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Laika
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Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
 
   Posted 8/20/2003 11:28 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
John Calvin's bodycount

I did a BODY COUNT on John Calvin's reign of terror.

The victims are listed, followed by references, (A)...(L), the URLs of which are at the bottom. Have fun!

A. Execution

1. Jacques Gruet
(A)"Thus the State issued dogmatic decrees, the force of which had been anticipated earlier, as when Jacques Gruet, a known opponent of Calvin, was arrested, tortured for a month and beheaded on July 26, 1547, for placing a letter in Calvin's pulpit calling him a hypocrite. Gruet's book was later found and burned along with his house while his wife was thrown out into the street to watch."
(C)"Calvin cut off the head of Jacques Gruet "for having written impious letters, libertine verses, and for working to overthrow ecclesiastical ordinances."
(D)Quoting Stephan Zweig's "The Right to Heresy": "Jacques Gruet was racked and then executed merely for having called Calvin a hypocrite."
(E)"This regime was resisted by a party incorrectly described as 'Libertines', which Calvin succeeded in overcoming by force. Among the opponents executed after torture were Jacques Gruet (1547), Raoul Monnet (1549), and, best known, Michael *Servetus (1553)."
(F)"Even eminent men were not safe from Calvin's control. Jacques Gruet was beheaded for blasphemy, treason, and a threat to the ministers."
(J)

2. Giovanni Valentino Gentile
(A)and(G)"Another victim of Calvin's fiery zeal was Gentile of an Italian sect in Geneva, which also numbered among its adherents Alciati and Gribaldo. More or less Unitarian in their views, they were required to sign a confession drawn up by Calvin in 1558. Gentile signed it reluctantly, but in the upshot he was condemned and imprisoned as a perjurer. He escaped only to be twice incarcerated at Berne where, in 1566, he was beheaded."
(H) & (I) Very full accounts of Gentile

3. Michael Servetus Is much needed about him? Is there any debate about his murder?
(A)
(C)"Seven years before the conference which was now to take place in Calvin's house on the proposals of the queen-mother, Michel Servet, a Frenchman, travelling through Switzerland, was arrested at Geneva, tried, condemned, and burned alive, on Calvin's accusation, for having "attacked the mystery of the Trinity," in a book which was neither written nor published in Geneva."
(E)(J)

4. Raoul Monnet
(E)
(J)page 223 "This regime was resisted by a party incorrectly described as "Libertines, which Calvin succeeded in overcoming by force.Among the opponents executed after torture were Jacques Gruet (1547), Raoul Monnet (1549), and best known, Michael Servetus (1553). By 1555, however, all resistance had ceased and Calvin was the uncontested master of the city."

5. Others
(A)"Calvin also had twenty women burned at the stake after accusing them of causing a plague that had swept through Geneva in 1545."
(A)"Calvin did not shrink from his self-appointed task. Within five years fifty-eight sentences of death and seventy-six of exile, besides numerous committals of the most eminent citizens to prison, took place in Geneva."
(F)"A heretic who also was an anti-Trinitarian was burned at the stake." NOTE: Probably Servetus

B. Banishment (mere banishment!)

1. Castellio
(A)"Gruet's death was more highly criticized by far than the banishment of Castellio or the penalties inflicted on Bolsec -- moderate men opposed to extreme views in discipline and doctrine, who fell under suspicion as reactionary."
(B)
(K) Very full account of Castellio

2. Bolsec
(A)(B)(F)"Jerome Bolsec, a physician who attacked Calvin's doctrine of predestination, was banished."
(L)

3. Others
(A)"Calvin did not shrink from his self-appointed task. Within five years fifty-eight sentences of death and seventy-six of exile, besides numerous committals of the most eminent citizens to prison, took place in Geneva."

A. http://www.biblelife.org/calvinism.htm
B. http://www.gospeltruth.net/heresy/heresy_chap5.htm
C. http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/debalzac/CatherinedeMedici/chap16.html
D. http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/calvin.htm
E. http://www.gospelcom.net/chi/HERITAGF/Issuenos/chl047.shtml
F. http://www.churchlink.com.au/churchlink/worldscope/voice/calvin.html
G. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03195b.htm
H. http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/hcc8/htm/iv.xv.xiv.htm
I. http://online.sksm.edu/ouh/chapter/13_XIII.html
J. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church; F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone; Oxford University Press;
K. http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/hcc8/htm/iv.xv.ix.htm (different page from H)
L. http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/hcc8/htm/iv.xv.viii.htm



inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade

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Chris Grant
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Total Posts : 151
 
   Posted 8/20/2003 12:08 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Laika
Inasmuch as there was a discussion about Calvin's bodycount in which I didn't participate, And
inasmuch as Calvin's Kidz and others concluded that ONLY Servetus was killed due to Calvin's Reign of Terror (ROT), And
inasmuch as Greg Boyd suggested Bolsec was also killed due to ROT


Reverend Boyd's statement that "Bolsac [was] killed by [Calvin]" occurs in the 2nd post of a brief thread entitled "Very Interesting Online Book". I can't see any posts in that thread that asserted that Servetus was the only person executed in Calvin's Geneva. To what discussion and to which of Calvin's Kidz are you referring?

That post by Boyd was also the one in which he asserted that "no Reformed Confession mentions the love of God." In light of your apparent ability to do extensive web searches, your claim that you couldn't comment on the accuracy of that statement because "[you] don't know anything about" the Westminster Confession, Savoy Declaration of Faith, and Canons of Dordt seems odd. Does your Internet search engine have a unusually selective filter on it?


"I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I would even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories."
(C.S. Lewis to Mary Willis Shelburne, November 10, 1952.)

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Starkman
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   Posted 8/20/2003 1:52 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Now tell me, how, in all my 25 years of being a Christian, I had never heard any of this?

Starkman
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John Earp
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   Posted 8/20/2003 5:26 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Starkman

Now tell me, how, in all my 25 years of being a Christian, I had never heard any of this?

Starkman



Because Calvin is equated with Paul and even Jesus in much of evangelicalism.



"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.

revivaltheology.net

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GregBoyd
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   Posted 8/20/2003 6:56 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Did I say Calvin PUT Bolsek to death? My bad. He did, however, go to great lengths to TRY to get him executed. indeed, it appears (to some scholars at least) that he was willing to shade the truth here and there to prove his case. For the fullest account of this ugly episode (which, in the light of Laika's research actually looks par for the course, if not tame), see Philip Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy on Predestination (Edwin Mellon Press, 1993).

Hard for me to find the "hero" in all this.

Doc


"The responsibility is with the chooser -- God is blameless." Plato, Republic, 10.

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GregBoyd
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   Posted 8/20/2003 7:05 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
It may be worth noting that the first person to advocate 'the sword" as a means of evangelism was (drum roll...... St. Augustine!!! In De Correctione Donatistarium he writes:

"...Paul was compelled by Christ, therefore the Church, in tring to compel the Donatists, is following the example of the Lord... Wherefore, if the power [of the sword] which the Church has received by divine appointment in its due course... be the instrument by which those who are found in the highways and hedges -- that is, in heresies and schisms -- are compelled to come in, then let them not find fault because they are compelled."

What ever happened to the "example of the Lord" given at Calvary?

Doc


"The responsibility is with the chooser -- God is blameless." Plato, Republic, 10.

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honorman
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Date Joined Oct 2002
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   Posted 8/20/2003 11:41 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
If most reformed believers didn't think we open theists were evil enough, this will put them over the topApprove
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Laika
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Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 2:08 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Chris Grant
Reverend Boyd's statement that "Bolsac [was] killed by [Calvin]" occurs in the 2nd post of a brief thread entitled "Very Interesting Online Book". I can't see any posts in that thread that asserted that Servetus was the only person executed in Calvin's Geneva.



When Bolsec and Servetus were mentioned, you questioned Bolsec, i.e. trying to limit it to just Servetus. Other threads only mention Servetus (the CARM thread). I thought I'd set the record straight. Shine a light into the dark corners.... Eyebrow



inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade

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Chris Grant
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Date Joined Jun 2003
Total Posts : 151
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 3:32 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by GregBoyd
What ever happened to the "example of the Lord" given at Calvary?


Good question. Did Calvin see himself as following in the footsteps of, say, Moses or Samuel?


"I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I would even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories."
(C.S. Lewis to Mary Willis Shelburne, November 10, 1952.)

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Chris Grant
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Date Joined Jun 2003
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   Posted 8/21/2003 3:39 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by GregBoyd

Did I say Calvin PUT Bolsek to death?

Man, that guy's name is tough to spell!Wink
quote:
Originally posted by GregBoyd

My bad.

No problem. Now, do you have a follow-up on your claim that "no Reformed Confession mentions the love of God"?


"I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I would even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories."
(C.S. Lewis to Mary Willis Shelburne, November 10, 1952.)

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Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 3:40 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Starkman

Now tell me, how, in all my 25 years of being a Christian, I had never heard any of this?

Starkman

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Because Calvin is equated with Paul and even Jesus in much of evangelicalism.


Oh, that's a tough one to swollow (though, it's probably true). I mean, SOMEONE would have brought this stuff up to the forefront. There's always someone who has the dirt right up front. I find it so hard to understand how I hadn't at least "heard" of this throughout my Christian years. Amazing!

Starkman
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Chris Grant
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Total Posts : 151
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 4:08 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Laika
When Bolsec and Servetus were mentioned, you questioned Bolsec, i.e. trying to limit it to just Servetus.


Don't quit your day job to become a professional mind-reader. I questioned Reverend Boyd's statement about Bolsec because it was false. Regardless of the validity of one's overall point, that validity should be proved using true statements rather than false ones. (Is it only mathematicians who feel that way?)
quote:

Other threads only mention Servetus (the CARM thread).


So, how does failure to mention others that were executed in Calvin's Geneva besides Servetus show that "Calvin's Kidz . . . concluded" that these others didn't exist? While you have shared with all of us here on the board information that indicates that you have intestines, I don't recall you telling us that you have, say, eyeballs. Does that show that you're blind?


"I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I would even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories."
(C.S. Lewis to Mary Willis Shelburne, November 10, 1952.)

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Laika
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Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 4:42 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Chris Grant
Does that show that you're blind?



You lose one and go postal? LOL

You got your Pyrrhic victory (Bolsec was only banished). Be happy! Eyebrow



inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade

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Chris Grant
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Date Joined Jun 2003
Total Posts : 151
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 5:06 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Laika
You lose one and go postal?


Remind me what I lost. (I'm not a Calvinist.)
quote:

You got your Pyrrhic victory (Bolsec was only banished). Be happy! Eyebrow


It took you an extra 15 minutes to come up with that?


"I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I would even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories."
(C.S. Lewis to Mary Willis Shelburne, November 10, 1952.)

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Tigress
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   Posted 8/21/2003 5:09 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I don't remember learning about this in college either, although I wasn't a very good student, so maybe that's why. Sometimes it was all I could do to stay awake in class. Sleepy But, you'd think I'd remember something like this! I can't understand how Christians could possibly believe that they must kill dissenters to preserve their theology. It must have been pride clouding their conscience. The Holy Spirit must have grieved so heavily when these things happened. Sad


Tigress Tigress

"Name a shrub after me. Preferably one that's prickly and difficult to eradicate."

-Captain Jack Aubrey
"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"

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Laika
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Total Posts : 2433
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 5:21 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Chris Grant
It took you an extra 15 minutes to come up with that?



LOL, yeah. We're having internal network problems. That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it. Eyebrow

So why couldn't you find Bolsec on the internet? Researching



inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade

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Chris Grant
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Total Posts : 151
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 5:41 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:

So why couldn't you find Bolsec on the internet? Researching



I could and did. Nothing about a "Bolsac" that was killed by Calvin, though.

BTW, what happened to your request for "definitions of definitions"? You're pretty quick on the edit key. I guess you've learned that it's hard to hit a moving target!Wink


"I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I would even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories."
(C.S. Lewis to Mary Willis Shelburne, November 10, 1952.)

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Laika
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Total Posts : 2433
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 6:48 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Chris Grant
I could and did. Nothing about a "Bolsac" that was killed by Calvin, though.



Tough luck. I reasoned it was someone else. Not everyone has a perfect memory.

quote:

BTW, what happened to your request for "definitions of definitions"? You're pretty quick on the edit key. I guess you've learned that it's hard to hit a moving target!Wink



Yeah, I still can't figure that one out. I wanted a definition of his terms before I answered your question. Silly me. Ima sugu kimi wa sore o wakatte irun desu ka? ---- Well?

I just got lunch, did you clock me? Eyebrow

Do I edit my posts more frequently than you hit refresh on your browser?



inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade

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Chris Grant
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Total Posts : 151
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 7:32 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Laika
I wanted a definition of his terms before I answered your question.
And what I couldn't figure out was what my definitions of the terms Roger Olson used in his talk had to do with the question of whether you found his talk (including the fact that, like everyone, he failed to undertake the Sisyphean task of defining every single term he used) acceptable. If Open Theists can't trust their friend Roger Olson to treat them right, who can they trust?
quote:
Originally posted by Laika
Ima sugu kimi wa sore o wakatte irun desu ka? ---- Well?

Is Roger Olson's English as unintelligible to you as your Japanese is to me?


"I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I would even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories."
(C.S. Lewis to Mary Willis Shelburne, November 10, 1952.)

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John Earp
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   Posted 8/21/2003 7:45 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
How unfair to attack such an eminent theologian's character!

Calvin couldn't help sinning at all, and in fact was simply and only doing the will of God by sinning against his fellow man as he repeatedly did. Who are we mere worms to talk back to God by criticizing Calvin's persecutorial actions?!?!

God was GLORIFIED in ALL of Calvin's actions, just as He is glorified in unconditionally electing a few to heaven and the majority to hell, being the ultimate cause of all actions, whether good or evil, even the fall of Satan and the original sin of Adam and Eve. All of this was God's will.

Shall the created thing say to the Creator, "Why hast thou made me thus?" Those who are truly of the elect do not question God's sovereignty like this.



(Now, if I can only pull my tongue out of my cheek...)



"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.

revivaltheology.net

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Chris Grant
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Total Posts : 151
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 7:50 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Tigress

I don't remember learning about this in college either

Do you mean about Calvin, in particular, or about the lack of religious tolerance in 16th-century Europe, in general?


"I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I would even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories."
(C.S. Lewis to Mary Willis Shelburne, November 10, 1952.)

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Laika
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Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 8:44 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Chris Grant
And what I couldn't figure out was what my definitions of the terms Roger Olson used in his talk had to do with the question of whether you found his talk



When I asked for any definitions, you got snippy and asked if I would want definitions for those definitions.

You can't answer my nihongo question without knowing the meaning of the terms I'm using? Imagine that!

OV doesn't disagree on whether God is omniscient, they disagree on the meaning of the terms used. That's why definitions are important. Wakarimasuka, sensei?



inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade

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Tigress
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Total Posts : 1252
 
   Posted 8/21/2003 8:54 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Chris Grant

quote:
Originally posted by Tigress

I don't remember learning about this in college either

Do you mean about Calvin, in particular, or about the lack of religious tolerance in 16th-century Europe, in general?





I don't remember learning about Calvin having all sorts of people executed for not believing in what he preached.


Tigress Tigress

"Name a shrub after me. Preferably one that's prickly and difficult to eradicate."

-Captain Jack Aubrey
"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"

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Kenya
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   Posted 8/21/2003 9:47 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
This is one of the worst websites I have been too. People are very mean and mocking in here. I don't hate John Calvin and don't believe all those things, but I also don't believe he is equal to Jesus. Why do you say this? It is very unfair to say these types of things about other Christians when you really do not even know them. Do some of you take delight in mocking and wanting to put people who don't believe like you in their place? It seems like it to me. I think it's awful and very unchristian-like. I am sorry that I came here.
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John Earp
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   Posted 8/21/2003 9:55 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.


Hi Kenya,

What I meant was that many evangelicals take Calvin's word OVER Jesus or Paul. If you don't believe me I can only conclude that you haven't debated with very many Calvinists.

Also, the things which Laika posted about Calvin are historical FACT. Please show his research to be erroneous if you can.



"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.

revivaltheology.net

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