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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Can you be a Christian and a Calvinist?
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Calindreams:
To save those who are unwilling to be saved does not mean that God is abusing our rights to free will, just as grabbing a drowning person out of a lake before you've asked them if they want to be saved doesn't.
How do you square this with Matthew 23 v 37-39?
There is also a quote from C S Lewis's "The Great Divorce" within which the pilgrim is advised that the world divides into those who say to God "Your will be done" and those to whom God says "Your will be done". Given the encouragement by Jesus to pray "your will be done" every day, it seems very strange to me that it shouldn't matter whether folks take that encouragement seriously. God gives us the choice to align our wills with His and encourages us to pray that may be so every day. Why?
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Archimandrite
Shipmate
# 3997
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon Cheng:
I don't think the Bible excludes the option of hell as being almost empty (Judas is certainly there, and there is more than one person there, as I read the Bible).
Although I suspect that this is not the place to have a discussion on Judas, Matthew 27:3-4 says he repented, and openly acknowledged his sin. Just more bad luck for those of us who like the idea of forgiveness and a loving God, isn't it?
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Archimandrite
Shipmate
# 3997
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Posted
Egad! The prooftexting begins...
I'm an Anglo-Catholic. I don't do this sort of thing.
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"Loyal Anglican" (Warning: General Synod may differ).
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon Cheng:
I think we're still needing an answer from you MT (or anyone) as to why God must allow his grace to be resisted.
Because not to do so would make man utterly irrelevant. You could have a God that did that, but unless he also extended his grace to all (which is IMO a far more important issue), he would be guilty for all the suffering caused by hell.
quote:
To insist that he must limit himself in this area means that we make ourselves God, as we can dictate the terms of our salvation to him.
To not insist on trying to understand the motivations of God is to not use discernment and to leave the door to evil wide open. Do you think the Father of Lies would hesitate to try to convince others he was God? Do you think that you could see through all his deceptions?
You have an absolute duty to discern for yourself what is good and what is evil. Any being that automatically damns individuals to hell without either using his power to save them or giving them a chance to save themselves or be saved is evil. If you want to leave yourself open to the worship of Evil that calls itself God (or even Evil that is God if this is the case), feel free- but I will not allow myself to worship an evil God under any circumstance I have any control over.
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Sarkycow
La belle Dame sans merci
# 1012
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Posted
Uses taosting fork to heave thread into Purgatory
Ok, this thread is maintaining an calm and reasonable discussion, so up it goes.
Remember that the rules change up there - no personal attacks and all that.
Have fun.
Sarkycow, hellhost
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“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.”
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
I'm glad this is up here now because the vitriol was driving me mad.
All schemas of salvation that are not universalist neeed to deal with the issue that some people reject Jesus. (And indeed some universalist schemas need to deal with this too, if they don't go for the "people have accepted Jesus without knowing" line)
Now, ISTM, either you say God chooses some and not others, which makes God look, erm...well not very good. Or you say God designed people with such a design flaw that they could truly see his beauty and still turn away from him. In fact, only creating some people with that design flaw and not others. Which makes God look, well...not very good in a different sense.
So I do think that as this is an issue which we all have to deal with, and none of us particularly satisfactorily, we could do with less of the assertions that others aren't Christians.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
All schemas of salvation that are not universalist neeed to deal with the issue that some people reject Jesus.
Well, yes. Obviously.
A Calvinist might say to you "it is possible that God rejects someone because of reasons of his own" but the alternative - if you believe that Hell is occupied - is to say "it is possible that God rejects someone because they are not good enough". Its hard to see how that is more reassuring for the poor sinner.
And guess what - in modern times strands of Christianity that have been universalist without falling into extreme theological liberalism or relativism have mostly tended to arise from the Reformed tradition. I wonder why that is?
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Astro
Shipmate
# 84
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Posted
I wonder if a lot of what passes for Calvinism is a case of the world influencing the church. As I don't think Calvin was a Calvinist - much too wooly as some have said. However those who latter tried to follow him especially in the Netherlands were living in a time when philosopers such as Spinoza were denying free will. Thus the world view at the time was that things were (pre-)determined.
The irony of this is that it is often modern day "calvinists" who are most opposed to any present day worldview creeping into the church (e.g. acceptance of gay relationships - to risk a dead horse).
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if you look around the world today – whether you're an atheist or a believer – and think that the greatest problem facing us is other people's theologies, you are yourself part of the problem. - Andrew Brown (The Guardian)
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
A Calvinist might say to you "it is possible that God rejects someone because of reasons of his own" but the alternative - if you believe that Hell is occupied - is to say "it is possible that God rejects someone because they are not good enough". Its hard to see how that is more reassuring for the poor sinner.
It's dead easy to see how.
I think you accept the same viewpoint as me on what election/predestination is - the effect of omnipotence viewing history and not something that's incompatible with free will. But I could be wrong.
Well, when someone recognises that they're a sinner, they can take the eternal viewpoint, in which case if they're a reprobate God has always known that and they've been fucked since eternity, or they can take the temporal viewpoint and attempt to repent. The eternal viewpoint is hopeless, we can't change the outcome and if we're in the wrong camp it's God's doing. The temporal viewpoint is the one that gives hope but never certainty. We can always attempt to repent.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Christians, true ones, the church within the church, the little flock are the elite, the elect, have a place in the first and great resurrection on Earth. And even they will have to give account for every idle word. I reckon. The rest of us come up in Purgatory/Guantanamo for de-programming I reckon. Primitive - Dalek - Calvinism - now-is-the-on-ly-day-of-salvayyyyyy-tion, is the vilest, most moronic, racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, Neanderthalist, you-name-itist - graceless heresy in Christendom.
Those who ascribe to it are going to be nauseated in the Resurrection at God's grace: in danger of hell fire annihilation for rejecting the scum God accepts.
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Love wins
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gracious rebel:
So which is it then? ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
OK not an entitely fair question, as you said 'close' not the same as, but it would be useful to hear about the differences.
The differences mostly have to do with the meaning and mechanism of salvation. The generic description "God wants all to be saved but some may refuse and he won't force them to be saved against their will" is accurate as far as it goes.
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
Mousethief, is it fair to say...
Arminian: Salvation at point of freely-chosen conversion on hearing the Gospel by God's grace, followed by growth in holiness by God's grace as an outworking of salvation
Orthodox: Salvation as ongoing process of theosis, by God's grace but requiring the cooperation of a free will, and in which the freely-chosen point of apparent initial repentance might be an important milestone
Or am I miles out?
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
I could only answer the OP accurately if it said:- "Can you be an orthodox Christian (lower case) and a Calvinist?" In which case, unequivocally , "no." However, you can be a Christian and a Calvinist, so "yes."
Greyface ... just thought I'd barge in ... that's how I understand salvation in Orthodoxy to be.
[ 25. April 2005, 14:58: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
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Gordon Cheng
a child on sydney harbour
# 8895
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
The differences mostly have to do with the meaning and mechanism of salvation. The generic description "God wants all to be saved but some may refuse and he won't force them to be saved against their will" is accurate as far as it goes.
This statement is true of Calvinism too.
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Gordon Cheng
a child on sydney harbour
# 8895
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Posted
Here's a helpful quote from my bus reading this morning. Richard Muller is a careful scholar and his work is quite up to date (this is published 2003):
quote:
As for the terms "Calvinist" and "Calvinism," I tend to avoid them as less than useful to the historical task. If, by "Calvinist," one means a follower of Calvin who had nothing to say that was different from what Calvin said, then one would be hard put to find any Calvinists in the later sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. If by Calvinist, one means a later exponent of a theology standing within the confessional boundaries described by such documents as the Gallican Confession, the Belgic Confession, the Second Helvetic Confession, and the Heidelberg Catechism, then one will have the problem of accounting for the many ways in which such thinkers — notably, Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf, Bartholomeus Keckermann, William Perkins, Franciscus Junius, and Gulielmus Bucanus, just to name a few — differ from Calvin both doctrinally and methodologically. One might even be forced to pose Calvin against the Calvinists. Given the diversity of the movement and the fact that Calvin was not the primary author of any of the confessional norms just noted, the better part of historical valor (namely, discretion) requires rejection of the term “Calvinist” and Calvinism” in favor of the more historically accurate term, “Reformed”.
-quoted from Muller, Richard A. Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725. 2nd edition. Volume One: Prolegomena to Theology. (Michigan: Baker Academic, 2003) p. 30.
This is a problem with the thread title, which is fine for Hell rants but here in Purgatory lacks precision.
If the issue of Calvinism is really shorthand for a discussion of predestination then the existing thread on Augustinian Predestination has a really excellent discussion going on this at the moment between (mainly) Levor and Ricardus (It's interleaved with another discussion between Levor and Dave Marshall so that can be a bit confusing).
If on the other hand this is a discussion of Calvin, then he is really a theologian of grace of the first order, and until we see that he's on about union with Christ then we've missed the real key to understanding him. He himself thought that predestination, though true and important, was not a necessary doctrine to be believed for salvation and therefore ought to be understood as second order.
[ 26. April 2005, 04:43: Message edited by: Gordon Cheng ]
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
It's not about Calvin, it's about Calvinism.
And God reaching into our heads and making us want to be saved is a perversion of the phrase "not against our will".
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Gordon Cheng
a child on sydney harbour
# 8895
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
It's not about Calvin, it's about Calvinism.
And God reaching into our heads and making us want to be saved is a perversion of the phrase "not against our will".
OK, so of these...
quote:
— notably, Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf, Bartholomeus Keckermann, William Perkins, Franciscus Junius, and Gulielmus Bucanus, just to name a few —
which?
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Demas*
Shipmate
# 7147
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Posted
Gordon, when you said you were a Calvinist, what did you mean?
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
We already posted our links, Gordon. Try to keep up.
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Gordon Cheng
a child on sydney harbour
# 8895
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Posted
Fair question, Demas! It was a Hell Post, and I was painting broad brush strokes.
I would align myself as being in broad agreement with the key points of Calvin's theology as outlined in his Institutes of the Christian Religion.
The quote from Muller recognises that we're now in Purgatory and was intended to be a bit more nuanced. So in Purgatory, I'm no longer a Calvinist. When I get to Heaven, only God knows!
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
ell, when someone recognises that they're a sinner, they can take the eternal viewpoint, in which case if they're a reprobate God has always known that and they've been fucked since eternity, or they can take the temporal viewpoint and attempt to repent. The eternal viewpoint is hopeless, we can't change the outcome and if we're in the wrong camp it's God's doing.
But from our point of view both outcomes look the same - we repent & are saved. That God knew all along that we would or wouldn't makes no difference to what we feel and see and do. Even that God chose us to repent before creation makes no obvious difference to the effects of our reprentence. When we repent and have faith we can know we are saved by the grace of God - and byt the strength of God, not the strength of our faith or repentence. A Christian who is a little bit faithful is not thereby a little bit saved. If we don't repent & have no faith & we can't know that (though we can still hope & pray that the grace of God is extended to such people)
There is a myth of the sinner who attempts to repent but is somehow not permitted to by God, but that comes more from psychological Scottish novels than Christian doctrine. It goes along with its counterpart, the sinner who does not need to repent, because they are Chosen.
Those are charicatures of Christianity. If that's what someone means by "Calvinism" they are right to reject it - as would have Calvin or Whitefield or Spurgeon (or even Augustine). But that is rejecting man-made parodies of the Church, not rejecting the Church itself.
To save time, assume I just posted all the usual proof-texts...
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
There is a myth of the sinner who attempts to repent but is somehow not permitted to by God, but that comes more from psychological Scottish novels than Christian doctrine.
But this myth is so close to what Calvinism almost says - the myth of the sinner who would attempt to repent if God chose to grant him the ability.
If Calvinism says that God grants the ability to all, yet some never chose to take hold of it, well, you have Arminianism or Orthodoxy or Catholicism. The contentious part of Calvinism as it's presented (I don't know that this is what Calvin thought) is not predestination but that predestination to reprobation was God's plan from the beginning.
Myself, I think the disagreement is at the philosophical level of what it means to be free, but the consequences for our perception of God can be severe. Calvinist seem to argue that if they are wrong, God is not sovereign. Free-willers argue that if they are wrong, God is evil. Neither is true but I'd rather risk the former error than the latter.
Posts: 5748 | From: North East England | Registered: Jul 2003
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Gordon Cheng
a child on sydney harbour
# 8895
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
The contentious part of Calvinism as it's presented (I don't know that this is what Calvin thought) is not predestination but that predestination to reprobation was God's plan from the beginning.
As Paul argues in Romans 9. Or Jesus in John 17:12. But it's a shadow of the doctrine of predestination, rather than a symmetrical process — a sovereign decision to leave people in their deadness as contrasted with a specific act to make them alive in Christ.
quote:
Calvinist seem to argue that if they are wrong, God is not sovereign. Free-willers argue that if they are wrong, God is evil.
I like this summary.
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Originally posted by Astro:
quote:
I wonder if a lot of what passes for Calvinism is a case of the world influencing the church. As I don't think Calvin was a Calvinist - much too wooly as some have said. However those who latter tried to follow him especially in the Netherlands were living in a time when philosopers such as Spinoza were denying free will. Thus the world view at the time was that things were (pre-)determined.
Of course, a bit later you get Newton's clockwork universe. So the model of a God who, in Mary Midgley's phrase, builds and winds up a clock and then punishes it for striking fits neatly into this era.
The question is, really, does 'Calvinism' derive from contemporary currents of thought or did those currents derive from Calvinism? To put the question that way should, of course, set all our alarm bells ringing.
It might be instructive to look back at the Renaissance in which there was a vast confidence in the ability of human beings to create their own destinies. I think that this is the period that people who like to have a 'pop' at the Enlightenment should really be investigating. The Reformation and Trent are, in their separate ways, reactions against this current of thought. It is notable that the thought of Montaigne and Erasmus - the two wisest and most learned men of their age - was marginalised in an age of confessional wars. Trent repudiated Erasmus as unequivocally as Luther did - the Reformers regarded Trent's formulations on predestination as insincere because of their closeness to their own.
Of course, the Newtonian-Spinozist determinist account of life then becomes the basis of the Enlightenment. Locke owes more to Calvin than later admirers of either would have been comfortable admitting. Voltaire was a card carrying determinist. One ends up with a rather perverse Hegelian dialectic whereby the Renaissance confidence in humanity is married off to the determinism of the era which culminates in Whig and Marxist accounts of history in which we are all dragged ineluctably, kicking and screaming to the New Jerusalem.
Which turns out, of course, not to be the New Jerusalem at all...
[ 26. April 2005, 11:20: Message edited by: Callan ]
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Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
My main problem with TULIP Calvinism is that it creates a capricious monster out of God, a celestial bouncer who on a whim says to some "I don't like the cut of your job, you're not coming in"; you're damned simply because, in the words of the Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch, "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid God doesn't like you very much".
All of which leads me to conclude with Mousethief that it's not much short of a blasphemous parody
Matt
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
GF - nice one. God is obviously NOT Sovereign over Satan's heart and cannot ever be or any one else's. He will do ANYTHING to woo and win us, but, theoretically let's hope, like Karl Barth, any entity apart from God can say, even in Judgment to the bitter end, MY will be done.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon Cheng:
As Paul argues in Romans 9. Or Jesus in John 17:12. But it's a shadow of the doctrine of predestination, rather than a symmetrical process — a sovereign decision to leave people in their deadness as contrasted with a specific act to make them alive in Christ.
Well, yes, but here lies the difficulty - I know you're an intelligent person and you know it already, but just for the record - that we find it difficult to think in an eternal mode, not unreasonably since we live within time, and so we tend to think sequentially.
So either, God planned the creation of beings for damnation from before creation, or God knew in advance that creation would result in beings that would be damned.
The difference is in choice - do we have any? If not, the former is true and either God's intention is to torture people or he couldn't help making them that way, which explicitly contradicts the scriptural claim that God wants all to be saved*.
If we have choice, then in the distinction between God's necessary will and God's contingent will, it is possible to choose or reject God and so predestination viewed temporally is, rather than a preconceived plan, foreknowledge, and we're left with the option that if any are lost it's against God's contingent will and their own doing. This will require, of course, either post-mortem evangelism or Judgement that takes into account what we have to work with, if we're to avoid the same accusation of God being less than generous.
* There's a get-out clause of course - Universalism. But I'm not sure whether Universalism is really Calvinism (sorry, Ken).
Posts: 5748 | From: North East England | Registered: Jul 2003
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
In fact... I'll think I'll ask the question explicitly. How does a non-Universalist Calvinist that believes in scriptural inerrancy, or at least has a very high view of Scripture, cope with the passages that say God wants all to be saved?
Posts: 5748 | From: North East England | Registered: Jul 2003
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
Myself, I think the disagreement is at the philosophical level of what it means to be free, but the consequences for our perception of God can be severe. Calvinist seem to argue that if they are wrong, God is not sovereign. Free-willers argue that if they are wrong, God is evil. Neither is true but I'd rather risk the former error than the latter.
Indeed. God limiting himself is scriptural (e.g. Phil 2:6 'He emptied himself assuming the condition of a slave') and I've long thought that Calvinists are more bothered about God's sovereignty than God is. Whereas God being evil is certainly not scriptural!
I am still waiting for Jengie to explain why:
quote:
The Arminian God is like a cat sitting by a mousehole and blinking occassionally. The mice are going to be caught, but one or two might get through.
This doesn't match up with anything I know about Arminianism. It has to be said that given the fact that when I hear Calvinists talking about Arminianism I almost always go 'but that's not what how I understand Arminianism', I do wonder whether my view of Calvinism is similarly distorted. Are we just talking past each other?
Carys
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
Posts: 6896 | From: Bryste mwy na thebyg | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
In fact... I'll think I'll ask the question explicitly. How does a non-Universalist Calvinist that believes in scriptural inerrancy, or at least has a very high view of Scripture, cope with the passages that say God wants all to be saved?
They become universalist?
Or read Karl Barth & get so confused they don't know any more?
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
In fact... I'll think I'll ask the question explicitly. How does a non-Universalist Calvinist that believes in scriptural inerrancy, or at least has a very high view of Scripture, cope with the passages that say God wants all to be saved?
God's sovereign and moral will. In that God morally wills some things (ie that people should not kill each other) but sovereignly wills another (that men should kill Jesus and thus achieve the salvation of the world)
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
Sorry, my last post should have read "cut of your jib " ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) (Preview post is my friend...)
Matt
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
God's sovereign and moral will. In that God morally wills some things (ie that people should not kill each other) but sovereignly wills another (that men should kill Jesus and thus achieve the salvation of the world)
Could you elaborate please, Lep, in the specifics of how God can will all to be saved yet refuse to save some?
Posts: 5748 | From: North East England | Registered: Jul 2003
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
Could you elaborate please, Lep, in the specifics of how God can will all to be saved yet refuse to save some?
Well, not really I'm afraid, because I'm not claiming to understand it. (And I'm sorry if that's a cop-out, I've been told off for making such comments in Purg before, but I really don't understand it - ultimately it seems easier to say that if you have a strong doctrine of God's sovereignty, because ultimately my understanding or lack thereof can't thwart God's purposes, but anyway)
All I can say is that we appear to have God sovereignly arranging for things to happen which from his moral commands we would not think that he wills throughout Scripture. So why God appears not to arrange some of the things he morally wills in order to achieve his sovereign purposes, I can't explain, but neither can I seem to deny its' truth.
Arminianism I suppose can't merely take the "God wants everyone to be saved" at face value either, unless they are willing to say God can't save everyone. If you think he CAN but doesn't, then there must be something else God wants more than for everyone to be saved. What that thing is differs between the Calvinist and Arminian positions as far as I understand it.
[code tidied, duplicate deleted - C]
[ 26. April 2005, 13:50: Message edited by: Callan ]
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He hath loved us, He hath loved us, because he would love
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Arminianism I suppose can't merely take the "God wants everyone to be saved" at face value either, unless they are willing to say God can't save everyone.
I assume you're using Arminianism as a catch-all for any position that involves free will in some form. I appreciate your honesty on the question, by the way.
Incidentally, I am willing to say that I suspect if any are lost it's because God can't save them - because it's logically impossible. This is compatible with the view that love must be freely chosen.
quote:
If you think he CAN but doesn't, then there must be something else God wants more than for everyone to be saved.
Or that the definition of salvation in use, is wrong.
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Arminianism I suppose can't merely take the "God wants everyone to be saved" at face value either, unless they are willing to say God can't save everyone.
I assume you're using Arminianism as a catch-all for any position that involves free will in some form. I appreciate your honesty on the question, by the way.
Incidentally, I am willing to say that I suspect if any are lost it's because God can't save them - because it's logically impossible. This is compatible with the view that love must be freely chosen.
Indeed. I understand that - but it does leave you with the idea that God thinks us choosing to love Him is more important to Him than Him loving us.
I did actually mean Arminianism in the techincal sense above, but yeah, what I said would apply to most "free will" positions also.
Anyway, we've had this debate at length, and as evangelical Arminianism at least IS pretty much Calvinism but said differently, I'm not that fussed about it.
Sorry, by the way, for my botched code above( ) - thanks Callan for fixing it.
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He hath loved us, He hath loved us, because he would love
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
I understand that - but it does leave you with the idea that God thinks us choosing to love Him is more important to Him than Him loving us.
If all he wanted was to love, he could have created a bed of nice begonias. But for some reason he created beings with at least the semblance of the power to love him back -- or withhold that love. That must have been important to Him.
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Indeed. I understand that - but it does leave you with the idea that God thinks us choosing to love Him is more important to Him than Him loving us.
Maybe it does, but I'm suggesting not that God wants us to love him because that's His need, but rather that ultimately, salvation may be logically meaningless and impossible without it.
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Indeed. I understand that - but it does leave you with the idea that God thinks us choosing to love Him is more important to Him than Him loving us.
Maybe it does, but I'm suggesting not that God wants us to love him because that's His need, but rather that ultimately, salvation may be logically meaningless and impossible without it.
I can see the logcial difficulty - but I suppose you would then have to argue that God is constrained by logic - which I'm not sure is true. The incarnation for example, or the Trinity are both pretty hard to explain in logical terms.
I'm not trying to make anyone a Calvinist - I know I'm on a hiding to nothing there - but merely to say that I think we all need to acknowledge that there is difficult mystery in this, and Cavinism and free-will theologies are attempts to divine something which is ultimately mysterious.
The best we can seek to do is work with the evidence as we have it. That is all each of us are trying to do, hence I don't think that the "vile and evil heresy which makes you not a Christian" language is all that helpful.
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The Bede's American Successor
Curmudgeon-in-Training
# 5042
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
In fact... I'll think I'll ask the question explicitly. How does a non-Universalist Calvinist that believes in scriptural inerrancy, or at least has a very high view of Scripture, cope with the passages that say God wants all to be saved?
They become universalist?
Or read Karl Barth & get so confused they don't know any more?
Or read CFW Walther, including his 25 theses taken from Law and Gospel.
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This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride of wealth and food in plenty, comfort and ease, and yet she never helped the poor and the wretched.
—Ezekiel 16.49
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Demas*
Shipmate
# 7147
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
Incidentally, I am willing to say that I suspect if any are lost it's because God can't save them - because it's logically impossible. This is compatible with the view that love must be freely chosen.
I'm fascinated by the extremely binary view of free will being presented on this thread - that either we are completely free agents, responsible for our own decisions even unto Hell, or our free will is constrained and thus meaningless (and thus our love and life also meaningless).
Does a small child freely choose to love their mother? Is that love meaningless?
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Hamburger (note beetroot, pineapple, bacon and egg)
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Does a small child freely choose to love their mother? Is that love meaningless?
Answer to question 1. Yes and No
Answer to question 2. Not to the mother, however the child expresses it.
Point being of course that our love for God is not meaningless to Him, no matter how compromised and mixed up it may be from our side. And I think that is the freedom of will which matters to those of us who have been arguing that choice matters. We love because He first loved us.
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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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Gordon Cheng
a child on sydney harbour
# 8895
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
I'm fascinated by the extremely binary view of free will being presented on this thread - that either we are completely free agents, responsible for our own decisions even unto Hell, or our free will is constrained and thus meaningless (and thus our love and life also meaningless).
Does a small child freely choose to love their mother? Is that love meaningless?
Agreed. I wonder what "free" actually means. I tend to avoid using the term in relation to "will" because the more it's talked about the more confusing it becomes. It is a philosophical problem with wide-ranging ramifications, whether or not it is discussed from a theological angle as well.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon Cheng:
I wonder what "free" actually means.
I would say you were being disingenuous but that's not my call. In this discussion, "free" means "free to choose for itself without outside interference (i.e. from God) whether to accept or reject God's offer of salvation."
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Gordon Cheng:
I wonder what "free" actually means.
I would say you were being disingenuous but that's not my call. In this discussion, "free" means "free to choose for itself without outside interference (i.e. from God) whether to accept or reject God's offer of salvation."
And yet, I think I know what he means. All of our genetics, all of our experience, our current environment and so on all go into influencing our decisions. I can't say that God left me free to choose without interference, and I hope he never does. I'll almost certainly bugger it up.
The difference is in whether God actually removes all options for everyone, wiping out choice rather than guiding it. I think he does not and in fact logically cannot do both that and save us. But he can certainly pull out all the stops to influence our choice.
Similarly I see those who are Christians now, in the sense of being on the path and attempting to follow Christ at however feeble a level, as being blessed in a special way because we've had the chance to make choices that others haven't, but I don't see God abandoning the rest any time soon. Or for all eternity for that matter.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
In this discussion, "free" means "free to choose for itself without outside interference [...]"
But that would imply uncaused choices which I'm sure no-one believes.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
In this discussion, "free" means "free to choose for itself without outside interference [...]"
But that would imply uncaused choices which I'm sure no-one believes.
Choices are always subject to influences, which may have some effect on the perceived options. But the influences need not be overwhelming. I may "find the lady" despite all attempts by the conjurer to deceive me and "force" me to pick another card.
And here's the rub. My choices may also be perverse, despite benign influence to the contrary. That's my privilege. Or so I believe.
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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?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
In this discussion, "free" means "free to choose for itself without outside interference [...]"
But that would imply uncaused choices which I'm sure no-one believes.
I think if you had left in my gloss of what I was using "outside interference" to mean, it wouldn't be nearly so difficult to understand. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Demas*
Shipmate
# 7147
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Posted
So my sovereign free will would be intolerably interfered with by the 'outside interference' of God but other influences (original sin, genetics, drugs, addiction etc) are merely my own private obstacles to communion with God?
That I have to overcome by myself in order to 'choose whether to accept or reject God's offer of salvation'?
God help me.
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Gordon Cheng
a child on sydney harbour
# 8895
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Posted
Do we have any evidence that it is in our power to choose good as a general rule of our life, let alone choosing God?
The picture Jesus paints of us in our natural humanity seems to be unrelievedly bleak. We're so bad, even the good bits are bad!
so that the problem of free will is not just a problem to do with God's sovereignty (although it is that), but a problem of our ability.
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