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gguskid
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 32
| Posted 10/15/2002 3:05 PM (GMT -6) |   | If it shouldn't be asked, should you respond?
Until That Time...
Edited by - gguskid on 10/15/2002 8:07:38 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Tiggers
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 219
| Posted 10/15/2002 7:08 PM (GMT -6) | | Yes... !!!
Warmly in Christ,
Tiggers
“The notion that God uses evils as a means to such higher goods is, … incompatible with the doctrine that he is omnipotent, and therefore does not need to use deplorable means to achieve his ends” (J.L. Mackie). | | Back to Top | | |
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GregBoyd
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 10/17/2002 2:08 PM (GMT -6) | | WHAT shouldn't be asked?
Or shouldn't I ask?
Doc
"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6 | | Back to Top | | |
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gguskid
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 32
| Posted 10/17/2002 4:19 PM (GMT -6) | | Well, since you ask, OK.
Admittedly my original post will never amount to a nail biting thriller or a high drama screen play but I thought I would give my hand at trying to raise a few eyebrows or maybe catch a lurking Calvinist or two. The question is really born out my Lutheran seminary studies and the apparent inability to move past the issue of mystery and take a position either side of Calvin or Arminius. The view seems disturbingly schizophrenic. So thus, the question (in quote form)…
“Why are some converted and others not, though by nature all men are in the same guilt (eadem culpa) and are saved by grace alone (sola gratia)?…The Particularists (Calvinists) answer the question by denying gratia universalis; The synergists, by denying the sola gratia. Both solutions are alike unscriptural, since Holy Writ most emphatically teaches both…it [remains] an unsolved mystery, which human reason should not try to explore…Nor is it proper for the Christian Theologian to endeavor to answer the question; for in that case he must draw on human reason to decide what is properly a matter of Divine revelation.” (J.T.Mueler, Th. D; Christian Dogmatics; 1934 Concordia Publishing House, St Louis, MO; Pp. 58, 81, 251, 359, 440, 611).
Until That Time...
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Newcomb
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116
| Posted 10/31/2002 12:31 PM (GMT -6) | | Hmm, you bring up part of what drove me to the concepts now known as OV. I don’t believe this is a mystery at all.
The Calvinists and Arminians as a whole take stands on either side of the doctrine of lapsarianism, that is, when did God know everything in the future. (I don't think he does.)
Dezarian Calvinism took Augustine’s view, which was reiterated Neo-Platonism, supralapsarianism, stating that God knew before he created. Calvin himself would have agreed with John Arminius that this is morally untenable making God the logical party responsible for sin and all the evil of the world because only he designed it this way and did not change his design before creating it this way.
The other side of the issue says God knew after the fall, is infralapsarianism. This was actually Calvin’s view. Are we saved by Grace? Yes, grace is the exemplar cause of salvation, restated: the blueprint or that after which salvation is fashioned. But there are other causes. Jesus' atonement is certainly the efficient cause, that is, that by which we are saved. The final cause[/] is to restore the relationship we broke apart when Adam sinned. The formal cause is the shed blood of Christ, who died for all who would partake of the instrumental cause and accept the free gift. Sometimes we forget that there is usually more than one cause for an effect, and thologians often confuse cause and effect.
Mueler’s quote quote:
Nor is it proper for the Christian Theologian to endeavor to answer the question; for in that case he must draw on human reason to decide what is properly a matter of Divine revelation.
is for the birds. It yields to the broad sense of the word “mysticism” I use periodically.
We like mysteries and want to point to them to avoid tough questions and re-examination of old doctrines that should have been buried long ago had we the intellectual honesty to deal with them frankly. We use mystical statements (“there is a secret, or mystery, you just don’t understand”) to avoid these issues.
Good question, perhaps the direction the arrow is pointed (toward God when stated as “some are converted”) should be changed to pointing toward man (“why do men not accept?”) That is the correct question. God responded and paid with his life he loved us so much. Why do men not respond?
quote:
Well, since you ask, OK.
Admittedly my original post will never amount to a nail biting thriller or a high drama screen play but I thought I would give my hand at trying to raise a few eyebrows or maybe catch a lurking Calvinist or two. The question is really born out my Lutheran seminary studies and the apparent inability to move past the issue of mystery and take a position either side of Calvin or Arminius. The view seems disturbingly schizophrenic. So thus, the question (in quote form)…
“Why are some converted and others not, though by nature all men are in the same guilt (eadem culpa) and are saved by grace alone (sola gratia)?…The Particularists (Calvinists) answer the question by denying gratia universalis; The synergists, by denying the sola gratia. Both solutions are alike unscriptural, since Holy Writ most emphatically teaches both…it [remains] an unsolved mystery, which human reason should not try to explore…Nor is it proper for the Christian Theologian to endeavor to answer the question; for in that case he must draw on human reason to decide what is properly a matter of Divine revelation.” (J.T.Mueler, Th. D; Christian Dogmatics; 1934 Concordia Publishing House, St Louis, MO; Pp. 58, 81, 251, 359, 440, 611).
Until That Time...
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