What do You Think of Calvinists?

[blackrobe]

Other than the comic strip and some fuzzy memories from high school history, I know nothing about Calvinism.

One of the first things I was told about Calvinism is that it is a spiritual disorder marked by the persistent fear that somebody somewhere is having a good time.

JSA

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Eternal security is based on nothing more shocking than believing that, when Christ says that none of His sheep shall be taken from Him, He means it. An Almighty Saviour isn’t capable, just possibly, perhaps, of preserving His elect for whom He has died - He cannot fail to do so, because He is absolutely faithful. When He makes a promise, He means it. “He is not a man, that He should lie…” - He is God-with-us, Mighty to save - it is the gods of the heathen “that have eyes, but cannot see; feet, but cannot walk; ears, but cannot hear”, that are so weak & wretched that they cannot save - this God is different, He is the Living God, and He cannot be thwarted or foiled; His word “does not return to Him empty”, but accomplishes all that He Wills - why should Jesus Christ be less powerful, or less efficacious ?

It is man who is faithless, weak, untrustworthy, changing, inconstant, powerless, who reneges on his word - never God. God is all the excellent things that we are not - He is wholly to be trusted; He has left Himself with no “wiggle-room” whatever. He has committed Himself to us so thoroughly by taking our nature upon Him & sharing with all that is His, that either we believe Him, or treat Him as a perjurer.

When God promises something, it honours Him that we believe what He promises. ##

The issue of “eternal security” is a distortion of Christ’s message. The protestant, especially the Calvinist sees themself as one of Christ’s sheep, a guaranteed pereseverance. The Catholic says God alone knows who will persevere.
The former undermines God’s soverignty (by presuming to know God’s plans for them), the latter protects it.

I wish someone would explain how election ante praevisa merita is still election - how can God elect, if foreknowledge of merits is even remotely involved ?​

Election is referred to God’s counsel & good pleasure & foreknowledge, not to the merits of creatures. Election by God’s counsel allows it to remain absolutely gratuitous. It depends wholly on God - not in the slightest on man. Make election dependent on man, even in the least degree, & it becomes gratuitous only in name. Election is an article by which the Church stands or falls; because a non-gratuitous election means a non-gratuitous redemption, a non-gratuitous justification, a non-gratuitous salvation, a salvation that not is a salvation by Christ & Christ alone. ##

Here is what I have never understood, whats wrong with the idea that God gives everyone the initial grace (not according to their merits) but they further reject it to one degree or another? As far as I can tell there is nothing wrong with this “theory”. It brings to mind parables like the Talents (Matt 25:14ff, also Matt 22:14)

Calvinists gave impetus to the notion of Christians, and by extension America, to be elect and therefore entitled to treat the non-elect (like native Americans) in the way they did. When you are God’s special people you can do a lot of stuff to a lot of people and sleep very well at night.

There is a lot of truth to this, by considering themselve “elect” they literally saw themselves as entitled, not to mention with the osas mentality they literally couldnt sin except on secular legal grounds.
This mentality was strong in western american expansion and blossomed into the term “manifest destiny” which was a almost official term they used to refer to the idea it was God’s Will they own all of America.

 

[brkn1]

Election is not something that can be easily dismissed when a person carefully studies the Bible.

Even after Jesus performed many miracles, those ( who were not elected) could not believe in Jesus, and thus receive the undeserved gift of salvation. We all assume that those amazing miracles would make it impossible for us, if we were there, to not believe in Jesus.

But look at (John 12:39-40) :
“Therefore they could not believe, because that Isaiah said again,
He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.”

God is making it impossible for those described here to believe in Jesus and be saved. The only “free will” given to the unelected is to reject Jesus and remain unconverted and therefore condemned. They can’t do otherwise, since their hearts were made hardened and their eyes were made spiritually blind by God’s hand or choice (election).

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Election is not something that can be easily dismissed when a person carefully studies the Bible.

Even after Jesus performed many miracles, those ( who were not elected) could not believe in Jesus, and thus receive the undeserved gift of salvation. We all assume that those amazing miracles would make it impossible for us, if we were there, to not believe in Jesus.

But look at (John 12:39-40) :
“Therefore they could not believe, because that Isaiah said again,
He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.”

God is making it impossible for those described here to believe in Jesus and be saved. The only “free will” given to the unelected is to reject Jesus and remain unconverted and therefore condemned. They can’t do otherwise, since their hearts were made hardened and their eyes were made spiritually blind by God’s hand or choice (election).

Thats oversimplified and misunderstood passage of John 12, here is what comes right after your quote:39 Therefore they could not believe. For Isaiah again said, 40 “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and turn for me to heal them.” 41 Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him. 42 Nevertheless many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: 43 for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.
Most people dont catch that last part, there were Jews who believed who Jesus was but with their free will abused God’s grace (also places like Jn 6:66). The above quote from Isaiah is the prophecy/conclusion of many years of God pleading with the Jews, places like Mark 12:1-10 show God was more than merciful with the Jews all those years and it had to stop some day (also places like Is 65:2ff).
The Catholic Church teaches both Predestination AND Free Will (how exactly they go together is a divine mystery), various groups over history have denied one or the other aspects and run into problems.

 

[brkn1]

I still have difficulty seeing where the reprobates described in (John 12:39-40) could have done anything by their own free will or works to counteract God’s blinding their spiritual eyes and hardening their hearts towards Jesus.

There are some verses in Romans that seem to show that their fate was completely out of their hands:
(Romans 9:15-16) …15 “For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
16. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.”

 

[Catholic_Dude]

I still have difficulty seeing where the reprobates described in (John 12:39-40) could have done anything by their own free will or works to counteract God’s blinding their spiritual eyes and hardening their hearts towards Jesus.

We dont know exactly why but we do know it wasnt a random hardening (eg Mk12:1-10), also as the context clearly shows we know that some did believe but abused that grace. Also we know that hardening isnt necessarily a permanent thing, it can be lifted down the road.

There are some verses in Romans that seem to show that their fate was completely out of their hands:
(Romans 9:15-16) …15 “For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
16. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.”

In the case of the Jews when God said this their fate was in their hands and they dropped the ball (eg golden calf), out of God’s mercy he spared them through considering the intercessory prayer of a righteous man, Moses.

 

[brkn1]

We can agree that hardening is not a random act of God. The Jews during the Exodus were called by God a “stiffnecked” people, but they were not described as first being hardened by God.

I have not been able to find any examples in the Bible where a person that is described as being hardened by God has such hardening lifted later.

The purpose of God in election is that He “might show His power” that “His name might be declared throughout the earth.” (Romans 9:17)

Our wills can not be involved in election if you go to the example of (Romans 9:11)…(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth)
Esau and Pharaoh are cited as examples of this negative form of election.

 

[exoflare]

We can agree that hardening is not a random act of God. The Jews during the Exodus were called by God a “stiffnecked” people, but they were not described as first being hardened by God.

Where does it say that they were NOT “hardened by God”?

 

[brkn1]

Hi Exoflare,

They may very well have been “hardened by God”. My point is that I have not come across any scripture that convincingly proves that " hardening isn’t necessarily a permanent thing, it can be lifted down the road". I would appreciate any verses that you know of that supports such a viewpoint.

 

[whosebob]

I wish someone would explain how election ante praevisa merita is still election - how can God elect, if foreknowledge of merits is even remotely involved?

JMJ + OBT​

Gottle of Geer, have you read the late Fr. William Most’s book (pub. 1997) in which he attempts to tackle such problems?

Grace, Predestination and the Salvific Will of God:
New Answers to Old Questions

The foreward was written by Bertrand de Margerie, S.J.

In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

IC XC NIKA

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

JMJ + OBT​

Gottle of Geer, have you read the late Fr. William Most’s book (pub. 1997) in which he attempts to tackle such problems?

Grace, Predestination and the Salvific Will of God:
New Answers to Old Questions

The foreward was written by Bertrand de Margerie, S.J.

In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

IC XC NIKA

I even have a copy - one criticism I would make is that there is too much Thomism in it, & not enough of the Bible.​

This could be partly a matter of temperament & national character, but I do far prefer the austere Biblical approach of Calvin. He takes sin seriously, & he won’t hear of any but Christ being Saviour. I’m conscious of a certain lack of clarity in Catholic soteriology, because it does not unambiguously state that Christ is the only Saviour - it always manages to smuggle in Mary: which is completely unBiblical. Christ, and Christ Alone (not Mary, in any sense whatever) is our Saviour. Calvin by contrast is refreshingly unambiguous & Christ-centred.

With Calvin, grace is totally & irreducibly gratuitous - the doctrine of predestination after merits foreseen smuggles in human merit, which perverts the entire meaning of grace, & overthrows the work of Christ entirely. If God is not totally gracious, even despite our lack of anything which could recommend us to His mercy, what one has is salvation by works. But St. Paul could hardly have been more insistent that we are not saved by works, “lest any man should boast”. If salvation is by works at all, then grace is grace is no more. ##

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

This may be interesting as a pendant to the preceding - Mary the Coredemptrix in the Writings of Frederick William Faber (1814-1863)​

 

[whosebob]

I do far prefer the austere Biblical approach of Calvin … I’m conscious of a certain lack of clarity in Catholic soteriology, because it does not unambiguously state that Christ is the only Saviour

But how is it that Christ was and is our Savior, according to Calvin? Unless I have misunderstood his approach, Calvin primarily understood the Redemption in terms of a strict “substitutionary punishment” whereby Jesus “became sin” and the wrath-punishment of God the Father due to the elect for their sins was poured out on Christ in their stead. He, or at least later Calvinists, went so far as to conclude that as part of the punishment Christ bore for the elect, He must have suffered even the complete separation from God the Father that the souls of the damned experience in Hell. The reprobation of the elect having been satisfied in Christ, then those souls could enjoy God’s friendship in this life and the next, to be first manifested at that time when in this life they confess Him as Savior.

If that is one’s model for how the Redemption operated, then I can see how there is no room in it whatsoever for a person other than Jesus Christ to be understood to have had a positive role in its being accomplished. I must say too that I don’t see how such an understanding can but lead to a terrible collapse of the realities of the objective redemption and the subjective redemption into the single principle of “substitutionary punishment” and the believing sinner’s conviction that because of it he may rest assured that he is saved from eternal damnation. (As to this latter concern, see especially parts E and F of the article St. Paul.)

That is not the orthodox Catholic understanding of the Redemption, though sometimes it passes as such in the minds, words, and writings of Catholics who have been heavily influenced by that model. That may not be your understanding either, I’m not sure. (And you could clear up whether it was indeed Calvin’s personal understanding, if you are so informed.) That’s not to say that Western Catholic theology does not understand Christ’s Sacrifice to have been truly propitiatory, “the expiation for our sins” (cf. 1 John 2:2), i.e. appeasement of God’s wrath; and our theologians confidently assert an understanding of the Cross as “vicarious atonement,” yet Catholic teaching does not assert that Christ assumed our reprobation:

From the CCC:
603 Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned.(405) But in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our name from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”(406) Having thus established him in solidarity with us sinners, God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all”, so that we might be “reconciled to God by the death of his Son”.(407)

• 405 Cf. Jn 8:46.
  406 Mk 15:34; Ps 22:2; cf. Jn 8:29.
  407 Rom 8:32; 5:10.*

[emphasis mine]

By His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus Christ won a triple victory over the devil, sin, and death. One aspect of Christ’s victory over sin is the understanding that man in the God-Man, in His obedience to the Divine Will, “cancels out” the offensive disobedience of Adam, Eve and all those human persons who have sinned and will sin up to the close of history; His obedience culminated in an embrace of the realities of suffering and death, and all of the fiery darts of the evil one, that he might swallow them up and defeat them in His Sacred Humanity by the power of His Divinity. Is it possible that God may have freely chosen to associate another person with His particular historical combat and victory, i.e. the Objective Redemption?

Allow me to recommend four more of Fr. Most’s works; I’d be interested to know if you’ve read them and what you think of them:

A Biblical Theology of Redemption in a Covenant Framework
(I would read that one in conjunction with these articles from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia: Atonement, Redemption, Sacrifice.)

Cooperation in Redemption
(different version of the same article)

How the Redemption Operated

Ordinary Magisterium on Mary’s Immediate Cooperation in the Objective Redemption

In Christ.

IC XC NIKA

 

[Ghosty]

Is there any reason one can’t be a five-point Catholic ?​

ISTM that all of TULIP can be given a Catholic sense, without any alteration of meaning.

Catholicism ought to adopt monergism as well.

Then Calvinists would have to find a different way of expressing Reformed doctrine ##

There was an element of Thomistic tradition that comes awfully close to 5-point Calvinism, as presented by Jimmy Akin, but that aspect of Thomism doesn’t actually reflect the views of Thomas Aquinas or the larger Tradition of the Church. That isn’t to say it’s heretical, only that it is largely a Counter-Reformation development of Catholic theology that seems to try and play by the Reformer’s rules. I think of it as almost “Reformation Catholicism”.

The irony is that the Molinists in many way keep closer to St. Thomas Aquinas’ actual arguments, while the “Thomists” of that period stuck with his (heavily modified) language and style; both sides of the classic debate on predestination in the Catholic Church were actually arguing from St. Thomas Aquinas, it’s just that the name of “Thomist” is applied to one side of it because it was the position of the “Thomist School”. When you get outside of the Latin tradition, however, all pretense of even approaching Calvinism goes right out the window, so I think it’s safe to say that Calvinism and the form of Thomism that so closely resembles it are not truly rooted in the wider Catholic Tradition, but are rather developments from a very particular period of time. Even today most Thomists, in my personal experience hanging out with Dominican brothers, aren’t particularily “Thomistic” in their views on Grace, as they’ve generally gone back to the more Patristically rooted “pure Thomism” of Aquinas.

All that being said, Calvinism skirts the edge of orthodoxy, but the edge it skirts is the FAR edge, the edge that from a Catholic perspective could be said to be skirting the edge of heterodoxy, or at least anti-traditionalism

Peace and God bless!

 

[Zooey]

I think Calivinsts are reverent, logical, and good Christinas. I also think they are mistaken about, well, about 5 points.

I’m a 5 poitn Arminian. Calvinists only got their 5 points cause they didn’t like the Arminin ones and felt the need to refute them… They only got more recognition for it cause they have a cute little TULIP acrynomn.

:tiphat:

I think that they are nothing without Hobbs.

One of the first things I was told about Calvinism is that it is a spiritual disorder marked by the persistent fear that somebody somewhere is having a good time.

JSA

 

[brkn1]

The words “Mediatrix”, “objective redemption”, and other such “lawyer talk” do not hide the fact that Mary is looked upon, by some, as a " Coredemptrix".
Only by man’s distorted imagination could Mary ever be considered, in any way, a possible co-redemptrix.

(Isaiah 54:5) “For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of host is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.”

I understand from this verse that our Redeemer is the Holy One (singular). Our Redeemer is also our husband (masculine), our Maker, the Lord of host, and the God of the whole earth.
Mary does not fit into any of these necessary criteria for being a Redeemer.

Redemption is the sole work of God alone.

 

[whosebob]

Redemption is the sole work of God alone.

JMJ + OBT​

What is your understanding of how the Redemption operated/s? Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians all agree that Jesus Christ is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (cf. John 1:29) and that Christ’s death was and is salvific (as was/is His life and resurrection) and yet there are divergent understandings among those believers as to how to understand the relevant Scripture passages and also as to how they believe the Redemption is realized in the life of the believer.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, I think that many Protestants are taught to understand the Redemption according to a strict “substitutionary punishment” interpretation of Christ’s suffering, death, and descent into hell. And in that view, yes, there seems (to me at least) no room for Mary or anyone else to have been associated with Christ such that she could be named a “co-redeemer,” according as to how the events of his passion and death unfolded as reported by the Gospels.

But the Catholic Church, even more so the Eastern Orthodox Churches, does not teach us to understand Christ’s sacrifice as “substitionary punisment,” strictly speaking, though we do understand Christ to have taken upon Himself those realities which are the “penalty” suffered by Adam, Eve, and their children; and we do understand that Christ’s obedience and humility in this regard, according as God freely required man to make perfect satisfaction and reparation, did truly cancel out the disobedience and offenses against God perpetrated by His wayward creatures. Christ’s obedience unto God was an instrument of perfect satisfaction and reparation because of His perfect innocence and because He is a divine person, thus an infinitely meritorious, propitiatory, and impetratory character was imparted to every movement of His human will.

That is one aspect of how Catholics understand Christ to have conquered sin. In my opinion, it is just as important to look at the bigger picture: in His life, death, and resurrection Christ won a triple victory over the devil, sin and death! It is important to see too how the first moment of the At-one-ment was His incarnation in the womb of Mary – God and man were one in the zygotic Christ! Christ’s whole life, all of His trials and suffering, the most mundane and the most brilliant moments He experienced in public and private, His death, His resurrection – God lived as man in Christ so that every human person incorporated into His mystical body might live, work, rejoice, suffer, and die as the Man-God did, sharing in the divine life of the Blessed Trinity.

The Catholic belief is that Mary, by virtue of the Redemption which would be wrought in Christ her son, enjoyed a participation in the life of Grace even from the moment she was conceived in her mother’s womb. (We likewise believe that in God’s grace, Mary chose not to sin throughout her entire life on Earth.) This imparted to her person that dignity of an adopted daugther of God, a “son in the Son,” which made every movement of her will in response to God to be “God-pleasing” and meritorious in His sight. God then had created Mary as an instrument of His will which he freely chose to associate with the work of His Christ to redeem the human race; in fact, as stated above, Mary’s role depended entirely upon the grace and power of Jesus. From her conception and childhood, to her “yes” in response to Gabriel’s news, to her suffering in her mother’s soul and heart what her son suffered in His humanity, Mary was always “with” mankind’s Redeember, she was and is the Co-redemptrix (“co” means “with”), the woman with the Redeemer. Her role in the historical events which comprise the Redemption, what Catholic theologians term the “objective redemption,” was unique, and was a gift to her from God which He freely chose to bestow upon her. Then by His eternal decree, the merits and satisfaction of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Coredemptrix, are inseparably part of that infinite treasury of merits and satisfaction of mankind’s Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

For more information, please read the materials I linked to in my response to Gottle of Geer made earlier in this thread.

In Christ.

IC XC NIKA

 

[exoflare]

Hi Exoflare,

They may very well have been “hardened by God”. My point is that I have not come across any scripture that convincingly proves that " hardening isn’t necessarily a permanent thing, it can be lifted down the road". I would appreciate any verses that you know of that supports such a viewpoint.

My point is there are no verses that make the case for one side or the other. Why are explicit passages of scripture needed to prove that this “hardening” is not necessarily a permanent thing, but you seem to accept a priori that it probably is permanent?

 

[Catholic_Dude]

My point is there are no verses that make the case for one side or the other. Why are explicit passages of scripture needed to prove that this “hardening” is not necessarily a permanent thing, but you seem to accept a priori that it probably is permanent?

The passages that come to mind for me are:
48 And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, 49 but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out; 50 for they all saw him, and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; have no fear.” 51 And he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, 52 for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. Mark 6

17 And being aware of it, Jesus said to them, “Why do you discuss the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” 20 “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” 21 And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?” Mark 8

25 Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, 26 and so all Israel will be saved Rom 11
In these cases above the “hardened hearts” isnt permanent.

 

[brkn1]

To whosebob,
I don’t have so much of a problem with (“co” means "with), the woman with the Redeemer.
It is the use of the words “Mediatrix” and “Redemptrix” which imply a “female mediator” or a “female redeemer”. That is not a woman’s role in spiritual matters.

To exoflare,
I see God’s hardening of Pharoah’s heart as having been permanent. (Exodus 14:4, 28)

Catholic Dudes’ example: “Are your hearts hardened?” is not what I would call God’s hardening of someone’s heart.
The “hardening has come upon part of Israel” example probably does not end well for those who God hardened.
I will conceed that such hardening may not always be permanent, except in Pharoah’s case.