I think it was Beza.

1. Total Depravity: Can anything God has created become totally depraved? I'm not sure about this. I think it's recognising something that's true - that rescue is ultimate on the divine initiative, yet it fails to take into account the innate desire for rescue and the "ability" to recognise God. And yet, if God is sovereign, then even the ability to rescue him must be gift also? Mmmmm. Dunno.

2. Unconditional Election: Is that "election" in the sense of "we've got God on our side, we're all going to heaven and you're not" or in the true, Israelite sense of election to a priestly and serving role?

3. Limited Atonement: ...pass. Sounds like a cushy way of getting out of having to do anything because you've got your place booked to me.

4. Irresistible Grace: Not quite irresistable. Nearly, but not quite.

Another verse

'For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring you to God.'

Actually, I found it all wonderfully comforting as a new christian, knowing that because I was surely saved, God was going to ensure that I walked uprightly.

Then it was terribly worrying when I failed to walk uprightly.

Ok sometimes when I look around the world I think that Total Depravity is the most eaisly proved of the 5, but then as has been said can anything that God made be totally not good?

Although I am satisfied in myself that Calvinism is wrong, it is not totally wrong. I think that there are 2 main things to learn from it.

1) The emphasis on God's Grace, sometimes we get 2 hung up on what we should do to please God. The calvinist would say that we can do nothing. God loves us even though we can do nothing to please Him. This is a lovely thought to me. It's wonderful that nothing can separate me from the love of God.

2) The enduring nature of God's love for me. Point 5, Perserverence of the Saints, I think is true. Once we are in Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit we are there for all eternity. God does not let go of us.
"Even if I descend into the depths Thou art with me"

Got any biographical links?

Besides, I know it should matter, but often the question of whether a person was a nice guy or not doesn't have any bearing on their being made into saints of some kind or another. I mean, If Cyril of Alexandria could be canonised, Calvin can be a hero of the Reformed church, surely?

Seriously, though. Calvin doesn't actually come into this discussion, since the fivce points are not found explicitly in his works, and - I am given to understand on the information of a friend who actually sat down and read the Institutes - Limited Atonement is arguably not there at all.
[/tangent]

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Originally posted by seasick:
It must be quite good fun being a Calvinist. You're either saved or you're not, and there's nothing you can do about it. So go and have fun . . . faith and Christian living becomes irrelevant.

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I'm not sure your average Calvinist would believe it to be that simple - basically, if you're truly regenerate, they would argue, then you will exhibit all the aspects of Christian living.

The main thing that bothers me (apart from all the other main things) is the denial of Free Will, which fails on a philosophical point (after all, the Free Will Defence is the only thing that solves the Problem of Evil so beloved of so many part-time philosophy students).

I could feel the light draining out of the universe.

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Originally posted by simon 2:
PLus it eliminates the need for evangelism. After all why bother telling everybody about God when they might not be in his plan, and if God is sovereign, according to this his plans can't be scuppered. So God doesn't choose according just to his own critera he chooses according to my laziness as well.

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Apparently not. Calvinists I have known would argue that it is our evangelism which is the vehicle through which God makes His sovereign will known. IE we are given the duty to evangelise, which God knew we were going to do anyway.

How do you know that God didn't ordain that you were going to be lazy? :P

unconditional election? nope. i just can't believe that "exclusive" is a good word to use about God.

limited atonement? nope. "Jesus died for me, but not for osama bin laden doesn't sound too 'graceful' to me.

irresistable grace? like to believe it, but can't. if it's true, then our free will goes down the pan. also suggests that whatever happens to us christians (and perhaps everyone?) is God's will.

perserverance of the saints again, would be nice, but smacks a bit of fatalism to me.

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Originally posted by Firenze:
I can remember looking at a particular work of calvinistic theology (probably pub. Banner of Truth or somesuch).
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Bryntirion's Banner of Truth Press hold the torch for Calvinist literature in Britain, keeping many puritan and reformed works in print (any publisher that can seriously call one of its imprints 'Puritan Paperbacks' and not see how lame that is really deserves my admiration ).

Calvinsim (ISTM) gives a nice neat system for saying who's in and who's out - or at least why some people are out, but I think that it reduces Christianity and God in doing this. Yes Limited Atonement is a logically coherent answer to the question why is Christ's death not effective to save everyone? (or something along those lines) but so is universalism (which I see as making most sense within the Calvinistic context if Divine grace is irrestible and God is loving surely everyone will be saved), but neither seem to me to fit with the breadth and diversity found in the Bible. The Gospels seem to me to emphasis what we have to do, Jesus' answer to the rich young man's question 'What shall I do to inherent eternal life?' isn't the standard evangelical one of believe in me and pray this prayer but 'Go and sell
everything'. How does this fit within Calvinsim?

Salvation cannot be reduced to 5 points, it rests on God's overwhelming love for his creation - despite us turning our back on him he reaches out to us and longs to draw us back. This seems absent from Calvinism where God seems quite happy to condemn the majority to Hell. I suppose it comes back to Total depravity or God's image in us being marred.

Oh and a nice quote from Arminius 'Calvinism makes God the author of sin'. (IIRC, A Level History was a long time ago, well 4 and a half years at least)

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Originally posted by Weslian:
I'd like to know how real those five points of Calvinism are for those mainstream churches that have Calvinistic roots, namely ... Presbyterian Church of Wales,

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Very little in the Welsh from memory. Never heard my dad preach on them or allude to them, and fabbest presby minister in the last 25 years Gwilym Ceiriog Evans had little time for them. I was in on a conversation between him and a visiting minister from Burma/Myanmar, and it seems Calvinism simply isn't on the radar of many M.C.'s anymore.

She was raised in the Roman Catholic Church and taught that if she died after she committed a mortal sin and before she confessed it, she would go to hell. The nuns taught her that many of her childish misbehaviors were mortal sins, so she spent most of her childhood trying to avoid hell.

As an adult she embraced Calvinism with great relief. If her salvation was a free gift from God and not something she had to earn, she could relax a little. The God who offered her a free gift seemed kinder than one who would send her to hell for a momentary lapse committed at the wrong time.

I wish she were here to discuss this.

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1. Total Depravity: The idea that human beings are contaminated by Original Sin and cannot get into a right relationship with God through their own effort.

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to which Stooberry added:

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nope. "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good."

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Yes, God made it good, and then Satan messed it up.

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2. Unconditional Election: God chooses those He will save, and furthermorem chooses them by His own criteria.

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Who's criteria would be better?

Stooberry added:

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nope. i just can't believe that "exclusive" is a good word to use about God.

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There are many things I can't believe, but that doesn't have any bearing on the reality of those things.

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3. Limited Atonement: Since God has chosen those He will save, it follows that Jesus only died for those God has chosen to save.

4. Irresistible Grace: That since God is sovereign, those He chooses to save have no choice.

5. Perseverance of the Saints: That since God is sovereign and has chosen those He will save, and since they have no choice in the matter, those whom God has saved will remain saved.

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And, Stooberry's comments:

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limited atonement? nope. "Jesus died for me, but not for osama bin laden doesn't sound too 'graceful' to me.

irresistable grace? like to believe it, but can't. if it's true, then our free will goes down the pan. also suggests that whatever happens to us christians (and perhaps everyone?) is God's will.

perserverance of the saints again, would be nice, but smacks a bit of fatalism to me.

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Do you really want to lump yourself in with Osama? Jesus only said to one thief "Today you be with me in Heaven".

Please explain, with references, why you so strongly believe in free will, and what it means to you.

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boo to calvinism. boo, boo, boooo.

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Originally posted by Dyfrig:
This may not be as true within the "Eastern Connexion" (the assocation of prebyters from the English-language churches in the PCW), as that tends to be more self-consciously Calvinist.

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Unconditional Election: As I understand this, it means that God does not choose us on the basis of anything that we do (i.e. God chose Abrahm rather than, say, Socrates, for his own mysterious reasons). As near as I can tell, this is simply a matter of spelling out what is implicit in the notion of God as a gracious creator. After all, is it really grace if God is waiting for us to do something before he chooses to give us grace?

Free will: I think the modern notion of free will is perhaps the most dangerous heresy around today. We want to think that "freedon" is a zero-sum game: the more freedom God has the less I have as a human being. So if I am to be genuinely free, then God must be in some sense unfree. God must be somehow waiting on my decision before he can save me. But if that is the case, then ultimately I am the cause of my own salvation (which puts me in the place of God). One of the things that begins to disappear around the beginning of the 14th century is the understanding that divine freedom and human freedom are not in competition; rather, God's freedom is the ground of human freedom. Grace does not make us less free, but more free, by saving us from our bondage to sin. Apart from grace, we are like the alcoholic who "freely" decides to have just one more drink.

But as far as limited atonement goes. . . boo, boo, boo!

Historically I believe that Beza was a pupil of Calvin and really put what is known a Calvinism together and then Arminius was a pupil of Beza who put together his 5 points to show how far Beza had gone wrong.

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Originally posted by Wood:
And, of course, the Evangelical Movement of Wales tends to be very calvinist indeed.

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It hadn't struck me that the English-language bit of the PCW was desperately Calvanistic, nor the CofS for that matter.

The most Calvanistic people that I have met are the Free Church of Scotland and the Free Preby Church of Scotland, along with the Evangelical Movement of Wales.

It seems to me that the more Calvanistic a person, the more they seem to internatise any expression of joy. I have been to Christmas and Easter services that have been more 'Lenten' than celebratory. It got me very confused!

after all:

'For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.'

depending on the case of "this" (and this is not from yourselves), it'll refer to either the grace or the faith which is God's gift.

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Originally posted by Stooberry:
depending on the case of "this" (and this is not from yourselves), it'll refer to either the grace or the faith which is God's gift.

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Unfortunately, "this" does not occur in the Greek. Ephesians 2:8-9 literally says,

For by grace you are saved through faith; and this not of yourselves ; God's gift; not of works, that not anyone might boast.

I don't know what I was thinking of when I posted that. Of course the word "this" is there.

However, it does not refer to either faith or grace. Both these words are feminine, and "this" is neuter. I assume it refers to the situation as a whole.

However, the problem I have is that God has created someone who he would not redeem and would therefore be eternally condemned. The arbitrariness of this is certainly not fair. Paul, in Romans 9, doesn't even bother dealing with this point - he simply says "Who are you, a man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder: 'Why have you made me thus?'"

Both Calvinists and Arminians would say that there is something more important for God than saving everyone, since God wants to save everyone and unfortunately won't. Calvinists would say that this thing is God's glory, while Arminians would say that it is the preservation of man's free will.

Wayne Grudem ends by saying that "it seems that the [Calvinist] position has more explicit biblical support than the Arminian".

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He points out that people saying "Election is unfair" have to understand that it would be perfectly fair for God not to save anyone. The fact that he chooses to save some "is a demonstration of grace that goes far beyond the requirements of fairness and justice".

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Yep, that's the answer I've got from Calvinists in the past. But I just don't buy it, I can't. It might be perfectly fair and just of him to leave us all to rot - but it doesn't fit with his character as revealed in the Bible. He searches for the lost - even at the expense of the saved. Think of the parables of the lost sheep, coin and son.

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For me, like (I would think) most people, the whole thing of election and reprobation seems really difficult to swallow and hard to reconcile with out view of God. Perhaps our view of God is wrong.

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Well, if the choice is between my view of God and a view of God that is reconcilable with Calvinism, I'll stick with my view even if that means I'm damned. I don't like the God Calvinism seems to require.

1. 'Total depravity' does not mean that everything (or anything) is as evil or corrupt as it can possibly be. It merely means that everything every person does, thinks, or says is imperfect and tainted by sin (since the Fall, of course).
Think of the best action ever done by a fallen human. Was it perfectly free from mixed motives? "Non," says Calvin.

2. 'Unconditional election' means that God chooses to save someone just coz he's nice that way, not because they deserve it. If you accept that there's nothing we can do to earn or achieve our salvation, then this follows on pretty naturally.

3. 'Limited Atonement' - that Christ on the cross paid the debts not for all people, but only for those predestined to salvation. This is just economy: why suffer for those you foreknow will not accept your sacrifice.
(We're on thin ice here. The Bible really is against it, and it's just what you get from believing in both predestination and penal substitution, if you'll pardon the jargon.)

4. 'Irresistable Grace' means that God is the infallible wooer - if chooses to unleash his charms on a person, they'd never be so coldhearted as to turn him away. It's just the same as saying, 'If only everyone knew the whole truth about God, heaven and hell etc, they'd choose God.'

5. 'Perseverence of the saints' is simply predestination looked at another way: if you're one of the chosen you'll keep going to the end, one way or another; if you fall (and don't get up again), you weren't one of the chosen.

6. Prooftexting isn't going to achieve much. Different bits of the Bible support the opposite sides, and the fact that you can quote the ones that agree with you doesn't prove anything.

Total depravity This is based on an understanding of the fall that comes ultimately from Augustine: that man fell totally and completely, and nothing good remained in him of the original "deposit" of good that God endowed him with at creation. When you point out somebody who is, in fact, doing good and yet who is not a Christian (say, Ghandi), the TULIP calvinist must either redefine good so that it's only good when Christians do it, or must drag in bad things about the person (as if no Christian who did good works ever had bad characteristics), or simply deny that the person is, in fact, doing good.

Ultimately most Calvinists in my experience will back down from "total depravity" and say limply that we cannot "save ourselves." But there is a world of turf between "totally depraved" and "unable to save oneself." The Orthodox Church accepts the latter. It categorically rejects the former.

Unconditional election In other words, God's decision of who gets saved is 100% totally arbitrary -- there are no conditions that make one person more likely to be saved than another. Let's call a spade a spade: this makes God into a dice-rolling ogre. In contrast to clear scriptural teaching that God is not a respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), this would have us believe that God plays favorites, like a neurotic mother who can't help but give more love and attention to some of her children than others. It is blasphemous.

Limited atonement This is flatly contradicted in Scripture. For example, "And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 Jn 2:2). There is no way to fit this verse into a "limited atonement" worldview. Just as there is no way to fit a "limited atonement" worldview into the New Testament.

Irresistable grace Not only does God choose whom He will save, he forces himself on them. This is in clear contradistinction to oodles of Scripture verses urging us to choose to follow God. Surely a waste of breath, if we have no choice in the matter? Here the TULIP Calvinist tries to pull a fast one on us: he says that from God's point of view we have no choice, but it looks from our point of view as if we do. I assume we can be forgiven if we find this as inscrutable as the man on Monty Python whose name is SPELLED "Luxury Yacht" but PRONOUNCED "Throat-warbler Mangrove."

"Come, let us reason together" says the Lord through Isaiah. "Reason schmeason," says the Calvinist, "we do what he forces us to do, however it may look to us."

Bad theologian. No biscuit.

Perserverance of the saints again What then do we make of the innumerable passages in the NT exhorting us to persevere to the end? If there is no chance of not persevering, again God is a great Waster of Ink. Here again the Calvinist must perform amazing feats of mental gymnastics to save the appearances. Anyone who has been a churchgoing Christian for a long enough time will know somebody who seemed to be a very strong Christian at one time, and then fell away, turned his/her back on Christ and the church. "Well they were never saved in the first place," the Calvinist says. Then how can you know if anyone, even yourself is saved now, if someone can be NOT saved, despite all appearances?

All they have done is change the meaning of the word "saved" so that you're only saved in retrospect. You can only be sure someone is a "saint" if they do, in fact, persevere. Those who do not were never "saints" in the first place.

In such a case "perseverence of the saints" becomes a harmless tautology: "Anybody who perseveres to the end will, in fact, persevere to the end."

Either that or it is, as all the admonitions to keep running the race suggest and the writers of Hebrews and the Revelation explicitly state*, possible to fall away from saving grace. (As the Orthodox Church has always taught.)

In which case grace isn't irresistable after all, and thus election isn't a fiat of God and hence unconditional, and thus the atonement isn't limited to the elect (for one can't be saved and then be, and remain, unsaved, if salvation and atonement are inextricably linked). And the whole thing tumbles down like the (blasphemous) house of cards that it is.

Reader Alexis

I have been to many Calvinistic Churches, and have found one thing unites them all, Joylessness, and I really can not understand why this is so, If they are so sure of their salvation, why the long faces?

Like Wood I have flirted with calvinism, but not been satisfied with all of it, but the same can be said of Arminianism, i now fall somewhere in the middle, or perhaps I actually fall outside the debate all together!

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Originally posted by PaulTH:
Amen again.

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Well, Paul and Nicole, we make quite an unexpected troika!

The only TULIP I want anything to do with is from the Netherlands, and I do NOT mean the Dutch Reformed Church!

Starbelly is right in saying that Calvinist places and people are on the whole joyless. And woe be to you if you dare to have joy!

Although Paul, I think all branches of Christianity have been and have the potential to be used abusively. It comes from people feeling the need to be theologically "right" where others are "liberal", or "wrong". It comes from a need to create security for ourselves.

And SteveTom, your understanding of how Calivnists view Total Depravity might be right in theory , but in practice most Calvinists hold that we are totally vile, and that the image of God is so ruined in us as to be non-existent; ie the "image of God" was something pre-Fall. My aunt harangued me for 3 hours in this way.

I do not agree with Total Depravity when I am in a good mood, for the reason that we may have marred the image of God, but it is still there in us, and capable of restoration.

However, I don't think I will ever be rid of Calvinism, much as I hate the way I was bound by it, and its influence on me during my developmental years.

Last night, the news focussed on fresh violence breaking out in Northern Ireland, and on the overrunning of Gaza Strip by Israeli forces. Later, I watched a documentary on the early stages of Hitler's Pogrom against the Jews, and how heartlessly both the German soldiers (or more, their generals who could have stopped it - many soldiers have been emotionally wounded for life through the actions they had to take) and the local police in the places they overran mowed down human beings.

I was reflecting too, on the twisted sexual abberration and hypocrisy in my family. While my Dad was growing up, he was physically and emotionally abused with Calvinism by my Opa. At the same time, this self-righteous father was off having a string of affairs, openly, with a number of women from the church . My Dad is still Calvinist, and it was deeply engraved on me too, though without the physical abuse. And I suspect my Dad's been promiscuous too - all the while my Mum has slaved and slaved on his behalf and been impeccably faithful in all things.

These church people, those who make themselves out to have their theology down pat, and "everyone else is wrong", who present good-little-X (insert denomination) masks to the world
- are a pack of liars. I include myself in that, because I too am a good-little-churchperson and I am afraid of the beast I keep chained within. And what extents we go to to cover up the reality that crouches within!

Anyhow, in this black frame of mind last night, I wrote the following reflection.

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Who are you God? And why do you allow violence? It seems my eyes have been blind for longer than I remember, that I have never seen the sickening truth, the sickening reality that this world is. War, stupid petty religious war between Catholic and Protestant, who no longer know why they are fighting, or what they really believe, or why they believe it and how and why it is so much better than that of the “Others” that it is worth killing for. And War of another kind, fostered by a Superpower who took on the role of God, and by a Fading Kingdom wanting to be rid of an “ethic” problem – to the result that the innocent are murdered in their beds while the tanks role in, all because one group of people believe they have an ancestral right to territory long forfeited…War never changes, it is always the same. The same crimes are committed, the same inhumanities, the same failure to see another person, regardless of racial, sexual, or religious identity, as a human being with feelings, thoughts and dreams. One wonders what crimes the “goodies” are covering, and only a rumour is heard, a rustle of autumn leaves, of the rapes, murders and crimes they have committed in putting down the enemy. How can this be condoned? And does responsibility remain with the perpetrators, or are they somehow absolved of their crimes through being the victors, or a world Power?

Because it seems to me that evil prospers all round the world, in all its peoples, in each individual member of each nation on earth. We are twisted and corrupt, deformed and crooked, and our eyes glow with malice against the innocent. Yet who are the innocent? Do we not deserve our suffering? For none of us is innocent. We all have buried deep within us the malice that informs the behaviour of the worst among us, and that latent power crouches as a beast within each of us, ready to pounce, to crush and devour, if let loose, if we fail to control it and it gets out. Like werewolves we are; we travel the world in a veil of human flesh: but all it hides is the reality of ugliness within, the raging beast governed by primal urges to feed its pride.

Foul we are, like fetid water in tyre-track puddles, breeding nought but flies. It seems no human is capable of doing one self-less deed, for all our motives are mixed to the point of even our good intentions being a travesty of good, and all our good deeds (even those inspired by divine grace) are mockeries of love.

There is no such thing as self-less love between human beings. There is no such thing as love, which remains the preserve of only the divine nature, and wholly unattainable by ordinary mortals, no matter how sanctified and progressed in the life of grace they are. Because we are too crippled to love, we cannot, dare not, should not trust another human being, lest they cripple us still more through our vulnerability. For afterall, each human being is so self-centred as to be unable to see beyond their own interests, even the interests of their soul. And so, if we open ourselves to others, we will be hurt, just as we hurt others who have opened to us.

And above all, God cannot be trusted. He is not evil, but holy. And so there is no recourse for anyone unfortunate enough to be born into this world. He was made incarnate, supposedly suffered the worst deal life can serve up, was sinless and died to save the world, rising to usher in a new life for all who trust him – if any can. Look at the world! It is still dark, and all humans are still foul cesspits seething with bodily and spiritual desires! Yet we cannot even shout at him, cannot even call him, and when we have and do, thinking he will heal and aid us in our need, he doesn’t listen, but sends instead more and worse suffering, promising Paradise to those who endure. Faugh! Some Paradise! All he needs to do is say the word, and we would be healed, healed of our deformities of mind and spirit, body and soul. But no, instead he withholds his power, instructing useless servants to be his delegates. And who are these delegates, but the foulest of foul, most broken-not-healed among us? Those whose masks are more spectacular and even better maintained than anyone else’s? As if they are capable of anything good, even under grace.

No, the world is graceless, and God withholds his grace until a distant future, a mere golden promise, a dream. He shuts his ears to the cries of earthly despair, for if he didn’t, one assumes his pity would be roused, as it was in the days he walked the earth, and then the distant promise would have to be squandered on the swine in the mud at this point in time, swine who are incapable of understanding, incapable of being raised to anything other than what they are. We have proved this afterall, have we not?

So eager are we to escape dismal reality that we convince ourselves that he cares for us each individually in each moment of our lives. We use our imaginations, and so strong are our own powers of self-hypnosis, we believe we are loved, treasured, valued and cleaned-up, healed and sent forth by God. We even are able to give ourselves “experiences” of God, of being loved, of being inspired to be something we can never be. We have “religious” experiences, and supposedly meet this loving Christ. Some say in doing this we merely commune with our own souls, and so again escape the reality of our sickness, suffering and pain. They say, God is within, or the Kingdom of God is within. Well of course it is! Going within is the only way we can convince ourselves that there is any light, warmth or love in the world. Yet this too is a mere manifestation of pride, and wanting to escape from reality. And it does nothing to truly heal us of the effects of pride and selfcentredness.

We cannot heal ourselves. God is unwilling to do it.

See and despair!

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While the theological position is often married to a particular kind of church, this is by no means always the case.

[QUOTE]Dyfrig said: What Moo said about Presleyterian's experience is fascinating - it reminds us that theologies are actually organic beasties which exist in relation (and often in competition) to other theologies. Calvinism, in that particular case, was a balm for an injured soul.
[QUOTE]

I so miss Presleyterian. She's an absolute star (if you're reading this, Lesley, I wish you well in everything you do).

But you see, a theological position which offers an insight to God and which offers, as Dyfrig put it, 'balm to a wounded soul' - well, that's not a 'horrible, blasphemous lie'. That's a different perspective.

My own conversion experience has a lot to do with the Calvinist viewpoint. Were it not for a particularly Calvinist bloke of my acquaintance and his words to me, I would never have become a Christian in the first place.

Serioulsy, tho', I think to blame John Calvin for the failings of a 20th century institution and the sexual hypocrisy of some of its members is pushing it a bit far, nunc, however hurtful this has been for you.

It's a bit like saying that Innocent III's despotic actions against the Cathars destroys the value of anything written or said by a Roman Catholic, or that Cyril of Alexandria's tyranny invalidates Orthodox understanding

Perhaps we should engage with Calvin and not the Calvinisms we have encountered? Otherwise we're just doing what those rioters in Belfast were doing - hating something because we've grown up hating it.

My view is that out of Calvinism and Classical Arminianism, Calvinism is the "stronger" system. However I also think that Christian theology has been unduly influenced by greek philosophy. The distant God many of you complain about in Calvinism is the God of Plato, not the Bible, and has found his way into the christian faith through Augustine and others since him. Classical Arminianism is really only a tweaking of Calvinism,it leaves to many oditities about the nature of God.

Neo Arminianism seems a more coherent system, and the Openness theology is a natural outworking of that. Some however consider it to have gone outside the bounds of Evangelical Orthodoxy. Many of the things that make one "Evangelical" are actually symptoms of Calvinism, as standard Evangelical statements of faith demonstrate.

The Openness theology however suffers from being new in its approach. Although the church fathers seem to be mainly free-will theists it is clear that they didn't think about things the way Pinnock et al do

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Originally posted by sacredthree:
My view is that we need to read ... Pinnock

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Originally posted by Dyfrig:
It's a bit like saying that Innocent III's despotic actions against the Cathars destroys the value of anything written or said by a Roman Catholic, or that Cyril of Alexandria's tyranny invalidates Orthodox understanding.

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Actually, it's more like saying, "Since I've met [for example] a Franciscan who wasn't a very nice person, I must conclude that all Franciscans are bad people and Saint Francis mnust have been a bad person too."

I use an extreme example, but the logic is, I think, the same, that because the views of those members of a group whom you have met are not so inspiring, you therefore assume not only that all members of this group are bad, but that its originator was also bad.

Now this may be true; eg. you meet a member of the Aryan Nation church, you're on to a winner if you imagine them to be all nutters - but bear in mind that the Aryan Nation is a group founded on hate for the propagation of hate.

On the other hand, Calvin's doctrine was the attempt of a man to address how he saw the world, in both a political and spiritual sense. Calvin, according to SteveTom (and trust me, Tomkins does know what he's talking about) was not a bad man.

Shall we, as Dyfrig said, rather than engage in an anti-Calvinist hate-fest, engage with the ideas and offer a critique which doesn't just say, 'it's crap'. We may well conclude it's crap, but let's give it the benefit, mm?

I don't think it's fair to call something held dear by a large number of decent and genuine believers a 'hideous blasphemy'.

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Someone used to have a sig. quote (from whom, I don't recall) along the lines of: the heresies which we most hate are the ones we've left behind. Me, it took me a long while to realise that evangelicalism wasn't all dominant personalities and cliques.

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Originally posted by sacredthree:
New Frontiers, the largest house church group in the UK is strongly Calvinist, both as a doctrinal position and as a spirituality.

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Re: accusations of Calvinist church meetings as 'joyless'. Whatever you may think of NFI's theology (and I can take it or leave it... well, leave it, mostly), you cannot accuse their meetings of being 'joyless'.

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However I also think that Christian theology has been unduly influenced by greek philosophy.

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Originally posted by Dyfrig:
Really, Edward? Can you tell me where I can get hold of some of Pinnock's work?

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Why! At the Shop of Fools of course.

What a silly question

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Originally posted by Wood:
Not that evangelicalism is a heresy, of course. RIGHT, DYFRIG?

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True, Woodford.

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Originally posted by Mousethief:
I am not now, nor have I ever been a Calvinist. TULIP calvinism is a horrible, blasphemous lie which makes God out to be an ogre, and humans his helpless pawns (who are nevertheless blamed for doing what he forces them to do!).

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I suggest you should represent people's opinions more accurately before you denounce them as blasphemous lies.

Total depravity When you point out somebody who is, in fact, doing good and yet who is not a Christian (say, Ghandi), the TULIP calvinist must either redefine good so that it's only good when Christians do it, or must drag in bad things about the person (as if no Christian who did good works ever had bad characteristics), or simply deny that the person is, in fact, doing good.

No. Calvin addressed that specific issue in the Institutes and says that when the unregenerate do good it is by the special grace of God (but no such act is perfectly good or springs form perfect motives, neither can it atone for other bad things done).

(And of course Christians have 'bad characteristics'. That's why for Calvin salvation is a matter of grace and forgiveness, not achieved by holiness.)

Unconditional election In other words, God's decision of who gets saved is 100% totally arbitrary -- there are no conditions that make one person more likely to be saved than another. Let's call a spade a spade: this makes God into a dice-rolling ogre.

Well, Calvin also rejects the idea that God's choice is arbitrary: God has his reasons, good and sufficient reasons, but they are hidden from us.

And anyway, if no one can save themselves, then either God could save everyone, or no one, or some of them. Most Christians believe he took the last option. So what precisely is the difference?

Limited atonement This is flatly contradicted in Scripture. For example, "And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 Jn 2:2). There is no way to fit this verse into a "limited atonement" worldview.

Well there is, because the writer is addressing a particular readership, and could be saying that that Christ also died for all other Christians across the world. (There's no way to fit "Do not make graven images" into an Orthdox or Catholic worldview, but most people seem to manage OK.)

Anyway, Calvin never taught this himself, it was later disciples tidying things up, so it's quite possible to be a Calvinist without believing it. It has never had the assent of all Calvinists.

Irresistable grace Not only does God choose whom He will save, he forces himself on them.

No. The doctrine is that God does not override the will, but evokes a willing reponse.
Take something perfectly good and wonderful. If I don't want it, it can only be because I don't properly appreciate what it is. If you can perfectly reveal to me how good it is, I will find it irresistible. No forcing, no ogres.

This is in clear contradistinction to oodles of Scripture verses urging us to choose to follow God.

No it isn't. These exhortations are one of the things God uses to open our eyes.

Here the TULIP Calvinist tries to pull a fast one on us: he says that from God's point of view we have no choice, but it looks from our point of view as if we do.

This TULIP Calvinist is a bit of a duffer, isn't he?

"Come, let us reason together" says the Lord through Isaiah. "Reason schmeason," says the Calvinist, "we do what he forces us to do, however it may look to us."

It is by his perfect reasoning that the offer becomes irresistible.

Perserverance of the saints again What then do we make of the innumerable passages in the NT exhorting us to persevere to the end? If there is no chance of not persevering, again God is a great Waster of Ink.

God ensures that his chosen persevere to the end by, among other things, exhorting them to do so.

Here again the Calvinist must perform amazing feats of mental gymnastics to save the appearances. Anyone who has been a churchgoing Christian for a long enough time will know somebody who seemed to be a very strong Christian at one time, and then fell away, turned his/her back on Christ and the church. "Well they were never saved in the first place," the Calvinist says.

No, the mental exercise involved here is utterly simple: those who are not chosen can become Christians, and those who are chosen may fall from the faith. But God will always bring the chosen back, and he will not give the reprobate sufficient strength to continue to the end.

Then how can you know if anyone, even yourself is saved now, if someone can be NOT saved, despite all appearances?

You can't. Other people's salvation is not your business, your business to keep on going in hope and perseverence.

All they have done is change the meaning of the word "saved" so that you're only saved in retrospect.

Not so.

You can only be sure someone is a "saint" if they do, in fact, persevere. Those who do not were never "saints" in the first place.

Calvinist theology is not about looking into other people's souls.

Either that or it is, as all the admonitions to keep running the race suggest and the writers of Hebrews and the Revelation explicitly state, possible to fall away from saving grace. (As the Orthodox Church has always taught.)