Thread: Are there any Calvinistic girls out there?
Admin
Are there any Calvinistic girls out there?
Posted : 23 Jan, 2011 09:47 PM
I do not really like the term "Calvinism", but it get's the point across with out having to write down every single doctrine. I just want some good discussion. If you do not adhere to the Doctrines of Grace please don't reply :).
For me, "Unconditional Election" results in a distorted view of the very Nature of who Gods is. To say there are conditions by which God chooses the elect in no way diminishes His Glory nor Sovereignty. But to say it is "unconditional" seems to paint God as cold and calculating.
Actually when you think about it "unconditional election" points to diminished Sovereignty. After all if God is Love, is He not Powerful enough to elect all?
However, "Conditional" election gives God a Sovereign responsible informed choice as who the elect should be. To say it is "Unconditional" is to restrict how God chooses the elect. God is Sovereign ; He can choose however He wishes.
Those are some very good questions! Hopefully the following will bring some answers and clarification =)
1) To your first thought as Calvinism being the "cool kids club" (lol), I would say this may seem like a natural consequence at first glance but upon further inquiry, we see that it is not the case at all. Just think of the opposite doctrine in Arminianism. This teaches that man is not totally depraved - they are spiritually sick, but not dead. Thus, they are still able to choose God. However, this means that if you do accept Christ, you are at least a lot smarter than people who do not accept Him. Christians, in essence, would be all the smartest people in the world. Calvinism on the other hand, teaches that all men are born with a sinful nature and are totally depraved. All of us deserve God's wrath and that is why when God chooses to save us, we do not think of how wise we are, how superior our intellect is...in fact, we don't think of ourselves at all. The proper response to God choosing to save you is "What a good and gracious God, that he would save me, a rebel that he should have squashed!" And that is the truth of salvation.
2) Why should the Calvinist care about the lost? Or why should they feel bad for them? These are interesting questions, but it goes far beyond just Calvinism. For instance, the Bible clearly teaches that hell exists and since we know people have died without repenting and putting their faith in Jesus, that there are people in hell. Should we feel sorry for them? No, in fact that sentiment sounds blasphemous. Consider the following, "What poor people in hell! Why would God do such a horrible thing to them? What an awful thing for God to do!"...They are in hell because justice has been served so we should no more feel bad for them than a law breaker who is punished for his crimes. God does not feel bad for them, you're right, and we should not either. However, I think there is a proper sentiment towards unbelievers that Paul expresses in the book of Romans. "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh" (Rom. 9:2-3). Though Paul knows that is impossible, it is a hyperbole that expresses his consuming desire to see them saved. Knowing the truth about salvation and the eternal, horrific consequences of not knowing the truth should drive us to prayer and evangelism but not to feeling sorry for them.
3) "If you are chosen, you can live any way you want. You can sin and not worry becuase you are picked by God and can't be taken away."... Ok, the funny thing is, the first sentence is not true but the second one very much is. This could be a long reply lol... Let's look at second sentence first: As a true Christian (one who has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit and given the gift of faith and repentance), it is true that you don't worry about your sins ever stealing you from God's hands. Salvation means that God has forgiven your sins - past, present and future - and he has declared you righteous; he has justified you. Since God cannot lie, there is no way that he could say you are forgiven one day but the next not. When we are saved, we are given the Holy Spirit to ensure that what God has promised, he will also fulfill. "In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were SEALED with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the GUARANTEE of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory" (Ephesians 1:13-14). The verse is saying that the Holy Spirit is the down payment that God has made declaring that you will have an inheritance with me. There is no way you could walk away, run away, get snatched away, anything! Because God will fulfill his promise. But, does this mean that a Christian can just sin all the time and never face any consequence for it (like your first sentence implies)? No, in fact if a person is in a continual lifestyle of sin, that is evidence that they are not a Christian.
In Romans 6, Paul tackles this very challenge. Paul shows that if you are a Christian you are dead to sin (v. 11), sin does not have dominion over us (v. 14), we are set free from sin and are slaves to righteousness (v. 18), and we are sanctified (v. 19,22). As a Christian, we are dead to sins and a slave to Christ - a slave of righteousness. You cannot serve 2 masters - either you are a slave of sin or a slave of Christ. This does not mean that Christians do not sin because we obviously do; yet we do not love sin because it is rebellion against the One we love. However, because we are true Christians, we don't need to worry that our sin will ever spiritually "choke" us, it will never lead us away from Christ because God, in his everlasting love and mercy, will always bring us to repentance by the conviction of the Holy Spirit and through his Word. He is our good shepherd without which, our sins would choke us.
4) Why should we witness? This is a very common question to which there is a very simple answer - Matthew 28:8. We are commanded to preach the Gospel! Think of it this way, God knows who is elect but we do not. We do not see big "E"s on everyone who is elect so we know "oh, I need to witness to that person because God wants to save him." lol We are simply commanded to preach the Word because that is the means God has chosen through which to save people. "How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone *preaching*?" God has given us a means of salvation and that is the Word of God, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes..." (Romans 1:16). We are commanded to preach the gospel. Since salvation is a complete and total work of God, we do not depend on our preaching for salvation or the cleverness of our arguments, we simply preach the gospel and God will save those whom he has intended.
5) John 3:16 - You bring up a good point that anyone has the choice to be saved. It's true that God commands all men everywhere to repent, yet there are those who never repent. How could that be? Well, to understand this, we need to understand total depravity. The Bible describes the human heart as "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked" (Jeremiah 17:9). Man's will is free only in the sense that it is not controlled by any force outside of himself. However, even as a bird with a broken wing is "free" to fly, but not able, so all men are "free" to come to God but not able. How can a man come to God when he hates Him (Romans 8:7-8)? The call to salvation is open - anyone and everyone may come. Man is simply unable on his own, yet still responsible because man freely sins and is not coerced into it by any creature outside of himself. Whoever believes, its true, will be saved but only those whom the Father draws, Christ died for, and the Holy Spirit regenerates will be able to believe.
I really hope that helps! It's good to talk about Scripture =)
I have to say that I'm really glad that you paid attention in sunday school and youth group! I wish I had (insert large number) of students just like you!
The problem that I have with a lot of modern era Christians is that they don't question what they believe and tend to be parrots for their ministers who are parrots of their (insert denomination)'s global headquarters. So now we're left with a bunch of Christrons who have been programmed with the systems of men and cannot compute a logical argument against what they believe. They simply lock-up, point at whatever is in question, call it evil and then flee from the appearance of it.
I hope that you are not this way. (And I think that you're smart enough not to be) :)
First I need to see if I have an understanding of what you've said so far. You believe that before the creation of Man, that God, in His sovereignty, selected who would be saved. So that those who are saved, the elect, cannot say that they did anything to earn their salvation.
lol, I'm so sorry! My hand needed a break after typing that monster lol. Alright, in regards to your post - Firstly, I think we can agree that whatever God has done is the most reasonable and informed decision that could have possibly been made (Him bein God and all lol). If He elects according to His own wishes and according to his own good pleasure as we agree, then I would argue that his own good pleasure is to save those whom he has elected and predestined only:
�Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will� (Eph. 1:3-5).
�it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy� (Rom. 9:16; see Romans 9:6-24 where Paul argues that why some people become Christians and others remain in darkness is because God so wills)
These verses and others like it (see Acts 13:48), teach plainly that God decides who is saved and who is not. This is to give God the maximum amount of glory. Election refers to �that eternal act of God whereby He, in His sovereign good pleasure, and on account of no foreseen merit in them, chooses a certain number of men to be the recipients of special grace and of eternal salvation.� Consequently, it must be unconditional or, in other words, the condition on whether or not you will be saved is not on you. There's no way you could make God choosing to save you "reasonable," there just isn't. It took the death of the Son of God to bring anyone to salvation and what we have to offer God is worth less than dung in comparison. There are some things that human reason simply cannot comprehend about the Bible and Scripture and this may be one of them. But certainly because our weak and limited brain power cannot comprehend it, doesn't mean that it wasn't the most reasonable thing for God to do. So, though God is indeed powerful enough to save everybody, he is no way obliged to and it is actually not a question of power. It is a question of what he chose to do according to his good will. This, again, is so that everyone may see what a gracious God he is and not look upon a man and say, "That man earned God's favor."
So, I hope that addresses your post thoroughly...If you are really interested, I would highly suggest reading the link at the end of my previous post to reformedonline.org. It contains an excellent article that answers many questions and objections about Calvinism according to Scripture. It's a little lengthy, but if there are pertinent questions in your mind, it's easy to navigate through to find specific information =)
It's true that that is a sad state of many Christians today. They do not study the Scriptures themselves to see if these things are so. I think you described their state quite well.
And what you said is correct, yes. You are actually referring to a covenant that the Godhead made between itself before anything was created. It is called "The Covenant of Grace" in reformed circles. Each member has a part in this covenant. God the Father chose those whom he would give to his Son to be his bride. God the Son then came down in time and and died for those people; he gave himself up for his bride. God the Holy Spirit's part is to regenerate those whom the Father has chosen and the Son died for, to sanctify them and keep them from falling away. As you can see, this truly does make salvation a gift free of all human merit.
Thank you for the "monster post"... lol! U r sweet.
You don't need to answer this with a monster post, but I am going to ask you to put on your thinking cap.
You shared: "Election refers to �that eternal act of God whereby He, in His sovereign good pleasure, and on account of no foreseen merit in them, chooses a certain number of men to be the recipients of special grace and of eternal salvation.� Consequently, it must be unconditional....."
Ok, here is where the rub comes in; God exists outside of time, therefore we cannot say what conditions (if any) God uses to choose the elect. Granted their is nothing in any of us that would make God unjust in saving no one. Yet the bottom line is some are elect and some aren't and God who knows the beginning to the end as one picture makes the choices. There is plenty in Scripture to support the existence of the elect, support the claim that it is Gods choice, and that none of us deserve to be chosen. However there is nothing in Scripture that says it is "Unconditional". This does not mean that this doctrine is prohibited by Scripture, only that it goes beyond what Scripture teaches.
Thanks =) Well, I'm thinking maybe this is where we disagree: I think by unconditional, it means that there is no condition dependent upon us in regards to salvation. In other words, that the only and ultimate "condition" is whether or not God has chosen to save you - that's really the only way you can be saved by the means God has provided. God does not say, "first you must do this and this, and then I will choose you for salvation." Unless you think the term "unconditional" refers to something else, I don't see how this could go beyond Scripture.
I think that discussing theology is a lot like playing rummy or spades. There's a lot of diffierent rules and you really need to discuss them before you start playing.
There are a lot of terms used in Christian circles that have been defined in different ways. So we need to get on the same page with these terms so that we can understand each other better.
What is (a):
covenant (you brought this up so i thing it's a decent place to start)
faith
grace
works
mercy
love
The scripture says "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith�and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God� not by works, so that no one can boast"
So I think it's a little important to understand the ingredients of salvation--grace and faith
Covenant - A covenant is a binding agreement between two parties (either God and man or man and man) far more binding than agreements today, they are unto death. It often involves the exchanging of identities and strength, the taking on of a new name, a sign and a seal, among other things. More could be said about this, that is simply a strict definition.
Faith - The act of trusting something or someone. To put your faith in God, is to believe that His Word is true and trustworthy.
Grace - God's unmerited favor on a sinner.
Works - Obviously, that which a person does whether good or bad. Works have no part in the work of salvation; God begets a Christian. However, in the part of sanctification, or a Christian's growth towards holiness (the part of being a Christian), there are many good works involved. Faith without works is dead.
Mercy - Very similar to grace, just a little added to it. Whereas grace would cleanse us from our sins and sorta wipe our slate clean, mercy goes beyond that and actually gives us good things.
Love - Hmm, I think there are many intricate parts to love depending on the object of your love. Suffice it to say that generally speaking love originates and is an essential attribute of God. God is love. 1 Cor. 13 obviously describes love a lot. When we look at everything God is and has done, we can know that that is love...and I'm sure that's the only objective answer I can give lol.
I hope those were the kind of definition you were looking for.
