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TULIPed
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Which is why I’m not a 5 pointer. Keep that between you and me though.
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HopkinsReb
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Something I forget with your username. Then again, I’m neither Anthony Hopkins nor a member of a rebellion.
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lanman87
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Christianity isn’t about avoiding sin and working to convince God that we are worthy of heaven. If that were the case the there was no need for Christ to come as we could have done that as Jews following the Jewish Law. Christianity is about being adopted, made a new creation in Christ, and having our hearts changed. When our hearts are changed then avoiding sin doesn’t become drudgery but becomes a passion, loving our neighbor becomes joyous, and worship becomes an expression of love and devotion that brings us a kind of pleasure that could never be found in sin and the world.
In other words, avoiding sin or “Behaving well” is a result of loving God and loving others that comes from our relationship with God through Jesus. How we behave is more often than not a reflection of what is in our hearts. If Jesus is in our hearts then we will seek to live for Him.
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HopkinsReb
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Literally nobody is making the case that Christianity is about “working to convince God that we are worthy of heaven.” Nobody.
Again, the Calvinist position reduces us to automatons. Notice your use of the passive voice: it’s about “being adopted, made a new creation in Christ, having our hearts changed.” The actual people are irrelevant; we’re just machines along for the ride. God programs some of us for Hell and some of us for Heaven, and His little machines march along to their destinations.
John Calvin’s version of God is not a God I could worship.
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ATraveller
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That should have read “Romans 1-3” not “Romans 3”.
The LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart can be found in multiple parts of Exodus.
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ATraveller
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I made no such claim. The point was if you think Calvinists believe Jesus had sin, then by that reasoning you would claim Catholics believe Jesus had a sinful nature, which obviously Catholics don’t.
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SyCarl
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First let me say that I am not a Calvinist. I am more of an Arminian. If God wants all to be saved, what is preventing that except man’s ability not to choose God? Limited atonement does not conform with much in Scripture. That does not mean Calvin did not get some things right and his views on predestination were expressed to varying degrees by earlier theologans. Augustine led the way in the later part of his life in response to Pelagianism.
Thomas Aquinas and Calvin have quite a few similarities on predestination. The portion of Summa Theologica dealing with predestination is not that long and is interesting to read. This article is fairly long but I think it does a reasonable job in comparing Calvin and Aquinas on this issue.
A Calvinist would argue that freewill still exists but is under control of our fallen nature, If you put a plate of raw meat and a pile of hay in front of a hungry tiger he will always choose the meat although it has the option of choosing either.
Calvinists would still say that second causes are still important. That is one reason evangelism is so important as it is one of the means by which God implements His will.
Thomas Aquinas and Calvin have quite a few similarities on predestination. The portion of Summa Theologica dealing with predestination is not that long and is interesting to read. This article is fairly long but I think it does a reasonable job in comparing Calvin and Aquinas on this issue.
A Calvinist would argue that freewill still exists but is under control of our fallen nature, If you put a plate of raw meat and a pile of hay in front of a hungry tiger he will always choose the meat although it has the option of choosing either.
Calvinists would still say that second causes are still important. That is one reason evangelism is so important as it is one of the means by which God implements His will.
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ATraveller
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Let’s start with what Gnostics believe and contrast that with what Calvinists of all stripes believe. The five common beliefs of Gnosticism (Gnosticism - Wikipedia)
1. All matter is evil, and the non-material, spirit-realm is good.
Calvinists don’t believe this. Among Presbyterians and likely Reformed Baptists:
All Christians believe God is beyond our comprehension but He revealed all we needed to know in Scripture at the very least. Calvinists certainly don’t believe in Aeon spirits.
3. The creator of the (material) universe is not the supreme god, but an inferior spirit (the Demiurge).
Calvinists definitely don’t believe this. God created the universe and is supreme and sovereign.
4. Gnosticism does not deal with “sin,” only ignorance.
Calvinists talk about sin so much it’ll make your head spin. Romans 1:
Calvinists believe in Sola Fide. There’s no intellectual requirement.
1. All matter is evil, and the non-material, spirit-realm is good.
Calvinists don’t believe this. Among Presbyterians and likely Reformed Baptists:
2. There is an unknowable God, who gave rise to many lesser spirit beings called Aeons.
All Christians believe God is beyond our comprehension but He revealed all we needed to know in Scripture at the very least. Calvinists certainly don’t believe in Aeon spirits.
3. The creator of the (material) universe is not the supreme god, but an inferior spirit (the Demiurge).
Calvinists definitely don’t believe this. God created the universe and is supreme and sovereign.
4. Gnosticism does not deal with “sin,” only ignorance.
Calvinists talk about sin so much it’ll make your head spin. Romans 1:
5. To achieve salvation, one needs gnosis (knowledge).
Calvinists believe in Sola Fide. There’s no intellectual requirement.
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ATraveller
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Do people not have thoughts that transgress against God? Even if one doesn’t punch someone without provocation, if a person imagines such an act, it can be sinful.
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Edmundus1581
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I’m just picking up on this interesting comment, and haven’t followed the whole conversation.HopkinsReb:
My point is that Augustine’s view on the nature of fallen man was enormously influential. It was certainly sidelined by more optimistic views of humanity, and the Western Church had to do a balancing act between Origen’s highly optimistic view of humanity and Augustine’s much more dour view. I view Calvin as sort of the opposite end of the pole from Origen, but as I said Calvin and Luther weren’t just making these things up, and because Augustine’s position as one of the pre-eminent theologians of Western Christianity, they felt they had pretty good ground to stand on.niceatheist:
This is a different thing than “accept[ing]everything Augustine taught.”
It’s important to always remember that thinkers through the centuries were rarely “just making things up”. It’s very easy to make this mistake on both Catholic and Protestant sides, and probably in the secular world worst of all. eg. the secular lampooning of the Church’s response to Galileo.
Well said, and I find it a useful reminder in my own rather casual dismissal of Luther and Calvin.
I would also posit that “not just making things up” applied more strongly in earlier centuries (say through to the 20th?) where the scholarly rigor was tighter, and that it’s much easier now to “just make things up” and fabricate evidence which conforms with fashionable views (eg. the Grievance Studies Hoax and How feminists corrupt DV research)).
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ATraveller
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And this is where Calvinists are in dispute with each other.
Some definitely believe God purposely sends some people to Hell. I don’t think any actual confessions of faith express this view. Others don’t agree with “Hyper-Calvinism” and mirror as closely as possible to what Lutherans believe. And then everything in between the two.
Some Calvinists believe the Fall was decreed by God. Others believe the Fall was due to free will and the consequence of that inhibits people so God intervenes for some people. But then others think all of this is speculative and shouldn’t dwell on this.
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fhansen
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Not much of a man IMO if, at the beginning, all else being equal, He created some to experience eternal bliss and the rest eternal torment, without regard to their will. Presumably He treats worms, who have no say in the matter either, way better than the poor reprobate! Wouldn’t want to be on His team.
It’s not a matter of what we want-but solely what God wants. If He wants us to participate for the good of all-who are we to deny that? Unless we’re sort of lazy? Do some prefer not to change, no obligation to be righteous or holy anymore? IDK. The Savior still gets the credit because we can’t turn to Him to begin without the Savior coming to save us-and yet we’d still be responsible for ever saying no to His calling, for refusing to be saved IOW. If we accept His offer with faith, we’re forgiven of sin and made new creations. Now God is expecting us to walk in and “own” that justice, that righteousness He’s given us. He never created us to be sinners after all and His desire now is to restore justice to His wayward creation and arguably produce even more yet-something greater than He began with, rather than simply ignore justice by imputing it to us. Otherwise He’d be in the position of simply, suddenly, with the advent of Christ, determining to stock heaven with some of His worthless wretches and stock hell with the reprobate. End of story-wow-exciting plan. He may as well have simply done that at the beginning, or prevented Adam from making the wrong choice then, if man’s will has no bearing. In that way He would’ve at least precluded all the drama and pain and suffering and sin and evil that have transpired since the Fall.
But the truth, as the RCC teaches, is that all of this has a purpose. God has always planned to bring an even greater good out of the mess and so, from the larger perspective, placed His creation in a "state of journeying to perfection”, that perfection, that justice, as it applies to man, involving our choices, choices that can be shaped, for one thing by the education gained through experiencing a world where God’s will is not in control in the moral sphere, where man’s will reigns for better or worse, favoring the worse more often as not as shown by the sin that naturally results when man is no longer in direct subjugation to God, where knowledge of God, even, has been lost, a situation initiated by Adam.
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fhansen
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Here we know, viscerally, both good and evil, and therefore have the choice of deciding between the two, and, hopefully, of choosing to run towards the good, to the Ultimate Good as grace, also, seeks to move us towards Him. Man was made for communion with God; man needs to come to find out just how much he needs Him and how worthy He is and Jesus came to reveal just that: how desirable the Father really is when the time was ripe in human history-and ripe in our own, individual histories, so we may choose : light over darkness, life over death, good over evil, God over no God.
The Church teaches that man is created as a noble and dignified being, made in God’s own image whom He loves lavishly, grandly, beyond our ability to imagine. We don’t have to live up to that potential, of course, a fact we witness daily in human life, but we’re given the capability of doing the best we can with the lot and grace we’re given.
The Church teaches that man is created as a noble and dignified being, made in God’s own image whom He loves lavishly, grandly, beyond our ability to imagine. We don’t have to live up to that potential, of course, a fact we witness daily in human life, but we’re given the capability of doing the best we can with the lot and grace we’re given.
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lanman87
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I’ve known plenty of people in my life who think that we get to heaven by some sort of cosmic scales where if we do more good than bad we are in. As a matter of fact, when I first came to this forum I used the analogy that the Catholic view of salvation is like a high school student trying to get a college scholarship by not getting into trouble, making good grades and doing extracurricular activities in hopes of getting a merit scholarship, with the scholarship representing heaven. Someone (a Catholic) told me “that’s exactly right”.
Do we adopt ourselves, make ourselves a new creation and change our own hearts?
BTW-I’m not a Calvinist but I have been studying both Catholic and Reformed Theology. Calvinism does raise some interesting questions. If salvation (past, present and future) is by Grace through faith and not of our own doing then is my decision to follow and be obedient to Christ a decision I made of my own accord or is God choosing me and my response is to choose Him back?
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HopkinsReb
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Let me rephrase: literally no Christian school of thought is making that claim. It is not a Catholic view that people get into heaven by being good enough as proven by their works. The Catholic who told you that was ignorant of Catholic teachings.
We choose to be adopted, to be recreated, and to have our hearts changed. Calvin leaves no room for any of our choice. God offers Himself to all; it requires an act of the will to follow Him.
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TULIPed
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I don’t make the news my friend, I just report it…
“What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.”
I hear you though. And I’m sympathetic to your argument. Romans 9 is super hard to read. I like passages like John 3:16 and Matthew 28 way better. I just think post modernism has moved the pendulum way, way away from God’s sovereignty and way, way towards our own. Of all the mistakes Calvin makes, this isn’t one.
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fhansen
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Of course, and while God desires perfection in us, and will ultimately achieve it as we cooperate, He knows most or all will fail in some manner or another at times. The requirement in any case is for us to do the best we can with what we’re given, stumbling sometimes but moving towards righteousness (growing in love to put it most accurately) overall. Read the Parable of the Talents. All are not given the same, and all are not expected to return the same, but burying ones talents is not a good thing as the lazy servant’s fate reveals.fhansen:
Do people not have thoughts that transgress against God? Even if one doesn’t punch someone without provocation, if a person imagines such an act, it can be sinful.
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lanman87
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Then aren’t we saving ourselves by our choices? Is our choice a work of righteousness?
How does God choosing us and predestining us work its way into our choice to choose Him?
The Bible says we were dead in our trespasses and sins? Can a dead person make a decision to become alive?
Those are legitimate questions.
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HopkinsReb
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God gives us all sufficient grace to choose to follow Him. Not all so choose, but at least He, being a loving God, gives that option. I’m not a semi-Pelagian; I’m not saying any of this is purely our own doing. All the good we do is done with God’s help. But we do have the ability to reject His help.HopkinsReb:
Then aren’t we saving ourselves by our choices? Is our choice a work of righteousness?
How does God choosing us and predestining us work its way into our choice to choose Him?
The Bible says we were dead in our trespasses and sins? Can a dead person make a decision to become alive?
Those are legitimate questions.
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fhansen
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The Church has never taught strict determinism. And you already agreed that passages can seem to be at odds. So much for Sola Scriptura, with some guy picking up a bible 1500 years after the fact and just knowing what it all means to say, often based on a single passage or two, even as he may well disagree with his fellow Sola Scriptura adherent. Fortunately we have the Church to sort such things out, possessing knowledge that dates back to the beginning in many cases along with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Again, we can’t know Pharaoh’s eternal fate, only that he was used by God for His purposes at the time. Either way the Church, in her wisdom, in both the east and west BTW, understands the critical nature of preserving the role of man’s will. Predestination is taught thusly by the RCC:
600 To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace: “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.
1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:
Father, accept this offering
from your whole family.
Grant us your peace in this life,
save us from final damnation,
and count us among those you have chosen.
600 To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace: “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.
1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:
Father, accept this offering
from your whole family.
Grant us your peace in this life,
save us from final damnation,
and count us among those you have chosen.
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