Wiploc

Interestingly, your link sent me to about.com atheism.

And when I search for Calvinism at about.com, there are at least ten pages of hits, so there's no way I can tell what you intended to link to. So I read up an Wikipedia, and it didn't change my understanding of Calvinism (beyond giving me to realize that there are enough Calvinists that you can find some on every side of every issue). So here's my understanding of Calvinist predestination:


Predestination thru knowledge: A Catholic might say we aren't predestined at all; we have free will. Another Catholic might say we are predestined, but only by god's foreknowledge. That is, god knows what we will choose, therefore we will choose what god knows we will choose, therefore what we will choose is---in a sense---fixed. But we still have free will. What god foreknows is what we will freely choose.

Predestination thru will: Luther, on the other hand, believed that god doesn't just know who will be saved, but rather he made that decision himself. He elected (chose) them. Everybody is totally depraved, unable to help god save them, so god chose some to change, to touch with faith. Faith isn't something you do; it is something god does to you, if, and only if, you are one of the elect.

Luther's predestination can be called "single predestination," because god is pictured as choosing from among the Hellbound those whom he would save.

Calvin is associated with "double predestination," where god chooses both who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell. Calvinists will argue that Luther was a Calvinist, that Calvin was expounding on Luther's doctrine without changeing it. They'll say that Luther believed in double predestination, but he just focused more on the happy part of god selecting who would be saved. He necessarily also selected everyone else to be damned.

Analogy: There are drowning people in a river and you pull one out. You elected who would live; did you also elect who would die? Calvinists will say that you did elect who would die: You made the river; you put everybody into the river; you decided that they wouldn't be able to swim; you decided to only save some of them; and you decided who would be saved and who would not. And if people want to be softies and only think about god saving the people he saves, and not think about him damning the people he damns, that's fine; but it doesn't change the reality that god chose who would be damned. He chose from the beginning of time. And if you are chosen to go to Hell, there is nothing you can do about it.

And if that doesn't seem fair to you, that shows that your will is not alligned with god's, which means you are hellbound. Of course it doesn't seem fair to reprobates, they are sinful.

My favorite part: If you are a reprobate, one whom god elected to be unsaved, then you are out of line if you try to be good. You are supposed to be a sinner. If you try to get your mind right and be good, god will "darken your counsels and strenghten your will." That is, he will make you more concupiscent.

Concupiscence: Your intellect should rule your will (you should reason, not rationalize); your will should rule your appetites (you shouldn't be hungry unless you need food); and your appetites should rule your senses (food shouldn't even look good to you unless you need food). God punished us for the fall (which he arranged) by flipping our souls upside down, so to speak. Thus, to darken your counsels (intellect) and strengthen your will is to increase your concupiscence, to give your will dominance over your reason.

Aside: That, for me, anyway, makes one definition of sin useless. Many people say that sin is a lack of congruence between what you want and what god wants, you will is not alligned with his. But if god darkens your counsels and strengthens your will so you'll go out and do more rapes, then when you do that you are doing exactly what god wants, which, according to that definition of sin, means you are not sinning.

crc

EthnAlln

....just take a look at Robert Burns' Calvinist prayer. (Still uproariously funny, after 250 years!)

http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic...9;s_prayer.htm

Johnny Skeptic

For some strange reason, on my computer sometimes the link goes where it should go, and sometimes it goes to about.com.athesim. I must have messed up somewhere, but my main question is, in Calvinism, does God essentially choose who he will save by picking people out of a hat, or by some other process? I would never accept any God who refused to show up in person and explain what predestination means in simple, easy to understand terms.

Wiploc

Hat. We are all totally depraved; therefore, there is nothing about one of us that is better than another. The selection, then, is random.



That's because you're a reprobate.

crc




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EthnAlln

Yes, I suppose. In theory, God has his own reasons, which are inscrutable to us. Inscrutability, I suppose, must appear to be randomness. Actually, since we don't know who is elect, we don't even know how it would appear to us. So, we must go back to pure theory (so pure that it has no content at all). All that Calvinist theory says is that God freely chose the elect, just as he freely chose the Jews for his own purposes. (Jews and Christians tend to disagree on what purpose he had for that choice.)

JamesBannon

Scotland's greatest ever poet and an ancestor of mine (at least I think so by common law marriage to Jean Armour). On a related note another very funny take on Calvinism is by James Hogg (The Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner). Not quite in the same class as Burns, but still very funny.

sharon45

Well the belief is still not really supported in the NT, but what would I know, I am clearly not one of the elect.

DBT

Re - Calvanism.
It could be no other way with an Omniscient/Omnipotent God. Also, considering our lives, such a God can only be deficient in compassion and love.

EthnAlln

As a teenager, I ranked Burns at the very top of my list of poets. He's still very high, although I now measure everything by Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I memorized many of Burns' poems and can still recite them. I think Flow Gently, Sweet Afton is the most perfect love poem ever written. I'd be very proud to number him among my ancestors, only I can't, since the only ones who came from Scotland were natives of Kirkcaldy.