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Bobbie

That's it Brett? Hmmm... you say I play "passive-agressive games" and yet your only contributions in this thread have been to "sigh" over my comments and to say this about me? Come on! You can do better than that, can't you? I just think it's really weak for you (and Mayflower has done this also) to just join in to make a punch here and jab there yet contribute nothing else of substance.

Brett

HELP! I'M ABOUT TO GET SUCKED
INTO THE BOBBIE VORTEX!
SOMEBODY GRAB MY HAND
AND PULL ME
BACK OUT!


Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Iconoclast

Brett! Give me your hand good buddy.

Listen, it is ONLY an invitation to the game. Yes, it has power words designed to “set the hook” so you can be reeled in, but in itself it is ONLY an invitation. Invitations can be declined.

Let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go …

thanks,
Iconoclast


"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Edited by - Iconoclast on 04/21/2003 10:58:31 PM

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Whew! That was close. Thanks, Iconoclast. . .

[Hey, wait! I think Tom might still be in there. I should go back in and get him. . .oh, no, nevermind. . . there he is. Okay, I think we're all safe now.]

Brett

"Siste viator et memento mori."

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why would you like me to articulate my beliefs? I mean... what exactly is the purpose? Would it be fruitful? I lean towards saying... probably not. It is very clear that open theists in here are pretty set in their believes and my intent coming here was not to sway anyone... it was more to find out more which I did... then I came to my conclusions and from there, it just became an all-out brawl!

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Lewis B. Smedes

(a fairly independently thinking Calvinist)

on Election, in "Union with Christ", pp.85-90

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5. ELECTION IN CHRIST<BR>


Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him (Eph 1:3,4)<BR>


No other sentence that Paul wrote carries more mystery into our union with Christ than this doxology. And the doxology can easily be spoil by trading the mystery for a crisp formula. The Christian faith is better off when it bows before the mystery of antecedent love than when it carries off the prize of a precise formula. Still, the words are in front of us. And words are meant to help our understanding as well as to kindle our devotion.<BR>


What does the doctrine of election tell us about our life in Christ? This is the reverse of the question that one ordinarily asks of this texts: what does the fact that we are chosen in Christ tell us about the doctrine of election? But the two questions are interwoven. And, in a sense, we are forced to ask them both at the same time. For each question, if asked separately, implies that we already have the answer to the other. So we had better ask again about "election in Christ" and also ask if it illumines the reality of our being in Christ. **footnote**<BR>


First we must observe that Paul sings his song to electing love from within the reality of life in Christ. He begins from where we are -- in Christ. We are, he says, blessed in Christ and are present with Christ "in heavenly places" (1:3). "Heavenly places" points to the new creation that is really, but not comprehensively present. So it is the language of hope; the "heavenly places" point ahead to a future reality -- the reality of "all things" united in Christ. The surprising fact is that we are already included in the new reality.<BR>


Only a sense of wonder and the experience of surprise inspire songs. A person is not moved to sing by commonplaces. The inevitability of syllogism does not inspire a doxology. We sing when we wonder; our songs are born of mystery. And the wonder here is that people {i]like us are "in the heavenly places with Christ." How does one account for this reality, this "being in Christ"? There is no accounting for it. There is no reason in heaven or earth we should be so blessed. <BR>


It is a gift. Paul ran from Christ; Christ pursued and overtook him. Paul resisted Christ; Christ disarmed him. Paul persecuted Christ; Christ converted him. Paul was alien; Christ made him a member of the family. Paul was an enemy; Christ made him a friend. Paul was "in the flesh"; Christ set him "in the Spirit." Paul was under the law.; Christ made him alive to God. how does one give reasons for this? He does not give reasons; he sings: "Blessed be God who blessed us . . . even as he chose us in him."<BR>


The reason for saying this is to remind us that Paul is not philosophizing about the eternal plan of an absolute deity. He is stricken by grace, overwhelmed by love. and he sings. What he says of election in Christ is a song, a confession, a hymn of wonder. Love is not a reason; it is a mystery to sing about.<BR>


We must now turn to the fact that our election was in Christ from before the worlds were made. This means that Christ, too , was elect. And to say this is only to repeat what the New Testament ways again and again. Jesus' death was predestined (Acts 2:23; 4:28). "This is my Son, my chosen," Luke reports the Father as saying (Luke 9:35). God loved Him before the world was founded (John 17:24). He is the Lamb of God, elect to be slain for man's atonement (1 Pet. 1:20). And like Melchizecek he was a priest with not earthly antecedents to account for him (Heb. 7:16). Moreover, he was appointed "the heir of all things, through whom he [God] also created the world" (Heb. 1:2).


He was elect as the concrete individual doing the specific task that He was chosen to do. But we must also note that His election was not only as the comprehensive Christ. Paul is always concerned with Jesus in his total significance, in his grand contest. <BR>


The contest, is, first of all, the election of Israel. Israel is God's chosen; out of all the nations of the earth, she was God's unique concern. "You only have I chosen our of all the families of the earth," says Jehovah (Amos 3:2). Israel may have distorted and twisted the meaning of its won election, but it could not undo the fact of it. <BR>


The essential meaning of Israel's election is: God and His people in vital community. community is the purpose or end of election. But it crystallizes the meaning as well as the goal: "I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer. 31:33). Jeremiah's conviction is echoed by prophet after prophet. And it is echoed in new forms in the new Testament until, in the vision of the Apocalypse, John hears the great voice from the throne crying, "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them" (Rev. 21:3).<BR>


Israel was elect as Jehovah's servant for the blessing of the nations; Jesus is the culmination of Israel's election, for He is the "suffering servant of Jehovah" for the salvation of the world. His cross and resurrection are what Israel's election was all about. He established a covenant "in His blood" that cannot fail. And the core of His covenant is the same as the core of Israel's covenant -- God and humanity is reconciled partnership (Isa. 42:1).<BR>


This thought must be brought back to our election in Christ, God's election is His "plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him (Eph. 1:10). Christ was elect as the Christ "to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross" (Col. 1:20). He is elect as the one in whom a new creation is brought into being through the reconciliation of men with God at the cross. he is elect as head of His body, the Church, which is the harbinger of the coming new creation. This is the comprehensive sense in which we must think of the election of Jesus Christ. Christ the concrete individual, the Man for others, is elect. But His election, like Israels's, and with Israel's, is the decision of God to create a new world of people in partnership with Him. When we think of election, we must think of God's comprehensive decision to have a "new creation."<BR>


Thus, when we think of ourselves as elect in Christ, we must think of ourselves as elect in the comprehensive Christ. when Paul says "Christ" he includes His universal goal and its universal achievement. We are in God's decision to unite "all things" in Christ. So is the Christ within whom all things are recreated. And we are elect within that concrete and comprehensive Christ.<BR>


If we reflect on our "election in Christ" in this way, we will be spared from the frightening abstractions that have so often plagues the doctrine of election. *^*footnote*^* We will never think of election as a grace-less love-less decree to select some individuals for heaven and to reject other individuals for hell. The election in Christ is not a matter of numbers. Paul is talking, as we said, as a man dumbfounded that he and we were included in God's election. He is singing of the mercy of God that included us; he is not speculating on why certain others are not included.<BR>


We are elect in Christ. How hard it is to say what this means! Christ and Christians, the Lord and His subjects, the King and His kingdom, the Reconciler and the reconciled, the Leader and His followers, the Head and His body are elect together. Bavinck says: "The community and Christ are together in the one decision; they are, as one community, the elect." Perhaps this is what we should be content to say. God wanted a new creation with people in it who were His people, and this was His election. He elected a kingdom with a King, a body with a Lord, and sinners with a Savior. He elected us in the comprehensive Christ, the Christ who was -- in faith -- first defined as "Lord of All."<BR>


Being chosen in Christ means that we can no more be the object of God's agapic desire apart from Christ than a fraction can exist without an integer, a part without a whole. He is the circle in shich we are included. He unites the whole of which we are individual parts. He is the elect head of whom we are the body. To confess that we are chosen is, then, to confess that our new being is in Christ fundamentally and eternally; and that is to say that we are included in the new creation in Christ only through God's agapic, free decision of love. To make the discovery that one is in Christ is, at the same time and with the same wonder, to confess that one is in Christ because God in love freely desired a new creation in Christ.<BR>


What, then, does election by God's free agapic decision tell us of union with Christ? It tells us that the new order begun at the cross and resurrection, which sweeps into the here and now under His lordship and in the power of His Spirit, and which will culminate in the new earth where all things are reconciled, is rooted, not in time present, but in God's own eternal desire in love to give himself in partnership with men and to restore a situation where we will be "his people" and He will be "our God" and Christ shall be all and in all.<BR>


__(footnotes)__<BR>


** Footnote: That the nature of our union with Christ was explained by Paul's doctrine of election was firmly believed by Albert Sweitzer. "Once it is perceived," he writes, "that we have to start from the conception of the predestined solidarity of the Elect with one another and with the Messiah, the mystical body of Christ is at once explained." This is too large a claim, it seems to me. But it does have point. Taken in its whole breadth, to include the foal of election as well as the fact of it, to include God's purpose to unite all things in Christ by means of His resurrection, it does tell us something truly significant about union with Christ. But Schweitzer's entire book was weakened, in my judgment, by finding in the "preordained solidarity" of the Messiah and His people the key to understanding Paul's "mysticism." There is too much of real history, including our experience and discovery of God in history, to make pre-ordination the key to Paul.<BR>


*^* Footnote: In "Divine Election" (pp153f) Berkhouwer says that Ephesisns 1:4 is the text which, more than any other, keeps us from "abstractions and determinism in which the traits of the living God, the Father of Jesus Christ, are obscured by the hiddenness and the menace of inscrutable fate."<BR>

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Thus, when we think of ourselves as elect in Christ, we must think of ourselves as elect in the comprehensive Christ. when Paul says "Christ" he includes His universal goal and its universal achievement. We are in God's decision to unite "all things" in Christ. So is the Christ within whom all things are recreated. And we are elect within that concrete and comprehensive Christ.<BR>


If we reflect on our "election in Christ" in this way, we will be spared from the frightening abstractions that have so often plagues the doctrine of election. *^*footnote*^* We will never think of election as a grace-less love-less decree to select some individuals for heaven and to reject other individuals for hell. The election in Christ is not a matter of numbers. Paul is talking, as we said, as a man dumbfounded that he and we were included in God's election. He is singing of the mercy of God that included us; he is not speculating on why certain others are not included.<BR>


We are elect in Christ. How hard it is to say what this means! Christ and Christians, the Lord and His subjects, the King and His kingdom, the Reconciler and the reconciled, the Leader and His followers, the Head and His body are elect together. Bavinck says: "The community and Christ are together in the one decision; they are, as one community, the elect." Perhaps this is what we should be content to say. God wanted a new creation with people in it who were His people, and this was His election. He elected a kingdom with a King, a body with a Lord, and sinners with a Savior. He elected us in the comprehensive Christ, the Christ who was -- in faith -- first defined as "Lord of All."<BR>

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Also, notice this presentation on Calvin -- that his theological work was out of a doxological framework, rather than a Scholastic theorizing.

Here is a good place to start.


Is this the Calvin you know?


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Recent scholarship in Calvin Studies has emphasized that the sixteenth-century Genevan Reformer's theology was not so much governed, as traditionally thought, by an over-arching "system" centered on a unifying doctrine of (for example) predestination, as it was by "the constant reappearance of favorite images, metaphors, or figures of speech." 11 Formed by his training as a Renaissance humanist, Calvin's language was consistently more rhetorical than it was dialectical. The metaphor of the theatre, for instance, was one of his favorite ways of summarizing the sweeping epic of Christian salvation. "In the vast theater of heaven and earth," Ford Lewis Battles says of Calvin, "the divine playwright stages the ongoing drama of creation, alienation, return, and forgiveness for the teeming audience of humanity itself." 12 The theatre in which the drama unfolds is, in its broadest sense, the whole created world. There, through a display of astounding beauty, God summons all creation to take delight in common praise. More narrowly, however, the theatre of God's glory is the church, that particular company of players who most fully have grasped (and been grasped by) the drama enacted on the wider stage. They are the ones who apprehend worship as the audience's most appropriate response to God's dramatic performance.

In this way, the image of the theatre became an organizing metaphor in Calvin's thought, putting worship at the heart of his theology. 13 The human adoration of God, and its extension throughout the rest of creation, was, in fact, the stated purpose toward which Calvin originally directed his Institutes of the Christian Religion. His theological masterpiece might best be read as a summa pietatis rather than as a summa theologica. In the long subtitle of the first edition of the Institutes (1536), Calvin described his book as "encompassing almost the whole sum of piety [pietatis summam] and whatever it is necessary to know about the doctrine of salvation, a work most worthy to be read by all who are zealous for piety." (OS I:19) Doxology was for him the chief goal and delight of all created beings. He knew that theology remains unfinished until it concludes itself in spirituality.

Spirituality as the Performance of Desire: Calvin on the World as a Theatre of God's Glory
Belden C. Lane
Saint Louis University
Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 1.1 (2001) 1-30

muse.jhu.edu/demo/scs/1.1lane.html


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And THIS just in from the editorial page of REFORMED WORSHIP MAG, a CRC publication.


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"Two Gray Cats" and the Doctrine of Election
I have been a subscriber to Reformed Worship since the first issue and have always appreciated the many ideas and perspectives in the magazine. I was very disturbed therefore to read the poem 'Two Gray Cats" (RW 63, p. 21) in the article "A Classic TULIP Bouquet." This poem is a horrible example of the doctrine of election and was a poor choice for a magazine whose primary focus is on corporate worship. Fatalism does not belong in a magazine such as this. The Christian Reformed Church denominational publication The Banner had an excellent article on this topic in the Dec. 31, 2001, issue. As Rev. Timmer states in the article "Election Is a Story," "the Bible does not say that God chooses only a few people and rejects most people." And "the greatest abuse of the biblical teaching of election occurs when we divorce election from the mission of the elect." This poem is an embarrassment to an otherwise quality publication and I am extremely disappointed in the editorial staff for including it in the article.

Jill Friend
Boone, Iowa

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

I am a bit puzzled by the poem "Two Gray Cats" (RW 63, p. 21). I suppose the most natural way to read the poem is as a parable of election, since that is the theme of the article. The point of the parable then is that two needy sinners came to God seeking salvation. God let one through and kicked the other away. Is this the message you are encouraging us to communicate to the congregation assembled for worship?

This is not a theoretical question; I have already had one member of the congregation ask if this poem represents the Reformed understanding of election. Do you think it does? I hope not, but then I wonder why it is included in an article about Reformed theology.

Thomas J. Niehof, pastor
Trinity Christian Reformed Church
Ames, Iowa


Editorial comment: The poem certainly does not represent a Reformed view of the doctrine of election; it was included as an example of how many Christians, including Chad Walsh, are baffled by a doctrine that could make God seem so arbitrary. In retrospect, we should have been clearer about the poem's purpose and should have placed it within the section "Election is baffling" rather than at the end of the sermon notes after the final section, "Election is balm," which included the statement "Calvin saw election as a doctrine that provides deep comfort and assurance. . . . For those who have accepted Jesus, there are no worries for eternity." —ERB

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Foreordination in general cannot rest on foreknowledge; for only that which is certain can be foreknown, and only that which is predetermined can be certain. The Almighty and all-sovereign Ruler of the universe does not govern Himself on the basis of a foreknowledge of things which might haply come to pass. Through the Scriptures the divine foreknowledge is ever thought of as dependent on the divine purpose, and God foreknows only because He has predetermined. His foreknowledge is but a transcript of His will as to what shall come to pass in the future, and the course which the world takes under His providential control is but the execution of His all-embracing plan. His foreknowledge of what is yet to be, whether it be in regard to the world as a whole or in regard to the detailed life of every individual, rests upon His pre-arranged plan.

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This hilarity is getting around!!!!! I read on a public bathroom wall today, "For good time, see 'Gay Man Defends Himself" thread on gregboyd.org.

It's frigg'n AMAZING!!!

Greg

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LOL
Wait until the search engine bots go through the site again and link certain words back to that thread. You'll have particular people showing up....



I'm not a complete idiot, some parts are missing.

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rossfadeinout

PoW, Your quotes definitely do not sound like your typical Calvinistic view of election. They also don't sound like the Reformed teaching that I was introduced to in college. Did Lewis Smede call himself a Calvinist, because those who I know that are "five pointers" would not explain election the way that Smede did.

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rossfadeinout

Pow, I have tried to figure out what your understanding of God's knowledge of the future is and what you find wrong with the Open View. No offense, but most of your post are REALLY LONG and I don't have too much time to read everything you write. I think that you have stated that you believe that God is timeless, but I could be wrong. So it would be cool if you could give a BASIC summary of

1) your understanding of God's knowledge of the future

2) your critique of the Open View

If possible, it would be cool if YOU stated what you believe. . .I'm looking for a (somewhat) concise statement!

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Iconoclast That 'crazy lion' Mephi2k (now MephEternal) started using that word sometime back on this board and now I am hearing it all over. Weird how that happens.

Bobbie: ???? Why was he that "crazy lion" (in yours and tiggers words).

Wierd how that happens??

"With God ALL things are possible" Matt. 19:26

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Hey Bob,

If you reread my post on page 17 from which you are referring (with regards to my words), I never stated Lion Lamb and Mephi2k were one in the same rather there is quite the distinction. Anyways, that message had to many inside old-timer comments that were merely for fun in reminiscing old times on this thread, sorry for the confusion, Bob! Well, God bless ya !

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).