers; whereas Luther's m.o. in cleaning out the drawers was to pick out piecemeal items in the drawer that he thought were detrimental to the Gospel message, while leaving most of the rest behind, Calvin's m.o. was to dump the drawers out, then replace the contents as he saw fit. (And the Anabaptists just destroyed the chest of drawers and contents, and started over.) Even allowing for the differences between Calvin's own thoughts and their morphing into something rather different, and far less nuanced, over time...Lutheranism and Calvinism operate from different points of view.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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I only didn't say everything in Protestantism is based on Calvin or that every Protestant theologian was inspired by him or agrees with him. Is anyone even reading my posts without an eye to being offended these days?
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
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I'm not offended, Zach -- I'm just sayin'.
Even after 18 years in church and many years of religious education in an ueber-Lutheran milieu, I never learned about John Calvin or Calvinism until I went away to a (secular) university and took a proper course in the Protestant Reformation. It's simply not on the radar of most Lutherans, even after the recent agreement involving the ELCA and several church bodies with a Reformed pedigree (PCUSA, UCC and others) that formalized altar and pulpit fellowship between us all.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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He's not on the radar for most Episcopalians these days either. But if you go back and read the Anglican and Lutheran texts from the Reformation there is a very clear dialogue with Calvin. They had their differences, but they saw their mission as essentially one of solidarity with the doctrines he espoused. I think reading Calvin gives a lot of insight into what Luther and other Reformers were thinking and writing about.
People are clearly having problems with calling him the "foundation," but I've clarified what I meant. Calvin is the pillar, pediment, groin vault, balustrade, pick whatever architectural metaphor you like for "an extremely central figure in Protestant theology."
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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CSL1, I think you're onto something there ...
One of the paradoxes of a certain kind of Calvinist (by no means all) is that they'll rail against Arminians as being virtual closet Papists or Pelagians, seeking to justify themselves ... and take anything that looks like an anthropocentric approach or self-effort as an attempt to be justified by works and therefore prideful and worthy of all condemnation ...
But in the very act of denouncing everyone else for these tendencies they can fail to see the Pharisaisism and pride of their own position ...
I'm making a very broad generalism here ...
It's the solipsism that Kaplan alluded to.
And yes, it is impossible to reduce God's sovereignty, the plan of salvation or anything else in soteriological or theological terms to a nice neat acrostic.
At the extreme, it can also lead to a smug form of self-righteousness whilst insisting on God's sovereignty and free grace ...
Fr Gregory and I have had various discussions about Calvinism over the years (he's tried to cure me of its more baleful effects) and he once said something that struck a real chord in this respect, namely that another paradox of extreme Calvinism is that whilst setting out to protect God's sovereignty and the 'crown rights of King Jesus' it actually boxes God in and makes him subject to his own sovereignty!
In fact, the logical conclusion of Calvinism, when taken to an extreme, is to rob Almighty God of any sovereignty whatsoever, the very thing that it seeks to assert and protect.
Ok, so there are nuances and gradations along that continuum. Calvinism and Calvinists are right to insist on God's sovereignty, but there's something in the uber-Scholastic way that they do it that can end up in solipsism.
On the Sovereign Grace thing ... now there's a wriggly and dodgy outfit if ever was one and the tragedy is that they use weasel words to justify the way they con and oppress people. They hide behind a mask of false piety. I won't name names, but they've effectively used their Calvinistic sound-bites in a casuistic way both to gull their own followers and to garner more support from the broadly Calvinistic evangelical mainstream than they deserve ...
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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I might have overreacted to Fr.Gregory's original statement, but in the end lobbing names like that is a weasely thing to do, and he only confirmed his weasely attitude about it all with subsequent posts.
I don't agree with every point in Calvinism, but it deserves just as much respect as Orthodoxy. That's what my objections there are about. He would still be just as Orthodox if he stopped calling names and had a little charity for Calvinists, wouldn't he?
Posted by CSL1 (# 17168) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
But in the very act of denouncing everyone else for these tendencies they can fail to see the Pharisaisism and pride of their own position ...
At the extreme, it can also lead to a smug form of self-righteousness whilst insisting on God's sovereignty and free grace ...
Having spent a year and a half amongst a group of young neo-Cals, I can attest to the smugness, at least in that particular group. In their understanding of their own total depravity, they projected an aura of extreme self-righteous! I tried to point out the obvious non-sequitur, but generally it felt like explaining the quadratic equation to tabby cats.
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
On the Sovereign Grace thing ... now there's a wriggly and dodgy outfit if ever was one and the tragedy is that they use weasel words to justify the way they con and oppress people. They hide behind a mask of false piety. I won't name names, but they've effectively used their Calvinistic sound-bites in a casuistic way both to gull their own followers and to garner more support from the broadly Calvinistic evangelical mainstream than they deserve ...
Don't get me started on SGI. The neo-Cal church referenced above was headed by a leader who'd come straight from SGI, as was his right-hand man on the Elder's Team, it was something of a New Frontiers/Sovereign Grace hybrid, though officially NFI. I got a good taste of SGI, right down to the controlled prophecy mic, the small groups that were used to gather dirt, the backroom politicking that ruins careers, the innuendo that ruins reputations, but is always done with white gloves and pious words ("But brother, I would never do anything to hurt you, we're doing this because we love you") They aren't just dodgy, they're diabolical.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
But if you go back and read the Anglican and Lutheran texts from the Reformation there is a very clear dialogue with Calvin. They had their differences, but they saw their mission as essentially one of solidarity with the doctrines he espoused. I think reading Calvin gives a lot of insight into what Luther and other Reformers were thinking and writing about.
There are two things here that aren't quite right.
The first is that throughout the Reformation the division between Lutheran and Reformed was in many ways almost as deep as that between Roman Catholics and Protestant. In many cases, the Lutherans would ally with the Roman Catholics in preference to the Reformed - the use of religious statuary being the most practically salient point. (The sticker for Luther theologically was the Eucharist. Melanchthon was closer to the Reformed on the Eucharist, but wasn't at all happy with predestination.)
The second is that there were a lot more names in the Reformed party than just Calvin. Calvin was the most articulate and systematic, and after Geneva burnt Servetus, the most prominent. But there were many names around other than Calvin: Zwingli, who was dead before Calvin started writing, and Bucer, for instance, were among the elder statesmen of the Reformed party. (For Luther, Calvin would have been one more young whippersnapper.) During Calvin's lifetime it was only really the French-speaking Reformed who were doctrinaire Calvinists; it was only after his lifetime that he was regarded more widely as the authority on Reformed belief.
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
irish_lord99: I'm not even sure how many Calvinists are truly Calvinist anymore?
The Dutch Reformed Church (now incorporated in the Protestant Church of the Netherlands) is officially Calvinist, but in practice it has moved away quite far from his teachings. I'd even venture that most of its members know very little about Calvin. Once in a conversation with some church members, I tried to explain a bit of what he taught, and they were actually quite shocked!
Knowing little of Calvin is not new in Reformed circles, there is an interesting debate over whether Jonathan Edwards ever read any actual work of John Calvin rather than commentators on him. Yet he is held to be a Reformed theologian by most.
Further Arminius was of course a Reformed theologian and the argument he had with other Dutch Reformed theologians was as much about Dutch identity as about Predestinarianism, and Calvin called Luther an apostle. In a tradition that at once is profoundly aniconic and verbose, simplicity will always mislead.
Two things, Calvin is not first generation protestant but second, he is later than Luther. Also Calvin would himself decline the role, the mother of Protestantism is of course the Roman Catholic Church! If it had not got itself into the state it did, Protestantism would not exist.
Jengie
Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on
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quote:
Two things, Calvin is not first generation protestant but second, he is later than Luther.
I've heard it argued that this is an important distinction. Luther evolved his theology on the hoof in the midst of fierce controversy. He took early modern Catholicism as his starting point and changed only what he felt needed to be changed. Calvin on the other hand sat down as a second generation reformer to work out a systematic theology from scratch.
Posted by Mockingale (# 16599) on
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I remember the first time I heard about Calvinism, in a high school history lecture talking about the Reformation. From a moderate Anglican standpoint like I had growing up (and now), I found the concepts of limited atonement and "double predestination" to be quite shocking. Over the years I have allowed myself to be convinced that no one could actually believe in a God who arbitrarily chooses some people for heaven and lets the others rot, and there's nothing they can do about it, all because a distant ancestor ate an apple he wasn't supposed to 6000 years ago. That God sounds worse than Hitler.
I realize now, having seen some of the asinine things that some people believe, that raw Calvinism is still a thing. But Calvinism has made no obvious appearance in any Protestant setting (Anglican, Lutheran) that I have set foot in. To the extent that the Episcopal parishes I've been to express any theology at all from the pulpit, it's usually of the Lutheran "we all have free will to choose salvation, but that is through God's grace and our own faith, and not through good works" variety, maybe with a hint of Arminianism.
Calvin may have had some very early influence in the Church of England, but it's been drowned out by Lutheranish doctrine, Catholic practice and liberal sentiment.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
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Yes, but small-c calvinism, as held by many Anglican evangelicals until recently (and some of us still), and by people like Cranmer and many of the English Reformers, and Baxter and others in later generations is little more than orthodox Christian doctrine as described in a way that takes the omnipotence and eternity of God seriously. It is, frankly, the only approach that makes the traditional doctrines about God credible.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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![[Confused]](confused.gif)
Well, how does small c-calvinism make the traditional doctrines about God any more credible than, say, small-o orthodoxy might or even large O Orthodoxy for that matter ... or small c or large C Catholicism ...
I know you have a soft spot for small c Calvinism, Ken, but it's not as if it's the only show in town.
The aspects of it that Zach82 cited gained nods of approval from both Mousethief and Fr Gregory. Surely there is more to even small-c Calvinism than that?
If that were the case then both Mousethief and Fr Gregory could be described as Calvinists and don't see either of them wanting to embrace that epithet any time soon ...
What are you saying? That YOU find small-c Calvinism credible or that everyone else should?
Posted by Mockingale (# 16599) on
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quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Yes, but small-c calvinism, as held by many Anglican evangelicals until recently (and some of us still), and by people like Cranmer and many of the English Reformers, and Baxter and others in later generations is little more than orthodox Christian doctrine as described in a way that takes the omnipotence and eternity of God seriously. It is, frankly, the only approach that makes the traditional doctrines about God credible.
Calvinism makes calvinism credible? What an insight.
If on the one hand you have John the Evangelist saying that God loves mankind so much and on the other you've got some French guy who invents a theological system that makes God out to be an arbitrary dick who will enjoy seeing the members of Team B fry for all eternity, maybe the French guy is just wrong.
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
:
Remember that Universalism is really four point Cavinism. Oh an Calvin's predestinarianism isn't the later form, but something far more important, the fact that Salvation is God's and God's alone. The challenge for the Christian is to let go of the need to sort out their salvation and leave that where it truly belongs in God's hands.
From the perspective of eternity nothing is arbitary unless everything is.
Jengie
[ 22. June 2012, 22:29: Message edited by: Jengie Jon ]
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
:
Another thing for accuracy there is no such tradition as Calvinism, not in the sense of some pure untainted line that springs directly from John Calvin. The mergering in Calvin's day of the Genevan and Zurich churches has left its mark. The more groups choose to proclaim themselves as Calvinist the more likely they are to adopt a Zwinglian Eucharistic theology (Calvin's own can be interpreted as spiritual presence). Now Zwingli is earlier Calvin as does Farel; Bucer and Knox come soon afterwards, the tradition never ever speaks with one voice it is always polyphonic. That is why it is more correctly called Reformed.
Oh Calvin at leisure writing up his institutes is a nice conceit, the evidence is that he worked himself to death and died comparatively young. A refugee working in a foreign city, writing largely for fellow refugees (Calvin's Institutes came out in French very shortly after they came out in Latin). Nor was he writing a systematic theology, he could not be, there was no modern systematic theology for him to take as an example. His examplar is more likely to be medieval scholasticism that he takes and does something new with but it is his successors who developed systematic theology. Not everything is tidy in Calvin either; he is a good rhetorician and covers some of the messes skillfully but they are there. These are myths created by those who are trying to tidy him up.
Jengie
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
It's the solipsism that Kaplan alluded to.
I don't have the faintest idea of what you're referring to, Gammy.
Are you sure you're not thinking of syllogism, which I did use in the Chesterton quote, which starts with s, ends with m, and has the same number of syllables, but has nothing to do with solipsism?
Further on the decretum horribile, have you read Charles Wesley's exposure of Calvin's cosmic fascism in his The Horrible Decree?
It begins:
Sinners, abhor the Fiend,
His other gospel hear:
The God of truth did not intend
The Thing his Words declare,
He offers grace to All,
Which most cannot embrace
Mock'd with an ineffectual Call
And insufficient grace.
and then gets even better as it proceeds.
It is in glorious line with his, "Your sovereign grace too all extends....It reaches all mankind", and, "The arms of love which compass me would all mankind embrace".
Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on
:
Could someone recommend a book or books that would help the non-academic understand Calvin and Calvinism? I'm still Confused.
Thanks. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on
:
quote:
I think reading Calvin gives a lot of insight into what Luther and other Reformers were thinking and writing about.
I think reading Luther gives a lot of insight into what Luther was thinking about.
Posted by Janine (# 3337) on
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One would hope the foundation of any Christian faith would be the Lord Jesus Christ, to start with.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Even the Arminians agreed that God predestines the elect- they just thought human will had something to do with it.
Sort of.
There is an excellent chapter in Roger E. Olson's Arminian Theology: Myths And Realities (IVP)called Myth 8: Arminians Do Not Believe In Predestination.
For Arminians predestination is corporate: the total body of all those who freely trust in Christ are predestined to be saved.
Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on
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Janine: quote:
One would hope the foundation of any Christian faith would be the Lord Jesus Christ, to start with.
In ground level piety you are right.
But He lived, died, rose and ascended two thousand years ago, and the writers of the NT lived and died back then, too. Now there are multiple ideas of what he and his followers meant by a good number of things they said, ideas expressed through the ages by Ignatius, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, John Nelson Darby and many more (including that original thinker, Martin PC Not ), and no one is left on earth from that time to do theological tie-breakers. So we natter on.
Posted by Janine (# 3337) on
:
We natter on about what sort of dish, plate, rack, toasting fork or doily we use to serve up the Bread of Life, and we natter about what condiments we want to / should / may put on it to help us choke it down.
It's still -- He's still -- the same Bread.
Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on
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Calvinists and Arminians can and have produced concordats. The Basis of Union of the United Church of Canada was agreed at the Melville Conference in 1908. Union was finalized in 1925.
Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Janine:
We natter on about what sort of dish, plate, rack, toasting fork or doily we use to serve up the Bread of Life, and we natter about what condiments we want to / should / may put on it to help us choke it down.
It's still -- He's still -- the same Bread.
Which Bread?
Bread and the juice-of-the-fruit-of-the-vine and a worshipful memory of a certain Supper long ago? Bread and juice-etc. endowed spiritually with our Lord's Body and Blood? Body and Blood that merely look like bread and wine but really are Body and Blood, Real Presence, in fact? All distinctions to natter on about and not a table utensil, doily, or condiment in sight.
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
Could someone recommend a book or books that would help the non-academic understand Calvin and Calvinism? I'm still Confused.
Thanks.
Lyda Rose
Two things, Calvin actually is readable, I wish that other Reformed Theologians paid as much attention to readability as he did, you might take Calvin's writings on Pastoral Piety as giving a range of his writings rather than going straight to the Institutes.
However the Calvin for Armchair Theologians should be a good introduction. My experience of the "for Armchair Theologians" is that it gives a level of understanding that is more than adequate for debate here and yet an relatively easy read.
However Reformed is not pure Calvinism, perhaps more than any other theologian you get Calvin through interpreters rather than directly. It is commonly accepted that Calvin would never have signed up for TULIP for instance.
Jengie
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Remember that Universalism is really four point Cavinism. Oh an Calvin's predestinarianism isn't the later form, but something far more important, the fact that Salvation is God's and God's alone. The challenge for the Christian is to let go of the need to sort out their salvation and leave that where it truly belongs in God's hands.
Exactly!
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well, how does small c-calvinism make the traditional doctrines about God any more credible than, say, small-o orthodoxy might or even large O Orthodoxy for that matter ... or small c or large C Catholicism ...
By taking God's omnipotence and eternity seriously.
If God is the eternal creator of the universe, then God knows what is going to happen. That is "going to" happen from our point of view, from God's pont of view its all one single event containing time and space within it. If God is the omnipotent creator then God has in some sense chosen for those things to happen. That's it, basically. All the handwringing and definitions and declarations of faith of the later 16th and 17th centuries build on that insight and make it look like something it isn't, but forget that. "God is sovereign" is the basic point. If you don't belive that then its namby-pamby process-theology bollocks, or Mormonism, or worse.
Lots of secular philopsophers, and too many Christians, confuse predestination with determinism, which is an utterly different idea and quite irrelevant to the argument, predestination depends on God's eternal perspective, and could work in either a deterministic or a non-deterministic universe. As far as we can tell the universe really is fundamentally and deeply non-deterministic, that's the way its built from the turtles up, there are no hidden variables. But that't not really relevant. Not that anyoine but a handful of mostly mildy insane physicists really understand the hard sums yoiu need to do to see why that is, the rest uf us have to believe them.
And of course its not original with Calvin. Its in Athanasius as well as in Augustine. It really comes from Paul. The seeds of it are in in Isaiah and Ezekiel and other OT books. But is best described by Boethius. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
"God is sovereign" is the basic point. If you don't belive that then its namby-pamby process-theology bollocks, or Mormonism, or worse.
As it happens, I completely agree with you ken.
However, I suspect others may feel that there is a little nuance lacking to your argument here.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well, how does small c-calvinism make the traditional doctrines about God any more credible than, say, small-o orthodoxy might or even large O Orthodoxy for that matter ... or small c or large C Catholicism ...
By taking God's omnipotence and eternity seriously.
. "God is sovereign" is the basic point. If you don't belive that then its namby-pamby process-theology bollocks, or Mormonism, or worse.
Gamaliel is right.
Every orthodox, credal Christian believes in God's sovereignty.
Just because Calvinists have an idiosyncratic and proprietorial take on the doctrine doesn't mean either that they believe it and other Christians don't, or that they take it more seriously than other Christians.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I don't disagree with any of that, Ken.
Oh - and yes, Kaplan, I was thinking of the syllogism you alluded to. I have absolutely no idea why I typed 'solipsism'. Perhaps I'm just stupid or perhaps it was pre-ordained ... oh both ... ?
The point I was making, ken, was that there'd be nothing to stop an Orthodox Christian, an RC, a Swedenborgian, Adventist or anyone else from maintaining that their particular take on the faith was the only logical and viable one to take.
What makes small c-calvinism any different?
It seems to me, from your definition, almost anyone could sign up for small c-calvinism, even if they wouldn't self-identify as small-c calvinists.
I would suggest that what you're describing here isn't small c-calvinism at all but simply a sense that God is ultimately in charge. Which is surely something that Copts, Orthodox, RCs, Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Wesleyans and virtually everyone else would sign up to.
In that respect then, well ok ... so what else is new? Richard Baxter was saying this sort of thing back in the 17th century.
I suspect there's more to it though ...
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
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Try and answer, firstly it is Reformed distinctives (note that plural). There are lots
- sense of church as nomadic(pilgrim) community covenanted together, Reformed Christians are on the move, always, not always sure of which direction we should be heading in but... (From refugees like Calvin, through Bunyan to modern church behaviour it echoes around)
- a relationship with the Bible, its not just our Evangelicals that read it deeply so do our liberals. Everything else including Biblical Interpretation, church tradition, theology, creeds and statements of faith are contextual. This is not new, post modern thinking it dates back to the early days of the Reformation.
- Polyvocalism, more than one voice, often discordant but in the end resolving into a chord. Therefore the primacy of the local whether the local is defined as nation or congregation. Some strive for an enforced unity; others are happy to live with diversity.
- God as Other, rather than that which is unknowable, similar but different concepts.This has elements of the Sociological idea of "other". You meet God in the stranger and through other humans. As well as notions of an Aniconic/Aphophatic approach to God.
- Worldly/Activist spirituality, if we are not called to work for our Salvation we are called to do God's will in the world which is the theatre of God's creation.
- Priesthood of all believers in the sense that there is no reasons why lay people can't do effectively the majority of the churches work and be a totally integral part of the government and administration of the Church. I know of no Reformed tradition where there is not lay involvement both in the ruling bodies of the Church and in pastoral care. This marks a Reformed church more than Predestinarianism. Also tie in with that the wider idea of vocation.
- Plain speaking, the tendency to favour the conversation of everyday things, specific circumstances. High language is used/reserved for worship and theology and even then is often only used sparingly. This goes wider.
- A "we" rather than an "I" tradition. Actually more cautious as I suspect English speaking Reformed tradition has an "I" strand, but the core is "we" as the people of God.
Jengie
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
I'll toss in another voice saying that Calvin is very readable. I would recommend the Institutes of Christian Religion. The final edition is pretty long, but it is easy going. Try reading earlier editions, which were much shorter, or just find a section in the great final edition and see Calvin's take on a particular subject.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I'll toss in another voice saying that Calvin is very readable. I would recommend the Institutes of Christian Religion. The final edition is pretty long, but it is easy going. Try reading earlier editions, which were much shorter, or just find a section in the great final edition and see Calvin's take on a particular subject.
I'd agree that it is relatively easy to read - for the most part. That said a large part of it's context is set by Peter Lombard's "Sentences" so you really need to read that to understand all the nuances.
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Which is surely something that Copts, Orthodox, RCs, Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Wesleyans and virtually everyone else would sign up to.
Richard Baxter was Presbyterian, Presbyterian's are Reformed and therefore calvinist by definition. You are citing calvinist as evidence that calvinistic views exist outside Calvinism. How seriously are we to take the rest of your views of other traditions.
May I suggest you need to do some investigation into the broadness of this tradition!
The Reformed tradition does pervade nearly all attempts to do theology in English, this is not the same as claiming it is foundational to Protestantism. Indeed I would go further and say a specific branch of Reformed theology pervades English-language theology (and Dutch), this is an amalgam of Anglican Puritanism, Evangelicalism (possibly New England Evangelicalism) and Scottish Presbyterianism. It is if you like the elephant in the room.
Jengie
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
You've completely missed the point I was making, Jengie, in your attempt to defend the distinctives of the Reformed tradition.
Look at the context. Go back up the thread. Zach82 complained that Fr Gregory was being snarky about Calvin. So what else is new?
So he took him to task using a definition of Calvinism that, to many posters here, seemed to drop short of what Calvinism actually teaches or how it has traditionally been understood. In fact, he'd presented a filleted version that almost anyone could sign up for whether they were Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox.
Later, ken comes along and asserts that small-c calvinism is the only way to make any sense of traditional language about God. I challenged him on that, by suggesting, in a round about way, that he was simply putting forward a Baxter-esque 'Mere Christianity' notion rather than anything specifically small-c calvinist.
And yes, of course I know that Baxter was a Presbyterian ... ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
But he was also very eirenic. He said he'd be prepared to fellowship with the Greeks and Abyssinians if he ever found himself travelling in their countries. He also believed that many RCs were 'blessed souls in Christ' when they died.
Rather than lecturing me about whether I fully understand the Reformed tradition in all its nuances or not, I suggest you actually read my posts and the rest of this thread to get the context right.
I wasn't saying that all Christian traditions were Calvinist, small-c or otherwise. Far from it. I was simply suggesting that both Zach82 and ken weren't giving the full picture in their defence of Calvinism (or calvinism) and were keeping elements back so as not to frighten the horses ...
As for the distinctives you've listed. Sure. But I wouldn't be surprised if Fr Gregory or one of the other Orthodox posters came along and started ticking off some of the boxes for those aspects that they believe are also expressed or represented within their own tradition. Likewise the RCs or some of the less big R reformed Protestants ... if I can put it that way ...
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
I wasn't saying that all Christian traditions were Calvinist, small-c or otherwise. Far from it. I was simply suggesting that both Zach82 and ken weren't giving the full picture in their defence of Calvinism (or calvinism) and were keeping elements back so as not to frighten the horses ...
My point was the Calvinists see their doctrines as coherent expressions of the beliefs all Christians agree to. I can't account for your perception of insincerity behind that.
[ 23. June 2012, 18:14: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on
:
Thank you for your suggestions, Jengie and Zach. I checked out what they have on Kindle listings, and I think I will be able to make a start either with "Pastoral Piety" or "The Institutes" (which seemed rather daunting, but I'm relieved that, from what Zach says, are quite readable).
The guy was a literary maniac. It looks like he managed to write commentary on the whole Protestant Bible- whew!
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Which is surely something that Copts, Orthodox, RCs, Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Wesleyans and virtually everyone else would sign up to.
But lots of them don't like expressing the logical consequences of it. Calvinism seems to being rapped on the knuckles for saying what others implicitly belive but won't explicitly say.
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Richard Baxter was Presbyterian, Presbyterian's are Reformed and therefore calvinist by definition.
You know better than that! As you yourself have often pointed out those later denominational distinctions are an anachronism in England in the 18th century. Baxter's Presbyterianism was a desire to see the Church of England further reformed along Presbyterian lines, not a desire to separate from it and form a new church or connexion of churches. He never left the CofE, he was kicked out by the King, and he came back again when a more congenial king came to the throne. The Independents, the Presbyterians and the Anglicans, have all got a perfectly good claim on him! As it happened Baxter (like Charles Wesley a century later) ended his life in communion with the established church and was buried in a parish churchyard.
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
You are citing calvinist as evidence that calvinistic views exist outside Calvinism. How seriously are we to take the rest of your views of other traditions.
May I suggest you need to do some investigation into the broadness of this tradition!
May we suggest you do? Because "calvinism" is an overloaded word, with a range of meanings. "Calvinism" could be the actual opinions and teaching of Calvin. Or it could be the ongoing traditions of the Reformed/Presbyterian churches - which as you have often pointed out owe a lot to people before Calvin, and to some like Zwingli whose opinions were often opposed to Calvin's. It could mean the defined and laid out systems of Dort or the Savoy, even if Calvin himself might have rejected parts of them. It could mean the rigid TULIP party line. It could mean the small-c "calvinism" of many of the later evangelicals.
And the stream of Reformed theology in Presbyterian churches has flowed into some odd corners. It produced 18th-century Unitarians and 19th-century Universalists. Barth and the various Torrances are part of it. In what us Anglicans call "churchmanship" its led to the Wee Frees, but also to Iona and Taize.
quote:
The Reformed tradition does pervade nearly all attempts to do theology in English, this is not the same as claiming it is foundational to Protestantism. Indeed I would go further and say a specific branch of Reformed theology pervades English-language theology (and Dutch), this is an amalgam of Anglican Puritanism, Evangelicalism (possibly New England Evangelicalism) and Scottish Presbyterianism. It is if you like the elephant in the room.
Well yes. And there is a stream of what I called small-c-Calvinism (maybe you would call it the Reformed Elephant) running all through the history of British Prostantism. Pretty obviously Cranmer, and Baxter, and Bunyan, and Whitfield, and John Newton, and the Countess of Huntingdon, and the Venns, and William Carey, and Hudson Taylor, and Charles Spurgeon, were all in a real sense calvinists, without ever being members of an explicitly Reformed/Presbyterian connexion of churches or signing up to TULIP. Or in our own lifetimes Martyn Lloyd-Jones, JI Packer, John Stott, Don Carson, Terry Virgo, Stephen Sizer, John Piper, Mark Driscoll. (deliberatly putting some people I am very wary of in that list...)
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
:
No. In this case I am better read than you, Baxter was a specific type of Puritan and that type is commonly characterised as Presbyterian, so no I am not wrong. It is time you stopped pretending everyone who you like at the time was Anglican. Above all Baxter objected to Episcopalian government and would therefore not serve as a Bishop.
Jengie
Posted by Balaam (# 4543) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
However the Calvin for Armchair Theologians should be a good introduction.
Also available for free on Google Books. Happy reading
Posted by Balaam (# 4543) on
:
Erm...
Not quite, it is a preview of 40ish pages.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
It is time you stopped pretending everyone who you like at the time was Anglican.
Its time you stopped pretending that you are the only person who posts here who has a right to say even a word about the reformed traditions. You are so possessive of it that you have been snapping at what I and others have said EVEN WHEN WE AGREE WITH YOU. Which if you had read what I wrote instead of going off on one just because of who wrote it, you would realise I do almost entirely.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
The Puritans were the reforming wing of the Anglican Church, Jengie, and until the triumph of the High Church party at the restoration they were nearly the majority of the Church. The fact is, Anglican Church was thoroughly Calvinist until the rise of Laud & Co, and even sent representatives to the Synod of Dort.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
But is best described by Boethius.
In Book V of The Consolation Of Philosophy, Boethius wrote that, "All things...whose future occurrence is known to God do without doubt happen, but some of them are the result of free will".
That is pretty much Arminius's position.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I'll toss in another voice saying that Calvin is very readable. I would recommend the Institutes of Christian Religion. The final edition is pretty long, but it is easy going. Try reading earlier editions, which were much shorter, or just find a section in the great final edition and see Calvin's take on a particular subject.
Book III Chapter IV of the Institutes actually contains a sex joke.
Happy hunting.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Zach82 - if that is what you were suggesting that fine - there ARE doctrines that Calvinists hold to which form part of the 'that believed everywhere and by all' category that all creedal Christians would sign up for.
No, that's not the issue. The issue is, as ken has correctly identified, that there are logical outworkings of the Calvinist position that not everyone else would sign up for in any way, shape or form.
Ken is explicit about that. You don't seem to be. But perhaps I've misread you.
Not all Christians agree with Calvinists. That's self-evident. Think for a moment about the aspects that Fr Gregory has described as 'monstrous'. What are they likely to be?
Let's think for a moment ...
Hmmmm .... the idea that God knows everything and can foresee things ... Nope, I don't think that Fr Gregory would find that at all 'monstrous'.
The apparent corollary of that which is that God somehow fore-ordains certain people to be damned and there's nothing whatsoever they can do about it ... well, that, I suspect is what he finds 'monstrous.'
I'm not entirely convinced, that the logical consequence of believing that God knows all things and can see the future necessitates some kind of determinism. Ken doesn't either. Indeed, he draws a distinction between foreknowledge and determinism.
And yes, there are dangers with the alternative views - as Ken so eloquently (if bluntly) put it - Mormonism and some kind of process-theology bollocks ...
But, as I think Kaplan and others are trying to suggest, the whole thing transcends any sense of human reasoning and trying to Scholastically dissect and define it all ... 'His paths are beyond finding out,' (he quoted in a muddled memory from various translations ...)
None of us can fathom the ways of God fully. We can have inklings, of course, but none of us can sit here and pontificate on the full extent of the Elect and so on and so forth.
This is where the more mystical and apophatic Eastern approach appeals to me, I must admit. They don't seek to pin everything down and define the guts out of everything. The whole freewill/predestination argument strikes me as simply another manifestation of a Western Scholastic mindset that seeks to clarify, categorise and sort everything out in a neat and cut-and-dried fashion.
Shoot ... I'd even go as far as to suggest that Jengie Jon's apparent obsession with defining who and what is properly Reformed is part and parcel of the same tendency.
'You Anglicans, you can't have Baxter because he was more properly Reformed than you are ... nur nur nuh nur nur ... what's more, I, Jengie Jon, the well-read and the wise, I alone (with the help of my father) am in the supreme position to judge and assess who was, is and remains sufficiently Reformed ...'
Not all Christians and not all of Christendom thinks like that - although there are parallels, of course.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
So apart from inexorable, effective, coercive, yep-I'll-beat-the-hell-out-of-you-and-pragmatically-kill-you-if-necessary, healing, all-inclusive LOVE, what is Sovereignty ?
Not everyone by a LONG way believes in the same Sovereignty.
Although the vast mass since Augustine have believed in the same ineffable, stainless steel, Bender God clock, unrelational HERESY of it.
[ 24. June 2012, 11:49: Message edited by: Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard ]
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
And there is a stream of what I called small-c-Calvinism (maybe you would call it the Reformed Elephant) running all through the history of British Prostantism. Pretty obviously Cranmer, and Baxter, and Bunyan, and Whitfield, and John Newton, and the Countess of Huntingdon, and the Venns, and William Carey, and Hudson Taylor, and Charles Spurgeon, were all in a real sense calvinists, without ever being members of an explicitly Reformed/Presbyterian connexion of churches or signing up to TULIP.
I'm not sure whether calvinist, even with a small c, can be the right word for the Reformed Elephant given that Cranmer is clearly part of it. Cranmer was twenty years older than Calvin. Cranmer was indisputably a Reformed theologian in his later thinking (if one who hadn't yet considered the split with the Lutheran tradition irresolvable). However, I'd be surprised if Calvin rather than the elder Reformed thinkers were a major influence even on his later thinking.
I suppose somebody familiar with the nuances of Reformed Eucharistic theology could tell me that Cranmer is clearly following Calvin as opposed to Bucer or Laski. But I'd be surprised.
Posted by Metapelagius (# 9453) on
:
quote:
I suppose somebody familiar with the nuances of Reformed Eucharistic theology could tell me that Cranmer is clearly following Calvin as opposed to Bucer or Laski. But I'd be surprised.
Dafyd
On this point Gregory Dix put his money on Zwingli - and not Calvin - as the source of Cranmer's ideas, though his critics have long scorned his hypothesis.
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
:
What people may not be aware of was John Calvin was a prolific letter writer. One of his correspondences was with divines in England. I have not seen the letters but from those I have good reason to believe may have, the hints I got, there is a good chance Cramner was amongst them.
Jengie
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
'You Anglicans, you can't have Baxter because he was more properly Reformed than you are ... nur nur nuh nur nur ... what's more, I, Jengie Jon, the well-read and the wise, I alone (with the help of my father) am in the supreme position to judge and assess who was, is and remains sufficiently Reformed ...'
Not all Christians and not all of Christendom thinks like that - although there are parallels, of course.
No I accepted Ken's assertion until I really started reading Puritan authorities and Baxter for myself, it does not add up. This is a guy who is openly critical of the Episcopacy (the chief point of division between Presbyterians and Anglicans) in his writing the Reformed Pastor, who is taken as almost the exemplar of English Presbyterian Divines by scholars and Ken wants to say he is Anglican. I am calling him on it and he should be.
Please note I am also precise he was Presbyterian Puritan, not a Congregationalist Puritan Divine, he belonged to the conservative structuralist form of the Reformed tradition, not the radical tolerant tradition. It was the extremists in this case who were the most tolerant. He was interested in a national church and such.
Jengie
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Sure, but he was still buried in an Anglican churchyard ... but I can see the distinction you are making.
I'm not sure that Ken was claiming him as an Anglican as such, rather as someone who could be seen as having 'clout'/influence/warm impressions across a wide 'pan-reformed' spectrum ...
But of course, you are the only one here who is qualified to decide on what is Reformed (or 'reformed') or not ...
Anyway, whatever the case, it seems to me that the real elephant in the room isn't the influences that created contemporary evangelicalism but double-predestination.
That, I submit, would be what Fr Gregory and others might find 'monstrous'. They might not agree with other aspects of the Reformed position as has been articulated here by yourself and others - but it's the predestination thing that provides the rub ...
And that's the issue we all seem to be skirting round.
Of course, the Reformed tradition is wider than that and can, as you've identified, incline towards universalism a kind of TUIP rather than TULIP ...
But it's the bleakness and cold Scholasticism of what is traditionally understood as Calvinism that gives offence. But the Orthodox beef goes back further than that and it's the old Palamite vs Scholasticism and the non-filioque vs filioque, Papal claims vs Patriarchal claims etc etc etc that underlies their objections to Western theology - Calvin or no Calvin ...
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
No, that's not the issue. The issue is, as ken has correctly identified, that there are logical outworkings of the Calvinist position that not everyone else would sign up for in any way, shape or form.
If you mean the issue is that we are arguing about it, no it isn't. I agree not everyone accepts every part of Calvin. This is also why I talked about "Calvinism" is ultimately about. The hangups of everyone isn't exactly the sole focus of Calvinism like people seem to think.
Fr. Gregory just flat out called Calvinism a "Monstrous edifice," which contains none of the subtlety you seem to think him capable of. And I suspect he is getting a free pass for that because Calvinism is a dirty word that isn't getting a fair hearing.
quote:
But, as I think Kaplan and others are trying to suggest, the whole thing transcends any sense of human reasoning and trying to Scholastically dissect and define it all ... 'His paths are beyond finding out,' (he quoted in a muddled memory from various translations ...)
Fr.Gregory just waved off the obvious conclusions of my line of questioning as a mystery not worth thinking about. If Calvin is monstrous, then accepting the premises but refusing to accept the consequences is more monstrous.
[ 24. June 2012, 18:54: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
No I accepted Ken's assertion until I really started reading Puritan authorities and Baxter for myself, it does not add up. This is a guy who is openly critical of the Episcopacy (the chief point of division between Presbyterians and Anglicans) in his writing the Reformed Pastor, who is taken as almost the exemplar of English Presbyterian Divines by scholars and Ken wants to say he is Anglican. I am calling him on it and he should be.
You are projecting an anachronistic division into Baxter's day. Baxter considered himself a member of the Church of England, and there were plenty in the Church of England who wholly agreed with him. Like I said, the High Church theology now associated with Anglicanism was a very small minority back then. Baxter representing the views of the Church much better than Laud & Co.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
If Calvin is monstrous, then accepting the premises but refusing to accept the consequences is more monstrous.
I'm surprised to find you arguing that since that's only true if you think God is bound by what we think are the consequences - and you've said on a number of occasions that God isn't so bound.
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:
No I accepted Ken's assertion until I really started reading Puritan authorities and Baxter for myself, it does not add up. This is a guy who is openly critical of the Episcopacy (the chief point of division between Presbyterians and Anglicans) in his writing the Reformed Pastor, who is taken as almost the exemplar of English Presbyterian Divines by scholars and Ken wants to say he is Anglican. I am calling him on it and he should be.
You are projecting an anachronistic division into Baxter's day. Baxter considered himself a member of the Church of England, and there were plenty in the Church of England who wholly agreed with him. Like I said, the High Church theology now associated with Anglicanism was a very small minority back then. Baxter representing the views of the Church much better than Laud & Co.
I am not projecting an anachronistic view you should read what I wrote. The distinguishing mark was not theology but ecclesiology. Baxter rejected Bishops i.e. episcopal government. Therefore he was not in the Anglican party but the Presbyterian. He was not extreme enough to be Congregational/Separatist.
Jengie
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
:
If you do not believe me then here is an exercise for you. You need to get hold of the three statements of faith that were created in Baxters day for the Church in England
- Westminster Confession
- Savoy Declaration
- 39 Articles
Read the Westminster Confession, it is clearly a Reformed document and has been widely used. Then move onto the Savoy Declaration, you can glance through the first few pages, but go to the end and have a look where they differ. Finally turn to the 39 articles and see how it fits.
You will find that it is Ecclesiology and almost that alone that defines the differences in stance between the three.
Jengie
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
This is a guy who is openly critical of the Episcopacy in his writing the Reformed Pastor, who is taken as almost the exemplar of English Presbyterian Divines by scholars and Ken wants to say he is Anglican. I am calling him on it and he should be.
You are maybe using the word 'Anglican' in two different ways. In one sense, 'Anglican' refers to someone who believes in the threefold order of ordained ministry, in the use of formal liturgy, and so on. In the other sense, it means 'anybody who is a regular member of the Church of England'.
In the first sense it would continue to make sense to call the Episcopal Church in the United States Anglican even if all offical institutional ties fell apart. In the second sense it would no longer make sense.
You're using Anglican in the first sense. I think Ken regards the first use as improper: he wants to recover or rehabilitate the contribution of Presbyterians to the traditions of the Church of England. It's not a contradiction in terms to say that up until 1688 Anglicans could have become Presbyterianjust as the Church of Scotland was an Episcopal Church until 1688.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
I'm surprised to find you arguing that since that's only true if you think God is bound by what we think are the consequences - and you've said on a number of occasions that God isn't so bound.
Calvin didn't think so either- he argued from logical consequences. God foreknows everything, so he creates people he knows will be damned. God is just, so if he damns people he must be just in doing so. If God is glorified by all justice, then he is glorified by the justice in sending people to hell.
It's no good playing the mystery card just to wiggle out of accepting the consequences one doesn't like.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
How does God know if it's going to rain tomorrow ?
Posted by Mary LA (# 17040) on
:
Even if God doesn't yet know or hasn't made up Her Sublimely Ineffable Mind, the principle is the same
The rain falls on the just
and unjust fella
but mainly on the just
because the unjust
stole the just's umbrella
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Zach82, who is wriggling now?
Knowing that someone will be damned isn't the same as foreordaining them to be damned ...
You wrote:
'God foreknows everything, so he creates people he knows will be damned. God is just, so if he damns people he must be just in doing so.'
The Orthodox, presumably, and non-Calvinistic Protestants such as the Arminians and Wesleyans (accepting Mudfrog's distinction) would say that God doesn't damn them, they damn themselves ...
'If God is glorified by all justice, then he is glorified by the justice in sending people to hell.'
How does this follow? It only follows if you accept a Calvinistic schema. If you don't, as Fr Gregory doesn't, then it can be regarded as 'monstrous'.
You are assuming that this is the logical corollary of your own position and presenting it as something that everyone ought to sign up to. I'm suggesting it's not as clear cut as that.
I'm more than capable of 'calling' Fr Gregory on something if I think he's being an arse - and vice-versa. He can certainly be guilty of sweeping generalisations and judgements - as can we all.
In this instance I'm not giving him a free pass because Calvinism is a dirty word ... as it happens, I don't think that it is ... unless we get to the very full-on uber-deterministic side of it which is very gloomy indeed and (as has been shown time and again in literature, autobiography etc etc) is capable of messing up people's heads.
You also wrote: 'It's no good playing the mystery card just to wiggle out of accepting the consequences one doesn't like.'
Well, that would apply if Fr Gregory and others (I can't really speak for them, mind, they should be here to speak for themselves) DID accept what you've said as the natural consequences. I'm not convinced that they do.
But that's for them to say, not me.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
We are not talking about a human, Gamaliel, who cannot know the results of his actions. God knew full well that he was creating a species that would be damned without his help. He can't claim the level of passive helplessness in the matter that your argument demands.
Why are you giving Fr.Gregory a free pass then? Is "monstrous" a word you normally expect in reasonable discourse?
[ 25. June 2012, 11:24: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
:
And, if God chooses not to know the consequences of his actions? If he made humanity knowing that there was a chance we'd rebel, and a chance that we'd be faithful, and decided not to peak and spoil the surprise of finding out what we'd do? Then, you either have a Calvinism that states God choses some to save, and by extension damns the rest, or you have a Protestant Christianity where election is considered in a framework totally alien to calvinism.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
And, if God chooses not to know the consequences of his actions?
Then he's guilty of what theologians call "culpable ignorance," and thus still responsible for what he's done.
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
:
But, we're not about responsibility. We're talking about whether God willfully, deliberately and in full knowledge of the consequences created individual human beings who he would damn. The question is, do we believe in such a monstrous diety who would act in such a deliberately calculated manner? Or a God who created beings to love and be loved, knowing that love is a risky business and he could be spurned?
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
But, we're not about responsibility. We're talking about whether God willfully, deliberately and in full knowledge of the consequences created individual human beings who he would damn. The question is, do we believe in such a monstrous diety who would act in such a deliberately calculated manner? Or a God who created beings to love and be loved, knowing that love is a risky business and he could be spurned?
Your second option is a careless deity. Instead of playing the mystery card like Fr.Gregory you are falling back on simply denying the omniscience of God.
Not knowing does not make God more loving or good. For Calvin, God doesn't save a humanity that is half in, half out. He saves a humanity that is certainly damned. Calvin's God is more loving in that way than your ignorant God.
[ 25. June 2012, 12:42: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Instead of playing the mystery card like Fr.Gregory you are falling back on simply denying the omniscience of God.
Well, it's certainly true that I find the concept of "omniscience" (and, omnipotence for that matter) unhelpful when describing God. It's not a description for God that I find in Scripture, omnipotence has more Scriptural support although I would say that "Almighty" is a better term. So, yes I'm denying a non-Scriptural philosophical description for the God I believe in. Even if I did accept the 'omni's' they are logically inconsistent in this case - does his onmipotence or omniscience win if he decides not to know something?
quote:
For Calvin, God doesn't save a humanity that is half in, half out. He saves a humanity that is certainly damned.
And, I haven't denied that. If it wasn't for Christ, we would most certainly be damned. That is something else that I don't think is in question here. What we are talking about is whether God created us, with absolute knowledge that we would be damned? And, does he choose individuals to save (and, hence damns those he doesn't choose)? Or, does he save those who choose to follow Christ?
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
You are maybe using the word 'Anglican' in two different ways. In one sense, 'Anglican' refers to someone who believes in the threefold order of ordained ministry, in the use of formal liturgy, and so on. In the other sense, it means 'anybody who is a regular member of the Church of England'.
As to what 'Anglican' means, I would understand it to mean 'someone who is a member of the Church of England or a church in communion with it'.
If one says Calvinism = Predestination (I would regard that as over-simplistic, and what I called above sub-Calvinism), there is one Article, No 17, which deals with pre-destination.
I defy anyone to be able to tell me categorically what that Article actually obliges a good Anglican to believe. It describes predestination, using terminology much of which comes from St Paul, and would not be alien to many Western theologians between St Augustine and the Reformation. It then says that it is a comfort and encouragement for the faithful (IMHO true) but a discouragement to the 'curious and carnal', making them think (converted into modern language) why not be wicked since if I'm not one of the elect, I might as well do what I like' (IMHO also true). But although it is quite a good description, it doesn't actually say, 'this is the right, true and only answer'.
I take that as saying that a good Anglican understands what pre-destination is about, but is not obliged either to be able to explain it or to take a position on it.
I'm happy with that.
Posted by CSL1 (# 17168) on
:
This is something akin to the very cute conversation my wife and I were once privy to in which my young children were discussing their theories of procreation. Starting from a kernel of truth that we'd shared with them ("We're not going to tell you all the details yet, but God takes a thing that comes from daddy and combines it with a thing that comes from mommy, and from this it grows into your little brother or sister inside of mommy"). They came up with some hilarious, incredibly bizarre theories, none of them even approximating the truth, which their young minds were not yet fit the wrap themselves round.
The Lord gave us his Word, not unlike my wife's and my completely truthful, yet incomplete explanation of conception, and from it we spin our hilarious, incredibly bizarre theories, none of them even approximating the truth, which our tiny and inefficient minds are not yet fit the wrap themselves round.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
If God could have known, but chose not to know, Alan, then he was vincibly ignorant and is guilty of depraved indifference. If he could not have known, then he was simply incompetent. Those are the alternatives you describe, as I see them. I confess I cannot understand your poeticizing about the possibility of God's ignorance. The possibility of an ignorant God seems horrible beyond imagination to me.
I'll also remind you that there is not idea of compulsion in Calvin. The damned choose their damnation, but the elect haven't chosen their salvation. It's been given them, unasked for and unconditionally.
[ 25. June 2012, 14:36: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
It's no good playing the mystery card just to wiggle out of accepting the consequences one doesn't like.
The problem here is that they're not consequences that one doesn't like. Depraved human nature likes the consequences all too well.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
That's the sola fide part of Protestantism. Salvation is the result of grace alone, but the sign off it is faith- comfort and trust in God's plan.
I don't think everyone here really does believe salvation is God's free, unasked for gift. Instead, it seems people believe that God offers grace, and then gives salvation to those who choose to accept it. That choice, then, is a condition of salvation, and God's salvation is therefore not unconditional.
Calvin proposes a yet more amazing idea- that a person could not deserve salvation, do nothing to chose it, but God is so loving and so generous that he gives His salvation anyway. That is truly unconditional salvation.
[ 25. June 2012, 14:58: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on
:
To all or to some? Absolute, unrequested salvation sounds marvelous; absolute, unrequested damnation the pits.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
Once again, there is no sense of compulsion here. Because of sin, humanity really wants to flee from God. Humans may think they want salvation, but they don't much like what salvation really entails.
Think about this on a personal level. This is why I am actually far more Lutheran than Calvinist. Everyone here wants to make salvation conditional on choice. People who want salvation are given it.
But do we really want it? Jesus shows us what it's like to really want the Kingdom of Heaven. If we wanted to be forgiven, we would forgive. If we really believed God loved us freely, we would love one another freely. Yet for all our professions of belief, we continue to not love or forgive. I must conclude, then, that we don't really want salvation.
Here, Calvin says "God's grace sanctifies. Lack of sanctification means lack of salvation." But here Luther says, "No, here we are all the more amazed at God's grace. God saves us even as we continue to be vicious, merciless sinners."
[ 25. June 2012, 15:28: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by PD (# 12436) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
The Puritans were the reforming wing of the Anglican Church, Jengie, and until the triumph of the High Church party at the restoration they were nearly the majority of the Church. The fact is, Anglican Church was thoroughly Calvinist until the rise of Laud & Co, and even sent representatives to the Synod of Dort.
Actually it was a bit more nuanced than that. It is probably better to say that the "doctrinal consensus in the Church of England was Reformed." However, there were exceptions - the Lutheran Bishop Ghest in the 1560s and 70s, Baro and Barrett question Double Predestination in the 1580s, Lancelot Andrewes and his school after that. However, I would have no problem asserting that the C of E was overwhelming Reformed, but not necessarily Calvinist.
In some respects, the XXXIX veer closer to the Lutherans than to the Calvinists, but that is largely a matter of what is unsaid rather than what is said. I think the old European estimate of the C of E as a 'perverse and self-willed offshoot of the Reformed tradition' is closer than I would like to admit.
PD
Posted by Mockingale (# 16599) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Calvin proposes a yet more amazing idea- that a person could not deserve salvation, do nothing to chose it, but God is so loving and so generous that he gives His salvation anyway. That is truly unconditional salvation.
The problem with the Calvinist line of thinking, when taken to its logical conclusion, is that mankind has no free will; if you accept this, that God ordains everything that happens, then God knew that Adam and Eve would disobey him, and that all humanity would be damned thereby unless God decided to forgive them, and knowing this, God created the means of man's destruction in the Garden of Eden for no other reason than to cause mankind to fall. God also created a hell for no other reason than to consign those he DOESN'T arbitrarily favor with grace to an everlasting, unrelenting torment and agony. God then decides that some people will be forgiven, but not all.
It makes God sound like a child who burns ants willy-nilly with a magnifying glass. God is omnipotent and all-knowing and still created Man destined to fail, and a hell if for no other reason than to provide a terrible consequence for that failure, and therefore created mankind than for no other reason than to watch some suffer and others not, for his own glory. That God sounds thoroughly evil.
If I'm wrong, I'd love to be corrected.
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
If God could have known, but chose not to know, Alan, then he was vincibly ignorant and is guilty of depraved indifference. If he could not have known, then he was simply incompetent. Those are the alternatives you describe, as I see them. I confess I cannot understand your poeticizing about the possibility of God's ignorance. The possibility of an ignorant God seems horrible beyond imagination to me.
Who said anything about an ignorant God. There's a big space between omniscient and ignorant, just because I reject one extreme doesn't mean I'm embracing the other. As for the poeticizing, perhaps I am. But, I for one love to get given a present without knowing what it is. There's a great deal of fun findig out, and joy at being surprised by the thoughtfulness and love shown by the person who chose just the right thing. Of course, there's a risk it'll be just another pair of socks. Is it too much to think that God might have the same love of the unknown? That he made humanity without peaking inside the wrapping paper, in the hope of a wonderful surprise ... even if we turned out to be a really manky pair of socks? I play hide and seek with my kids, now let's be honest they're lousy at hiding but I still play along and search the room knowing full well where they are, because they enjoy (and, so do I). If I can put aside some of my knowledge to play with my kids, why shouldn't God put aside some of his knowledge to play with his children? When I read the Bible the God I see there isn't an abstraction from Greek inspired philosophy, he isn't some cold omniscient computer churning the numbers. The God of the Bible is the parent who plays hide and seek with his children. Of course, there's nothing new in that idea - Paul quotes a hymn about how Christ emptied himself of all that it means to be God.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I'll also remind you that there is not idea of compulsion in Calvin. The damned choose their damnation, but the elect haven't chosen their salvation. It's been given them, unasked for and unconditionally.
The elect choose their salvation in exactly the same sense as the damned choose their damnation. God is the sole sufficient cause of salvation in the one and the sole and sufficient cause of sin in the other.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I used to be fairly Calvinist ... I probably am to some extent ... as George MacLeod of Iona Community fame said, 'Calvinism is a virus, you never quite get rid of it ...'
I am trying to shrug it off but find it very difficult to do ...
The positive aspects, as Zach82 has identified, are a compelling argument in its favour - the comfort of unconditional grace and so on. But it's the logical corollary that appears so 'monstrous' to many people - and I'm not giving Fr Gregory a 'Get out of Jail Free' card over that because plenty of other people think it's 'monstrous' too.
Heck, as Kaplan Corday has reminded us with his Latin quotation, even Calvin himself believed it was a 'dread decree' ...
But I'm not convinced that it has to be that straight, coldly logical matter of black-and-white alternatives. You are having a go at Mr Creswell for 'poeticising' but it strikes me that this is exactly what the scriptures themselves do - we can't but talk about God without using analogies, metaphors, anthropomorphisms ...
Theology is an 'art' rather than a 'science'. We're not dealing with an electrical circuit-board here, we're dealing with soteriology. And theology is also messy.
I may be cutting Fr Gregory more slack than I am cutting you, but I don't see his position as being a retreat into obscurantism and mystery ... to some extent any way of making sense of the divine is going to have to call on mystery and so on at some point ...
No, the issue I have with your approach, Zach82, is that it is TOO cut-and-dried and coldly Scholastic. I mean no offence to Jengie Jon with this observation, although I have teased here earlier in this thread, but it strikes me that this desire to categorise and prescribe and to pin everything down is indeed a very Western thing.
Jengie will correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the early names for what became the Puritan party was 'Precisians' - or something similar. They were 'precise' about everything, they wanted to docket and describe everything, dot every 'i', cross every 't' ...
Fair enough, I suppose, but you just can't do that to the extent that some of us have tried. There has to be room for mystery.
In fact, it is ALL mystery ...
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
No, the issue I have with your approach, Zach82, is that it is TOO cut-and-dried and coldly Scholastic. I mean no offence to Jengie Jon with this observation, although I have teased here earlier in this thread, but it strikes me that this desire to categorise and prescribe and to pin everything down is indeed a very Western thing.
Jengie will correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the early names for what became the Puritan party was 'Precisians' - or something similar. They were 'precise' about everything, they wanted to docket and describe everything, dot every 'i', cross every 't' ...
It's curious, isn't it, that sub-Thomists exhibit the same failing?
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
But do we really want it? Jesus shows us what it's like to really want the Kingdom of Heaven. If we wanted to be forgiven, we would forgive. If we really believed God loved us freely, we would love one another freely. Yet for all our professions of belief, we continue to not love or forgive. I must conclude, then, that we don't really want salvation.
The usual Christian analysis of the human predicament denies that failure to love is evidence of not wanting to love - 'I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want is what I do.'
To say that if we really believed God loved us then we would love one another is to say that wrongdoing is not sin but ignorance; it is rather Socratic than Pauline.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Jengie will correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the early names for what became the Puritan party was 'Precisians' - or something similar. They were 'precise' about everything, they wanted to docket and describe everything, dot every 'i', cross every 't' ...
Fair enough, I suppose, but you just can't do that to the extent that some of us have tried. There has to be room for mystery.
In fact, it is ALL mystery ...
Rev Richard Rogers (1550-1618): "I serve a precise God".
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Nice one Enoch ...
Are you suggesting I'm a sub-Thomist though?
The cap might fit, I don't know. If the Orthodox are right than all of us Westerners are into dotting 'i's and crossing 't's and trying to define everything in ultra-precise terms ...
I'm probably as guilty of that as the next man, or woman, or adolescent aged 13-and-three-quarter years, 15 days and ...
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
Nice one Mary LA!
I'm delighted to see your orthodoxy on omniscience Alan !
And I LOVE what you say about love.
God can ONLY foreknow what He omnipotently wills, of that which is willable, to happen. He can't possibly know anything indeterminate otherwise UNLESS He's 'outside' time: that all time has happened in Him.
He'd have to be outside Himself.
Zach82, who doesn't love ? Who doesn't forgive ? Who does ? How much ? When is the point of no return ?
Certainly not this life for Sodom and Gomarrah, as you well know. Twice.
Freddy ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
God is the sole sufficient cause of salvation in the one and the sole and sufficient cause of sin in the other.
At least you're consistent.
Some Calvinists are reluctant to acknowledge God as the author of sin, as their system demands.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Just as a point of information, Kaplan, didn't the Brethren start off as fairly Calvinist? When I first encountered them in the early 1980s they seemed either small c-calvinist (rather like ken) and many Anglican and Baptist evangelicals I'd encountered.
I was told that there were a range of views on the issue across 'the Assemblies' and it wasn't seen as any big deal of anything to fall out with anyone about. Although I did notice that they could be as critical of the very strict Reformed Evangelical chapel nearby as they were of the Pentecostals ... but I could never work out quite why as the Brethren assembly and the independent evangelical outfit seemed very similar - save for the fact that the latter had a paid minister.
I've since wondered whether it was because the nearby independent evos weren't Schofield Bible style dispensationalists ... but I'm not so sure. It could just be that they didn't like the idea of paid ministers. They used to criticise the Baptists for the same reason.
Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Some Calvinists are reluctant to acknowledge God as the author of sin, as their system demands.
It is always a bit of a tell on the ship when someone feels that they need to point out what 'their' system demands.
Can't their system speak for themselves?
Posted by Dinghy Sailor (# 8507) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mockingale:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Calvin proposes a yet more amazing idea- that a person could not deserve salvation, do nothing to chose it, but God is so loving and so generous that he gives His salvation anyway. That is truly unconditional salvation.
The problem with the Calvinist line of thinking, when taken to its logical conclusion, is that mankind has no free will; if you accept this, that God ordains everything that happens, then God knew that Adam and Eve would disobey him, and that all humanity would be damned thereby unless God decided to forgive them, and knowing this, God created the means of man's destruction in the Garden of Eden for no other reason than to cause mankind to fall. God also created a hell for no other reason than to consign those he DOESN'T arbitrarily favor with grace to an everlasting, unrelenting torment and agony. God then decides that some people will be forgiven, but not all.
It makes God sound like a child who burns ants willy-nilly with a magnifying glass. God is omnipotent and all-knowing and still created Man destined to fail, and a hell if for no other reason than to provide a terrible consequence for that failure, and therefore created mankind than for no other reason than to watch some suffer and others not, for his own glory. That God sounds thoroughly evil.
If I'm wrong, I'd love to be corrected.
Doing so was the necessary price of creating beings that were truly external to God, that could truly have their own lives and their own free will. Therefore, God's rescue plan - the cross - wasn't Plan B but Plan A, because God always knew that people would need redemption and forgiveness.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Some Calvinists are reluctant to acknowledge God as the author of sin, as their system demands.
It is always a bit of a tell on the ship when someone feels that they need to point out what 'their' system demands.
Can't their system speak for themselves?
Zach seems to think non-Calvinists can't. If someone is trying to square the circle, then denying they are doing so, if they cannot produce some kind of evidence understandable to all as to why they are not squaring the circle, then it isn't to be wondered that people tell them they're squaring the circle.
Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on
:
There are too many negatives and clauses in that sentence for me to scan properly MT (you're not the Apostle Paul are you?) but if I've understood you then - fair point.
I joined a thread mid-stream and should shut up.
[ 26. June 2012, 00:55: Message edited by: Johnny S ]
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
If someone is trying to square the circle, then denying they are doing so, if they cannot produce some kind of evidence understandable to all as to why they are not squaring the circle, then it isn't to be wondered that people tell them they're squaring the circle.
Fair call, Johnny S -- that is pretty obtuse. Let me try to make it clearer.
Johnny S complained that Kaplan Corday was telling the Calvinists what the Calvinists believed (or had to believe), and saying they should be allowed to say for themselves what they believe.
My first point is that that is exactly what Zach82 was doing earlier in the other direction -- saying that the non-Calvinist position, if pressed, would lead to results the non-Calvinists don't like, and would rather keep schtum about.
My second point is that Zach82's method is more correct than Johnny S's in this: sometimes people lay out a bunch of premises and fail to accept the necessary conclusion. Then raise a fuss if you tell them what the necessary conclusion of their premises actually is.
My third point is that the Calvinist position is an attempt to square the circle: to claim God is entirely sovereign, and yet not responsible for everything that happens. That God alone decides who gets saved and who goes to Hell, yet it is to God's credit who gets saved, but NOT to God's credit who gets damned.
Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I'll also remind you that there is not idea of compulsion in Calvin. The damned choose their damnation, but the elect haven't chosen their salvation. It's been given them, unasked for and unconditionally.
and later:
quote:
I don't think everyone here really does believe salvation is God's free, unasked for gift. Instead, it seems people believe that God offers grace, and then gives salvation to those who choose to accept it. That choice, then, is a condition of salvation, and God's salvation is therefore not unconditional.
Calvin proposes a yet more amazing idea- that a person could not deserve salvation, do nothing to chose it, but God is so loving and so generous that he gives His salvation anyway. That is truly unconditional salvation.
I'm struggling to understand your point of view here and I'd be interested in an explanation of how your first paragraph I quote avoids your own criticism in the second paragraph. If God gives salvation unasked for and unconditionally, but only to people who do not choose their damnation, then isn't that non-choice (i.e. not choosing damnation) a condition of salvation? Even if one has to actively reject salvation in order to be damned, isn't that salvation still conditional on us choosing not to reject it?
And as for the third quoted paragraph describing Calvin's proposed idea, it would make sense to me if salvation is something that exists outside the saved person, to be received as a thing with its own substance or existence. But wouldn't it be more accurate to describe salvation as a transformation (by God) of the very nature of the saved person? In which case it makes more sense to me to say that of course a loving God would not consider "giving" anyone salvation without their freely choosing to accept it.
It would seem to me to be the nature of love to ask and wait for acceptance before proceeding to change who someone is, similar to the way a heart surgeon would not even consider performing a heart transplant unless the patient consents (or unless the patient is unable to either consent or decline), no matter how necessary the transplant is.
I think I understand the objective behind your view, and I agree with it, but I'm having a hard time understanding the need to remove the element of choice on the part of the person being saved. Why is it not enough to say that God gives us the power to choose and that we are free to use that power however we want? The freedom to choose how to respond seems to me to be not only the essence of free will, but the essence of our very identity and humanity as well. It's still all from God, but given to us to use as though it's our very own.
Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
My first point is that that is exactly what Zach82 was doing earlier in the other direction -- saying that the non-Calvinist position, if pressed, would lead to results the non-Calvinists don't like, and would rather keep schtum about.
Yeah, I see that that now. I hadn't read the thread carefully enough.
Fair point.
Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
My third point is that the Calvinist position is an attempt to square the circle: to claim God is entirely sovereign, and yet not responsible for everything that happens. That God alone decides who gets saved and who goes to Hell, yet it is to God's credit who gets saved, but NOT to God's credit who gets damned.
I think people are using 'responsible' in two different ways. I'd argue that he is sovereign which makes him responsible but that doesn't necessarily mean that he causes everything to happen.
[ 26. June 2012, 02:29: Message edited by: Johnny S ]
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Just as a point of information, Kaplan, didn't the Brethren start off as fairly Calvinist? When I first encountered them in the early 1980s they seemed either small c-calvinist (rather like ken) and many Anglican and Baptist evangelicals I'd encountered.
I was told that there were a range of views on the issue across 'the Assemblies' and it wasn't seen as any big deal of anything to fall out with anyone about. Although I did notice that they could be as critical of the very strict Reformed Evangelical chapel nearby as they were of the Pentecostals ... but I could never work out quite why as the Brethren assembly and the independent evangelical outfit seemed very similar - save for the fact that the latter had a paid minister.
I've since wondered whether it was because the nearby independent evos weren't Schofield Bible style dispensationalists ... but I'm not so sure. It could just be that they didn't like the idea of paid ministers. They used to criticise the Baptists for the same reason.
Brethrenism is a microcosm of evangelicalism in that the issue rumbles along with most agreeing to disagree most of the time, but small brushfires beaking out occasionally.
In our assembly, some of us are Calvinist, and some of us are scriptural, reasonable, ethical and correct.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
My third point is that the Calvinist position is an attempt to square the circle: to claim God is entirely sovereign, and yet not responsible for everything that happens. That God alone decides who gets saved and who goes to Hell, yet it is to God's credit who gets saved, but NOT to God's credit who gets damned.
I think people are using 'responsible' in two different ways. I'd argue that he is sovereign which makes him responsible but that doesn't necessarily mean that he causes everything to happen.
So things happen that are against his will? Just to be sure I understand.
Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So things happen that are against his will? Just to be sure I understand.
Not quite. Sort of. No.
Usually a distinction is made between his active will and his permissive will.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So things happen that are against his will? Just to be sure I understand.
Not quite. Sort of. No.
Usually a distinction is made between his active will and his permissive will.
This sounds like squaring the circle.
Anyway, if there's something that God doesn't cause, how can he be sovereign? If it's okay for God not to cause things (such as sin, right?), then why isn't it okay for the in/out salvation lists to not be entirely in his control? Usually the argument against the latter is God's sovereignty, but there is an exception made for sin. Square circle? If not, why not?
Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on
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If God created the world then the laws of physics are part of his creation. Should you fall off a cliff then you die when you hit the bottom.
Did God 'will' your death? No. Is he sovereign over your death? (In the sense that he created a world where death was an inevitable outcome of your fall.) Yes.
I'm just using that as an analogy for how it is possible to speak about God's sovereign will in a primary and secondary sense.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Of his assembly, Kaplan wrote:
'... some of us are Calvinist, and some of us are scriptural, reasonable, ethical and correct.'
And some of you are deluded?/suffering from 'prelest'?/from false piety and failure to see the planks in their own eyes? ... (and so on)
Sure, I recognise the irony in your response, and I'm not taking it too seriously, but it does seem to me that there's a certain binariness on both sides of this argument.
Non-Calvinists: 'You are monsters! You make God the author of sin and create a dread deity worse than Molech ...'
Calvinists: 'You lot can neither see nor except the rightness of our position, the logical consequences inevitably incline that way ... you might not like it but that's because you reject free grace, you are seeking to be justified by works! Who are you, oh man to talk back to God ...?'
And so on and so on ...
One of the things that Edmund Gosse observed in his classic autobiography, 'Father and Son' was how his very Calvinistic Plymouth Brethren father wouldn't say boo to a goose and wouldn't harm a soul and yet seemed to take an almost fiendish delight in the prospect of the reprobate being eternally condemned ...
Ok, so the old man spoke of 'uncovenanted grace' and 'uncovenanted mercies' and suggested that maybe even Shakespeare may have accepted salvation at some point ...
I've noticed this too. A Brethren girl I used to know from South West Scotland had a father who was the very embodiment of sweetness and light ... and yet he seemed to have an almost savage delight in the idea of people going to Hell ...
It just didn't square with his character at all.
It's a bit like the old story about the Baptist chapel inviting two potential ministers to 'preach with a view' on consecutive Sundays. During the week one of the deacons met a friend in the street who asked him about the first prospective minister and what he preached on.
'Oh, he preached very well,' said the deacon. 'He spoke about how the wicked would be cast into outer darkness and into eternal hell fire ...'
The second preacher came the following Sunday and during the subsequent week the deacon again met his friend in the street. How had the second preacher fared, what did he preach on?
'Oh, he preached very well,' said the deacon. 'He spoke of how sinners would be cast into outer darkness and into eternal hell fire ...'
'And which of the two ministers have you chosen?' asked his friend.
'The first,' came the reply.
'Why, if both men preached on the same subject, that sinners are going to be cast into eternal hell fire?'
'Well, the second sounded as if he enjoyed the prospect ...'
Now, I'm not saying that Calvinists are cruel, spiteful and unloving. Reformed people have as good a record as any when it comes to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, suffering for Christ's sake and so on ...
But it can lead to a kind of cold, clinical and highly repugnant faith. One that the term 'monstrous' is appropriate to cover. My brother knew a bloke who was convinced that his daughter was 'reprobate' and decreed from eternity to suffer the everlasting torments of the damned ...
I don't know how the guy could live with himself or even go through life believing such a thing.
It takes a very cold-fish form of Scholastic - nay Talibanic - faith to live like that ...
That, I submit, is what Fr Gregory means when he describes Calvinism as monstrous. Sure, the rest of us, perhaps, being largely Westerners, would cut it some slack as we all derive from the Reformed tradition - whether big R or small r - but even so ... even so ...
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
God is the sole sufficient cause of salvation in the one and the sole and sufficient cause of sin in the other.
At least you're consistent.
Some Calvinists are reluctant to acknowledge God as the author of sin, as their system demands.
Just to point out that I was replying to Zach82 from within his argument, rather than speaking as myself.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
But it can lead to a kind of cold, clinical and highly repugnant faith. One that the term 'monstrous' is appropriate to cover. My brother knew a bloke who was convinced that his daughter was 'reprobate' and decreed from eternity to suffer the everlasting torments of the damned ...
I don't know how the guy could live with himself or even go through life believing such a thing.
It takes a very cold-fish form of Scholastic - nay Talibanic - faith to live like that ...
It's beyond me how Calvinists cope with parenthood.
My daughter has quite explicitly rejected her faith, and I suspect that my son is going along with it for the sake of his wife and kids.
As a Calvinist, I would have to suspect that they were possibly/probably reprobate.
As it is, I continue to believe what I brought them up to believe: that God loves them, that Jesus died for them, that God wants them to be saved, and freely and genuinely offers them the gift of salvation which they are genuinely able to accept.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
As a Calvinist, I would have to suspect that they were possibly/probably reprobate.
As it is, I continue to believe what I brought them up to believe: that God loves them, that Jesus died for them, that God wants them to be saved, and freely and genuinely offers them the gift of salvation which they are genuinely able to accept.
I'm not sure why you believe that being a Calvinist would preclude you from believing that second paragraph there.
Wrestling with the doctrine of election just exposes a problem which all systems outside universalism and some forms of open theism have.
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