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Ah, the mystery of sqaure circles! So meaningful! So existentially gripping when embraced.
Tom

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Cut it out, Tom!

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That's the difference Winghead. Calvinists reject simple-foreknowledge because it introduces contingency into God. God cannot "get" his knowledge of the future from the actual events themselves. The future "gets" its content from the will of God. The line of influence and information runs from God to the future, not from the future to God. You got it.

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This explains a lot!

Tom:

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So, Calvinists and open theits totally agree on their rejection of simple-foreknowledge, except in some of the reasons why they reject it: Calvinists because it introduces contingency into God, a reason open theists wouldn't find convincing, but they both agree that simple-foreknowledge is providentially useless. That's the clincher for me. Open theists might be wrong about believing the future to be partly open, but the only alternative is Calvinism. Arminian simple-foreknowledge is in the grave baby!

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You lost me. Setting Calvinism aside (no pun intended [:D}), why do you discount simple foreknowledge? I see no reason why the future cannot be open, and still known by God. The OV (I think correctly) afirms LCFW, and makes an excellent case for a partially open future. For the sake of argument, what if the only meaningful way God can engage us is temporally? If God foreknew Abraham's willingness to offer up Isaac, that does not preclude that knowledge being derived from His own temporal experience. Help me out here.... What am I missing.


Alimonium-2 Silicon-2 Hydrogen-4 Oxygen-9 (how do you pronounce this?):

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I just have to wonder whether this take or yours on Calvinsim doesn't ignore the "mutual consent" that is in Calvinism, which Calvin called a deep inexpressible mystery. [Insitutes 4.17.7]

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Actually, Sanders in "The Openness of God" observed that Calvin did break away from Augustine on this issue. Still, isn't that just a way of dealing with the accusation that if all we do reflects God's will that it should be God, not us, who is morally responsible for the consequences of our actions? Calvin rightly seems to see the problem, but remains unconvincing in his explanation.

BTW, welcome to the board!

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Still, the Wesleyans and the Reformed, and the Lutherans, etc. all are diverse ways of also expressing the underlying point. The "testemony" of the Wesleyans, Calvinists, Lutherans, etc., must not be disolved into academic reductions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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I think all the traditions have something to offer the Body of Christ, as a whole. Often each brought a correction of a sort to the thinking of the church. We balance each other out. In the same way, I do not think we should give in to the OV so quickly. There are still some areas (IMHO) that need refining, if only in my own understanding.

That said, it is easy to fall into "academic reductions". Yet, it seems to me that it can be helpful to recognize those areas that are distinctives of each view. It can even be helpful to understand why some reject some of our own "pat answers". For example, while I understand some of the arguements against simple foreknowledge, I have yet been convinced that openness and foreknowledge are mutually exclusive. Hince, my challenge to Tom (and others), above.

Gotta go.

Peace,
Winghead



"...you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”
Mark 12:30-31 (NLT)

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Setting Calvinism aside (no pun intended [:D}), why do you discount simple foreknowledge? I see no reason why the future cannot be open, and still known by God. The OV (I think correctly) afirms LCFW, and makes an excellent case for a partially open future. For the sake of argument, what if the only meaningful way God can engage us is temporally? If God foreknew Abraham's willingness to offer up Isaac, that does not preclude that knowledge being derived from His own temporal experience. Help me out here.... What am I missing?

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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 rep- C resent 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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IN THE HANDS OF THOSE THREE ABOVE,
THE CONCEPT OF ELECTION BARELY RESEMBLES
-- IF AT ALL --
THE STRAWMAN OF THE O.V. DEBATE!


So, I feel very strongly that instead of trying to "convert" on another, we should set about to understand and profit from what each other have for bringing to the table.

Indeed, it is in the "hard parts" of our own donctrinal conceptions that the Spirit has hammered out -- in flesh, and NOT in theory -- the most wonderful revelations!







Edited by - Al2Si2H4O9 on 08/27/2002 09:50:20 AM

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Interesting. Calvin continues to amaize me. He also talks of "mutual cooperation."

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Yes, he amazes me too, and since someone uses the words "mutual cooperation," we can then say nothing about anything else in their theology that militates against such cooperation.

Tom

"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde

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Yes, he amazes me too, and since someone uses the words "mutual cooperation," we can then say nothing about anything else in their theology that militates against such cooperation. Tom

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STRAWMEN CAN'T HIT BACK.

Dear brother, I once sat in a Fine Arts Department meeting at a Baptist school with collegues, one of whom being a young theatre Prof. was ranting against Hans Rookmacher. He said that Rookmacher was hopelessly out of date. (Rookmacher was possitively groundbreaking in influencing Christians to get into and work redemptively in art and in philosophical aesthetics. Wolterstorff would not be what he is without that lineage.) My quick retort split his sides into convulsive laughter. (Maybe not...but it is fun to srite that it did.) I simply pointed out that Rookmacher was dead, and that prevented him from thinking any new thoughts.


Go ahead and be mad at some of the ideas that Calvin published. I know that I am. But since I'm _IN_YOUR_FACE_ right now, I just want to encourage you to deciding to find out more about the gems he has hidden that your rantings will only push further into the corners.

Notice what Sanders said above! NOTICE that Calvin intuits beautifully. He does so about Communion. He does so about the role of the Spirit in both the sacrament of the Word and of the Table.

WHAT MADE HIM INTUIT THOSE. NO, no, no, no, no... it was not his Scholasitic upbringing leading him logically to unavoidable conclusions. (Do you want to be a Scholastic, Tom? Really?) He colored outside of the lines BECAUSE he could see clearly that that was where the real form was.

Just because Calvin was able to see clearly where the forms were even dispite strongly distracting errant lines neighboring that part of the picture -- to his credit -- don't you, now, take him to task for the MERE presence of those lines that he was able to overcome -- to see clearly what mattered dispite there presence.

The people I know who are Reformed live with the whole bag. They display both the ruts that can 'trip up' and the intuitions that lead to the truth. They bear it all in their FLESH!!! (They incarnate the truth.)

I've read repeatedly that Calvin worked at his Institutes as a DEVOTIONAL work. Election is a DEVOTIONAL doctrine -- not a Scholastic one. If when you confront Calvin you habitually regress towards the Augustine that Sanders pictures him transcending, DON'T BLAME CALVIN ... Blame yourself.


Doctrine is to be incarnated, not conceptualized!




Edited by - Al2Si2H4O9 on 08/27/2002 10:20:14 AM

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This thread is a wee bit puzzellng to me...It seems to "flowery" to me to suggest that we shouldn’t try to "convert" each other to our position. That’s what honest debate does. The different conceptions of God and of his relationship to humanity are HUGE, especially between the Calvinist and Open Views.

Also, I have to confess that I don’t quite know what the "strawman" is on this thread. I saw no caricature of Calvin here yet, nor did I see anyone expose anything as a carticature. Calvin affirmed that everything, down to the smallest, most insignificant "chance" event in nature, is completely and eternally predestined by God. I don’t see any mystery in THAT. What’s the issue?

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Doc, thank you very much!

Al, where are you? Come back here! I wanna punch you in the nose! Let's fight! Down and dirty. Right now! &*$)#)!@

Tom


"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde

Edited by - TGB on 08/28/2002 09:24:01 AM

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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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*** This thread is a wee bit puzzellng to me. Of course all dialogue must be done in love and without caricaturing others positions. And of course we should work together for the good of the Kingdom. But it seems to "flowery" to me to suggest that we shouldn’t try to "convert" each other to our position. That’s what honest debate does. The different conceptions of God and of his relationship to humanity are HUGE, especially between the Calvinist and Open Views.

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Doc, I realize some of what you are responding to is the exchange between Tom and "Kaolin", so I will allow them to shed light on what appears to be a long relationship. However, I would like to respond your comment here.

First, my original intent in starting this thread was to engage an idea presented by John Sanders that for the Calvinist/Augustianian that God's knowledge of the future is based on what God has determined, rather than what he know what will happen. This distinction is subtle (to me), and has some interesting implications.

That said, regarding "converting" each other. To me, this whole thing is about seeking truth. As we are not God -- remember, you are NOT, He IS -- we must discern truth from the things available to us. The primary authority being the bible, as illumined by the Holy Spirit. In the case of the Open View, we do not have an explicit and exhaustive revelation, so again, we must try to discern the truth from what we have.

As is often the case, we, being fallible and riveted in finitude (I love that phrase ), often over correct. This puts God into the position of having to later apply yet another corrective. Fortunately, when we engage in debate, we often refine our own thinking and understanding, and in time, we (hopefully) arrive a bit nearer to the truth.

It is easy to paint with too wide of a brush. While we might disagree with much of what Calvin and Augustine taught, it is false (IMHO) to say that everything they taught is wrong. My goal is not to get every Reformed Christian to reject their tradition. Instead, it is my hope to get every Christian to think about what they believe, and engage these ideas, with hope that they might move closer to the truth. (This includes myself -- I love moving closer to the truth. ) So, I would hope to convince some Calvinists to reconsider LCFW and the Openness of God. On the other hand, I would hope to convince (if necessary) some Open Theists to not sacrifice God's transcendences at the altar of his Immanance, or his soverign action in this world, at the altar of LCFW.

So Greg, keep paying attention, and hopefully, you will become "unpuzzled" and appreciate the profound depths of thought that we are reaching in this thread.

Your Friend,
Winghead

"...you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”
Mark 12:30-31 (NLT)

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In the same way, I do not think we should give in to the OV so quickly.

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How is the OV "tilting towards academic abstraction?" This does not make sense to me. Perhaps the whole topic of foreknowledge is tilting toward academic abstraction. However, I see the OV no more abstract than the traditional alternatives. In fact, it seems to me that what the traditional view must do to explain the so called "openness verses" of the Bible is more of an abstraction than the OV's literal hermaneutics.

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Yes and Yes. Both seem like abstractions. Are they both epistomologically similar? I'm guessing so.

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I also sense you are trying to salvage Reformed thinking from the likes of "neo-Calvinists".

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Distinguish between Continental Reformed and Presbyterian. (Links below.)

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I fail to see why the Calvinist view of election is something we should embrace so tenderly. It sounds like people trying to make a bad thing sound better than it is. What am I missing?

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Read Smedes and read Timmer (I had thougth it was Wolterstorff.) and decide for yourself. (I'm not necessarily Calvinist myself, though.)
Thread: And YOU thought you knew Calvinism... www.gregboyd.org/gbfront/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=567


I'm intrigued by the similarities between Calvin and Eastern Orthodox. And that said, I'm interested in what I can sniff out as to both the influences and the intuitions that Calvin might have had that pulled him away from Scholasticism's shackles; and that distinguishes Reformed from Presbyterian. (I used to listen To John Vanderstelt talk about this at faculty meetings. He was up on Van Till and Princeton.) Links include: theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1980/v37-1-article6.htm and www.markers.com/ink/pkrightr.htm