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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: The background of Calvinism
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
I really think we need to factor in the EMOTIONAL investment some folks have in Calvinism. This cannot be dealt with simply at the discursive level.
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Fr. Gregory
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
I really think we need to factor in the EMOTIONAL investment some folks have in Calvinism. This cannot be dealt with simply at the discursive level.
(Egad! centurionism is catching!)
But I have an equally strong emotional repulsion of Calvinism. In the end the emotional components probably cancel each other out. Anyway, Purgatory is for discussion, not therapy.
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El Greco
Shipmate
# 9313
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Posted
Father Gregory is a pastor, and so he takes all things into account. I think that we would benefit from following that example, eventhough it is a hard example to follow. (more of a note-to-self than a reply to Mousethief)
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
So does God want us to have free will then? More than he wants us to be saved?
He seems to have wanted Adam and Eve to have free will more than he wanted them not to eat the apple.
[ 19. September 2006, 16:08: Message edited by: mdijon ]
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
Is that your position, Mousethief?
It's a pretty fair summary of mine, Papio.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
I really think we need to factor in the EMOTIONAL investment some folks have in Calvinism. This cannot be dealt with simply at the discursive level.
This is probably a fairly blind question.... but what is the emotional investment? I can understand the emotional investment in a valid sacrament... in believing one is saved... in the role of women in the church... but Calvinism seems so abstract to start with, and to make almost no practical impact on the way one lives or worships... what am I missing?
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear Mousethief and mdijon
What I mean is that ATTACHMENT to Calvinism (I share the repulsion) is not primarily an intellectual thing ... that is worked out afterwards. It is the sense of being snatched as a brand out of the burning that keeps most Calvinists Calvinist.
[ 19. September 2006, 16:12: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
Is that your position, Mousethief?
It's a pretty fair summary of mine, Papio.
I think that, were I forced to choose, I would have to side you and Mousethief as well. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
What I mean is that ATTACHMENT to Calvinism (I share the repulsion) is not primarily an intellectual thing ... that is worked out afterwards. It is the sense of being snatched as a brand out of the burning that keeps most Calvinists Calvinist.
But this is just Bulverism. All we can do here is argue the point.
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daronmedway
Shipmate
# 3012
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by m.t-tomb:
I was; you understood me correctly. I then tried to extend the analogy to accomodate free will. Lazarus had no free will until he was alive; I say that it is the same with regeneration. Dead people don't cooperate; they just lie there, dead.
In which case, I'm back to asking how that a) fits with your previous position about predestined ability but not response.
The Lazarus's resuscitation/regeneration analogy was designed to clarify Paul's use of the death/sin analogy on Ephesians 2.1-5. The point I wanted to make was that free will is a fruit of regeneration not a precursor to regeneration. So, in Lazarus's case, his abilty to respond to the call of Christ to come forth was a fruit of his resuscitation not a precursor to it. So in terms of 'predestined ability' but not response I'll try to explain.
The ability to respond is the first fruit of regeneration: it is the first thing that a regenerate heart does. Just like the first thing a resuscitaed person does is draw breath. the response of faith after regeneration is like that: no one would say that breathing is an act of free will but most people would say that it is something we very much like doing. The first response of faith is like that; automatic, vital and pleasurable.
[ 19. September 2006, 16:18: Message edited by: m.t-tomb ]
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
Extending that analogy, then, is it not possible that all are resuscitated? All are predestined to have the ability to respond to grace...
Yet not all respond.
(i.e., as Papio put it).
It would fit with Timothy and Peter.
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daronmedway
Shipmate
# 3012
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Dear Mousethief and mdijon
What I mean is that ATTACHMENT to Calvinism (I share the repulsion) is not primarily an intellectual thing ... that is worked out afterwards. It is the sense of being snatched as a brand out of the burning that keeps most Calvinists Calvinist.
Not for me! I discovered Calvinism fairly recently; it is answering many theological questions but throwing up yet more conundrums as well. I do not claim to understand the nuances (perhaps not even the basics of TULIP) but I do find that it makes a great deal of sense. Basically, this conversation would be more fruitful if we could have a debate as to whether regeneration is monergistic or synergistic. I think that if we could establish our own points of view concerning regeneration then the rest could logically follow on from there.
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Regeneration is synergistic. When the prodigal son got sick of feeding pigs you COULD say that God made him sick of feeding pigs. What, however, if his own sickness at feeding pigs was a combination of his religious / cultural background, personal issues and grace. That seems to me to be truer to both humanity and history.
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sharkshooter
Not your average shark
# 1589
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
... It is the sense of being snatched as a brand out of the burning that keeps most Calvinists Calvinist.
Unlike you, I cannot speak for "most Calvinist", just the ones I know: They tend to remain Calvinist because they think it best explains the gospel.
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
A God that wants all of his free children saved but allows them to reject him seems a far more worthy object of worship than a God who makes nothing but puppets, and then torments some of them for eternity for a choice that He, and not they, made.
In my view, it's worse than that.
Unless you're a Deist, you presumably accept that our existence, our consciousness if you like, is a facet of the ongoing creating and sustaining power of God. Human souls (whatever they are) presumably aren't self-sustaining pieces of spiritual jetsam, but a continuing work of the Creator.
If that's the case -- and I don't think it's any kind of radical proposition -- then the Calvinist god not only consigns his puppets to eternal torture, but actively continues to sustain their very existence in that state.
This, it seems to me, is monstrous beyond comprehension.
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sharkshooter:
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
... It is the sense of being snatched as a brand out of the burning that keeps most Calvinists Calvinist.
Unlike you, I cannot speak for "most Calvinist", just the ones I know: They tend to remain Calvinist because they think it best explains the gospel.
Fair enough. It also has a certain logical coherence that, in my opinion, many other soteriological views do not have.
For example, the Calvinist has a straightforward answer to that old chestnut: if faith is a precursor to salvation, why do so many people lack the means to find faith? The answer, of course, is that those who have faith are those whom God, for his inscrutable reasons, have elected to.
Similarly, the old faith/works argument falls away for the Calvinist. The Weslyan, for example, has to contend with the problem that accepting God's freely-offered grace might be considered `works' (or, at least, a work). This is not a problem for the Calvinist -- God's grace is offered only to those whom God has foreknowledge would accept it.
And so on.
So I can quite understand how Calvin arrived at the position he did, given the information he had, and I can understand the continuing appeal of Calvinism to people who have a low tolerance for cognitive dissonance.
But, although being logically coherent is a precondition for being right, not everything that is logically coherent is, in fact, right.
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
quote:
I can understand the continuing appeal of Calvinism to people who have a low tolerance for cognitive dissonance.
That's the point. It is the tidiness of the lawyer's mind with a bit of fire and brimstone thrown in for moral earnestness. It's a kind of Protestant scholasticism.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
There's a point. If the churches are emptying, if there are fewer and fewer conversions, what does that say about God's election? Has he stopped electing young people, going for older ones instead?
You have exctly the same problem with your Arminian or Pelagian view. Notoriously, what about the people born before Jesus?
If you believe that anybody at all is damned then you have the same moral problem as the Augustinians do. If people's chance of salvation or damnation depends in any way on their circumstances you have the same theological problem that they do. The almighty creator God could have placed them in a different situation.
The horrible God you are accusing Calvin of worshipping is the same horrible God Wesley or the Evcumenical Patriarch also worship - its just that the calvinist way of thinking makes some of the very real problems we all share clearer and more obvious.
quote:
why has God only elected to save 7% of the British population?
Augustine was pretty clear that the visible church is not the same as the invisible one.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
There's a point. If the churches are emptying, if there are fewer and fewer conversions, what does that say about God's election? Has he stopped electing young people, going for older ones instead?
You have exctly the same problem with your Arminian or Pelagian view. Notoriously, what about the people born before Jesus?
If you believe that anybody at all is damned then you have the same moral problem as the Augustinians do. If people's chance of salvation or damnation depends in any way on their circumstances you have the same theological problem that they do. The almighty creator God could have placed them in a different situation.
The horrible God you are accusing Calvin of worshipping is the same horrible God Wesley or the Evcumenical Patriarch also worship - its just that the calvinist way of thinking makes some of the very real problems we all share clearer and more obvious.
quote:
why has God only elected to save 7% of the British population?
Augustine was pretty clear that the visible church is not the same as the invisible one.
Hebrews 11
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
ken - sorry. I don't see how God giving people a choice is the same as deciding before they were born, on completely and utterly arbitray grounds, who shall be saved and who shall fry.
In all honest, I think the first God is worthy of worship. The latter is not worthy to lick the shit off my boots.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I am not a total Arminian in that I do not believe that I can simply decide to be a Christian and then use the capacity of my own faith to accept the atonement.
If you believed that you would be a Pelagian, not an Arminian. What you describe as Wesleyan view is pretty much the Arminian one - which remember originated as part of the Reformed tradition, as an argument within the Augustinian school.
quote:
I believe therefore in prevenient grace which is where grace is given in order to believe. It is a work of God that precludes any effort or merit on our part.
An Augustinain notion! The argument between the hyper-Calvinists and the Arminians was about who the previenient grace is given to.
The Calvinist position (people still argue about whether it was actually Calvin's) was that the prevenient grace was only given to those who God knew to be saved - if that wasn't the case then God's grace would be wasted on the unsaved, God's will frustrated, and Christ's work in vain. (That's the "L" in "TULIP" - Limited Atonement)
The Arminian & Wesleyan is that its availible to all ("Unlimited Atonement") but that some people, for some reason, refuse it.
The debate is caricatured as "Christ died for the World" (Arminian) versus "Christ died for the Church" (Calvinist). Both can find their soundbytes and proof texts in the Bible (both can find prooftexts in Paul to Romans and Ephesians) and in the early Fathers (it is nonsense to suggest that these ideas originated with Augustine, though he perhaps did more to popularise them than anyone else)
The middle position - as adopted by Baxter and perhaps Bunyan and others is the less-than-five-point Calvinist one (which some I think call "Calvinian" and others "Amyrauthian") which acknowledges that Christ died for all and is in that sense one of "Unlimited Atonement". This has the problem that it seems to deny God's sovreignty because his attempts to save are failures if any are damned. So both Arminians and hyper-Calvinists can say to them that they don't really believe God is sovereign, because they allow human will to triumph over God's will.
(But NB that problem exists in the Arminian view as well. Why does God place some in the church and the others in the wilderness?)
That would get resolved in Origenian universalism - basically the idea that God tries again and again to save you and in the end you will give in of your own free will - but the Church reckoned Origen a heretic for it. (Catchphrase was "even the devil can be saved" - something I suspect even Athanasius believed but which became unpopular later).
And the neo-Orthodox position follows the same line. If I understand Barth (& its perfectly possible I don't, he's not an easy read) the will of God is such that in the end everyone is saved in Christ, whether they like it or not.
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L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
This has the problem that it seems to deny God's sovreignty because his attempts to save are failures if any are damned. So both Arminians and hyper-Calvinists can say to them that they don't really believe God is sovereign, because they allow human will to triumph over God's will.
Isn't a God who is less then fully soveriegn preferable in literally every single way worth mentioning to a God who is compromised in both love and justice, which I contend that the Calvinian God is?
IE - that isn't really a problem for me, because I don't really believe that God is soveriegn in the ways you suggest anyway. I think God wooes rather than commands. Such a God seems superior to me to the Calvinian one in literally every respect, even with the eschatological problems involved.
[ 19. September 2006, 18:12: Message edited by: Papio ]
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El Greco
Shipmate
# 9313
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Posted
It's not about God saving all, because God's salvation is God Himself and He will be seen by all. It's the way we experience God.
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
I think I will stick with Process Theology really. At least I am not the only heretic on board. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Pursuasion has always seemed to me to be more powerful, more intelligent, more just and more Godlike than a mere command accompanied by a threat.
Perhaps that is just me.
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sharkshooter
Not your average shark
# 1589
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
I think I will stick with Process Theology really.
I thought you were an agnostic. ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
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Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer. [Psalm 19:14]
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
Also I'm not sure how your question, clearly intended as a condemnation of my position, really is one -- if your position is that God doesn't want to save all people, but only a few. A God that wants all of his free children saved but allows them to reject him seems a far more worthy object of worship than a God who makes nothing but puppets, and then torments some of them for eternity for a choice that He, and not they, made.
It wasn't. It does however mean that there is something more complex going on that God wanting everyone to be saved rather than just "it means what it says."
Even you are saying that God wants something else more than us to be saved (our free choice to love him) Calvinists are just saying that about something different.
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sharkshooter:
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
I think I will stick with Process Theology really.
I thought you were an agnostic.
Well - I am not a strict agnostic any more. I am agnostic on a great many things, but I have decided to give Christianity one more go. as arrogant as that sounds.
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sharkshooter
Not your average shark
# 1589
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
...I have decided to give Christianity one more go. as arrogant as that sounds.
Not arrogant, just confusing. At least it is to a Calvinist.
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Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer. [Psalm 19:14]
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Calvinists are just saying that about something different.
What is the something different?
I can understand the free will argument preventing all being saved - we've all experienced similar situations, painful as they are, with children as they grow up. Calvinism has always seemed to me to make the "something different" God's unexplained desire that it be that way - predetermined from the dawn of time....
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
...I have decided to give Christianity one more go. as arrogant as that sounds.
quote:
Originally posted by sharkshooter:
Not arrogant, just confusing. At least it is to a Calvinist.
No at all. It's just that irresistable grace got him in the end.
(Well, unless he turns out to not be one of the elect, in which case I guess he'll revert to type shortly).
But, either way, ![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif) for the baboon.
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
in which case I guess he'll revert to type shortly).
I dunno how paranoid I should be at that remark. I guess (and hope) you just mean revert to being a grumpy heathen - which is fine ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
And thanks for the candle.
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by m.t-tomb:
John Spears, have you ever read Deuteronomy 30.6? quote:
6 The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.
And now some questions: what does this verse say about man's ability to love God? Who makes that love possible? How is that love made possible? Who exercises that love? Who does the promise of that love extend to? What is the result of that love? Who benefits from the result?
m.t-tomb
This may get a bit Keryg. but I recognise the serious intention. I have to weigh that scripture with these.
Acts 10:34ff (Peter at Cornelius' house)
Then Peter began to speak. "I now realise how true it is that God does not show favouritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right. .......
v44. While Peter was still speaking these words the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumscised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles ....
v46b-47. The Peter said. "Can anyone keep these people from being baptised with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have".
God is impartial in His acceptance, says Peter. As He is impartial in his acceptance, and if "circumcision of the heart" remains a pre-condition of the ability of human beings to respond, then ISTM that the only way to avoid some measure of contradiction within the love of God is to believe that this "circumcision of the heart" is, under the New Covenant, universal. The Gentiles are no longer "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and foreigners to the covenants of promise and without hope in the world". (Ephesians 2).
In addition my NT eyes read Deuteronomy 30:6 as a sign that circumcision of the body (an external sign) does not guarantee love for God in the heart of a child of the Old Covenant. And so it is a precursor of the massively important Galatians themes, with their climax in the great declaration of Christian freedom. (I could say more about that but it might be better to do this in Keryg anyway.)
As you know, I'm not in any way a trained theologian and there may be all sorts of holes in this - but that is how these key texts strike me.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I meant whatever the opposite of the elect was... I was trying to fit it into a Calvinist universe (which I reject, by the way).
But you're welcome to all the votives available to me, BTW.
I do suspect, however, that I completely misunderstand Calvinism.
For instance, I suppose that belief in that kind of predestination would make one utterly fatalistic... which isn't something one commonly sees in Calvinists. Presumably there's a reason for that, that I just don't know/understand it.
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
mdijon - I suspect that I misunderstand it as well, I have tried to, but it doesn't seem to make much sense no matter how I look at it. Maybe I am not bright enough, or just have the wrong moral and epistemological assumptions. I dunno.
I don't get it, or at least I hope I don't.
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Papio
I don't get it either. Thanks for that simplicity.
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Skeptic
Shipmate
# 11799
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
God created us to be free agents that could choose to love Him. If he wanted automatons that automatically loved him, he could have made those, but "love" of that sort is rather cheap.
Many mothers love their children almost unconditionally. Whatever their children do, some will always love them. Are they automatons?
And how would you rate love based on bribery and punishment? If belief, worship and/or love for God is required to be accepted in heaven, God is both arrogant and insecure. If He sends people to hell for simply not believing in Him, He is a monster.
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daronmedway
Shipmate
# 3012
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I meant whatever the opposite of the elect was... I was trying to fit it into a Calvinist universe (which I reject, by the way).
But you're welcome to all the votives available to me, BTW.
I do suspect, however, that I completely misunderstand Calvinism.
For instance, I suppose that belief in that kind of predestination would make one utterly fatalistic... which isn't something one commonly sees in Calvinists. Presumably there's a reason for that, that I just don't know/understand it.
It rests on differentiating grace and the means of grace. God has appointed a variety of gracious means through which we can meet him, know him, work for and with him, perceive him, love etc. We (Calvinists) accept Ephesians 2.8-9 with total acceptance; however we are also very interested in knowing that grace to be powerfully at work in us and actively will for it to be so.
We see prayer as the gracious means by which God has given us permission to tell him how to run the universe! We also believe that God has ordained prayer to be the means by which grace can be set to work powerfully in us and in others. Calvinists derive their joy from particilaption in the means of grace that God has ordained; we also get our esteem through knowing that we (Christians) are one of those means of grace that God has ordained.
[ 19. September 2006, 20:28: Message edited by: m.t-tomb ]
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daronmedway
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# 3012
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Posted
Skeptic said: quote:
If He sends people to hell for simply not believing in Him, He is a monster.
Now reverse that statement! If God lets people into heaven for simply believing in Him, He's a... what? What's the opposite of a monster? A fluffy bunny?
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
I confess I don't "get" Calvinism either. I'm inclined to think that a very precise understanding of the terms is required, and that it represents a highly self-contained and self-consistent set of propositions.
As evidence, even though I am in no way a Calvinist, I would point to the terminal confusion that many posters have made in confusing "double predestination" (i.e encompassing reprobation as well as salvation) with single predestination - plus unstated differences in who we are talking about as the elect. The visible church? The invisible church? All those called (whatever that means)? All humanity? All creation? Different ones of the above at different soteriological (earthly) timescales?
My problem is not that it is not that it is not internally consistent - Jean Calvin's legal expertise is well captured by Fr. Gregory's observation. I have problems with it when it comes to interfacing with external evidence, and those are the sorts of questions we are seeing here. What sort of God is this we are talking about? And from there we get into the question raised so tantalisingly by B16 in his recent Regensburg lecture about faith and reason. Are we getting a god who is so transcendent he is unreasonable?
Ian
(PS - good for you, Papio!)
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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daronmedway
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# 3012
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Posted
Barnabas, if circumcision of the heart is universal why does God ordain for it happen as a result of hearing the gospel proclaimed? In Acts 2.37-38 Luke (the first Calvinist!?) says this: quote:
When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"
Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Faith come by hearing, surely? Regeneration by the Holy Spirit without the human will happens first. Conversion, which is an act of volition happens next, starting with repentance.
[ 19. September 2006, 20:40: Message edited by: m.t-tomb ]
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by m.t-tomb:
Calvinists derive their joy from particilaption in the means of grace that God has ordained
Sounds painful, particilaption.
m.t, we seem to be founding an "Actually, I don't understand Calvinism" club here... having spent the last few pages explaining to you why it's immoral and unscriptural... you've graciously hung around, and perhaps you could now seize your moment to inform us a little better....
Do you think Calvinism makes any practical difference to the way you live or worship?
Many of us react to the Calvinist vision of God with a certain amount of horror... do you experience equal and opposite reactions to the free-will limited version?
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Skeptic
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# 11799
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by m.t-tomb:
Skeptic said: quote:
If He sends people to hell for simply not believing in Him, He is a monster.
Now reverse that statement! If God lets people into heaven for simply believing in Him, He's a... what? What's the opposite of a monster? A fluffy bunny?
I wrote God would be both arrogant and insecure. It doesn't logically follow that God would have to be the opposite of a monster for accepting people into heaven for simply believing in Him if He is a monster for sending people to hell for not believing in Him.
[ 19. September 2006, 21:03: Message edited by: Skeptic ]
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GreyFace
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# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Even you are saying that God wants something else more than us to be saved (our free choice to love him)
I'm not sure this is true. To be saved in Orthodox soteriology as I understand it is ultimately (and loosely) to come into the fullest possible union with God, and that union comes about through love.
If love cannot be coerced then this basically means that our free choice to love him - and let's not forget his free choice to love us - is the beginning of salvation rather than something additional to it.
Papio, welcome back and if it starts to go pear-shaped, remember it's perfectly possible to be a grumpy Christian. I should know...
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
remember it's perfectly possible to be a grumpy Christian. I should know...
Yes, one could easily forget that on a website like this one.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
m.t-tomb
Hearing is an activation of faith and it is certainly true that some "hear and do not hear". I understand the link between Deuteronomy 30:6 and Acts 2:36-38 and we have discussed it on another thread. It is not conclusive. The Acts 2 account is simply an illustration of a particular "cutting to the heart". It by no means precludes a universal "cutting" as a provision of God's grace. What is this "hearing" by which faith comes? Do not the heavens "declare" the glory of God and do not our lives "speak"? Does not the water of baptism "speak"? And the bread and wine? And is not the Holy Spirit the teaching, convincing voice of God? And is not the voice of God both a thin whisper and the sound of many waters?
I am not being irreverent in suggesting that, in the econony of a just God, there may be more than one way to "skin this particular cat". "For the love of God is wider than the measure of men's minds and the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind". I don't get my theology out of that hymn, it just encapsulates the theology I find in scripture, in life and in me.
[ 19. September 2006, 21:36: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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daronmedway
Shipmate
# 3012
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Skeptic:
quote:
Originally posted by m.t-tomb:
Skeptic said: quote:
If He sends people to hell for simply not believing in Him, He is a monster.
Now reverse that statement! If God lets people into heaven for simply believing in Him, He's a... what? What's the opposite of a monster? A fluffy bunny?
I wrote God would be both arrogant and insecure. It doesn't logically follow that God would have to be the opposite of a monster for accepting people into heaven for simply believing in Him if He is a monster for sending people to hell for not believing in Him.
Why? Just because one outcome is favourable and one is not? As I've said before the real scandal in terms of cosmic justice is that anyone gets to heaven, not that only some have that honour. The only reason that some people think that particular redemption is scandalous is because (secretly) they're so darn sure that they're going there themselves. They just think that a bit of moral indignation against the God who elected them will assuage their existential guilt. It's the spiritual equivalent of chucking a bone to the lost from comfort of their salvific armchair.
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
quote:
As I've said before the real scandal in terms of cosmic justice is that anyone gets to heaven
Why? I can't understand this compulsion to believe that normal people are somehow monstrous. If a person genuinely lives a life which seeks justice, compassion and all these things (and the example of Cornelius suffices to show that this is possible for a pagan), why is it a scandal that God should remit the penalty of what sins the person does have, given that they were born with them? I find that ethically strange, but then I do not consider self-hate to be virtuous.
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Schnuffle schnuffle.
Posts: 2538 | From: UK | Registered: May 2006
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by m.t-tomb:
The only reason that some people think that particular redemption is scandalous is because (secretly) they're so darn sure that they're going there themselves. They just think that a bit of moral indignation against the God who elected them will assuage their existential guilt. It's the spiritual equivalent of chucking a bone to the lost from comfort of their salvific armchair.
What a steaming pile of horse gonads.
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Infinite Penguins.
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Posts: 12176 | From: a zoo in England. | Registered: Mar 2003
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
Papio, welcome back and if it starts to go pear-shaped, remember it's perfectly possible to be a grumpy Christian. I should know...
Thank you. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Infinite Penguins.
My "Readit, Swapit" page
My "LibraryThing" page
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by m.t-tomb:
The only reason that some people think that particular redemption is scandalous is because (secretly) they're so darn sure that they're going there themselves. They just think that a bit of moral indignation against the God who elected them will assuage their existential guilt. It's the spiritual equivalent of chucking a bone to the lost from comfort of their salvific armchair.
Ah, speaking of armchairs, now you're an armchair psychoanalyst. You needn't try to psychoananalyze me again, either, because you're so wide of the mark with this one, I'm not going to be inclined to listen, and you'd just be wasting your breath. Can we cut with the Bulveristic bullshit and just get back to the theological issues?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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