Calvinism and Christianity - incompatible?

Does every human being that exists, ever existed and ever will exist love God? No. In fact, since the fall of Adam, all mankind is in a state of rebellion against its maker, none are good and all are children of wrath deserving of condemnation. We're not born in a neutral state, we're born as criminals, we hate good and love evil. Who can deny this? The Scriptures and our own consciences condemn us! It would be entirely just for God to leave us in our sins and condemn us to eternal punishment. In fact, the reprobate don't want it otherwise since they love darkness and hate the light. The fact that out of this perfidious mass of iniquity, the massa damnata as Augustine put it, God mercifully saves some people is a pure act of mercy, not of justice. "All of those who love God and one another" are those who are regenerated by God, the elect, those whom the Father entrusted to Christ, and those whom no-one can snatch out of the Lord's hand. If they hadn't been chosen and vivified by the Spirit, they too would perish and die in their sins.

How great is His mercy! Let us boast in nothing but the Lord.

 

You or I, everyone else living now in the past or in the future is not in any position to know the answer to that either way. I don't know the mind of God and would suggest you don't either.

 

Knowing the mind of God? I'm not sure where you're getting at.

There's a class of men who will be damned called the reprobate. This is a fact revealed by God throughout the scriptures. The class of men who will mercifully be saved by Him are the elect. If everyone loved God, as the Law requires, then none would be damned.

As for 1 Corinthians 15:22, I do hope you're not arguing in favour of universal salvation. That's a heresy. Gill does a better job at expounding it than I would:

 

I am not asserting anything, in your post above you were basically saying you know what is in the mind of God and I said none of us know what it is in the mind of God.

As far as the quote from Pauls Epistle goes - it says what it says... I am not about to get into an argument about what it means as that is a total waste of time in my humble opinion.

 

I asserted that not all people love God. This is just a fact, as revealed by Scripture and also common sense.

You equate this with "knowing the mind of God" and try to accuse me of presumption. It's nonsense.

 

Of course not everyone is going to love Christ and God knows this, when He died for all that was known by God. The gift Christ offers we must accept it is not forced on us and many will never open their gift

 

I admit there's a sense of mystery in trying to comprehend how God can ordain all things and yet we are free and held accountable for our choices. But I do believe scripture shows this to be a biblical position.


I think the clearest illustration is the crucifixion. This was ordained by God, and yet would His anger towards those who killed his Son be unjust because He so planned it? Yet they behaved wickedly.

Another old testament example can be found in Isaiah 10, where Assyria is called "the rod of my [God's] anger", its clear from Isaiah that God used Assyria to punish Israel for their wickedness and yet in the same chapter God says He will punish Assyria for this.

Again in Isaiah 45:7 , there's this hard verse "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." God ordains everthing that happens. I really see a major problem trying to understand the old testament if Calvinism isn't true.

Can I ask you, why did God allow the fall in your view? Why did God stick a tree in the garden of Eden when He knew Adam would fall?

 

Why do many never open the gift? Why do the we respond whereas the others don't? I'm just curious how people who hold to your view respond to this. If by free will, then why do we respond to it? Is it just because we make better choices then others or because of God's sovereign grace? :think:

This is what made me lean towards Calvinism. If by our own volition, we would never be saved. If given the gift, none will open it at all. If some do possess the ability to open the gifts while others don't, then salvation is based on those who possess the ability to pick better than others...

 

I am not accusing you of anything I am simply saying we don't know what is in the mind of God, and as such it not up to us to judge what is someone else's heart, Jesus was very clear when he told us not to judge others. I am 60 now and in all my years I have learnt that none of us ever really know what is someone else's heart, we may think we do but really never really know sometimes even those who we think we know really don't know what is buried deep in their own hearts. The other thing I have painfully learnt in that time is that not everyone thinks, feels or believes what I do.

Blessings, Gordon

 

I'm not judging what's in someone else's heart since I'm not passing judgment on anyone in particular. I'm not saying that person A or person B is effectively damned. I know you're having a fit of pious humility here but, please, drop this strawman. I'm stating that there's a class of people who will be damned, commonly called the reprobate, and that these fallen men and women do not love God. In fact, they hate God. This is a mere statement of fact. God has revealed this dreadful fact to us in His word.

Hence, my initial statement, which you disagreed with, stands: "Does every human being that exists, ever existed and ever will exist love God? No." Why? Because universalism is a heresy and only the elect love God. And that only because He loved them first: "Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father." (John 6:65)

 

It is through our free will that we choose, just as someone here would have a gift for all but you have to come and get it not everyone will through laziness, apathy, or maybe they just don't like the gift giver or believe the gift is what he sad it would be. Still others star out and see that the road to get the gift is hard and not easy they rather want an easy road.There are many reasons that people don't accept a free gift and only they know what it is.

Just the same for those who respond, there are many reasons. Some get at the end of there rope, others know that they just need something more than themseleves. The dicision to open the gift is something that only them and God may know.

To me Calvinism is repugnant, it sets up a system where one can feel self righteous because they are chosen. I consider myself once lost in that system and I do feel Christ lead me out. Everyone posses the ability to open the gift because God is no respecter of persons, Calvinism on the other hand is a respecter of persons. Calvinism forces one to be saved, God doesn't

 

Fallen men don't have the free will to choose good. Our will is depraved, it chooses evil, it relishes in evil. Unless God acts, man is not going anywhere but to eternal destruction. We're born in a negative state, as criminals, not in a neutral or good state. But God does act and He gratuitously saves some people out of this mass or perdition, called the elect. Why? "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will." (Ephesians 1:4-5)

It is His will that He should save some and let others perish. Salvation is entirely by grace, which is another way of saying by divine favour. It is not merited by anyone, which is the real problem most people face since we instinctively want to merit and to justify ourselves, it is not founded on the goodness of anyone, much less any foreseen goodness since there is no goodness in man unless God had wrought it in him to begin with. Salvation is indeed of the Lord, as the psalmist sings.

Saying that Calvinism forces one to be saved, as if this were some kind of violation of the soul, is the same thing as saying that somebody who lovingly pushes a drunken man out of the road lest he be run over by a car is to be condemned.

 

Well that is your opinion and I gave mine, namely I do feel Calvinism is a very bad thing almost evil and it sucks many in to it's ways over the Gospel of Christ

 

I, and others, provided the scriptural and logical reasons for believing in the doctrines of grace, we did not merely state that we did. And I personally refrained from calling the opposing view, i.e. synergistic theology, "evil." Perhaps you could do the same.

Be it as it may, in my opinion the root problem from which diverging opinions arise is the diagnose of the state of fallen man.

 

I would if I wasn't lost in such a system and Christ rescued me out of it

 

But in the same way, your belief can cause (not will cause) one to feel self righteous because you were the one smart enough to open the present. You were the one who wasn't lazy, apathetic or disliked the gift giver. You were the one who chose the hard road and not the easy road. You weren't like others who don't accept the gift.

Similarly, a few Calvinists may be filled with a sense of superiority because they were elected. However, if they understood the Calvinistic doctrine, they shouldn't have that feeling because according to Calvinistic doctrine, we were elected not because of what we could do but because God (whose will we do now know) choose us. We were guilty as anyone else and deserved damnation; however, Jesus reached out his arms to us (who are so unworthy) and grabbed us from our doom as a father reaches out his hand to save his child.

I guess since I held your view before I could say the same

It wasn't easy embracing any view because I struggled a lot with each view. However, I lean towards Calvinism because I view it as more Biblical for me. It should also be noted that there are great Christians who have done much for Christendom on both sides of this debate.. We should be charitable to each other and refrain from name calling. However, we also shouldn't be relativists. I believe that Calvinism is more true and will adhere to its tenets because I am bound by my conscience. If I have erred, at least I have erred without violating my conscience and God forgive me!

 

Not really because I know intrinsically that I could have passed up the gift and still lose it if I do not follow the Master. Calvinism can not say this, all Calvinism can say and crow is "I was chosen, not you publican!"

Than I wish you well on your journey. Calvinism to is another gospel that does not spread good news but damnation to all but those in the club. It divides not blesses as St. Paul says about Calvinism:

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

Gal 1:8

Calvinism has ran people from this forum feeling like they were not welcomed, that is how "good" that system is. I believe it is 5 more times a tradition of man than anything in Catholicism could be. So I said my piece and thank you for listening, I will unsub now. May God always lead your path

 

In the reformed view, those who were elected unto salvation cannot boast of anything but God's mercy. The difference between the elect and the reprobate is merely God's gratious favour, nothing more. This is why many people reject it: it puts salvation entirely into God's hands, not ours. Intrinsically, we all want to have a say, to feel we control at least a vital part of it. Men are natural pelagians: they work and think based on merit. Our pride is also legendary: deep down, our ego fails to acknowledge its total depravity and we all think we deserve grace, which is nonsensical.

In any other theological view, the elect - if we can even call them such - can indeed boast of their response to God's grace. The difference between the elect and the reprobate is that the former were better, more competent, smarter, shrewder, more attentive, more pious, however you want to put it, to God's call.

God's purpose in devising the covenant of grace with man was not for the purpose of saving all of mankind but rather a portion of mankind. In eternity God chose from among fallen mankind those whom he purposed to save. As the Scriptures declare: "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world ... in love having predestinated us unto the adoption of children" (Eph. 1:4–5). Christ prayed, "I pray not for the world but for them which thou hast given me" (John 17:9). Christ declared to his disciples: "Ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you and ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit" (John 15:16). Paul affirmed: "Whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called them he also justified ..." (Rom. 8:30).

This is not "another gospel," this IS the gospel. Your outrageous accusation saddens me.

So Reformed Christians are worse off than Papists? I never thought I'd hear a fellow Protestant utter such nonsense.

And it's curious you should attribute to Calvinism the fact that some people ran away from this forum, since the percentage of Reformed Anglicans on this board is very small and clearly in the minority.

 

This seems to avoid the natural reading of the text, to fit it with the Calvinist view. Christ "died for all mankind," but, and here follows the explanation for how he didn't really die for "all" mankind. You rely on a simple and natural reading of the text in passages that fit Calvinism, and use a strained and metaphorical reading in passages that oppose Calvinism.

I agree. But God provides prevenient grace, which lifts us out of our natural spiritual death, and gives us the grace to accept him. That is why synergistic theology is also fully dependent on grace. We don't depend on the omnipotence of God's grace any less than you.

So do you agree with my scenario, that God punishes (with infinite merciless death, mind you!) a rock, when it falls down to earth?

The basic error in your construction (in my view, respectfully), is that you apply the situation to the wrong time. What you describe was the situation only before the grace of God came into play.

Just as we were all originally born spiritually dead, so we are given the grace of God now, to accept or reject him. None of your quotes violate or refute synergistic theology.

Yet it does say that he died for every single man and woman. And yet we do know that some do perish.

We have to find a theological system in which both as true.

 

I am no such thing, I do not hate the Catholic Church and am quite fond of it. I am an anglo-Catholic