Reformed Theology: Somewhere Between..

Crucible

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So he knew ahead of time that Adam and Eve would sin and that he would kill lots of people in the Big Flood. Also that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc would kill millions. That a couple of wack job Islamists would kill people in San Berdo. Got it, thanks

Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Now go cry about it, I guess.
Nothing like an atheist joining Christians to go against those who don't tell him what they want to hear :rolleyes:
 

Clete

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First, I've never known a Calvinist to not see TULIP as the defining abstract of Christianity.
You must have simply just happened by certain Presbyterians or churches that have watered it down.
You miss my point. There are Calvinists who believe that you can be something other than a Calvinist and still be saved. There are Calvinists who believe, for example, that many Catholics are saved believers in Christ.

There are others, however, who believe that Calvinism is the gospel itself and that to reject Calvinism specifically is to reject the Christian faith entirely.

All of you all's doctrines and ideologies continually change and are tailored to fit your preferences. Every church does it over time, except for those anchored to Calvinism.
Well this was a stupid thing to say.

Calvinism has only existed for not even 500 years! It represents the single most colossal doctrinal change in the history of Christianity.

Those who aren't Catholic or hold to Reformed doctrine have become a web of heresies transfiguring all throughout Christian society.
Saying it doesn't make it so.

Every Catholic in existence could say the exact same sentence except that they'd remove the words "or hold to Reformed doctrine" and it would be no more valid and you couldn't refute it for all the tea in China.

So don't even try to say that 'Calvinists don't think right'- you all just can't recognize the light so you create your own, using the foundation that the Reformers built to go and bite into them just as the Roman Church.
I'll say what I am convinced is the truth. When Calvinists (or anyone else) intentionally throw out sound reason, they debase their own mind.

It, in fact, is you, the Calvinist, who can't recognize the light and create your own. You throw out the objective laws of reason (logos) and substitute it for blind belief (John1:5).

The truth of the matter is that Calvinism is the only belief that does make sense, and all you or any other person opposed to it is the same shallow, emotional response that 'if God created people to perdition, He is evil'.
That is not an emotional response that is rationality.

Contradictions cannot exist. If one acts unjustly he is unjust, by definition. God, the real God, tells us clearly what justice looks like. The god of Calvinism acts in a manner contrary to justice. That god is therefore unjust or a made up fairy tail (or both).

That is not an emotionally based argument no matter how many times you want to repeat that it is. It is a rational argument that you cannot refute. I know that you cannot refute it because I've been debating Calvinists for well over a decade. There's nothing you could say that I haven't read or heard a hundred times before.

Well, God is not one of chaos, but of order. Look at the universe, look at nature, and look at your ideology- where is the chaos?
Again, your mind is broken. You argue against yourself! It isn't my doctrine that is impervious to rational argument, its yours! If my theology is false prove it! PLEASE! If you can rationally refute one syllable of my doctrine, I'll hear it gladly!

You, on the other hand, have discarded order of every kind! You claim that the universe is orderly but discard the rational faculty of your mind that permits you to rightly draw that conclusion. You accept the coherent nature of the universe God created and would reject as a mad man anyone who told you to boil your water by placing it the freezer but will accept blindly that the unjust is the just and declare that IT is the only doctrine that makes sense. You therefore tacitly accept that the self-consistent (i.e. the universe) was created by its opposite (the self-contradictory).

If you were given free will, how would your choices be different then as they are now?
How is it possible, unless your mind is broken, that you can even ask such a convoluted, self-contradictory question as this?

If I don't have a free will I wouldn't have any choices to begin with. To say I have choices is to say that I have a free will. That's all "free will' means, the ability to choose.

How does God, the All-knowing, sovereign and omnipotent Creator be subject to your choices?
By His own choice, that's how.

This question commits yet another logically fallacy known as Begging the Question. Your question presupposes the truth of Calvinism in order to make argument in favor of Calvinism. That's called circular reasoning and is yet another example of what happens when you throw your mind out the window.

These are questions you can't honestly answer because you are in rebellion against it.
Which questions would those be?

Must have been predestined :rolleyes:
This is, by far, the most logically consistent sentence in your entire post. If you believe that everything is predestined one wonders why you would care to debate it, unless of course you believe that your debating it was also predestined. I really don't know how you Calvinists stay upright. Your minds go in such circles as to make anyone dizzy!


Resting in Him,
Clete
 

Clete

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ARMcCarley,

This thread is going a lightning speed and so I wanted to re-post this in case you might have over looked it...


Please be respectful and do not disrespect anyone(no matter their comments)


So, about a year ago a good friend of mine introduced reformed theology to me. My first thought was,"ummm what?", but as he explainned the thought behind it, the more I could see some agreement I have always had. I do no not hold to all five points of Calvinism. The truth is im torn between.

Any thoughts on reformed theology?

You cannot hold to part of the T.UL.I.P. doctrines. They're very much an all or nothing package deal as is the rest of the Reformed doctrinal system.

Reformed theology (here after; Calvinism) is based on the Greek philosophical idea that God cannot change AT ALL. Utter, absolute, completely exhaustive immutability is the core doctrine of the whole system. All of what you understand as Calvinism; the five points of the TULIP Divine Impassibility, Predestination & the Classical understanding of the omni-doctrines (omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence); all of it derives logically from the single premise the God is utterly immutable. Thus, as I said, you cannot take part of it. It's all or nothing. That is assuming you want to believe in something that is rationally coherent.

If you're interested in having what I just said substantiated, the historical material is extensive and detailed and irrefutable and even unchallenged. That is to say that the historical and philosophical basis for what is called Calvinism or Reformed Theology is so clear and the evidence so obvious that not even Calvinists will deny it except in ignorance. One of the clearest and most concise treatments I've found is here...

Calvinism Unmasked – by Bob Hill

That link is to a pdf that's only 32 pages long. I've see whole books, ten times that long on the topic.

I should point out that while Calvinists do not deny (usually) the veracity of the historical origins of their doctrines, its not because they think that such a historical basis is a valid way to form a doctrine. Its because they don't care about the historical basis for their doctrine. They say things like, "Who cares where Luther got the doctrine of Immutability so long as he got it!" The problem with this sort of thinking is obvious, it seems, to everyone but them.

I'm out of time for now but I leave you, for now, with one final thought...

Contradictions do not exist! Do not accept Calvinism, any of it, unless and until you can be made to see with your own mind how what they teach about who does and who does not get saved is consistent with the concept of justice. You cannot accept Calvinism without transmuting the concept of justice into its opposite. God is either just or He is arbitrary. He cannot be both.

Resting in Him,
Clete
 

Zeke

Well-known member
It necessarily makes it a different conversation because your nonliteral stance is against all of the rest of the thread, as is Universalism. It makes it a different conversation, and I'm not as familiar with your departure from Christianty. There is a lot of needed conversation because of this.


This is why it is beyond a straightforward conversation with you, however I did try to address your questions after the concerns involved with the OP. I'm stuck on the page, however and thus have different expectations in such a conversation. I believe it is the infallible word of God.

I would make the argument that a allegorical approach does deal with issues raised by historical theology, and the many Gordian knots that literal approach fails to undo. The symbolic clues (pearls) hidden in the scripture (field) is the tool that correctly divides the teaching between drama and Conscience in the which all things exist.

You brought up Romans nine and I brought up eleven which counter balances the need to Judge God for those types of amoral actions all through the scripture.

God of the OT can't be let off that amoral literal hook, that veils/deceives the reader into making excuses/theology for those actions that contradict the Deity of the more excellent way.
 

Grosnick Marowbe

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I would make the argument that a allegorical approach does deal with issues raised by historical theology, and the many Gordian knots that literal approach fails to undo. The symbolic clues (pearls) hidden in the scripture (field) is the tool that correctly divides the teaching between drama and Conscience in the which all things exist.

You brought up Romans nine and I brought up eleven which counter balances the need to Judge God for those types of amoral actions all through the scripture.

God of the OT can't be let off that amoral literal hook, that veils/deceives the reader into making excuses/theology for those actions that contradict the Deity of the more excellent way.

Another, other presents his inane comment.
 

Grosnick Marowbe

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Reprobates.

He cannot claim to love someone when He never shed for them the blood of His Son, who was the ultimate expression of that love.

He can't claim to love those for whom He gave no possible way for them to be made acceptable to Himself.

He cannot claim to love those He damns for unbelief when in eternity past He decided they would forever be unbelievers.

Calvinists insisting God loves those He reprobated is another transparent lie and another Reformed slander against God.

Also note how the reformed can't answer simple questions and points without elaborate walls of text.

Good post.
 

TulipBee

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So he knew ahead of time that Adam and Eve would sin and that he would kill lots of people in the Big Flood. Also that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc would kill millions. That a couple of wack job Islamists would kill people in San Berdo. Got it, thanks
If he didn't then there would be a space we here is not. Where God isn't doesn't exist. There are no space without God. No single maverick molecule running loose That means you have no understanding what, who, why, how and when of God. Your comments and questins shows you to be unregerate, one that has no clue of God and being passed over.
 

Grosnick Marowbe

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frankly I'm tired of the relentless assault on Calvinism.

Why not find a thread that's, Calvinist friendly?
That's a simple answer to your dilemma isn't it?

Some don't accept the Calvinist belief system. I
don't and there are plenty of others that don't. Belly-
aching won't get you anywhere, will it?
 

Crucible

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Well this was a stupid thing to say.

Calvinism has only existed for not even 500 years! It represents the single most colossal doctrinal change in the history of Christianity.

Do you understand the definition of REFORMED?
:doh:

Calvinism is what it was before you all came along and adulterated it every century from then till now. You think the early Christians believed that they had to meet God in the middle, or that they were saved by a free choice of faith? Pff.

They died as the ELECT.

Saying it doesn't make it so.

Shut up, then.
 

Grosnick Marowbe

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Do you understand the definition of REFORMED?
:doh:

Calvinism is what it was before you all came along and adulterated it every century from then till now. You think the early Christians believed that they had to meet God in the middle, or that they were saved by a free choice of faith? Pff.

They died as the ELECT.



Shut up, then.

I think it best if, you shut up BIG mouth.
 

Clete

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Do you understand the definition of REFORMED?
:doh:
Better than you do, I'd wager.

Calvinism is what it was before you all came along and adulterated it every century from then till now.
Every believer of every sect of Christianity makes the exact same claim.

You think the early Christians believed that they had to meet God in the middle, or that they were saved by a free choice of faith? Pff.
Of course I believe that.

Shut up, then.
Hey FOOL!

I'm the one here, THE ONLY ONE of the two of us that has made anything that looks similar to an argument. You make claims and shoot your mouth off as though by the mere fact that you've shown up to say it, its proven.

Typical Calvinist drivel.

I despise Calvin, Calvinism and anyone who, knowing what the term means and implies, calls themselves a Calvinist and you a terrific example of why.

Enjoy your cosmic lotto winnings!
:wave2:
 

Nick M

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Non-Calvinists are the ones lacking guts, too afraid to call the Gospel what it is.

Romans 5

18 Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.
[/QUOTE]
 

Clete

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Well, I was raised Southern Baptist and was taught that Christ died for all. And it made sense to me because i was only introduced to the verses that appeared to support that theology. But now that Christ is in me, I have a desire to know him and i am challenged with scripture like Romans 9. And to tell the truth my heart aches for the non-elect. not sure if that's right but that;s my feeling.


ARM
Read this..

One on One: Romans 9
 

Crucible

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Every believer of every sect of Christianity makes the exact same claim.

Calvinism is the golden fruit of the Reformation. You all used it as a bridge to get away from the Catholic Church before turning against it- non catholic, anti reformers.
Imagine that.

You all went and created an entire web of heresy, especially in America which owes a lot of credit to the Reformation as well.

I'm the one here, THE ONLY ONE of the two of us that has made anything that looks similar to an argument. You make claims and shoot your mouth off as though by the mere fact that you've shown up to say it, its proven.

The only argument you and others have made on here is 'if God created men to perdition, than God is evil'.
The most typical argument.

An atheist will say, 'if you have to believe in God, then God is evil'. You will sit there all day and try to convince them, in vain, while they deny it and eventually show that they despise such belief- just as you have done here:

Typical Calvinist drivel.

I despise Calvin, Calvinism and anyone who, knowing what the term means and implies, calls themselves a Calvinist and you a terrific example of why.

A Calvinist doesn't suffer from cognitive dissonance. You do, and I'll show you:

-If you are under predestination now, then what would you choose differently if given free will? Do you have a real idea of the forensic difference in the experience between them?

-Your own identity is predestined- you do not control your fate anymore then you controlled your beginning. You didn't choose you and how you identify with reality.

-Separating omniscience and predestination is fallacious. If God is the maker of all things, and knows the outcome, then it would be impossible for God to make anything without a predetermined outcome. Since He would know beforehand that an outcome would be undesirable, He would never make things to result in such a way in the first place.

Do you know what all that means? It means that Calvinism is the only belief in which God isn't wicked, because those destined to Hell are intrinsically wicked and not sent there simply for being inflicted :rolleyes:
 
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