Shasta
Well-known member
Actually the key aspect of Reformed theology is the view that Scripture plainly teaches the sovereignty of God. Everything else about Reformed theology follows from that starting point. Wherever differences between the Reformed view and non-Reformed views emerge, it can invariably be traced back to a dilution of this key point.
For example, with the open theists—a minority movement—you have the Survivor God, outwitting, outlasting, and outplaying His apparently autonomous moral agents as He learns more and more by learning what they do, for God cannot truly know what they will do until the do it (the future is unknown). God can only predict their choices—of course with ivory soap level percentages, ninety-nine, and forty-four over one hundred percent—since God is really, really smart. For these folks, the God of Moses truly knows less than God today as God is continually accreting knowledge and adjusting His plan A, B, etc., while He keeps up with the billions of contingencies developing each moment by the so-called free will choices of His autonomous moral agents.
With all others—e.g., the soteriological synergists of Arminianism and Romanism—God is merely peeking ahead in time before actualizing creation to see what His so-called autonomous moral agents will do when presented with the Good News. God then effectively "rubber stamps" their decision, thus making God a contingent debtor based upon the decisions of those He created.
Both groups dilute the sovereignty of God with all manner of rationalization that is nothing more than placing Him in the Dock for cross-examination according to what His pitiful finite creatures think He should be like and act like, creating more theological dilemmas than they think they are solving with these peculiar views.
The Reformed would rather be as was the Prophet who lamented upon a mere glimpse of He who reigns with sceptre in hand disposing of His creation as He sees fit, "Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."
AMR
I was speaking historically from the standpoint of Augustine's journey. His interest in explaining the universality and dominance of evil was a personal dilemma which lead him, first into Manichaeism then to Christianity. In Christian theology mere determinism was transfigured into the more august concept of sovereignty but Augustine retained the idea of total inability throughout his experience.
None of the ECF before Augustine advocated any part of what we now call Reformed Doctrine. Not only did they not affirm it they renounced such ideas as "pre-determinism" and "inability." Without going to philosophical depth, the ECF said that God's prophecies were not meant to imply that God necessitated people to do evil but only that He knew what they would do. Ideas like inability and pre-determinism were universally considered pagan and Gnostic by orthodox believers until Augustine.
I have no doubt that what you say is a fair description of Reformed doctrine today. I have no grounds to argue otherwise since I have never been a member of a Reformed Church. I do, however, read Calvin. Personally I have taken the Molinist view which I think affirms God's omniscience while at the same time allowing freewill (which the ECF affirmed). Because God knows the choices moral agents will freely make in a given situation He is able to providentially arrange circumstances so as to bring about His will. Thus God is neither a programmer or a gambler.