For those who think that the Articles are exclusively Calvinist, how do you suppose that John and Charles Wesley were able to remain Anglicans all their lives, even after the founding of Methodism?
Apparently you think that to "foreknow" means to see into the future, and then that after seeing the future, God predestinates all the variables to arrive at that conclusion. That's sad. No, I cannot. If salvation is subject to a man's "free will", then he will end up enslaved to his sin. This is what Article 10 teaches, that a man can be made free only by God's act of autonomous sovereign mercy. Well, make up your mind. I agree with you that they are fully synchronized. God is in control and free to do as He likes. Man is not in control and is enslaved to his nature. The sheep are distinguished from the goats because the Shepherd knows one from the other. He knows them because He has always known them, and He has also known every circumstance of their lives because He is the author of those "circumstances". He sees every blade of grass as it were. The possibility of His not knowing the tiniest detail of anyone's life is zero not merely because he has perfect knowledge in the Temporal world, but He also has perfect knowledge of Eternity. He is the Alpha and the Omega. There is no such thing as "man's free will", and nowhere does the Bible speak of it. It is a figment of the idolator's mind that thinks he can build a tower halfway to heaven. God will destroy that tower if only to prove that He is in control.
Yep. Thanks for summing it up so well for me. And in any case, why would God even need to foreknow, if nothing he foreknew would alter his subsequent predestination? Nothing in God is redundant. Divine Simplicity. Yet having foreknowledge before predestination is redundant, in the Calvinist view. In other words, you don't even know what Arminianism teaches, is what it sounds like. How can you argue against what you don't even know?
Again, salvation is not about giving a fair oportunity to all men and then let those who are the most competent with the grace they get receive the prize. Salvation is not like a job interview, salvation is really and truly an unmerited rescue from death. The failure to grasp our hopelessness and depravity is the error many people keep bumping into. All men are dead in sins and trespasses and all men deserve eternal punishment. The fact that God reaches out and saves some men is an act of pure mercy, not of justice. Grace and mercy aren't things we are entitled to: the Lord has mercy upon whom He sovereignly choses to have mercy. Period. Jesus also said that NO MAN can come to Him, or seek Him, if the Father doesn't draw him first (John 6:44 et seq.). All who seek and find Jesus were chosen by Him, not the other way around. "You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you." (John 15:16)
The two basic types of predestination is conditional and unconditional. Arminianism teaches conditional election. The articles are unabashedly unconditional. Look at article 17 - Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind -Now Arminianism would say God's counsel is not secret in matters of predestination! That God looked into the future, saw who would a accept Him if given the enabling grace to do so and on that basis chose them 2- Article 10 on free will I have read very carefully and I am convinced it upholds the calvinist/monergist/Augustinian belief in free will. The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith; and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will. I'm not up to date on arminian teaching, but as I understand it God gives His grace to all to open the possibility of aalvation to everyone. And the reason some choose Christ and others dont is down to that person. This article is perfectly in agreement with the other reformed confessions. before Armnius, protestantism was strongly in favour of unconditional election, starting from Luther himself onwards. To interpret the 39 articles in favour of arminianism is I think no better than interpreting them in support of tractarianism.
The question arises how does God foreknow what will happen. Is it because He ordains all things to happen or is it because He passively looks into time and then knows? Romans 9 helps to explain the nature of election: though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— Rom 9:12 and 9:16 - it doesnt depend on the hman will It doesnt say that God looked into the future and saw one was better than the other (and logically one would have to be better than the other for one to accept God and the other to reject Him), no it was before they did anything. Also look at the objections Paul sees coming before him in this passage: Paul sees the accusation of injustice being made agaisnt God. Since when has Arminianism been attacked for being unjust? and yet it is a common accusation against calvinists.
And better either or both of these than Calvinism or Augustinianism, although I'm also opposed to tractarianism. Not to be confrontational, but I simply hate Calvinism with a passion. I can't help it; that's how I feel about it. I believe it is a false gospel... And yet, I have friends and relatives who are Calvinists to one degree or another, and I would not want to exclude them from the church. We all see through a glass, darkly.
Thanks for your honesty in how you feel about it.. I have personally found a lot of people reject Calvinism due to an emotional reaction to it, or because t seems t go against their natural reasoning of how God should act according to us.
I just don't see it in scripture or the early church. Also, it goes against what I consider to be an essential element of God's character -- freedom. But please don't think my opinion is anything personal against you.
Hackney, you are in a dream! The Church sent three bishops to Dort at the behest of the King, James Ist. To claim that the Catholic Church in England, the Body of Christ, propagated Heresy, and that 's what Calvinism was, is beyond belief! It was a political gesture by the Monarch!
Not true. Again, you guys need to read Arminius, he's become a bogeyman for the reformed crowd, more than an author whose works can be read. The prevenient grace of God that enables free will is not given to absolutely everyone equally. Arminianism is versatile enough to say that people can be denied free will at certain times, such as the Pharaoh whose heart God hardened against Moses; or Assyrians who were 'forced' by God to invade and destroy Israel. The whole concept of an entirely independent free will is a red herring in the context of what I'm saying. Partly correct. God gives grace to all to open the possibility of salvation, yes; and Some choose Christ and others don't, yes. But in Arminian teaching, before God's grace, on our own, we cannot choose God, because we are naturally sinful and atheistic.So I think you guys, not knowing these important components, attribute them whenever you see them, to Calvinism. But the simple fact is that all Protestants rejected man's natural ability to choose God. Total depravity. Some chose to address that initial fact through further theology, like Arminius, and others like Calvin left it as it is. But all accept and believe that man naturally is not capable, and if ever becomes capable, it's only through God's grace, not his own merits. But there's a whole other part that you also missed: once we have the initial grace to believe at all, then it's down to us working with God's grace to continue and grow in our faith; namely not libertarian free will, but synergism. That phrase, "working with God's grace", is right in the articles, which I found simply astounding when I first read it, because it means that synergistic doctrine is encoded in our articles, and Arminius wasn't the first one to formulate it. That's simply not true. Melanchton was an advocate of synergistic/arminian theology, and strongly altered the course of Lutheranism after Luther's death. Luther himself, I might add, was not in favor of double-predestination. It is an entirely Calvinist innovation He doesn't first ordain and then foreknow, but rather, he first foreknows, and then ordains. According to Scripture, he ordains as a second step, not the first. This is a simple essential stumbling block that makes Calvinism impossible, among other reasons. Only if foreknowledge as the first step in the Ordo Salutis becomes erased from the Bible does it become tenable.
I like and agree with most of what you have said. I don't affirm total depravity, though. My soteriology has more in common with Eastern Orthodoxy than with Protestantism. Actually, I would say it combines EO and Anabaptist thought -- the two of which have more in common than most would realize, soteriologically speaking.
The only way that one can reconcile the God of Calvin with the God of Love, imho, would be to endorse Universalism. While I hope for all people to find their way home if God so wills, I cannot find that promise clearly proclaimed in the Scriptures, thus I cannot believe it. Because I cannot reconcile Calvin's god with the God revealed in Scripture, I must reject him.
"The God of Calvin" is the God who revealed Himself in the Scriptures. He's not just the God of Love but also the God of Justice and the God of Holiness. No man deserves to saved. God has no obligation to give grace to anyone. He could send the whole of mankind to hell and it would be perfectly just. God isn't unfair if he passes someone by because the reprobate have only themselves to blame for their rejection of God. In fact, they all hate God. The fact that some people are saved (the elect) from out of this pit of iniquity and perdition is an act of FREE MERCY on the part of God. An they are "elected" because God chose them, not the other way around.
I'm sorry but I cannot believe that, based on all the passages quoted before, and for the common witness of both Sts. Peter and Paul that God shows no partiality. If limited atonement is true then their declarations must be false. Since the latter stares at me straight from the pages of my bible and the former comes from the notions of a sixteenth century Swiss lawyer, I must believe the latter to the exclusion of the former.
You can't believe that all men are wicked and that no-one deserves grace and salvation? You can't believe God actually predestines some, the elect, to salvation and passes by the rest, the reprobate, leaving them to their own damnation? That's the Bible too. You need to take into account everything, not just the things that meet your fancies. As Ryle once said: "Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just; a God who is all love, but not holy; a God who as a heaven for every body, but a hell for none; a God who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time, but will make no distinction between good and broad in eternity. Such a God is an idol of your own, as truly an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple. The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and beside the God of the Bible there is no God at all." John Calvin was actually French, not Swiss. And he was indeed a great theologian, you don't need to diminish him by calling him "lawyer." But forget about him. Medidate on what God, through Paul, had to say:
There is not one inkling in the early churches or in the churches of the following centuries of the doctrines that came to be known as Calvinism. Why? Because they were all invented or "discovered" by Calvin. Some would say that at least Augustine was a forerunner of Calvinism, but Augustine's worldview and writings were from a completely different context, so his views cannot be considered "Calvinistic". Calvinists should ask themselves why these doctrines were unknown until Calvin. The early church had the same scriptures that we have today, and yet they didn't see Calvinist doctrine there -- or what Reformed Baptists and others erroneously call "the doctrines of grace", as if no other views could be labeled as such. I must emphasize again that I have Calvinist friends. I am opposed to the doctrine, not those who hold to the doctrine.