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Originally posted by Laika

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel
Significantly, Christ's [singular]human will FREELY CHOSE to do the [singular]will of the Father.

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I'm in total agreement.

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel
Its nice if we do agree. With Tozer (Nice to find someone who had an Orthodox view who's Western -- though he follows Anselm in some things...but some of them are OK too.) I see that Christ had one human will and shared in the one Divine will "of the Father."

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Originally posted by Laika

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel
Its nice if we do agree. With Tozer (Nice to find someone who had an Orthodox view who's Western -- though he follows Anselm in some things...but some of them are OK too.) I see that Christ had one human will and shared in the one Divine will "of the Father."

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Yes, Jesus' Divine will mapped to God's singular will and so did His Human will.

Jesus' Human will ___________
                             \__________  God's Divine will
Jesus' Divine will___________/

So there's always, only ONE will

Not two contradictory wills such as the calvinist's say.

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The Knowledge of the Holy
by A. W. Tozer
Publisher: Harper San Francisco
Cover: Trade Paper
Pages: 120

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Originally posted by Laika

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel
Its nice if we do agree. With Tozer (Nice to find someone who had an Orthodox view who's Western -- though he follows Anselm in some things...but some of them are OK too.) I see that Christ had one human will and shared in the one Divine will "of the Father."

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Yes, Jesus' Divine will mapped to God's singular will and so did His Human will.

Jesus' Human will ___________
                             \__________  God's Divine will
Jesus' Divine will___________/

So there's always, only ONE will

Not two contradictory wills such as the calvinist's say.

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Originally posted by Laika

Yes, Jesus' Divine will mapped to God's singular will and so did His Human will.

Jesus' Human will ___________
                             \__________  God's Divine will
Jesus' Divine will___________/

So there's always, only ONE will

Not two contradictory wills such as the calvinist's say.

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Originally posted by feelinahole

Pickiness as in nose...?

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Originally posted by echo

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Originally posted by feelinahole

Pickiness as in nose...?

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1. Read your name: "feelinahole"
2. Contemplate "Pickiness"

:<X

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

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Originally posted by Laika
Yes, Jesus' Divine will mapped to God's singular will and so did His Human will.

Jesus' Human will ___________
                             \__________  God's Divine will
Jesus' Divine will___________/

So there's always, only ONE will

Not two contradictory wills such as the calvinist's say.

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Laika, tell me if I've caught up with what you are trying to say.
Are you trying to say that some Calvinists say that God has two different CONTENTS to his one Will?

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My contribution has simply been to show that God's will for all people to be saved is not at odds with the sovereignty of God's grace in election.

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• God so loved the world



• Do not love the world or anything of the world.


www.schmemann.org/byhim/betweenutopiaandescape.html

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel
I think we all agree that there is this pair of seemingly conflicting truths, that are both true:

• God so loved the world


• Do not love the world or anything of the world.

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• God so loved ALL PEOPLE. (The meaning of "the world")


• Do not love THINGS OF THIS WORLD.

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Originally posted by feelinahole

POW: the terms you are comparing are not simply not comparable. The salvation of all people compared with not loving what the world represents. Certainly Piper knows nothing of what you are talking about. Sounds, once again, like you are imposing your odd Orthodox musings (propaganda?!) on an issue that knows nothing of it. But please continue unabated...
The article you post is a perfect example of this...

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Between Utopia and Escape
A Talk by Father Alexander Schmemann

www.schmemann.org/byhim/betweenutopiaandescape.html

. . . And this is of course the tragedy of our Christian response to Utopia and to Escape. Now, then what?

Then what? What indeed is behind all this? I said that we are dealing with two sides of the same vision: God so loved the world, on the one hand; and on the other hand, Do not love the world or anything of the world. On the one hand, St. Paul says, "My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But for your sake there is greater need for me to stay on in the body." (Phil. 1:23-24) On the other hand, he says, "Nothing, neither death, nor life . . . can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 8:38-39)

Now, how did the Church keep these two visions together? How can the Church rejoice day after day in this God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, on the one hand, and on the other hand, how does the Church reconcile this with the affirmation, Do not love anything of this world. Escape! Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth . . . Store up treasure in heaven . . . For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. How can these two be reconciled? People, like the great professor of theology Adolph Von Harnack, have tried to explain this without seeing the real truth about how they are related. Harnack says that there was a white Christianity and there was a black Christianity. There was a kind of joyful Christianity and a sad Christianity. Not true.

Christianity brings together three fundamental truths. First of all, the Bible and the Church both proclaim the truth of, what I would call, "the experience of Creation." Oh, I am not speaking now about how creation was revealed through seven days, through proteins, or exactly how old Adam was when he was created, things like that. Those things are absolutely not important. What is important — when we say "Creation," is revealed every evening when we sing Psalm 104, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name..." This is the affirmation of the essential goodness of the world — the Divine Image in it. "The heavens proclaim Thy glory!" Maybe the authors of Bible had no traumatic experiences? Maybe they had never gone through psychological nervous breakdowns? Of course people in this world have always suffered. How then did that Book appear, which is one endless hymn of Doxology, of glorification?

This is the first affirmation: Everything is good. The Greek fathers say, "Don’t you ever dare to say the devil is bad. He is bad by behavior, but he is good by nature." Or else, you go back to the dualism of the extreme "good god/bad god." The devil is the most perfect creation of God. That is why he became so powerful and so bad, ontologically speaking.

Now, the second affirmation: This world is fallen. Not because of one little transgression — that famous apple. (Why apple? I don’t know who decided that the forbidden fruit was an apple. I have tried to find out, but I never could.) The world has rejected goodness, has rejected first of all, God, who is goodness. And, therefore, the whole world is fallen — not just some things in the world. Not, for instance, extramarital love as opposed to marital love, or cognac as opposed to tomato juice: the whole world is fallen. Marriage is fallen. And tomato juice is fallen, not only bourbon. Everything has become fallen. The best religion is first among the most fallen things of all! Because religion replaces joy about God with calculations: how many candles, how many dollars, how many rules, how many commandments, how many Fathers, how many sacraments, how many?... — "Numerical theology." So, everything is fallen. Everything has become darkened. And here the Orthodox Christian would immediately say: "Yes, the world is sick, mutilated, fundamentally mutilated by sin. But, it still sings the divine glory! It is still capable of God!"

And finally, the third affirmation: The world is redeemed. But it is redeemed not in order to guarantee success, even of the excellent fiscal policy of Dr. Stockman. It is redeemed not in order to assure that we will have "tomorrows that sing." The redemption occurs now, right now. This is Christian eschatology. It is not only an eschatology of the future. Yes, every day, many times a day, we say: "Thy Kingdom come." And it comes now. That famous French formula, Metro, boulot, dodo, is exactly what is being redeemed. Redemption does not mean the replacement of all those inevitable mundane things with meaningful jobs. What job is meaningful, by the way? Every job, which has had three Mondays in its history, already becomes meaningless, or at least to some extent oppressive. Redemption means exactly that of which St. John writes in his epistle: "That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life — the eternal life which was made manifest to us." And this is the paradox, the antinomy, the message, which Christians could not endure because it was too much for them. It is much easier to have a little religion of the past, present and future, of commandments and prescriptions. Of saying that God did not love the world; He loved the good things in the world. He loved people who did go to church. He loved people who contributed (although it is tax-deductible, but still it is good that they contribute), and so on and so forth. Redemption means that the Kingdom which is to come has already come, it is in the midst of us.

The great drama of redemption takes place all the time. And this point of view, this eschatology, this doctrine, this faith in the ultimate is what the early church held together. The church was persecuted. She was denied. The Roman Empire said to Christians: "You cannot exist." But read the early Christian prayers, and you will see that they are cosmic, they are historic. Nero! My goodness, what a horrible guy he was! And at that time Paul writes to Timothy and says, "Pray first of all . . . for kings and for all that are in authority." (1 Tim. 2:2) He does not say, "Picket!" He does not say, "Go to—!" He says, "Pray for them." Why? Because the church is not a little forum for social reforms. It introduces, it reiterates the single fact that the history of the world’s redemption, for which we are responsible, takes place in our hearts, and that Kingdom, that light, which comes to us, is the only power left with us — the realized, inaugurated eschatology of the Kingdom and, at the same time, the real knowledge of the Kingdom. The knowledge that nothing is solved by recipes and therapies, but, when a man decides to know the truth of all things, he, like Saint Anthony of the Desert, the great father of monasticism, turns to God. Anthony went to the desert and asked God for the ability to see the devil always. Because the devil always takes the form of an angel of light. The devil is always one who says something sentimental, nice, good. And finally God gave Anthony the ability to see the devil. And then, while still within the dimensions of human existence, for the saint this world became the Kingdom.

This ultimate experience of the Kingdom holds together that, which I call the "triune intuition"— created, fallen, redeemed. Created: it means good. It means that the foundation of everything, which we question in our utopianism and our escapism, is good. However, everything can also be bad. Systems? Metro, boulot, dodo? But perhaps all systems are merely caricatures of that which truly is the fate of man? Someone would come to me and say: "I can’t take a meaningless life. The subways, the beds, the breakfasts, the venison, and so on and so forth..." And I would reply: Christ couldn’t take it either. He died on the cross. And Paul said: "Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Cor. 10:31) The other day, I was preaching in Montreal, and one man came up to me and said: "Thank you for teaching me that I can read even the Wall Street Journal to the glory of God." Yes, of course you can. The glory of God is not only in Mr. Ralph Nader's office, believe me. It is wherever a man wants it to be.

There is this intuition of the created, and then — of the fallen world. Let’s be realistic. Let us not subscribe to the idea that just one more institute, one more think tank, one more discovery, one more therapy and finally evil will be taken care of. Evil is here, all around us. But, we don’t have to panic. We do not have to immediately go overboard and escape, no! I recall that little 16-year-old French boy who was playing ball, and some Jesuit came up and said: "You are playing ball! Suppose Christ were to come back today. What would you do?" And the boy answered: "Play ball." He did not think there was anything wrong with playing ball.

Sometimes, I feel like I joined a kind of metaphysical Peace Corps made out of Christianity. Very often in Geneva, when I used to go to ecumenical meetings, I heard the expression "churches, synagogues, and other agencies." I was not baptized into an agency. And I think that everyone is free not to be part of an agency. Keep me out of it.

And so, there is this vision of the created, fallen, and redeemed world. Until this triune vision broke apart, there was no way for our culture, which is rooted in the Gospel, to either go all the way into utopianism or all the way into escapism.

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This is the first affirmation: Everything is good. The Greek fathers say, "Don’t you ever dare to say the devil is bad. He is bad by behavior, but he is good by nature." Or else, you go back to the dualism of the extreme "good god/bad god." The devil is the most perfect creation of God. That is why he became so powerful and so bad, ontologically speaking.

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Originally posted by Laika

POW, I couldn't get beyond this: <snip> "Don’t you ever dare to say the devil is bad. He is bad by behavior, but he is good by nature."

I do dare to say it, the devil is BAD. Bad by behavior, bad by choice, bad by his developed nature. Bad.

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

Let me just make one more observation. Maybe I'll repeat it later. Calvinism and Lutheranism are often summariezed as "Sin, Salvation, Service." (Another version begins with the Garison Keihlorian word "Guilt.") The Canon's of Dort--from which TULIP comes--does. But THAT means that the Creation part is allowed to slip from view. Notice that the quote from the article recommended by my Calvinist Reformed pastor friend said: "Everything is good. The Greek fathers say, "Don’t you ever dare to say the devil is bad. He is bad by behavior, but he is good by nature." Or else, you go back to the dualism of the extreme "good god/bad god." The devil is the most perfect creation of God. That is why he became so powerful and so bad, ontologically speaking." BUT, a "Reformed World-View" in any of their colleges, in any subject besides theology posits "CREATION, FALL, REDEMPTION." I find that to be very, very, very currious!

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Supralapsarianism

Advanced Information The doctrine that God decreed both election and reprobation before the fall. Supralapsarianism differs from infralapsarianism on the relation of God's decree to human sin. The differences go back to the conflict between Augustine and Pelagius. Before the Reformation, the main difference was whether Adam's fall was included in God's eternal decree; supralapsarians held that it was, but infralapsarians acknowledged only God's foreknowledge of sin. Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin were agreed that Adam's fall was somehow included in God's decree; it came to be referred to as a "permissive decree," and all insisted that God was in no way the author of sin. As a result of the Reformers' agreement, after the Reformation the distinction between infra - and supralapsarianism shifted to differences on the logical order of God's decrees.

Theodore Beza, Calvin's successor at Geneva, was the first to develop supralapsarianism in this new sense. By the time of the Synod of Dort in 1618 - 19, a heated intraconfessional controversy developed between infra - and supralapsarians; both positions were represented at the synod. Francis Gomarus, the chief opponent of James Arminius, was a supralapsarian.

The question of the logical, not the temporal, order of the eternal decrees reflected differences on God's ultimate goal in predestination and on the specific objects of predestination. Supralapsarians considered God's ultimate goal to be his own glory in election and reprobation, while infralapsarians considered predestination subordinate to other goals. The object of predestination, according to supralapsarians, was uncreated and unfallen humanity, while infralapsarians viewed the object as created and fallen humanity.

The term "supralapsarianism" comes from the Latin words supra and lapsus; the decree of predestination was considered to be "above" (supra) or logically "before" the decree concerning the fall (lapsus), while the infralapsarians viewed it as "below" (infra) or logically "after" the decree concerning the fall. The contrast of the two views is evident from the following summaries.

The logical order of the decrees in the supralapsarian scheme is:
(1) God's decree to glorify himself through the election of some and the reprobation of others;
(2) as a means to that goal, the decree to create those elected and reprobated;
(3) the decree to permit the fall; and
(4) the decree to provide salvation for the elect through Jesus Christ.



The logical order of the decrees according to infralapsarians is:
(1) God's decree to glorify himself through the creation of the human race;
(2) the decree to permit the fall;
(3) the decree to elect some of the fallen race to salvation and to pass by the others and condemn them for their sin; and
(4) the decree to provide salvation for the elect through Jesus Christ. Infralapsarians were in the majority at the Synod of Dort. The Arminians tried to depict all the Calvinists as representatives of the "repulsive" supralapsarian doctrine. Four attempts were made at Dort to condemn the supralapsarian view, but the efforts were unsuccessful. Although the Canons of Dort do not deal with the order of the divine decrees, they are infralapsarian in the sense that the elect are "chosen from the whole human race, which had fallen through their own fault from their primitive state of rectitude into sin and destruction" (I,7; cf.I,1). The reprobate "are passed by in the eternal decree" and God "decreed to leave (them) in the common misery into which they have willfully plunged themselves" and "to condemn and punish them forever...for all their sins" (I,15).

Defenders of supralapsarianism continued after Dort. The chairman of the Westminister Assembly, William Twisse, was a supralapsarian but the Westminister standards do not favor either position. Although supralapsarianism never received confessional endorsement within the Reformed churches, it has been tolerated within the confessional boundaries. In 1905 the Reformed churches of the Netherlands and the Christian Reformed Church in 1908 adopted the Conclusions of Utrecht, which stated that "our Confessional Standards admittedly follow the infralapsarian presentation in respect to the doctrine of election, but that it is evident...that this in no wise intended to exclude or condemn the supralapsarian presentation." Recent defenders of the supralapsarian position have been Gerhardus Vos, Herman Hoeksema, and G H Kersten.

F H Klooster
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)

mb-soft.com/believe/text/supralap.htm

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

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Originally posted by Laika

POW, I couldn't get beyond this: <snip> "Don’t you ever dare to say the devil is bad. He is bad by behavior, but he is good by nature."

I do dare to say it, the devil is BAD. Bad by behavior, bad by choice, bad by his developed nature. Bad.

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BUT YOU JUST AGREED WITH HIM!

Schmemann says: "He is bad by behavior..."

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Originally posted by Laika

Originally he was created good (or morally neutral as we all are), but that is not his nature now.

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Originally posted by johnmd
It is no secret that Piper and his church boycotted the Post 9-11 city wide prayer meeting BECAUSE BOYDS CHURCH WAS PARTICIPATING. They were RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET!!!

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel
Laika, you o'l closet Calvinist. Do you believe in "total depravity?" Must!

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Originally posted by Laika

0 point Calvinist

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